Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 324: This Ain't The Primordial Ooze Anymore

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

Topics this week include everything from Israel's bombing of a neighborhood in Beirut; the US bombing of Iraq; bombings in Iran; the resignation of Harvard president Claudine Gay; and much more Please support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

damn i i was already going well look at you okay i'll start a plus student over here tom sex yeah not another tardy boy yeah i'm the i'm the son of tiger parents funny to think about hillbilly tiger parents i don't even know what a tiger parent is is it like a helicopter mom well i guess wasn't it based on that amy tan book or something like that and i guess there was some like race science attached to it to where like certain cultures even within like races of people are like a little more stringent and what they expect out of their children so like for like for like black folks it would be like nigerians for latino folks it would be cubans yeah you know for asian people it'd be pretty much all of them yeah it'd

be like it'd be like it'd be like yo we are not a monolith actually my mom doesn't give a shit if i do well in school so no she doesn't i guess she would kick my ass she would kick my ass like i went to i went to college with um i had some really good Arab friends in college who were like first generation immigrants. And like their parents were extremely strict on them to do well. Whereas my parents literally didn't even care if I went to college or not. They were like, you know, he's not working on an oil rig, so I guess that's all right. Does that mean that their parents were

tiger parents is that the thing that like there's more expectations on them to succeed in so i'm curious then what's the what's the opposite then to a tiger parent is it like a sponge parent not a sponge parent i'm thinking something soft and squishy like a like a mollusk parrot yeah yeah hmm what's a spider parent oh that sounds actually kind of scary that sounds insidious insidious yeah now to like you know eat your corpse and yeah you lay eggs in it you know weave a web lure your children weave a web of lies and deceit uh yeah don't even feel it yeah and yet three days later, you become necrotic. Oh, man. Just like the capitalist system we live under.

Indeed, indeed. I guess you could be an octopus parent. Weirdly alien and out of this world. Out of this world. What's that shrimp? What's the shrimp that lives in the South Pacific? The tiger shrimp. Is it the tiger shrimp?

Tiger prawn. Why is everything a tiger? Well, they demand more out of their kids than your standard shrimp. So you could be a tiger... Can you be a tiger shrimp mom? You could be a tiger shrimp mom. Why not? Isn't that the shrimp that can grab things faster than a bullet

shoots out? You know what I'm saying? And it has extremely like its eyes can see like 20,000 different colors on the spectrum. Oh, you're talking about something that lives deep down in the trench i don't think that's a tiger prawn i think that's something else yeah yeah specifically i was like god damn i don't know if any shrimp that's that's high achievement for a crustacean you just kind of go through the world either being gross or delicious

or kind of both well see if you're a tiger shrimp mom that's what you want for your kid you know for your spawn you know to be gross or delicious yeah to be gross or delicious hopefully not delicious my parents only lived about nine minutes all right i'm i'm gonna be gone any day now i want better for you i want to see you live like several days you know back in my, we only lived for like half a week. Son, I'm not always going to be here. You walk like 20,000 leagues to school

and die halfway. uh yeah no welcome to the first episode of the year. This is the first episode, both free and premium. We are recording live in 2024, the first week of the year, and, you know, right out the gate. The last week of forever. The last week. The last year of forever. Do you think that? Do you really think that?

No, no. No, every year, I feel like, especially when I was a kid, I felt like we were, I guess as I've gotten older, we're inching more towards apocalypse. But I don't know, man. I guess the world's felt like it's ended numerous times for other people's civilizations. So, no. It's just going to be another year, you know. Good and bad.

I've wondered that because for several years, everybody's been saying like, yeah, we're entering towards apocalypse. I mean, I did see something that was very concerning the other day. The Great Lakes typically have an ice coverage of 55% during the winter months, causing at least half of their surfaces to freeze. As of yesterday, they had a combined ice cover of just 0.2%. Goddamn. I thought you were going to hit me with like 10%. I was like, oh, that's not a good trend.

No, that's alarming. I guess if you like outdoor hockey, you know, if you're playing hockey on the uh the great lakes it's all field hockey now it's all field hockey yeah you know if you want a good sort of proxy for surrogate rather for like how poorly things are going follow the map of where uh in filary uh brain eating amoebas are are doing their shit they used to just operate in louisiana and texas the gulf coast you know what i mean and now they're popping up in minnesota colorado big cities manitoba you know what else is a good barometer too for um you know not to

we're already getting into the doomerism but i mean this is just i saw this this I saw this, this, I mean, yo, we're just called balls and strikes. That's what you always say, Tom. But I saw that there have been 14 species of bird. I saw that. Yeah, that went extinct in Hawaii in 2023, which, I mean, I'm not even getting into it, man. man but just thinking about you know settler colonialism and climate change and populations that are going to be most adversely affected and seeing those 14 i think species of bird in hawaii i mean it just kind of it kind of just uh draws the circle you know draws a home you know what i mean in a very depressing bleak way you know i think that's actually a good point and i think

that like if we're talking about the start of a new year the start of um establishing some themes and concepts and trends and patterns up front that we'll probably see play out over the year and over this decade obviously you usually need a few years at the beginning of every decade to understand like what the decade is going to look like but like you need to let it cook a little bit you need need to let it cook. That's true. That's true. It definitely seems that, or this is probably our point that's already been made many times

by theorists and historians much smarter than I, but exactly what you just said, Aaron, the climate catastrophe is basically a settler colonial project because like as we're as we're seeing like settler colonialism is like a completely totalizing system it's like you know you have to obviously like there's the uh there's the physical expulsion of people but then there's also like the cultural elimination of them and then included in that is their approach to the environment and stewardship and the connection to the land and because like that's a thing that is cultural at the end of the day like there is no

such thing as like wilderness there is no such thing as wilderness. There's no such thing as untouched lands. We interact with the environment all the time. So it would make sense that the elimination of all these other species is also a part of that project as well. And yes, that's a part of capitalism. It's a part of that project as well and yes that's a part of capitalism it's a part of like modernity but you know it's just it's i don't know it's just like one of those things

that like i guess i've we call it doomerism but maybe i've kind of like naturalized it at this point just like which is a really scary depressing thing that like the environment is uh the natural world quote unquote it has reached a sort of like tipping point beyond which we're not even going to do anything about yeah point of no return you know i'm reminded of them alexander avinya um he i shared this article with you guys um in the group chat he talks about the connection between um israel and um contra movements and right-wing governments latin america and at the end of the article um there is this palestinian doctor i believe who goes the visits the border where elbit Systems has their surveillance towers, right? And he says that he compares climate change,

when you're talking about, Terrence, like we were talking about settler colonialism being totalitizing, but I'm thinking of climate change as well, right? And as a sort of negative feedback loop also being totalitizing. And he calls climate change the global Nakba, you know, which I thought was really depressingly poignant because i don't know man i think about like you know i've thought of climate change as sort of a great equalizer you know in the similar sense where i mean it doesn't really

matter if you have like a bunker a couple miles underground you know what i mean or if you think you're gonna go to to go to space that's not gonna fucking happen but at the same time though there are gonna be populations and communities that are obviously gonna uh be more negatively impacted because historically that's been the case you know yeah yeah it's it's something that like again just like we're establishing it up front establishing it at the beginning of this year but obviously it's something i've been thinking about a lot not just because not just because i've been watching yellowstone and like i've really been thinking about our connection to to nature and the erosion of the commons a lot lately vis-a-vis the worldview of john dutton well great documentary known as yellow yeah i i think it's just the thing that like i've been

kind of re-interrogating because like you know grew up in new mexico which is uh i don't know how to put it it's less of a completed settler project than say new york like there are still reservations in new mexico i mean there is there is a reservation in western new york uh around buffalo and and i'm pretty sure there are others too but like quantitatively in terms of like land and population new mexico is still very much a uh it is not a, like, what, you know, settler colonialists would say, like, a completed or ethnically cleansed area. But I guess what I'm saying is that, like, having grown up with a lot of these myths and realities, it's like, I'm kind of, like, in this moment where I've been sort of, like, reinterrogating a lot of the mythologies of the West and the frontier and of settlers in general. And it just comes at this moment where you've got this large settler colonial project being played out globally, worldwide like not not just in like israel and palestine but also as avinia as our buddy alexander avinia said like globally because like something that's been in the news the past

few weeks is like this crisis at the border and i read a new york times article about it a few days ago and i was actually astonished because i don't think the entire article mentioned climate change once they never do man also you can tell it's an election year when you start hearing crisis at the border no that's so that's so true nothing says nothing says election year like most important election of our lifetime and crisis at the border. You know what? It's so it's I've said this before, but it's like, you know, it's like this country constantly has to be reborn in the blood and the suffocation of the oppressed. And now it's like, oh, we have to all rally together to save our democracy from the hordes at the border.

You know what I mean? Sorry, masses beating at the door. It's so libidinal yo it's disgusting man oh my god i hate it i hate this goddamn place no it's like i saw a story like 60 house republicans are you know led by mike johnson are going down to the border this week or next week do what wear fucking uh wear fucking stents and hats backwards and shit like Elon Musk. Yeah, no, I mean, like, seriously. Like cops, sheriffs. I mean, that's the thing. It's like in America, right?

It's like we have this global spectacle playing out with, like, Israel and Palestine, especially what's going on in Gaza. But it's like it is just replayed in America. You just don't really see it magnified as much. And but like the dynamics are very similar because like, let's face it, like America, like the West, like that area. For example, I grew up in New Mexico. I grew up in New Mexico. New Mexico is like one of the few states that has passed, you know, quote unquote hands.

You know, as compared to like a state like New York, for example. It's like first, you know, obviously it was the land of the indigenous, you know, the Pueblo people, Diné and everything. Then it was New Spain. Then it was Mexico. And then it was new spain then it was mexico and then it was the united states but it's like obviously that that entire process is a settler colonial process and it's still ongoing and it's still in motion but you're right like it gets buried and pushed to the sides except when it's an election year and then then all of a sudden, it's a crisis again. And, I mean, a big... And again, what I was astonished reading that New York Times article,

it's just like there was not any real mention of the climate aspect of this, that climate change is affecting agricultural practices, probably in Southern Mexico, Central America, South America. And instead, it was all about like the cartels yeah which i mean granted probably does have some part in the quote-unquote refugee crisis at the border but like let's not kid ourselves like this is a fucking climate change issue at at the very base of it um anyways not sure exactly where i was going with that other than to say that like i don't know it's like it's a global year man it's like you know 2024 like

this is the thing like the very first things we see in this year like right like israel bombs a neighborhood in beirut just to kill one guy yeah as you were saying aaron before we started recording like all the news reports you saw about that called it a hezbollah run neighborhood dude that's like this is fucking sitzler these motherfuckers do like dude listen this is shit's gonna drive me insane well they go this is a mafia ran neighborhood this is a this is the cornbread mafia ran neighborhood so i'm gonna bomb uh hazard kentucky like how do these guys get off like seriously everything is you're right what you the point you were trying to make i don't

put words in your mouth there and i'll let you flesh this out but i if i'm if i understood you correctly the point you're getting at is like everything has been like d and then re-territorialized in the sense that like people aren't autonomous anymore everything is now like been cordoned off into various like feudal areas that like because of your ethnicity you ergo axiomatically belong to whatever bad guy is in that area exactly exactly yo dude that's exactly what it is and you know you know what that's um i remember when i took political science right for whatever that's worth whatever that fucking voodoo shit is worth right like i Like, I took political science, and I remember that my professor said that the way to look at countries, right,

is to not associate, right, a country or a leader with an entire people, right? That's something that the United States consistently, under kind of this liberal bourgeois, liberal international relations, a liberal order, right? This is constantly what America says, right? But at the same time, you know's like it's like that um that woman who the pope there was a post article right who

um this woman who had spoke about why she was not raped the only reason why she was not raped by hamas right right and dude yo like out of everything that she said the one thing that was just completely swept over was when she was axed or commented on what she thinks should happen to the children of gaza and she said they deserve what they get right as in tying and associating them with hamas so it's just like i mean i don't know man i feel like what i what i what i really want to do i'm just gonna speak frankly for a second i want to round up all those fuckers that say shit like that and play a game of fucking manhunt with them somewhere in fucking west virginia and see how they fucking like it.

Seriously. Just fucking terrorize these motherfuckers and peck them off from someplace they don't even fucking see it coming. Swear to God, I'm sick of these fuckers. God damn it. Go out there dressed in camo. All right, you're rolling. You get like five minutes. That's the most fucking sucker shit in the world, man.

It's just the fuck like how you can say that about fucking children well dude i mean what i think it is too is that you know tying it back into the climate crisis right and the fact that i think that that will be used as a pretext right for the complete like elimination extermination of populations right you know what i mean and it'll be done in such a way where it'll be passing the buck off to something that the same reason, this is the same kind of the same inciting

force that disallows them to even mention climate change, right? You know what I mean? It's like this absolvement of responsibility, you know, or at least like, at least acknowledging, I mean, I hate to say science, but everybody fucking loves to talk about, like, when Biden got elected, oh, we're going to bring back science, you know or at least like at least acknowledging i mean i hate to say science but everybody fucking loves to talk about like when biden got elected oh we're gonna bring back science

you know we're not gonna ignore the science and it's like dude that's exactly what you're fucking doing yo one especially one by propping up this fucking country that's using mythological fucking religion from 6 000 years ago right to fucking justify genocide you know what i mean it's just i don't know man crazy making is the theme of this year i feel yeah it's not going to hold like you're right there's too many things packed into one tiny vessel it's like on you're right aaron the the same people telling us that we are in a climate crisis, which I do believe, just as someone who spends a lot of time outside and has noticed a lot of trends and has read a lot, has a lot of biologists.

As a person who is alive and has sweat glands and lived in the summer of 2023. As a person who shit more or less works. Like the same people telling us that and and and we've pointed this out on the show before but the same people telling us that like in this house we believe in science are also the ones backing to the hilt the genocidal ethnostate that claims sovereignty over land from a deed written by God. I'm not even making that up.

And using very much pseudoscientific. Yeah. Yeah. Remember when we did, like, one of our earlier episodes was called The March for Pseudoscience. Yeah. You know what I mean? And, like, this is kind of what this is.

You know what I mean? Like, what do you call it? What's the historical analog for pseudoscience? Like, I guess hagiography to some degree, although it's not a one-to-one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, you mean like alchemy and stuff? Like pseudo-historical.

I guess an example in the field would be Ken Ham at the Creation Museum. Okay. What do you call that? This is what's happening here. Basically, you've got a bunch of fucking Ken Hams with a very tenuous thousands-year-old claim, land deed, like, lording over us and, like, doing extrajudicial killings with impunity.

Uh-huh. Like, seriously, I want to take every Mossad and drop them in the middle of the fucking Taze Valley or something, West Virginia, and just peck them off. Like, let's see what you can do in the mountains you fucking pussy bitch yeah easy to do this shit out here when you got all these advantages let's see what you gotta do you gotta get out here in the trenches cocksucker well and i think that like this basic dynamic is kind of the thing that might wind up unraveling the libs.

Like, I don't know, man. Like, granted, four weeks ago, we were saying the liberal, like, the Dems are cooked in 2024. Like, they're cooked at the election. I mean, again, it's too far out to even know. Again, it's too far out to even know. However, this inability to contain some of these, you can't even call them contradictions because they're openly acknowledged. It's not like they are mystified and pushed to the side.

Like when John Kirby gets out there and says that South Africa's case against Israel at The Hague is completely meritless. South Africa's filed this 84-page lawsuit against Israel, accusing them of genocide. Israel says that this is blood libel. Does Washington agree? And where does this put Washington and Pretoria? We find this submission meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever. Dude, that was unreal.

Yo, I mean, I don't know how to cut you off, Terrence, but I just wonder, and I know this is a moot point, we've said this before, and I mean, I don't want to even pathologize these people because they're all fucking psychotic but like i mean like could you imagine like i mean did it somebody tweeted that like reagan had said i think reagan at the time had said that any uh sanctions against south africa right by the united nations was counterproductive and was using the same sort of language oh my god yo when these people when these people are shriveled up and dying right you know what i mean and it's just like will any of them see like not even justice like in a court of law like take them to the hague i'm just saying like i don't even know man it's just it's just maddening it's maddening sure a sign you're fucking up is when south africa's

trying to get you tried in a court. Literally, dude. That's how you know you're, that's like, just like, you know. A former genocide factory, bro. That's three feet away from Rhodesia, taking you in and trying to get you tried for war crimes. You know what I mean? I mean, I guess the thing there is that like, you know, obviously what John Kirby said was merit. He said that their 84 page lawsuit accusing Israel of genocide was meritless, counterproductive and completely without any basis, in fact, whatsoever.

MK Tali Gottlieb said, without hunger and thirst among the Gazan population, we will not be able to recruit collaborators. We will not be able to recruit intelligence. We will not be able to bribe people with food, drink, medicine in order to obtain intelligence. And we know that finding the abductees is a super important goal. Basically, what she was just saying was that, yes, starvation, famine, which, by the way, I don't know if y'all read that isaac chotner interview in the new in the new yorker about the famine in gaza but it's insane man dude it was incredible did you see that's basically saying that 85 percent of the highest category of famine victims in the world are Palestinian. Right, exactly.

I mean, you've got them saying this openly to the extent that, like, I read this article in The Guardian about the South African case against Israel, and, like, they quoted several people in like former israeli members of government who were by no means liberal like even they were saying like yo we've got to tone down the open calls for ethnic cleansing and genocide like this is not we should like this is this is not something we're speaking the quiet part loud yeah like i mean that's the thing it's like even former officials of israel is going out there and saying like yo this case does have merit because every two days because we did it we did that shit

yeah because every two days someone comes out and says like all right we're gonna do ethnic cleansing matthew fucking miller like the state department spokesman like what was his thing he was like we uh we we can we condemn itamir bengavir is like statements about ethnic cleansing and then like 32 minutes later bengavir gets out there and says like we really appreciate super appreciate your help united states but we're gonna keep doing the ethnic cleansing. Just saying, fuck you. Just fuck you. Dude, I mean, just getting yanked around by a genocidal state with nuclear weapons.

And I mean, like, providing cover every time that Israel does something right in the United States and media outlets provide cover. And then immediately, as you're saying, Terrence, somebody comes out and says, yeah, we should nuke Gaza. I mean, it's just like those, as you said, they're not even contradictions. I mean, at this point, they're known truths, right? Right. And they're just like bursting at the seams, right? Just snarling.

You know what I mean? And it's just like, they can't, I mean, you cannot contain that for too long, man. You can't, I mean, it's just like trying to like i don't know like contain a bag of ferrets and stuff this shit like that you know what i mean like it's just gonna claw out and fuck your face up man you know what i mean yeah i think that the thing is is like like israel apparently is very you know spooked by this case at the hague like they have opted to defend themselves which they and who do you call and they might get dirsh there's only one name one trusted name when you need to get off the

hook and i'll tell you this johnny cochran's going on brother brother with heroes like that they cannot lose that's a weird that's another weird thing from this week. I didn't complete my thought earlier, but I'll bring it back around. I promise. But another weird thing from this week is the Epstein list. And it's very interesting, right? Because, like... Oh, it is interesting, brother. Oh, it is.

Yes, it is, actually. As someone pointed out to us a few months ago, I totally spaced this, but did you guys know that Anthony Blinken's father was the last person to see Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine's father, alive? I did not know that. Yeah.

Dude, there's a connection there. Like, there is a lineal connection there. He was the one that pushed him off the lady giz line and maybe into his watery grave yeah um but like i guess i guess where i was going the point i was going to make just a second ago is that like you've got all these different things that openly contradict each other like we believe in science we believe in two thousand year old land deeds granted by god we believe that protecting children yeah we believe israel has a right to defend itself by genocide and we believe israel is not doing genocide we believe

that uh uh we don't want a wider war in the East, and yet we believe we've got to bomb Iraq, which I don't know if you saw that this morning. The United States bombed Iraq to kill some... What? Yeah. Dude, what the fuck? This happened in three days. Within three days, you get Israel bombing Beirut.

You get mysterious explosions at a march in Iran to commemorate the death of Qasem Soleimani. And then on the third day, you get United States bombing Iraq and killing multiple people, by the way, and pissing off the Iraqi parliament and president. Let me just say something, too. And what we have to look forward

to is the guy currently in there aiding and abetting one of those nations and the other guy who nuked the guy on a whim yes and those are the two guys jockeying to to lead us going forward uh-huh yo dude i mean like it's kind of what you said tom like going into every uh election year right like um um you know this uh this fear fear is about uh migration right but like oh like i feel like there's a similar dynamic man like this also like kind of um almost like almost inaugural ceremony of bombing the shit out of a country at the beginning of the new year man yeah dude solomony got nuked in 20 right 2020 yeah dude like the first week of the new year bro holy shit and dude i'm pretty sure that we're always bombing countries but it just feels like like i mean i don't know i'm just talking shit now but it's like we're setting the tone and the

agenda right right for the year you know what I mean? God, I didn't even think about that, man. That is like, it's like at the start of every election year, well there's an October surprise at the end right before the election and every January there's like a war crime. Uh-huh.

Yeah. And crisis at the border, kids in cages. and then you can't talk about it ever again after the election yeah yeah exactly oh my god i don't know i mean obviously several different things are going on here like geopolitically i find it very very concerning that it seems to me and this is total armchair conjecture but it seems to me, and this is total armchair conjecture, but it seems to me that Israel has decided that world war is in its interest. And I was talking to somebody about this recently.

Hell of a gamble. Do what? Hell of a gamble. And the thing is, is like, why? Right? The question is why? And I think that, for for me anyways my diagnosis of that all goes back to september right like the talks between saudi arabia and israel like these

normalization talks like the forging of a new middle east one that did not include the palestinians and the way that i see it like israel basically has decided that to consolidate all its settlements and shore up its its land its labor systems its uh its political economy it has to be in full control of everything that goes on in the west bank perhaps even jordan after a certain point um and in gaza and the only way that's going to happen is through some sort of like baptism by fire um and by that i mean like a war right like and and they know that the united states will back them fully to the hilt in whatever happens i mean this is almost a test run to see how much the united states is willing to go right right back them you know well that's and that's the thing like this calls into because like i guess if if there's any themes that we will probably see over

the course of this year and again i may come come back to this and say that was extremely naive and blinkered. But it seems to me that this will be the year that the crisis of liberalism becomes so acute and pronounced that it starts collapsing in on itself. And the signal event that I think is probably a good case study or a test on that thesis is the resignation of the Harvard president, Claudine Gay. Claudine Gay resigned today, weeks after her controversial testimony before Congress about anti-Semitism. Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment yes or no it can be depending on the context it does not depend on the context the answer is yes like that to me is a very fascinating a very fascinating phenomenon right because so so can you yeah yeah so I like i told you at

the beginning terrence that i've kind of been uh kind of out of the loop so can you can you fill me in i've been a real tardy boy with this one what's what's why why did she resign what happened i heard something about plagiarism so this all started when the when congress dragged out like three of the heads of the major universities for like a show trial like a month ago and made them to made them publicly answer like why they did not uh condemn hamas and why they allowed for pro-palestinian protests on their campuses and this kind of stuff right um out of that you saw the resignation of the president of upin uh but then there was all this speculation like will any of the other presidents resign for example gay at harvard um and it looked

for a little while like she was probably that she might be able to hold on to her position but then in the last like week or so, Christopher Rufo, old friend of the show. Talk about a guy who needs to get his head beaten in with a sledgehammer. Talk about a man that will draw his last breath with my hands around his throat at some point. I'm not saying it's going to be today or tomorrow, but that's something that you better hope

I never get a position where I got nothing to lose. I'll go ahead and tell you that. but that son of a bitch better hope I never get a position where I got nothing to lose. I'll go ahead and tell you that. He, I mean, and this is the thing. This is the thing about Rufo. He basically laid out his entire agenda. Because, like, he does that because he thinks he's like a Marvel movie villain.

He's like, and this is my whole evil plan. Exactly. And what i did it 25 minutes to go fucking exactly he's like ozzy mandy's right like i've already done it it's too late to do anything now don't you wish you were as smart and brilliant as me that's a man that's a man whose whose is the inside-out skin suit. You know what I mean? Like his inner man is inside-out. It ain't the outer shell, even. I also just want to add to you, he's the one that tells the libs, this is my master plan,

and they're like, oh, we weren't going to do anything about it anyway. Don't worry. This was my point. That's exactly right, Aaron.aron this was my point if you think it's bad enough this fucking moron just goes out there and he's like this cringe moron just goes out there it's like my whole evil plan is all good this is the method to my madness i literally saw him use the phrase method to this is the method to my madness. Like, it's bad enough that he goes out there and he's like, I'm so smart and brilliant.

Here's the thing about this guy. I used to look at that shit. I used to be like, man, like, you know, because this was the conventional wisdom after the 2022 midterms. Like, oh, the GOP took the Rufo bait and they fucked themselves because they went with the Rufo playbook. The way I see him now, it's like, yes, he is a fucking moron and completely high on his own supply and self-aggrandizing and, again, comic book villain. Brandizing and, again, like comic book villain. What's even more depressing and sad than that is that there are a group of people who actually fall for it and actually have to fucking play the foil to him,

and those are the liberals. Charlie Brown football-ass motherfuckers. Here's the only thing. If you just refuse to play, this guy is back to nowhere. He's really irrelevant. Exactly. It's like, where the fuck does he even come from?

You know what I mean? And it's like he gets his power from people paying attention to him. That's exactly right, Tom. We correctly diagnosed him from day one. He gets his entire power from his ability to provoke and get a rise out of you like he is completely powerless at the end of the day i mean granted he can marshal all these right-wing forces that are more and more as the election approaches looking like they're going to probably try to steal the election again um however like he's not an evil genius he's not a master manipulator

like his the the extent of his manipulation requires that you also be manipulated and play ball with it if you don't yeah exactly right which is far easier to do when you're basically living rent free and the dumbest people alive's head. And the thing is, is that Harvard completely capitulated to it. So what Rufus said he was gonna do and what he did was he raised a big fuss over Claudine Gay's scholarly record. And the fact that apparently she had plagiarized,

I saw the instances of plagiarism. It's not really my place. I i saw the instances of plagiarism it's not really my place i'm not a judge of plagiarism a lot of what i see is just like people reciting the same boring ass fucking like lines and statements that like i guess to me plagiarism is more like in stealing someone's like critique or framework or or insight rather than like their exact words but yes that is also plagiarism sure i mean uh regardless the whole thing was ginned up into this moral panic that then you had harvard funders exactly like in the upin case like bill ackman step stepping in and being like i'm not gonna give you 11 million dollars a month now and harvard basically saying like oh no okay all

right we'll get we'll get rid of her she's gotta go and so that's what happens and there's just something i wanted to like point out about this you know i think that like and i'm not gonna i don't want to put him on uh put him under the spotlight because he's a friend of mine i hope he doesn't mind that i'm using i am plagiarizing his uh his excellent thoughts um but gabe why not was talking about like i thought he made a really good point which is that like first of all like for there to be any kind of popular front against these fascists, against Rufo and against Trump and everything, people forget that in the 1930s and 40s, for there to be a popular front,

the libs had to also make concessions. That is not happening anymore. What you're seeing now is that all these institutions that could marshal the for like the social forces for their defense are not doing that they are instead going to capitulate at every step of the way to the right wing rather than marshalling the student unions the student uh the grad unions the uh the you know faculty unions all this student groups of color as well because yo make no mistake i'm not like you know i'm not um i'm not necessarily a fan of any president of an elite ivy league school but make no mistake man this is also rufo's plan to attack any person of color

any woman any marginalized person in these positions of power or authority right no matter how nominal they are right and again these are institutions like you're saying terrence that these are liberal institutions right that that that sort of um um well prioritize ostensibly right right um diversity and all of these other things but an identity and all these other things but like when it comes to actually like protecting their staff or students or anything like that, well, because I guess that goes to show you then that they're also not in control.

Right. You know, they're not really in control of these decisions at all. Right. The funders are in control. Yeah. The funders are in control. Exactly.

Right. I mean, and this, this is the thing, like it's, I guess it's like a perfect microcosm of all of those, call them contradictions if you want, or call them hypocrisies if you want, but all of those things that can't coexist, they can't sit comfortably side by side together anymore, starting to become unraveled once they are prodded and pushed a little bit by the right wing. unraveled once they are prodded and pushed a little bit by the right wing and uh like there's several different interpretations you can make of that you could say like oh this is all just the media spectacle if you just ignore the right wing and if you ignore rufo he will go away

part of me does think that right like we were just saying i do think that however at the same point at the same at the same time the liberals have conceded so much to him and so much to the right wing that by this point, he himself has become an institutional force in the trend of American politics. I don't even know if you can ignore it anymore because it's become naturalized. This pattern, this dynamic has become naturalized. I mean, granted, you saw the beginnings of it 30 years ago when Clinton signed welfare reform. And once they caved on all these concessions to the right on foreign policy, on, yeah, the social safety net. I was thinking about Clinton today in the context of, like, some friends and i were talking about the scots irish and how that like they didn't really ascend the high heights in the arts necessarily music i guess to some degree but like in politics they've done astonishingly well you know what i mean and it's

kind of driven by like almost like the hillbilly version of like uh scott fitzgerald's like sort of class anxieties about trying to keep up with the joneses of what the tony like sort of ivy league crowd as just permeates itself in his work and like how bill clinton essentially sold his people down the river because of that class anxiety you know the wasps needed a foil like they needed they needed an ethnic white identity to like project themselves up against and and furthermore they needed the scots irish who were basically their settlers yeah to then to then adopt their own policies and been basically you know that's why like the what like 60 70 years ago the wasps were the ones hanging out

with the epstein types now you've got clinton hanging out with the epstein types yeah yeah you know you know what it is too i think even just you know generally speaking about liberalism it's like whenever you adopt their framing when i say they're the right whenever the liberal liberals adopt the rights framing you've already lost you know you've already allowed this like miasma of their worldview to like kind of like you said naturalize right sort of like i don't use the word discourse but it's political discourse right and i guess the whole political spectrum in itself and it narrows that aperture of political possibility you know know what I mean? When you don't beat back, when you don't push back and marshal the forces that you have.

But I mean, again, then again, man, like if part of that marshalling of the forces is like the, the left, right. Whether I don't know,

it's weirdos like us or whether it's like, you know, progressives and they obviously were seeing this with, with, um, with Israel and Palestineine they obviously don't give a shit about us right they're willing to throw us under the bus right and call us hamas supporters and terrorists you know and anti-semites right if it means that they fucking

lose an election even if it means they lose an election you know yeah i mean did you guys read claudian gay's op-ed after she got fired? Nah, man. I don't even want to. God damn, yo. Dude, it was pretty fucking... She'd be like, I'm sorry for not cracking down on students protesting against genocide. Literally exactly what she said, Aaron. She said, yes, I made mistakes.

In my initial response to the atrocities of October 7th, I should have stated more forcefully what all people of good conscience know. Hamas is a terrorist organization that seeks to eradicate the Jewish state. She's running. Give it a like to her. Yeah, she's running. She's running. And at a congressional hearing last month, I fell into a well-laid trap.

I neglected to clearly articulate that calls for the genocide of Jewish people are abhorrent. You did fall into a trap. You're doing it right. You're in the trap. You're in the trap. Not the one you think, sister. You've not escaped the trap. You're still obviously in it. You're in the pet opticon right now.

They're looking at you, laughing at you, dog. I think that to me, I don't know why this is because i don't even really fully care like i have an undergrad degree between the three of us aaron i did you didn't even finish college right i barely graduated from a mediocre state school i mean i do mean barely that's not even accredited anymore right well my department's not we got like half a doctor's between us and some shit yeah and i i have a bachelor's from a state school as well but like you know i think the thing is is i don't even really care that much uh i mean i do i do, obviously, like we talked about, like West Virginia University.

Universities are one of the last bastions of a kind of safety net state universities anyways, like WVU, like land grant institutions and stuff. Because as you strip away the social safety net, you at least give people an opportunity through the sort of meritocracy, through various means tested measures or whatever to level up, to be socially upwardly mobile. But like as we see the attack on the university, we're not even having that anymore and the thing is is that the university could be kind of be a last bastion of both liberalism as a as a political force but also as a reflection of itself and like of its own missions and goals and aims and everything granted i don't think that like i still fundamentally i brought this point up a few weeks ago, I still fundamentally do not think the Democratic Party is finished by any means. Granted, things can happen very fast and the whole thing could just collapse.

However, at the same time, I see that, like, tons of people still vote for Democrats. I went and saw Barbie. I don't know why I've latched onto the Barbie thing, but when I went and saw Barbie in fucking Northern Virginia, the fucking house was packed. Like that movie made like a billion dollars. People went back and saw it over and over. That movie is liberalism distilled. What if you just made me think about something, dog?

All right. So if that movie did like phenomenally well, right? In 2023, right? Like, like, could we use that as a barometer? For like, how many, could we turn out all the people that went to buy Barbie tickets? Can we turn them out to vote for Joe Biden? Should Joe Biden team up with Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig and, like, go campaigning?

They will. And, like, he could drive a big pink truck. I'm sure they will. That's the thing. Like, this is the pussy hat marches, right? We're the biggest, like, marches in American. They're big protests in American history. biggest like marches in american their big protests in american history like numerically quantitatively they are still a massive social force in american society however that doesn't

really mean a whole lot when you've got like democracy like them taking like sandpaper to democracy and just kind of like wearing it down at the edges well that's the problem when you're very good at fundraising but don't have any conviction you know what i mean like you can raise monstrous amounts of money and do all this that in the third but you're not it's not going to avail anything for anybody who who was it that said what iranian president was it that said um or leader that said america's heroes right are like you know these superheroes right like batman and i think you could also extend that to celebrities i think he said spongebob exactly yo and it's like what you just kind of said right like like like like the democrats are like a really good like how can i

put it man like not not a really good pr firm not a really good pr firm but they're all wrapped up in veneer and aesthetics but they don't have any conviction backed up behind that they're like a roland emmerich film dog you know what i mean it's a lot of explosions a lot of cool shit going on like on the surface but you sit for two hours and you feel like you've been induced into a coma you know what i mean and you don't galvanize anybody so it's just like with all of these contradictions and all these institutions these hollowed institutions of liberalism sort of like like the the fetters are breaking and being attacked left and right by well by the right like what do you have left you know what i mean

like i don't you know you don't even have like you don't even have the the cool shit that's in the roland emmerich movie you know what i mean you don't have anything you know yeah i think that well we'll probably look back and we'll see 2022 is like the high point of i don't even know what you would call it maybe like liberalism's last gasp right like and again that's probably very premature but like i'm just saying within the dynamics of Biden's presidency, that's pretty wild to consider that like they were trying to do some second term shit in his first term in 2022. fucking gym like the family jewels like the whole fucking the whole thing that made biodynamics work and make it a viable alternative to like the neoliberal past and everything else they announced it i'm pretty i mean i could be wrong maybe i've retconned this but i'm pretty positive they announced it in the context of the flood in eastern kentucky like the whole thing was

about like this is an example of climate change our white working class is being decimated but like we're gonna fucking actually tackle this now um that was the high point everything since then has been a gradual capitulation to cynicism to realism to i mean everything from student loans to israel palestine to everything else it has been a gradual like just slow you know getting the having the boulder push you back down the mountain and and honestly like i'm astonished that that there hasn't been more credence paid to the fact that like we had the pandemic we had these examples of the welfare state actually flexing its muscles and showing that like it can actually intervene in people's lives

i think the biden administration took that and they took the popularity of bernie and said they're like oh we can do this thing called bidenomics it'll be good enough we can patch the ship together with with some tar and shit and get it through the storm i don't know i think you know what i don't know not that this is conspiratorial or not to say that they are consciously doing this but it almost seems like it almost seems like inadvertently like it's also like like you really brought up a good point that the the pandemic and the government assistance federal aid really showed people kind of that like hey like the state can do things for people and it's almost like by the nom is like no it can't no it can't don't get any smart ideas i mean it's the same thing what we're seeing with this like

sort of engineered inflation in response to like in my opinion like increased unionization right over the past couple years you know since the pandemic and it's just like at every moment they're like you thought a better world was possible fuck out of here you crazy don't fuck out of here that's like that because that is the thing like people talk about this ideological exhaustion on the left we're not on the left in america in the west just that like they look at the rise of the right especially in europe and they look at the uh decline of the left at least social democrats anyways and they say that like this is an ideological exhaustion the thing is like i'm not like a state a statist i'm not like someone who thinks that like you know we need like a fortis system again

where the state is intervening uh forcefully on behalf of like unions that's all good i don't oppose it but i think the point the larger point is it just the pandemic just showed that there are other alternatives yeah like it's not that like i think it's i don't think it's like good to run like a military keynesian state like, intervenes everywhere around the world and, but provides for people here in America. Like, that's also bad. I think it just showed that there is another way of existing. Biden tried it, and it's crazy to watch it all unravel. If he does get elected, it'll be a fucking miracle on his part, right? Because, like, the only reason. If he doesn't die, it'll be a fucking miracle on his part right because like

the only reason die it'll be a miracle yeah i just i don't i don't know i just uh i'm not trying to like um be premature in any in any kind of like forecasting or anything i'm just trying to diagnose some actual trends and patterns we've seen just from the last two or three months that it seems to me that like kind of become sort of distilled and magnified in the crisis at like Harvard and UPenn, at the Israel-Palestine thing. Like all these things are just kind of shot through each other. And I don't know. You know what it's like man it's like you know i don't want anyone to think that we're making any definitive prescriptions right um these are just kind of like just armchair projections but it's kind of like you know you can see the contour and the shape of something you know from a distance and it's not until you

get closer that it comes into form you know as something complete and i don't know if the last year and the first week of this year is any indication i mean i think that all of the sort of contradictions are these known truths because you were right terence i don't even know i guess as a marxist you can call them contradictions right but they also just seem to be like things that are very much in the open right that but That but that the that liberals that the whole political establishment elite is trying very hard to conceal. Right. And all I got to say is that it really seems like this seems to be like a sort of end game or a prequel to an end game. You know what I mean?

Whether it's like sort of this final project of settler colonialism you know whether it's israel willing to go to world war in the united states backing you know whether it's like liberals who are talking and screaming about kids in cages right now don't give a shit you know all of these things it's just like yeah man i know we've said this before but um it's mask off man you know well yeah frame it another way this isn't this is another way to look at it. If you have leaders in the Middle East trying to create a new Middle East, which that's just a fact. There is a photo, a well-known photo from two weeks before October 7th of Bibi Netanyahu holding up a map that shows the new Middle East with Israel in full possession of not only the West Bank and Gaza,

but I think the Golan Heights as well. Also, that map looks like something off Animaniacs, you know? You know what I'm talking about? Pinky and the brain-ass map. They just took like a little flag with a toothpick. they just took like a little flag with a toothpick it is like that for that to be a reality there has to be some sort of like global realignment or shake-up yeah that usually has to be mediated by like conflict by war it is high idealism to think that like they could just do that and not incur any kind of reaction or counter-attack from hamas from the palestinians that's a better way to put it in a realignment is

the better way to put it terence that's exactly what it is well and this has reverberations through american political economy and american politics and i mean i don't know i feel like i'm trying to grasp too many things here because there's a lot of different like items going on there's a lot of like different things in motion uh but like i think that you are correct aaron and like some transmutation has to occur on america like on the american body politic because like we have these forms that we've inherited from the 20th century but we just don't know what to do with them yeah it's weird like i don't know i've been reading this is this is more like a an aaron thorpe diatribe but like i've been reading this fantasy series by gene wolf um called book of the new sun oh gee and good hell yeah i don't want to like spoil it because this

is part of the whole mystification of the book. But like as you're reading it, you eventually realize that like this doesn't take place on another planet. This takes place on Earth well, well into the future, probably about four or five thousand years in the future. And like they've all inherited these defunct technologies from the past and they're, they're all in them. Like they're, they're around them at all times, but they've applied like prehistoric conceptions to them.

So that like they, they are in a, what they call a citadel, but they don't realize that that citadel is the ancient husk of like an old spaceship. It's almost like they reify like these these like technological items with almost like yeah that's that's i mean it just reminds me of like um um um certain i guess indigenous people like um the what are they

called like the cargo the cargo what is it called yo it's like they it's like seeing like a cargo ship or some modern piece of technology wash up on shore and not knowing what it is at all right and almost describing like the most fetishistic qualities to it's already cut you up well it's almost it's almost like let me let me think about it it's it's almost like um it's almost like this like we would have all of the forms of a previous life around us. That previous life in those technological forms and even political vehicles shaped the present day. But it was so far in the past, we don't even know how to use them anymore. But we still deploy them for current circumstances.

And the result is always like deformed and and weird and violent and usually it blows up in our faces and we think that that's magical or something like that and so like that's and so that's that's kind of like the the thing it's like we've inherited the 20th century and its baggage like the ideologies the the fealty ideology the reverence we have for ideology and like the political forms like parties and everything but we don't know how to engage them anymore like they they exist around us like a spaceship that like looks cool and sleek if only we could realize how to use it not realizing that like perhaps the atmosphere and the world around us isn't even amenable to using it anymore yeah you know what i'm saying like no no man that's that's that's i mean it's

like i think i'll use this example too it's just like it's like trying to grow out of this husk of an old world you know you know what i mean like almost like a crustacean molting you know yeah and like we haven't i don't know we haven't broken out of the show well a crustacean molting you know yeah and like we haven't i don't know we haven't broken out of the show well a crustacean molting it's like yes the crustacean still exists and it molts but like there's no water anymore everything is land now you know what i'm saying it's like motherfucker you gotta learn to breathe yeah you better sprout them legs motherfucker it's not the primordial ooze anymore motherfucker it's the trenches baby that's a good episode that's a good episode title i think that's

that is that is the exact point i'm trying to make the left somehow cannot theorize and conceive of new forms whatever that would be it is it is so bogged down and stuck in the baggage of the 20th century that it can't it still can't quite break out of it i guess that's why we're all tailing liberals right it's why we're all like concerned with their concerns and we kind of get wrapped up into their hysteria. And not only their hysteria, but their nihilism. And doesn't it all feel so dated, too? Yeah.

Like, doesn't liberalism feel like it's from 2007 or something? Like, you know, it's current conception. It feels like it's just, like, coasting on the detritus of, like, their glory days. Like, around, like, just right before Obama was elected. Uh-huh. They feel like the first iPhone dog that you see. They really do. Yeah. Bottom draw.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, and that's the thing. Like we get, we get, we almost get captured in a, in a sense by their idealism and their nihilism.

Like those two things, like their idealism represented in the biodynamics thing, but then the flip side inverse of it their nihilism surrounding israel and palestine right and so it's like we have no way of breaking out of that ourselves it's like why i hesitate to say this i do still call for a ceasefire yes like it needs to end immediately but at the same time it's why every time i see one of those al-qassam videos i'm like fuck you man yeah yeah yeah i need to i need to see israeli soldiers blown the fuck up while they just stand there aloof it's like i you know what i'm saying it's like just something to tide me over till y'all get right in the head about this exactly i mean

i mean maybe that makes me i don't know i've never claimed to be a pacifist even though i am a coward um those things are not mutually exclusive brother don't worry about that but uh i don't i don't know man these are these are all like very just like loosely floating thoughts in the ether um i'm just trying to steal us for what is sure to be a very uh insanity inducing year like destabilizing year because as we said earlier there's these contradictions but it doesn't feel like they're even trying to conceal them anymore it seems like the opposite it almost seems like it's like a shotgun blast like the point is to destabilize you as much as possible it's accelerationist almost it is that's what it

feels like it's like dude like you know like i think people would uh i don't want to say characterize us because every time i talk about the left i'm like there's no fucking left right that's part of the reason why this conversation is so troubling right but like not to say there isn't a left but i mean i hope people know what i mean right i know there are people out there but i'm talking about an organized left right one that can actually challenge institutional power right but like oh fuck i even forgot what i was saying but like um yeah man it feels like they're the ones that think that we are either pie in the sky or we're pushing things too fast right too too uh too hard too fast but it's like nah man i mean you guys are the ones that are like saying that the world is fine and everything is okay and it's on fire you know

what i mean yeah not to be like not to be like you exaggerate about it be hyperbolic but that's truly what it is you know i you know it's it's weird it's like part of this and again i know we're probably like um wrapping things up pretty soon but like part of it is that the left has yet to develop a way to thoroughly reject bourgeois society in a way that doesn't get us like immediately written off as insane people because we are you know because like this is the thing about like marxism and about the history of marxism and communism is that like after marx died ingalls writes this thing called the anti-during and this kind of becomes one of the foundational texts for marxism inism in the early 20th century. Because Engels basically applies the Marxist critique to all of bourgeois society,

including the family, including social relations, obviously, but also science. All the things bourgeois society holds dear to itself. And I guess that you can critique that maybe there's some things that are correct and things that are incorrect there but you can see why he did it because like you have this thing called modernity bourgeois society whatever with all of its you know all of its features science and rationalism and categorization like philosophical realism race the ideology of race and settler colonialism obviously capitalism that's the thing that that's the mode of production that oversees all of it

but you have to develop some sort of worldview that comprehensively rejects all of those but also retains the parts of liberalism that i find myself unable to abandon for example liberalism that i find myself unable to abandon for example equality uh yeah freedom of speech right freedom of speech uh yes but that's the thing it's just like that's the thing that makes it hard to get out of the culture war it's because like i believe uh in liberation for lgbt i believe in liberation for you knowC, indigenous sovereign nations and everything else. It's like, how do you how do you develop a framework that includes those things, but also rejects everything bourgeois society has to offer? Yeah. And it builds it paints a portrait of one that is new and is attainable, furthermore. It's like, how do you shake off these vestiges?

I don't know. I don't want to close it out. But you saying that we're kind of chasing liberals in this mode of chasing liberals makes me think that. Then that means that they're in the mode of chasing the right. And that's terrifying. You know what I mean? That means they moth to a flame. They just kind of circulate and gravitate around the right and then i don't want to say this means that the right has but i mean i think we are talking about again

settler colonialism we're talking about the west we're talking about just the entire modern civilization the way it's been built yeah it has been a fixed point of reaction you know yeah that all this is revolving around and we have to break out of that that. We have to break out of that sort of oscillation. I think that's exactly right. I think that's why there seems to be so much energy on the right towards a future project, towards a future building project. Because it seemed like for a brief moment in the 20th century

that you could actually coexist. You could be in the Westernth century that you could actually coexist you could be in the western settler colonial state america and all the things that that includes and at the same time have all the benefits of liberalism yeah but it that obviously it's a false dream right it's a chimera it's it's completely the husk has fallen. And so I think that that's why it seems like there's so much energy on the right towards a new political mode, maybe even a new mode of production. Call it neo-feudalism or whatever. Yeah, that's pretty much what they want. Yeah.

And so I don't know man it's it's i i think the left it it's hard because like we are kind of haunted by the failures of the left in general one of which is israel like honestly the way i see like i think israel is one of the premier failures of the left right it's kind of like a it's kind of like the failure of socialism in one country realized. Because it was like socialism in one country at its most idealistic, like hyper self-obsessed, like vanguard of history. You know what? It thought it could even build socialism without being settler colonial.

It's like, holy shit. You know what? Just to underscore that, why that's such a good point dog like um i saw this post i know you guys saw it was this idf general or whatever and he had his he's at his desk with his laptop i saw and he says he says it says um some some stickers about unions and shit like that you know what i mean and then some like union proud union strong strong and i think it was like a sticker of like theodore hertzel too you know what i mean so it's just like somebody said this is this is the uh this there's no better indictment of social democracy than this image right here you know yeah and yeah man yeah i saw

that too i was really astonished it had like a history sticker on it dude that's another again like let me close now that's just another i mean at that point i mean i guess that's a contradiction i mean that's just like a that's chimeric yo that's just something that even looking at it for too long and trying to process it i feel like i'm gonna have an aneurysm you know well that's that's because like you have to also critique and attack the very firmament of society itself i mean because that's the thing about like social democracy right like it does promise a horizon of comfort liberate maybe even liberation for labor and harnesses labor to do it but like that's only one part of the puzzle you have to completely like rearrange

society and create basically create a new form of like governance i mean i guess call it democracy even though i'm selling on the i'm selling on the concept boys yeah boys i think i'm gonna i've for 2024 i've made a resolution to become more authoritarian in all ways possible. To become completely ruthless. I just think we have to come up with a new word. There's got to be a new word and concept to denote what the political basis of a new mode of production should be. I don't know what that would be. I don't know.

I got to, I'll workshop that with. Yeah. Anyways, this has been pretty far reaching. I'm sorry. I, I went into this without it,

you know, just with just a couple of bullet points for the news this week. And this is what I came up with, but, but yeah, you know know i think that like final thoughts final closing images uh i don't know if you've seen those have you guys seen those fucking videos of like the idea of soldiers like doing skits before blowing up entire neighborhoods fucking psychotic that's you know that's that's what that's the that's the future my friends like i i

imagine your entire neighborhood everybody you love all your friends and family getting blown up and expelled and then not only that but someone doing a skit about how it's pretty funny doing a skit about how it's pretty funny the butt of a joke it's honestly it's so fucking grim that i have considered abandoning comedy and any pretense towards being funny like it's so that is so disgusting yeah that it's like i feel embarrassed even trying to be lighthearted and comical. No, you shouldn't be. They should abandon it. That's what it is. You know what, though, I will say, man?

I feel like every now and then, and this happened frequently, I would say, it's like that one IDF soldier who, in a home where the residents had been expelled, he wrote on the wall his wedding date. And then lo and behold, maybe a few days, a week, I don't know, it was reported that he'd been killed in action. So all I want to say is that, I mean, listen, man. Good luck. I mean, you know, I don't know, i mean listen man good luck uh i mean you know i don't know dog it's just poetic justice you know you wanna you wanna uh be openly and um you know ostentatiously depraved and you know god don't like ugly you know yeah strike your ass down well that's the

thing it's like closing out 2023 going into 2024 i was like like we were talking about before we recorded aaron i was like yeah mostly based on this conversation i had with a friend back home in new mexico who was just like dude i've seen your tweets i agree mostly with what you're saying but like you've got to chill like you're gonna go insane like this is you you know you you uh israel's not gonna stop these people are insane like you're it's like you're gonna go insane you just need to chill you're gonna throw yourself in the padded wagon yeah and i was like man have i really made a ass out of myself and i felt really embarrassed and like i was looking at my tweets and i was like i guess i was kind of cloying and uh hysterical but then i was like well i guess at the very least i didn't get on

there and say like um you know we should turn gaza into a national park right it's like it's consider who's you know yeah yeah it's just like man there is no shortage of people out there saying the most genocidal things you can imagine. People out there excusing the death of 12,000 children. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, and it's just like, it almost feels like it was a switch was flipped. I think that was the most kind of just jarring thing about it is that I didn't know that there were so many people walking around surreptitiously in uh inside out skin suits man i had no idea i had no idea same here man and i i think that that's the uh that's the thing like

reading claudian gay's statement it's like i should have more forcefully said that um what did she say that like her boss is a terrorist organization who wants to kill all Jews. It's like, yeah, you're at least I'm not in the trap. That person's still in the trap. That's so true. So you can tell yourself. Grow your legs, people. Yeah.

Steal yourselves and don't wear the suit, man, and don't get caught in a trap. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks for listening this week, friends. You can go check out the Patreon, www.patreon.com, slash Trollbilly Workers Party. Please go support us over there. And we would like to see you over there. We've got all kinds of good content.

The last Patreon episode was a tour de force featuring John and Beth Dutton. We landed them. We got them on the show. That's how big the Patreon's gotten. We got John and Beth Dutton on the show, so go check it out. So, all right. thanks for listening this week we'll see you next time over at the Patreon this weekend peace out

bye see ya Great detail on this bombing. Certainly our hearts go out to all the innocent victims and their family members who are obviously, their lives are going to be forever changed by this. I basically don't have any great detail on who was responsible, but can you rule out that Israel had anything to do with this? I would, I'm not going to speak for another nation. And given that this was the Soleimani anniversary, did you have any intelligence that something was being planned for this day?

We certainly had no indications that there would be some sort of violence surrounding the anniversary of his death. Just to follow up on the Lebanon issue, is there any concern that that particular strike might expand the conflict regionally? Well, I would just say, Trevor, everything that we've done, in fact, the lay-down I just offered of the forced posture changes that the president has ordered in the region has been designed to prevent an escalation or widening or deepening of this conflict. As we've said before, we don't want to see it widen beyond Israel and Hamas. And again, we're going to keep working with partners in the region to prevent that from happening. John, thanks so much.

Is it the White House's view that the elimination of Hamas is an attainable goal? What we've said before is, well, first of all, the Israelis should speak to their military goals. We have said that we absolutely believe they have the right and responsibility to eliminate the threat that Hamas poses to the Israeli people. Now, they have said for themselves, Peter, that the way they're going about that is really targeting infrastructure. It is not that unusual or different approach than we took ourselves in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, going after the leadership network. You can certainly significantly degrade a terrorist organization's ability to operate, train and conduct attacks by going after its leadership.

You are probably not going to eliminate the ideology which underpins that group.