Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 333: Geezer Gestapo

Episode Date: March 7, 2024

Covering all the news and discourse this week of March 7, 2024. We're planning to cover the State of Union on this weekend's Patreon (if there's anything good in it), so please subscribe: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty Thanks!

Did you guys see that video of... I don't know. There was at least several different videos floating around this week of old people assaulting young people who were trying to do a Gaza protest. You know what I mean? Like a pro-Palestinian.

Yeah, we had the geezers brigade. The geezers Gestapo. You experienced that firsthand, didn't you, Terry? Yeah, I did. I have experienced it. How old was that guy? You got rough hours about old motherfucking turrets? I don't know.

It depends. Which exact moment are you talking about, Tom? I feel like this is happening multiple times. The guy that ran into the protest after the UK game, you were talking about on the patreon how old was that guy that guy was probably in his 60s he was um definitely on the line between gen x and boomer all right so so like so but the people that we're talking about in these videos are hoary haired silver haired not silver foxes they're more like ghouls they're more like decrepit like like middle earth creatures the one they got the shakes you know

the one that killed there was two that fucking killed me one was at a jill stein event which really tells you everything you need to know about that fucking absolute black hole of hopelessness fucking jill stein um and green party in general i don't know i was at the palestine thing at the very end they were like write your representatives vote third party and i was like dude it's it's done guys i would just i would just i just say real quick that like you know sometimes like you know i make the mistake of going online and you know like, oh, I'm not going to fucking vote, da, da, da. I made a post like that recently, and somebody's like, oh, third party. And I just want to let listeners know, you can do whatever you want.

But I have checked out. And I'm just going to let you know that it doesn't matter if it's a fucking – it doesn't matter what third party. It's not going to happen, y'all. It don't matter if you're black or white. It don't matter if it's a fucking, it doesn't matter what third party, it's not going to happen. I don't matter if you're black or white. We're all smoking crack tonight. You don't know. The, um, yeah, there was like an Ezra Klein tweet this week where he was like commenting on the Joe Biden story in the New Yorker where he was like, I don't know. It seems like the Biden administration, the Biden campaignorker where he was like i don't know it seems like the biden

administration the biden campaign was really stubborn like i don't know like they're really not changing course are they it's like it's like okay i don't know how to like put this in as plain a way as possible but you know like when your grandfather, like, your 85-year-old grandfather, like, insists on fucking, like, shearing the bushes out in front of the house. Doing some chore that he has no right or ability to do. Pulling the weeds or something. Yes. Actually, that would be better. He'd be like, yo, I need to chop down some firewood.

And it's like, first of all, the farthest tree is, like, eight miles away. Grandpa, secondly, you're, like, 95 years old. Yeah, you're 104. firewood and it's like first of all the farthest tree is like eight miles away grandpa secondly yeah 95 years old like you're 104 that's the logic at operation here like we live under the whims of a mad king we cannot affect it there is no way to affect it i would suggest if for those that are still holding out hope, go listen to the one we did about the French king and what ended up happening there. When you do try to intervene, here's what happens.

Okay, so the two videos that I saw one was at a jill stein event that you know these young people were trying to do so jill stein not joe budden no jill stein which is funny because like at the pro-palestine march i was at on saturday like the jill stein contingent was very present and they were handing out flyers contingent yeah she's coming to lexington i guess maybe like today actually sometime this week she may have already come i don't know but um but it's like it's like well regardless whatever that's just a fucking complete lost cause a completely like hopeless you might as well like take all the money in your bank account and then just put it on your front yard and just like piss on it and pour gasoline on it you might as well like take all the money in your bank account and then just put it on your

front yard and just like piss on it and pour gasoline on it you might as well take a submersible to the titanic and also yo i want to just say something too because i mean this is like a this is probably where you were going and this is um you know this is a trite comment and um but i've been i've been i've been more fascinated recently with the sort of signifiers that seem to explode out of the contradictions. I just mentioned the submersible. That was such a visceral sort of cathartic image. Right. An expression. Right. Joe Biden sitting at a can of a cake with a candle with 84 candles could flay conflagrating into a flame into an inferno right um i mean all of these things right that are just so emblematic of this this this kind of decadent era that we live in and just for these old ass liberals these white

liberals to be shouting down young people it's just i mean i can't think of anything that was just more expressive of the moment that we're in you know you know what's what's funny about that though like the rallying cry to vote for third party like honestly the uncommitted movement is yielding more dividends like voting for somebody that's not there is actually proving more fruitful than voting for some of these third party outfits. There's more confidence in nobody rather than somebody in some instances. There's more confidence in the amorphous silhouette on the character creation

screen, the randomizer. You know what I mean? The idea of a president is more comforting to people than any of the realities that exist right now. These third party options. Or third party options exactly well just to like back up what i'm saying with like a theoretical justification with the exception of about four years 2016 to 2020 uh even then i think that like you can even make an argument that like like, Bernie's campaigns even probably served in a way the same function, but it was way more mystified.

But, like, I genuinely think that in election years, politics tend to become way more reactionary. Like, the narrow, like, the horizons for what's possible become extremely like much more narrowed i mean again maybe that seems farcical to say that it was the case with bernie i don't think that was the case in the immediate sense obviously because he was calling for things that were like you know medicare for all universal health care programs and that kind of stuff but you could make the argument that in the structural sense he did serve the purpose of bringing people back into the fold of a ultimately reactionary thing. Yeah, it's like the Democratic Party is the graveyard of social movements, right? Yeah, I mean, it's like I woke up to the news yesterday that like Kathy Hochul had like sent in National Guard troops into the fucking subway.

She turned to Judge Dredd. Oh my God. Judge Judy Dredd. I saw that. What was the deal with that? What happened now? So what has happened? This is the same woman that had made some sort of loose comments

about like invading Canada or like Canada invading Buffalo or something. Yeah, having to nuke Canada as a metaphor. But comparing that to Israel-Palestine. Yeah, she said that if Canadians came across and murdered 1,300 people in Buffalo. First of all, that's not true. I've been to Buffalo. The structural forces being... Buffalo is the appalachia of new york so like they would absolutely write off 1300 deaths in buffalo they just fell off a mountain just like they went bad and i think yeah by some cougars

they wouldn't give a shit uh the donner party shit 1300 struck um but they uh yeah she said that we would have to like nuke buffalo basically or i mean sorry nuke canada yeah they said canada would pay a grave price if they hurt the hair on any buffalo and buffalo white. I don't know what he calls him. Buffalo. But like what she said, so like the whole point of this is that it's become like a crisis thing in the same way that like a flood is a crisis and they have to send in the National Guard. Crime has become a crisis now. So now they send in the National Guard to the subways and they can check your suitcases and shit. Like they make you they search your bags and apparently this is not a violation of the fourth amendment well as a as a native new yorker they've been doing this like uh um i'm just curious as to

why there's fanfare about it now because after 9-11 um and for as long as i can remember i mean you were subject to having your back searched like they would have the table there and you know but now it seems to be maybe the fanfare is because or the outrage I guess I should say is because it seems to be mandatory like I mean I don't know I think it's also

the optics of like someone in a military uniform with an M16 yeah like let's say your purse it's stripped away all the pretense and now it's just like yeah no it's like no now we do do live in the military police under under under a uh democratic city uh under a democratic governor well this was this was the point this is why she did this because it's an election year and democrats are worried that crime is going to become an election

thing they're they're worried that crime is going to become an election wedge issue that like forces more people to the right so this is strictly theater like in in the style of like uh clinton and gore we're not those uh you know squishy democrats of yesteryear we're gonna be tough on crime and destroy families for generations to come like sometimes their theater they don't understand has repercussions for people you know what i mean yeah i mean their theater what the theater does is that like it actualizes right like i mean and also too anytime that you give any kind of credence to the right or accept their framing you've already lost right

you know yeah yeah i'm so i'm looking at this thing now um this was in a at a kristin or kirsten gillibrand event this fucking killed me dude i was laughing my fucking ass off this is this is who this is who we have to like protect this is who we're pandering to this is why we're sending national guard troops into the subways um how many how many oh my god i can't i can't tell that's it yeah i can't tell if that's could be one of three things either that's like old man yelling at the clouds having a seizure like Aaron said or that's a Pentecostal

music service he's got the Holy Ghost on him and he's just sitting there dancing the jig yeah yeah this is from Twitter user at cat content only. I guess they organized the disruption at a Kirsten Gillibrand event. Sit down. Sit down.

Just like being eight. You're 83. You're so close to the end and you just like in in in 30 seconds you half your entire time left on the earth you know what i mean like yeah you probably blocked a few arteries like you went home and just had a stroke in the bathroom just because you got to sleep i mean the thing the thing is too that's so striking is just that, you know, for the past four years, when Trump was president, right, we heard about how much daylight there is between the Republicans and the Democrats, right? And then when Biden's got elected, we're back to normalcy, right? We're back to civility, all of this, right?

right we're back to civility all of this right you know and then you know i know we've made this point before but the same motherfuckers who are screaming about kids in cages have no issue with kids being literally pulverized right and then just like these these videos that are coming out like there really is no daylight at all between them i posted this like between these people and uh uh trump supporters that were yoking up protesters during protests in 2015. Uh-huh. Yeah. Like, I'm just telling you right now, if one of these old ass motherfuckers, it's an ableism.

This is just don't put your fucking hands on me, dog. Right. What if these motherfuckers put their hands on me? Come on. I mean, that's the thing about it, too, is that, like, they only have smoke, right? They're only conflictual, right? When it comes to like the left right or when it comes to being confronted with things that they feel like are

unpalatable you know i'll tell you this i wouldn't hit an old person but i'd shake the shit out of just grab and just shake the absolute hell out of it. Oh, man. Yeah. Really astonishing. But yeah, but that's the thing. It doesn't matter who wins. Like, we will have a mad king trump or biden we will have a mad king who's like who's we will be subject to their very whims

and impulses and there's nothing we can do about it we'll be subject to the vagaries of a dying man yo a dying man clinging, not only to the edge of life, but to the edge of power. Well, let me ask y'all. Go ahead, Aaron. No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no.

I just want to say, just a piece that, you know, like they have nothing to lose, you know, it's risk at all kind of behavior, mentality, you know. Go ahead, Tom. What I was going to say

is the tardy boys live in sort of a frail mental state, the three of us. I've received late night phone calls from both of you. Yeah, I cried on that. You've received them from me, all that kind of stuff. You know when you're in such a poor state that you can't be trusted? Your impulses are just not good.

You know what I'm saying? You go into a store and you just't really like you just buy something you know you're not going to eat or use you know you just have to do it i just cooked i just cooked food today and ate some chicken afterwards and it tasted like nothing i was like i want to throw this out i'm not even hungry right now yeah you just do things you know you just kind of do things for just no good reason just because it's like whatever now imagine having all the power in the world and you're like like you can feel the death rattle coming on every day yeah what would that what is that like having having so much power having so much power like you know what i mean but also

you're about the being that frail mental state. Being that frail mental state. Jesus. Yeah, it's just disastrous things. Do you just sometimes just like, you know, I don't like what's going on over here. Let's just go do a bombing campaign. You know what I mean? And you do that in the same way that we would impulse shop on eBay or something. You know what I mean?

Yeah, like me buying a pair of Jordans. You don't need them. I don't need them, but I want them, though. Well, you see this in the New York Times and the Atlantic and the Washington Post. All three this week did a full court press on how dangerous nuclear weapons are. It's like, no shit that's that incisive level of analysis we've come to expect from the atlantic this is why this is why people trust the media man well everyone knows that we're subject to mad emperors and mad kings who there's no feedback loop anymore right like there's no

because like this is the thing like people have like said like you know for all of its imperfections for all of its flaws at least america is a democracy and it's like yeah but it's not because like you still can't decide who the candidate is they gift you the candidates and then you decide among them there is no actual democratic process and that's been obvious for a while right but like it didn't really matter because various uh regimes of accumulation and banking practices and regulation and stuff could paper over that but it doesn't it's there's not enough juice anymore to do that rate of profit has gone down things have become deracinated and you know what i mean like just

flimsy and so now we all have to pretend like we don't live in some sort of like de facto monarchy where we don't have any real say over anything and honestly like it's really wild how everything does drift farther to the right like you know one of the last progressives in congress like barbara lee like she's probably gonna lose her election this year you've got like protesters screaming at aoc and she's like but my feelings these are my feelings and you can't you know you can't you know what i'm saying it's just like you know you know that you know that there's man whatever what i noticed too it's like um you were talking about like uh just this like not even like choice anymore right like these candidates are selected for you and you know obviously you know there's what's happening in palestine right that is um

you know sucked uh you know a substantial amount of air out of any energy that would have went toward the Democratic primary, right, with these uncommitted votes we're seeing. But also, like, I mean, if even if this was this, this atrocity wasn't happening, right, it's still two candidates, right, that neither party or constituent really wanted i mean i guess trump the people are excited for that but even trump feels kind of like pastoral now you know he feels almost antiquated and dated you know what i mean and we have these two candidates that are kind of foisted upon us and really like kind of foisted historically right upon history i guess right or history has foisted them upon us and um like it just feels so atrophied you know you know i mean

like there's just no liveliness to it no verve to it i saw that biden apparently well this is because of the protesters um that have been heckling him um at uh at uh you know events and whatnot but i heard that he's not even going to start like his rallies are going to be like secret you know like there's a rally there's a i don't even call him a rally right but there's an event here in atlanta this weekend and um um i think tomorrow and i'm planning to go protest and we don't even know where it is because they're trying to keep the location under wraps so you know what i mean so this is like running a presidential campaign where motherfuckers don't even see you yeah that's like uh it's like a one of those hip pop-ups you know what i mean

it's like the lamest pop-up you could imagine which is saying something like a food truck yeah yeah yeah bite and serve an ice cream yeah can you imagine running for president on a if you know you know basis but bro if you if-you-know-you-know basis? Bro, if you were there at the right time, you might catch him. It's going to be half-assed like the Willy Wonka pop-up, though. You're going to go with a guy in an LBJ mask and a Nixon mask. You're going to be playing fucking checkers and smoking cigarettes or something. He's going to be playing chess, but there's not a person across from him. There's not going to be... He's going to be playing chess,

but there's not a person across from him. It's just a pigeon sitting at a stool. It's a Bill Clinton impersonator playing not the saxophone, but one of those electronic saxophones you had when you were a kid. They have three buttons. The Fisher-Price one?

Yeah, and they'll have potions, obviously. They've got to have potions. You've got to have vials of potions and then and then it'll just be yeah it'll just be the bartender from the willy wonka pop up there while all this is happening or it'll be all those same reenactors creating the you know uh how they do the um democratic presidents or the Republican presidents in the style of dogs playing poker. It'll be them recreating that. And maybe sprinkling in a few of the dogs playing poker for good measure.

But that'll be half-assed too. Like two or three of the dogs will be dead. One of them has like really bad like hot spots. One of them has a cold. It's like licking its paw. Sarcoptic mange yeah i'll tell you right now though i would i would vote for one of them dogs you know

over either one of these two guys i'm going to i would mean this in all honesty i would vote for a geriatric dog with flea dermatitis heartworm and uh parvo before i would vote for either of these guys dude it does seem it does seem like because okay this is the thing about the uncommitted vote which like i i support in theory i don't you know i mean i guess it's good like i don't really feel like it's gonna make much of a difference either way. Because the thing is, you saw this this week. Nikki Haley dropped out. And basically, I get these Apple updates on my phone.

And you could hear the sighing through my phone. It's like, Trump is going to be-elected again he's gonna be the nominee you can like hear i the apple news sign sir he was like uh damn damn going on snl didn't pay any dividends for her yeah and it's in and so like but then there was a headline where, as a result, Biden is now pandering. And we've called this for months now. We definitely have been calling this as long ago as the summer, especially during the inflation stuff and Bidenomics and everything. But it seems like they're

tacked now uh biden said there's a place for nicki haley supporters in my campaign oh my fucking god so it's like that's the thing like the uncommitted thing doesn't really matter because they've got the nomination since i'm not saying don't do it because i do think that there is some utility in like building those bonds those bonds and making connections and stuff. But it does feel like, say what you want about Bernie, obviously he was never going to work. There was all kinds of problems with that. But I'm noticing this across the board. It definitely seems that pretty much every regard, the 2010s were kind of like this brief moment of reform and possibility in all kinds of ways. Even though we had a Trump presidency, I still think about things like criminal justice reform, for example.

In Kentucky, you had people like Rand Paul even saying that we have to cut down on incarceration. Incarceration rates are too high. So like there was even among the right wing, there was even a little bit of energy towards reforming the criminal justice system, for example. Well, now in Kentucky, there's this thing called like the Kentucky Safe Act or something. Keep Kentucky Safe Act, something like that. I mean, it lowers the felony threshold uh for like theft back down to like 200 i mean like you know you can basically be a hit with a felony just for

like walking accidentally walking away with like your homies like cell phone or some shit you know what i mean like it increases um it increases incarceration duration all this stuff i guess what i'm saying is that like what was once a brief moment of potential reform and possibility has now once has now fallen away and we're all sliding right back into the most insane carceral solutions to all these things the most insane you know obviously we've talked about homelessness right yeah like they're not even pretending to do anything about it now they're just telling you oh the economy is good shut the fuck up and criminalizing homelessness in like a really fucking heavy-handed way too you know instead of like doing something about that policy

wise they're just treating it like you know yeah any any or any other crime do y'all do y'all feel like um part of this reaction that we're seeing is i think one of the running themes in the show is the climate apocalypse right as a sort of ambient background noise right and sort of this um this um um the sense you know this ubiquitous sense that like that shit's about to get real you know and that um what we need to do is either um have a solution like israel does right where we limit social mobility we surveil people we kill them you know we bomb the shit out of them as a captive population or do you also do you guys also think that part of that backlash is sort of you know being three things right maybe the bernie movement sure right black

lives matter and other grassroots movements we can even go back to uh the dakota access pipeline stuff right and also too i think the pandemic you know i think the spate of unionizations that we saw during the pandemic. Right. The fact that, you know, I think, Terrence, you brought this point. You pointed this out a lot before that, you know, like the government was actually doing something for people positively. You know what I mean? And people could see that, you know. And I mean, I don't know if this is so much a conscious effort, but it does seem like, you know, for a minute, you know and i mean i don't know if this is so much a conscious effort but it does seem like you know for a minute you know people were able to peer through the cracks of the contradiction and saw that there was another possibility whether it was through bernie whether it was through the the demonstrations that we saw on the streets or whether there's unit through unionization

and then they were just like nah they just closed that window in the aperture you know i don't know if any of that makes sense or i'm just kind of spitballing here but you know i think i think you're right i think that like i think that the pandemic was probably the high point of a lot of that stuff i mean they they expanded unemployment benefits uh they had they had like injected a lot of stuff into the welfare state that like we hadn't seen in a really long time. And, um, uh, and,

and I guess like we can like talk all day about like why this all being rolled back now and why the horizons are now being like limited and narrowed once again. But I've really never seen anything like this in my lifetime where you had a brief moment, like not even after Obama, because I think that like, you know, everybody, we all knew.

Like nobody wants to admit it, but we all knew when we had voted for Obama in 2008, like he was gonna do what he did. We all knew he was gonna, he wasn't gonna fall through on any of that stuff. I'll tell you right now, I didn't, I was too, I didn't, no, wait, did I?

Yeah. I was crying when he spoke at hyde park i was bawling my eyes out like oprah's there dapping him up and i'm just like hell yeah that's my president i'm just sobbing listen i didn't know it was like it was like for me it was like uh like of course i was crying too it's emotional but and i mean you know i was just like dude there's no way they're gonna let this brother a black man then no way they didn't let j i mean j of k you know what i'm saying like you know what i mean like what j of k is not like a a progressive like paragon or anything like that right but like much less a black guy do any of these things that he said he was gonna do

hell no you know what i mean yeah okay well you Okay. But, you know, I hope, though. I'm sorry. No, you're right. I mean, I don't know. I was very jaded in 2008 already. So it's like maybe that's the difference. Not me. I thought, man, we finally did it. No, you were smarter.

You were smarter, Terrence. I wouldn't say that. You're just smarter. I wouldn't say that. I guess it's just, I guess my point here though is that like compared to obama there had actual there had been actual examples of potential movement in areas for example like you know i've been on the prison abolitionist left since 2012 just about and you had seen in my opinion there was some movement towards reform between the years 2012 and 2020

2021 or so it definitely feels like that is all being slowly rolled back now and peeled back all being slowly rolled back now and peeled back and i mean i don't know i'm not trying to like you know make anyone doomer or whatever i'm i guess i'm just trying to point out that like structurally that the the drift of things definitely to the right and when you've got like the liberals basically campaigning on right-wing politics like sending the national guard into the subways or beefing up the strongest border security bill we've ever seen then i mean that kind of just gives away the ball game here that like leftists can't really affect this in any way because this isn't this isn't really our game anymore you know what i I'm saying? Like it's, it's, we are not in the, we not, okay.

If we were not in the room before, we might've been outside the room by the door. Right. No, there's that window. Exactly. We could hear, or we could look through the window,

you know, we'd fog up the glass, maybe, you know, make a little smiley face and be like, we see you motherfuckers. Now, like they are down the hall in like air in a vacuum or like an,

in a soundproof room with guards outside with guards outside and dogs and shit and i mean like i don't know man like another thing too is just like sort of like how you know you see that when the liberals really feel like they have nothing to lose you know what i mean like they don't need the left You know what I mean? Like they don't need the left. They don't need young people. They don't need, I mean, I wouldn't say they don't even need people of color. Right.

Because I mean, you're bombing the shit out of another middle Eastern country. Right. And you're saying, fuck you to Muslims and Arabs in America, you know, but you really see how like, and I hate to say the term,

you know, mask off because it's just such a, like a trite kind of term. But you really see, like, Terrence, I think you mentioned it too. These aren't even contradictions anymore. They're just kind of like just bald-faced kind of truths. You know what I mean? Yeah, they're just facts.

They're just facts. And you see that they wholeheartedly, sincerely just adopt. You know what i mean like they just take these these i mean they they adopt not just adopt the framing of the right but they actualize they enact it you know what i mean they carry that torch yeah and i just want to say to people it's like you know if you're telling people like oh you know you're not gonna vote for uh you're gonna help trump win if you don't vote for joe biden it's like well dude like who's president right now you know what i mean well dude like there was a headline go ahead tom no no no go ahead i was just gonna say there was a headline the other day where biden was like it was it was

an nbc news thing i think where biden was like um we're asking trump to work with us on this border we're asking the republicans and like obviously these fucking like lib pedants like got into the community notes and they were like this is false biden did not say let's work with trump and then you read the article and it's like actually biden did say let's work with the republicans so like what are you talking about like there is well and and and not only that because that's that that's a a good preamble to the point i was going to make is that did you see where oneble to the point I was going to make, is that did you see where one of his staffers was holding this up as a point of pride

that Biden works with people that he disagrees with all the time? Just the other day he called Larry Summers. Yeah. What it is is they all share the same class interests, and so they have an interest in working together or whatever, but they sell it to like john q american guys working across the aisle is something valiant we should all be striving to but i personally don't want to work across the aisle with count chocula you know i was just about to

say larry summers is like this nosferatu motherfucker who keeps cropping back up in fucking public life to say some stupid shit about how we should send children back to the mines or something, yo. In that same article, he also said he consults with Mitch McConnell who this week endorsed Trump. He consults with the guy who endorsed his opponent. So it's like, you can't make the argument here that like, that you cannot make the argument that like a vote for,

you can't make the argument that not voting is a vote for trump because you're telling me that voting for biden is voting for trump right yeah you know you know what it's like dog you know it's like you know how you got at&t and t-mobile and they all got like the subsidiaries like uh or like i have a metro pcs you know which is under t-mobile and where i live there's a t-mobile store right across the street from a metro pcs store right so it's the same goddamn thing you could go either way you know what i mean this is the same listen and i know people could be like well that's a trite simplistic point to say that all they're both the same but i mean dude dude if if on the border which is like something that is like okay we were just talking

about like reaction in american politics the border you mentioned this tom a couple weeks ago the border is an issue that just rears its ugly head every election right then we have to rally right the the reactionary american spirit to make these comfortable white people in buckhead feel comfortable right like go ahead go ahead i'm going no no no no no no i'm just saying if you if they're gonna work with them on the border dog what like how how are you telling me there's daylight between you know what i mean like come the fuck on dude dude it is a rubber room thing 2020 the whole reason this motherfucker got elected was he was he he was his policy was a refutation of trump's the appearance of trump's draconian border policies and now in the

next election he wants to work with him on border policy because everything shifted so rightward because of this crime narrative and all this shit that is fucking insane i'm sorry i'm sorry it really makes me want to go take a long walk off a short beer it does because what makes it insane what makes you feel insane is that they make you feel like you're either childish or trite for pointing out these things and it's like there's nothing childish or trite about getting ourselves out of the fucking colossal mess we've gotten ourselves in like i i read this op-ed today in the new york times where david wallace wells had interviewed john kerry about like climate change and like john fucking kerry was just like yeah we kind of failed we kind of failed climate change is pretty i mean

like we didn't do me me i'm checking out soon but you guys you guys are fucked yeah we we kind of failed that is that's like that's like that's like uh the existential version of we tortured some folks the eggs yeah i'm just the the thing is it's like there's no i'm not telling people to like do nothing it's just that the things that i personally think people should be doing i can't say on a public platform yeah i can't tell you i mean that genuinely i'm not saying them online yeah i'm saying this as a human being like i can't say i mean i am uh i have a public facing persona and i have a underground facing persona right i'm trying to be a writer, dog.

I'm not trying to have these motherfuckers listen to me. What did he say? Should happen to whom? Yeah, and so I guess I'm just saying that the point is that if you're shut out of these things, then there's... I don't know, man. maybe there is a world in four years where there is some sort of electoral breakthrough where the confines of the system become so restrictive that there has to be some sort of intervention or shattering of the status quo and then you can break through there it seems though that like that was attempted and we got as close as we'll ever get to it in 2016 and 2020 and so then you have to like start looking at other ways to do it me personally

i got a lot out of going and standing outside of rup arena and screaming at uk wildcat fans as they exited the building that really helped me i felt something. Felt a lot. But yeah, I don't know. The one dividend that I can see the uncommitted movement doing is in Michigan. Only because, you know, if you siphon off 100,000 votes for Metro Detroit, particularly ininian diaspora and the arab diaspora votes that otherwise would have went to him that could that could theoretically cost biden an important swing state but other than that it yeah it's like sort of uh seems yeah like a symbolic gesture more than anything we've called this for months though that like that, like, what they're going to do, and I personally think that this motivates their strategy on Israel-Gaza.

I really do think that they have made the calculus, they've made the decision that the Haley voters, those types of— Are going to come over. Are going to come over. And they might be right. I don't know but i'm just saying if that's the calculus there's no place in the room for us there but but i want to i want to even project even a little bit yeah we're not even within a range of debate if that's what they're they're banking on we're not in the room but i want to project a little

further not to be doomerish but you know and you know we were talking in the chat and um you know i talk a lot of shit online but i don't know i think i think even though shit's looking up in the air for biden i don't know i think he might win but i don't know right but let's say that he did lose right let's say that that happened like i'm not like when i say it wouldn't matter i mean that they would not learn anything from that defeat right like like i think that the committed um the uncommitted um movement um i definitely think it has merit but i also think that i don't know how to say i'm gonna be careful about saying this because i don't want to disparage what um you know anybody's like effort or cause right um especially for such an atrocity but i think that there's this there's

this mistaken like assumption that that means that this is going to change the liberals. Right. The Democrats, the Biden administration. Right. This is going to change their their their their position. Right. Yeah. And I'm not saying that pressure won't. I do think that protests do. I do think that the demonstrations that we've been seeing do. But when it comes to like, you you know translating that into like we won't vote for you i really mean this with all my heart i don't think they care if they lose right i don't think that they're trying to win i don't think that this is going to change i think that if they lost that it would change their minds anyway because as you've talked about the sad terrence

they are locked into this historical groove and unless something paradigm shifting and shattering happens and occurs that rocks them out of it that that hasn't shakes off the dust off this kind of like geriatric atrium like atrophied system you know nothing is i mean not on their part they're not going to do anything right you know what i mean i don't mean to be doomerish about it but i'm just being realistic no i think that that's the truth i think that that's honestly the god's honest truth and that's again that's not to say don't do don't put any effort into that don't put any energy into that because i do think there's merit in it in the sense that i think there's i think there's merit in pretty much every political action you do you know what i'm saying like because you learn

things and you build bonds that's again i don't think that that um necessarily is going to translate to any change on on biden i mean you've seen them uh you've seen the biden administration this is how insulting it is the biden administration is completely aware that their stance on this is unpopular with the left and that's why they keep trotting out Kamala every two or three weeks to say, we need a ceasefire. I mean, like the most recent one was a parody. It was like, we need a ceasefire. You remember that tweet she had where she was like,

we're doing student loan forgiveness for 30% of people with a great grandfather who served in the Korean War. You know what I'm saying? Like it was that like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who was a dill farmer. Who's at least 12% Hungarian on their mother's side. They did that this week where she was like,

we need a ceasefire for six weeks and only on Israel's terms and Hamas has to... And obviously people were like, are they pivoting? They're changing. No, they're not. They're not pivoting. They're not changing. What they're doinging they're changing no they're not they're not pivoting they're not changing they're what they're doing is they're acknowledging that this is not a popular

position with the left they're going to attack right in the election while making rhetorical gestures to the left i mean the fucking using can i just focus using their focus grouping yeah i mean i'm just pointing out the obvious thing too just using just not to cut you off turns using kamala harris which they always trot out the black women, right? Whenever they want to appeal, right, to certain constituencies. Did you see the meme that she posted? She was walking across the Pettus Bridge.

Bruh, bruh. That was insane. Yo, my blood pressure, like, instantly. I just bought a new phone and had to put it down because I was about to throw that shit. I was like, I'm telling you, y'all,'t fucking mad yo what was the thing it was like it was like history is a relay race which for you know just starting out like that's an amazingly bourgeois statement like in the all in the pantheon of like bourgeois history history is a relay race is

fucking amazing i mean that's literally the opposite of what Martin Luther King said, that history doesn't roll in on the wheels of inevitability. What are you talking about, dog? Yeah, there is no baton passing in and of itself, like inherently. And once you've killed 30,000 people and are threatening to kill another 30 to 100 more thousand people, like there's no baton to be passed. You forfeited the right to hold the fucking baton

you're passing grenades is what you're passing that's what you're doing yeah but like i i they they realize this they acknowledge it and they're gonna keep cynically deploying it all the way up until november um i think the thing is is that uh you know i don't know it's god damn the thought of kyle harris coming out every couple of weeks and like uh doing something you know uh shit i don't know like fucking like fugue state yo i think the thing is this realignment was inevitable it's just weird to watch it happen because like economically it seems like the two, there is a kind of broad consensus on what needs to be done with regards to the economy. They'll keep interest rates relatively high for a while. They're going to keep cracking down on the border in order to in order to replace the gains to the labor market

they would get from an open border. They're going to make child labor legal again. You know what I'm saying? Because child labor as a mechanism for regulating the labor market actually is very conducive to both parties' politics, especially when it comes to, like, trans moral panic and all this groomer stuff.

I mean, they're not talking, the Republicans aren't talking about that as much as they were a year ago. However, it's still manifested in just, like, what was that Alabama ruling from a few weeks ago where, like, that Alabama Supreme Court judge was, like, ruled all IVF embryos, human life.

You know what I'm saying? Like, that's insane. This is, I think this is all tied bit. Are you thinking about having a baby? Then it's protected. That idea is protected.

Oh, oh, we hate groomers, but also, uh, it's, you can marry a 10 year old in most places. I think like that's how they paper over some of the contradictions at the heart of their economic policies.

The politics of children and childbearing is very conducive to that, and it allows them to keep a very restrictive border policy. At the same time, we call it restrictive. But as we talked about with like Alexander Avina, they do allow people in under various criteria. And that's because the labor market needs those workers. Like that's, you know, that's the unspoken secret of like our border policy. Anyways, the point I'm trying to make is there is broad agreement on the economic aims right now. Even if the Republicans don agreement on the economic aims right now even if the republicans don't call it Bidenomics and even if the Biden people don't call it neoliberalism it is this weird hybrid fusion form of like post-neoliberalism it's weird franken liberalism

was that Tom franken liberalism franken neoliberalism it's franken liberalism with like I don't want to just say fascistic characteristics because that's and neoliberalism it's frank and liberalism with like i don't want to just say fascistic characteristics because that's already inherent but again it's more so like like israeli characteristics you know i mean again like liberalism with israeli characters it's like this it's like just this captive i mean this captive populist siege mentality you know what i mean like just i mean i don't know man i just think this is we're seeing this played out and reproduced and reverberated in national politics now right well they'll keep doing it um because the you like i said you can paper over the economic

stuff to a certain extent because like we've talked about the fucking economy has largely kept afloat through uh uh defense spending and uh i like one in every five jobs is police adjacent in some way remember that was a statistic we found a few years ago that like it's not like indirect policing but like security firms and police prison guards and all that kind of stuff. You know what? Think about that even, Terrence. When I had to take you to the emergency room a few years ago, there was literally an armed guard that stood outside your room the whole time.

Yeah, oh yeah. Like, why? Why? Why does he get a gun? Like, what the fuck, dude? Like, yeah, 125-pound me. Like, I'm not a threat to and also also hampered by dehydration and i mean just just to have like the implication of death and violence in a place that's meant to heal people well sure people die but you know what i'm saying where people are supposed to be healed

like it's just so and that's another part is that the healthcare sector is an extremely overgrown sector in the economy. Like people talk about like, I don't remember who I was listening to talk about this the other day, but like people talk about like the steel industry in China and economists in the United States are like, oh, it's this extreme. And they talk about the oil industry in Russia, like, oh, there's these overgrown industries, these overgrown sectors. And it's like, that's what the healthcare industry is in the United States. I mean, all these things are kind of primed for a certain kind of collapse. But if the United, if the government can just kind of like underwrite it and backstop it for a little while, then that's fine. The what's, what's happening, the realignment where the realignment occurs is that the liberals, um, the liberals then turn to the people that are extremely

disaffected from the republicans and are really creeped out by people saying sweden sydney sweeney is the lacanian super predator who's you know like they get like they're like the democrats can sweep up from that all day because there are quite a few people in this country who are really weirded out by that whereas the like the republicans just can absorb all those people who yes who like get really creeped with the weirdest positions yeah but because that's the thing like by the way because that's another weird thing that's going i have spent so much time thinking about this in the last 24 hours guys i don't know what the fuck is going on but like i told this to tom last night if you don't think sydney sweeney is hot like i just have to logically assume that you don't fuck humans you must fuck dogs and horses and stuff aliens bro love crafty

and creatures elder gods you know that exists between universes like bro it's this weird thing that i realized it's like all right yo it's like okay you do have like this moral panic right and it's mostly like you know predicated on um and uh upon like you know the lgbtq community right but there is also like this um this i don't know how to say is this like prudeness right like this kind of classical i mean i don't want to say classical conservative prudeness because these people are some of the horniest most perverted deranged people alive politically right but like it's like on the one hand they they want to like assert their masculinity right and their hyper sexuality but at the same time they're afraid of titties you know what i mean like it's just like what what the fuck like do you want to be horny or do you want to i mean i guess that's the the enigma of america america is an incredibly horny country but it's also very prude right well they

i mean i i guess you get that from the british you know yeah come by it honest yeah what they what it is is they're turned on by the idea of repressing somebody else's sexuality. And their own. They're turned on by the idea of repressing their own sexuality. You're right. You're right. You're right. I've been a bad boy.

It's a prude kink. Yeah. It's a prude kink. That's exactly right. And this is the thing. I think that explains a significant portion of them. However, I do also think that a significant portion of them have kind of bought into what used to be a position

on the 90s countercultural left, which is that society, bourgeois society as a whole, which is crazy, not even Marxists, not even committed communists really believe this, but that bourgeois society as a whole must be entirely and thoroughly rejected every single aspect of it including beauty standards and and again the left is good to critique that right because like beauty standards is definitely something that should be critiqued and rejected because that is that is informed by

capitalist bourgeois social relations yeah the right doesn't have that class critique, and so they just reject it all writ large. And so this has made me start wondering, like, well, what's the limits to that? If you reject all of it to the point that you're even saying that, like, conventionally attractive people aren't attractive, like, do you, are they, this is what I'm asking. You remember when, back in the day, they used to be like, if we start letting gays marry, they're going to start fucking dogs.

Like, are we going to start seeing them actual just like. Oh, do I. If we see supernaturally beautiful people on TV, people might start getting ideas and might start having babies. This is what I'm asking. Are they going to back themselves into like reverse engineer themselves into actually fucking dogs? They're going to start fucking horses and dogs and goats and being like, no, this is what's hot, bro. Like, you can't be fucking chicks and dudes. You got to fuck goats.

And then they'll say that, yeah, some group of, you know, presumably white Europeans from antiquity did this as a practice and it actually boosts testosterone by 600%. Yo, you know Alexander the Great fuck goats, bro. You didn't know that, did you? Yeah, you didn't. You didn't know that, though, did you? That's what they don't want you to know.

12 easy tricks. Dude, you're so right, Aaron. They're going to be attracted to animals, elder gods, supernatural spirits. They're going to get really into dead languages. They're going to start living in caves. I am just so weirded out

by how weird they are about Sidney's show. It's bizarre, man. Their fixation on just certain figures i don't know it probably speaks to something going on celebrity culture too and like how like you know i don't know they've these type of people have never really like they have never really sort of been invited to that party like wholesale you know what i mean you know like even trump who is like you know is like a pop culture whore you know it's like i think probably the one thing that keeps trump up at night is that probably

the oh if anything okay is the idea that he is like a pariah in like homo yeah he's got phone yeah yeah yeah you're right and you know what he he his supporters live vicariously through him with that with that same audience too and you know what i was thinking but that's the thing it's it's you're right it's vicariously but that's why they have the white hat thing they think that he's in their fighting on their behalf obviously the white hat thing is the theory that he's a pedophile fighting pedophiles on their behalf but it's not it's not that it's not that but he's a pedophile fighting pedophiles on their behalf. It's not that Biden is actually...

He's absorbing the... Yeah, he's abusing kids for them. Oh my god. This is how fucking weird they all are. I mean, dude, it's just like, I think, it's just like, too, it's like, I don't know, man, just this sort of, like, projection

that they have because i guess you're right right it's like they get off on repressing their own sexuality you know what i mean and their own wants and desires and i mean it's just so weird to me you know this is what i was gonna say their own alienation i have to assume right there has to be some alienation there has to be some sort of like sexual resonance with their alienation, I would have to imagine. You know what else I was thinking, too? This is what I wanted to say. I was thinking, too, is that they're the right.

They're always so ready, like these cultural kind of critics or right cultures or whatever. They're always so ready to point to things that... All right, I'll give an example. point to things that all right i'll give an example remember when what what what what video was it music video had that guy posted um and said that uh this was in 2000 you know back then everybody was like carefree and having a good time and i think it was a cover of a michael jackson song right oh it's alien ant farm yeah it was alien ant farm right it was mike it was hanania i think it was the richard hanania weirdo yeah yeah and it was like it was just like okay one you can still do all of those things right but they love to point to things like sydney sweeney and saying oh um um women and sexuality is back

on you know what i mean it's just like dude these things are always apparent right these things and like none of these things have ever faded away and none of these things are an indication of a decadent society these things have constantly been happening and you can always point to them and either reminisce about them and have nostalgia or fucking complain about them like you always have you know what i mean yeah i have a solution to this i think we could nip it in the bud real quick did you ever read that uh radio war nerd blog post about like if we just hung not even all the confederates but if we'd hung a few key confederates that we could have had a much better outcome uh you know post

civil war and abolition of slavery if we applied the same thing and we just and we just here's all we have to do is just publicly execute richard hannanian chrisuffo, and the Libs of TikTok check. Matt Walsh. We don't even have to do Matt Walsh. Matt Walsh could float around. He'll hang himself. He would be defanged if we took out that three-headed hydrant. Yeah, you know what? Fuck it. For good measure,

for good measure, let's kill Matt Walsh too. Better safe than sorry. And I'm not talking like I'm not talking like we just, you know, shoot them in the head and throw them in a hole. I mean, we have to, like, King David cut Goliath's head off and carry it around

the town square. Yeah, put it on the pyre. Put it on the spire. We need, I'm saying we need somebody wearing a cloak and holding a scythe, riding a pale horse, having all four of their heads like on kind of a, like a string thing. You know what I mean? A massive key chain.

Basically their heads are banging together, sliding together. Yeah. And just blood and sinew dripping down all over, like kind of staining the pale horse's coat and stuff. And I'm going to tell you something. all over, like, kind of staining the pale horse's coat and stuff. And I'm gonna tell you something. America

would become 40% less fucking weird and fucked up overnight. I go 100%, dog. 100%. I have to agree with you. There were two, not one, but two articles yesterday that were exceedingly bizarre, like,

not normal about Sidney Sweeney. The first one was in the Spectator sydney sweeney in the return of real body positivity yay boobs are back sydney sweeney made engagement farming easy with her cleavage revealing bro bro can i just say bro can i just say bro yo no human being who has ever existed in the history of this planet has ever thought that boobs was not in, dog. Titties have never since time immemorial. You're trying to be titties are out, bro? Titties have never been

out. What the fuck are you talking about? They're the source of life. I mean, really, when you get down to it, the reason we love titties is because they give us life. They've always given us life. Bro, I've seen people, we get our nutrition. Nutrition.

Comfort. Just comfort. I'm not a dune guy, but I've seen people talk about the alien orb that Paul Tredy sucks the juice out of. Those are titties, bro. Titties are that cosmic orb that give life, yo. Yeah. Come on, sir. bro titties are that cosmic orb of that give life yo yeah um and then the other exceedingly abnormal one was in the national post thinking that was a that's a canadian site wokeness is no match for sydney sweeney's undeniable beauty are sydney sweeney's breasts double d harbingers

of the death of woke oh my, these people are so horny, they should go to jail. Not even go to jail, they should be executed. Yo, this is insane, dog. They're getting everything that they want. I ask you, are these the signs of a healthy culture

that is adjusted well to you know what i mean to human life this is what i'm saying like if you go too far down this rabbit hole you really will eventually walk yourself into being like human humans aren't even attractive i don't even think humans are have you ever seen a horse's ass now Now we're talking. You ever thought about fucking a ladybug? Sure. You're going to be walking down the street and some guy's going to be humping the sidewalk. And like, yo, check out my girl. What is it?

I can't see it. A ladybug that's like two centimeters large. Yo, me and my girl just chilling. Squished and shit. Yeah. Also, too, dude, you just brought up a really good point i forgot who tweeted it but i've been just thinking about this past couple years especially with the trans panic um especially when it's really really fucking bad was it last year or two summers ago right not that it hasn't ever been horrible but

i mean when it was just disgusting right fucking every other week right um it was some lives of tiktok video right but it was like you like, these people are incredibly maladjusted, you know? Like, they, it's such a farce that they want to convince everyone else that the things that they believe in are, like, the baseline, right? That this is the baseline of normalcy, you know? And that this is what every American should want. And it's like, I think I saw, God, i forgot what group it was but conservative group but they were talking about like bans on consensual sex or something and i was like dude what the like what the fuck are you doing like i mean first of all don't don't you believe in procreate i mean i get i don't know

forget even their their their their because their hypocrisy doesn't even make sense to point out it's like who do you think on planet Earth? I mean, I guess there are people who are... I mean, sure, I guess there are people who are an age dude. I'm not gonna judge you, right? But for the majority of human beings on the planet, at least in America, you're

not gonna get any more bored with that shit, dog. I love how many caveats you had to add to that. I did. Yeah, I had to sprinkle it. I had to try to be polite to the ace community, you know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, I just, you know, I just, I think the thing is, the thing behind Sidney Sweeney and all that, like, beyond it just being like a psychosexual repression or all this other stuff i really do think it's more along the lines of um or or even or even like a psychological uh napoleon complex or anything anything at the psychological level i really do think it's more of a um sociological expression

of something which is that i think that right-wingers have to reject society in its totality that like every aspect of society has become so infiltrated this is the bizarre thing about right-wingers man is that they will sometimes occasionally land on the diagnosis of something without understanding any of its underlying causes. And in this case, they have weirdly picked up, for example, like the beauty standards thing. They have weirdly picked up that in a capitalist society under bourgeois social relations, you do see all these bizarre manifestations of culture, these manifestations of uh of culture these manifestations of sexual abnormality or or let's just call them beauty standards in general right like of thinness that that being buxom or

having a fat ass for example is not something well actually that's changed very much in the past the bbl is having the time of its life right now. I think they point out, they recognize that these things are culturally and socially constructed. I guess that's the point I'm trying to make. The reason those are socially and socially constructed, culturally and socially constructed, is because of capitalist social relations. Now, you could say, you could look at ancient Greece and you could look at medieval Europe and say like, what are the beauty standards in those places? Those are all in my extreme shape, like a pair. Yeah.

It's like, that was that, like that was, that was hot. There's nothing. And there's nothing wrong. There's nothing objectively or subjectively good or bad about any of those things.

It's just that these are all uh in in our current society they basically exist as marketing tools to sell people shit and um and no matter what you look like to be honest yeah and also there is a social control function which is that you can make people feel like shit all the time about their own bodies and then they uh have to then consume their way out of it or further into it or whatever. But I think that like the conservatives, they don't, there's not really a class analysis there. There's nothing really deeper there. So they come up with these extremely bizarre fucking approaches to it. You know what, Terrence?

Can I just point out, that's a really good point, this totalizing rejection, I guess. Yeah. It's a good point because, I mean, even look at it politically, right, like in the actual sphere of political activity. You know, I think about, you know, things that Obama might have wanted to do, right? You know what I mean? Which, you know, they weren't these progressive milestones or anything. I think, you know, I't these progressive milestones or anything i think you know i'm far from it i think one of the first things was uh and if anyone uh if i'm wrong anyone can call me

but i think you know trying to privatize social security right during his first administration you know and these are just like preliminary talks never went anywhere but even republicans rejected that and that's something that you know what i mean like like even things that like that they would be for if it's presented in a through a lens or through an avenue right that they already inherently reject whether it's through liberalism you know they'll be like nah we don't want that shit it's like dude you guys have been fucking championing this shit for the past like decade or so or 20 years but it's because it's a liberal doing it and because you hate liberalism so much you reject it you know yeah i think that's i think that that is a big part of it and and again i just wonder what the limitations like what are the limits of that how far how long can you keep doing that

i'll spoil it for you to death i mean it's it's a death draft or to the beginning or to the beginning of life which might be death as well. We might go back to a protozoic life form. You know what I'm saying? They might be trying to just peel back all of these cultural markers. They're sexually attracted to the primordial ooze. You guys just want to fuck the primordial ooze. You just want to fuck the ooze, bro.

I mean, look, we all know that having sex in a hot tub is impossible. However, having sex in the hot tub is impossible however having sex in the primordial ooze now that might be something i might i might fuck a protozoa in the primordial great great great great great great great it ain't weird if we come from that right it ain't weird if we family right protozoa dick have a bitch laid up got a screaming um well i think that like all all these things like in the aggregate

uh have you know just to sort of like start tying this together we're over an hour i want to start wrapping up but like in the aggregate a lot of these things create a lot of like drag on the actual functioning of bureaucracy in the in the government like um most not so much like the cultural things like i i don't think that like the irs is a uh the terrorist organization no i don't i don't think that like american like bureaucratic agencies are like weighed down by like their extreme horniness or or lack thereof of sydney sweeney um but i do think there are cultural things in the in the uh there are things in the culture that like make the functioning of our institutions like gradually erode honestly but i think most of it comes from political economy

like i think that like the neoliberalization of everything has made institutions extremely flimsy and like i said deracinated i had this dream the other night i'm going to tie this to a dream i had this dream the other night that i was back in the church that i'd grown up in and these people had taken over the church and and taken it in a wildly different direction and i was like but i my family has gone to this church for 40, 50 years. Like, I grew up in this church. Like, do I not have any say or standing into, like, how the church is now reformed?

And, you know, they were, like, obviously, like, no, blah, blah, blah. You're having stress dreams about losing control. I'm having stress dreams about losing control. That's the thing. Because this is a common theme. This is a common theme this is a common theme of my adult life like working at various non-profits volunteering at various non-profits or in social movements there has just been this this drift this gradual drift towards uh mission creep towards ineffectiveness towards um just lost nearsightedness but also just completely like lost

yeah yo it's like it's like i don't know how to say without trying to uh trying to uh you know make it sound like i'm complaining about her being overly plaintive about it but it is like this sort of like man how can i explain is this sort of like this creep you know what i mean and this sort of whittling of opportunity this feeling that there's this whittling of opportunity or possibility you know what i mean and like i don't know for me i'm like for the god how old am i like 33 34 now i like i can't remember like i've started feeling that like and i mean i don't mean to be like oh the zeitgeist but dude like i was i swear to god it was like after 9-11 right when i started coming to political age you know and all these things that i had imagined myself being you know and as an adult you know

carrying through life and all these dreams and hopes i had as a kid and seeing that window and not even in my own narrow and not even in my own life right but just looking at the political climate yeah looking at the literal climate you know what i mean yeah yeah yeah i was just saying that to terrence the other day i think the hardest part about getting older it's not even like you know getting going gray or you know whatever losing a little bit of hair whatever it is the idea that the things you wanted for yourself like the possibilities shrink and shrink and shrink and shrink and shrink you know what i mean yeah the older they get the farther those things get away from you you know the walker percy quote i always go back to is blessed is the man that doesn't secretly believe every option is

open to it i like that you think okay on on the on the uh note of what both of you are saying, have y'all seen that, like, thing that, I feel like it goes around once a week at this point, but when people talk about what's happening in Israel and Gaza and the United States government's policy towards this, like, it's a Wikipedia article, and I saw it in an Adam Curtis movie. It's like the purpose of a system is what it does.

Yeah. Like, and the whole, I guess the whole point is like there's no point in asking what a system does or why it's doing it. It does what it's programmed to do, basically. are all operating in these institutions in a larger political environment of which we are so far disconnected from the purpose of that system and then how it was programmed to do what it was to do that's why we're all kind of like stressed out and like confused about what we're even supposed to be doing um yeah that's true yeah it's like uh there are days when you just don't know what to kind of do with yourself. You know what I mean? Like, what is my...

Yeah. When this is... I think this is... There are a lot of different things. There are a lot of different ways to take this. But I think this is partially... Part of the reason for the rise in LLM's large language modeling, is that what LLM stands for?

Master of Legal Letters. The Master of Legal Letters, yes. But like chat GPT and AI in general, I think part of it is a labor, like a cost-saving mechanism for labor, basically automating certain people out of jobs but a lot another part of it though is a large structural thing where like people are trying to determine how to like control for the various sort of structural contradictions in the system

the best example of this is in the washington post let ai remake the whole u.s government oh and save the country that's um and this save the country. And this is in earnest? This is in earnest. I think this person should be buried up to their neck in a net hill. I'm going to be honest with you. I would rather be ruled by a whole team of Count Choculas than AI. I'm talking a football team's worth of actual Nosferatu bloodsuckers. Creatures of the night.

I thought you were actually talking about the mascot. That would be the worst vampire to be governed by. Well, so he starts out by talking about Operation Warp Speed and how that's, that was the vaccine program and how it was kind of sped along by like AI programs. And he talks about like a four-star general who wants to apply the AI to all of the government's ills from the IRS to contracting to the welfare state. They did a knockout job on that Operation Warp Speed.

I mean, yeah, the vaccine saves lives, but it doesn't really ensure quality of life as we've all just been getting COVID multiple times. Got COVID like three times already yeah and um so the i the ai that he has specifically in mind i was i was reading the article and i was like okay i don't really agree because ai um ai one of the things about an artificial intelligence is it can't do what a human does, which is have an empathetic judgment. So if you're working at a welfare agency and someone comes to you and lays out their entire life story, an AI will just look at the quantitative data and say, yes, this person is good for welfare benefits. No, they're not.

Just based off of a sheer algorithmic calculation or an anvil will drop from the sky and crush them and you you know what you could you could also argue that uh um you could also argue that like in in institutions like that where the workers there are encouraged to be like machines right and be on on uh unfeeling you could argue that like yeah then ai would be the perfect replacement for those people right yeah and that's and um so like that's why i would oppose it on those grounds but as he was laying out the argument i was like i guess i can kind of see this like if you're talking about certain inefficiencies and redundancies and how bureaucracy is done for example i guess tax revenue and tax

collection anything to do with numbers i'm not good with math yeah give that shit to the computer apparently ai is not even from what i understand having read about it ai is not that ai is not as good at math as you would expect um so ai still counting counting uh numbers under the on their fingers under the table like ai still doing that shit well it would appear that at certain levels of mathematical abstraction abstraction is a human capacity it requires various degrees and levels of imagination an ai doesn't have that so while an AI can crunch hard numbers, it probably can't do like, you know, vast abstract levels of math. I'm not an expert in this. This is just what I've read. What an AI is good at apparently right now is like predictive text generation.'s why that's you know that's why chat gpt is becoming

so popular and why all of our jobs are at fucking risk um any of you anybody who's a writer bro yes exactly you were bored you were bored i was just actually i was talking to a friend of the show uh josh olsen the other day uh and um i was like man i feel like all right i always say i was born at the wrong time but i'm black so there was no time that would be this is probably the best time to be allowed maybe under the rule of man samusa or the 24th century where i have my own starship but like right it's like if you're a writer right now, this shit sucks. It's the worst fucking time to be a writer. It's the fucking worst time to be a writer. Straight up. But anyways, right, like, this is, you know, that's what AI is.

That's what LLMs do. As I was reading the article, though, the AI in particular that they have in mind for this is created by a company called palantir favorite dystopian uh uh tech firm yeah um so i'm just gonna read here what palantir does has long been draped in mystery it's a software company that works with ai and is named for the indestructible crystal balls in Lord of the Rings. So they're not exactly discouraging it, but the foundation of its products is almost comically dull. Imagine all of an organization's data sources.

So that's Bobby Schmurder who got locked because of fucking Palantir. Is that why? Yeah. Yeah. I remember you telling me that, Tom. Yeah, it was surveillance software, TIL surveillance software that got him indicted and everything. Palantir, they say, imagine all of an organization's data sources as a series of garden hoses in your backyard.

Let's say the organization is a hospital. There are hoses for personnel, equipment, drugs, insurance, medical supplies, scheduling, bed availability, and probably dozens of other things. Many of the hoses connect up to vendors and many connect to the patients. No one can remember what some of them are supposed to connect to. All were brought at different times from different manufacturers and are different sizes and lengths.

And it's a hospital, so hose maintenance has never been anyone's top priority. Now look out the window. There's a pile of knotted rubber so dense you can't see grass. Palantir untangles hoses. We've always been the mole people of Silicon Valley, says Palantir's chief architect. Can I just say we were just talking about beer riders? That was a tortured-ass metaphor,

Don. Fine, fine. I'll let it fucking pass or whatever, y'all. I was gonna say the same thing. There was much better ways to get there. We've always been the mole people of Silicon valley says palantir's chief architect it's like we go into the plumbing of all this stuff and come out and say let's help you build a beautiful ontology so just like i said we mario fuck out of here dog oh god curse sentences fuck out of here a beautiful ontology.

In software and AI, that means it's come to... In software and AI, ontology has come to mean the untangling of messes and the recreation of a functional information ecosystem. Basically, what I'm outlining here is things become so complex. They become so weighted down under the heaviness of their complexity that we, as humans, apparently can't even solve them anymore. So we have to turn it over to machines that then aggregate certain information and then are able to like concatenate. What's the word? They're able to, you know, divide out certain.

Optimize it, I guess, whatever. But like, like this is like this is like hiring like every time you like lose a pair like a sock out of a pair or you lose the roku remote this is like hiring somebody to find it for you know what i'm saying this is this is just like this weird thing that has been created out of modern conveniences and you know what i'm saying and the the convolution out of modern conveniences requiring new solutions for them you know yes it is it is this just like in the political realm it's this surrender to cynicism it's the surrender to realism the the uh the acceptance and acknowledgement that we could never

we can never uh fix any of the problems that we've brought upon ourselves under capitalism. That they're all too complex and too heavy. That they'll all either collapse and take us with them into the black hole, or we can just deploy AI at them and they can sort it all out for us. Or if you're the right wing, then you believe that God will fill in the role of the computer, right? Yes, right. That's so scary. It would be nice. I would like that if that would...

I mean, yeah, if it was the actual God, God, you know? Yeah. It's not Old Testament God. Is Old Testament God the vengeful one? He's the bad one, yeah. Yeah, yeah. He lightens up by the time we get to the new covenant. But a lot of shit goes down before that, so I don't know.

So this article is extremely long. I'm just going to read the final passage here um because he goes on to talk about palantir and their history and this is an op-ed it's in the opinion section but it's like 5 000 words i don't know what the fuck it's like an ad for palantir basically um but he says it did not take someone with JFK's charisma to inspire Americans to go to the moon the moon is big and pretty humanity has been dreaming about it for eons the challenge of he never got to see that because he got his top blown off but you know

yeah and also humans figured out how to do that without the assistance of AI but I digress with government presumably right we did understand we did understand orbits and uh how to mathematically compute the exact distance and speed you would need to position something to orbit around something which again

you don't need ai to do that although now we need to pay 26 to orbit around something which again you don't need ai to do that although now we need to pay 26 for somebody to bring us a diet coke you know you know you know you know who you know who used to do those calculations they will call computers they were black women they used to do those calculations mostly black women but this is part of the argument of this article the argument is that software has similarly become too complex and heavy with the contradictions of the past that we need to wipe all software clean and replace it with AI.

This is the promise of Palantir. You uninstall, we do a collective uninstalling of all the software of the past and then reinstall it with AI. So it's like the rapture? It's like the AI rapture? It's the AI rapture. God, the ai rapture it's the ai rapture god these freaks purge we've created god and we want god to fix it for us except god is

not that great as we not as great as we think it is god is sitting at the willy walker pop-up what about what what was that profiles encouraged we did about the God machine that time? Yeah, the God machine. What was it? Reverend Spear? Yeah. We're trying to do the immaterial version of that. Yes, every day is a new adventure in the Tower of Babel. It's like, what can we come up with today to scrape the lower rungs of heaven that god is just fucking

just like i created distance from between myself and you for a reason you fucking yeah and all the while how can we also just make everybody feel less human i was thinking about that the the dude tomah bongletare one half of daft punk when they were talking about a daft punk reunion he came out with this classical record because he's like a classically trained composer and his comment on was the last fucking thing i want to be right now is a robot yeah you know i was i was uh i saw this no we about to close out but i saw this uh i saw this clip that was going around from one of those accounts that posts like you know videos or science facts and shit and it was arthur c clark a famous british science fiction writer um maybe probably in the 50s maybe i think um talking about the

future right and of course the post is like arthur c clark had some amazing predictions about the future and of course he talks about telecommunications right um not like cities on the moon and shit but you know what actually happened but what he said that i took a uh just took a i want to use the word umbrage it's not umbrage i didn't take personal offense but i was like that's bullshit is that you know he said it will make the world smaller you know and it'll kind of create a global community you know and i'm not trying to be a lot out here man but i would argue that like the advent the advent of you know uh telecommunications especially the Terrence, you've brought this point up, has made us probably the stupidest that we've ever been. And I'm talking about in human history.

I'm talking about, no, that's probably a big claim. You know what I mean? We've been stupider. But I mean, I'm just talking about. During the forms era, we were definitely stupider. But just having access to more information than at any point in human history. And people just still say the most insane shit ever when you have a fucking computer in your pocket. You know what I mean?

That, like, 60 years ago was the size of a fucking room and weighed a ton, you know? I wonder if that is a refutation of that tide in society. Like, just saying the most absolute insane shit, the most incongruous shit that you can come up with. You know what I mean? Despite the fact that you can look it up yeah the fact to the contrary you know dude and because you know because and that's the point i was getting at right he talks about like um the world getting smaller but i would say that like you know not only has it like you know obviously fractured right and alienated people but it's just this deluge of information, you know, like, just this constant, constant overwhelming, like, I mean, I think this is, I've mentioned it before, my worry

with AI is that, like, AI will junk up search engines so much so that you can't even find, you know, an original painting. It's already doing that, yeah. It's already doing that, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. What is there to suggest that that trend is going to abate and this is going to just sort itself out like we it's already bad exactly exactly i do i do think that like because i'm not i'm similarly not a luddite i do think though that in a different arrangement a societal arrangement that like you can use this technology for all kinds of like creative pursuits and um column industrial architectural pursuits and that kind of stuff right like i i think about like in the mars trilogy, like part of the use of AI, AI is used there to basically, what's the word I'm looking for?

Like maintenance this elevator from the atmosphere of Mars down to the surface of Mars. Because if Mars is specifically rotational capacity, you need AI to be able to compute in real time how an orbital elevator would work. So it doesn't split like a thread or something like that. Exactly. That's really more the use of AI that you would maybe get out of rather than high school students cheating on their essays or what this writer is trying to advocate for like getting bigger tax revenues. So AI, instead

of AI, would basically be used to keep people alive and make their lives better and easier? Yeah. Instead of whatever the fuck we're doing now? Whatever this is. Well, but let me just finish reading this article and then we can close down.

I know we've gone really long, but like I said, this does tie in with what we've been outlining. The challenge of using AI for better government is very different. The excitement about a new thing is tempered by fear and confusion. To get maximum reward from AI,

the country must first go through an unprecedented vegetable eating exercise to clean up its bureaucracy. Jesus. Motherfucker said we need fiber. We must all get our own blood, boys, like our founder. The relationship between citizens and government

is fractured. It's crucial to the republic's survival that we stop defending the status quo. New technology can help us repair the damage and open the door to a level of service and efficiency that will make Scandinavians seize with envy. Almost all this... Such a weird line.

We tacitly acknowledge they have it much better figured out. But not for long um he talks about how like democrats need to acknowledge that not every government job is should be one for life that we have to fire a lot of bureaucrats blah blah blah um all this is preamble to the work, methodical demolition, and joyful construction. Blah, blah, blah. One of the secrets of great software is that it's not built all at once. Projects get broken down into manageable units. Teams get feedback, make adjustments in real time.

It's a form of common sense that the industry calls agile development. The United States could do its first agile AI sprint in its most broken place where the breach of trust and services is the most shameful. You likely know the statistic about Veterans Affairs, but there's one worth repeating. 6,392 veterans died by suicide in 2021. The most recent year numbers are available. Okay, this is really weird. A ProPublica survey of inspector general reports found VA employees regularly

botched screenings meant to assess veterans risk of suicide or violence. Sometimes they didn't perform the screenings at all. What if we treat VA like the crisis it is? It's not as simple as entangling hoses between veterans and the department. A lot of care is managed manually, but when we create digital infrastructure, appointment scheduling can run on AI. A cascade of benefits would follow, such as reduced wait times, analytics that predicts demands for service. Next, make a first alert chatbot for veterans that only with their consent can be used to look for signs of crisis or suicidal thoughts. Or if you feel like you want to kill yourself, talk to the computer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the thing.

It's like give it enough time and these things will not be asking for your consent they just will be deploying wellness checks anytime that you even they deploy a drone and do it for you bro oh you want you went out we got you but because this is the thing in a capitalist society there are surplus populations and do you think that an ai is going to come up with any solution for a surplus population other than just swift extermination yeah just encourage you to kill yourself or send the robot the other robot to kill yeah this is this is the last thread like truly like mass incarceration was like the last attempt at any uh you know the government calls it altruistic obviously it's completely uh fascistic but like

surplus population as you know ruth wilson gilmore points out like you had surplus population surplus land surplus government capacity to deal with these to deal with this and what resulted was mass incarceration if you turn that over to an ai they won't even come up with that their solution will be just a completely just you know wife of a liquidation and you know i mean i probably brought this up before man i brought i brought this up several times on the show but like you know it's like i think about like kod Kodak, you know, and coming out with film. You know what I mean? And they came out with color film that couldn't reproduce the skin color of black people, you know, because inherent built into that technology were biases, you know, of a certain social system, you know? So it's like, yeah, like you really want the computers,

the, the AI when they deploy that shit in police departments across the country and through, and healthcare and an education, education system, whatever fucking education system we have, you really want it to be doing that shit. You know what I mean?

So it could like, so more, more kids that could have maybe had an opportunity, more people that could have gotten an opportunity, you know what I mean? Like all of these, all of these liberal ideas that they believe in, you know, a quality of opportunity. It's like the ai will deny that outright because this this system is not built on opportunity you know yeah yeah it's

like why we've built an opportunity for who you know it's we've talked about it before but like in the fortis um era the way that discrimination was meted out was through these prejudicial markers like skin color and sexuality and all this other stuff. And how the neoliberal reform was just attach every person's name to a number and call it a credit score and all this other stuff. I think AI would combine the two. We talked about the AI. Remember the dating app that was for your credit score? It's just like it's going to determine your race, your credit score, and then your phone will just have a needle like in Dune

that'll just come out and fucking pierce your neck with a lethal thing. You'll just die. It's like, all right. You have been determined to be surplus. Yeah. I think that that's the thing it's like i don't on the face of it disagree that like ai is a promising hopeful tool that could be used to better human life in a capitalist society no that is not true at all because in a capitalist society there is surplus population that is a hallmark of capitalist

society when you come when you combine that with ai there's only one solution that it's going to come to i'll put it i'll put it this way to put a fine point on it uh because i love star trek like you know why the replicator exists in star trek if anybody knows the replicator it could turn um you know uh uh anything into matter right you know um i don't know how exactly how it works actually it works because it's feces technically but anyway right it could turn all this all this waste into matter right on the ship and the only reason why it works is because they've achieved the post-scarcity society if replicators if that technology existed under a capitalist society you know jeff bezos and all these fucking ghouls these undead ghouls would be hoarding it, you know what I mean? So it's like...

Isn't Israel already doing this? Remember, we covered this on... No, well, we covered this on a... Yo, I was about to... Yo, nah, tell me Israel's not gonna make a space federation. No, but they're already

using AI to basically make more efficient the killing machine. We covered this on an episode. They were using that program, the gospel, to basically target Palestinians. Oh, my God. That is a harbinger of what you're talking about. When you're talking about turning over these things to AI, that's what it would look like in this society. Oh, my God.

There's no alternative. Techno in this society. Oh my God. There's no, there's no alternative. Techno new Testament. All right, gang. Um, I think that's probably a good place to end it today. I hope that you, um,

I hope that you enjoyed the show. Uh, if you would like to go support us on Patreon, you know where to find us. Um, I, today's the state of the union. We're recording this, you know,

many hours before the State of the Union. But if you would like to- Way, way before Joe Biden's bedtime. Well, maybe not that much before. It's an hour before Joe Biden's bedtime. He's not even recording. I'm interested to see how he does, you know? Well, I think we're going to cover that on the Patreon.

I imagine we'll have plenty of things to say about the state of the union. So if you would like to hear what we have to say about it and our debriefing, I guess one thing we could do would be like a Twitch stream, but like, I'm not that enter enterprising, at least not yet. Like I'm, you know, I'm in Lexington now.

I'm trying to like turn this into an operation. Maybe that means video streaming eventually, but like for now, I still got to get this into an operation. Maybe that means video streaming eventually, but for now, I still got to get my shit together. You got to get your shit together. Maybe y'all can see our beautiful faces soon. Yeah. But you could go to the Patreon, though. Like I said, we'll probably be talking about that,

debriefing about that on Monday or on Sunday, unless Tom and I find tickets to the Drake show, in which case we'll be doing that on monday or on sunday unless tom and i find tickets to the drake show in which case we'll be doing that on monday if anybody's got any leads on that for less than a million dollars let me know hit my line yeah yo when you see drake tell him his sneakers are fucking ugly sneakers he did with nike are fucking grotesque it just it's just a normal like air force one with certified lover boy wrote on the side like Yeah, like what the fuck is that? The sneakers are shitty, brother, but the dick looks great.

Your penis is looking great, man. Penis is looking super, brother. Hog's looking fantastic, which is more than I can say for those fucking shoes you got on. Good looking penis. I want to get my autograph a 36 year old skinny white guy good looking penis drake i gotta call barbara good looking penis aubrey his guards just shoot me in the head. Just like that guy needed. Don't you automatically? You have been deemed surplus. This thing will pick me up and throw me up in the air like a napkin. Good looking penis, Aubrey.

Love how the penis is looking these days, Aubrey. You're doing great things with the penis I'll tell you Aubrey It's the best looking penis I've ever seen Aubrey Oh my god Everyone around me In like a 10 mile radius Dies of embarrassment

It's just like they're calling it The biggest mass casualty event From vicarious embarrassment 30, 000 people dead and if you want god like i just ran away as soon as he started talking me that fucking voice i was out the door man bodies just started dropping i clocked what it was and I reacted in time and appropriately. Have you ever seen the end of Watchmen? Just score as a dead body. Just, yeah, one guy

makes it out alive. A psychopath who's not a capable vicarious embarrassment. He has no emotions at all. He's alive. So how do you feel about being robbed that much death the destruction i mean he was making a good point the penis do be looking good though

heard that all right he's just killing dude you could just kill entire scores of people by saying that on the nightly nose. The penis is looking great, Aubrey. The penis... No, I'm not going to do the jump voice. Alright. Alright, gang. Sorry, we've gone way too long. Thanks for tuning in.

Please go to the Patreon and support us. We would love to see you over there. Until next time, thanks for listening. Peace out.