Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 384: Friction Fire

Episode Date: March 13, 2025

Examining the nature and basis of fascism in America in the 2020s Peter Thiel op-ed we mentioned: https://www.ft.com/content/a46cb128-1f74-4621-ab0b-242a76583105 Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

When is the ibuprofen boost us kick in? 30 minutes, I guess. Oh man. Oh Man Man, we're gonna have a we have an ambitious show for you today Cut my down just a jag are you still still hot? Wait, which one are you talk? Yo, you're too you are a little hot. Oh Yeah, a little bit more That's good. Is that good? That's good. Yeah, that sounds good, but I like it when you're hot

Okay, I got like a Tennessee Williams play or I'm like it hot some like it hot or is that Billy Wilder or is that Shakespeare? We have three oh no no no no it's cat on a hot tin roof is Tennessee Williams Some like it hot is Billy Wilder movie. Okay? All right, but not Billy Shakespeare not Billy. That sounds like a bill. It sounds like a bill Shakespeare play Some like it hot I'm gonna get text from Josh Olsen since this comes out. He's gonna say it's not Billy Wilder dumbass Josh Olsen was in my dream last night. Say more about that. I don't know I had a dream that I've um was going on vacation and got stuck in

this weird limbo place in upstate New York next um, next to the Erie Canal. And it was really pretty. There was a lot of hills around, but I couldn't get out. It was called like Pretoria or something like that. Pretoria. Yeah. And there was a indie film festival going on there. So I was like, well, I'll check out the indie film festival. I think that is an actual place.

Prisok, is it? Or is that, no, that's in South Africa. That's where Oscar Pistorius is from. Is that in Patagonia? Ah. Anyway. There's an indie film festival going on and Josh Olson was there and I was like, hey man, what's up? And we went and saw this movie and the movie had in it a like 30 minute Middle section that was extremely surreal which as you know dreams are usually like

30 seconds long they usually last seconds So it really you and Josh really watched about a nanosecond long short film But it felt like 30 minutes it did feel like the we watched the entire thing and then I went into the movie a little bit because the movie was about as often happens in dreams as often happens in dreams the movie was about a Well this section of the movie took place in ancient Rome and it was about some secret like mystical sect in the And it was about some secret, like, mystical sect in the caves, what do they call that? Where they had the Oracle at Delphi. There was like caves where they would huff. Delphi.

There's this Delphi. I think it was Delphi, is where the Oracle at Delphi was from. Okay, all right. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of like Corinthian columns, you know Greco Roman stuff Josh huffing the vapors in the caves with you. He might have been a buddy comedy. It was yeah

It's like Harold and Kumar good white cast is like Josh and Terrence go huff the vapors in the cave There was a green vaporous hue to everything Everything was so it's an a 24 film. Yeah, it was covered in a thick fog of sulfurous vapor yeah But Ultimately, you know the movie ended and I was like, what am I gonna tell my friends like I didn't actually go on vacation I just went to it. I was like I'll tell him I went to an indie film festival. They'll accept that I didn't actually go on vacation. I just went to it. I was like I'll tell him I went to an indie film festival They'll accept that

Can I give you a prescription just as an armchair diagnosis, what's that? It's you know like Mickey 17 last night there was that line at the end He was just like I gotta quit feeling guilty all the time. I can just be happy. I have been saying What do you think I'm guilty about what is this an expression of not being able to enjoy myself? You can just go to an indie film festival without having to like explain that to anybody. You know, you could just go enjoy yourself. You and Josh could just go watch a nano-sick long short film of the Vapors. You're saying I can actually accept and enjoy the things I like rather than feel guilty about them and feel like I have to justify and explain them to everybody. Well within reason I mean I don't you know if you're

You know stealing off your friends to go by black tar. Maybe you owe somebody an explanation, but you know you're right I am so I actually cried at that scene Because I am so ridden with guilt over the dumbest shit to Well, it's not I guess not because obviously I have hurt when I killed what I shot that man in Reno just to watch him Die. Yeah, I should I should have felt bad about that. Yeah, I've hurt people Yeah, I've hurt people before and I feel guilty about it You can and so as a result, I wind up using my entire religious Christian trauma

to then craft a narrative that I am start of an evil person. Because you need to feel, well it comes from a need to feel absolved. And in order to feel absolved, you have to feel guilty first. Exactly. Yeah, right, like you have to,

it is a, it's a sort of like a reward or I don't know how to put it. It's a cognitive, it's a- A little absolution as a treat, huh? A little absolution as a treat. Right, it's true. Like you set up this thought process in your head

early on in life precisely because you're raised in the church that You have to be absolved but absolution requires you to sin So there is a implication built into it that you must sin because we all know we're not perfect and However, we're saved by grace. It's this like feedback loop That carries on well into adulthood Yeah, even though I don't even believe in that stuff anymore. Yeah

but How you break it how do you break it? Yeah, well You become a expendable replicant apparently and by the the 17th go around, it finally dawns on you. That's true, did you like that movie? I loved that movie. I did too. Even though some of it was like a little on the nose corny. It was, yeah. I still like, it was still good enough

to kind of make up for that. His movies are often like that, and I, it's a little earnest, but I like that. We don't have enough earnestness anymore. Something that I picked up on later that I didn't think about was like, I know that that movie was in like pre-production for a while, but like some of the stuff had,

like, you know, like, I don't know, it's like some of the stuff was like a little overtly Trump, like Ruffalo's character. I don't wanna give it away or anything like that, but like Yeah, it's funny You had mentioned that and I saw people online saying that but I wouldn't have picked up on that unless you mentioned it or Unless I saw tweets online saying that precisely because well, I'm not gonna give anything away either, but I didn't really get didn't really I Thought he was supposed to be more of a stand-in for Elon Musk, but maybe he was maybe they were trying to like You know or it could also just tell me Colette was the stand-in for Elon Musk

It could also just be the case that there's just so many people like that in power In positions of power that it's just a common archetype in our time Maybe it could have been anybody you know the Antich Antichrists came many times, you know? Nero. That's true. Adolf Hitler. You think he was Antichrist? Adolf Hitler.

See, I always kind of thought that, and maybe this is my overcorrection from rejecting Christianity, but I always kind of thought the Antichrist would be like a little bit of an anti-villain. Like he'd be, or an anti-hero. Walter Whitevillain Like you'd be or a anti-hero. You think Walter White is the an anti-hero. He'd be kind of a Walter White time I always thought that he would like be complicated Heisenberg

Well, I thought he would be hot as fuck I always assumed he'd be hot as fuck didn't you always assume the Antichrist would be hot as fuck. I always assumed he'd be hot as fuck. Didn't you always assume the Indy Craze would be hot as fuck? Well, here's what I've always thought. I thought he'd be like a dashing Romanian count or something like that. Well, right. That's because we were raised with the Left Behind series where he was literally a dashing Romanian count. Yeah, Nicolae Carpathia. But that name, which is like... I'm thinking Bela Lugosi, you know what I mean? I'm thinking Bela Lugosi, you know what I mean? Well, but yeah, I always kind of assumed he would have, he would be very attractive. Everybody would want to fuck the Antichrist.

Yeah. Yeah, you see, here's the thing that's like, you know, we were talking the other day about like sort of evangelical Christianity sort of being like sort of a political movement geared at like giving Israel sovereignty over the entire Middle East and thus ushering in their own like weird little apocalyptic fantasies or whatever is animating them. I'm not even persuaded it's that. It could just be griffed like using that as a mechanism. But like the assumption that like the antichrist

would be like Turkish or like Muslim or something like that just never like made sense to me. Like in my mind like that guy is 100% Frank oppression. Do you think, you know, you didn't even think you'd be Canadian? Nope, nope. Always thought like Hungarian maybe. And this is no disrespect to like.

Dude, it would be tight if he was a cholo Hey, what's up, man? I'm coming here to usher in the end times bro, and decrease still be a decrease though, bro The lake of fire, man. Let's get Jesus down here, we're gonna fight. He's the final battle, bro. Israel will be leveled, man. You've never seen, you seem like a low rider, bro. He's gonna be lower than that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 144,000 Jews, man. They'll be. They get in, the rest? They get in, the rest of them. No, bro

fire like a fire I'm sorry Prophecy must be fulfilled Yeah, dude we were boxing ourselves in with this Eastern European thing yeah, yeah the fuck Let me ask you a question because this is like with this Eastern European thing. Yeah, yeah. The fuck? Let me ask you a question, because this is like, now I'm gonna put your feet to the fire on this one. Is Christianity anti-Semitic?

Yeah. I got it. I don't think it started that way. I think the end times prophecy skews a little bit that way. The first group of disciples and the first group of Christians Don't I don't think they saw themselves. It was literally like a Jewish reform movement. You think they were like Jewish cynics Or do you think it's more like the case that they were like?

There's some problems in with the Sanhedrin Council that we need to like iron out if I remember correctly There is like several books about this now if I remember correctly there is like several books about this but I'm pretty sure the early Christian movement was in material terms a Jewish movement well yeah yes but it was a resistance movement against Roman development Roman yeah the Roman yeah that that was not necessarily like I think that the whole thing about like I Genuinely think and I don't know if this is proven or this is just my own conjecture or whatever But the whole thing about like the Jews being the one that crucified Jesus and all this like that's got to be like a medieval

Antisemitic that's gotta be something they slid in there Yeah, well, I mean I guess it could be true in the sense that like if Jesus was a Jewish reform If the Christ movement was a reform movement within Judaism, it would make sense that they would try to stamp that out I won't tell you where they went wrong Okay Christians. No Jews. Yes Sending their kids to the Hellenic schools To Greece to be educated. It perfectly mirrors sending your kids to be educated by these fucking wasps at Yale and Harvard and stuff.

The same problems we're seeing at the academy and the same problem we were seeing then in the days of the Sanhedrin Council. Dude, that's true. The Sanhedrin Council never left us really. Honestly, no. Dude, this all brings up an important thing this actually echoes with my dream from last night like

Sometimes when I get manic I get like and maybe this is partially why I've not been sleeping well for a while Maybe I am in a little bit of a manic phase, but obviously you can't have like ultra grandiose visions of the world or whatever. But maybe before I die I would like to write a history of the world. Let's start from the top. Let's just start from the top. Don't you think that would be a good idea. I Can I tell you something I think it'd be a lofty undertak. Where do you start?

The world was without form and void the world of God hovered above it. I keep starting there You start from the dinosaurs where we're going the primordial ooz on where we make our first appearance as like some sort of lizard thing um Let's start with The primordial ooz on where we make our first appearance as like some sort of lizard thing um Let's start with Honestly, I think where we should start is What was the first civilization like the Sumerians? right Yeah, that sounds right

Already wait. How's that? How's that? How's that? Who had the ziggurats? I think they did. Hammurabi's Code, that's where we need to start from. Hammurabi's Code. The Fertile Crest and in between the Tigris and the Euphrates from which we all sprang. That's where we need to start. That's the one, bing, bing, bing, Hammurabi Code. We're gonna start with the Hammurabi Code. Yeah.

Not much is known, it seems, as to like kind of, even the Bible kind of leaves this a little, like if you're gonna go biblical on this. It just is like, here's Adam and Eve, and then they beget these, and they beget these, and then they just start, then something interesting happens. Those sons and daughters go out and just marry these nomads

that were just kind of floating around here, which suggests there was another creation thing going on somewhere. There probably was. You know what I mean? Yeah, there probably was for sure So was God making other people over here and just been like now go go mingle, okay? Let's actually let's look at this from the Okay, I don't or or You know how Trump says there's gonna be a little painful adjustment period in the economy since we're gonna need a detox in the beginning

was Did we do a little incest is just like sort of a temporary measure? Incest is a temporary Well, I mean Or did they just go off and marry these nomads before any of that could take place? I think that humans have always been well there was a genetic bottleneck all right Here's what I was gonna get out great now. We're getting to you can look at this from an anthropological Perspective you need to look at my eyes. That's look. I thought look about it

There's a few early things in Humanities development that make us who we are. One of which is the development of the speech box. The ability to speak language. I think, if I'm not mistaken, I'm pretty sure that a lot of people think, a lot of scientists think, that how this came about was that 70,000 years ago there was a lot of volcanic activity that wiped out like 90% of the human race. Like we went through like a genetic bottleneck. Yet another temporary, what Trump's proposing is just many examples

in history like how the anti-crisis came many times. Yeah a bottleneck. Just some temporary like pain. Temporary pain. Yeah for a greater good. I'm good with that I'm a lot of love temporary pain, you know We couldn't enjoy the pleasant times without it the same or appreciate it the same way. No, definitely not But So you've got that right? You've got the development of the voice box, the ability to shape language and speak it. Make a joyful noise.

Make a joyful noise. Yeah. Obviously we're forgetting fire. I don't know where along the lines of fire is. The wheel. The wheel. The Chauvet Cave, or the Le Clos Cave in France. Like sweatpants. 30,000 years.

Yeah, sweatpants.at 808 drum machine We're getting a little ahead of ourselves. I don't know if they had Maybe is that the one with the hieroglyphs or whatever it is. Yes. Yes What a what a head fuck to realize that France is a Dog they had they were cooking in France. They had fucking like mammoths had the catacombs and the catacombs Yeah, I don't know what that is Is it where they buried the dead? I think it's what the Spanish call it necropolis City of the down. Okay, a necropolis man

You got these in France too, that's cool, bro. I'm the antichrist You got these in France, too. That's cool, bro. I'm the antichrist Just like he's very transparent about his message is just like You know it would be tied if you know there's like fucking hit Jesus man It actually makes sense What do you think about it actually does make a lot of sense? Yeah, that's like You know have you ever heard this guy like Elmirto TJ? No, he's like the dead man of Tijuana He's like this old guy that paints his stuff up like a goth kind of thing And he plays like one of those cheap Casio drum machines and sings songs about being old and having diabetes.

Oh, no. Yeah, his best song's called Maldita Diabetes. Okay. Sorry, apologies to Alex O'Veinon, Spanish-speaking friend. What does that mean, bad? Think, Maldita means sickness, diabetes, you know.

Like malady, I guess, you know. Right, right. Yeah, anyway, it'd be cool if he was the Antichrist. I'd probably take the Mark of the Beast Like malady I guess you know right right yeah anyway It'd be cool if he was the Antichrist. I'd probably I'd probably take the mark of the beast to film where if though TJ Hit me with that isn't there a guy in South America that has been crucified like 80 times Or not say 80, but maybe like 60 every year he gets crucified. He's got the oh yeah. Yeah, you're talking about What's his face the president of Argentina? Yeah metaphorically crucified by Yeah, you're talking about What's his face the president of Argentina? Melee Melee, yeah metaphorically crucified by the

I forgot about that All right, we're looking at milestones. All right. Sorry. I keep getting fire voice art But also even way before that was burying our dead. Yeah, we started burying our dead You think we took that from elephants? You know, we talk about how elephants kind of bury their dead. I kind of like to think they took it from us. They were like, oh, okay.

Well, what if we saw mammoths doing like, look, the mammoths bury their dead. Why don't we do that? Well, the mammoths had a, they were like, the mammoths had a natural excavator with their tus. Yeah, dig out. Yeah, that is true. Maybe they were made for that Maybe do they really stab anything with like elephants don't use their tusks for evil. Do elephants even have tusks? Yeah. Oh Where've you been? Fucking no, do you I guess some of them don't but

For the most part Is that why they're like hunted to extinction? People want that ivory? Yeah that's right Also another milestone We domesticated the cat, the humble cat Yeah look at that Nature's perfect killing machine just rendered into

Fucking milk drinking mm-hmm fucking free loader Okay, husbandry. We did some of that the development of agriculture which of course sees the rise of class society There's where that's the star the big one. That's the best. That's the big one. That's where we're Still at but moving away from quickly We developed agriculture which of course meant that you would have a surplus Which meant that you would then have the elevation of a certain cast of society that would oversee The distribution and or hoarding of such surplus some societies early ones figured out communism like the Incans.

They also practiced some, you know, kind of fucked up things. Like I'm pretty sure they did practice child sacrifice. However, they also practiced state communism, essentially. Like everybody was fed. I don't even think that the hierarchy was as like stratified as... Well, you got crack a couple eggs and make an omelet, you know? No society's perfect. Look, I would trade a few child sacrifices for, I mean... As long as it's before they're the age of like two or three.

Fuck them kids. Yeah, fuck them. You're not even a person until you're like 30. Yeah. You guys motherfuckers, they barely have object permanence. Which goes back to our policy of abortion legal up to two years post-birth exactly You know so um you got trial periods if you might get a bad kid might get a bad baby You don't know you know you have no idea. That's true, so

But yeah development of agriculture then That record of course results in the development of agriculture then that record of course results in the development of widespread class civilization which has the All the technological capacities there in that you would expect but also Somewhere along the way you get the development of religious and philosophical systems. Right?

World views that explain, why am I here? Why am I pathetic? Why am I muy pathetico? Why do I have no hoes? Why do women find me repugnant? All the big questions. Yeah. The thing about writing a history of the world that would be really... I'm not like nothing. All the big questions. Yeah.

The thing about writing a history of the world that would be really, you could do this when like the 1300s, like Ibn Khaldun, I think he was maybe one of the first. But imagine if you forgot something. Imagine if you were like, fuck! You went through all that work, you publish it, and like a year later you're like, oh, damn. I forgot. I I hate when that happens I hate when we do a podcast and I'm like oh yeah I meant to make this point but I started talking about the dead man of TJ

and the whole chapter of the cross question mark imagine if you forgot the whole chapter about Rome engine room you'd be like, aww, well shit, that kind of throws everything on. Kind of a glaring omission, honestly. Rome! That's what I meant to hit on! Fuck. Of course, all this civilizational development and expansion and... I'm asking you a question, what were the Celts doing there and all this just kind of up there like Building Stonehenge and eating organ meats. Yeah, they were they had gods they were the Something that like frustrates me about the current moment with Celts are just in general

What's your beef with modern? Our assumption that all of our technological scientific innovation and ability to look into the secrets of the universe therefore means that we have found the secrets to the universe. Like it positions that sort of ontological view as superior to one that sees gods and messages and the stars and that kind of stuff. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I don't- Brings us to reverend spirit. Which, fast forward to 1860.

Man's always kind of been looking up. You know what, they, you know, we've been kind of looking to the moon, you know? Hence where we get the phrase lunatic. Well, but for a lot of, that's true. For a lot of civilizations though, that was how they did, it wasn't just like, it wasn't necessarily an existential thing it had

practical application for a lot of civilizations the philosophical and religious framework was literally the way that they did things like medicine you know what I'm saying so it's like I it's like intimately bound in which kind of explains why medicine is practiced so poorly today like we were just talking before we went on here Why it's like a retail sort of boutique experience now it reflects the values of the time We secularize how we heal reflects the the overall value. It is it is true. We secularize it through profit through the profit motive And through our almost utopian Positivist beliefs in science as the ultimate explanation and answer for all of

All of our cultural woes Holistic health woes blah blah blah blah But now but now we're Getting ahead of ourselves once again. Well before we just let me go down that road just a little bit more for we recalibrate So the what's your what we're getting at here is the homeopaths That that like, you know you know are into turmeric and everything

like that. Homeopathy is ultimately wrong because it is disconnected from the heuristic system in which it would conceivably have any kind of effect. Does that make sense? What it is is it's like it's hearkens back to like Sage traditional Chinese medicine in an artificial sort of artifice kind of way rather than like Yeah as a community health approach exactly. Let me give you an example. There's this thing called OSHA root. All right It's a medicine that the ute in Colorado used to use, pie Ute, it's a plant that they used to use for pulmonary diseases and just respiratory diseases, that kind of stuff.

You can buy it at the health food store, but just using it as a medicine that you just take, and it's in like the homeopathy section, right? But using it as a medicine you take just doesn't really get at what the point was. And I could be getting ahead of myself here, but the reason- Okay, all right, yeah, little self-crit.

The reason it did work for indigenous systems and societies was because they had an entire like cosmological framework within which that would work. For example, if you are sick and you're dying and you believe it is your cosmic destiny to perhaps this be the end or to continue on, that is gonna have some sort of physical physiological yeah that is true I mean this is where we get miracles from right exactly they sometimes happen in medicine and like and this is kind of one of those things that's been studied a lot and it's like yeah like well it's the same thing for like they've documented that people heal a lot easier

if if their hospital room has a window through which they can just see green trees and grass. That kind of stuff. You know what I'm saying? Like there's things built into our approach here that's not quite. I thought about that when my mom was sick and I looked out her window

and it looked like the opening shot of Twin Peaks. And I'm not talking about the like pastoral view of the mountains, I'm talking the factor. Dude, yes. My grandma, I remember visiting my grandma with severe dementia in her nursing home and just like looking at the window and just this massive, just barren field

outside of Hobbs, New Mexico, just filled with trash and oil, Derrick. So I was just like, how in bad shape? I love you, Grant. Get out of this I mean this sounds like Rogan-esque shit but You're at it, it does

It does sound Rogan-esque I'm trying to say here that like homeopathy is kind of quackery for that reason because it's disconnected from any kind of larger I mean I guess a lot of people could be like, well, I'm a witch, or I'm a... These are all modern constructions.

You know what I'm saying? You're not a witch in the sense that the village level where you believe in casting the evil eye, or like, bagging alms, it's a form of class warfare. Exactly, witchcraft is a communal role. It's not just something that you can just do and... Buy off Etsy. Right, exactly.

You know what I mean? Yeah. All this stuff is- Unless you're buying from my shop, I'll cast spells for money. I thought about starting an Etsy shop where it's like, we'll do Appalachian witchcraft for $50 a pop. That does exist, literally. I know it does.

It's a fantastic rift. It really is. Yeah. It really is. Yeah It really is done. Yeah All of which is to say that like all of these all of which all of which is to say that like we're kind of at this point so far down the like I said though the Western scientific capitalist medicinal paradigm that like to go back to a different one would require some

massive massive cultural You know severance from the past. Yeah, I see what you're saying. So The you're saying the likelihood of us returning to shamanism and all that kind of stuff dissipates by the day a hundred percent Yeah, we're the cats out of the bag like shamanism for it to actually work and you know for it to be a Paradigm of medicine or whatever that would actually intervene in people's lives meaningful We would take like another two or three thousand years to develop I think It's like because like right now. It just- It's like coal or diamonds.

100%. We gotta build it back up over a long period of time. You gotta build it back over a long time. 100%, yeah. Okay, I see. Well, yeah, I guess it was dismembered over a long period of time and so. That is why our current moment is such a grotesque disfiguration of humanity

genuinely, it's why capitalism is Ultimately humanities Kind of death sentence. Can I tell you something? I Know that like, you know in the time of you know Emil Zola and germinal and you know, all those times. I know those were like bad times. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. This is maybe the most vulgar time in human history.

Like in the sense of like your sensibilities being offended at every turn, you know? This is a vulgar time. You're absolutely correct. It's a time of vulgarity. This is a time of vulgarity. And Bulgarians. This is an extremely vulgar time. You're right.

Because the thing is, and I told you this on the phone yesterday, if you were a feudal lord or a king or whatever, a thousand years ago, your power and lordship over other people brought you some sort of spiritual and material fulfillment at the end of the day because you literally could delude yourself into thinking, well, at least I'm God's chosen instrument and vessel here on earth. I'm God's elect. Yeah. I'm God's elect.

Today's- We don't even have that consolation anymore. Today's powerful people don't have that. And this is the thing. This is why we have to transition into communism. We don't have any other choice. It's kind of out of our hands. Or we go to the woodshed. Or we go to the woodshed. Here's why. Because the bourgeois are doing something that the feudal lords never would have thought to do. Which is, they have reached the logical end of the,

of all the philosophical, of all the premises of the mode of production of capitalism, of all the logic that like, operative logics that made it work. They are unfulfilled. And I was mentioning this with Elon Musk the other day. But like, it's also- You were talking to Musk.

Yeah, I was, yeah. I mentioned this with Elon Musk the other day, but like it's also talking to Musk. Yeah, I was yeah I mentioned this I mentioned this with Elon Musk the other day Jesus surprisingly I was listening to Joe Rogan. I was talking to my friends on the Joe Rogan podcast I mentioned this when I was referring to Elon Musk the other on an episode recently But it's also true for Peter till in that Financial Times op-ed about the coming apocalypse and all this The bourgeoisie is now trying to sabotage Stab to death smother in the crib or in at this point the fully developed bed That's that we're still sleeping in a crib. They were still sleeping. Fully humanoid.

They're trying to smother to death their own mode of production. They waged these revolutions and wars against the feudal order 300 years ago. And now having eaten from the plate, having sucked at the table of decadence and plenty and surplus, and technological progress and scientific awareness and all this, all the things that capitalism delivered, they are still ultimately empty.

They're unfulfilled. They are not able to reconcile all of the economic, you know, surplus and bounty with the fact that their spiritual selves are totally vacuous. I think there's one exception to that rule. There isn't. That's Brian Johnson. Well, Brian Johnson is, uh, that is... Brian Johnson seems downright happy.

He does seem happy. Why would you want to live forever? That is true. You know? That is true. That is so funny of all the idiot a lot ideologies in Figureheads of the bourgeoisie right now. He's really the only one that's like no. I'm I like living. Yeah, I like it here Yeah, he's he doesn't really seem to be like spiritually empty nobody's he's not mentioned the the Greek pronunciation of apocalypse and interviews with like bonafide shit stupid morons He is if the bourgeoisie has any hope it's with a guy like that They need to be brain dead and stupid and whimsical

because there's two wings because I was thinking about this with regards to like the liberals are if they're good for anything it is Protection of civil rights and free speech for example And I was like why if you said the Democrats are good on liberals just in general I was like why are they just letting this Mahmoud Khalil thing just completely? Because again like all of- That's when your values butts up against your racism. Your racism, obviously, right.

Yeah, we call that a friction fire. That's when your insurance policy rubs up. Get your mortgage. Get your mortgage. Okay, look, that is true. They, but I was like thinking, I I was like but you would think that like as Arbiters of the bourgeois order these liberals would at least be able to defend civil civil rights like freedom of speech But they themselves are the flip side opposite of the Peter till doge Elon Musk

Let's burn everything to the ground they themselves are not happy with this mode of production What I'm saying is that the bourgeoisie has lost faith in their mode of production and we don't know how I don't know This is why you see people say oh is this technolio neo feudalism? I don't think it's that I just think that what we're Witnessing is in real time them losing faith in the political economic project that they fought to create And protect yeah from a historical actor perspective I'm not saying Peter Till was literally on the barricades in fucking France but the bourgeoisie was right and he is bourgeoisie yeah and so I'm just saying and and this also explains why we're in the era of sore

winners they got everything they wanted they wanted but they've lost faith in it and so whether you call that fascism or not, I don't even know, it's like I was saying to you on the phone yesterday, 1930s fascism was kind of a weird hybrid of proletarian bourgeoisie collaboration. Like this time, despite all the attempts to paint Trump as some like, tribune of the white working class or of the plebs, it's an entirely bourgeois project

You know what I'm saying? So I think it's a different kind of fascism in that regard like it's not a fascism that tries to articulate any kind of proletarian demand Or in or even create any kind of like proletarian inter-class Collaboration it's a fascism that is entirely like self-sabotaging and this explains why neither Democrats or Republicans can move in any kind of operative logic that doesn't include putting the gun to their head. Yeah, because here's the other thing too, and it's maybe one of the few things I'm taking some solace in in this moment is that that

when fascism, when fascism came to America, I mean a long time ago, it was kind of bubbling under the surface. But when overt fascism came to America, it was ushered in by the shit stupid. A hundred percent. Which is a good thing, kind of. Yeah. I mean, it's not good. Ushering in fascism is never good. Let's be clear. I'm just saying that like, they're in over, they out of their depth. Well, it does show you're right. It does show a weakness Yeah, which is that they

And it will get a lot of people killed and it will result in a lot of fucking horror but it also at the same time shows that they are Not really united in any way That would be conceivable to people even 50 years ago. You know what I'm saying? shows that they are not really united in any way that would be conceivable to people even 50 years ago. You know what I'm saying? I don't quite know how to like, it sucks, I really wish the working class was more united and coordinated in a way to fight back against this.

However, I think there's utility in just naming this in the sense that like they They've lost faith, you know and That presents a kind of opening in this stream of human history for a proletarian vision Commune call it communism call it whatever you want. Yeah Just something to think about. Yeah. Arrow's got the zoomies. Ah, Arrow, you're throwing us off here. We're talking about the big issues.

What are you doing? Yeah, go look at those squirrels. Man. That, you're right. I mean, there is like a window to, it's not like, it can feel like sort of insurmountable, I think, you know, when you have Trump coming here

making little pronouncements like a little French king or something like that every day, and everybody just assumes that's law because our bulwark against that is fucking Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, a man who you said that you could walk into his house, fuck his wife, eat all the food out of his fridge, and he would shake your hand and say thank you.

He'd hold the door open for you. Yeah yeah he'd hold the door open for you yeah and uh and uh Schumer uh doesn't have enough backbone to even just be like you know uh it's wrong to like imprison college students like 20,000 words to just be like this person is bigoted disgusting repulsive repulsive, anti-Semitic. But maybe I support his free speech rights, maybe? But maybe not. There's no phenomenon I hate worse than the liberals hollow commitment to I don't like what you say, but I respect your right to say it. Because it's very selectively applied, we see here.

Dude, they have had more deference to the right for fascists, literally. Like, not neo-Nazis. Yeah, I mean you look at the ACLU, you know what I mean? It's like, those people have been like, nah, I don't like what the Nazis have to say, but it's a slippery slope. It's a slippery slope, you know. And it's just like what we were talking about yesterday.

It's just like, you know, I discussed this with my Palestinian Barbies like yeah all these like free speech guys are like huge pussies when like It comes down to like hearing something. They don't want to hear dude. They are the biggest cowards Yeah of all time yeah like that fucking tweet I mentioned this to you yesterday that tweet from JD Vance like I was taking my daughter on a walk Like she's a little fucking like Fucking god damn and and these up Yorkie these are Ukrainian protesters for Yelling at her and you're a shit person if you yell at a three-year-old child and it's like bro. It's like dude Multiple

Children of John Brown fought alongside him at Harper's Ferry. I think one of them even died To the ends of their life they were supporters of the abolitionist cause because he raised them them that way Your children on the other hand JD will grow up to fucking hate you. Yeah. They will never respect you or die for you, like John Brown's children did. If you are gonna take a public position, especially as the fucking vice president, you better be goddamn fucking ready to defend it. Yeah. Even if, or especially if your fucking kid is there.

Yeah. Don't be a fucking pussy. Don't be a piss baby, you know what I mean? Biggest crybabies in the fucking world. They are the, they'rebabies in the fucking world. They are the sore winners. It's like I'm saying that they've won, they don't see anything left to... Like there's no rewards or benefits. Here's what it is, man. They're so addicted to grievance. Like even Trump.

A man that lives in a literal fucking gold tower and people have just held as the boy at TwiceNow, like our special boy that's like, you know Yeah, he's he's got all the money. His name is shorthand for wealth all this stuff The biggest fucking piss baby that ever walked face of the planet and do very mean to me. They're very unkind to me It's like dude. Here's rule number one. It's social climbing. Okay, let me just tell you as a social climber Let me tell you rule number one and I'm bad to do this sometimes too okay I can see it up front and it's one thing that I hate about myself okay nobody likes a fucking complainer yeah like rule number one of this is like you know even if you are

aggrieved to the fucking gills adopt adopt a stiff upper lip, do daredevil, smile, like eat that little hint of rage you feel building up in your chest about something, and just go on. Swallow it. Just swallow it, swallow it. Cause JD, you're gonna die a coward. You're gonna die, I'm sorry, but like, you better fucking hope that the Victors

get to write the story. Yeah. Because if they don't, you're gonna be immortalized as a pussy ass bitch Nazi to Nazi to Okay, I'm sorry I don't give a fuck how like you know like how he was like trying to act like oh I'm gonna get in on the JD Vance things and he does we don't know nobody's viewing you as they're not Capri no get over yourself Trump same way, but Trump's too far gone. He's he's already had grotesquerie

He will this is kind of what I was talking about on the free episode last week. They are so driven by grievance, it has made their economic policy completely incoherent. And I did have people saying, who got really mad at me because I was being a crank, and I was like, they're not smart enough to buy the dip and orchestrate all this.

And then I did go back and I was like, well maybe they are, I don't know. But now I'm kinda back to this position where I'm like, no, I think that they are so motivated by grievance because they can't get anything else out of this mode of production beyond more money. Well they've got all the money, they don't need any fucking more.

They can't get anything more out of it. The only thing that they can do, the only way that they are motivated is through grievance.ance and that explains the tariffs which again don't make any sense Like the way they've gone about the tariffs make no goddamn sense It's like we were talking about this and this is again. I know personal finance is not like economic policy But it's like we are just a society driven by fees now. It's all vapor It's like like we were like when we went to the movies last night I was down 30 bucks before we walked into the fucking place

Cost us $16 to park Supplemental fee on top of that right when you go Of course you go to the movies and you pay $14 for a coke. We're country built on fees So I guess that that does make sense and fees the tariffs do make sense in that regard, but the fact that like I said they've Dangled them over everybody everybody's heads for so long that it scared the markets It's like really freaked them out like they don't there's no confidence in the markets now You know and I was listening to that Chopper episode with Joe Weisenthal, who was talking about this too.

Like, there's not even really a strong argument that like, if you assume that they do the tariffs because they're gonna reshore everything, well then, you've already done a trade war where you're gonna put such high tariffs on our exports. Let's say we do reshore and build a bunch of manufacturing facilities, you won't be able to export it

because the tariffs will be so high because you went through this trade war process. It doesn't have any long-term, what I'm saying is, and what he was saying is, there's no long-term vision to it. It's completely incoherent and erratic. And then, but to me the the whole grievance thing was kind of made clear to me by the fact that

They're basically trying to make it or not basically Trump literally explicitly said this you will be designated a domestic terrorist if you vandalize a Fucking Tesla, and I was just thinking about that this morning. It's like you know what's funny about that is like vandalizing a Tesla is like Going and like murdering your enemy while they're on their deathbed It's like don't catch a murder charge. You know Seconds for somebody that is not worth it. They're gonna die anyway. You know what I mean?

Like if you don't blow up a Tesla chances are it might just do it itself. You know what I mean? Like if you're a blooper Tesla chances are it might just do it itself. You know what I mean? I Think he was no yeah, I mean I don't if you want blooper Tesla That's fine I think it was talking about like the dealerships people were like setting fires to dealerships Which I don't even think anybody did if I had to guess I'd say they themselves probably Fucking super car whatever the ugly ones just blew up. Yeah was like no these this is the is the left left lunatics It's the left radical left. Well, what's funny about that? Dude It's so transparently fucking like what I was talking about a couple weeks ago. It's like the experience of this Trump

presidency just aesthetically feels like the experience of staying home from school and watching the prices ride and seeing them like Gold coins to shut in like retirees, you know what I mean? It's like right after he's like I'm gonna pass an executive order any attack on a Tesla plants domestic terrorism and it's like it's like It's like seconds later on the official White House account like seconds later on the official White House account, he puts out a promo code that you can take to any Tesla dealership and get $1,000 off a new Tesla. Yeah.

And he's passing that off as like economic policy. This man can't help but sell shitty states by mail order. You know what I mean? He's such a fucking con man. To provide more evidence to my thesis here Shitty states by mail order, you know, this is such a fucking con man to Provide more evidence to my thesis here what I'm saying People were saying people were passing around that photo of Trump and Elon's in front of the White House with the Tesla's being like this is a blatant example of corruption using the public office to

you know Basically bolster support for a corporation, a single company. And it's like, yeah, but Dick Cheney did that when he invaded Iraq for Halbert. Because those guys were pure, like they were truly bourgeois actors, in the sense that they did that to basically make more money. That's not why Trump is doing this. They are doing this to trigger the libs and to go after their political enemies, which is the left, which is pro-Palestinian protesters,

communists, socialists, anybody who dares challenge any of their prescriptions or edicts. It's the hallmark of somebody that's never been in a fight their own fights. Yeah. It is very, it's very, it's very, I have my uncles in the mafia. Dad says you have to be nice to him.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. JD is the poster child for that, obviously. Elon Musk, no surprise there, same thing. And then Trump is that same way. There's a fucking Kennedy in the mix. There's a Kennedy in the mix. Like, you're talking about all four people who have never literally physically had their ass kicked.

Who desperately need that. Literally. Like, I'm serious, if somebody just throttled the shit out of Trump and left his hair looking at him, busted his goddamn nose and knocked some fucking teeth out and blacked his eyes and shit, he would probably be a quantifiably different person after that. You saw how he was after he somebody took a shot at him Yeah, you know even though that probably now that I'm one thing that's like a little orchard

He was a little weird for a little bit. You think it was orchestrated. I'm going back and forth. I don't know it's like Trump is One of history's big cowards and I find it hard to believe after somebody took a legit shot at him He would stand up and say fight fight fight unless he was the fix was in yeah He is one of history's big cowards and I find it hard to believe after somebody took a legit shot at him He would stand up and say fight fight fight unless he was the fix was in yeah I kind of that's the only one thing that doesn't jive with me. Yeah, you're right because you're he does have the sort of atomic Composition of somebody who if they just got slightly If you slapped him in front of people that and no Secret Service was going to dome you if you just smacked the shit out of him in front of a bunch of people he thought was

cool, he would crumble like a house of cards. He probably would. You know what I mean? Yeah. Or just act like the whole thing never happened. Or he would go use his money to try to scrub any memory of it from the internet. That's what he would do. Elon Musk has embarrassed himself several times publicly just with his own like sort of

inability to be socially normal, you know what I mean? Anything like that? I think it's important to name this the fascism of the current moment as a kind of Again, I don't think that if you can distinguish it from the 1930s fascism in any way It's like that fascism was like I said it basically was created out of the institutional infrastructural ruins of the left You know in Italy and Germany and everything and it was it was done kind of like as a last-ditch effort to

Bring some of these like quote-unquote developing new nations into the capitalist order like Germany and Italy And as a result it was a kind of cross-class collaboration You know between Like I said proletarians and not to say that the majority of proles were fascist because they weren't I'm not trying to say that but I am trying to say that like There was a base

Same thing here. Yeah I would I would say it but with this the bases Agree of small business owners. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all playing out within the bourgeoisie in the sense that it's small business owners as the base for a big bourgeoisie business class that is kind of black-pilled. You know what I'm saying? And so it's a different kind of class composition

of fascism and I see that as a big weakness. As scary as it is, I don't think we should be terrified just because I think that I see that as a big weakness. I would also say it's qualitatively, I would call this, oh god that's gonna be so cringe, I was gonna say bitch-ash-ism. I immediately struck that for minutes. But you know in the old days fascism was done by like strong men. You know what I mean? Yeah. Well now it's just done by like fucking cartoon characters. Well they themselves can't even-

Which is what's maddening about it. They can't even see themselves as legitimate. Like they themselves, they also have the imposter syndrome that we pointed out with like Jake Sullivan and everything. Like in the sense that, who was it? I think it was, again, I'm referencing another Joppo episode, but I think they were talking about Sebastian Gorka, recently speaking at like CPAC about watching

Trump kill, you know people in the Middle East like with drone strikes and stuff in the war room and in the in the White House When Sebastian was in there, they let him push the button or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and he was like he was like it was like watching 20 was like an episode of 24. And that to me is like, That tells the tale. That kind of tells the tale, like they are larping in a sense. And that's, and again, this is why they keep doing the SigHales,

because they really do want to larp as several different entities and groupings and whatever of fascism across time and history. That is such a good point. That extends further into culture. Everybody's trying to be an archetype from yesteryear. Yeah, yeah. There is no defining aesthetic quality.

There's no defining political quality of these times. It's just a- Moribund, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're doing essentially the same thing that everybody in society's doing where they're just like, oh no, that was a good time, so I'm just gonna dress like that time,

comport myself like how men comported themselves in that time. This explains the bourbon boom. You know what I mean? I really think that you could trace the mad men coming on TV with the bourbon industry reprising. You know what I mean? That's about the time things started kicking back up

and going crazy again. That's true. You know what I mean? Because it about the time things started kicking back up and going crazy again. That's true. You know what I mean? Because it harkened back to when men were men. When men were men, right. Kind of time. And that's kind of what's going on all over society right now.

Like everybody's just trying to figure out like, okay, what patchwork or what like just era do I just want to rip off because there is no more, there's no more innovation. Because now it's just innovation for innovation's sake. Instead of being innovation for, if you look at the mid-century, if you even look at design,

like those homes that were built and everything, like they look space age, they look like they're looking toward the future. You know what I mean? Art Deco, that Memorial Coliseum in Lexington, that's an Art Deco building, I love that building. I mean, it looks kind of weird and fascist, but. That's Art Deco building. I love that building. I mean it looks kind of weird and fascist But like I do like Art Deco like part of me at first when I see it

It's like oh, we're like the courthouse in downtown Lexington. That's our Deco too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, like you're right like even Stylistically it was very It had an identity to it. It had a kind of artistic and it's not really art movements in the same way No, look at architecture now. Look at architecture now. Look at the buildings they're building downtown like so now. They're just these like flimsy boxes basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's kind of like a cheap facsimile like Swedish modernism or something like that. You know what I mean? Like a lot of glass. And it's just like, it's like, yeah, I don't know if that's, I don't know what, you know what I mean, maybe that's one for Kate Wagner to tackle next time we have her own but like yeah, it's like Yeah, there's no sort of like defining feature of

Anything now. It's just like sort of a It does have some aesthetic markers. I mean it does it does Endeavoring verbiage well, yeah It does endeavor towards a kind of minimalism Like look at the way what I find fast that is true actually you're right about that what I find fascinating is that there's continuity between a McDonald's and a Business building downtown Lacedon in the sense that they are both they both adhere to similar architectural styles You know what I'm saying like the way that McDonald's and Wendy's and in fast food restaurants are built now

It's these kind of like sleek minimalist box structures. That's the same premise for those large corporate buildings downtown Which is which is like I said it just collapses the distance between the two and just kind of gives it away that there's not Really any like you look at how Wendy's were in the 90s how they had like those like sort of like greenhouse alcoves and there was the super Racing strap colors. I mean it's very of that time, but at least it was like, you know Well, and there was a there was an aesthetic difference that denoted you're at fast food schlock place There's where corporate big decisions are made right

you go to the art deco building and it's a very grandiose yeah it's the feeling going in there yeah get your slop yes come here to do serious paperwork but now the buildings are identical now you get your slop in the same building that you go do your corporate white-collar work and Like you can watch if you look at downtown, Lexington I would imagine it's probably the case for most urban areas in the United States you can watch like With rings on a fucking tree or with like, you know lines of the tide or whatever You can you can see how over time you've got because Lexington is an old city You've got buildings that go back to the early 1800s

to the early 1900s, and then you start to then go into the Art Deco era, and then you get into the 80s. That fifth thirds building downtown, classic 80s. That's very right, you can ask, yeah. Or that electric utilities, Kentucky Utilities building, which I fucking hate that building, but it is still brick. It's an entirely brick building, but they managed to make it disgusting, I love brick.

But now, now the buildings aren't even that. Now they're these flimsy, it's almost like they fucking just put plywood on the outside, but put a nice fancy design on it with a lot of glass and then these kind of like colorful designs box designs on this, you know what I'm talking about? No, I know exactly what you're talking about. It's just it's just

We've kind of cast a fun end to it. You know let me tell you what I think it is part of what that signaling without getting into too much like, you know, design and architecture criticism but it's almost like this cheap facsimile of Japanese or Scandinavian modernist minimalism in an American context almost signals to us you should expect less. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? Not like in the Japanese sense, it's like owning fewer but better things is like beautiful.

I mean, same thing in the Scandinavian context, whatever. The things that you do own should be beautiful. Right. Here it is, no. You can just get your slop. And what slop you get should be as minimal as possible because the minimum wage hasn't been raised in 15 years and that is because if I could pay you less, I would.

Yeah. You know? And now, we're trying to create a new economy where we can bring that into fruition. And 15 years and that is because if I could pay you less I would yeah, you know and now We're trying to create a new economy where we can bring that into fruition. Yeah, you know This all honestly it all goes back If you look at like I said this all has to do with the fact that the bourgeoisie has completely given up on their Own project in a way a lot of them are just going through the motions some of them are black-pilled Some of them some of them are just like doppelganger you know fucking tulpas like Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumers like I've

never seen a more hapless confused group of people genuinely it's a bunch of Dougie Jones it's it's kind of funny Dougie Jones. It's what it's dude. It's it's kind of funny. No Dougie Jones is by orders More effective than these guys the thing about those guys is that like and you said it the other day. It's like You know if there were a time to take over the Democratic Party not saying that this is like what it should be done or anything So the writing seems to be on the wall for them But like now would be the time for something like that because they're completely rudderous. They are completely asleep at the moment.

They were still dedicated to their project when Bernie ran. That's why Bernie got knee capped and all that stuff. Now they don't know. I saw this off there where James Carvel's like, we need a strategic retreat. Like we need a retreat from politics. Can you imagine that? Fascism has overtly come to America. I'll say overtly because like again

It's they're arresting students for speech and it's domestic terrorism if you piss on a Tesla and your answer to that is we just Need to go away for a year and regroup. Yeah Fucking ball grotesquerie in a fucking swamp and Louisiana let the alligators. Here's a fucking look. I'll just piss this one away I don't even fucking really believe in it But genuinely like I was thinking about it the other day like could you start a new party if you did I would call Like I'm because like the branding is really what's important You also like I mean of course the substance itself like the platform would have to be obviously pro-palestine pro working-class

You know Anyway, you have a you would have a mass movement if you started that you know call it The NDP new Democratic Party call it Here's one that I thought might be kind of cool the Democratic Republican Party It's not a content. It's not a continuation of Jefferson's old party Well, but like it's like, you know, it's like the DRP or the Democratic Republican Party. It's like people would be like Okay, I mean maybe I'm a Republican sometimes you get so much cadre from dumb guys. Yeah, you know We'll fill you in on particulars. Thanks for coming. Don't call it anything like a workers party.

Don't call it anything like green something. Green's bad. Yeah, don't call it. Green's out. Don't call it anything like. Nothing that harkens to the Soviet. Nothing poetic. You want something that's almost kind of boring, but strong. A little banal, but strong. yeah to me new Democratic Party's like I mean it's a little cringe but as long as

you demark very 80s yeah it's a little like new coke I don't know I mean listen look don't strategically retreat look if I could tie a bow on this, I think that like the prevalence of apocalyptic speech and ideology within the bourgeoisie has to partially do with their own, like I said, them kind of giving up on their project. Um, but I do think it has been infused with a kind of millenarian religious impulse, primarily because I'm reading that Melinda Cooper book about, uh,

the birth of neoliberalism. And she talks about like, I'm not gonna get into all this stuff in there, but like the social and economic climate of the 60s and 70s was that I think in 1970 alone you had like 5,000 strikes. It was like the most strikes that they had ever seen in US labor history. In 1973, the rate of profit fell from like 23% than what it was in 1967. You had an increasing number of workers demanding autonomy at the point of production,

and you had public sector workers organizing in numbers that had never been seen before. You basically had a mass militancy movement. At the same time, you saw a decline in the rate of profit, at the same time you saw heavy inflation and the depreciation of asset values. At this same moment, in 1967, was the Six-Day War when Israel took Jerusalem, fulfilling the second

of three apocalyptic promises of Christian Zionism the first being that Israel has to be created a state again the second that Jews have to control the city of is of Jerusalem and the third being that they have to What sacrifice a red heifer or something that the building of the third temple building of the third which? Necessitates like destroying the Dome of the Rock, right? That's why the war on Islam and then what happens in 1973? It's not all that's not the whole wife the world is long. Well, but part of it from the evangelical Yes, and then instead 1973 you've got the OPEC oil shocks

You've got the Arab world asserting its own kind of material interests on that scale so you have an upward spiraling level of The bourgeoisie like looking at the situation and kind of coming up with apocalyptic visions Like you know what I'm saying? Like you got a Christian Zionist one You've got a or is that all baked in the sort of a realpolitik where they're like, okay, we've got this Or is that all baked into sort of a realpolitik where they're like, okay, we've got this 2000 year old document, the Bible, okay. It says this, this, and this needs to happen in order for this to happen. Why don't we just take that upon ourselves to just go make, like me and you could take

a prophecy from Daniel or something like that and probably make it come to pass today. Just their own sheer will of whatever, you know what I mean? Well people have talked a lot about why did the conservatives ally with the evangelicals in the 70s? And that's genuinely a big reason why. Both camps saw huge apocalyptic crises. For the Republicans it was, like I said, worker militancy and wage push inflation. For the evangelicals it was this millenarian religious.

That's when, it's funny you say that because that's when Hal Lindsey started predicting the end of the world. We would talk about this a little in this thing we're working on. But in the 70s is when you started having, yeah, everybody thought basically, I don't know what it was.

Maybe it was George Orwell writing a book called 1984. Everybody thought the 80s was going to be like end of the world kind of thing. It's even reflected in the, like the sort of 80s futurism. You know what I mean? Like everybody was like looking anytime that movements like that start happening, you know what I mean? Like you start seeing like apoca, anytime, okay I'll give you an example, anytime there's a

resurgence of synth music, the music of the future, like George Omeroder talked about this, like when he described the synthesizers, he's like that's the sound of the future. Anytime you see an uptick in interest in synth music and all that kind of stuff, it is going gonna exist alongside apocalyptic vision. Just is. I think if you look in the early 2000s, if you look at even the 2010s. That's why I've been making a lot of synth music

for our episodes. Right, because you think the end's not. Okay, in the 80s, same thing. You know, like coming out of post-punk and you got all these sort of synth pop bands and all that stuff. Anytime there's sort of futuristic sort of movements looking toward the future, like there's always going to be like that counter

veiling force it's like, well that means the end is here. You know what I mean? And yeah, you're right about that. Like the 80s were almost looked at as like almost the way when we were kids we looked at the year 2000 as evangelicals. It's like some sort of new epoch that's coming in and maybe Jesus is gonna come back but something bad therein is gonna happen and that is sort of infected the whole 2000s and sort of stunted our growth I think for the last 25 years. I mean the end did come in a way. I mean it was a temporary band-aid to kind of keep things moving along but you did have the end of

The New Deal order you had the end of worker militancy Come out the late 70s early or late 70s early 80s I mean, I think that's why they saw the 80s as the kind of end because like the 70s the the situation was apocalyptic in a similar way to right now, in the sense that like they had run up against the limits of, within a mode of production you have little regimes of accumulation. Or, you know, I want to use the word regime, use model. You have a little models of accumulation. You had like entrepreneurial capitalism, you had Keynesian capitalism or Fortist, call it Fortist accumulation then you had neoliberal and I think that

For the bourgeoisie at the end of the 70s When they were in when they were you know reaching the end of the Fortis model they searched around cast a wide net and said this is in that Melinda Cooper bug I was talking about and they pieced together a ad-hoc model that you would call neoliberalism. I don't even need to get into all the fucking details of what it is, but let's just say for now that the basic fact that the bourgeoisie was able to find and land on new ideologies and new technologies of accumulation, switching from

production to financialization. That showed that they- Yeah, financial instruments away from like pensions, for example. Yeah, they should- Used to work in a factory and get a pension. Exactly. Now, what do you have to do? You have to loan the bourgeoisie money for decades in advance for a pittance on the money and that became our retirement system. Well and under the Fortis system and she gets into this in the book, land itself was not

something you wanted. You didn't want land under the Fortis model. Land was an expense because you couldn't write it off on your taxes and it depreciated too fast. Under the neoliberal model, land acquires a new value. This goes hand in hand with Donald Trump's empire, real estate, financialization. The fact that they were able to put together a new model

showed that they still were in it. They still wanted to continue capitalism. They wanted to do it on their own terms, they wanted to destroy the proletariat in the process, or at least keep them subdued. I don't think that they wanted to destroy them entirely. I think they wanted to disorganize them and keep them subdued.

I genuinely think now that they, having reached the end of that paradigm, that phase, they don't even really, it's not that they want to kill the proletariat, they do, obviously they want us all dead, but they kind of want themselves to die. It's like, the only reason I say this is like, why else would Elon be talking about continuing on his consciousness after he dies? I genuinely think you would only be talking about that if you yourself didn't kind of want to die a little bit. Does

that make sense? Paradoxically. I know that that's a weird thought to try to connect. Well it's also too the thought for a man that just indiscriminately has like several children out of wedlock. Right. You know, like for most people the way you live on after you die is you have progeny. Yes, exactly. You know, I was thinking about Mickey 17 last night. It's like, yeah, it's like, yeah, like, like it's not enough for him like he has to have like once he got like 12 children by like eight different women or something

something crazy like that and just keeps on having them. You have to like them according to Trump. Yeah yeah yeah is it a hate crime if you don't like it? It's a hate crime if you don't like Elon's kids. Point being is I don't really see them with the initiative in any way I think JD Vance is maybe the only one among that crew that has any kind of cultural or any kind of initiative that might Allow them, but he's not an economist He doesn't have like the brain for that like the only he doesn't JD Vance doesn't see the world in terms of economy He sees it purely within culture. This explains everything. Like, it's why he'll be able to elegy his dog shit.

It's why he hangs out in these like, Groper group chats and stuff. As the vice president of the United States. Yeah, he doesn't see the world in terms of economy. No. So like, that's a bad thing for their project. They don't have any real economic plan. Peter Thiel does.

A lot of those, his right-hand dude at Palantir, Alex Karp, I think that they kind of have a little bit of an economic, perhaps, vision that would allow them to exit neoliberalism. But like, I just genuinely think that they kind of, on a subconscious level, crave the ending of the bourgeois project. They don't really want to be bourgeoisie anymore.

They want to be something else, maybe some sort of hybrid of monarchy and bourgeoisie, and I'm not saying that that's techno-neo feudalism. I'm saying it's probably something that we couldn't even conceive of or imagine. I don't think the social order would look like feudalism in any way. I think though that they themselves in the way that all humans kind of cast back to the past and like just recreate roles they would try to recreate it in a way that would be kind of incoherent, stochastic, violent, repressive. But I don't know I just I don't know I just just, I don't know.

I just don't think that they've got much. They don't have the kind of optimism or know-how that the bourgeoisie of the late 70s, early 80s did. Those guys, evil, but they were smart. They managed to thread some needles that was in hindsight. What do you think Trump's whole stake in that is, like in the economic future? Do you think he just doesn't care about it

because he's just wealthy and whatever and like he's the homecoming queen now and like all that stuff so he doesn't really care? But like it seems Trump is clinging to the Reagan 80s in like of many ways, you know, like terrorists for example, like all that like just kind of like weird economic stuff he's doing is just like, well what was going on when I came to, when my rise started? Yeah, I wonder if it's like because he had a brush with death

He's like his life's flashing before his eyes. Yeah, and he's like He's like Ben Horne in Twin Peaks or something. He's like My I love that bicycle. I Love that green bicycle that my dad gave me yeah yeah, he could be like this Ben Horn shit Now I'll actually not to get in twin Peaks talk, but actually do like Ben Horn Yeah, Ben Horn had like kind of a redemption art. Yeah, you know yeah, I don't see that for I don't either I Don't know man All of which just to say that they look at the world and they see an increasing upward spiral of cataclysm and

Intractability and I do too But like I think they're more pessimistic than I am people listen to this show like oh y'all are do-mers blah blah I guarantee you our do-mer ism doesn't come a fucking fraction of an inch as close to their do-mer-ism Well, did you see Elon's nightstand? five caffeine free diet cokes and a handgun Listen friends you can say what you want about me and Terrence. That's not what my nightstand looks like. No. I have flowers on my nightstand I have an alarm clock and my inhaler. Yeah, that's it Also my nose thing cuz I'm trying to breathe through my nose more when I sleep yeah, I don't think it's working

You're gonna start doing the mouth patch thing. I'm worried about that because um, they said don't use it if you have low blood pressure and have low blood pressure sometimes. Yeah. So I worry about like suffocating to death or like lowering my blood oxygen so much that I just die. That wouldn't be bad though dying in your sleep. It's the best you can hope for according to Kenny Rogers Kenny Rogers? Yeah, and the best you can hope for is to die in your sleep You better know when to hold him What that that song is full of wisdom really is Jesus. That is so much wisdom in one song. Yeah That's too much honestly, it's it's running over truly Damn, I'm so congested dude How am I supposed to end this?

Is it because I snorted too many pills in my youth? Is that why? Could be you might have you maybe check to see if you have a deviated septum How do you check you just stick your finger up there? there's no bridge? Well I think you see an ear, nose, and throat specialist. Yeah or you could just do the home test which is to stick your finger as far as up your nose as you can to see if there's a septum that's deviated. I think I just snorted too many pills. You can't snort pills kids. Don't do that. Don't snort pills. That's the stupidest fucking thing you could do. It's best not to just put anything up your nose Yeah, you're probably right. Mostly because it feels pretty good weirdly. It does feel very good. It scratches up very nice itch. That's true

Don't do it. But don't do it Well, the funny thing is is yeah Like I look back on me being like 22 and just crushing pills up and just probably leaving massive chunks of the pill And just snorting that that's like snorting a fucking boulder on your nose They're like what the fuck are you doing? I have like some sort of like black lung s disease from snorting pills That's true, where does it Where does the I? Just always assumed that you just snorted it and you had like the post nasal drip and you swallowed it

It doesn't go into your lungs literally doesn't you had like the post nasal drip and you swallowed it it doesn't go into your lungs literally does it does cocaine go into your lungs when you start what's the mechanism for nose drugs how does that work yeah I thought it just stayed in your sinuses and then just dripped I thought it was just it's kind of the same concept as boofin you know putting something up your ass because like the it's just quicker to your bloodstream I think just putting in your nose hits your bloodstream quicker because the tissues are thinner. I used to parachute MDMA.

You know what parachute is? Well apparently somebody told, I thought I parachuted MDMA when I stuffed it up my ass. Somebody said, no, that's boofing. Parachuting's a different thing. Parachuting's when you put it in a little bit of toilet paper and swallow that. Well I put it in a little toilet paper

and put it up my ass. That's a paraboof. That's a hybrid. The other day I was thinking about the funniest thing I think I'd ever heard. Like I was trying to think of the funniest thing I'd ever heard in my life. And it's tough, but like one of the funniest things I think I've ever heard was you saying you won't eat beets because you're afraid that it might mask or hide some internal bleeding. Gastrointestinal bleeding.

Let me tell you, I just, it's gonna come as no surprise to a lot of people. I grew up around a lot of kooks, which has prepared me for these times in a way that maybe other people feel like caught off guard, you know, where people grew up more, you know, I guess normal, you normal, pragmatic circumstances. I was not raised pragmatically.

I was raised by essentially a bunch of kooks at the community level, not talking about the familial level, although there's definitely some kooks in my family. But the funniest thing I've ever heard was from one of those people who you know, did you ever meet Pac-Man never met him hers heard legends though yeah the funniest thing I ever heard was Pac-Man saying that well there's a lot of funny things Pac-Man

said but I think chief among others so I'll just tell you some greatest hits he started a wrestling promotion one time and told us that he was in the process of getting the Undertaker who at the time was the biggest wrestler in the world wasn't going to come and participate in his promotion. Now isn't he the mayor of Knoxville? That's Kane, his TV brother. So that was one thing. Another thing he told us is when me and my cousin went to get our driver's license he said, boys you don't even have to go get get your driver's license. He said, boys, you don't even have to go get your driver's license. You can ride into the DMV in Romulus, Michigan, and they'll send you a driver's license. And he showed us a driver's license from Romulus, Michigan.

It's like a Michigan driver's license that looked like a fake ID, essentially. And I think it was. So that was one. He told us he was the 84 World Pac-Man champion. Told us he skated down Pine Mountain backwards on roller skates, that was a famous story. On the guard rails. Yeah.

I heard that, yeah. But the best one, he told us he worked at the Weitzberg City Pool when he was in high school. And he told us that he could walk around the bottom of the deep end with a T-shirt tied, air tied around his head and he could breathe in the pool with basically an airtight t-shirt. He said he would tie off the neck and the arms and the neck and he said it acted like

almost like a like one of those old diving helmets. The old time diving helmets. And he told us that he just told us he could walk around the bottom of the 10th foot which is like you know maybe he doesn't have the same buoyancy as me because he probably weighs you know 83 pounds soaking wet that is the funniest thing ever well another contender for that is when he told us that all the coke machines that had the NASCAR drivers on them back in the 90s that he was standing by one one day with Richard Petty on it and a woman came up to him and asked him to sign her tits because she thought he was she thought he was Richard Petty standing next to his Coke

machine dude when he would liars like that Are a dying breed we need them back like creative liars. We need some more color in this world having a shirt scuba is Funniest was creative lie. I have ever hey, and I think her believed it You know what I mean like as is often the case like I'm curious how he tied off the neck But did he just like put like a bungee cord or something like risk choke it Even if you completely I mean, it's a shirt like water is gonna go through Now he said he created an airtight bubble it probably actually make you suffocate even faster Well, I guess you can't breathe underwater at all. I

Don't anyway, there's a couple of things in that account of things that defy physics and you know. That's good shit. In natural order, but. That is good shit. That was, that was one of them. Damn. I was the opposite of, I was insufferable when I was a kid.

I was the kid that would tell my friends that wrestling wasn't real. Ability is obviously staged. It's fake You're one of that you were a realist. There was a kid there was um When I was this when I was in elementary school there was this The roof on Coronado elementary in Hobbs, New Mexico The fire you were the geography reigning geography champ. I was the reigning geography champ. That's true

There was this they put this rubber Lining on top of the roof that was green very bright green and it would blow off Because you can Hobbs you get like fucking 80 miles an hour winds sometimes and it would like tear up and get old and blow off onto the playground and This girl my class renell We had the same name last name actually no relation and this girl in my class, Renell, we had the same name, last name actually, no relation. She led a campaign where she was like, it's alien skin, it's alien skin,

we were like in fifth grade. She's like, this is alien skin. And I was like, no, this is obviously just from the roof, it's just the lining on the roof. And everybody believed her. Everybody, nobody believed me. Well that should have been a harbinger of things to come. You know what I mean?

Why, young Terrence didn't want to live in a disenchanted world. No, I didn't. You wanted to just have everything explained to you. Why'd you just go with the alien? Why couldn't you get on board with that? I don't know, Tom. I've asked myself that question ever since.

I mean, it's stupid, but it's a lot more fun It's a lot more fun. Fuck. Yeah Yeah, is it we do live in a disenchanted world? That's another reason these tech moguls are they want apocalypse that we live in a disenchanted world, and it's not fun Yeah, it doesn't make sense if we live in a disenchanted world and our idea is to bring back Witchcraft and a belief in like werewolves something like that it makes sense that the ruling class's belief is that they must usher in the end times because they have all the money they had exactly it's just like everybody's just playing

their role in that context what we need to do is just say hey this is all stupid also we just kill all y'all yeah take your money back take our money back take our money back yeah classless society yeah damn man we give them the choice first like Fidel did you know yeah I mean surely there's a way to do it we're not barbarians because I've been thinking about this like how scared I've been at times in the last few weeks, months, years, that like the hammer could come down on me at any moment. And I'm like, well, that sucks. I don't want to like make JD Vance's family ever feel like, just because as a human, I'm like, oh, I don't want to like make anybody suffer the same fear or whatever as I experience

sometimes. So I'm like, is there ways to do it where we can just like isolate them from society? But I think so, I don't think that, it's easy to adopt the bloodthirsty kill them all thing. That's a vulgarians response. I think we need to take our lessons from the Ethiopian Marxists that overthrew Haile Selassie

Uh-huh let our special boys just live out their days in their palace, but they don't get to come outside Yeah, like let him Right give him a little zoo enclosure. Yeah, right. Can we can we have this true? That's true They let Selassie keep his line Yeah, like can we just have the bourgeoisie in a zoo and just in a little enclosure and be like a curiosity Yeah, like this is what we used to be this is what this guy made six hundred billion dollars Can you believe it now look at it? He's eating grass. He's my big guy It's like a zoo of American grotesque girls

Yeah, I mean look if the people want blood I mean you're gonna have to give them a little blood here and there Well, there will be some obstinance and the obstinates get blood. Yeah, right, right, right because yeah at the same time when Bryan Thompson got Blau I was like Man that felt good But I'm human. I'm complicated, I have conflicting feelings sometimes.

Well, he denied cancer patients treatments and stuff like that. He deserves death. Elon probably, like I know the instinct is to kill Elon, Elon probably deserves the zoo. You think he deserves the zoo? If we're just judging everything on balance. One, because he's such a curiosity just the way his body looks. Okay. See, I was gonna say for that reason he probably needs to go. He's kind of-

No, I want to. He's kind of an affront to God and humanity. I kind of- Oh, that is true. I kind of want to conserve Trump because he is an oddity, but like, Elon, I kind of feel like is an insult to beauty and sublime, you know.

That is true. The world would be quantifiably More beautiful without him. Okay, reverse that Trump goes in the zoo trumps like that, you know like One of those like house cats that lives to be like 35 that just looks like it's not having a good time here Looking like that his teeth have like falling out You know, but Elon probably has to go, yeah. We'll probably just. Peter Thiel's a little too sweaty. I mean, because when you think about when you go to a zoo,

you don't wanna see something like in distress really. I mean, granted, our thing here is it's like a zoo where they've been deposed and stripped of power and money and wealth. So they're gonna be in distress. But I feel like Peter Thiel's so sweaty that like... He's also squirrely. He's also squirrely?

Yeah, you can't trust a man that did Palantir. Like if you don't nip that in the bud, he's gonna reprise. Like if we slip up and rest on our laurels, he comes out later and bites us in the ass The CEO Alex carp though or the other Palantir guy that guy belongs in the zoo. He looks like Taika Waititi You know I'm talking about. Yeah, he does look like Taika doesn't like he could be in the zoo Yeah, I would love to feed that guy pellets in a zoo like throw some bird seed on the ground and he'd be like oh Yeah, lamp it up bitch That would be cool. Yeah Who else?

Robert F. Kennedy also kind of a grotesquerie. It's kind of crazy how all these guys are grotesqueries. Man, what an unfortunate bounce of luck to be a Kennedy and be the gross one. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, how are you you like that's like yeah it's like you're you're born in Kennedy but you don't get any of the like redeeming Ken like he's a horrible dresser he sounds weird he looks weird

who else is in this we've, what about Mark Cuban? I'm thinking of the other bourgeoisie. Mark Cuban? Yeah. Zoo, right? Ah, he's a guy. He's a guy, yeah. I mean, he's like, I don't really have any like,

blood thirst for him. Nah. But he does need to be stripped of his riches and power. Yeah, and well, it's just, it's nothing personal, it's just if you accumulated that fortune. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You. Yeah, we can't let that carry on Yeah, so the zoo he gets the zoo Who are other captains of industry in America Mark Zuckerberg

I'm thinking zoo for him Because and I'll tell you why I don't think he's like really smart enough or canny enough to like launch some sort of like white enough or canny enough to like launch some sort of like white Guard what did they call that after the Bolshevik Revolution like the white guards of the white Russians or whatever No, no, it doesn't matter how much jiu-jitsu he's learned and how much he learned to chuck a spear I don't just don't buy it. I'm not threatened by him. So zoo. Yeah, I think it's the zoo Dana white or the McMahons. Also Ari Emanuel, Rahm Emanuel's brother,

did you know he is the executive of UFC or the executive of the company that owns UFC now? And Rahm Emanuel's talking about running for president. Ari Emanuel played by Jeremy Pibbin in entourage was Trump's agent did you know that yeah and so he's now runs the company that owns a FC or UFC the manuals I don't think they're getting the zoo hard to say hard to hardly problem is getting this is a he too much of a live wire yeah I took I'll say he just makes me mad yeah I know when I go in the zoo. I think Primal Mania is getting the zoo. He's too much of a live wire. Yeah.

He's too crazy. Also, he just makes me mad. Yeah. I know, when I go to the zoo, I don't want to get mad. I don't want to get mad at the zoo. No. Yeah. Ari.

Betsy DeVos? Here's the thing about how I feel about the UFC and all that stuff. For beautiful cage fighters, want to fight in the cages, they should, but they should reap all the spoils of that. We don't need Dana White paying them poverty wages and Ari Emanuel paying them poverty wages. If you want to get UFC, if you want to get CTE. Let them unionize. Yeah yeah yeah. Let the fighters

unionize. Also too, well here's what we need for Trump. Here's the thing, here's what's decides his either or zoo future we need to put him and Khabib in a cage together okay okay yeah Khabib said to him Trump free Palestine keep that promise to me and Trump said he wouldn't I guess Trump's compromises that we'll just raise it and build you know, whatever on there. Mm-hmm put those two in a cage together If Trump survives Khabib Then he gets in the zoo If he doesn't then well, that's problems taking care of a force. Okay, I like that Trying to think of other captains of industry like the DeVos family Were the Waltons like they own Walmart? What about them? Yeah, they destroyed

Yes, like the Sacklers and stuff like that too right like they they're probably getting Some of those are some of those crimes are like It's a it's a criteria, right? It's like if you crimes are like it's a it's a criteria right it's like if you you've done a lot of like bad stuff sown a lot of evil into the world created social pollutant like the case of Mark Zuckerberg it's like you are not without a ton of blood on your hands but also I don't really fear you and you know you are kind of quirky and it's maybe fun to watch you get your ass beat from time to time you know, you are kind of quirky and it's maybe fun to watch you get your ass beat

from time to time, because that could be a good part, like two, you know? In the zoo, there's like predators and prey, because it's only a little ecosystem. Yeah, we could just sit up there and just be like, who wants to fight today? And we just paired like fighting. Yeah.

Like Zuckerberg gets to fight, I started saying Jeff Cart, Alex Cart, or whatever it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Karp Alex Karp. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah We treat it like the Roman Coliseum almost yeah, so yeah, there's We can nobody bother Trump though. He's old. He's Rupert Murdoch How too old huh? We shall do that Adelson Anyways you get the idea. Yeah, we'll have to go on a case-by-case basis. Yeah, but man Good stuff. Yeah, if you've accumulated fortune on the backs of other people nobody likes you

Reminder mm-hmm. Nobody does like you. That's the thing. That's the funny thing about Elon It's like what have you done to make anybody like you? Why are you surprised everybody fucking hates you? You've just made yourself more you were doing sig hails, man You have done nothing to make anybody like you you fire like a hundred thousand people from their jobs at the government like What have you done to engender any goodwill in the public other than like a bunch of fucking? Maladjusted losers who think that like their destiny is to accumulate a fortune like yours Uh-huh temporarily embarrassed yeah, or to be a sycophant for you like that bald guy in Mickey 17 Yeah, that's right. You know what I mean?

with the weird lip piercing like What have you added to humanity like? Across the board you so poison you could you could have if I if this were if I were God and I'm not And in fact, bro, I'm against it Eat my fucking enemy man Great judge I was like you could have used your fortune to Cure disease Solve homelessness and solve hunger all these things you have more money than than I do and I'm god

And yet you decided to sell a mail order flamethrower instead You made a I'm sorry, dude lay a peak you guys Get no quarter for me. Yeah, they're not zoo guys. I'm sorry. You're right. I think they gotta go I think they you gotta hit the button to the trap door drop them into the furnace Um a lot of my trollo friends growing up had those airbrush shirts that were like XXXL, you know I'm talking about yeah, it would have like Bugs Bunny on it or like Jesus a lot of times it have Jesus on it with like a cross of the war or you know a crown of thorns or

RIP somebody yes or RIP somebody if you're the Antichrist, but you're a Cholo, like what is your airbrush shirt gonna have on it? It's like someone flipped. It's just 666. Calvin pissing on Jesus's face or something? RIP civilization. I guess Calvin pissing is more of a hillbilly thing. I'm not seeing it very much in Cholo. Nah, that seems like. They're more into spiritual cousins, but the link is through cockfighting. Yeah, that's true That's true. That's true Hmm. Yeah, that's good stuff Alright, yeah, same here. I gotta eat lunch man. I've been busting to piss literally for eight minutes into this I'm so hungry. It's like it's, you know that piss where it's like,

kinda like, hurts, you know? As soon as we started, I was like, I gotta pee. Damn, dude. I was afraid to be like, man, let me pee, so I've gotta go. All right, thanks for listening, friends. We've got a lot of content over at Patreon. If you've been missing Aaron on the main feed, he's been on most of the recent Patreon.

So just go over there. Maybe we'll unlock one of those episodes here soon as well to kind of chum the waters there. But please go check us out on Patreon. Links in the show notes. Yeah, go with God. Yeah, see you friends. We'll see you next time, peace.