Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 337: Expanding The Metaphor

Episode Date: April 5, 2024

Covering all the news and developments of a rather momentous week in early 2024. Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

people need balding content there's a lot of people out there losing hair and we need to know it's okay well this okay so like i was talking to katie the other day friend of the show and she was like i just really wish men knew that it's not a big deal like no one like it's not a big deal that you're balding like no one really cares that much. And I was like, okay, two things. First of all, really what aggravates me so much about it is, like, I love running my hands through my hair. I love, like, I just want to be able to run. Running them through your mane. Yes.

Like, I just want, like, my beautiful locks, like, flowing. And shaking it like some fucking shampoo commercial issue the lock the curls fall down upon your shoulders and catch the sun in these ringlets yeah exactly i was known for my hair at one point like that was an animating part of my personality and girls would come up and rub their hands through it and then now they do it and i'm just like be gentle not that there's a harem of women just you know lining up to run that's not what i mean i just meant like when on the occasion somebody does it i'm always like clenching my ass all a little bit like i need every fiber i can muster don't take a little bit off the top please okay

and then the second the second thing is that i saw this thing the other day, and I've worked with bats. I have observed this behavior in bats. But bats, when you find a bat and you put a little tracker on it, like a little leg band, like a GPS tracker, it won't go back to its home immediately. It'll go somewhere else and sulk for like 24 hours stop by the homie crib and be like yo i can't believe what this motherfucker just did to me sit out sit out in his car and eat mcdonald's

in the walmart parking lot in the walmart parking lot and um i'm connecting this to my my cat my cat's behavior because he's he gets knotted up really bad and so i'll cut the knots out of his fur and then he he will also sulk for like two days after i do that and it's and i think it i think there is something that goes on at a sort of subconscious level like when you know that something has changed on you yeah you know what i'm saying like you just you have to sulk a little bit it hurts it hurts your pride man it almost i mean i think i'm thinking with animals maybe this is a going on this animal tip but i'm thinking when cats and dogs have the cone you know after they've had surgery and they're skulking around the house and it's like well man i'd be

skulking around too man you know we need the cone for balding they should start doing the cone we do could you imagine just a cone around the balding? Just around the balding spot. Yeah, I'm going to start rocking a fryer tuck. You know, just shaving the top of it, but keeping the ring around. Like a reverse fryer tuck? Yeah. Have you considered also that Leon might be a Natty Dredd, bro?

He might be Rasta. He could be Rasta. He might be Rastafari. He could be like that rapper that keeps going viral. She's like, I had my kidney infection with a crystal ball. That's not of God. That's not Etal. That's some otherworldly shit.

That's not even like an earthly deal. Oh, man. You're having a cat that eats etal that's interesting jamaican cat yeah jamaican cat that's also a vegan hell yeah he got dreads hanging off the body the only other cat that i knew that looked like Leon was coincidentally, perhaps not coincidentally, was a cat named Samson. Oh. It was morbidly obese, but also, too, it was kind of that Maine Cooney vibe that would get dreaded and stuff. So did you have to cut his hair? Because that would be biblical.

That was the thing about Samson, right? He had his hair cut. It's too on the nose. Would you just take him to the store, take him to the hairstylist and like, you know, get them locked up, you know, get them retwisted.

Oh man. Um, okay. I got a lot of things to talk about today. Um, before we get into it, Jesse, there's a damn 4.8 earthquake,

Pennsylvania, New York. No. New York? No. Yeah, I was just on the phone with a friend of the show, Lucian Reed, that produced the Nick Offerman thing we did back in the day, and it happened while we were on the phone. He was like,

I think I'm in an earthquake. What? Is that one of those fracking things? That's gotta be, right? Yeah, because that's in the northeast, man. You'd think it'd have to be. Well, okay, speaking of fracking things that's got to be right yeah up there northeast man you'd think it'd have to be oh okay speaking of fracking um okay on the patreon this past week the last patreon episode we talked about like how there is this article in the new york times about how uh ai developers are looking to ai to uh increase worker productivity so as to like squeeze more and more profit and surplus out of every hour of work that's possible so the

computers can make turn people into more like robots right and so that the robots can turn just so humans can turn robots more like people and people can turn robots you know okay people yeah exactly exactly um but like you know the point is that you know capitalism having exhausted all of its frontiers uh and easily accessible like reams of or seams of profit is is now using AI to squeeze as much out of it. It's like squeezing blood from a... Is it turnip or stone? A stone?

I guess either or. What do you squeeze from a turnip? I say you can't draw blood from a turnip. That's what I say to my creditors. Can't draw blood from a stone, I think, is... Similar vibe, though. Yeah, that's more biblical right yeah when when chase bank calls and says they need a payment i say well you can't draw blood from a turn they understand turnips because they are in agricultural futures so speculation so that oh yeah okay good point

yeah they they punted on rocks a long time ago. Yeah, right. But then when I say you can't draw blood out of a turnip, they say, oh, well, okay, cool. Well, just get that to us whenever you can then. Like, no, you don't understand. No penalties, no nothing. Just whenever you get a chance. Cool, thanks, man.

Well, speaking of rocks and AI and fracking, this is... in turnips the internups this is uh this is relevant to the patreon episode um which if you want to go listen go subscribe at patreon.com um but this is uh in financial times and this is before i want to get into the meat of the show i just read this article right before we started recording. AI revolution will be booned for natural gas, say fossil fuel bosses. A surge in demand for electricity to feed data senders and to power an AI revolution will usher in a golden era for natural gas, producers say.

AI's soaring energy needs will rise well beyond what renewable energy and batteries can deliver, executives argue, making more planet-warming fossil fuel supplies crucial, even as governments vow to slash their use. I mean, dude, this is, so, I mean, so the AI already, like, all that shit already uses so much energy, right? Right. So they're going to use the AI to, to use uh tom's phrase to uh uh draw blood from a turnip pretty much when when we are at like the end game you know or the beginning of the end game of climate collapse jesus christ i think that's the key thing here it's like

everything and this will be the uniting theme of this episode, I think. But just because it seems like that's where my mind's been at this past week. But like everything across the board would indicate that capitalists are aware that they are in an end game. And AI has become the thing that will be used to squeeze blood from a turnip or from a stone in this, in this specific instance. And it's like, it's almost kind of crazy, man,

that it would be AI. That would be the thing that would do it because it is almost biblical. It is almost like a kind of like tower of Babel thing, like trying to like reproduce a human mind in a machine. And that would be the thing that they land on to be like, all right, we're not fixing climate change uh we're not dealing with any of the uh rampant issues social issues from climate uh health care to border anything like that now we'll just use ai or and also that a story in the

guardian about the ai program that israel uses um called like lavender lavender yes i mean i mean dude what's what's oh god i'm gonna go ahead and for you i mean what's what's just so what's so fucking troubling about it too man is that or i guess what what's i guess makes sense about it in a really uh fucked up way is that at this point i guess ai is sort of the accumulation of all of this information and knowledge you know and in in a time in which we are overloaded and deluged and overwhelmed with information and data every single fucking day, you know. So now they're saying like, I don't know, it reminds me of Shoshana Zuboff's and I've heard she's a little bit suspect, you know. But her book where she talks about instrumentarianism, surveillance capitalism, and instrumentarianism is the power of knowledge and using that to control and to anticipate. I mean, it just seems like the logical conclusion because, like you said, Terrence, they're not really going to deal with any of these issues practically because they have political solutions that are unconscionable to them.

They have political solutions that are unconscionable to them. So they're going to say, oh, we'll just take all the data that we have just to squeeze. We keep using this term to squeeze blood from a stone. I mean, basically, I guess it's throwing gasoline on the fire is what it is. Yeah. Well, and I think that the thing is, the thinking here is that you're exactly right. The thinking here is that, look, you know, it's a theme that we've hammered on for years now. That there is, you know, no more sort of like easily accessible seams of like surplus to be found. That like we've exhausted all frontiers and all markets, basically. And they're not going to the moon.

They're not, they're not mining asteroids anytime soon. They're going to try. A lot of people are going to die, but it's probably not going to. Oh yeah. It's one, one,

like one mission where like a person goes insane, like Steve Buscemi style and Armageddon and just like fucking murders everybody on the, on board. Like moon. After that, they'll be like all right like no okay we're not gonna do the cosmic horror shit anymore we're done with that boys i didn't think i'd ever say this but we're it may come to we're gonna have to make war on the machines we we might have to i mean asymmetrical guerrilla warfare i guess we might have we might

have to we might have to preemptively start like you know going to like i don't know like a best buy and start smashing shit up man you know you know when everybody was talking about ai uh them experiment ai on that movie late night with the devil you know a couple weeks ago and that was a little bit of the discourse and how like people were saying this is a slippery slope to replacing humans and stuff like that. At first, I was like, okay, it's not that offensive, and it's just a couple of things. Maybe I'm warming up to that argument now, though, with the introduction of Lavender into the lexicon this week and all this shit.

The quotations in that article about the lavender program were like astonishing man i mean like people were like one like they were interviewing multiple like intelligence uh personnel in the idf and massad and stuff and they were just talking about like yeah it's actually easier um to just bomb people's homes where we suspect Hamas militants to be. It's actually easier to just plug all this data into an algorithmically fed machine that then duplicates where potential targets might be and just basically carpet bomb that entire area. be and just basically carpet bomb that entire area and i don't know it's it's just like from war to fossil fuels to like worker uh you know production or whatever it's like this is tame to even entertainment this is the thing in art yeah this is yeah to art itself you're right this is what already made art shittier

yeah it really made warfare more gruesome i didn't call that warfare it's made genocide even somehow more grotesque and yeah like there's nothing there is no quantifiable improvement in anything that ai has done i can say it's perverted i mean like like i don't know man go ahead terrence go ahead i'm just gonna say that one of the things that you saw like a few months ago when people were still like it's not a genocide because section 8 clause 3 of the geneva convention says it has to be my fucking i mean they were saying it has to be industrialized like the holocaust and it's like i mean this lavender program is a perfect example of how it's industrialized they've transistorized warfare exactly like that even just mechanized they come

they've computerized and i mean this is the thing we've talked about this before uh i think we did an episode maybe on a patreon maybe a year back or so where we talked about um ai in real estate like these kind of early i don't even know how how early, I don't know how long they've been experimenting with this, but like, it's like the responsibility is offloaded onto the algorithm, you know? Yeah. So people are absolved of responsibility. And I don't know, man, it's just like, I keep thinking about, I know this is a moot point, but I keep thinking about how, like, AI, right, at least in the, I mean, from its kind of inception, right, whether we're talking about, like, you know, the 40s, 50s, 60s, but especially in the 80s, right, in the 90s, right, when I was coming of age, right, it was seen as, like, it was gonna, it wasn't just gonna take away

everybody's jobs, but it was gonna allow free people up to do the things they actually wanted to do. It was gonna make life easier. Like those Ian Banks novels. Exactly, right, and it's, like, wanted to do it was gonna make life easier like those ian banks novels exactly exactly right and it's like now the machines are doing art right and and making war more sleek and mechanized and turning people into slaves you know i mean it's just pervert it's just perverted like every i don't know aspect of like you know what it means to be human exactly what i mean exactly what i mean and it's also causing all of us to lose our minds as a result yeah yeah you know i mean when i was on the phone with with lucian during the earthquake he said people there are people just walking around on the street that didn't even seem to

notice it a 4.8 is nothing to sneeze at you know what i mean it's not like like cataclysmic but that's like you know what i mean no i think it's yeah it's detaching us from the natural world in a way it's it's making us more like robots in a sense i know that's like like a very hack and cliche thing to say but like i mean but yeah no i mean i don't know man i also think too uh i mean this is just like i don't know, man. I also think too. I mean, this is just like, I don't know. This is just kind of a perfect sort of medium for capitalism. Right. And for like cultural hegemony, I guess, you know, you know, just this regurgitation and

just this perversion of what it means to be human. But even something, as you were saying, Tom, something that's just grotesque is genocide in itself, you know, and you've saying in time something that's just grotesque is genocide in itself You know and you've made that like something like that just I mean by by Removing but also real I guess like reproducing the human element right because of course this machine is like dictated by like Israel's like, you know Genocide apartheid state, you know, so it's it's it's not like this technology is like unbiased, you know genocide apartheid state you know so it's it's it's not like this technology is like unbiased you know yeah but the but the fact that like they know that it's much easier to use this

and they can sort of remove and distance themselves from it you know i think like i don't it's just i don't know that to me is the clearest proof that it is a genocide. Like if you have to displace your actions onto like machines like that, because like it's well documented. Like what, like you read any of the, like there's a, there's a little mini series called the English that I actually enjoyed. It's like a Western.

And there's a scene in that show where um these settler colonialists like they murdered they massacre um some indians in like wyoming or montana and uh and i think that show really captures like what happens in that scenario and you're seeing it with these idf soldiers but like uh what will happen is the people carrying that out will get this kind of like um rictus like grin on their face. You know, like you'll kind of like become very sort of like skeletal almost like sort of like, you know, almost kind of like like almost almost like sort of something you would see from like me lie or like full metal jacket or something like that. Like they get emaciated and horrified. Yes, they get like, yes, you're right,

like sort of emaciated and horrified. And I think the thing is, is that like, that's not good for like overall morale. And so like, it's like, and this is what makes it kind of like a zone of interest type thing. It's like, well, just turn it over to the machine and we don't have to think about it. Like the quotations they use in that article are them literally saying it's

easier on us just to turn it over to the machine and let it take care of it. Yeah. I was thinking about that from zone of interest, the scene where like the guys that make the furnaces come in there and lay out their plans and explain the science and how that's going to make things more efficient and it's very clinical like disturbing like kind of like where the whole mood like you know i mean it's disturbing from the word go if you're like paying attention but like that just like the sort of detached yeah way they're thinking about exterminating people you know as like like

you're doing it to cockroaches or mice or something yeah yeah i don't know man it just just like i'm talking about it now it just seems like like ai really i mean at least in terms of uh uh the way it's being used in this genocide it really does seem to be like this reification of like the Renaissance, you know, like the beginnings of like, you know, like racial classification, you know,

and these like beginnings of, or inklings of settler, what would become settler colonialism and using all this science, right. And the sort of reasoning, you know, and this logic and all this information that right, and this sort of reasoning, you know, and this logic and all this information that they had amassed and would continue to amass through raping and pillaging, right, the rest of the world.

And now it's just become sort of reified in this, I mean, I don't even know what to call it because AI isn't really artificial intelligence at all, right? It's not really machine learning, you know. But I don't know. It just seems, seems again to it just i don't know kind of harking back to what we've been saying about technology being this new domain you know or silicon value this new domain of like um power and control as akin to like you know uh i guess nation states or religion before that you know it's interesting that you brought up the Renaissance.

Like, that is very true. And one of the most ironic things about that is that the Renaissance was, in the name itself, Renaissance. Like, they were bringing back, like, these older ideas from ancient times. Like, the Renaissance is when they rediscovered, like, you know, many of the writings of, like, Plato rediscovered like uh you know many of the writings of like plato and stuff like you know they had tried to fashion it is good they were

trying to fashion themselves off of um you know ancient systems of thought and and aesthetics and in the process wound up creating these new and not this is you know the renaissance isn't the reason that we created these new forms of control like you were saying like settler colonialism and racism and everything but it did occur in the same intellectual milieu it did occur in the same intellectual period and i guess it makes sense that like you see so much uh once again like you see so much like traditional uh fetish fetishization of like tradition trad life traditional forms like fetishization of all these uh like past uh the family all these like past like social arrangements at the same time that you see them in real time trying to develop like how to how to control people and

manage people in the 21st century like yeah i was thinking about like i know i've recently i know i have like reference such a strange thing that you say that it's like all the tech no utopian futurists are us are like socially trying to go back to yeah yes the 1950s or 40s or something yes and it just keeps going further and further back too yeah they just or to the 1860s yeah they would reupholster the past in chrome like they just want to cover it up in chrome and just slap some like lights and shit on it you know what i mean and say like okay this is cool but like women are slaves you know what i mean? And say, okay, this is cool, but women are slaves, you know what I mean? It is interesting.

Yeah, it does make you wonder about these larger trends throughout human history that racism was a new... When racism came off the shelves, when it came off the assembly lines... It came out of nothing. It was a truly innovative a new system of social control right but it required was like hell yeah y'all got it y'all did it y'all did it but it required them to look back into the past for uh you know various you know traditional or previous forms of us both aesthetics and like

cultural fetishizations and all these other things. And so it's this very interesting thing. I mean, it does prove that there is something called dialectics, obviously. But like, I guess where I was going with that is like, I know I keep referencing it, but like, I just keep thinking about that essay from mike davis like his last essay that he wrote and like he's just got this he's got this section in there about like how like the biden the democrats are even more lizard brain than uh he even uses that word they're even more lizard brain than like putin and his like apparatchiks like his sort of soothsayers and like he says like you can almost hear them sigh uh issue a sigh of relief once russia invaded ukraine

because it gave them a uh basically a template or a blueprint for like what the 21st century would look like because they're out of ideas and and if nuclear confrontation is the way to just smooth over all these problems i mean we can hearken back to that yeah i mean if you don't if you don't stand for anything especially the democratic party and i understand that like unpopular presidents or i mean conflict and war is always a way to uh you know um either uh boost ratings, become be seen as more favorable, you know, to have that cash flowing in, you know, but like, at the same time, though, I mean, Biden said it himself, right in the State of the Union, not not the most recent one, but I think last year, when he was talking about Israel and Ukraine, right. And it was almost as if he was speaking about these wars having given America purpose again.

Yeah. Like a reason to exist. Yeah. You know what I mean? And it was just like, God damn, dude. Like, I mean, I guess this is the same thing we see reproduced in Israel. Right. Is that I mean, the nature and the function of its state is like you have to. It's a siege mentality. Right. You have to have an enemy. You have to wage war or else. I mean, what are the reasons do you have to like have an enemy you have to wage war or else i mean what other reason do you have for existed right you know you don't if you don't have i mean if the democratic party doesn't have any long-term ideological projects then they can in a sort of mirror sort of way as opposed to like putin i guess or i mean trump for example right you don't have to stand for anything if you could just say you're opposed to trump right because you're just opposed for everything that he stands for you know right even though there's not that much daylight and i'm sorry to say it again there's not much that

much daylight between these motherfuckers you know no well it's what's your thoughts on biden calling for a ceasefire last night like for the first time i didn't even hear i didn't i missed that last night when people were sleeping to some shit yeah while y'all was a snooze in your bed biden's called for a ceasefire yeah what is it like a is it a six-week ceasefire now well i mean you know i guess he did that the one time he's like you know i've i've negotiated an 11-hour ceasefire. You know, that's going to save upwards of 2.6 lives. Mostly Israeli. Mostly Israelis, unless they kill each other. Right, right.

So now he's, I guess, they've looked at the numbers and they saw, like, I think it was Wisconsin or somewhere, one of the primaries, where it was like, the uncommitted anti-genocide vote has now eclipsed the margin of victory for... You know what I mean? And so now they're like, oh, shit. We are actually losing to this immaterial candidate, the anti-genocide ghost you know that's how unpopular we are and so now you know of course he's you know saying like the unspoken caveats you know like there's no like i want an end to this you know or anything like that but interesting too

that the day before trump said had said like he's calling for israel to wrap this shit up yeah yeah you know what i mean so like biden was getting outflanked by uh like another genocidal madman on this issue getting outflanked by alex jones and trump and like i mean look at the end of the day i mean what this means is that like he's losing to the want for peace, right? Like, that's all it is, right? Like, it's not losing to, like, you know, like, these Hamas supporters or, like, the crazy left. When I went to D.C., man, I'm sure that those 500,000 people that were there, I'm sure a lot of those people voted for Biden and are going to vote for him again, you know? Yeah.

But, like, essentially, you're losing to people like demanding this to stop you know yeah i mean that's it you're losing to just the base human need to feel comfort and not you know what we feel now which is this ambient anxiety right where you know uh so much is going on in the world and so much has radically shifted that like if like an alarm in my house starts beeping, my body interprets it as like I'm getting like carpet bombed. You know what I mean? I mean, dude, like a car, somebody was starting up their car outside and I don't know if the engine was fucked up. And I like my heart jumped, man. I was like, am I getting shot at?

Some shit. What the fuck is going on, dude? Because I've just been frayed. My nerves have been frayed for the past fucking... And I'm saying this as an American, obviously. For years, really. I'm just saying this is a cumulative thing. This is even before.

This is just a cumulative thing for the past couple of years. Well, okay. All right. That's a good pivot point because I need to... We need to talk about this week because I have to say that this week will probably go down in the history of both the election and in this quote unquote war, which is more of a genocide than a war. But this week will go down as the week that I think that the, basically, the Democratic electorate basically turned on Biden. There will be, I think, I think this will be seen as the kind of pivot point. And before I get into that, I just kind of want to tie a bow on a previous conversation.

And I want to carry it over into this next part of the conversation. The reason these fossil fuel executives are talking about AI as a boon for AI is because AI has to have, for it to work, it has to have reliable electricity source. It is a machine, so it has to have energy put into it. Like us, we have to have food. The machine has to have electricity. And what is the thing we've heard about fossil fuels for years now? If you've lived in eastern Kentucky, it's that fossil fuels are a reliable source of energy as opposed to solar and wind, which they're not reliable in the way that fossil fuels are. I mean, it's not like the sun is shining every day. It's not like the wind is just blowing and shit.

You know what I mean? It's not like the shit is just blowing his shit you know what i mean it's not like this shit is just just a natural abundant resource but okay what fossil fuels do and you read that andreas maum book fossil capital but what fossil fuels do is they basically inject a kind of anabolic steroid into the system and let it extract as much surplus as it possibly can while everything else decays around it uh i mean fossil fuels are an amazing innovation for capitalism for that reason they allow us to like transcend our natural boundaries and allow us to transcend like uh the limitations of markets and finite resources and all these things i mean you could just make shit you could just make it's just the fact that you could just make shit yeah it gives you the fuel and energy to just make more shit oh i mean

not to get even more doomer about this but i read this article in the new york times this morning about like microplastics right like um so obviously microplastics are in everything and uh not not just us but the oceans and everything else and so they're trying to innovate new ways to recycle plastic like the previous way they would just um melt it basically and grind it into something new but like a lot of plastics have dyes and things in it that makes it hard to recycle so they're trying to come up with these new innovative technologies and they built a plant in ironton ohio called like pure cycle or something like that oh yeah like all these all these like um like l'oreal like you know makeup companies and all these other johnson and johnson johnson

procter and gamble like they have touted pure cycle as this like innovative way to like recycle plastics but apparently two things first of all there's so much fucking plastic on the planet that it is a drop in the bucket it's kind of like what we're talking about on the patreon uh like when it comes to uh like it's kind of like where we're talking about the patreon like when it comes to what we're talking about like geoengineering like the problems are so huge that like any attempts to like ameliorate it are just a drop it's like shaving it's like sculpting a mountain range you know yeah like it's just it's like i've seen that firsthand i've seen them give mountains a haircut this is true i mean i live close by with it's just

like you you eat yourself with just like a little pickaxe you know what i mean second of all they found that this plant had just been feeding virgin polyethylene like plastics into the thing to just basically con their investors to say that this innovative works so like dude it's there is no solution to any of these problems until you in capitalism so what you can do is you can inject the anabolic steroid into the system to extract as much more out of it and fossil fuels and ai will be that will be the way we get as much we wring blood from a turnip out of this i mean it's i don't mean i don't mean to i don't mean to like use an overused reference right oh the matrix but like i mean like sooner or later they're gonna be like how can we derive energy from the human body literally how can we turn people

nah fuck the battery thing they're gonna be like we're gonna just have people running on human-sized hamster wheels yeah we'll be blood bags to generate energy for the servers at the ai or they'll burn us alive for our carbon to power some dickhead and tassel loafers maserati i was just thinking here's what we need we need a here's what we need to do we need you know that's well you're talking about saying hack things but i'm getting ready to lay in the hackiest of hack but you know that scene in x-men where magneto doses the guy with iron in his blood and then pulls it out of him yeah yeah but the guy that's guarding his thing what if there was a plastic magneto they could just kill humanity by like pulling all the microplastics out of us and just like little holes ripped through us you know it would come out and all

the plastic from your body would be this it would be a silhouette of you a life-size silhouette yeah yeah that's how much that's how much plastic is in your body i bet it would feel good though you'd really it really will feel good before you write you know two seconds before you die obviously but you'd probably feel pretty good you'll do it a little bit slower do a little bit slower um like when you got you give blood but if you get like high iron and then you just feel like this kind of sense of oh i feel a lot you know except you die um okay so like yeah political solutions are off the table. Right. So like they'll use technological innovations and AI and everything else.

Um, and I just wanted to keep that in mind. Um, like this week, I think, like I said, will be kind of the week that it'll be sort of seen as people having some doubts. I mean, you've got, okay. So like what happened was Israel bombed an Iranian embassy complex in Damascus, first of all, and killed, I think, two or three generals and eight other diplomatic officials from Iran. Just like an act of war, just like bombing another fucking country. Yeah, 100%.

Just trying to provoke a confrontation at all costs. 100%, just trying to provoke a confrontation at all costs. I genuinely think that they want... I genuinely think that they really do want a war that'll draw the United States into it. Oh, no, absolutely. And basically get the U.S. to fight it for them. And the U.S. will. These fucking Israelis have the biggest...

They have the biggest fucking my uncle's in the mafia mentality. Like these little pussy boys that want to make you think they got an uncle that's a killer so you won't fuck with them or something like that. But get them out on your own and you can fucking give them a swirly and, you know, shut them up in a locker,

a bunch of fucking pussies. I swear to God. It's just a mentality that I'm so abrasive toward. Yeah. Getting somebody else to fight your battles all the time while you sit there and run your fucking cocksucker exactly exactly while you kill children while you kill children and act like you're the aggrieved one you fucking loser yeah the um so like i think that that's what they're trying to do um obviously

what i think what really got things moving in a different direction this week is israel murdered several aid workers from what is it world kitchen uh like international or something like that like yeah um so world central kitchen kitchen which is like run by this like celebrity chef in D.C. And I was like reading stuff because I don't know anything about this group. Like I think they were in East Kentucky during the flood, maybe a little bit like they I think they respond to like disaster zones and stuff like that. But like I didn't know anything about this guy that runs it. And like I was seeing people say that like he's a celebrity in D.C.

I think he's even on one of Biden's like advisory councils. And so like I think that's an awkward conversation. Right. Like I think that like Israel like OK, it's not even a question that Israel intentionally murdered these people. But like the like I think that they like triple tapped the fucking vehicles they were in. Like they it wasn't just it wasn't just the it wasn't just like a coincidence or an accident they intentionally like triple tapped these vehicles and these aid workers and we know this because they've been doing it for months right like journalists we

saw them we saw them do it with those uh not to cut you off terrence but i mean this is just scarred me i've been thinking about this since i've seen it those two boys right those two young boys right right and they just double tapped to i mean so we know that this is what they fucking do this is intentional this is not into people say indiscriminate no this is very discriminatory it's very discriminant yeah well and i think that the um the the thing is is like this has kind of made people reckon with like this is who the israelis are like they intentionally want to starve out the gazans like they don't want aid in at all uh they you know they raided another hospital last week which is um really insane that they managed to essentially, like,

I hate another hack thing, but gaslight everyone into believing that they didn't bomb that hospital back in November. But they're out of control, right? Like, they've been out of control. We've been saying it since day one. I think part of the reason why we were so um you know like maybe people called us alarmists or whatever back in october november part of the reason why is because like we know israel is absolutely unhinged and out of their nazis i mean dude like literally they've like killed or tried

to assassinate diplomats right yeah i mean like every fucking israeli pm has been a fucking psychopathic murderer i mean just if you just recently like going being unhinged apparently they set up like i don't even know if they're called kill zones i think it's an even more oh right insane word psychopathic word but killing anything that moves and i'm talking about when i say anything that moves dog i'm talking about fucking trees olive trees plants people's crops fucking birds cattle they're fucking just killing i mean this is psychopathic it's at this point you're not even just trying to kill these people these people you're trying to kill a way of life so that they can never fucking flourish there again man yeah no i mean you're exactly right i mean not even just a way of life so that they can never fucking flourish there again man yeah no i mean you're

exactly right i mean not even just a way of life but like humanity itself yes you know what i'm saying like they are 100 committed to the project of not just regional war but i would even say like world war basically i mean did you see that fucking tweet? That lady like, the red heifers have arrived in Israel. Yes. I thought of the show. I thought of Yawa when I saw that.

I was like, oh my God, dude. Boys. That put me in an indescribably bad place. I just raised it on a steady diet of that shit. You know what I mean I had someone in my comments because I posted it and I had someone in my comments like what it's just someone with some cows

and I was like you fucking moron you wasn't there you wasn't there you was not in any church in the early aughts pal take a lap red heifers do not occur naturally you have to freaking breed them that way like like like dude again again it's like it's like kind of early what we're talking about like what we've been talking about sort of this

using technology to reify these mythologies and justify shit you know what i'm saying to justify the not even the unconscionable but just likeologies and justify shit you know what i'm saying to justify the not even the unconscionable but just like the inhumane you know yeah it's i think the thing is is that people are are having to reckon with the fact that uh what we were all saying on october 8th and people were um not our fans our fans were for like 99 of them were on board with what we were saying but um large parts of the like punditry and even parts of the left saying oh the left's moral compass is broken blah blah blah what we know as soon as as soon as october 8th you know as soon as the fucking uh dust had settled, which was that, like, Israel is a genocidal war state. That they will stop at nothing to draw the United States into a regional war, basically, that allows them to expand even more territorially.

Because that's what they need. They need land. Which the united states will continue to defend right whether it does it directly or whether it does it through fucking like you know uh uh sending them weapons and arms and shit like that you know yeah hey the u.s is an opportunistic fake friend though too so maybe they'll read the tea leaves and be like well well dude this is that's what is the upside now that's a good point though tom because i think to me okay so there's a several there's several like data points here one is that like i

saw like even fucking like chris coons there was a condi rice staffer on like morning joe this week saying like what is going on why the fuck are biden why are they not conditioning aid to Israel? Why are they not doing anything? Okay, I'm so sick of hearing how upset President Biden is. The buck stops with him. If he wants to stop arm sales, if he wants to stop the bombs that are indiscriminately killing civilians, he

can. He has the power. We don't need him going and his aides going to reporters and talking all background about how upset they are. What happened yesterday is still going to happen. We don't need to be giving any more arms sales or money. It needs to stop. It needs to be conditional.

A Condi Rice staffer. That's insane. I'm saying that Israel needs to wrap this up. They need to wrap this shit up. I mean, it really does beg the question. I really do think that like like really what is going on like I know that like there are these questions that like I've asked this multiple times myself and and I keep landing on like oh well they're just racist they

are obviously there are just races but it doesn't make sense even like when you it doesn't make sense when you consider that even right-wingers are like okay israel is dictating this to the united states you know what i'm saying yes and like like we're not getting to kill these people in our terms here's the here's what it's like this is a very crude comparison i've made it before but i think seeing how things have progressed in the intervening months, it bears repeating. But it does mirror the kind of chokehold that the coal industry has on the state of Kentucky well past coal's glory days. Right. You know what I mean? that hires fewer people than even the University of Kentucky or obviously the healthcare industry

have such disproportionate sway when they're on the ropes? Is it just some sort of fealty out of decades and decades and decades and decades of relationship? Like, what is it? Is it just Joe Biden's sort of low imagination for corruption that he thinks that, like, well, you know, these people funded my 86 fucking, you know, senatorial campaign or whatever. So like, I'm going to let them, you know, murder people with impunity somewhere else.

Like, like, what is it exactly? Like, what is the sort of PR and thinking of it as a Western imperialist, not as a leftist for a second. What is the geopolitical PR upside of like continuing to give these fucking rabid dogs money and munitions and everything else. And cover and cover too. And the rhetorical cover and the moral cover. I mean, I know this is not right.

You know, this is not like a, this is more of a, an abstract sort of answer, I is not right you know this is not like a this is more of a an abstract sort of answer i guess but you know i really do think that indicting israel would be an indictment of the united states and i know i've said that before you know but i mean i feel like in order to even through as you were saying tom these decades the decades of relationships right that have been built but just the sort of i don't man, it's like that kind of that sinew, right? That not

even so much cultural, I guess it's historical, I guess. I guess it's in the way that both states exert dominance over captive populations, right? I mean, I'm just thinking about the Ghillie program, you know, I've talked about it before that officer exchange program between Georgia police officers and law enforcement in Israel. And like, I mean, one of the things that one of the officers has said, and this kind of echoes something that I've heard from, you know, idiots like John Fetterman, and not even just John Fetterman, but right wingers, too, is that Israel is like this great example of this kind of pluralistic, multiracial democracy, you know, I mean, they always say that's the democracy in the Middle East. And it just feels like, well, I mean, I don't know. And I can't discount the racism, man. But it's just this idea that like,

we have this sort of European is-ish kind of you know what i'm saying state that's this oasis in this horde of brown people right yeah who are so culturally different from us and i know that's i know i don't know if that's such a conscious decision but it just feels like these these ties these these these abstract ties are so strong that i mean it's trying to like it's trying to shake off dust. You know what I mean? They're incapable of doing that, you know? Right.

I don't know if y'all read that New Yorker, Isaac Chotner interview with that guy. His name was like Aaron David Morris or some shit. I don't know. You got three first names? Yeah. Aaron David Miller. He is a former State Department official who played a role in Middle East peace negotiations,

most notably at the end of the Clinton administration. Did y'all read that? It was honestly, I thought it was one of the most fascinating ones so far. Is this fairly recent or the? It just came out this week. Okay. Yeah, Chotner's been on fire with these stories.

Well, this one was really fascinating because like you can see it like both of these guys like chotner is like what is going on like seriously like you can see it in the minds of liberals like what is happening here like it's even too much for them to stomach i think that like they you know we very morbidly speculated on like what number would be appropriate uh for retaliation for october 7th and it turns out that it is about 30 000 uh that's the number where they're like okay i can't stomach it we know intellectually we far outpaced that but like 30 000 is where they've stopped counting exactly so they count it's so weird that they budgeted that into this conflict.

We can give up 30,000 innocent lives before we really start to take a nosedive on this from a public relations perspective. Yeah, and it's interesting because, like, obviously what motivates that is racism, but also a big part of it is this almost sort of, like, neoconservative idea that, and I think this is, I think genuinely think this is why like Condi Rice staffers are also like, what is going on here? Because the neoconservative idea is that like we will do war on your population, but we'll lift them up with democracy and aid and that kind of stuff right like that's ultra imperialism like being

able to rebuild a society after you've like you know violently decimated it um i think that there's no rhetorical counterbalance in this yeah like in that same one there is this vacuum at the heart of the liberal project here and i think it it gets at what Mike Davis was saying in that article, which is that if the liberals don't have an answer, and I'm genuinely starting to think that if you look back at their behavior over the last eight years, if they don't have an answer to this, it does push them into a position that is even more genocidal than the neoconservatives were during the

Bush years. Because here's the thing. And it kind of occurred to me when I saw Hillary Clinton on Fallon being like, just get over yourselves. What did she say? Did y'all see that? She said there are only two choices. There are two choices, so just get over yourself.

And Jimmy Fallon's like, What do you say to voters who are upset that those are the two choices? Get over yourself. Those are the two choices, so just get over yourself. And Jimmy Fallon's like, what? What do you say to voters who are upset that those are the two choices? Get over yourself. Those are the two choices. Yeah, I love that. And, you know. You don't need to hate that guy. Yo, dog, dog, that guy needs to be fucking.

I fucking hate that motherfucker. Every time I see his face, yo, I just imagined it behind, like, a brick wall or something like that, man. Like, again, cask of Amontillado, this motherfucker, dude. Seriously, yo. I fucking hate that motherfucker. because this is weird. I'm going to try to thread this here, but like in 2016, I don't know if this is true for you guys, but me personally, I had friends,

working class friends. These aren't like middle class professionals or anything like that, but also them too. But I also had working class friends who had been apolitical their entire lives, who had shown no interest in politics, get into Bernie. And that carried over to 2020. And that was my main reason for being into Bernie. Because it's like, okay, I'm not going to try to point out all the contradictions and discrepancies here.

If this is politicizing people who my entire life have just never been into this like yeah and is kind of introducing a class consciousness towards something called socialism then that's a it's a net positive that's a net positive that's a thing exactly obviously when that got defeated in 2016 uh and 2020 like i've seen those people since then i've seen them completely depoliticized once again like they're just not even interested in politics once again um if you look at the um if you look at the behavior of the democrats from that moment it would bolster the idea that they are rudderless that they have no fucking clue what they're doing obviously like putting

hillary clinton up there as the candidate against trump was someone who is so supremely unlikable like in that clip like just learned nothing obviously with the fallon appearance yeah like who's you're doing the one thing people can't stand about you and that is this reductive scolding yeah i mean it's just like her hubris just makes it her incapable of of just seeing why anybody you know just seeing other points of view you know what i mean yeah or just acknowledging that other people might not like you for that reason you know yeah and i think that like the the thing is is the history of the democratic party is like very complicated um at various times it has tried to recuperate and and absorb the working class energy of social movement and and activism and stuff but in a carefully calibrated way in a carefully calibrated

way in a piece in a piecemeal way right yeah i think if it was trying to do that, it would have let Bernie go ahead and basically be the nominee in 2016 and reconcile some of these issues that it knows it's weak on. However, it did take a more or less, I'll just say it, black-pilled route. They took a doomer route in 2016. They did. In 2020, they kind of tried to reconcile it. They had to because of historical contingencies and i'm talking about pandemic the covid pandemic they had to do something and what they tried was this very weird maneuver between like bernie liberalism what they call

biodynamics and almost a kind of like neoconservatism um but like very nihilistic like imperial policy right um and i think that in trying to maneuver that trying to pull that maneuver off they have absolutely like just abdicated any responsibility towards uh trying to uh intervene in any meaningful way politically or whatever but i wanted to read you guys this thing i don't know if y'all saw this i was my jaw dropped when i read this my fucking jaw dropped there was a there was a profile in the washington post about biden's like campaign uh manager did y'all did y'all see this she's uh she's cesar chavez's granddaughter oh my god this is any whose campaign manager biden's buttons yeah

doesn't he doesn't he have uh uh doesn't biden also have a bust of cesar chavez in his office i think he does that's one of the first things that they noted which is why people were like oh he's gonna be the best labor president ever. You know, well, the strongest labor president since FDR, whatever. Yeah. Her name is Julie Chavez Rodriguez. The profile catches up with her at an event called Latinos con Biden Harris. Latinos con Biden Harris.

I'm sorry. They just have two names that whatever man it just doesn't sound exciting at all if they were more exciting last names okay you know what i mean i feel like i'm going to like an event with my grandparents or something okay fine like even tim kaine was a little more because at least the guy spoke spanish Yeah, exactly. And his name is spelled with a K-A-I-N. Kaine. I'm like, okay, cool. Okay, so it catches up with your... Sounds like one of those dishes with a racist origin.

Black beans and rice is like Cristiano C. Moros. And now like Moors and Christians. It's like the menu that they give to people who don't speak Spanish. They give the whitest people ever. They give you the bite of the Irish menu. I'll have the polo con queso. You know, that kind of thing. Yeah.

That shit come dry as fuck. Yeah, yeah. It's not even that good. It's like a Gringo meal. A kid Gringo Bill. Okay. You know, she's... There are a lot of things you can, like, pull from this article.

You know, again, I think at multiple times, I was kind of, like, just astonished. Like, my fucking jaw was on the floor at multiple points. But, you know, it talks about, like, it interviews a whole bunch of different, like, Democratic strategists about, like, the upcoming election. And they're, like, talking about Julie Chavez Rodriguez, right?

And like, okay, so this is one quote that she says, in some of the organizing that I've done, right, they folks had more money than we did. Fortunately, we have way more money than the Republicans right now, she said, cracking up a bit and adding, I can't help but laugh. So like they're- Oh my God. Oh my God.

Oh, they're so boned. Dude's over it's over yo let me tell you i would tell you how i know this they're so boned this is like when uh what's the union guy name that was running burning shit roca yeah uh yeah what's his name i can't remember his first name but he was like he got out there and said i think we're gonna win 48 out of 50 contests like talking about the primaries and then south carolina was like the next week and it just all folded like a house of cards yeah i mean in in fairness the screw job was in right right but still the hubris that level comes before the fall i know it when i see it well i mean i mean i don't know man maybe i'm maybe i'm wrong about this but um i mean we i guess i could look it up but i feel like hillary clinton had more money than Trump, right?

I just feel like her apparatus, right? Like, I mean, I don't know how much more, you know? I might be wrong about that. But I just feel like they, if anything, they maybe outspent, you know, her. She outspent her opponent. She still fucking lost. You know what I mean? There was an article in the New York Times this week about how, like, Trump like trump is draining the gop to like cover all of his legal costs and stuff

he's like he's breaking him upside down and shaking him shaking him over the scotch just milking the otters of the of the gop which is like once again it's just like man like agent of chaos shit like you know you would think the Democrats would love this guy. He's fucking... But no, the Democrats actually need... It's like Nancy Pelosi said, we need a strong GOP or whatever. Yeah, she said the quiet part all up. Yeah, they need the Republicans.

This is why I've been saying for a month now, there's no difference between them in the sense that structurally they need each other. Anyways, I want to point to this. My jaw was on the floor when i read this part okay um uh so okay they're interviewing a democratic strategist about julie chavez rodriguez and about her job okay they said no matter what i don't think they're gonna they're they're saying this in the event that biden loses okay all right so it's already it's already this is already couching defeat like like the liberals are just they just have a stench of defeat around them i've just noticed this recently they're fucking sorry losers listen listen to this no matter what i don't think people are gonna blame julie like people blame Robbie Mook for Hillary. Because Hillary was supposed to win this, said Morgan.

We all know this is a jump ball. In 2016, we were reading Nate Silver, and we weren't worried at all. When we woke up, we realized we've never been to Wisconsin. We've never been to Michigan. And then all the Monday morning quarterbacks are out. That won't be the case for Julie because we all are prepared to lose. Hold on. Hold on. to lose. Hold on. Hold on.

Hold on. So you're telling me they're exhibiting that kind of hubris while acknowledging there's a chance that they eat shit? And I'm not talking about a small chance. I'm talking about a 50-50 ball. I'm talking about losing to the random character generator of a candidate. You know what I mean? They're losing to the avatar-less creative character on NBA Live. You know what I mean?

Dude, also, I'm sorry, but any campaign, any side, any whatever yo any party that speaks with an air of defeat like that like like what do you mean like uh hillary what did she say hillary was prepared to win or something like that she was supposed to win she was supposed to win isn't every fucking campaign isn't that what you're going if you go with that energy with every fucking campaign that we are supposed to win that we we are supposed to be doing this, and that we might have a mandate to possibly win. Not this just like, actually, maybe. I don't know. You're right.

You're exactly right. But not if what is going on, which, again, is like why it should not be leftist concern to try to get this guy reelected. And I'll tell you why. Because there is something happening in the heart of liberalism. It is not able to reproduce the way it once did. Ideologically, it is like Mike Davis said, it's lizard brain.

And Mike Davis knew a thing or two about lizards. Didn't he? He's a herpetologist what a blown opportunity to ask him about that um it is lizard brain though in the sense that the world we are entering liberalism has no answer for it and and and that is why it is just adopting a more genocidal position like if liberalism has no this is the thing i saw there's a huge debate this week all That is why it is just adopting a more genocidal position. Like if liberalism has this is the thing I saw. There's a huge debate this week.

All right. Between like Corey Robin and Rick Pearlstein. Two writers I like. There was I mean, you know, there's a big debate over like whether Trump is fascist, etc. Like the classic debate. The classic debate. The classic debate. As if it fucking matters, whatever. And then this guy who's a fucking moron, Scott Lemieux, jumped in there and said that,

well, there needs to be a popular front between the left and liberals because leftists need to defend liberalism basically from the pack scott taking me yeah it's like it's like okay the thing is is like there's nothing we could do even if we wanted to do that even if that was like a strategically good thing even if there was a we that could enact some sort of leverage even if there there was a left. I don't know what the fuck that means. Even if it was an organized left. That's the way I should put it.

Even if we wanted to, it wouldn't make sense because liberalism has no answer for the conditions we are seeing now. And Gaza basically proved that. The best they can do is like Mike Davis said, the best they can do is like like mike davis said the best they can do is just hope that we go into nuclear armed confrontation because if the world we are inheriting is more prisons and more walls how do you think liberals are going to respond to that when they aren't willing to uh

when they aren't willing to use the working class the energy from the working class to like make the world better how do you think they're going to respond to that it is going to be it more openly in my in my opinion in some ways it's going to be even more openly genocidal than what the republicans can put forward because the republicans are kind of like like we've said before they're cowards ultimately um and they are also i think they are also just as incoherent and confused but um maybe like institutionally like they have they're more in lockstep more in lockstep right lockstep right right i mean no go ahead i was just gonna say whereas i think that like the god's Gaza thing is kind of, like, ripping apart a lot of those institutional binds on the liberal left.

Anyways, go ahead. No, no, no. I was just going to say, man, you know, I think I mentioned it earlier and I mentioned it before. It's like, they really do see Israel. And when I say they, I guess I'm talking about, like, the liberal establishment because apparently even some of the punditry, right? And definitely a lot of like their base, you know, are like, what the fuck is going on here? But I think they like it's twofold because one, I think they do still kind of believe that bullshit

or they have to believe that bullshit about Israel being this multiracial, pluralistic democracy. But they're also very aware that it is a society of walls. It is a society, right, is a society right um that uh that oppresses a captive populace you know and i think that you're right i think that's what i mean if their response to gaza their lack of a response to their nihilism nihilism over gaza says anything it says to me it speaks about their designs for the future right and this is the kind of violence that they're okay everyday violence that they are okay with because like you said they don't have any ideas they have nothing left in the tank

you know i'm so astonished at how bad a strategy it is to get out here once again and rile everybody up on the most important election of our lifetime and then you get to talking to some jaunty English journalist from the FT, and then you just say, eh, well, you know, we might win, we might lose. Like, how are you trying to, like, you're not doing a very, you're not inspiring a lot of confidence in me to win me to your point of view that this is existential.

When you're simultaneously getting into the British media and saying, oh, well, you know, it really, you know, we could win, we could lose, and whatever. You know what, Tom? That is so fucking insulting. Dude, the thing is, is liberalism has always been a delicate balance of trying to contain capitalism. And if you are entering a world where, like we established at the top of the program, if they are squeezing blood from a stone, in terms of political economy, destroying the working class

while building these absolutely hubristic technological innovations that, again, rival the Tower of Babel, because there's no frontiers left no markets left if they are trying like i said basically throw all of us into the furnace to squeeze that last bit of surplus out of of capitalism because capitalism that's what capitalism has done it's sucked all the fucking surplus out of out of the world out of the natural world out of our natural bodies like if there's no if there's none left how do liberals deal with that but in my opinion bernie offered the most uh 21st century reasonable uh uh uh option and and they killed it because of the possibilities it might unleash that's the thing

that's the thing about like historical contingency like it's it it is bound up with both curtailment of social movement and also in you know all kinds of infinite possibilities that's what bernie represented it had to be destroyed and so they that aside. And what they've gone with is a totally nihilistic approach to this. And they are lizard-brained. They have no answer. And I think that this is why when you read the New Yorker and Isaac Chotner and this Aaron David Miller guy are like, what is going on here? Both of them at multiple points in this interview are just like, what's happening? What's happening?

They can't see it because they are also within that like formation within the political formation yeah yeah you know what i was thinking man i've never seen a bunch of uh more haunted motherfuckers than the democrats you know because like i'm just thinking like they're haunted by like that uh that kind of kennedy black and blue coalition, right? Like, you know, the black working class and blue collar workers, right? Yeah. They're haunted by the civil rights movement, right? They're haunted by all the gains that were made, you know, during all of these different social movements, right? And, of course, they're haunted by, like, you know, like the Bernie kind of left, you know.

And because of that, like because I guess this project of this liberal project of really not even necessarily what to do about inequality or anything like that or racism. But I guess what to do with the self as a political program, what to do with the individual. Right. program what to do with the individual right and now that that that is kind of like petered out i mean like you say you're seeing this incredibly nihilistic i mean i just i just can't i just can't watch these uh i sometimes i do watch them but these these uh interviews that they do with like the state department officials and the biden the biden staff i had to stop watching dude it's just so cynical and nihilistic by the way they refused the state department refused to do one this week after those aid workers were killed they realized not even they could fucking oh they what do you say what do you i mean and it's just what do you mean what do you say after that right how many times

can you send somebody up there to continue to deflect and lie and, you know, fucking ring crocodile tears, you know? I don't know, man. I think the thing is, is that just to put a fine point on it, and this is really kind of the thing, the political economy of the 21st century,

you know, reaming as much fossil fuels from the earth as humanly possible. Like I said, building these insanely hubristic and and technologically advanced uh systems of of machine learning and everything um require walls they require walls and they require genocide this is the thing like the political economy the way we extract profit the the way we distribute resources and funnel profit upwards requires segmentation of the geography, the political geography, which requires walls and requires extermination. And I think that like that's why like saying Trump is a fascist.

He's going to kill us all. It just, it misses the point. Like, uh, it will he in democracy as we know it, like it may be who, who the fuck knows.

All of that is besides the point. What is really at work here is, is capitalism. It's political economy. These, these like political wind window dressing we put on it is like how we negotiate the distance between ourselves and the contradictions. And what we are finding is that like I said, liberalism doesn't really have a foothold in a world like that. It just morphs into actual fascism.

Or in a world for that matter. Or in a world. It just morphs into actual fascism. And that's the interesting thing here, is that, like, for so long, we thought that the fascist threat would come from the right, and it is. The two are in sort of, like,

dialectical motion with each other, but the face of it becomes liberal, so the ones that are left holding the bag. How you articulate something outside of that, like, to the left of that, that's actually, like, subversive and counter-systemic is systemic is like you know i don't think it's going to be answered tomorrow like tune in next time to find out yeah but you know tune in next week you know i was thinking um

i was thinking right when we were about to close i was thinking um you know i was reading this uh arcologies of the future uh book by uh frederick james by Frederick Jameson, where he goes through this sort of critical sort of deconstruction or exploration of utopia. And it's very dense. But one thing I did manage to glean from that was he talks about utopia as a boundary, you know. And, you know, we know we talk about utopias as dystopias right um you know the hidden dystopia in the utopia right but yeah i don't know i think for the liberal project especially i mean i guess you could say any political project but especially the liberal project which has has said that we've reconciled what to do with the individual what to do with the self

right the self's relationship to the state the individual right and it is all about creating boundaries right this utopia right is all about creating walls right because at the same in the same breath that they talk about um equality of opportunity right that's the famous liberal thing right if everyone gets the opportunity right already built into the system and they're very aware of our boundaries and walls and things that prevent people from even achieving having those opportunities right i mean i'm just talking about one one example i mean just i mean racial discrimination to the level of housing right to where your school what children your school go to what health care is available to you right and liberals somehow have said that well we are attempting to solve these problems right you know

but not only i mean i don't i know people know all this but not only do they fall short doing so but it feels like that heading into the future that they're willing that they're willing to entrench these divisions you know what i mean that they're willing to set up these boundaries because it's just easier that way you know yeah it's easier than dealing with a constituency that includes people of color and young people and women and people with all these disparate interests, you know? I wanted to read this thing on that note from that article, from that interview with Chotner. This fucking diplomat, this guy, who again worked in the Clinton administration, he said, when I left the State Department, Colin Powell gave me two pieces of advice.

Number one, don't ever try to come back. I took that advice. Second, don't ever try to look back. And I rejected that. I spent the past two decades trying to figure out why we failed, when we failed. And the one overriding lesson is that we persisted in seeing the world the way we

wanted it to be rather than the way it is and it's like i i can see that like it makes total sense like that like if that's the way they engaged with the world if that's the way they engaged with like deteriorating conditions and everything like they they are almost a kind of like historical remnant they're almost a kind of like uh vestigial organ or something that like doesn't make sense i just want to point out that you know you know we talk about like uh the democrats and their devolution over the past whatever years i've been reading mike davis's prisoners of the american dream and he's got a very good point in there which is that reaganomics started in 1978 when Carter was still president. Like these two parties have needed each other to kind of like, you know, grease the skids on the last like 40 years of just, you know, working class destruction and public infrastructure destruction and all these other things they've needed each

other and i don't know i just um you you you can see that the democrats have run up against that reality and they can't openly admit it which is why they both have the most insane hubris you've ever seen going into an election and also the upfront admission that well we're probably gonna lose yo that really does that just really does embody the liberal ethos right that really does embody the liberal ethos because it kind of i don't know man i also feel like it embodies too like i don't know like people like will say like what do you mean they want to win i don't think that they want to win i think that that's a reflection of an attitude that you don't want to win not that you're purposefully trying to lose but that you've already accepted defeat and like and victory is precluded so the only thing

that you could do is just lay it out and let it happen you know let the inevitable happen i almost think yeah i almost think it's like um in some ways the image that comes to mind is uh in the beginning of infinite jest i'm going to reference infinite jest here that character uh with a hilarious name erdady erdady when he's like um he has you know he's addicted to marijuana and he's like he's got like marijuana on the way to the house but he's waiting in his apartment on the way to his apartment but he's like also trying to like set up his apartment for the perfect way to like do marijuana and so like when the doorbell actually rings for the marijuana he just is frozen and cannot move. And he wants to move in both directions, but he is addicted to the whole process of being addicted.

Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that's kind of what the Democrats are doing here. They don't, there's no way to move. They're chasing, to some degree, as you've talked about before. They're chasing great laws, and that's the thing. It's the only reason that i can come up with that you would feel that elated and that yes pressure that just such lack of pressure while simultaneously scaring the electorate into thinking that if trump gets

elected we're all going into the oven tomorrow it's it's total fear and paranoia based it's like i read that white rural rage book that book and i was telling tom the other day like i feel like every book uh or if you want to check it out it's just called white rural rage by like these guys schaller and waldman maybe even fuck knows who these guys are i was telling guy i was telling tom the other day like that book like every word in that book should be in quotations there is nothing solid in that book nothing is defined

everything is a dog whistle it is a product of pure fear and paranoia which I take to be distilled liberalism at this moment everything is fear, everything is paranoia everything is of insurmountable there like there's no hope to be found but we have to we have to save american democracy but we can't we're gonna lose it's just

like total loss chasing addict behavior it really is it really is schizophrenic man and i mean i don't know i feel like if you really want to know what democrats think what liberals think the establishment thinks you just look at what they say to journalists right because like this week as you as you mentioned they're speaking out of one side of their mouth to us the electorate right but they're very upfront about being like we're pretty much gonna lose you know so so if so i mean like how is that incumbent upon me to defeat democracy if you don't even have you know what i mean if you don't even have faith in you you don't have faith in your old project you don't mean yeah why the fuck would i have faith in your project then and also it's also like two to assuage the concerns

of one person like oh they're not going to do that to julie because you know we might lose and like you know but like hillary was not supposed to lose. It's like, so what that signals to me is that y'all are getting progressively weaker because that bolsters your fundraising apparatus, right? Like when, when,

when you eat shit and you create new bogeyman, that is good for business. And what is, what, what is the trend you just outlined? The same one we just talked about in AI? The same one we just talked about in fossil fuels? Ringing blood from a stone because everything is over.

There's no future. We've arrived at the end. We're done. It's Jover. Actually, man, maybe that, I think this is too simplistic, right? Actually, actually, man, maybe that, I think this is too simplistic, right? But maybe that does like, you know, that does explain not only their intransigence on Israel, right? But, I mean, just this whole train wreck of the Biden presidency is consulting, right?

The consultant class needs money, man. They need to keep getting paid. You know what I mean? Because there is nothing anymore. So what we're doing is we're mining the immaterial. That's what it is. It's like that across the board, like we were saying, with political economy in general.

Honestly, it was pilloried at the time, but there is an article from Dylan Riley and Robert Brenner was pilloried at the time uh but there is an article from this is named dylan riley and robert brinner about like what they what they see to be a kind of like new regime of accumulation at work within capitalism they call like political capitalism i think people like made fun of it because of that term but if you read it i think they were actually just saying like we don't have anything else to call this so like we're just gonna call it political capitalism and what they were talking about was like the parties use various political

constituencies to inject more uh capital into uh various like market schemes so like for example like the aca was like a perfect example it's like well we aren't going to actually make people's lives better we're not going to actually provide them with health care plans. We're just going to actually try to squeeze as much surplus out of this as possible. I mean, I'm dealing with this right now. My fucking health premium is $400 fucking dollars a month, man. It's like, why do I even need this shit? And then I go read one of these books about how people in the heartland are racist because they won't sign up for aca for it's like dude i'm gonna fucking lose my god damn

mind i want to tell you something like they they better not catch what's the dudes that wrote white rural rage schwarzer waltman yeah waltman and whatever. Bro. Yeah. Don't catch me on the wrong day, please. You gonna get some white rural rage from Thompson? I'm gonna show you white rural rage, by God. You get a first-hand account? Yeah, I'll put hands on you. Yeah, that sounds like white rural rage.

You can take this anecdote to the bank, motherfucker. All right, yeah. Let me expand the metaphor for you give you some sensory details well and that's why they have to write these books because they need a scapegoat it's a classic fascist maneuver if it's not clear to you by this point the liberal i mean i know it was a hack book written by that jonah weiner fucking moron like 15 years ago but he was he was wrong um but it is true that the liberals have adopted a fascist framework and cosmology of the world it's why they're writing books now

about how everyone in royal america is insane and reactionary and basically needs to be rounded up and exterminated. There's no distinction of class in that entire book. They don't once mention the working class or anything like that. It is pure paranoia and fear. And I searched these guys' Twitter pages for their comments on Putin and Russia. And of course, it's all the most conspiratorial, insane shit which you know is insane because they have the nerve to say that people in rural america are even more amenable or uh even more likely to adopt conspiratorial thinking than anyone else it's like i'm saying they have adopted a fascist framework for this stuff they really have it's a

dot it's developing in real time in in this going back to that cory robin uh rick perlstein debate it's like you can kind of make the argument that biden might actually be more of a fascist than trump first of all let's just start with the genocide there's the genocide yeah there's also a guy who's in office currently doing a genocide yeah there's also the border which they're talking about doing uh even more right-wing authoritarian version of clamping down at the border than has ever been seen that's their own words and then they've done something that not even trump did they tried to develop a fascist aesthetic the dark brandon thing yes you know what i'm saying like yes yes like it's i mean of course they're they're both like fascists or whatever

they're both like sure sure sure authoritarians dark brandon was doing like good things that people like trap though like when like like when he was cooking on forgiving student loans like oh this is dark yeah this is dark brandon yeah yo you know you know how like the right you know how the right uh uh is always thinking like oh the left uh you know uh especially i've got this as like, you know, as a black communist, but like, oh, you want to enslave white people. They want to enslave. They want to they want to they want to they want to enslave like white women and shit. It's like, no, dude, the liberals are going to put white slaves on the moon. You know what I mean?

The liberals are going to round everybody up in rural America and ship them to Mars. You know what I'm saying? It's not going to be the left that's going to do that shit, yo. Like, seriously. Well, that's what's so hollow about the popular front thing. It's like, why the fuck would I ally with fascists to stop a fascist from being in the White House? What are you talking about? Also, too, I mean, this is a point that we've made before, but I mean, the Democrats, liberalism is—

liberalism, they say it's about the Democratic Party, but I think i mean the the democrats liberalism is the liberalism they say it's about the democrat democratic party but i think you say it's about liberalism at large is that it's there to frustrate any attempt right of the left right i mean the democratic party is the graveyard of social movements they want it they want us to die right why would i why would i go there you know what i mean and tried why would i try to organize and find common ground with these people i mean not even find common ground because for them that's already precluded right i mean we've seen this already in the way that they've discarded the left right post bernie not even the left but anybody who is against genocide you know what i mean like they talk about like these these people

uh these uh these people who are going to uh pro going to pro Palestine rallies as if they're all communists, you know, as if they're all Marxists. And it's like, no, dude, these are people that are willing to vote for you.

This is why you're having a fucking problem with the uncommitted vote. Right. Even the fucking pod save America guys are like, um, very critical of, you know, very much like what is going on here. This is what I'm saying.

Like this week, I just feel like the flood, they have been critical of him for a while. Sure i feel like this week the floodgates kind of opened on this like where you've even got like fucking chris coons and people like richard haas and all these people saying like well maybe we should start talking about conditioning aid to israel here's the thing biden will never mark my fucking words april 5th biden will never fucking condition aid to israel it's not happening i hope i'm wrong i hope that you i'm wrong too i hope you can point back to this and say like oh you're a

fucking dumbass he would be wise to do so certainly he would be wise he doesn't at his own peril but he probably won't though and so what is that like what does that do to this constituency going into the election you know what i'm saying like is it possible that like the liberals have become the right wing and the conservatives have become some sort of like weird third thing third party almost you know what i'm saying like the conservatives have become some like just like out in the wilderness just like conspiracy addled like completely paranoid i don't know man it's just no no man i mean like i don't know, man. It's just. No, no, man. I mean, like, I don't know, dude.

I feel like this has been, like, a rightward creep. But, I don't know. This election, it really does feel. I mean, I don't know. I'm just. I remember this conversation I had with this guy. I saw this bar. And he kept telling me, like, what?

So, you're going to help Trump? You're going to help Trump win? And I'm just like, all right. Where are we going to get to it where it's just the Republican running on the Democratic ticket you know what I mean like is it gonna get to a point where the parties are just gonna what is it called where they read where they uh they realign or something like that you know what I mean like yeah I like I don't know man the thing about American capitalism again I recommend prisoners of the american dream the thing about american capitalism is the way it was configured it had to have two bourgeois parties and it is entirely possible uh i mean we've gone through several different phases of capitalism like there was like competitive

capitalism of the 1800s taylorism of the early 1900s fordism now neoliberalism it's entirely possible that what comes after neoliberalism does require an obliteration of the two party thing and that you have to have some sort of like melding or realignment that just makes you know you fuse it to like one candidate they're just gonna put them into a machine like the fly or some shit

yeah well what that needs to happen is like in college sports where kids get in the transfer portal shop around for new school we need to put where kids get in the transfer portal. You got to shop around for new school. We need to put like some Republicans in the transfer portal, put some Democrats in the transfer portal. Yeah, give them NIL deals. I mean, it's weird because like the conflict has now become between these two bourgeois parties. It has become this weird like vulgarized um conflict between urban and rural america like it hints at a political geography but like the yeah the underlying social bases don't really make a lot

of sense yeah and it also does geographically i guess north south east west right but that's not even even those aren't really clearly delineated you know right yeah i mean it's more like i mean i guess this is all american politics it's like a vibes based thing right to keep that's exactly right to keep malik well fed you know what i mean you gotta keep that's the thing wow oh man all right well we're at an hour and a half um so i mean we could continue riffing on this but i think we'll save it for the patreon if you would like to go support us on Patreon, please go. P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash Trillbilly Workers Party. And we would love to have your support over there.

A lot of good content. We referenced the past episode on this episode. So if you want to know what we're talking about, you're going to have to go over there and sign up. You're just going to have to go cough it up pal yeah otherwise it'll continue to eat at you yeah I'd be like what the fuck was that I need the missing puzzle piece you wake up 3am my god I have to see what

Bob Dylan presidency would be like excuse me alright gang well thanks for listening I'll put the Patreon link in the comments Any final Comments before we go Just Is it spring has it been spring

Enjoy Solar eclipse coming up In a few days They're saying it'll be the rapture so oh hell yeah i hope so i hope the aliens please i hope when i hope when the when the uh when the uh the the sun reclaims the sky i hope that uh certain one person specifically is gone like richard hanania but i hope a couple thousand people are gone baby well richard hanania is uh christian so he's he's going to go on to his home

in glory and inherit the kingdom i'm sure yeah uh i've never been more of anything more certain of than richard hannany will get into heaven well tom it's not it's not the real rapture so it's a it's a it's a guys it's actually a it's an extraterrestrial rapture so richard hannany is not not going to heaven i don't know where he's going. My hunch is not heaven. A couple billion light years away from here. You know what? If they slaughter the red heifers and Christ does come back, he's got a lot

of explaining to do. He does. I understand you're the king of kings, but I need you to come over and take a knee and just lay this out for me. Tell me how this works. Me, personally, I mean... the king of kings but i need you to come and take a knee and just lay this out for me well he's not so what i don't me personally i mean i don't know about you but i'm trying to get a job with the christ administration christ because he's gonna have his work cut out for him and so like if he comes back like there's some low-level bureaucratic positions for us is all i'm saying like we might get in there lord did i not did i not serve you dutifully for at least four to six years?

Lord, in the last 48 hours, have I not pledged myself to you? Yeah, I have all this sexual baggage and inability to have a healthy relationship with intimacy because of my fealty to you you and your because my ass at least give me a make work job my face pretty much made me a psycho god but it's all for you it's all for you this is why nevertheless your will be done no i need i need a job in heaven for real i need a job all right gang um well thanks for listening everybody please go to the patreon we'll see you next time adios