Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 286: Feuerbach, Texas (w/ special guest Mina Shedd)

Episode Date: April 14, 2023

This week we talk a wide range of topics, mostly centered on what's going on in states like Tennessee: mass shootings, anti-trans bills, centralization of power in state governments, etc. To do it, we've enlisted our Tennessean friend Mina Shedd from Middle Tennessee DSA. To wrap it all up, we cover an op-ed from the New York Times about "Wagon Wheel Gun Reform" You can find and support Mina's many projects on Twitter at: @ScrewballDetctr And you can support us on Patreon at: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Welcome to the Trailblazers this week, everybody. We're joined by a very special guest, Amina Shedd from Middle Tennessee DSA. I almost said Dennis-ay. Yeah. That's a guy. That's a guy. Yeah, I'm part of the Direct Sellers Association. The Order of the Demolay.

Yeah. The Direct Sellers, that's, yeah, you're cutting out the middleman with direct sellers like yeah that's exactly what that is um before before you joined us uh dear listener we were just talking about uh how strong a name pat summit is and um i it's like it's like tom sexton see me and me and you have a-syllable first name, one-syllable last name. But Tom, that's the deadly combo right there. One-syllable first name, two-syllable second name. Tom Sexton, Pat Summitt.

It's very punchy. Those are powerful names. I didn't even think about it while we were just talking about it just now. Pat Summitt and Tom Sexton are two very strong names. Damn. How's your women's basketball coaching, Tom? I almost was a women's basketball coach. Shut the fuck up.

Not a lot of people know this, but I could have been the head coach. Well, not the head coach. I could have been assistant coach for the Furman University Lady Paladins. What is a paladin? That's a good question. It's a holy warrior. I was going to say. It's a plate armor.

Yeah, it sounds like it. It sounds like someone who fought in Shogun Japan or something. This is a deeply European thing, Terrence. Oh, is it really? Yes. From the Stand By Me when they're singing the song paladin paladin where do you roam so i've always thought he was some sort of uh you know mythic warrior of some tradition i didn't know what which one so you yeah i i got nerd checked right now so

no yeah seriously i mean i did too you're you're exactly right it's from the carolingian dynasties uh that's it that is a deep cut deep cut that is a deep when you're talking about eastern european history or when you're talking about european history everybody always wants to talk about rome they want to talk about like nazi germany they want to talk about napoleon no one ever talks about the carolingian years those were like i'm trying to think that that was like when um that was like just that was like pink floyd when sid barrett had kind of almost like was completely off the rails before they got like roger waters or uh david uh what was his name gilmore you don't't see what I'm saying?

You guys ever follow? I want to go with you on that. I'm just not familiar with the entire Pink Floyd line. Terrace, you could point a gun at me and ask me when the Carolingian era was and I'd tell you to pull the trigger. I have no fucking clue. Oh, damn. Well, you came to the right place 10th century it was like 9th 9th

10th century something like that okay yeah yeah that's good shit that was the that was the good shit well i mean you you're the one who knew paladin i didn't even know Paladin. Yeah, I play too many video games. I guess that makes sense. Yeah, that's probably revived most by Dungeons & Dragons. Uh-huh. That makes sense. I've never dabbled in the D&D world, unfortunately. I haven't either. Or maybe fortunately. Yeah, fortunately.

I got a question before we get too far away from Paladins, for those smarter than me. So was Paladin like a dude? Yeah, it was like a type of dude. Okay, so my question is this. So he's like calling the Furman University Lady Paladins. Is it kind of like calling them like the Lady Rams? Or is it like, you know what I mean?

I see what you mean. Like the Lady Rams? Or is it like, you know what I mean? I see what you mean. It's like... Paladin is like a knight, but like imbued with holy power. Yeah. So it could be gender neutral. It could be gender neutral.

It's a title more so than like a person. Yeah, Paladiness. Okay. Yeah. Well, I'm not getting hung up on it. I just think it's funny when people are like, oh oh it's like the so-and-so university like lady rams or you know what i mean like why can't they just be like what anyway lady paladin i'm tiptoeing being one of those guys it's like you shouldn't have trans swimmers competing with

women so i'm gonna i'm gonna back off this a little bit. Yeah. We need full co-ed. Full co-ed. Paladin. Sports. Everything should be. I actually talked about this with my fiance's dad once. Everything should be weight class. Everything.

I agree 1,000%. That is a good point. Everything should be weight class. I don't care about literally anything else. I agree 1,000%. Yeah. care about literally anything else i agree one thousand percent because i mean otherwise you're just going to get bogged down in these arbitrary distinctions when what we're really talking about here is physical prowess we're talking about skill yeah and you gotta like a lot of cruiserweight motherfuckers that think that like

women couldn't compete and then he he thinks that till he runs up on like a 230 pound heavyweight you know what i mean that just fucking that's a good point that's a good point man i think that is like the equitable way to do it is just per pound yeah you all of the big bitches in the room together yeah of any gender yes yes i agree i agree um uh well okay so we got that out of our system we i'd like you know you gotta have a little bit of paladin talk before you like get i mean get to the meat and potatoes yeah yeah i mean also i'm all i'm all limber now yeah you you get limber you get you have some paladin talk you wash it down with an icy cold ultra right beer six pack which costs 1999 good god conservative dad's ultra right 100 woke feet free American beer. Yeah.

This is... Here's the thing. If you were drinking Bud Light, you already had a piss kink. You're already a member of the community. 100% agree. When somebody wants an icy cold beer, you don't want to Apple pay it and have to wait you know

four to seven days ups ground for it to get to you either you know what i mean and also pay three times that it's like beer does not lend itself well to mail order you're right it's just i need a nice boiling hot conservative beer traveled in the back of a fedex van for three days. It's called a beer run for a reason. It's not just, you know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I'm going to, you know, down here in the south,

here in the conservative part of the country, which I think is a little bit overblown, but yeah, just love rolling up. 100 degrees, 100% humidity, just crack open an IED's worth of beer. It'll be so shaken up, you'll crack it open and get shrapnel in your neck. Exactly, exactly. Oh, man.

Yeah, yeah. That's the thing. Them going after Bud Light is kind of predictable. It's like, come on. I need to see some innovation here. Go after Ice House or Milwaukee's Best or something. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

A little Adam left field. You're picking too big of a target if you're starting with Bud Light. Also, this is something that's bothered me about this. light has had like pride campaigns in the past yeah so the fact that like a trans person now has like been in i guess like an advertisement for like three seconds or something yeah and people getting their their panties in a twist over it is just a little you know it just tickles me it is it is pretty it is pretty interesting um those clads nails have always been gay that's right that's right those are gay horses um well so yeah no got paladin talk out of the way washed it down with a nice

icy or a hot boiling hot conservative dad's ultra right Yeah It's like that Simpsons bit That's like root beer Boiling hot Texas style boiling hot root beer So let's serve it up With let's see You know

We wanted to have you on today to talk about Tennessee Tennessee's been in the news lately to put it, uh, to put it lightly. There's been a lot of stuff going on. Um, not that much different than what's going on in Kentucky. Um,

but it has the kind of like added, uh, it has a value add of, uh, the, you know, conservatives in the, in the legislature kicking out two members in the legislature

kicking out two members of the legislature, which is pretty insane. Yeah, that was pretty fucking crazy. It's pretty insane. Yeah, I mean, I didn't think they'd actually do it because I think it was really a big political misstep, but I'm not much of a strategist and i kind of have a uh i turn my nose up at uh bourgeois liberal legislative politics

but even that i was like what the fuck is going on right now it's it's over something so just like frankly minor as somebody who's like been in a space like that and basically done that before. Yeah. It's fine. It's not a big deal. The decorum. Oh, my God. Yeah.

It begs the question, do you, Mina, do you see a united front? Are we about to have to, you know, do the Gimli legolas meme from lord of the rings like never thought i'd find myself fighting side by side with lib never thought i'd find myself you know what i'm saying like is that coming well you know given the fact that uh history tends to rhyme and that the sdp had some fun collaboration in the past. I think that there, I have definitely seen some leftists shed some of their bona fides to be part of this. Like, look, I deeply respect all of my friends and thank them for providing like safety and stuff like that when they go down and help out with things. But I do not want to maybe overblow it. It's funny. There was like a Democratic political

strategist that's like, you know, the Republicans just did more for the did more for the Democrats in Tennessee than has ever happened. I'm like, you realize that that's bad. That sucks. That really, yeah. We used to be a solidly blue state. We had Democratic governors and then they just decided to, I mean, they were always going to capitulate to I mean, that's just liberals. But then over decades and decades of just de-industrialization and and uh like immiseration people are like well uh yeah thanks for

humiliating us yeah now we can win yeah where have you gone estes kefauver, Albert Gore Sr.? Phil Bredesen, where are you? I got the Phil Bredesen signal going. Well, so, yeah, let's kind of, like, go through the gauntlet here. What's going on in Tennessee isn't just, you know, relegated to Tennessee, obviously. It kind of gets the most it seems like like i was saying a second ago tennessee is kind of like on the you know on the tl right now so it's florida kentucky is also there we have a woman running

for governor who just put out an attack ad um featuring people parachuting in like red dawn style to elementary schools to like i mean it's just like boilerplate culture worship but like to teach kids one of them has blue hair about pronouns and stuff like that i mean it's just like straight out of the textbook you know what i'm saying it's like they're not even really trying um and uh but you know who's that fucking uh eyepatch motherfucker that did like the iron man thing is it dan crenshaw oh the texas yeah yeah when he was like you know parachuting or whatever to like uh to eliminate uh like antifa sitting in a car. Like that type of shit. It's basically what it is. Okay.

Yeah, and like... Yeah, she said Kentucky's a border state and she's going to protect us from Mexican fentanyl. With Tennessee, is what they're talking about. Yeah, yeah. Well, it is kind of interesting. I do feel like a lot of this legislation, whether it's banning drag

shows, banning gender-affirming care, banning abortions, all of which Tennessee has done in the last several months and which Kentucky is basically either on track to do, has done, or or whatever it's like

kind of i guess there's a lot of different interpretations of it and you kind of like want to dig in and it does seem like there's this question among the libs like why is this happening now it's kind of like in a chris hayes kind of a chris hayes way it's like why why is this happening but it is kind of an interesting question we had the catalyst of a trans person shooting up a school and like that really kick started

this I mean that's what led to these protests that happened which it you know directly led to Justin Pearson and Justin Jones getting expelled so yeah i mean that has happened here uh can i can i broach something real quick and i don't want to get too

conspiratorial or like in the weeds or like goofy about this so happy i'm i'm your i'm your parapolitical princess let's do it well like so the guy that was the shooter in louisville the very first thing everybody sees don was he was a pronouns he had pronouns but that was that was probably just because of like you know like in a lot of business cultures it's just you know kind of mainstream to do that not necessarily because he was woke or whatever you want to say about it yeah but like it there there is something like kind of screwy about like in the midst of all this now granted there's probably a perfectly innocuous reason i mean i don't want to say innocuous reason for like killing children but you know

what i'm saying there's probably something else afoot you're saying non-conspiratorial right right right right yeah we're getting we're getting programmed to kill uh but but it's it is kind of weird that like back-to-back days in neighboring states like they're saying like see it's it's wokeness of pronouns that are like murdering our kids now and the same thing with justin jones and them in tennessee where they were like oh what you all did was worse than jan 6th. They said worse than January 6th, yeah. That guy's name is Sexton, by the way. Not a strong one, though.

His name's Cameron Sexton. Like, come on. That's a bad. How are you as a man in your 40s named fucking Cameron? That is a bitch-made name. It really is. Cameron. I'm Cameron Sexton.

It's always weird when, like, you weird when you see a guy in his 50s named Zach, Cameron, or Jordan. You know what I mean? It's like, come on. The fact that we had a president named Zachary is really funny. In the 1800s. Yeah. You probably thought the same thing about him.

Little bitch ass. Sorry. Apologies to all the Zs, Jordans and Camerons out there no apologies fuck you I will send you my address Zach but about like your I think

so yeah like I I think it's inevitable. Like, when you put people into what is coming out to be, like, across this country, like, a low-grade civil war, and then you have the additional pressures of all of this crazy shit happening in society, you know, it is not surprising. And I think that this goes for anybody of any gender, why people would lash out like they live in a society that for them doesn't serve them and doesn't make any sense. So inevitably, you're going to get stuff like this. And moreover, like when it went in the media and in politics, effectively, nothing is done about it. politics effectively nothing is done about it uh of course it's going to seem like well this is a a to some people this will be like well this is a legitimate action to take and it's a horrific action and it uh it obviously you know takes the lives of several people traumatizes countless others um but i like i i don't want to say I get where these shooters are coming

from no I don't that's what I try to stop short of saying like when I talk about this but this is like a psychological like a psychological thing like you if you live in a society that like promotes violence as a response to inequities

and you know just the slow social murder of everyone around you. It should not be a surprise that these things, like, come up. And, of course, like, there are, like, situations where it's like, oh, yeah, this person's, like, you know, dad was a CIA informant or something like that. informant or something like that uh but particularly with the with the covenant school shooting the shooter wrote a manifesto and i sincere as somebody who tried to foia the manifesto of the nashville bomber and did not get it i do not think i know i know another thing that nobody talks about yeah so christmas day yeah downtown baby um uh yeah you you know i have kind of wanted to be a shithead when i've gone to gone to karaoke but it it still is kind of in bad taste um wait was that a carry

what was this what was the karaoke connection there I mean when the Nashville the Nashville bomber played downtown on the loud speakers on his RV before it blew up oh my god that's really crazy did anyone die

it's really weird did anybody die I do not believe so. I mean, damn, they took out the spaghetti factory, which was the thing that I was most worried about. That's the last straw, goddammit. I went to bed on Christmas Eve just thinking about how we got to protect that building. Yeah, I went and paid my respects. Get my ketchup and ground beef.

But yeah, like, there are, like, obviously, like, weird connections. And, you know, speaking of the manifesto, to return to that, like, I don't allegedly, there have been like sexual abuse scandals at that school from rumors that are swirling around. And of course, like at a private institution, especially one that is religious, which inherently has its own like an extra layer of like insularity. I mean, yeah, I wouldn't be terribly surprised. I mean, sexual abuse happens at every single fucking school in the country so if there was a motivation like that yeah somebody taking a drastic decision

like a horrific decision to get to my point I doubt that that's going to be released because they're it's just not going to help anything if it does i will be very surprised i will be very very surprised well um i actually have something i want to read later i sent it to you mina but oh baby i took a highlighter to this okay on that note i have something i want to read on that this later but before we get there

before we get you know make our way back there um i think that you you pointed out something that is interesting and that often gets you know minimized when they talk about like gun violence and stuff which is that like someone someone actually put a chart up the other day from the financial times why this was in the financial times i'm not entirely sure it was a chart of mass shootings um the the frequency of them going back to like 1990 and they explode after 2005 like they're everywhere suddenly and maybe some gun legislation was passed that year. I don't know. But what my mind goes to is that in those years, like I'm going to try to like thread the needle here, but in those years was kind of when you had the very first sort of inklings of what we're now seeing in all these states,

like the mass dehumanization and stripping away of rights of people. In that case, it was Muslims. mass dehumanization and stripping away of rights of people in that case it was muslims um but in the in the atlantic this week there's an article about it's called the tennessee expulsions are just the beginning by ronald brownstein it's i mean it's fine it's kind of just like lib shit but it's just kind of them talking about like how what's going on in tennessee is happening all across these other states like Kentucky and etc. They don't really get into why. I do think it's an interesting question of why.

But I think just to sort of connect the two ideas here, if you've got a widespread like mass dehumanization of people with regards to their rights, the slow social death that we've talked about many times that you mentioned just a second ago. Like, of course, when people resort to these acts of high intensity, you know, sort of penetration into the average mind, the form that that's going to take is going to be a violent mass, an act of mass violence with a gun that they can easily find. And, and I don't know, I mean, it's kind of an interesting question, I guess, that I think the left kind of needs to ask itself is like, maybe there is no, maybe there is no deep political economic explanation for it. But it is kind of interesting to ask, like, why now? Like, why now are all these rights being rolled back? But, I mean, just because it did seem like there was kind of a high watermark

at one point where, like, maybe it was right after Obergefell or whatever. But it does seem that if there was, that what is now going on is that all these state legislatures are slowly stripping away people's ability to move freely, to be who they want to be, etc. And so, again, I think that liberals, they don't really have an explanation for this other than, like, the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice and we just need to fight to right it. Is there another explanation? Do you see what i'm getting at that's a fucking long god damn i i mean that's a huge question as to like why i mean you're talking about like 2005 and onwards and just then like the huge spike there and uh i you know, I hate to, like, just rely on, like, the political economic situation, or I should say, like, more of the economic situation. But, you know, I think about, like, certain cities across the country that had, like, that their entire town was, like,

built around, you know, factories that ended up getting packed up and moved elsewhere and then all of a sudden you have like the murder rate just spike up too uh i think i think gary indiana has like that had like the highest murder rate in the country and before then it was like an industrialized town and then the factories all closed up, and nobody – like I know that you all have talked about – Michael Jackson left. That's true. That's true. Freddie Gibbs left.

Freddie Gibbs. I mean, they had brain drain. Yeah, they had brain drain. Anyway, sorry. What was the point that I was going to say? You said – I know you allall have talked about but i don't oh you're gonna flatter our intelligence oh no i would never do that um uh but talking about like the rampant use of like opioids and how that connects to

uh like de-industrialization and like how it connects to like uh workers rights being taken away like safety restrictions being taken away i feel like there is a connection to that where you have people who are just incredibly isolated who don't know anybody who just have like a you know omni-directional rage towards the world which makes a lot of sense there There are no opportunities. There are no like benefits for them in the world. So either they, you know, you know, they get injured at work or they, they continue to just be humiliated by just living. And then all of a sudden, you know, the glass starts to break. And as more of these happen uh you know i think i think it is accelerating like people are taking sides i think you are seeing more people who are uh convening around like farther right and farther left ideologies and especially when it comes to farther right

ideologies just like lone wolf attacks are encouraged yeah and i think that i think that if you kind of look at it it does feel like there is a transformation going on in the regime of accumulation like maybe we're moving out of what could be called neoliberalism into something else and if that's the case it kind of makes sense that they would go after the rights of anyone and everyone, including and especially children. You know what I'm saying? It's not a coincidence that you have this question of, quote unquote, grooming. At the same time, you have these children being put back into the workplace. They're going back to slaughterhouses. back it's just not ideologically consistent either because like the same people pissing and moaning about grooming are also like you know saying it's okay for grown men to marry 12 year

olds you know in the state legislature i think it is ideologically consistent it may not look like it on the face of it but i think there is a through line there well i mean with what you're saying with like child labor child brides yeah yeah i get what you say yeah well yeah it kind of does make sense in a way well people regard i think across the political spectrum just see children as property yes yeah yeah yeah yeah and you know thinking back to uh you know foundations of society especially class society like you had kids to basically be workers in the field not to like propagate your species or anything like that it's like you need extra hands there you need to like move yourself in you know the political economic regime and now it's like well this is my property and that hasn't changed for like effectively anybody my My mom, when I was a kid, I used to, I literally used to be like, my mom just had me so I mow

the lawn. She used to have me so she could make me mow the lawn. That was her alone con. Well, like my, my dad would like talk about my sibling and I as being like financial investments, which I got to say, if you're having a child as a financial investment, you're at financial investments yeah you're finding a lot of work you're not going you're bad yeah no kids are a bigger money pit than record collecting or i mean anything else you could get into you're hedging your bets by being like oh yeah i by the end of my life these children will still love me and take care of me and like put me in a nice home or whatever and it's like nothing that i will do will hurt my investment and and cause my property to

uh rebel against them yeah yeah no yeah i think i think that there is yes the through line there is that like these kids have virtually no autonomy the way it's going to work itself out is, you know, they're going to have to go work in a slaughterhouse at age 10. I mean, it is fucking nuts. It really is astonishing that, like, maybe this has been the case. Maybe it's, like, train accidents. You just didn't hear about them very much until a big one happened and suddenly they're all in the news all of a sudden. But, like, it just seems like in the last few months there has been a huge uptick and like oh here's a 12 year old working at a an automobile plant in alabama like what the fuck

you know it's just like it's it's happening everywhere and then in arkansas obviously they signed a law to make it okay so that picture is so fucking funny those kids with like the blazers and ties on they're just like what the fuck yeah they look like they're staring at death yeah as if as if they're going to be the ones in the slaughterhouse as if they they're instead of just being like the little lord fauntleroys of the world going to prep school and charm school so i you know to tie a bow on it i think that like what i'm getting out here or what we're getting at is that there if there is this kind of transformation in political economy that requires access to different labor markets and that requires a different access to labor markets

in the sense that they have to be more controllable they have to be more desperate they have you know what i'm saying like they have to have less autonomy. And it feels like there is a kind of shakeout, like a shakeup of the access to that market, and that's kind of what's going on right now. But there is also, I mean, it is also explainable by pure bigotry, prejudice, Christian belief. Like, these things, they coexist, right? It's not like it's one or the other. I do think that it is kind of, they play off of each other.

One is an ideology and another, well, they're both ideology, but you know what I'm saying? Like they kind of play off of each other. It's, you know, classic base and superstructure. This is an element of the superstructure to reinforce that capitalist, you know, patriarchal, racist, white supremacist base. And in order to do that, you need to take, you know, what on the outside, obviously, I think everybody else in the world probably looks at our country and it's like, this is an insane country. And of course, living here, we're like, this is an insane country. But it does have that like dark logic to it, of course, like, you know, expanding labor markets, like who's not working right now, like, let's put, let's put work requirements on getting like Medicare and Medicaid or like disability or something like that. Let's get children's back in slaughterhouses and, you know, get everybody to work. get children back in slaughterhouses and get everybody to work. Yeah, you did see that this week.

There was, I can't remember if it was McCarthy that came out and did it or Lindsey Graham said that they were going to reassess work requirements for Medicaid. One of them said, when did it stop being bad for kids to have a job in this country a hundred years ago well it's funny it's like it's it's so funny because like when i was like a little more lib like 10 years ago i used to look at like school shootings you know like 10 year olds getting shot and be be like well you know once upon a time like we we banned kids from working in slaughterhouses what we can't even do that today like why can't we even do that today and it's like i think that was the point i think the whole point was to kind of like dehumanize people through a sort of process of social death so that we could get them back into slaughterhouses

i don't know if it was conspiratorial and coordinated intentionally like that, but it was an emergent effect. What are you saying? Like the broad message to kids is you don't want to get murdered? Maybe go get a job when you're nine. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, get out of the school.

Nobody's shooting up the slaughterhouse. Yeah, school, that's a bad place to be. I guess I'm just saying that if the life of a child is devalued to that extent, there's a bad place to be. I guess I'm just, yeah, I'm just saying that, like, if the life of a child is devalued to that extent, there's nothing stopping you from just saying, like, well, we need your tiny hands to work the, you know, like the assembly plant lines.

It's like, that's what we need you to do, and you're going to be crippled and not able to speak by the time you're 16. Yeah, when, like, Sandy Hook happened, some of these were like a lot of children are murdered when it became like okay to murder kids it's like it looked by comparison it looks like putting them in the factory is humane you know maybe totally totally i'm not saying that was intentionally what they set out to do i'm just saying that like as an emergent effect of this process of like social death of like reordering of labor markets like that is kind

of like an out out yeah i mean this is not like some big broad southern strategy or anything like that these are just you know these are choices like choices built on top of choices that people make given their circumstances and depending on your political ideology i know what i'm saying is rather trite especially to your listeners but but like, these are the, these are the choices. There's no like orchestration, like the, the beast runs itself and we serve at the foot of the beast. So we have to, you know, keep feeding it as best as we can. And that means, you know, throwing children back into slaughterhouses or, you know, opening back up factories and things, you know, all of the factories that they're, you know, bringing back from you know all of the factories that they're you know bringing back from overseas is all of the ones that are going to like you know be be run

by children at some point and then you'll just have like you know all these old crusty foreman just like spitting on like a 12 year old being like you took my fucking job it really will be that like that it'll be like when people were mad that uh like nafta have yeah nafta like immigrants were coming over and taking their jobs no it'll now set father against son exactly exactly yeah this is how we destroy the patriarchal bond of marriage and terrible yeah you go home to your 12 year old kid you son of a bitch you put me out of a job you fucking scablet you little scablet just having the fucking school bus just take you directly there yeah there is also a process though of me and aaron were talking about this a few weeks ago there is also a process of like a

whittling down of uh i don't know how to put this like you probably know more about this than i do but in tennessee i read this in this article, the legislator voted to arbitrarily cut the size of the Nashville Metropolitan Council in half. Like, is it happening that, like, state governments are now the kind of place where all power is concentrated? So, like, they cut power at both the federal and the municipal level.

It's all concentrated now on the state level is that what's going on yeah it's like the way that like there are some like uh sovereign citizen sheriffs that are like actually the sheriff is the most powerful entity in the country is it's now just like the state government yeah so yeah like tennis i will say nashville has like one of the largest city councils in the country, which is really fucking crazy. I'm all for more representation. Everybody should have a seat on the city council. Who gives a fuck?

Anybody could do it. But yeah, them just purely reaching in and being like, Nah, no, we're just going to redistrict you. And it got blocked, I believe, so far. But we'll see i mean given the way that a lot of these like executive orders and things the thing is is like like what is the resistance outside of like the courts because ultimately as we have seen it's like legislative politics is just it's a fig leaf it's just like you know we're all you know it's it's like legislative politics is just it's a fig leaf it's just like you know we're all

you know it's it's theater it's like literal theater they'll do whatever they want to um and it's just whether or not people are organized enough to stop them and when it comes to stuff like this i i whether or not there's like the political will to uh to like prevent people from cutting our city council when like the vast majority of people in this country could not name who their city council member is or what they do or have literally any affection towards them. Partially because what the fuck can a city council do?

They're basically there to get yelled at about every single decision. And sign off on cop police budgets that are like greater than the size of like china's military budget yeah they're they're putting together like the i don't know if i don't know if kentucky is a part of this but i know tennessee is is part of gilly which is the georgia international law enforcement exchange uh and i've never heard of this what is it the georgia international law

law enforcement exchange it's like you get to go be like a yes in israel baby um you go to like go on like uh you know you get to go have like a summer abroad or whatever in israel and get trained by the idea you get to do have like a summer abroad or whatever in Israel and get trained by the IDF. You get to do birthright for cops? Birthright for cops? Cop birthright. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah. And there's, so I believe one of the Carolinas actually got them, remove them, was able to like organize and remove themselves from this program. But like Nashville cops have been there, like they've been trained by it and they,

you know, it's a, it's a law enforcement exchange. So sometimes we bring them over here. It's, you know, uh, we have,

you know, we put together our international students to come by and, and do like the most blood curdling lessons in the world. It's, this is astonishing. It really is like, uh's this is astonishing it really is like uh this is why this is why palestinian liberation to me is so important is because it does in fact affect people where they fucking live not just like about like the you know obviously like the budgets and the manufacturing and everything like that but it's like your cops are literally being paid to go over and learn the

same techniques that they use to to murder palestinians to then come over here and do it to us totally so yeah no you're right and that's probably why at the state aid uh the state level they're aiming for more control of like municipal governance because they need those municipal they need those like urban police forces to be basically um to be occupation you know what i mean occupation forces yeah absolutely you know you need a you need a disciplining force to to to keep all of the horrific stuff that you do uh just, you know, encircled, and people not even being able to fight back. And then maybe we'll see what happens in Palestine,

more happening here. I mean, there are places in the United States that already experience somewhat of what, uh, like the people who like Palestinians experience, certainly not to the degree, but like, uh, especially with like this, you know, handshake deal that American Israel has, uh, I would, I am not going to be surprised if this just becomes more and more fused together the gilly um motto is really kind of harrowing it's by august compta i have no idea who the fuck that is um the the motto is from knowledge to prediction and from prediction to policy what does that mean

it's like i mean that it really is uh i guess occupier shit it's basically saying like we know who's gonna commit crimes and we've already got yeah we already know you you're doing pre-crimes you're doing pre-crime yeah august comp yeah and you know that just legalizes people's literal existence and then it just goes further and further uh you know to connect it back to uh you know some of the trans right stuff uh abortion and like limiting people's like just literal existence um and that's how you you know the ghillie has existed for a long time um surprisingly and i wish more people knew about it because it is it's just like sort of tucked away yeah and like we all like people always bring up of like oh yeah you have to like swear a blood oath to to to uh to israel to in order to like do business or like be a political uh candidate in a country but then

there's stuff like this that's like on the municipal like local level that is like active direct like evil that people are just enacting and you see like kind of like i guess years and years later like the like the benefit the benefits for these folks of gassing us up on the importance of what the israel christian relationship and all that stuff and it's it starts early on yeah and i was embarrassingly old when i realized that the israel of the bible was not necessarily the state as it's currently constitute me too um so yeah and that can again as you pointed out me that connects back to what we were talking about a minute ago especially with like this dominionism and everything like these things are all like the roots of each other they're all

grown into each other um so uh okay I want to pivot now to what I wanted to read for you now Mina's got some notes how the fuck do you pronounce this motherfucker's name i literally looked it up i i don't know see i thought it was catch seeker but that's like a that sounds like an elementary school game that you would make up i know but it sounds like sucker kind of it looks like you know like s-u-c-c-o-u-r like that word you know what i'm saying like yeah yeah he he definitely is a fucking sucker if i've ever read one um who who exactly wrote this this will blow your mind tom um it's like literally it it was cooked up. Someone plugged this into chat GPT as the thing that could potentially ruin your sanity points, Tom. Ultimate psychic damage. You know, I just want to say before we go in on it, you know, as i know no one's gonna give a fuck but just to give a

kind of uh you know prologue or something preamble i know he means well but um anyways it was written by well let me just saw the title i I'll say the title first. Country music can lead America out of its obsession with guns. This is in the New York Times. Pure ideology. Yeah, that's it. Pure ideology. Pure ideology. Okay, so Terrence obviously knows.

Tom, do you know who this guy is? Yeah, do you know Ketch Secor? No, I have no idea. I live beside a guy that was a French professor in college that had the same last name, though. His name was John. Well, you're gonna love it.

Not Ketch. You're gonna love it. Should we tell him, Mina? Should we just start reading and let him find out? No, I feel like we have to come clean. So, Ketch Seeker, let him find out no i feel like we have to come clean so catch seeker i believe he is the lead singer of old crow medicine show yes old crow medicine

tom's face right now this is truly psychic damage it is i knew it would be especially especially i didn't i didn't know what these dudes looked like but then when i looked it up it looked like if you took johnny depp and like split him into like five shards and cast him across the world like like dragon balls and then you bring them back together for like the amber herd trial and then they're then they're like cast out again that is 1000 accurate and i used to like this band right like when i was like 18 i liked their first album like this band or did you like wagon wheel i liked this band before wagon wheel okay okay hell maybe there was no before maybe they came out the gate with wagon wheel i have to tell the truth here too my ex-girlfriend used to fuck the upright bass player for this band

oh i'm so sorry no this was before well before me but i always like to if she cheated on you then no no no no with an upright bass player i wouldn't be here today okay yeah no this was i'm wondering does every album of theirs have wagon will on it no i it should it should i i liked i liked there was a 2006 album did not have wagon will but but anyways these guys have won like Grammys and CMAs like they are genuinely like a popular and lauded band you know just because I don't seem to get it and others may not

does not mean that they are not wrong what it was is it opened the portal into our world through which Mumford and Sons could eventually step. That was their great crime against humanity.

You know what I'm saying? Yeah. They were the prototype. It's not them so much as what they wrought. Yes. It's exactly right. They were like the, the invasionary force.

Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. They were the, they were the scouts sent ahead. So it's like this article, it's, you know, it's strange.

It's got some interesting things in it. Wow, you are so nice. I'm like ultra sensitive now, now that I've made so many enemies at this point in my career i'm like i always i like have this dual opposing impulse in my mind where like on one hand i'm like i got to talk shit about everybody and on the other hand i'm like terrence you need that you can't die like at 80 with no friends some slack you know yeah you don't want to have three people at your funeral you know well we all know want to have three people at your funeral, you know? Well, we all know Old Crow Medicine Show has shooters.

We know that. They do. They do. That's why you got to be careful. They're pulling up with, like, flintlock pistols. Gets their ass. Little Derringers. Just a nice little whore's pistolette in their boots. Yeah.

Yeah, like they're getting ready to rob a card game. Yeah. So if that's you, go ahead and turn it off now, dear listener. And stop listening to the show. Stop listening to the show forever. Whores pistolette. Oh, God. Okay, let me start here.

They say we love our guns down south, and it's true they are part of the pageantry of our beloved Southland. Okay, I'm already going to have to stop there. Southland? Who refers to it as our beloved Southland? He might as well have said something about the kudzu that's slowly but surely strangling our beloved Dixon. Oh, my God.

He's not off to a good start, I have to say. He's talking like Gilbert Dautry. Songwriters should, it should be illegal for them to write articles. I agree, 1000%. I 1000% agree. It should be illegal. Because, you see why in this article?

Because he's kind of trying to make it lyrical like a song. Like that first line, they say we love our guns down south, and it's true they are part of the pageantry of our beloved Southland. In tune with the equally nostalgic heartstrings, we pull for mother, God, freedom, and country. Mother? Mother? Mother? God?

Mother? Country music plays a central role in forming the south's gun mythology from songs like ideology ideology anyways continue yeah you gotta call it out where you see it yeah like i'm pretty sure there that existed before country music yeah it's called we were a colonized country that uh colonized it using brute force and just like murder exactly um from songs like big iron to a country boy can survive seven nights a week in nashville you can hear any number of country upstarts remind the tourists in the honky-tonk bars on lower broad that Johnny Cash shot a man in Reno just to watch him die see I'm glad that he included the last part in quotes because I forgot what that song was about

and knowing you know a real deep cut from from old Johnny's fucking catalog I do I do love this I mean you are exactly right this is why songwriters cannot write uh cannot write op-eds or essays or anything because what you have just done in this paragraph is you have said that the entire gun mythology of the south is because johnny cash wrote a song that he openly admitted to after the fact was literally just storytelling that did not happen to him about shooting a man in reno to watch him die which is such a preposterous idea that like we get gun shootings because johnny cash sat down with his pen i like to think that this guy thinks that all songs are true

that really happened damn that's crazy damn that's crazy that really happened um but all the parents in nashville including me know what they were doing shortly after 10 a.m on monday march 27th when shots rang out outside or inside nashville's covenant school and three adults and three children were murdered tragedy exposed the deep hypocrisy of a musical genre okay that's not at all what i was thinking that was my first thought when i heard the news i was like listen these guys down in nashville got a lot to answer for that yeah that's not my first thought it that the tragedy exposed the deep hypocrisy of a musical genre at once so beholden to

these people are so self-obsessed man nashville oh my god yeah these are performers they are doing an act it just it oh god it's just like these are gay libs too like it's okay yeah here's okay listeners i just want, I don't know if we made this clear, I am a trans woman. So I am a gay trans woman who is getting married in literally one month. Yeah, mazel tov.

Woo! Yes, yes. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Anyways, let's fucking keep hurting ourselves by reading. The 377th school shooting columbine happened on a christian campus in nashville and as a musician writer and historian huh historian i'm gonna need

to see what's your what are your major works but you can like a part of the crisis is really you could just say whatever you're that you're that you can't just say stuff you can't just say things this is why they fired all the fact checkers and this is what happens you get some you get some dunce writing into the new york times calling himself a historian me and eugene genovese some of the biggest hard-hitting historians of our time. Yes. I now believe that country music has a unique opportunity to shepherd conservative Southerners, a demographic essential to the passage of any meaningful legislation,

to the table to negotiate gun reform. My band, Old Crow Medicine Show, which first struck a- Oh, my band, by the way. My band. In case you Show, which first struck a... Oh, my band, by the way. My band. In case you didn't know who I was. Has always played a fringe role on the country scene. Wait, what? My band has always played a fringe role on the country scene?

Like, dude, don't admit to that. You have one of the biggest songs of all time. You said... Yeah, you just... Also, you just said you're a historian. You could just lie and say you're not on the fringe. You have one of the biggest songs of all time. Though we lean left politically, our signature song, Wagon Wheel,

has become a mainstream anthem for audiences that consistently lean right when i hear it blasting from a pickup truck i often spy an nra sticker on the bumper in my experience wheels about fucking what do you want it's not a political message it's about getting your rock it's about rolling in the hay it's truly and i love the image of him sitting in traffic and he is cursed so like when i hear the song let's get this out of the way this man does not drive you think someone drives him or he rides in like a horse and buggy type situation yeah it's got me like a little i was gonna say the the former but now i know it's the latter yeah i see i see one of those fucking things around all the time.

It must be him. I do like that image, though. When I hear Wagon Wheel, it's pretty annoying, right? It's like, I don't want to be hearing this. This sucks. But imagine you're the guy that wrote it. You're fucking cursed to live a life the whole rest of your life. Hearing the song.

Difference is, is you don't get a big fat check every month. That's true. Also, let it be clear. This is a cover. Yeah. It was. It was. It's a Bob Dylan.

I think they added enough of their own lyrics to like they get partial songwriting credit or something. But they do get something like that and then what was it darius rucker did a version of it he did pretty sure okay first of all darius rucker version far superior i'm gonna i'm gonna plant that flag right now i think i'd agree i think i i but at the same time it's like it's so, it's so hard to rank them all. It's like ranking bottom feeders. You know what I mean? It's like, man.

Which one of the hagfish is the best? It's hotter. Yeah, it's the best. In my experience, country stars tend towards centrism. The right-wing groups we most often encountered are not our bandmates, but our audiences. Damn, he's given an industry secret here. Do you think the audiences would change their minds if they knew this?

Wow. Who's that guy, Morgan Wallen? He doesn't believe the same things we do. I could confidently say that. Yeah, I was going to say he's just pretty right wing. Thanks, Wade, dude. I could confidently say that. Yeah, I was going to say he's just pretty right wing. Also, yeah, they're centrists because they're libs. Because they're like theater kids who never got to, who succeeded.

Like, let's be honest. There was a photo this week of Joe Manchin and Brad Paisley with Vladimir Zelensky in between them. And Zelensky's holding the West Virginia cap, and he looks like he's just been drafted in the second round. It's like they're all looking thrilled with him. Yeah, it's like they're thrilled he signed to West Virginia to play free safety or something. Well, that was in addition to another four billion fucking

dollars yeah that we wrote a blank check for yeah but just a side tangent joe mansion actually had a tweet that said in my lifetime i've never seen the united states of america in a more just war it's like what wait that's a very strange thing to say. Well, first of all, in his lifetime. In his lifetime. So I have no idea how old this fuck is. That's true. I'll be generous to Mr. Manchin. It's the implication that we're in war. It's like, oh, I guess we're already there.

That we're a part of? Interesting. Right. Yeah. Anyways, back to Ketch. His name is Ketch. There's no way that's his real name, right? It's got to be a performer's name.

All these guys, like Pokey Lafarge, they all got names like Finch Butterbottom and things like that. Sounds like some goddamn Huck Finn characters. Finch Butterbottom. I don't know. This guy is like if Dewey Cox Like didn't stop Yeah

Shout out to Walk Hard Right I love that movie that's a banger What the South needs now Is an anti-assault weapons movement An anti-assault weapons movement Driven by voices from the center You know I've been saying this but

he now he's getting credit for it it's fucked up yeah i think honestly okay this is how i can compromise as a gun owner is uh now now you if you want a gun you have to like do the shinto abe gun thing you have to do you have to and look it can be like it can be like like make your own like yeah like gunpla like you could you can go to a michael's and get like a really complex one that you have to use a lot of glue and and and glitter on but that's the way that you get a gun you have to want it bad enough yeah i i 100 agree yeah that's true you have to you have to build it yeah you got to build it like a gundam it's fine and if you use it against someone in power there are no consequences yeah there you go yeah you want you get you get their position you get their badge there you go if you steal the cop's gun you're the cop you're the cop now um we need driven by voices

from the center and by country singers who are tired of bending to the whims of fear mongers and who are ready to speak from their platforms to an impressionable audience dude that would fucking rule i would love that i would love it if a fucking country singer got up and did an anti-gun tirade holding a bud light on stage at a country show could you imagine this is like it would be hilarious but with the same energy and vigor that kid rock shot the bud light with yeah it's like listen i i'm gonna keep fucking playing and drinking this goddamn gay beer. And he's just so unapologetic about it. I want him in the classic Grand Ole Opry

really big leather and stars and glitter and tassels. Nudie suit. I want him full done up in drag makeup and he's like, I'm fucking born this way. And then he just shotguns a Bud Light. Yay!

Basically Travis Tritt in the 80s. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hell yes. Conservative musicians are always vocal when it comes to the culture wars, but stars with moderate views tend not to weigh in publicly. The motive is genuine. We don't want to offend anyone.

But in times as dire as these silence is complicity it's time for country music makers to use their platforms to speak candidly to their conservative audiences who told him silence is complicity who allowed why was why did somebody do that to us and teach him that phrase well it's it's interesting that like guns are the things that he is the thing that he latches on to that he can lay at the feet of the country music industry it's like what what country singer now i don't know i don't listen to a ton of like brand new country but what country music i do listen to it's all like sitting on my tailgate with red light just like stuff like that they're

just like kind of rapping and rocking and talking about kissing each other and drinking beer it's like does it really is that about they're all fucking and sucking down on brockway they're fucking and sucking is what i'm saying they're fucking and sucking it's like what what is it what you're gonna take a you're gonna pick a bone with Johnny Cash, who's not even here? What are you talking about? He's not even alive. Yeah. Did you all see the video of the girl that's like the white country rapper that was making?

She's got a song called, I think it's just called Southern. Oh, my God, I did see this. You know, she's like pounding the beers and talking about the SEC. Oh, dude, yes, I did see this You know she's like Pounding the beers and talking about the SEC Oh dude yes I did too Yeah Like what Why can't we Why can't we write an op-ed about that

Was it Katie Knoll We should write an op-ed about that About how she's She's creating Dangerous stereotypes for SEC fans. That's true. Not enough of those. Not enough of those.

I'm going to be the guy that just really puts a nail in this Nouveau Southern thing and says the SEC is going woke. That's going to be, I don't know what angle I'm going to take. You're playing with fire right there. I can't wait. That will happen. That will happen within, I will say, the next two years. Yeah, you're right.

Football's going to go. It went 1,000. I mean, it already has. They already say that because of the Kaepernick thing, but college football. It'll happen this year, and I'll tell you exactly why it's going to happen this year. It's because a lot

of schools are letting them serve alcohol at the stadiums for the first time and bud light will naturally be in that picture and that's going to be the catalyst for that push yeah we're gonna have our own like soccer stadium tragedies like they have all over the world just like people killed by a stampede yeah yeah yeah um okay this next paragraph i just want you guys i just want you to know that like when i read this i had to do a few double tags it's like i was like what kind of a man are we dealing with here what kind of a man or a man what kind of man is this catch sucker i need to know because, because this threw me the fuck off. I don't know if it did for you too, Mina, but exactly one week after the shooting at Covenant School,

the students of Episcopal School of Nashville, a school I helped found eight years ago on the Judeo-Christian principles of peace, inclusivity, and love. That's a curveball. That's a curveball. I didn't see him founding a christian school i have to say judeo-christian values this is this is truly like uh who who's a supermodel by the way i need this ear medicine for my uncle yeah it's like a classic drill tweet yeah no why did he first of all yeah he's just trying to flex that he has his own episcopal school and i looked this school up because i was like i have to know more

about this it is yeah it is very much like a lib unit i mean it says it's episcopal i don't know what that means i'm assuming it's fake and i sorry episcopals pride themselves on being a little more liberal i guess like i think they you know they let the one gay bishop in like 10 years ago and then they've just been proud of their self-sense it just seems like a private it's just like a private school for episcopal people it's like i feel like the people you hear talking about judeo-christian values it's like jordan peterson ben shapiro it's like all the right-wingers like they love judeo-christian values it's like jordan peterson ben shapiro it's like all the right-wingers like they love judeo-christian values shit see but this is this is american brain like this is the american illness is like he once again i don't know who taught him the phrase judeo-christian so he's used to like so he's used judeo-christian values and then what

was the other one we said he just used? Oh, it was... Silence is complicity. Silence is complicity, yeah. Those are strange bedfellows, and I don't know how they're partying well together here. This is centrism on steroids. It is, it is. This is centrism does to your brain.

He's trying to pull Jordan Peterson and the boys a little bit toward the center is what he's doing. He is, and there's a connection here toward the center. He is. He is. And there's a connection here. Last time we were in Nashville, last time we saw you, Mina, we were in the same bar that Jordan Peterson lost his shit in and was crying in. Which one? Because they were playing Riders.

What was the name of that song? Oh, Ghost Riders in the Sky. Ghost Riders in the Sky. What's the name of that bar yeah it was at yeah yeah yeah yeah oh was it it wasn't the one that you it you me and the choppo boys went to right no not that okay then it was does jordan pearson live in nashville i would not be surprised i would not with all of the fucking right wing people people that moved here. Yeah, Matt Walsh does. Yeah, Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens. Judeo-Christian values.

I'm sure they fucking probably send their kids to catch Sikor's school. Judeo-Christian values. Yeah. Well, they're Episcopalian, so I don't know. Oh, yeah, you're right. See, it's too gay and lib for them. You're right. That is...

Episcopalian is a little more... Yeah. A little. Yeah. That's just for the fellas on the show. The street that runs past the Ryman Auditorium, the historic home of the grand ole opry was recently named rep john lewis way after the civil rights leader who was arrested for the first time

while protesting in nashville many architects of the civil rights movement such as james lawson and diane nash were active in this city where the political climate made it more palatable than further places further south what might have gotten you lynched in alabama or firebombed in mississippi felt somehow safer in nashville i mean maybe that's true but you just said at the front of this paragraph that john lewis got arrested there so it's like i don't i don't know yeah i i you know i i can't really knock him because he is a historian so he must more know more than i do um but i don't think that's true the only thing that i could say is that like if you work in the music business like you like the music business is not really conservative it's there to make money and like most people who play music are

fucking weird in a lot of different ways yeah so can't confirm yeah can't confirm uh and so like if you want to talk about like nashville always being sort of like a centrist or a liberal enclave like okay maybe uh but to what extent and also i think that really discounts uh the shit that we deal with here right now such as a uh somebody shooting up a school yeah yeah at least we forget um and people like matt walsh living there it's like so people were lynched whatever i just yeah he's talking about uh yeah tennessee like it was just the refuge from the storm. Much like the Shining City on the Hill being a dog whistle like Judeo-Christian values. He's definitely framing Nashville that way. If conservative Christian gun enthusiasts need a calling to lay down assault rifles after the tragedy at Covenant School, they need look no further than Isaiah 2, 3, 4,

the scripture's peace crusader passage in which swords are beaten to plowshares and spears to pruning hooks. If they need a soundtrack, they need only crank up Johnny Cash's Sunday Morning Coming Down written by Chris Christopherson, a sharpshooting veteran turned peace activist. Okay, okay, hold on a second, hold on a second. That is the most songwriter verse in the scripture to point out like they love beating swords in the yeah plowshares yes

yes that's a that's a song like if they don't know anything about the else about the bible they know that one yeah they do we need we need the ones where it's like you're a man of blood if you don't if you don't pay your uh your your serfs or whatever yeah um james 5 1 3 yeah somebody looked at that yeah somebody checked me yeah yeah yeah you're right it's like that's the one that's like uh yeah you have fattened yourself for the day of the slaughter yeah that's That's how we get left as country music in Bible verses and shit in there. Totally. In the song,

a spiritual journey during a Sabbath day hangover returns the singer to something that he'd lost somewhere, somehow somewhere along the way. The country community has lost its way if it thinks owning an AR-15 is more important than a child's right to safely attend school. Again, I just, once again, proving your point, Mina, this paragraph doesn't hold.

The whole argument doesn't really hold because the last sentence is not connected to any actual evidence prior to it in the article. The country community has lost its way if it thinks owning an ar-15 is more important than a child's right to safely attend school does the country community really think that i mean you know what i mean it's a weird it's a weird it's never lost its way it's from america it's from america right right things we've always believed these things it's just like who is that extended to it's like okay well you know forget about the founding of this country and colonization that didn't count right but now owning an ar-15 you know that's that's just unforgivable and it's because people listen to too much lu Bryan, I think. That's right. That guy's trouble.

I think I wrote at one point a thesis on Feuerbach on the side, which is a Marx piece. Basically ripping into people just being like, you can't just tell people facts and expect them to change their mind. You have to change their material conditions. And this is my new thesis on Feuerbach. Well, you know, Marx almost moved to texas right i know and so like could you you imagine that would have fucking prompted that exactly that would have transformed everything well i mean he had he got like kicked out of a lot of different places like he got eventually his citizenship taken away from germany i'm pretty sure after 1848. And he was kicked out of Prussia and that he,

he made his way to England. Um, and yeah, there was a potential for him to move to Texas, which would have been such a cooler timeline. Way cooler. It would have changed country music. Probably.

That's for damn sure. Maybe August Willich would have actually like fucking lit his ass up because august willich i'm pretty sure like threatened marx for how conservative he was he considered marx conservative which is awesome was he the general in the in civil war was he like a Union general in the Civil War? Yeah, he was a Union Army general. Yeah. I think, yeah, him and Mark's almost got in a fight or something, like a duel.

Yeah, he wanted to challenge him to a duel. Man, that's amazing. Awesome. Well, okay, so just wrapping up here. I won't read it all, but i just want to paint the picture for you um at a vigil in front of city hall 48 hours after the shooter uh he goes on to talk about how joe biden or actually joe biden wasn't there jill biden was there my bad yeah dr joe biden dr jill biden nashville's mayor john cooper indeed yeah MD. Yeah, it's Dr. Jill Biden, MD.

And they played harmonica, and he said that the cops who had AR-15s didn't focus on the harmonica, or he said his son was too focused on his harmonica to notice the guns. I don't know. At this point, it fucking falls apart into a cacophony of

various images and stuff it's supposed to be lyrical i can't even fuck it can't even hold on to any of it but i i will say as stay the course i have to know as somebody who used to work as a technical writer i the beginning sentence of this paragraph is 59 motherfucking words long and it really it is it's oh god i would send him to hell if i could are you talking about before are you talking about at a vigil in oh shit you're right is it right it is a long fucking sentence at a vigil in front of city hall just 48 hours after the shooter who was being treated for an emotional disorder arrived at covenant school armed with three guns including an ar-15 military style rifle all of them legal in tennessee and purchased locally i stood in front of a grieving audience alongside my own third grader my son he could have busted up into five sentences yeah yeah oh man i uh i also really really appreciate that he was able

to sneak in uh who was being treated for emotional disorder yeah love that yeah really really chill and not at all uh slightly transphobic right extremely it's like okay now now i see what you're doing now i see what let's say gun control for whom sir right for whom yeah yeah here's the thing you fucking first all right you first right right right yeah it's yeah it's like i'm sure yeah catch sick sick or man that fucking name is gonna haunt me at night. It's going to keep me awake at night. We're going to get yelled at because it's going to be from another part of the world. You're right.

It's like Slovenian. Yeah, I legitimately don't know. If it was Slovenian, that's fine. Fuck all of you. I'm Frenchman, you know? No, I do not know much about this man. I did read other articles because he was interviewed by Rolling Stone, which was nice because it wasn't him writing.

It was just him talking. So he didn't get to be so insufferable. Yeah. Um, the only thing that I will say is, uh, I will read a sentence from the from the Rolling Stone article. Oh, please. Yeah. Yes. So this is in he's being asked the question, how are your kids doing? Do they understand? And towards the end of the paragraph, he says, well, and this is a reality that leads me to ask this question. Is this Goma? Is this Bukavu? Are we in Crimea right now?

No, man. Isn't this where the kids are supposed to feel the safest on earth? And I want to tell you enough. As somebody who concerns herself with international politics, I had no idea where the fuck he was talking about. I don't either. What is Goma? Bukavu. I know where Crimea is.

Normally people pull out, this isn't Afghanistan. Right. Oh, yeah, you're right. He's going with some deep cuts. He was like. He's talking about the motherfucking Democratic Republic of the Congo. I don't know. Why does he know what the Congo is?

Why does she know what the Congo is? Well, because Old Crow Medicine Show is the kind of music for 19-year-old white girls who go to Africa and take photos with 18 black children and put it in their profile pic. I think it's dumber than that. I think it's just... You know how Steely Dan just sings about mixed drinks a lot? These guys just sing about locations.

It's true. That turns it in. Yeah, I've been everywhere, man. I've been to Bukavu. I've been to Roma. I've been to Crimea. That is hilarious. Yeah, usually it's like, what, it's just Pakistan?

It's like, no, he's reaching. I tried so hard. My Google skills were really tested to the limits to figure out why the hell. Did he, like, play? Is this, like, his pet, like, issue? I have literally no idea. If somebody can explain this to me at some point, why this man knows what these are i would deeply appreciate it sound off in the comments um so all right let me just hold let me just finish it all up here

well my son and i were led to the microphone i found it difficult to hold back tears as i sang the country music hymn will the circle be unbroken it's a song that's common at funeral processions. It's lyrics full of references to heaven and loved ones long missed. As I sang alongside my own third grader, one just as purely innocent as the ones whose lives were snuffed out earlier this week. Okay, snuffed out is like, it's really crazy.

Right in that little bit, man. Snuffed out. Jesus. Hell yes. He's not pulling any punches. A powerful thought came over me. What if Nashville could be the last stop on this terrible runway

train of school violence? The place where the cycle could finally be broken. Catch Secware is a Nashville resident and founding member of Old Corp Medicine Show, which won a Grammy for Best Folk Album in 2015. That's folk, motherfucker. After that last sentence, I just wrote the words no.

No. No. Yeah, wait. Was the – is this the rule? Oh, no. It didn't end in a question. Otherwise, it would just be no. But –

Oh, the headline? Yeah, the headline. Yeah, can country music leadica out of its obsession with the guns no no what are you talking about are you fucking kidding me what you have to look at you have to look at mass media what is the most popular genre of music that's right 100 gex we need 100 gex to be anti-gax out of yes you're 100 right that's the only way we're getting out of this i do find it it's on 100 it's all on 100 gex now yes it's yeah and that's on 100 gex um um but i really find it interesting that he did bring up the police carrying ar-15s when most of the time the rhetoric and the like the stuff around this seems to be talking about like like individual private citizens and not police owning uh military style weapons which again love that phrase that's

another phrase that that we didn't remark upon but military military style weapons yeah yeah i'm gonna need to get me some of those some military style weapons yeah not not guns but like tanks and mortar you know just the knife part of the bayonet knife part of the bayonet yeah yeah you're you and your listeners can go to govdeals.gov and find... Get discounts. Yeah, you can make like a technical and you can put your military style weapons on the back of a pickup truck. Totally.

That would be so tight, dude. If you just... This is Mad Max reality that's coming down south. At the bottom of this article, there are a few other articles collected. I love articles. Let's go. Let's read articles for the next 10 hours.

Apparently, this is an entry in a common type of article at the New york times because rosanne cash has an op-ed from 2017 rosanne cash country music musicians stand up to the nra and then there's another op-ed country music will talk about the hurt but not the politics country music association tells journalists not to talk about guns, politics, or Las Vegas. I guess that was after the Stephen Pan show. Oh, okay, okay. I thought, dude. I didn't think that.

I was like, what? Yeah, the New York Times is not in the business of opening people's third eye anymore, so they're not allowed to talk about shit like that. Right, right. Yeah, it's unfortunate. No more Pentagon Papers or whatever. Now we get to just see the most weepy fucking country music artists be like, can't we just not have guns anymore?

It's like, no, we live in the bad country, asshole. We're like the prequel to Mad Max. It is getting there. Also, it's like guns, I mean, I think that you might have a better chance railing against pickup trucks rail against dually pickup trucks they have like a fucking five foot lift kit on them 35 inch wheels or whatever that's the shit you should rail against because here's the thing the common man doesn't drive those kind of types of pickups the common

man drives the type of pickup that tom used to have an s10 a chevy s4 a ford ranger missing the tailgate that's right that's right see i think you've stumbled upon a new form of sewer socialism yeah it's just like no more no more blindingly bright headlights No more jacked up pickup trucks. You have to have a muffler. Yes. Just like basic fucking bullshit that everyone complains about. We're going back to sewer socialism, baby. 1,000% agree.

The headlights, they're killing me. I'm fucking done with it, man. Done with it. About to have a road rage incident. I think that's about it for the day. Yeah, sure. Why not? As soon as shit was popping off in Tennessee, I was like, well, who do I have that I'm friends with in Tennessee?

I was about to say a slur, but I feel like I should not drop the F-bomb here. I don't know if that seal's been broken. I'm sure it's been broken. I'm sure it's been broken. What type of fag do I know in Tennessee? That was my exact thought. Yeah, yeah. What type of tranny do I know in Tennessee?

That's my exact thought. Yeah, this is the second one. Yeah,'t know man it's rough they are they especially so to you know i just referenced it but there has been a lot of rhetoric around like well we can take people's guns away but it's a specific type of person with as as I will quote from our good man catch, who was being treated for an emotional disorder. Right. A certain type of emotional disorder. Because you see people like Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro and all of these people twisting themselves into fun different poses to be like, well, how can we connect this to trans rights? Because this is what's getting the most shit right now. And this is our issue is now we can be like okay we'll compromise with you libs

there we go we'll just take it away from people uh from a minority population well it's and it's exactly like tom pointed out they did the exact same well not the exact same thing but it was in that wheelhouse with the shooter in louisville about pronouns and shit yeah yeah i mean they're going to take every single like crumb that they can get to connect it to any type of uh like queer identity even if it's just some like you know cisgender guy who you know lost his marbles and decided to go shoot up a bank. Right. Yeah. Well, but Mina, thank you so much for coming on the show this week. Yeah, thanks, man. Always a pleasure.

Always a pleasure, boys. Have me on whenever you want. I'm such a slut for attention. We'd love to. And we love coming down to Nashville. Yeah, I'm so glad that I was able to bully my way into knowing you two. My favorite line, my favorite thing me to ever says,

like we played those Nashville shows back to back and you came up to me and said, you guys, you guys hard up for money or what's going on? I was teasing. Do you have anything you want to plug before we leave? Uh, I mean,

sure. Uh, like I have, uh, I don't have like a, I guess I technically kind of have a business. Um, so I make t-shirts sometimes. Yeah. So I sell those, uh, they're on third eye, third eye wide.us. Um, I also have Twitter. That's mostly like what I do online. That's mostly like what I do online.

So you can follow me at screwball detector. S C R E W D E T C T R. Yeah. It's just a butchering of that. And same thing for Instagram. I've mostly just been making books lately. I saw that. That's pretty tight.

Thank you. Yes. I, I take out of print books and then put them back into print, which is super fun. So I made a copy of Black Bolshevik by Harry Haywood. I will tease it now, even like this project has been pretty long coming. So I made a copy of Leila Khaled's autobiography. If you don't know who Layla Khaled is, listener,

she is, uh, uh, the first woman to ever hijack an airplane. Uh, she was a part of the, she is a part of the, uh,

popular front for the liberation of Palestine. Breaking barriers. Like she should be featured in that Hillary Clinton, like women's documentary. Yeah. Well, here's the thing. I'm a big fan of her work.

She has an autobiography and a friend of mine and I will be producing those with the permission of the ghost writer. I will put that out there. We reached out to him. It's a book that I believe is still technically banned in the US.

So there will soon be physical copies of folks to buy and all of the proceeds will go to helping Palestinian families, both here in Nashville, because there are a lot of Palestinian people here as well as in Palestine proper. So lots of exciting things. And also, if you just want me to make a book for you,

you can just DM me. My DMS are always open. I made a copy of mind fuckers, which is about acid fascism. So acid fascism in terms of like the CIA and the dispersal of acid across the country. Yes. A lot of cool shit. Jolly West shit. Oh, yeah.

And this book has been out of print for forever. So I make new covers. I designed them myself, bind them myself and, uh, make them all nice and fancy. So if you want a book, if you want to hit me up, um, or whatever, follow me. Um, and yeah, I also am an organizer here in middle Tennessee. I live in Nashville, uh, joy,, DSA. We're growing every day. And we're currently doing a lot of stuff. I lead the foundation's political education program that we have where we read basic texts from the Marxist and socialist tradition. So jump on. It is a six month long process we have weekdays

and weekend offerings for every single reading well go check out Mina's work and you can check out our work at Patreon www.patreon.com www.patreon.com

you can sign up for $5 a month over at that website. So please, go support all of us. We all need your help right now. I gotta pay for a wedding, fuckers. Yeah, yeah. He's about to get married. And me and Tom have to save country music from guns.

Or the opposite. We've all got our own callings. Yeah. So support us, please. Thank you for listening. Maybe I'll figure out how to liberate country music. Yeah, we'll let you know. We'll let you know.

Let's see what we come up with. Yeah. All right. We'll see you all next time. Adios. Later. Thank you.