Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 278: The Freight Awakening

Episode Date: February 16, 2023

Everything from religion to industrial disasters to Mehdi Hasan's debating methods Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

maybe maybe you're in a place with a really loud uh ac really loud machinery getting loud outside it's pissing the rain and be like hey i'm working man yeah can't hear you call you back yeah sorry boys i'm uh mowing grass over here while we're trying to pot just uh you know dude just working man i got a book for you guys to read. Yeah. It's called, it's by Mehdi Hassan. The book is. I already stepped ahead of you.

You already have the book? Do you know about this? You know I'm a Mehdi head. How I Learned to stop being a bitch. That's the name of the book. It's Win Every Argument, The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking. So a guy that gets owned quite frequently

has written a book about how to not get owned. I like the bio of the description. gets owned quite frequently has written a book about how to not get owned. I like the bio, the description. MSNBC's Mehdi Hassan isn't one to avoid arguments. Okay. Well, that's for damn sure. I'm sure that's why he went on MSNBC, right? Right.

When you have a humiliation fetish, you're not going to avoid arguments. That's for sure. No, you're not going to avoid arguments. That's for sure. No, you're a debate bro. That's your reason for existence. I think the internet has shown that there are people out in the world that have an actual

fetish for being humiliated ritually. I think Mehdi is one of them. I feel like he loves getting owned publicly. He's just like, oh, give me more. These people also love being wrong. They have a pathological

fetish, desire for being wrong and thus being humiliated. They also have no shame, though. This is so absurd. Mehdi Hassan isn't one to avoid arguments. He relishes them as the lifeblood of democracy and the only surefire way to establish the truth. The lifeblood of democracy is making sure that your aunt,

your 40-year-old aunt who has a Black Lives Matter lawn sign, she gets her daily slop every eight o'clock yeah it's the lifeblood of democracy but make sure the karens are happy and the wine moms yeah a good argument made in good faith has intrinsic value and can also simply be fun man i gotta get my hand when was this book written well it's about to come out it hasn't come out yet judd this is a 2016 shit bro this is a 2008 hold on hold on i'm thinking this is you're pulling one from the back catalog here i'm like okay in 2012 maybe yeah yeah yeah judd apatow blurbed it all right the guy who said that somebody could have been killed when chris when slapped? That Judd Apatow?

Did he say that? That's hilarious. He did say that. That's not a very good argument, Judd. I don't trust his judgment on this blurb. What did he say? Oh, Cornel West also blurbed it. Man.

Oh, man, my boy. Come on, Doc. Jen Psaki, Naomi Klein. Even MJ missed a couple, man. Ben Rhodes. Man, what a murderer's row. Good God. Ben Rhodes, too?

Jen Psaki, Ben Rhodes, Naomi Klein. Some guy named Jonathan Swan. Yo, that is a nefarious mashup of people. Cornel West is kind of an enigma because he will very openly criticize the empire in all the right ways but he like but he like keeps getting invited back on all these shows you know it's like the only guy that can really crack that filter i don't know why it broke my heart to find out he was cia or something but i mean because like he'll like he'll like take tuck across and down but like with kindness you know and then just call him brother the whole time. Yeah, yeah, that's true.

You can't really hate that. That's why. That's why. He's just very polite. Makes you laugh. He's very polite. Well, the reason I found this book is because Medi has a, man, I'm going to have to start doing a segment on this show called Paywall

where we just, because i've like canceled all my subscriptions to everything i don't have anything anymore and uh and and the ideas section in atlantic is like they've gotten way stricter about enforcing their paywall so like i only get like a paragraph of ideas at a time now so so here's the new segment. Here's the new segment is you take that paragraph and you try to finish the article. Like based on the context clues of the little sample they give you. Okay, we could do this with Mehdi's article. How to beat Trump in a debate.

Unprepared and weak-willed opponents continue to play right into his hands. As opposed to me. yeah unlike unlike me who uh makes some inroads with him yeah i could go off your browser trump yeah this is the first paragraph and that's all we get really because the thing is i mean we do get more but it's a fucking quotation this dumb motherfucker pulled out like i the thing is, I mean, we do get more, but it's a fucking quotation. This dumb motherfucker pulled out. Like I, the thing that kills me about paywall is like, if you really want me to subscribe and read,

you've got to like grab my attention in the first like paragraph. Literally. It's like a novel or a short story. It has to have a great opening hook. You know what I mean? If you're going to make me pay like, you know, $7 a month. You know what I you know i read one the other day let's see if i still have it pulled open um oh it was it was it was also in the atlantic a very alluring title asymmetrical

conspiracism is hurting democracy um in the past decade, conspiratorial thinking has shifted from a worrying factor in Republican politics to a defining feature. It's just like, okay, I could read this. Dude, it only gives you two paragraphs, and those two paragraphs are just about how polarized everything is. It's like, dude, I've already read all,

I've read this article hundreds of times. Hundreds of times. Why would I pay to read the rest you you didn't grab my attention oh my god in these polarizing times for the we've been saying it for the past what 20 30 years i feel like every every group trap i mean like there's some variation every week of this man things are getting crazy aren't they yeah yeah yeah things that it used to be like this shit is getting wild out like well well that's debatable when i was texting y'all this morning about the demar hamlin controversy that's what came up in the group chat they were they were

really like opinions were divided my friend rick a strict catholic thought that it wasn't offensive but that he said well if it would have been like Jesus fucking a pig, I would have found that offensive. Yeah. If we wanted to make that comparison, though, those comparisons aren't even close, though. Yeah, yeah. No.

Well, wait. I don't know what the original controversy is. What was it about his coat that people found? So, you know, DeMar Hamlin was the guy that suffered the cardiac arrest on the football field right a few months ago or about a month ago right and so now he's you know he's making the rounds and media and stuff and he popped up at the super bowl halftime and he was wearing a blue coat emblazoned with the face of christ but done in the style of takashi murakami who was uh a japanese artist that used

to he did kanye west graduation album cover so that like that type beat all right okay i'm looking at it right now and it was first brought to my attention when i was listening to the kentucky sports radio morning program and a guy called in from Asbury College to talk about the big revival that's happening there. Like they've been having church for like five days straight or six days straight or something. They're very proud about that. And he called in to tell the host of Kentucky Sports Radio that he was highly offended by DeMar Hamlin's depiction of Christ. highly offended by demar hamlin's depiction of christ and it it made me angry because to my notion it's like man what offends me is you're all taking a first century palestinian jew and

making him look like a goddamn danish person you know what i mean make him look like he should be on the cover of gq some shit man yeah make him look like he should be on the cover of GQ or some shit, man. Yeah, make him look like he should have plugged his finger in the dock to save Holland or some shit. That's offensive to me. But I didn't even know that, like, I didn't even know that that was, like, a thing, man. I mean, like, there are, like, there's iconography of Jesus everywhere, man. Like, if anything, that shit is cool. That's a cool jacket. Well, you know's we had a

broader discussion i said well you know a lot of my muslim friends obviously is according to to to the quran they don't do depictions of muhammad peace be upon him because it's considered haram or whatever you know what i mean and you can kind of understand that if you're kind of sitting back and you're seeing like motherfuckers walking around with like you know crucifixion you can see how you might arrive at that you know what i mean i guess it might be sort of a fair point it was just too tempting that that's the thing the crucifixion was so gruesome and i mean it's an overplayed expression but metal and and people saw that and they're like yeah we have to depict that for 2 000 years i mean this shit goes way too hard it goes way too hard from across i mean that's the thing about like

muhammad as compared to jesus because all of muhammad's like crazy shit was like you know dancing in the sky and riding tornadoes like you can't you can't really portray that on a on a chapel steeple or hanging around your neck i mean it just doesn't go as hard as like the you know know. No, no, people will be like, yo, that's whimsical. Instead of like, yo, that puts fear in my heart. No, I think I'd rather ride tornadoes. Yeah, you're right. Like Muhammad was, and honestly,

that's why it's the superior religion. I mean, Muhammad, he was whimsical and Jesus was angsty. Like that was really the difference between the two. That's the differentiation. Which way, Western man? So you say like Jesus was listening, really the difference between the two that's that's the differentiation which way western man so you say like jesus was listening like my chemical romance and like mojave does this like vampire weekend yeah yeah pedicure the disco so yeah anyway it's just it's i just i for some reason this has made me angry

because now they're doing this thing and, like, DeMar Hamlins came out on Twitter and made an apology if he's, like, offended anybody. Oh, my God. I'm like, that's not dude. It's like, bro, you ain't got to do all that for these fucking cretins who doth speak their own blasphemies every fucking day when they promote white supremacy through the sort of guise of faith or whatever.

Oh, my God, man. Yeah, yeah like having to counter those people man and i mean like why he did it because he wants to be respectful but like nah you shouldn't have to do that shit well also the funny thing is this bible doesn't really have anything to say about jesus's physical appearance either well i mean i would think that the i mean i would think that the offensive thing would be that the coat says eternal like when you first showed when you first told me to look up the coat i didn't even think twice about jesus looking fucked up and weird i thought it was i thought maybe they were offended that he was saying i'm like j Jesus Christ, I'm eternal, I didn't die. I came back from the dead. Oh, so they thought he was blaspheming.

Yeah, I thought he was, yeah. By comparing himself to Christ because he was resurrected. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the man laid there and then he got up again. He rose up. I mean, historically speaking, I mean, this happened before you know i mean the thing about the thing you can't get mad about that because like i don't know how many fucking times

growing up i had friends in church and youth pastors and pastors who had little fucking jesus bobblehead dolls in their offices and yes i mean it's like defaming the likeness of jesus has been part of western christianity i mean so much so that you could even probably make a case that like whenever some fucking weird hermetic uh pastor in germany claims to have like jesus's foreskin or something like that that's also kind of... Yeah. It's like... Jesus is not getting royalties from that shit either, man. Yeah, exactly. It's all in his likeness and, you know...

Yeah, I mean, I can... That's the thing. That was the thing. It didn't compute in my mind. Like, I can understand getting mad at someone saying, like, I'm Jesus Christ. I came back from the dead. I can understand someone getting mad about that.

I can understand, well, at this point in history, someone getting mad about a depiction of Jesus because none of you ever fucking gave a shit in the past when, like I said, you wanted to make Jesus a little cutesy and you wanted to make him a little like. To sell shit and basically like. Yes. Not brainwash.

Yeah, to sell cheap tchotch yes brain to sell brainwash yeah to sell cheap tchotchkes to put in your fucking uh youth pastor office next to like 12 ways how to be abstinent and stuff like that how to live life with no fear yeah let me let me ask you all a question though because i didn't take a good look at the jacket but if Jesus was black like visibly black like if it was a twist on the Murakami like piece and like he had brown skin like how much more do you think that would have made people mad?

I probably would have lost their mind about that. It would have been on Fox News? Oh yeah. I mean this is a trap point but like first century palestinian is going to be a lot closer to a black man than uh what is european dude i think i thought i think i told you this time about my godmother's uh uh grandmother i used to live with her and highly pious right um lovely lady but she

has she's like an old jamaican lady and she's fair skin man but like you know old jamaican lady and dog shit like it always bugged me out that she had this huge portrait of Jesus painting. I'm talking about blonde curls, like, pristine blue eyes. Like Swedish Jesus. Swedish Jesus, yo. She was just like praying all the time. Like, yo, you're okay. All right.

I'm not hating. I'm just saying, you know, like historically speaking. I'm making a declaration right now. I think Christian, American, and for that matter, Western Christianity needs to die. If you want to be a Christian, you join the one true church, Ethiopian Orthodox or nothing. Hell yeah, there you go, there you go.

Speak the truth, brother. I agree. Speak the truth. Wait, so, maybe I missed, I was reading reading i was trying to read through paywalls i was like i'm like i'm like um i i don't know like hugh dancy and hannibal or something like i put my hand up against the wall and i tried to determine what's on your seer you're a seer that sees through paywall i see through paywall so i i missed something i had my hand up against meddy's paywall so to speak but i missed the i missed the connective link there are people at this round the clock

revival at asbury university are they are they sitting around and just getting really mad about demar hamlin like what the fuck well a guy called me a guy called into the radio program and he said that he had been witnessing a historic move of god at asbury college through the revival that's been going on several days there and he just wanted to say that he was highly offended by demar hamlin's uh sort of loosey-goosey depiction of the risen christ or whatever okay that's what he was he called in to make that grievance and it's like buddy don't you have some church to go be doing it's a revival exactly this is a revival right now yeah yeah. Yeah, there's a historic move of God, but I'm gonna leave that spectacle

and call into a fucking radio show. Right, exactly. Because apparently this is more damaging than this historic movement of God. I'm reading this article right now. It says, Mark Whitworth, Asbury's vice president for intercollegiate athletics

and university communications. What? Okay, you can't be three things. What the fuck is this job description? Wait, what is roles? Wait, what is roles? It's the admins are even proletarianized now. Everybody has to take up five goddamn roles

for the same fucking thing. What the fuck is this title? It's like everybody has to take up five goddamn roles for the same fucking thing. What the fuck is this title? Is it hyphenated? I want to see like university president, church rector, and groundskeeper. That would be like a good trio. Lake Guard, hyphenate Lake Guard. Cover all bases of class distinctions there. Yeah, exactly.

of class distinctions there. Yeah, exactly. Okay, this guy, Whitworth, he said more than 10,000 people have come through the doors to sing, pray, and listen, but he hesitates to call it a revival. From those who study and are scholars, I'm told that most often

if something is called a revival, it's called that after. And so we have been referring to this as an effort well i gotta hand it to him that's kind of real yo it's like yo we don't know what the shape of what's to come dog we can't call it what it's not like you know what i mean like i get it man that's fair and so and so we have been referring to this as an outpouring of god's deep deep and abiding love doesn't roll off that's too long doesn't roll off the tongue doesn't roll off the tongue go with revival

it's a better branding if you're trying to market Jesus I'm sure Terrence knows this but those that grew up in this will recognize Asbury College as the site where Icthus Festival happens the Christian Woodstock

a Christian Woodstock so it's not Woodstock no happens the christian woodstock yeah a christian woodstock yeah and who one of my old colleagues no well i i don't know dude you'd be surprised yeah actually actually it yeah actually yeah i could imagine one of my one of my former colleagues told me that uh her father was a professor slash minister there when she was growing up and that everybody would go there to do drugs and have sex. That kind of broke my brain because I thought I was going to go to... I never made it.

I never made it to Icthus, regrettably. But I thought if I would have went there, it was going to be some life-changing shit. Like what they're experiencing right there at the church. But apparently not. Apparently they're just sucking and fucking like the rest of us. You thought it was gonna be like making a trip to Mecca?

Yeah, right. Except DC Talk and the Newsboys are there instead. Let's see. After worshipers are led in several courses of I Thank God, another contemporary worship song, a bald man in a black sports jacket takes the stage. I'm not making fun of this. I really don't want to get it entirely twisted.

Whatever you do in church is whatever you do in church i don't really give a shit i just thought it was funny that the guy refuses to call it a revival though because like when i was in church we used to have revivals all the time and they were marketed as that like they were encouraged they were encouraged they were playing too it's like we're gonna revival. Sometimes it was spontaneous. Like, you had a good church service. You say, hey, you know, let's do this again tomorrow. Let's call it a revival, historically.

But actually, you know what? Yeah, you know, historically, by the strictest definition, this is not a revival. The textbook definition, actually. Yeah, it's like waking up the next morning and you're like, oh, man, was last night, was that a revival? Last night was a movie, bro. It was a movie. You can't go into revival and you quite get it. And then your hair-splitting friend says,

actually, I think last night was an outpouring of God's deep, deep, and abiding love. And then you're like, oh, yeah, for sure, man. You don't want to fight with him. You got it. You know what, too? This could be an ingenious kind of way to create suspense. Because then people, it creates debate, right?

It invites debate. People are like, wait, is it a revival? Is it not? Let me go and find out. I guess the litmus test would be do you feel revived afterwards so i guess the the guy with five titles is correct wait what is the what is the criteria for feeling revived though that seems very like expensive well i i think that it's like having a like a fresh drink of water yeah yeah yeah i do think it's interesting that is a great question.

Like, what is a revival actually? Because, you know, I think that we kind of tend to think of it like in this country, there was like the first Great Awakening and the second Great Awakening, right? Like there were these like religious, like, you know, movements of fervor that kind of swept through geographic regions of the early United States. And we kind of think of that as a revival. But where did this, A, where did this term start? And B, what does it mean?

Because it's interesting to think about, like, a revival, it's a renewing, right? A renewing of faith, specifically. Right, right, exactly, but what are we renewing? Is it like collective faith, like a community? Is it like- Individual faith? Yeah, right. What's it pointed at?

Listen, for anybody that thinks that we get too in the weeds with this stuff, this is a fair question because it could also be reflected back in terms of organizing too. Like what is what you're doing point of that yes exactly what's are we just here to feel good do you know what i mean that's fine if you are that's fine but then it's not maybe it's not a revival yeah but it is an outpouring of you know dot dot dot yeah well i mean so the the what within christian studies the concept of revival is derived from biblical narratives of national decline and restoration during the history of the

israelites in particular yeah in particular narrative accounts of the kingdoms of israel and judah emphasize periods of national decline and revival associated. So it is kind of what I was thinking. Like I was thinking there has to be kind of like a societal or political element to it, right? Where it's like we're reseeding the earth metaphorically, but also literally. Like the nation needs to be reforested, you know, terraformed.

Cultivated. Maybe a better use of the time would be to get out of the chapel and go plant some trees. Maybe on the moon. Maybe the moon needs some trees. You'll find our wages competitive.

some tricks okay you'll find our wages competitive um so yeah it talks about the first and second great awakenings unlike the second great awakening that'd be being around 1800 and which reached out to the unchurched the first great awakening focused on people who were already church members um all right so they just double-dipping? Yeah, yeah. Well, there's a term for that. They're bapolizing the church. Preaching to the choir. You know what I'm saying?

Preaching to the choir, okay. Literally, okay. All right. So let me get this straight. A couple motherfuckers threw up some tents somewhere, and then the world was forever changed. Well, that like what's interesting is that i think his story historically and historiographically the uh i think that the second great awakening kind of inspired it was kind of one of the early things that inspired like abolitionism and suffrage uh okay stuff i mean like which is hilarious and absolutely

inconceivable now i like yeah i'm reading this book about john brown and i finally got to the part where they go to Kansas and like fucking just like- Is this the cloud splitter? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They go to Kansas and they take swords with them because John Brown was a dramatic motherfucker. A swordsman. They took swords, broadswords, and like sharpened them motherfuckers.

Did they light them on fire or some shit, too? Call it the Wraith of Heaven or something? Yeah, those motherfuckers. They hacked some guys to bits, man. Like, fucking brought them out of their houses and fucking hacked them up with swords. And, like, it's,'s like it's inconceivable and like obviously because like this was john brown's like i mean john brown had like a um uh he had like a critique right like he he very much had a critique of racism and of race

and obviously of slavery he was vehemently against slavery but john brown did not see the world really in rich versus poor like god john brown saw the world in god versus satan and good versus evil truly yeah good versus political social overlays it's like no motherfucker we're talking about this nebulous amorphous dark losing evil versus like you know the universe of the light you don't say the light of the universe type of shit i'm gonna ask y'all a question do you think like people back then really like and honestly in their heart of hearts thought that like slavery was like just okay or, like, whatever? Or is that something that, like, obviously they're, like, being hypocritical, you know? Yo, I, like, I think, like, people definitely knew.

Like, it was something so horrifying, like, that they kind of, like, had to live with it by, like, saying, like, well, it's just, like, you know, like, maybe it's not good. Or some people are like, yeah, it is good. But people, I mean, people, I have to believe that people had to know. You know what I mean? You had to have... You know what I mean? Because that's like a kind of mass, like, just like...

Just like... I mean, just like destitution of the soul. That is troubling to think about. You know what I mean? Yeah. I don't think... I mean... Obviously, the slave owners knew it was wrong.

Otherwise, they wouldn't have tried so hard to justify it. Like, they tried... Exactly tried so hard to justify it. Like, they tried, you know what I mean? Like, with Christian doctrine and all this stuff. Exactly. Which, to John Brown, that was like, if you were, like, a slave owner or supported slavery, you were Satan.

You were literally Satan. You were marked for death. Yeah. Especially if you were justifying it with the word of God. You know what I mean? And his avenging angels would move swift into Kansas on your hands. It's interesting, though, to think that anybody in today's day and age would A, feel so convicted to do such a thing but b would feel so convicted on grounds of spiritual like i know motherfuckers who have been plugging away like

prison abolitionism and environmental causes and abortion access and etc etc who are i would say i don't know like maybe if push comes to shove i'd say like most of them would probably be willing to die for the cause etc etc but most of them are probably not religious having said that they are 10 000 times more convicted in their values and principles than your average christian church person. Oh, by a mile. Absolutely. Absolutely. By a mile. So it's like, it's interesting. It's also interesting, the God that Christians today say they worship

is not at all the God that John Brown would have worshipped, for example, in his conception of things. Right. Yeah, yeah, right. Or, you know, maybe even like, you know, I don't know how to get into all that, but basically modern Christians are the inheritance of the slave-owning Christians that justified that.

You know what I mean? That is their intellectual inheritance. When you're seeing all this stuff, what you're seeing, yeah. This isn't just us saying it from the outside looking in. It's like, no, I grew up with it my whole life. I grew up with people telling me I couldn't criticize George Bush because that was sinful. Yeah. Or America.

Which is insane. All right. Or even the prosperity gospel, too, tying personal wealth with not even just you're a morally good person but that also god is smiling down upon you know what i mean yeah oh man that's the pentecostalism and all that stuff in america the way that plays out is god wants you to be rich in mexico how that plays out is you join up with the with the zapatistas in chiapas you know so it's like it's weird because i had that cop that sort of weird relationship with it all where it's like no there are very good christian people but there are also disgusting christians by and large in most places like where we live you know where we come from

well at this point i dude i don't know it's like i did not sit down today planning to talk about christianity in 21st century america but like all football season and i saw people pointing this out after the super bowl but like you know just all football season there was these commercials for that this fucking shadowy group that's like uh do you know which ones i'm talking about the jesus yeah the jesus commercials people are talking about yeah the jesus commercials yeah um and uh basically the the gist of all the articles or the all the commercials was like um jesus loves you it's literally it it's just like oh are you having hard times like is your life hard you know are you arguing with your aunt about black lives matter jesus loves you this is like that kind of shit wait so wait wait so did it get like actual

political like oh jesus loves you despite like like politics or whatever like that i feel like that's kind of those i feel like that was kind of the um okay the implicit thing it's like no even if you're even if you're like gay and stuff it's like jesus still loves you and that kind of shit but it's like but then it came out i should i'm feel bad for not even naming it because like i it would actually even if you believe in the day of the rope jesus loves you it's like wait what motherfucker what did you just say well it's funny because like yeah it's it was he gets us that was the he yeah that was like yeah uh but i saw someone point out that like this group is like funding all of these uh like they're it's like funding all of these... It's funding all these astroturfed anti-abortion groups

across the United States. You know what I mean? They don't even have the fucking convictions to be open about what they feel anymore. And it's because they all know that they're fucking fraudulence. They're all frauds. And the way that... This is an interesting thing obviously like i don't go

to church on a daily basis so i don't really know what and if i did i definitely wouldn't be fucking going back to a southern baptist church but it was like revealed this past year that the southern baptist convention had covered up all of these like abuse uh and and you know sexual assaults and all this stuff it's just like on a scale that was, I mean, it's hard to put up the numbers Catholicism put up just because it was running. Yeah, yeah. It's like comparing LeBron to Jordan,

but of sexual degeneracy. They've been running with the championship. One had a much longer career than the other. Yeah, one had a longer career, but it still was very fucked up and i'm sure uh i'm i am positive that the type of people that i grew up going to church with they've done no self-reflection on that they've probably done what every other fucking like middle american wasp has done see you know witnessing the last 20 years after the war in Iraq and the financial collapse and everything else

they've probably taken it all observed it not been able to fit it into all the things that they raised as saying you had to do to be a principled, virtue member of society instead

they've just kind of like pushed it way way way down oh yeah way subconsciously like buried that shit locked it in the pandora's box wrapped it with chains and shit threw that shit in the sea like yeah man yeah cast it to the sea and the reason is is because god to them is a mental health walk or meditation practice yeah it is it's a salve you know what i mean yeah it's a salve it's not has nothing to do with any deep conviction or the neck of the center is what it means to be human which means we're going to die and how do you deal with that they don't know if to them it's like how do i live the most comfortably you know exactly justify and justify horrible or selfish things that i do man right right how do i

carry on being a selfish fucking piece of shit with it while while also knowing that when my number's called i'll spend eternity and and more comfort uh-huh no you're right it's not it's not a mechanism towards greater understanding of the universe and pain and suffering. And while we're all here, nor is it a gateway to liberation and a, you know, a fire that can, you know, propel you towards fighting for the liberation for others.

It's like, no, it's my little coffee and I'm going to have it. And I'm going to do it. It's not even like a community either, man. it dude it's not even like a community either man no it's not even like a source of community for them like my mom goes to church that's a sense of community for you know oh and then the worst part is these people are getting more and more emboldened and insane well i'm just curious to see though because i i know that uh like i think

that um you know belief and like you know being religious has like been on the downswing in the united states for the past couple decades you know but at the same time though like like where it does exist in the political sphere it's like so activated you know what i mean and it's because like it's kind of like the same thing with the tech shit right we talked about this before it's like it used to be that like religion would solve like, you know, these the problems of the world and the self. Right. And especially of the future, what tomorrow is going to look like, you know, to give people some sense of certainty, you know. And like, I don't know, man, I'm like wondering, are we seeing like a resurgence of that? It's like shit gets worse. Like, are they going to get more crazy, more emboldened? Yeah, probably.

Yeah, I think so. That's actually an interesting kind of segue because or not a segue but it's an interesting kind of comparison because all the things that i don't know maybe this is partially why the right-wingers are against silicon valley but i doubt that their critique of it goes that deep but it's like all the things that we've we've pointed it out multiple times on this show but a lot of the things that they've come up with in this new tech paradigm is uh very blasphemous like being able to speak across the veil like with someone like that would have been that would that was high blasphemy when i was growing up it might be fuck that it might be it is like you know it's like arthur c clark says man it might be it might be indistinguishable

from magic right like i mean like not like it's like we went back to the victorian times and showed them like i mean even like a fucking typewriter or something like that you know what i mean well they'd be like what the fuck is also making idols we yes we holograms true truly dude we it really is if you were like a a john brown type like someone who like had deep deep convictions like like social justice convictions but also saw the world in this like very dramatic like clash between between good and evil, god-like forces versus satanic forces. You would truly be pretty freaked the fuck out. Because you're right, there is idols. There is this reformulation of metaphysics

and trying to new new intelligences and speaking across the veil but then there's also honestly in some ways we're like in in that in that sense it's kind of like a tower to babble right like we are kind of like trying to speak with god itself but it's maybe if you take the bird's eye view of it all, maybe the reason we're so polarized and all this kind of stuff is just a Tower of Babel situation. It's like God's trying to curb AI and all these blasphemous forces. Because all those things can't happen,

we all have to disagree and hate each other and like you know like famously in the story they all spoke different tongues and that's why we have all the different languages we can't all say it well i i think it's fascinating that we've like we are reverse engineering illiteracy like chat GPT is, dude, it's fucking insane. Like, we're literally giving kids the ability to just plug some shit in. I mean, I am a crank about this. I really do think it's very, very concerning that, I mean, right-wingers, they talk all the time, oh, kids don't have critical thinking skills, kids don't have critical thinking skills kids don't have critical thinking skills well they're sure shit not going to now like if if

you give them a tool where they can just like plug in a few keywords and it'll spit out an argument for you why would they what why would they even it's not even why would they want to why would they know anything else like my nephew like gravitates he's a toddler and he gravitates towards screens and like the fact that he can touch an icon on an ipad or something and know that that opens an app you know what i'm saying like i remember going to when i was in elementary school we were when computers were in like schools we had to take this type of this i'm typing course mavis typewriter where it was a program that would teach us like how to fucking use a keyboard and now these kids don't eat so i can understand too why people might like people who like grew up at a time where they didn't even

have like i mean maybe the town that they lived in didn't have like electricity everywhere or something like that or maybe they didn't have amenities that like now that we take for granted but now they're seeing like oh yeah dude like like i was thinking about this the other day this new harrison ford indiana jones movie like they de-aged him or like in the other Star Trek movies, they brought him back like actors that have died. And imagine like you saw that shit, like as a kid growing up, you know what I'm saying?

You're like, yo, this person, like, like, you know what I'm trying to say? Like that shit is fucking freaky, dude.

Like that shit is really disturbing. I agree. It's kind of like when there was that thing going on on youtube where algorithms were basically creating their own content and there were these continuity errors in the content itself that if you saw it and you were of a certain age it would really fuck with you like you know what i'm saying like it would really fuck with your understanding yeah of object permanence and continuity and being itself unsettling yeah it would it yeah it's just very surreal and unsettling and i also like that i really i really though i really am a crank about this chat gpt thing because it's like being able to read and write doesn't mean just

being able to like spell words and and stuff it's like it's how you navigate the world it's exactly and you have to like that's exactly right and you know it it really part of writing is building an argument i mean it's telling a story but it's also building an argument and so it's like if you can't do that you're not going to be able to read other people doing it does that make sense no that makes sense there's not gonna be readers they might like you know what i'm saying well you know what else too man it's like the way all this shit works is like i don't really think i mean anybody really knows how ai works even computer scientists who use that term it just seems like a catch-all term now that's like for branding

but like from my understanding it's like it it's it grabs information like an amalgamation of information right to put it into something that's like logical right but just because that's true it doesn't mean that this might be something that like a human being would say this is something that really like makes sense in certain contexts you know what i mean and i don't know like i don't we haven't talked about in a while but you know like the e-crisis man it really makes me think like yo this is like this is like their solution to it you know like with all the information that they've amassed through computer networks and shit like that right now they said okay now we can erase the human element out of it yeah and you can get and it's like i don't know that's so disturbing

you know yeah you're right it's like it's like because we don't know, that's so disturbing. Yeah, you're right. It's like because we can't agree on a consensus reality and because political polarization or whatever, because there are no political solutions to anything, they are just going to slowly start migrating all of society's discourse, arguments, just all the things that it means to be human into this disembodied externalized to a giant computer the multivac like isaac asimov wrote because it is a fucking computer yeah i was thinking about this the other day it's interesting how like now the internet has become a place word or i I'm sorry, AI has become synonymous with the internet.

Like we use those terms sort of because like what people, when people sit down and they try to explain what AI is to you, what they wind up explaining is just like what you were just explaining, like algorithms, taking data, reformulating it into this preconceived notion of what the user expects to get out of it and as a result that means we've we have imbued those things with this human-like knowledge and with a human-like uh you know authority but which is a hilarious leap in what the internet is for and does just in the last 20 years because like growing up literally the thing you heard about the internet was like oh you write it on the internet it can't be true it's like now now it's the opposite no now it is true it is absolutely undeniably true there's no it's so funny that the people that said that that many years ago are now the people that whole cloth believe the weirdest shit. Yeah.

Where did they slip? You know what I mean? Yeah. Where did they go down that rabbit hole? Oh, shit, man. I don't know, dude. Wow. It is also just going to be wild where in the years coming forward, especially with deep fakes and stuff like that, we're going to have these collective moments

and then realize two days later they were fake or engineered. And then some people are going to get the memo, some won't, and then that's just going to add further. Clearly we're going to have a situation. And I'm not talking in 20 years. I'm talking in three years. There's going to be no, even less so than now, consensus on what is real and what isn't. It's all coming apart, man.

It is all coming the fuck apart. It's like that article I sent you guys, fucking Vincent Lloyd or whatever. My takeaway from that wasn't that, oh, universities have gotten too woke, or this professor has become become a crank and he can't keep up with the times. What I get from that is no one can communicate anymore. No one. There is no way to communicate. We are all speaking across chasms. No one can fucking communicate with anyone. And this is not to say this is not to say that, like, because I think people could take this the wrong way where they're like, well, you know, there are some ideas that are like, like reprehensible that you shouldn't like engage with and shit like that.

And, you know, like this is all true. But like, dude, I've talked about this before. I worked for the Dems for like 10 years. Right. As a canvasser knocking on doors. And most of the time when I did that shit, I didn't talk about the candidate. I'd be smoking weed and just be like, hey, how you doing? X, Y, Z.

Right. But like, dude, I found out that like, like most people like i don't mean it's like in a like a simplistic way but like most people were pretty fucking chill and cared about relatively the same things you know they had different ways of expressing how they wanted that to happen or most people didn't even know how they wanted that to happen you know and it was kind of like yeah it was just being able to sit there and be able to talk to people and not have it mediated by like and i don't want to be a crank about it either terms but you're right not being mediated by like not just these echo chambers but through these certain technological interfaces you know i don't know it was just like it was just kind of like okay this is like a normal human interaction right now you know uh-huh where

there's no pressure to entrench oneself in one's position because you are literally talking to someone face to face and unless you're a fucking asshole nobody would do that you know what i mean nobody would behave like that you know right like it's people doing that more and more now too well it feels like uh i don't know man it's that article did you guys read that article i don't know i don't want to go through it but it's um i thought it was there was some interesting stuff in it uh long story short a black professor leads a workshop at a college uh a history workshop uh it gets taken over by quote unquote woke college students who say the professor is not talking enough about anti-blackness um even when he's trying to even talk about like native

american genocide they they demand he talk about anti-blackness etc etc i mean they just go round and round and round around like that's just kind of the thing um it's also kind of questionable because it's in compact mag so it's like yeah exactly exactly but i do i do think that there is something there uh i do think that there's some concerning thing there and i think that kind of like what it is is that um it's it's not something anybody can control like that what like what they're diagnosing in this article and um what i'm even diagnosing with like chad gpt and all this other stuff i don't think any of any of it is anything anybody can control i think this is just kind of the natural drift of thing it's like nobody we are all losing the ability to communicate we're all losing the ability to formulate arguments and understand why something is false and why something is correct and why we are convicted about it.

We are all becoming automatons, basically. We are ceding a part of our own intelligence and putting it onto machines. That is the weird thing. We're basically becoming cyborgs without the actual physical.'re not exactly we're not we're not getting exactly we're not getting any of the benefits of interfacing with these machines and with this technology like you know what i'm saying it's not like the board no it's just the drawbacks you know i mean it's just a project where you have the split exactly almost like like just where where you're overloaded with information. The only thing that you can do like an automaton is to fall back upon and execute the commands that you were made for.

Exactly. Exactly. I mean, that's all of us, yo. That's all of us. Me included, dude. Me fucking included. Well, that's the thing. A lot of the times.

You think that like in this AI debate, it's like there's one thing. It's like we're making this machine smarter. But it's like we are also, it's dialectical. We are making ourselves dumber. Dumber at the cost of that. At the cost of that. My first exposure to AI was the 2015 movie, Her, starring Joaquin Phoenix.

And I thought, this is gonna be chill. In the future, we're gonna be able to use AI to get pussy when there's none to be had. I can get behind that. And then just like, what? Eight short years later, man, we get this weird-ass art.

Weird hands and shit. Weird figures and shit. You don't know. Was that Kanye West that really said that, or was that AI? Well, dude, Joe Blatter just say to Edward, like, what? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all possible. Dude, it is all extremely dangerous. And this is another thing.

It's like, I did not consent to be driving on the road with automated cars, self-driving cars. I did not consent for chat GPT to run rampant through society. And I'm sure a lot of people. It's an assault on the commons. It is, dude. It really is. It really is.

And, dude, there's no fucking regulation at all. Like it blows my mind that elon musk tweet out like hey for tesla drivers a new beta test for self-driving is available you can download and i'm like wait bro hold up so you're telling me there's people that because there's teslas in my neighborhood tell me there's people that could just like decide one day that yeah i'm just gonna like turn this on and like i have to like all right now you know now i gotta make sure that i don't get killed mowed down in my whole fucking neighborhood because this fucking psych yo dude yeah so it's like your personal safety is is basically left up to the whims of elon musk's hubris

exactly yo and i mean essentially a bunch of zeros and ones you know what i'm saying like they can go haywire it for no reason at any moment yeah i was talking with our friend katie about this today it's like we kind of have hit a point with infrastructure where it if it's not explicitly designed to kill you it probably will fail and and kill you at some point it's like well it's like growing up it's like when you imagined your own imminent mortality it's like uh i probably have a heart attack it's like that you know heart disease is very common maybe off cancer but it's like now it's like oh well maybe a train might derail and go through my house or maybe a bridge might collapse or a fucking tesla where like where someone's asleep at the wheel will fucking run me off the road or like yeah or worse yeah or worse

yeah or like like and you you it's not hard to imagine a world where these fucking Norfolk Southern executives that are afraid to go testify in front of Congress about what happened. Not even in front of Congress. In front of the community. They wouldn't even go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Citing safety

concerns. Safety concerns. Yeah, you should be concerned. It's like, yeah, it's so wild. It's like, oh, man. Just the audacity to fucking destroy a place and then just be like, yeah, well, we don't really want to go face the music because, yeah, safety concerns.

Safety concerns. But it's not hard to see a world where they take all the wrong lessons from that and it's like, well, what we need is AI to run these trains. Yeah. Exactly. 1,000%. Exactly.

I guarantee you that's exactly what they're fucking doing. Well, dude, also with AI, too. I think I've talked about this before. But we talked about this, Terrence. Like, Kodak, when they had color film, they could not depict black people true to skin tone. Because they were like, black people are not fucking behind our cameras you know what i mean so like that technology was imbued with racism and discriminatory ideas and ideology and whatnot like you know power control and shit like that like before like they and just not even subconsciously so you know what i mean

consciously but subconsciously in a way right it was just like an effect of this intended like the way that they saw the world and it's the same thing with ai man i can already imagine uh police using it for racial profiling that's going to increase racial profiling i could imagine it for a data bank systems and health care right the way that they're going to portion data and shit like that so like when tim pool was like oh like uh this is ridiculous it won't even say the n-word and people were like well that's a good thing won't say the n-word i'm like dude like that'd be the least racist thing that ai could do right you know what i mean rather than actually making the lives of black people worse in insidious ways terrence we talked

about it with that um with where that ai um um algorithm where rents go up. Yeah. And it predominantly affects like black working class neighborhoods. Yeah. I think that like we talk about like revival, right? And it's like you look back at like all the great moments of either religious or intellectual revival. It's like because I even consider like the young hegelians and shit like philosophical groups and luddism and stuff it's like like humanity we used to have these moments where uh you know where we would have these kind of like revolutions in thought and uh we're like yo that shit is crazy we gotta stop exactly and it's like that's honestly what

we need honestly we really do need like a redefinition of humanity or some kind of like new humanism or something something that like it's not quite luddism because like you know it's like i'm i'm not against technology whatever i don't even know what the fuck technology is but like but i do think that like you have to like you don't know you gotta like put your foot down somewhere it's like yeah this is this is out of fucking control like this is not insane like you know and i was telling my mom too and i mean like i know we're talking about tech but i was even i mean i think it's all related but you know there's another school shooting you know um another mass shooting and i was just like it got to the point where i like i mean everyone is so desensitized but i'm

always like this doesn't happen anywhere else in the fucking world like this is insane and the fact that people are not like pulling their hair tearing their hair out and screaming, you know what I'm saying? By all of this shit just, like, blows my fucking mind. And that's the most troubling thing, you know? That's the most troubling thing when people are like, okay, this is like, like, people are like, okay, this is crazy, but I guess this is the way it is, you know? Instead of being like, okay, nah, we have to stop this shit, you know? We have to fucking do something. What to do, I don't know.

But I don't fucking know. Yeah. I don't know, man. I guess that's the problem, right? Is that nobody knows what to do because you can't really do anything i don't want to say people can't do anything but people are aware of their own powerlessness you know in this sort of context so i guess the only thing you can do is kind of either have this ironic detachment or you know you know it is interesting even with like the the train derailment, with what you were just saying. It's like there was this weird debate that popped off where you saw a lot of centrists sort of agreeing with the Ohio governor's line

about, well, this is not that bad. We don't need you making a stink about it. It's all this kind of stuff. And it kind of reminded me, when I was reading all this and seeing all this, and then seeing the weird arguments that popped up. Like, the one guy that was, like, bickering with Adam Johnson about, like, well, lefties tend to, you know, really ride for, like, rural problems. But when it comes to urban problems, disproportionately black people, they, like, disperse. I don't think

that's true that's not fucking true aren't liberals always the ones that like always say like fuck the south which is predominantly black right yeah yeah but like it's weird because i grew up in a place where like every stream is fucking orange and nobody like bats an eye at why that is yeah you know what i mean yeah and like all these things like like it is there is like a sense of uh just everybody's sort of becoming well adjusted to these like little injustices that were dealt every day and then over time they just don't even like register with you anymore and i just thought how fucking insane is it that we're basically saying like all these different like chemicals are like now in your air and water for you know maybe forever

who knows maybe an indeterminate amount of time whatever but like it's not that bad so you should just shut up about it yeah because city dwellers have problems too it It's like, it's all bad. Yeah, yeah. When you're comparing, when you're playing like environmental, like pollution Olympics, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. You're like, well, they have it worse. It's like, what are you talking about right here?

Was the argument that people don't attach this much fervor and concern to urban disasters was that it is that like that that like leftists are hyper fixated on rural disasters rather than urban ones right right yeah like that like and the guy really couldn't code any examples in that little back and forth but he was like eventually just cited like a couple of tweets or something. But he was like, do you remember in 2018, the never ending Appalachian coverage? You know, all that kind of stuff. And the reason being is because places like that typically, you know, I don't want to say that, you know, they necessarily get ignored. That's not necessarily true.

But like when they have a moment, they tend to milk it for all the... And I'm... Look, there's a lot about that that I'm put off by, too. This should be perfectly clear. A lot of the Appalachian Left annoys the shit out of me because it's like, how much fucking longer are we going to talk about J.D. Vance and all this other shit, you know what I mean? But it's like, people deserve to like not have to breathe fucking burning chemicals and shit like we you

you don't have to queue up in a line based on the severity of grievance you know what i mean like it's like it's like if i got a grievance about something i need to shut the fuck up because the transatlantic slave trade happened it's like i'm not saying that i'm not ranking well tom tom did you know you know what i mean like well it's mad and it and the worst expression of that of course is like oh it's woke whatever's woke which is fucking annoying too but like god damn man can't we just acknowledge that like everything is bad and we need each other? You know what I mean? Exactly.

Yeah, I think that to the extent that it's even true, which I don't think that it is, I think it's probably because there's a massive column of black smoke belching into the atmosphere and like the the visual image of that is so arresting that it's hard to like look away it's hard to you know what i'm saying it's like yeah uh and that does happen in some urban places but it's also the fact that it happened right after Biden basically fucking put the kibosh on the union. So it's like, dude, have you been under a fucking rock?

Like, what are you talking about? But then, Terrence, those people also would agree that, well, he had to do what he had to do, right? You know what I mean? He had to do what he had to do because, you know, the consumers were going to suffer, you know? Like, little Jimmy wasn't going to get his Christmas presents, you know what i mean he had to do what he had to do because you know the consumers were going to suffer you know like little jimmy wasn't going to get his christmas presents you know it's crazy that like a lot of this shit can be tied back to them balking on giving these people seven days of

paid sick leave a week which is nothing didn't didn't also i swear to god there was another derailment like i mean not like this where there was a chemical spill, but I think during these negotiations when people were kind of like, yeah, this motherfucker's going to side on behalf of the Capitol. I swear to God, it seems like every time he puts his foot down or touts about our

public transportation, there's always a derailment. Some shit always fucks up. And this country's literally crumbling, man. That's what fucking blows my mind. It's not even just the social impl imploding but literally falling the fuck apart you know yeah yeah just blows my fucking mind dude yeah i mean dude you have to think about though because i didn't really think about this um it's like the effect that this news story about shooting down the balloons, the UFOs. Yeah, the UFOs, the big dumb object.

Did you notice last week was UFOs, this week it's like derailments and chemical spills? Yeah. I feel like we're back in the 90s, man. Well, it's like, we spend a lot of time online and like have a for better or worse, have a specific kind of view or formulated opinion on UFOs, Pentagon activities, Department of defense activities like what well we we you know but we forget that this

is not readily apparent to the average american dude you gotta you gotta really put yourself because i thought about this because like my mom never fucking texts me about anything has to do with like social or political issues and then she sent me a message on like super bowl sunday it was like have you been keeping up with these ufos are shooting out of the sky it's like you forget that like the average american they just they just grab that from the ether you know what i mean like they hear the government shooting ufos out of the sky and they take it as is right it's like i don't know it's just um it's an interesting thing it's kind of does go to what we were saying on Sunday, them kind of ratcheting up the fear and paranoia a little bit.

That is so true, and it goes back to the communication thing a little bit. But it's like if you spend too much time on Twitter, it's like that show Early Edition where the guy gets the newspaper, like tomorrow's newspaper day early. You get that, but then you also get to see it get churned through the fucking, you know, the mill of like discourse.

So you could actually arrive at like a semi-sane opinion or, you know, after it's been like tousled about, whereas other people get it two days later and then they just grab it and it's like a knee jerk that. Well, that's the thing. That happened with the Palestine train derailment it like dude it went through several it went through so many different like metabolisms that like it got spat out on the other side 72 hours later yeah look with the most insane shit attached like the one you just said tom just like

uh leftists have uh they're focused too much on rural areas. It's like, what the fuck? Who are you talking about? It's so funny that why would you even say something like that? You would never say that to anyone in person. And that's what I was kind of saying earlier, right? There are some things that like, you would just never say this to anyone. Oh, this is what it was.

This is what it was. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to interrupt you, Aaron, but I got to read this. this is what it was this is what it was i'm sorry i'm sorry to interrupt you but i gotta read this this is what it said it's uncomfortable but it really feels like the idea of shadowy capitalists inflicting a terrible industrial accident and cover up on a small all white rural town with a cinematic name fits the heron vulkish heartland versus globalist worldview both extremes okay occasionally share like dude please please please go log off also listen listen can we one i don't agree with you but two if you think something's bad can we just please for the love of god find something to compare it to besides nazi fucking germany never yo never dude

because that is the ultimate evil bro that is the ultimate evil beyond like chemical spills which is why it's such a bad comparison because it's such a fucking outlier if i if i went to a fucking facility or a work site or a place every day where I saw people pouring themselves massive glasses of poison and just drinking it up and just being licking their lips like this is good stuff. Like you would not expect me to have a sane, you know what I mean? You would not expect me to look at the world with any parasain eyes. you know what i mean you would not expect me to look at the world with any parasitic eyes the fact that i have to watch people get online and because they hate themselves so fucking much and they hate everyone else so much they have to like they have to churn they have to throw up the takes and then eat the vomit and then throw them back like a baby bird yeah like a baby bird

you know what i was thinking of too man what's crazy too with the cycles of the news and the way the cycles that it goes through is that, like, apparently the balloons may have been, have drifted off course because of changing weather patterns. Which is also an interesting idea, like changing weather patterns and what is that going to do, right? Another thing I heard, like permafrost melts. This is going to release like long dead viruses and bacteria. So, okay, now we're also talking about technology just going wayward. And that didn't get covered, bro. heard like permafrost melts this is gonna release like long dead viruses and bacteria so okay now we're also talking about technology just going wayward and that didn't get covered bro like no one like i saw one or two tweets about it but like anyone who got that oh there are ufos being shot out of the sky was never okay ps actually they probably went you know what i mean like the

chinese are not spying on us like they were probably blown wayward because of the fucking wind you know which is yeah climate change maybe which is another thing they have to unpack you know to be fair which is i mean it's not a complicated thing to fucking understand but these are things that they're not meant to understand that people are not meant to understand you know right i mean it's the the it's the the thing about that is it's it's insulting you to your face. It's like everybody fucking knows that the Chinese don't have to get in the fucking balloons and come over and scout the lands like conquistadors. It's like, Google Maps! This is, I have to say, the fountain of youth.

It's like, dude, you just got to fucking go online and you can see everything bro everything is on the internet they have a satellite bro i'm telling you you got a satellite dog i don't really think they need to use fiber lube and you know what we do it too that's the fucking crazy thing man and i hate to be like oh well the u.s but it's like that's another thing is like the shit that you're being fed like and i mean this like to say like we're heavily online but i think about like where other people get their news from and i'm pretty sure like online too but these are facebook or mainstream media and i swear to god they're trying to get you to buy a gun and kill people i think they are i think i do i really do think that's it i think that's partially

i think that's one ingredient in why there's so many mass shooters it's like no one I think that's one ingredient in why there's so many mass shooters. It's like no one, this is like a cheapening of humanity, but also of the self. It's like, I can't get anything out of anything anymore. No pleasure, no connection, no nothing. The only thing, it is kind of like that Delilo novel, Mao Tu. It's like the only way to get any kind of fulfillment or reaction or any way to actually penetrate through people's brains is

terror. Like mass terror. And I think that that is a part of it. Even that's losing its luster. Even that's losing its luster. That's a tool. You know what I mean? We see it like 30 seasons of terror. 9-11 was crazy dog, but come on you gotta bring something else, man. That's why we were talking about that the group chat like it that's

funny to see some of my like bog standard like even kind of conservative leading friends being like yeah like our lives have been marked by tragedy and like just mark like mass bad events and like it's hard to like sort of come out of that normal you know and you can't and i think about like i think about like like like coming home and watching like the south tower collapse you know and just kind of being like yo they're like like this is insane there are people in there and i was like what 11 or 10 you know and i'm not saying that young young kids haven't been through horrible fucking things you know what i mean but like the like you were saying, Tom, the way everything is stacked on top of it, where you don't even get a chance to process it as a kid. It has to fuck with you, man.

It has to fuck with the society, not even just the generation. And then seeing that shit be cheapened. I brought it up before maybe, but this just blows my fucking mind like the new call of duty game is gonna have a mission like in like i mean this takes place like right after 9-11 and i think it's like the the uh fucking like attack of fallujah some shit like that and it's like yo there's somebody there's like a veteran who probably has like one leg who's sitting there playing that fucking game who is there fucking was there you know what i mean and now it's a fucking video game like not even to mention the like all the fucking people that is there fucking was there you know what i mean and now it's a fucking video game like not even to mention the like all the fucking people that died there you know what i'm saying

right i mean people live in that country we're from there you know what i mean fucking million or more displaced people and dead people it's just i don't know dude it just blows my mind well um you know i did not anticipate going down any of those routes. This all started out with Mehdi Hassan. With Mehdi Hassan. We were talking about how to beat Trump in a debate. How do you beat Trump in a debate? You terrorize people.

Terrorize Trump. All we have is the first paragraph, so let me read it to you. Donald Trump is probably unaware that he's an avid practitioner of a day of a debating method known among philosophers and rhetoricians as the gish galop or the gish gallop the gish gallop the gish gallop its aim is simple to defeat one's opponent by burying them in a torrent of incorrect irrelevant or idiotic arguments i love i love that it's like it's like i thought the point of debating was to win who fucking cares what method you use uh yeah yeah if it works it works pal yeah

trump has much of his political success to this tactic and to the fact that so few people know how to beat it although his 2024 campaign has been fairly quiet so far we can expect to hear a lot more gish galloping in the future months um i can't take you seriously using that word bro i'm sorry and then uh sorry he provides an example uh he provides an example uh so when i listen to joe biden talking about transition there has been no transition from when i won i won that election and if you look at crooked hillary clinton if you look at all the different people there was no transition because they came after me trying to do a coup they came after me spying on my campaign we got it all on tape um and then

uh he goes on a little bit more and then we run against the up against the paywall man against the paywall oh man man i gotta believe trump if i read it that and the paywall cuts it off then i just gotta be like well i guess trump was right yeah i guess they were spying on him all right we're trying to cool his ass. Oh, okay. All right. That's settled. I'm moving on to the next article.

I think you brought this up before, Terrence, but like, where y'all brought this up? But like, the fact that I think Fox News, I think like all these right-wing sites, like, they're like, if they're paywalls, the limit of what you could read articles is like much more extended. So, I mean, you don't have to, you know what I'm saying? Like, Fox News, you don't have to fucking pay. You don't have a paywall blocker you know if you want to read articles man but yeah the atlantic the new york times which honestly they probably should have paid no one should be reading that shit no i mean we didn't even talk about like the new york

times stuff but uh today they published a op-ed from pamela paul about oh my fucking god i mean it's like dude um it i mean i don't know man we just we just literally just like i mean like forget that the violence that happens to like queer people every day but we just like i just don't i just don't understand that man like how people could like look at that shit and not understand that like this is the stuff that's contributing to the violence you know what i mean well i don't understand when i was a kid when i was a kid i don't know if this happened to you guys this is a moment of a moment of vulnerability for me but like when i was like a fucking teenager i was going through puberty my nipples would get hard as fuck and like no reason yeah and it's like the doctor said it was some hormone shit but like some some young boys got it so bad that literally they would have like

milk come out of their they would lactate they would lactate and this and this happens like you know um there are kids that are born uh you know with uh you with issues like this and then they have a corrective procedure, you know what I'm saying? Balance hormones or whatever. And then they become the gender that they want to be and all this other stuff. And it's just like, that was

accepted, you know what I'm saying? As a part of the gender paradigm or whatever up until very recently where now it's like uh now to even talk about that is like uh grooming and you know what i'm saying and that like the trans trans thing has gotten out of control like we're making these kids do things that they don't want to do and they're going to regret it for the rest of their lives and it's like uh i mean i think that you have a pretty good idea of what your gender is as a young kid you know what i'm saying like exactly exactly i well i'm just

speaking from my own experience like as a human being who has you know who was assigned assigned to gender and then also eventually realized that i had one in my own mind is it in my mind does it make sense but so it's like i think that like i don't know maybe i'm not articulated myself no no but i think to go on your point though turn something to like uh like it just kind of blows my mind that like people like jk rowling and you know i'm gonna throw dave chapelle in there too my mind that, like, people like J.K. Rowling and, you know, I'm going to throw Dave Chappelle in there, too. And I guess, like, people like even Joyce Carol Oates, like, all these people that are around that kind of age, like, I don't know, man. Like, I wasn't born then, but I feel like the 70s, the 80s, like, there were these gender

bending genres of music, especially, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Like, where, like, male rock stars, like, I guess I'm talking about talking about like hair glam or glam rock or even just like i don't know like people would like like it wasn't like like these strictly enforced and yes in many places and you know like uh areas social you know spaces it was the best line from dave chapelle's whole shows if you were at if you were dressing hard in the 90s back in the 80s whoever dressed most like a bitch was getting all the women right i think the vast majority of people don't care i do i think so too man i really do think that the vast majority of people kind of know on an intuitive level that

gender is kind of ridiculous you know what i'm saying like we've all known it for forever yeah i mean probably since we were fucking uh in the fucking caves like we you know what i'm saying like we've all known it for forever yeah i mean probably since we were fucking uh in the fucking caves like we you know what i'm saying like it has always been constructed and we will always kind of known it even even if you look back at your own childhood and and adolescence and puberty and stuff it's like you can kind of see the moments where the cracks exactly showed you know what i mean you could see through you know it's like you can kind of see the moments where the cracks exactly showed you know what i mean you could see through you know it's like and we all kind of know that and most i think i mean i don't know i'm speaking for myself but like when those things happen you kind of sit with that and

when you get older you reflect and realize but like i don't know man it's like it's it's an experience that's kind of totalizing right it's like okay i know who i am right you know what i mean yeah and like to tell other people but then it's not even that it's just being hijacked by like the right but like in places like the new york times and i don't know pauline jones i don't know her fucking politics whatever like this is brett stevens wife by the way well well this is like a liberal fucking like rag right like just the fact that this shit is not in places like bright bard or like whatever the new statesman or whatever the fuck they call themselves it's like yeah dude like this is the kind of shit where you normalize

like i'm just asking questions you know what i mean like they love to say i'm just asking questions and like first of all second of all secondly why the fuck does jk rowling a billionaire need defending like i just don't understand it man like even the serfdom like i thought we fucking like exceeded that you know but apparently not yeah i mean it's uh she does right for the new york times it's just the reason it's the reason it's annoying is it's disingenuous it's like this whole just asking questions thing it's yeah it's completely disingenuous and you're right it is disingenuous and and you know it's disingenuous they don't even have a uh plausible deniability anymore because if you're publishing pamela paul saying we should defend jk rowling well then you've kind of put your cards on the table you don't even have plausible exactly deniability at that point like we know what your bias is

basically like there's a difference between like just asking questions about um like i do i do think there's utility in just asking questions in a way to be able to better strengthen your own argument and to be able to understand something and know why you understand it but there's a big difference between then between that and basically doing what like jk wrote what the new york times does and jesse single and all these guys do which is they do it just ingenuously and they leave room open for these transphobic arguments to slip in it's like a very it's a very savvy like weasley thing right it's like you you don't have the conviction enough to just say what the fuck you mean you're trying to like pepper this in there in the same way actually i feel like this is a old tactic it's the same way

it's the same shit they did it like in the 90s when they would just like float questions like are black people less intelligent than white people like well we gotta ask the question it's like yes like the bell curve type of shit right yeah it'd be journalistic malpractice if we didn't just if we didn't ask this question yeah i saw something interesting one time with the whole question an embalmer friend of mine and terrence's i won't say his name on here we were sitting around with a bunch of these old codgers one time and they were talking about all this trans stuff and boys want to be girls girls want to be boys and all this kind of shit and our friend spoke up and he was like i'm gonna tell you all something he's like i'm the last person to see people when they die he said part of that job

is obviously you see their genitals and he's like and i'm gonna tell you all it's not cut and dry and he's like i've seen people i've even seen people that sound like you all yeah that were intersexed or had other things going on it's like gender is not like because and and and the biological reality doesn't even matter anyway i've seen i've seen it people i've had a lot of people in my family die of liver disease i've seen how even something like that changes your hormone i mean also too i mean i probably mentioned this before but like uh i think there's like this species of mushroom or something that like um whatever the the i don't know the technical medical but the technical scientific term but whatever the the hormones are that determine like you know gender or sexual identity like they have thousands of different combinations you know

so like in between like two binaries of gender there are all these multitudes in between you know and these are fucking like this is a fun guy we're talking about you know i mean these are not like people that have like constructed like you know these overarching theories and ideas about how the world works and these disciplines like this is like nature you know yeah this is like natural you know what i mean yeah yeah it does suck though it does feel very much like there is a uh there's a reaction against a lot of this stuff and i do think it's kind of led by the turf thing i do think that there is a very discernible it's very interesting it's very strange but like the thing you heard in like 2016 was oh men feel like they're under attack masculinity feels like it's under attack and all this but the thing about the turf shit is it's very weird. There was a tweet, actually, that Libby Watson had pointed out

that I kind of like really just cut it to its core. Some fucking dumbass. Many words have trans in them. Transport, translate, transcribe. But cis, before recently, it was only used in one word before it was held as how to describe not trans people. A cistern, you know, that thing in a toilet. They're comparing biological women to toilets.

What the fuck? Oh, my God. It's a fucking fascinating look into the mind of a group of people who feel like womanhood is under attack. You know what I'm saying? That, like, in the same way that they said that, like, masculinity was under attack, like, you know, six or seven years ago, it is now this completely, like, rear guard defensive, well, in their minds, it's like,

they're completely on the offense, obviously. But, like, it's this weird thing where they think that, like, now femininity and womanhood is under attack. These are the people that get fucking mad when you say like a pregnant person instead of saying a pregnant woman woman you know what i mean and it's like well because like you know what i mean like it's not just women that can get pregnant right and it's like dude like why what like why does that even i mean like even that conception of like the like like as if that's an attack on like what it means to be a woman

which that means that every woman has to be a mother. You know what I mean? Like, motherhood is wrapped up into that. And it's like, yo, you're just reinforcing these biases that you ostensibly want to break out of, you know? It just blows my fucking mind, dude. It's just, like, compartmentalizing yourself even fucking more. And I'm just like, I don't understand that shit, yo. It's really sad and then like you know like i mean the fucking

new york times is publishing this jack hair rolling thing on the same week that that young girl that young trans girl was stabbed in in england i mean it's like yeah the fact that you would put all this i don't know man and it's i mean it's it's it's it's it's it's it's like i think before the the q like nightclub shooting i think that like that same week right but before there were like um the transphobic or asking questions articles you know and that's like bad enough right you know what i mean like to have those articles but to like publish something like this after you know it's just like it really i've already talked about this before but it's like and we guess we were talking about it on the like religious right too but like you know like them becoming more bold and

it really does seem like you know whether it's those guys or whether it's liberals like hillary clinton um uh i think she had an interview where i mean she basically threw like trans women under the bus right like you know these issues under the bus it's like oh these people are like like like where is the republicans are like getting bare knuckled you know these issues under the bus it's like oh these people are like like like where is the republicans are like getting bare-knuckled you know these people are like instead of meekly being like oh we don't care they're just saying it outright you know but it's still like but even not really though even not really because this article is not even like like out front what this person means right it's the in defense of a strong independent woman apparently i guess how it's phrased you know all right yeah oh my god man

well um gish gallop gish galloping man gish gallop me also too like where do you fucking find these words man why can't these motherfuckers ever be normal they have to go into like a 19th century fucking dictionary man i've never heard of this word before. That's not either. For some reason, it makes me think of Gallup Pole. Every time you said that. The Dish Gallup Pole. Yeah, the Gish Gallup Pole.

Also, it's like grow up. Dude, you're like 40 years old talking about some shit called gish gallop i want to hear him say that his british ass in gish gallop how old is he yeah how is it dude he is he's 43 out here talking about gish galloping dude come on you also 43 talking about how to debate another girl bad Nah bro Either walk away or you get a sock full of petties dog What are you talking about I would love to see Mehdi Hassan in his suit of armor Like his debate suit of armor

Like I'm gonna fucking bring down Donald Trump And Trump just absolutely fucking Just taking him to the cleaners Trump's fans would call him slurs in the crowd And shit like that Oh my god oh god dude oh man that's it

alright well anything else for today guys nah man it's just it's just wild yo it's just

I just wanna say how fucking dumb it is I see like a bunch of fucking commentators mad at people getting mad about the train derailment. He's Palestine because they're afraid it might cede some ground to the right because of Biden's failure on the union question. Dude, are you serious? That's why I'm raising my hand.

Well, dude, it's because, dude, it's because, dude, it's like... What? You know what? You know what? We be talking about church and shit like that. Like, for these people, like, whatever the Democratic... I don't know. I guess the Church of Neal...

It's not even Neal Littles. Protecting the sanctity of Democratic, like, talking points is, like, paramount. Because the deviation from that is seeding ground to the fascists. Yeah. And you can't criticize Democrats because at least they're not Republicans. And I'm like, well, dog, if you're going to prevent a UIA strike, and then weeks later, you know what I'm saying? Like there's chemical fires and shit.

And meanwhile, Pete Buttigieg is walking around like, you know what I'm saying? Not even blaming the fucking corporations and saying it's fine. Right. They're saying like he's not afraid to hold corporations accountable. It's like, all right, so do that then, bro. Fuck it. Nah, man. It's ridiculous, man.

Oh, my God. Can you imagine just fucking gutting a whole generation's hopes so you can get that cabinet? So you could be 15 heartbeats from the president and feel like mom's a little important boy and absolutely do the worst fucking job imaginable in that right not even do your job not even do your job man uh-huh like what does this motherfucker do actually nah man what does this motherfucker do i didn't mean to kick us back up i just saw something i just wanted no no just wanted to I've been thinking about it recently Crazy shit

Crazy shit Thanks for listening this week everybody I don't have any further Comments to add Do you? Can I plug something real quick? 1000% People should check

out my other podcast everybody loves communism because last night i recorded an episode with fred sherman who wrote space forces i've been talking about that book a lot which is a critical history on life in outer space it was like a two and a half hour conversation but it was like really really fucking cool people should get that book but uh check out that episode when it comes out next week yeah go check that out that out. That'll be great. I need to read those, by the way. Yeah, man. That book's awesome.

All right, well, check that out. Thanks for listening, everybody. We'll see you next time. See you out there, folks.