Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 4: No Sympathy for Coastal Elites (w/ special guests: Caroline Rubens + Lil Prosperino)

Episode Date: March 23, 2017

Since we've been on a brief hiatus, we decided to bring you a double episode this week. In part one, we welcome special guest Caroline Rubens of Appalshop to talk about proposed cuts to arts funding in the new Trump budget and what that might mean for cultural documentation on the mountains. In part two, we examine, with special guest Lil Prosperino (@shittykittymom), the cottage industry of think pieces written by so-called 'coastal elites' about the so-called 'white working class.'

I was telling Tom this weekend about how we need to we need to start getting like sponsorships for the show and Like a big corporate sponsor like Randy's the rolling paper Oh my god A big corporate sponsor Yeah just cause I just really want to make a commercial where we're like Where we're like Are you being shipped off overseas? You being shipped off overseas? You're being shipped off overseas?

You haven't seen your sweetheart in years? Pull out a Randy. I love your 40s radio voice. I want to advertise our show that way. Just like, you're not pleased with the media coverage of Appalachia? Well, tune in this week as the Trailbillies. Oh, shit. Want to commiserate?

You got to punch where they have the dated reference in that same voice. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Gary Grant listens to the Trailbillies. That's so fucking dumb Okay Alright, alright So we need to start the show like an actual show this time

So hello everybody Welcome to the podcast And we have a guest on this week Woohoo Could you announce yourself guest? I am guest Does it have a name? I am guest. Doesn't have a name.

I am guest. Caroline, the guest, Rubens. That's great. Happy to be here. Honored to be here on the great, already legendary Trillbillies podcast. Queen Caroline. Fuck yeah. Have you really listened, Caroline? I have.

Well, we just say that a lot of our friends are like great podcast but like I'll start talking to him about it and I'm like yeah you know that I'm just repeating this shit I say in the show because I'm not original enough to come up with my people have heard of us though today at that meeting I was at people were like like talking about oh yeah I've heard of the true abilities and they didn't know I was like true billy number two or something really we've not decided all of my friends have happily admitted to me they haven't listened to the podcast i'm like well who's listening to this no one i know is listening who the fuck coastal elites because i'm like oh hey did you hear the

podcast they're like no i'm sorry it's like they wanted to lie, but they just couldn't bullshit. They didn't even care about me enough to lie to me. I think a lot of people just don't listen to podcasts. They're not very popular. There's a lot out there sort of demanding people's attention. It's true. Yeah. Which is a terrible excuse to not listen to your friend's podcast. and it's true yeah yeah no on that note I do like the people I really get a big

kick out of the people online who are like, Trump's just doing this as one big distraction. You know what I'm saying? There's just this weird talking point I keep hearing over and over that, like, did you see his tweet about Obama wiretapping him? It's all a distraction, man. So the GOP people in Congress could pass 500 bills. And I was just like, I don't know if it's a distraction.

I think he's a fucking idiot. Yeah, no, he's not thinking that he doesn't think more than two seconds ahead even though like all this like horrible muslim legislation like it's a head fake it's a head fake and i'm like it's actually really significantly fucked up yeah if this is a head fake we legitimately need to look are you insane yeah yeah this If this is a hit fake, we legitimately need to look. Are you insane? This is terrifying. Right. It's just like outright authoritarianism.

But anyways. Like very amateurish authoritarianism. Right. Rookie fascism. 5 a.m. tweeting fascism. Right. Yeah. You think if Mussolini had a Twitter, he would be up at 5 a. Right. Yeah. You think if

Mussolini had a Twitter he would be up at 5am tweeting about what was going on in Napoli. When you give dated references you gotta do the voice. Yeah, you're right.

You think Mussolini was up at 5am? Mussolini spent 16 hours on Twitter yesterday. The wall comes home. Okay, but so speaking of the authoritarian in the office or whatever, he just put out a budget. And this is a good example of how people are like,

he's just distracting us. And how is the president's budget a distraction? That's literally what we've been waiting for. But it is so draconian, everybody's just like, it's a distraction. How Rogers finds it appalling. He called it draconian. Mitch McConnell's like, there's no way you're going to cut the ARC. Draconian, yeah, that's right.

He literally used the word draconian. How Rogers? How Rogers did, yeah. Wait's right He literally used the word draconian Hal Rogers? Hal Rogers did, yeah Wait, what does this word mean? Like harsh But in like an old way Yeah, I would say like severe Like very

I don't know how to explain it It's just very Yeah, it's just very harsh But, okay So, in the budget They proposed to cut all this shit One of which was the NEA Am I correct, Caroline? That is correct But, okay, so in the budget, they proposed to cut all this shit, one of which was the NEA.

Am I correct, Carolyn? That is correct. And is this why you were? Zeroing it out. Okay, zeroing it out. That's a national endowment for the arts. I say that because it sounds smart. Zeroing it out.

They're going to zero it out. Well, that's why I said it. Right, right, because it sounds smart. Right. That's why I said it. Right, right, because it sounds smart. Right. I'm an expert on budgets. But anyway, continue. Well, so correct me if I'm wrong.

I have been really bad at keeping up with my news updates on my phone. But you were featured. Were you in the New York Times? A couple of months ago. Oh, okay. Yeah, they did the National Endowment for the Humanities. You know, they're sort of like a pair, NEA and NEH. And there was sort of a push, I think, on the part of the NEH to feature the kinds of areas that people might not think they're funding, like rural programs and programs that benefit veterans and that kind of thing.

So I think the New York Times reporter talked to them at looking for those kinds of angles. So they got in touch with Apple Shop. You're the first person to pick up the phone. I was the first. Well, yeah. They ended up directing them to me pretty much shop and um you're the first person to pick up the phone i was the first well yeah or he had they ended up directing him to me pretty much because i work for the apple shop archive and we've gotten the most recent high profile grant from the neh so he ended up talking to me and um i and the phone

conversation didn't go well i would i i'm i I'm not very experienced at talking to reporters on the spot. I mean, who among us? Behind the scenes. The story behind the story. The New York Times article. Yeah, we all were like slamming shots of tequila. Yeah, we all were like slamming shots of tequila. So, and this might be more information than is interesting. So I wrote him a really long explanation of what I meant.

Praying that he would use this. Yeah, and he used like.0008% of what I wrote to make his point at.0008% of the budget. This is my segue. Of the annual budget goes towards arts and humanities. Yeah, it's so small. What will wind up happening with this episode is we'll use.008 of your part in it just to make another point. Anyway, so yeah, so that was the long story behind my answer to you. Okay.

Yeah, I was quoted in the Times supporting the NEH. I wanted to talk about why this is important, but I was playing around with it in my head all day. I was like, how are we going to talk about why this is important? Because I was like, what is the genesis of talking? And I was just like, what is art? Why is it important to fund art? But maybe that's a good place to go from.

I don't know. Why is it? I don't know. Why is it important? And should our government support it? Right. I think so. It's such a tiny investment.

We're in agreement. Yeah, it's such a tiny investment for a huge impact. So I've been reading think pieces about these proposed cuts to the NEA and NEH and CPB. And I read an interesting article that made the case that these programs were part of the, you know, 50 years old now, part of the Great Society programs that were rolled out, like war on poverty and all that. And so with NEA, let's focus on that, you know, the idea was that there's just an essential value to promoting the arts. The arts are good because they help, and it's good to fund the arts. We use them to tell a story about ourselves.

Tell a story about ourselves, explore new ideas, new ways of looking at the world, celebrating creativity, et cetera, and so forth. I mean, there are all kinds of more, you know. Make podcasts. Articulous ways. Yes, make podcasts. Sure. Where is it going?

Yeah, so it's not been perfect. There have been many controversies over the years. Certainly military spending has been without any. Yeah, no, military spending is beyond reproach. But this article was talking about how over the years to kind of meet all the challenges, it was getting from the right, which, of course, really started with Reagan. And then Newt Gingrich was trying to, you know, propose cutting it, cutting these programs. Right. So one of the responses seems to have been to talk to become more results oriented with what they were trying to do and talk about all the economic, the economic impact of the arts. Right. impact of the arts right you know oh arts help lift up local economies you know because probably

gentrification is part of that and create you know when you create a creative class and all of that right right it was a convincing case that's part of it that in some ways we've and maybe this is true to some degree of the democratic party sort of undercutting some of its like really basic values and beliefs in the essential worth of all people. And again, to tie back, so this results-oriented, economic impact-oriented approach to the arts has really, it's not why Trump and Paul Ryan and the Heritage Foundation are trying to cut it out but that's maybe partly why they're winning the ideological battle against these programs. I think you know if you see this this trend of Republican candidates and then nominees I think back to the Romney versus Obama thing. Do you remember when Romney proposed the

PBS cuts? Like all the memes with Count Dracula and all that stuff were out there. Oh, yeah. I think at the root of that is kind of a jealousy that these people don't make culture or art. They know finance.

They know those worlds. But they don't have any great art or anything that they ever contributed. So it's dispensable to them. You're right. And I think there's a deep-seated insecurity. I mean, if you look at fucking Trump's inauguration, he had to get three doors down and fucking Ted Nugent, the boy. I don't know who he had.

We talked about this before. Michael Flatley, the Lord of the Dance. Well, and they push this misinformation that, or they try to paint the NEA and programs like it. There aren't really any programs like it, but that they support elitist institutions. Opera. God.

And, you know, urban. As a tool to play to yeah urban museums you know but the nea supports local you know they they've been going out of their way especially recently to target more diverse populations local local populations they've tried to do more rural funding they fund a state arts infrastructure they they fund state arts agencies so i think that's part of you know oh public television is for you know coastal elites i'm sure is what they want people to believe what's coastal elite about the cookie monster yeah and what's scary about this is that this tactic they're using this tactic because it's already work it's working it worked when they were trying to cut Planned Parenthood they just kept saying that all of Planned Parenthood is abortion all this funding

for Planned Parenthood is for abortions when the facts are no federal funding to Planned Parenthood meaning it was being used for abortions that was already outlawed um and so they what they cut was um all types of man like health care that women have to have so right they're using it over and over the tactic on that note there was this episode or no i don't think it was an episode i think it was uh it was literally a sesame street movie in the early 90s um that had joeesci playing Donald Trump. Did you see this? I saw it. Did you see this?

And, like, the plot line was that he wanted to, like, pave through Sesame Street, like, destroy the block to build their building, and they didn't want to do it. And then Oscar the Groucho. Yeah, yeah, moved his trash can to the property, and they said it was private property, and so he couldn't do it, and Trump was really pissed off. It was just funny, because on Twitter they were talking about Oscar coming through with a direct action.

The DA, man. Before we call it, so I was on a hike today at this meeting, retreat thing. today at this meeting retreat thing and uh you ever like find yourself like where there's like not a bathroom easily accessible but you really have to shit really bad yeah so i found myself in that situation and i kept like pinching it off and like but i had no way to play it off i had no way to play it off so i can can't just stop abruptly and act like I'm taking somebody back so it passes. So I kind of just had to write it out and just kind of think pleasant thoughts

and hope I didn't shit myself in front of my colleagues. Poop in your hand and carry it in your colleagues. Non-poopy thoughts. Non-poopy thoughts. So I finally found the immaculate bathroom in the woods, and there was some Pretty choice stall art on it. First off, we got weenie in the butt. Oh, yeah.

Weenie in the butt. Literally the words. I thought you were going to show me an image. A weenie and a butt. And then there was a thought you were going to show me an image. A weenie and a butt. And then there was a... Have you guys heard of the shithouse poet? No, I can't say that I have. Well, apparently he has a reputation in Pike County.

Here's a sample of his work. There once was a girl from Peru who didn't have anything to do. So she sat there in the stairs counting her pussy hairs. Wow. 2,202. Oh, my God.

If that's not an argument for the NEA, I don't know. Fuck yeah. There we go. There we go. Kind of. Yeah, yeah. Get the shithouse code of Grant, God damn it. There we go. There we go. Tying it up for me. Yeah, yeah. Get the shithouse code of Grant, goddammit. Carolyn, thanks for joining us today.

Oh, my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Thank you. I think memes will honestly probably get us to the revolution. The lefty memes are so fucking good right now. I need to be on more lefty meme sites apparently oh no i got blacklisted from weird appalachia i was gonna say yeah lil is fresh off of getting blacklisted from weird appalachia y'all gotta hear y'all gotta hear the reason why i heard you talking about this at lgp yesterday and i was like i would definitely use this we're

definitely using this yeah oh yeah and fuck weird appalachia for cutting people out are you fucking with me there's nobody weirder than us motherfuckers yeah they've been put on fucking more like normie appalachia yeah we are call me scum from the gutters dude all right all right let let little tell their story uh let's hear all about how you got kicked off because of some soup beans, dog. The most Appalachian thing possible. So Weird Appalachia is supposed to be like this commie leftist space, allegedly. But there's been a lot of criticism by a lot of people who live here. You know, like, hey, these cornbread memes are cool, but why aren't we talking about, like, real stuff in our communities in here?

This is like a leftist Appalachian group. Basically, there has been talk several times about, like, stop romanticizing soup beans because some of our families, like, cook them every fucking day when we were little. So it's not, like, a meme to us. You know, it, like, very much represents how we grew up in poverty and a friend of mine uh there was like this poll option like how do you eat your soup beans and a friend of mine put like the best way to eat soup beans is to not romanticize their taste when you

ate them three times a week growing up okay yeah so i was confused about how it got to that point and that got voted to the very it was like the top that was like the top vote right and all these the mods were super pissed about it you know a lot of a lot of us ate soup beans growing up like don't police people who want to honor it and you know my friend was like i'm not policing it it's just that some people deal with their poverty or like past trauma differently and you know it feels romanticized in this space all the time lots of things about uh like class struggle feel romanticized in this space and I was basically bringing the argument that those two perspectives can coexist in the space and they were like nope man hammer yeah yeah I wish you'd been somewhere else yeah yeah i wish you'd been somewhere else yeah yeah oh my god yeah it's pretty hilarious like

i kind of love it like it is really weird it goes back to what we were saying just a minute ago tanya before you got in we were talking about how essentially we spend so much of our time online i feel like that we often forget that it's i don't know it's just online you know what i mean like it is activism but it's not it's it is i don't know, it's just online. You know what I mean? It is activism, but it's not. It is. I don't know. I go back and forth in my mind. The lines are so blurred now.

Right, right. Because I do think it affects political consciousness for sure. Honestly, all of us probably radicalized online in some way. We didn't have it. Yeah, but I find myself getting almost all my entertainment from left Twitter now. I worry about that like if i if i uh you know like sometimes you ever feel yourself like thinking you're too principled to entertain yourself the

way you used to right or you fill the walls of the echo chamber yeah no i hear this like like i i literally in the last five years have like went through periods where i wouldn't let myself watch porn because i decided because i decided that all porn is fucking rape culture or something like i just like completely convinced myself like no porn is good porn and like for a while you know i'd like found some like hippie fucking version of porn where the girls are hairy and all this shit like was like okay i can i can work with it it's like maybe that's what you're at or whatever but i'll just go in cycles so it's like that it's like i'm too principled to enjoy my goddamn self yeah that's that's the thing it's like and this is this is like i can't even like fake tits anymore yeah well if you want to turn

yourself into a meme and laugh at that very fact then you should just engage in some online discourse about soup man man who'd have thunk it uh we we really do live in a a very unique time it's a very fascinating time this is a good question though is it like is it okay to consume entertainment that's like is it okay to watch Woody Allen movies? You know what I'm saying? That's like an age-old question, right? I'd say for Woody Allen, no. Not the Woody Allen thing, but that's like the classic example. You know what I'm saying?

Can you separate the maker of the art and who they are as shitty people, or most likely shitty people, too, from their product. Well, it gets even more complicated when you're talking about sex and when you're talking about what turns you on, and you really have to, you know what I mean? For sure. This all goes back to what I was saying in episode one, that a person's political views so closely are interwoven

with their sexual, you know what don't mean like pathologies. Well, so that is another layer of it. What if they're not? Or what if they're supposed to be, but you find that yours are not? Right. And then you're like, well, I'm even more fucked up. Right, right, right, right, right.

That is fascinating. That is a fascinating concept. I mean, that's real. I want to be a radical feminist that doesn't trigger anybody, but I also want to be a leather daddy. Yeah. Right. How do they coexist? Yeah.

I mean, there have been times where, like, people had convinced me I had to ask before I did literally anything in bed. And that was when I almost gave up sex altogether. I was just like, this is not even. What the hell? What's going on? What the hell? What's going on? I feel like this kind of goes hand in hand with what we were talking about earlier,

which is like when you were giving me shit for not having lost my virginity. I did not give you shit. I expressed surprise. Okay? I expressed. I would say it was. That is stone cold pussy demon like you get it i would say it was it was surprise mixed with um a little bit of like come on terrence like what's going on there like a

little bit of condescension actually i think that was self-fulfilling prophecy there that you you think i read that into that yeah you're probably right i'm very insecure about it because it was mostly me just thinking you're so and you say this all the time, like you're so, what are you, attractive, but you use another word, con-something. No, you say I'm so. Effete? No, no, no. God damn it.

Like mainstream. That's not the word. Normie? No, like traditionally attractive or something like that. Oh, conventionally. Conventionally. Yeah, yeah. Conventionally attractive. I've said that a bit, yes. You say. I do thinkally. Conventionally. Yeah, yeah. Conventionally attractive.

I've said that a bit, yes. I do think I am conventionally attractive. You are. You are totally. You're both conventionally attractive and actually attractive. And so when you said I didn't have sex until I was whatever the fuck, I was just like, what? Well.

What were you doing? Or what I honestly thought was that this poor boy thinks anal's not safe. honestly thought was that this poor boy thinks anal is not safe i had a buddy that that like uh started his sexual career out with anal because he thought it was safer exactly three of my best friends in high school were all having anal sex but we're you know we're like or they or yeah they thought they were saving themselves. They all were saving themselves by having anal sex and oral sex. And I was just like, what? The youth. And I felt left out because I wasn't getting fucked in the butt at the time.

Thank God now I'm like, oh, I dodged that bullet. Damn. I think it's interesting to think about, like, the cis-heteronormativity of that, you know? Yes. Like, oh, anal sex and oral sex aren't real sex. Absolutely. Or, like, two femmes or two women or two men. It's not real sex that you know like oh i know sex and oral sex aren't real sex absolutely two femmes or two women or two men it's not real sex right right yeah nothing but straight vaginal sex is real sex yeah it's ridiculous yeah it's actually a little terrifying yeah well just because i'm also conventionally attractive it means i also have pretty conventional sex, and so that reflects my political views.

All very boring. I might call me, but I only do missionary. I want to see that on Tinder. I want that to be your Tinder. Bringing new meaning to the term anti-imperialism.

Bolshevik in the streets. Yeah. Conservative in the sheets. No, no. What it is is anti-imperialist in the streets, but missionary in the sheets. Oh, my God. This got so smutty so fast. Yeah, yeah, it did.

So as we were talking about the other day, there is a sort of cottage industry right now, sort of niche industry of people talking about Appalachia, talking about the South, talking about quote-unquote Trump country, even going so far as to conflate the term hillbilly with the term, you know, with Trump voter. We need to decide. We need like a working definition of what hillbilly is. I don't think so. Because I think the— You think we should do away with the term? No, I don't think so. Because I think the...

You think we should do away with the term? No, I'm fine with it. No, I'm fine with it. But I just think putting hillbilly in a box... What I mean by that is like... Why define it? Like people say

hillbillies in the Rust Belt in northern Michigan in the upper peninsula. I mean, where I grew up, people – I mean, I think it's just – I think it's a term that actually – For poor whites or working-class whites. It's a term just discussed in working-class neighborhoods. Right. You know? It's usually used derogatorily, though.

And is used derogatorily, for sure. Even – which, in my family, we – my family used a red name more. Like, my mom would say somebody was getting red right if they were acting bad well i feel like namely my uncle yeah so um so yeah no it's all in the media it'll die in like a month or something and it'll come back up again and it'll die again you know well we talked about when willow was on some of the times and thus why we thought it was like amped up. We really think that it's amped up in times when other marginalized people are desperately trying to get a microscope on their fucked up situation. And people are like, but these white people.

We talked about this around katrina around the like rise of mtr mount top removal language right around the time of katrina yeah so yeah no so like it comes and it goes and a lot of uh what you know makes it come and go is reflected in what's going on in the nation right now and and so yeah i think because of trump and you know we established this and pretty much every one of our episodes by this point, that, like, ever since Trump became a serious frontrunner, people started wanting to talk about why are they voting one way? You know, why are they voting? Why aren't they voting the way we want them to? And all of a sudden.

It's mostly why are they voting against their own self-interest? Or why? Yeah. Why are they voting against their own self-interest? Yeah. Why do they hate us and why do they hate themselves? So let me read off. I i wrote this down i want to do this like i can read it in my 1940s announcer please i love that we love that no sympathy for the hair belly the eternal sunshine of the spotless white mind

the eternal sunshine of the spotless white mind is that what you just said yeah yeah what was that who wrote that i missed that one i think that one was by someone named frank barker or something barker oh kevin baker kevin baker yeah oh my god okay yeah in the new republic that one was bad Building democracy in Trump country. I want to ring the bell. Bing, bing. Will you please close this segment with a pitch to buy war bonds? All of these, every single one of these articles that I just listed can be placed on the same horizon the same spectrum as this jd vance hillbilly

elgie the kevin williamson um big white ghetto i mean they are they all occur in the same political space you know what i'm saying they they don't come from radical perspectives we haven't actually introduced our guests but um little if you could explain a little bit you we have you on, put the spotlight on you for a minute. We were talking a little bit about this yesterday, about, like, how a lot of these pieces don't ever take into account anybody, like, the potential of them getting radicalized in a place like this. So, my experience in Appalachia, you know, having, like, lived here and stuff, is that I didn't become radicalized in college. I moved away for college, and I came back, and I feel like while I had maybe radicalized somewhat during that time, I feel like a lot of what really changed me

and grew the values and the belief system I have today is organizing right here in the community. And I feel like that didn't just happen for me but it actively happens to all kinds of young people that live in Appalachia every day and it really others them to not bring that to light you know it's like the teared up version of the brain drain yeah and you know I used to think that it was kind of like it was like silly for people to talk about getting radicalized and how they came to their politic. But recently I heard someone ask a guest that on a podcast, how did you come to have your politics growing up in Texas?

This person was growing up in Texas. And then, you know, and she's and then she clarified. But if it's too personal, you don't talk about it. We don't have to. We can move on. He's like, you know, I guess like, you know, he like she clarified, but if it's too personal, you don't want to talk about it. We don't have to. We can move on. He was like, no, you know, I guess, like, you know, he, like, went about a couple of the things. And it made me realize, like, we have to be talking about this shit. We have to talk about how we came to be who we are because it's really important that people see paths.

It's, like, important for me to know how other people, like, people that I admire for sure, like you like you Bill how you came to be so wonderful the person that you are like it's important for me to try to see that path and for us to try to reflect on our lives I think too it's a hard thing and especially in times like these when so many of us are asking the question is it possible for people to even for people to even fucking drop their white supremacist shit. Like, is it even possible for us to move people in, you know, rural white, wherever the hell, beyond? Yeah, no, people aren't static. I mean, people change.

And we are so impacted by our surroundings. I think for me, being really accountable and coming into the fact that, like, I used to be a fucking liberal. It's so important for like who i am today to remember where i came from and also like i think it's important to tell these stories of like hey a fucking minors kid step kid whatever can become like a queer anarchist communist like these are things that happen right here in appalachia yeah easily it's not even necessarily like the outlier no we're not outliers no we're not like there's so many of us

right we're everywhere and we're having children so we're multiplying every time one of my friends has a baby i'm like you motherfuckers yeah we're multiplying and you can't stop us well i wouldn't i wouldn't yeah after the new health care bill that was just okay yeah maybe they aren't gonna i mean how many towns um have like 19 and 20 something year old young people talking about not even just talking about making the ask for like a clean needle exchange and stuff like that you know that doesn't happen everywhere i'm not saying that this is the most special place in the world but like yeah why aren't news outlets covering that yeah the last sex ed workshop that i did half the kids all

teenagers all in high school half of them identified as trans yeah when i showed up to and it was not a play i just showed up to like a regular youth center, like after school center. Not like, they all got off the bus there. And it wasn't like a queer center at all. And we talked about how, last week or earlier this week, we talked about how young people stepping out to say fuck gender is uh very important and a big piece of the path of them saying fuck capitalism and fuck all fuck fascism and fuck nazis and like it's all intertwined fuck all these false dichotomies like male female left right uh gay straight these are all false dichotomies none of them are real fuck bad boy records as a staff record label

as a motherfucking crew yeah fuck yeah i'll be down bad boy fuck you too fuck weird appalachia yeah fuck weird appalachia officially fuck soap being dictators yeah that's that's a better way to put it so yeah no um all right another thing though that like a lot of these articles don't take into account these statistics for for, like, voting. What did you say, Tanya? Yeah, in multiple of the articles you just named off, people say 80% went, you know, and then they'll say it in different ways. But, like, here in Letcher County, they'll often pop off. Right.

80% went for Trump. That's CNN piece. 80% of Letcher County went for Trump. It's like, no, that's not true. I did the math today about how much of the county actually voted. Like, I added the census and the number of voters for both Hillary and Trump. 37% of the county voted. So over 60%.

80% of that 37%. Yes. Right. So to say 80% of this county is Trump country is just completely false. It's disingenuous. So we can basically confidently say that 70% of this county did not vote for Trump. Yes. With confidence.

Right. 70% of people here who can vote, who are of voting age, or of this county, didn't vote for Trump. Yeah, unless some limp-dick coastal elite step out and say that their apathy is what got us here and all this kind of stuff. Right. It's just like, what was so goddamn compelling about the Hillary Clinton campaign?

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. No, it's okay. I just want to read this piece from a thing in the media that I actually did like in Salon, of all places. Liberal shaming of Appalachia inside the media leads obsession with the hillbilly problem. That's because this awesome girl that I follow on Twitter wrote this. Yeah, Elizabeth Catt or Katie.

So I like this part, and I had no idea. I haven't heard this statistic before. Please come on the show. They wrote, this is a compelling reason for why Kevin Baker, for example, likely feels justified in writing a 2,000-word hit piece on a county in West Virginia that yielded yielded just four thousand six hundred and twenty nine votes for Donald Trump when his neighbors in Staten Island provided one hundred thousand. So, yeah, no, this this whole this whole bullshit cottage industry. I mean, yeah, it is. It is just bullshit. People in urban areas, suburban areas, middle class,

upper class, white people voted for Trump. You know what I'm saying? I think liberals need somebody to blame it on and it's much easier to blame it on,

you know, impacted communities, disenfranchised people. Right. They're not gonna fucking talk about how disenfranchised the voters here are.

Right. Yeah, anything to evade. Democrats will do anything to evade self-reflection. Yeah. Anything. Literally anything. Let me ask you all this.

Let me put this to you all, okay? They'll say I'm with her. Here's what grinds my gears so much about this. As you look at the neoliberal power brokers over the last however long, if I'm president of the United States, if I'm Barack Hussein Obama, and there's all these sort of, there's all this, you know, like war on coal shit going on,

and, you know, I'm sort of being put out there as this bogeyman for, like, all this stuff and being blamed for just tanking these people's lives and making it more precarious, and a good portion of the people that have sort of been of that opinion come from like number 435 out of 435 in wealthy congressional districts.

Why would I not think, why would I not think to make a fucking appearance in the poorest congressional district in the country when all these things are being said about me? Yeah. think to make a fucking appearance in the poorest congressional district in the country yeah when all these things are being said about me yeah why like even even if even if the whole war on coal shouldn't have jumped off isn't it a pretty fucking presidential thing to visit your poorest fucking place yeah no i know you're absolutely right but i'm saying these people people my people they they feel ignored. Right.

And that's real. Yeah. That's not like, you know. And it's not to discount all of the other very real problems we have in our communities like racism and sexism and all this other stuff. But the thing where they fuck up is assuming that the places they come from are better than us, are morally better than us, have their shit worked out, you know what I mean, have defeated white supremacy, because they haven't. No.

It still pervades every fucking fiber of our being in this country. No. But they figured out how not to talk about it in those communities. So the way they get around talking about it is by blaming us. Right. Because they can't fucking deal with it. I'd like to see liberals show up in a lie heap line, shaking hands.

You know, like, how are you doing? Well, I have a shutoff notice, so I'm in this line trying to get my fucking heap turned on, you son of a bitch. Right, right. But America's great, right? Right, yeah. Already great. Life is full. You know, and I— We're stronger together.

Yeah. We're stronger together right here. What comes to mind when I think about that is how, like, white supremacist in of itself it is to, like, just portray a whole region as this othered white racist area. Like, people of color live here. They have lived here. They have always lived here. area like people of color live here they have lived here they have always lived here and it's not to say that there is not big problems with racism here just like there is everywhere but it just seems like in of itself very white supremacist to paint Appalachia as like this

white space but it's advantageous for them to do so right right well and I think it's even more interesting when you consider it in the context of this group of Nazis that want to march in Pikeville, right? Like, I think they are reading the same stuff. And they're, I think, in their mind, they think like, oh, capitalism is in crisis. Like these people, you know, this is a white homogenous space. Like, therefore, they will be more sort of open to the idea of Nazism or fascism and all this. These liberal writers want to write, like, box Appalachia into that narrative, but those Nazi marchers aren't coming from this place. They're coming, like, from fucking Illinois. They're coming from the north. Prairie dogs.

Yeah, they're coming down here. For the same reason that these people are writing, that this cottage industry popped up yep i've always kind of thought that so and we talked about this on the on the vance episode that they are so closely intertwined that it is not that far of a stretch to call jd vance a fucking neo-nazi exactly neo-nazi exactly i think it's also gross to like pretend as if Nazism is not going to be on their eyes everywhere. We live under, like right now, fascism is rising. We have this horrible fucking Cheeto of a president who is empowering these people and giving them more of a voice than they've ever had. So, like, of course, Nazis are going to come out of the woodwork.

They're going to continue to. This is like a movement of work. This is a body of work that we're going to continue to have to do. And they've been organizing and waiting for this moment since Obama took office almost nine years ago now. The number of white supremacy groups that the FBI track has went from, like, in the hundreds to in the thousands in eight years. It's crazy.

They've been waiting for this moment that they could shine. And you see the atmosphere that that comes out in. Like this guy who, I don't know if y'all saw this headline, this white supremacist had driven to New York from Baltimore and killed, stabbed a black guy. He told police that he explicitly went to New York to kill a black person. I mean, fascism destroys nuance. It destroys humanity.

And that is the perfect climate for people like Dylann Roof and, you know what I mean, for people like that to come out. That was my first thought, like when this whole Nazi thing in Pikeville popped off, is I thought these guys are just like corny-ass opportunists. Nazi thing in Pikeville popped off is I thought these guys are just like corny ass opportunists. Right.

But like if there's some impressionable Dylann Roof type out there, then like. And they're. It becomes a lot more insidious. But yeah, but we can't talk about, you know, that they want us to think that Dylann Roof was individually or, you know, that he like brought himself to all these politics. Right. Please. Yeah, he was indoctrinated at what at what time do we say obviously people aren't and doctor like dylan roof didn't just wake up one morning

that's ridiculous what like white supremacy is every day people have access to white supremacist thought their systems are inherently white supremacist like the systems we go through every day you know we've talked about this i think another thing to talk about is how to deal with the issue of nazis because you know jail and prison and institutionalizing people makes them better at being nazis it makes people more racially divided so how this is a problem that the traditional way that it's being dealt with is not fucking working. It's just making it worse. But, like, the Nazis coming to Pikeville, I mean, they dropped a whole fucking mixtape of videos. Like, a whole fucking, they dropped, like, multiple videos of them, like, knocking on trailer doors.

I know. In Pike County. It's like soundtracked by, like, fucking Focus on the Family-like music. Like, I'm tired of. And they're anti-capitalist. They say they're anti-capitalist. Yeah, they're hijacking our language. They say they're socialist too.

I mean, national socialism, of course, but like. It is an ideology riven with hierarchy. So we know that it's just a fucking bullshit word that they use to get people on board with the cause can i tell you my favorite part of the article y'all made me read yeah yeah she's gonna prove that she read yeah i'm like got my hand up at the front of class i read it call on me i'm so proud of you uh that he he when he's talking, when he's roasting Hillary Clinton, and he says that she couldn't even come to name her favorite, she couldn't even bring herself to name her favorite ice cream flavor

at one of her campaign stops. And I was like, that's all you need to know about Hillary Clinton. That's literally all you need to know about her campaign, is that she couldn't even muster an opinion on ice cream. Because she didn't want to piss off the strawberry vote. She didn't have the numbers in her head of the polling in that location of what was going to be the best answer. Why do you want to do that to yourself? Just chilling.

I'm chilling in the Buckeye, Cedar Rapids. That's what it was. Chilling in Cedar Rapids. I like all the ice creams. That's what she said. Chillin' in Cedar Rapids. I like all the ice creams. That's what she said. I love ice cream. I love, I don't know. I don't remember this on the campaign trail.

I didn't hear this, but I was just like, when I read that, I was just like, oh, that really is like the epitome of that campaign. Jesus fucking Christ. I was so bad. Was it you that was telling me the story about the staffer? Um, uh, what? I forget the guy's name, but he was a clinton staffer and he was like we don't need to neglect the rust belt in appalachia and then like he was outvoted by

everybody else in the room who their suggestion was that we got this thing in the bag anyway let's go to texas and florida and run up run up the score yeah yeah they were they were pretty bad it's like i said that one episode though it's like donald trump had it right when he said i'm with her like it should be i'm with you like that's what he said like i like that that would be the correct answer and he was right oh my god what can we say about the hillary clinton campaign that ain't already been said about kmart they all went out of business around here, every fucking one of them. Exactly. Kmart is serious.

And I never even had a good sale when they were going out of business. And someone even said to me today, like, I think Hillary's going to run in 2020. And I was just like, what? For what? Fucking ombudsman? For dog catcher? Why would she do that? And why would the Dems get behind her?

That's an insane thing to do. Somebody on Twitter said poor Chelsea Clinton doesn't realize her mother's plans to Freaky Friday her. Switch bodies with her. Oh my god. Oh, she's gearing up for a run, Chelsea. Mom's gearing her up.

The only one who can literally call her mom. Somebody on left Twitter. Yeah. Yeah, really? Somebody on left Twitter, they had posted this link that Chelsea Clinton was accepting some sort of Lifetime Achievement Award. And they were like, I'm not even being facetious, but for what? Don't you have to be so old to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award? Yeah, she's like 36 or something.

No, no, it was Lifetime Network, I think. Oh. I think so. Maybe I'm just being facetious. Maybe I'm. Oh. Oh. I think so. No. Maybe I'm just being facetious. Maybe I'm being dense. I hope so, but I've never seen Chelsea in any Lifetime movies. That makes more sense. I wish I had.

I'm being obtuse. Maybe they'll do a Lifetime movie about the Clinton family. Who would play Hillary in a Lifetime movie? I guess no one knows the names of actors in Lifetime movies. It would be, what's that one lady's name that's in every Lifetime movie? I guess no one knows the names of actors in Lifetime movies. What's that one lady's name that's in every Lifetime movie? Susan Lucci? You know what I'm talking about? I don't know.

That's above my pay grade. I can list you a dozen articles on Trump country, but I don't know any actors on actresses. I always get them mixed up. Lifetime. Myself and some other people that I know that I'm close with, that I exist in the same community with, we have been sort of inadvertently written about in some articles that reference Appalachia as like Trump country

or talk about Appalachia in such a way that, you know, this is an area that favored Trump in the 2016 election. I just think, I don't know, I guess for me, I feel like there is a way to tell a story about multidimensional people in Appalachia and all over the world that does not other them or you don't have to make something more liberal so the audience can consume it i think people would rather consume authenticity personally you know that's right i think you were trying to tell the story that appalachians are multi-dimensional people but in telling it you played into the fact that we're not And you never had to take that route to do so. Right, because it's written from the frame

that it's presenting to you as surprising that they're multidimensional people, which dehumanizes them. It others and alienates people who live here who are multidimensional, a.k.a. all of them. Everyone. Every literal person. Every human being is multidimensional aka all of them everyone every literal person every human being is multidimensional

and worthy of humanity willow recently tweeted i love it she recently tweeted uh my dad uh hauled coal and i work in the arts get a family that can do both and like the the it also i feel like it othered me personally in two ways. That way, and it also othered me in the way of like, as if I don't engage with people in the community who don't agree with me. Right, like Weisberg is this sort of enclave that is disaffected by everything around us and that it's just, yeah, it's like our own little sort of echo chamber. I kind of wish. by everything around us and that it's just yeah it's like our own little sort of echo chamber we've been talking about our frustrations with how politicians are inauthentic politicians are

wishy-washy about things because they're scared to not give votes you know they're they don't live in their truth but the fact to say that people here don't live in their truth is untrue. I'm very open about who I am with literally everyone. And no one is, if people are off put by that, I don't, well, first of all, I don't really fucking care. But second of all, I don't hear it or see it. You know, regular people, plenty of regular people like me, and I help them heal through their struggles at my job. me and I help them heal through their struggles at my job so it's hard to I felt very othered by the idea that I don't engage with just regular old people in this community because I do every day yeah and what's regular old people yeah well what's normal anyone yeah I mean says the man who says normie all the time but that's how I felt it was written in the article I guess I'm not

saying that I you know think any you, there's not this dichotomy. And that's my point. Like, we all have different experiences. You know, I think a lot of the reasons that I can relate to people at my job that have, like, drug charges or are felons and stuff is because I'm anti-capitalist. Like, we have that in common, this frustration like oppressive power structure and it's a good way to connect with people right yeah and traps like we all see these traps set for ourselves and each other yeah so let's name a few can we think of any good examples articles like this article no articles that like about Appalachia probably written by people here who that just like we read it and we see ourselves

in it. It's like, oh, yeah. Yeah. Fuck. Yeah. That's so totally true. That Salon article, I thought it was really well. I thought it did a really good job.

Yeah. And like every single article, every single paragraph, I was like, fuck, I was going to make that point tonight. So, yeah. But there are very few voices from the region in the sort of national media discourse yeah yeah which is the question and one thing that um is it caitlin elizabeth elizabeth points out in the article is that or no i think this was a tweet um that she we know you did the reading time she tweeted recently the people who are writing the articles that we've been talking about i can't remember verbatim but they are men from outside the region and the people who are getting right

who are getting legacy money who are getting money who are getting paid the people who are getting legacy money, who are getting money, who are getting paid, the people trying to reroute that and correct it are regional women being underpaid for their original work. Exactly. And if that ain't the goddamn 100-year synopsis, I don't know what is. So, Nia, that was a good example. Did you have another one you're thinking of or did you

do y'all have any i wanted to hear what y'all thought i'm never quick in my feet with stuff like this with people like when people are like what's your favorite movie what's your favorite book and i'm like uh like paralyzed yeah i do remember um this is actually a woman who wasn't from here that came here and spent like a weekend and just wrote like this cute blog about it but she was she was going to an Ivy League school her name was Priyanka did y'all meet her and she like just came into town

one weekend she likes her show she said she really liked the show but I just like happened to meet her we were just like standing in line together at the bar trying to pay and I was just like hey what's up you know I know everybody in here except for you what's up and so she's like yeah i'm here i think she was like going to an ivy league school or something and she had come down for the weekend i don't know what was up but she just happened to be

here lucky her that was my doing a drag show that was the friend i said who gave the episode to their professor. Oh, that's awesome. Who likes J.D. Vance. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, yeah. So anyway. She was here for. Priyanka helped us penetrate the academy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, sweet. Well, she wrote an article I really like. That was just like someone who came in for like a few hours, and she was very clear. She was like, I was only there for a few hours or a few days, but all this happened. She told a real damn story. Yeah, she was like, all this happened. It was really cool. And she never said like you never believe oh my god these people

were awesome there was a drag show she was just like yeah she was like if you're in the area definitely swing by white's red rules it's like thank you okay yes that's just what we like it wasn't it she did she could have easily been like you would never think like they just set it up like a fucking mystery novel yeah right in the dark dark hills of appalachia we're not a cult yeah we disagree on things yes i disagree with my mother on damn near everything you literally texted me last night and said i disagree about something yeah i was like yeah i didn't i thought that was bullshit but it wasn't the fucking worst thing in the world come on we're not a fucking cult and this is what comes up when i hear people say like i've heard people in the area who consider themselves outsiders blah blah

i think this also goes hand in hand with uh what do we call it imposter complex you know what i mean right which i think i suffer from yeah Yeah. I think we all do. I think somebody's bringing the hammer down. I'm a fraud. Yeah, we all do. I like sleep till noon, and I'm like, if anyone finds out about this, I'm done. I'm finished. I'll never work in this town again. That's all they'll remember about me. That's all they'll say about me. I was fucking late in bed till noon.

Anyway, I've heard people say that Eastern Kentucky is full of those culture wars here. And I just, when I heard that term, I just lost it. Like, I was crying. I was laughing so hard. I'm about to cry now just, like, because it's equally sad and hilarious. Because it literally means that people show up here expecting the monolithic white working class. And then when you literally can't admit to yourself that you were wrong about something and try to rework your understanding of the world around you, you invent a war.

Right. Like. Yeah. Yeah. One. Yeah. I did it. I did it.

Well, we've got almost an hour and a half audio and I think we've got some good shit. I came in here at 6.15. Like this is clever. I think we got it back. I came in here at 6.15 and said, it's beautiful outside. We're only going to be almost an hour and a half of audio, and I think we've got some good shit. I came in here at 6.15. I think this is a slapper. I think we got it back. I came in here at 6.15 and said, it's beautiful outside. We're only going to be here an hour. What time is it? 8.

8.15. Kill me. We've almost missed the whole ballgame. It started at 7. But we did a beautiful thing just now. We just made one of our best episodes. Yeah. You think so?

Fuck yeah, it was a good episode. Yeah, I don't know why we haven't had Lil Han already. Yeah. I'm interested to hear. Could you replace Terrence on the fucking show? Actually, no, that would be fine. As long as I'll just edit it for y'all. Oh, actually, that really could be a good lineup right here.

But I don't know if I'm conventionally attractive enough. That's not true. Definitely not true. That's definitely not true. Definitely not true. That's definitely not true. With this Hitler Youth haircut that Brent gave me today, it's probably best we're doing this on right now. I like it. I've just been wanting to dad this fucking look.

I'm just like, man, just give me a trim, and then he takes me down and hits me. I'm not far from having that Nazi haircut this haircut is so hot right now I don't know what the fuck is up with it it's the fuckboy cut have y'all seen the Nazis that are on that

counter rally page on Facebook and they all have it's not that haircut but it's like a little piece of it it's completely bald or then they'll have some weird lines they's like a little piece of it's completely bald, or then they'll have some weird lines or design. Yeah, they do like a skin fade. What the fuck is that?

It's like I'm fresher looking Richard Spencer or whatever. I don't understand this. Yeah, they're inspired by him and the others. It's like I hate blacks, but I love their music. Culture vulture. Everybody always talks about how fresh Richard Spencer looks but I think

this dude looks like frumpy and like just fucking lame like I don't he's retaining some water that's the head Nazi remember that time

I was like what's the head Nazi's name and you all just started like he looks like he lives on canned food he looks like he eats a lot of canned food

he's just a motherfucker who bought a peacoat from Route 21 like everybody else. Yeah, exactly. Right, right, right. Dude in a peacoat. Oh, my God. That'd be such a good Twitter account. Dude in a peacoat.

Dude in a peacoat. I have a peacoat. I do wear it, but I feel very self-conscious about it. Did y'all see how the New York Post characterized the dude that went from Maryland to stab the black guy. He was like, the sharp-dressed suspect. Oh, my God. It's like, why are we holding up Nazis as fashion plates now? This is fucking weird.

These are wild times, friends. Yes, they are. Yes, they are. Bizarre fucking times. All right, so I think I'm gonna pull the plug But uh Thanks for coming on the show Lil This was a pleasure

It was a pleasure It was a pleasure to be on here with y'all Thank you so much We'll be right back. Outro Music We'll be right back. Michael Phelps with the swim moves. Michael Jordan with the tennis shoes. Quavo. Y'all niggas, I invented you. Ike Turner with the left hand. Griselda Blanco with the trap moves. Gangland with the right hand.

Undertaker with the tattoos. Never listen to the classrooms. Switch it up, they bit the last moves. I'm a magnet for bad bitches. You got the going out sad bitches. I spent the 50 on a chain. You spent your last 50. I got the keys to the streets. You got the keys to the feet. Outro Music