Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 404: How We Destroyed The World

Episode Date: August 7, 2025

Dean Cain is joining ICE... Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

I constructed that narrative in my head. You're warming up soup. I sit here, we're just talking about Dean Kane in the news, and I was like, well, as soon as Terrence eats the soup, we'll be ready to roll. You didn't even have any soup. I never had soup.

It's like life. When you think about it, life is like that. Like, you think your buddy's got some soup, but it really doesn't. They really don't. They really don't have soup at all. Less so these days with this dang recession. Mm-hmm.

are they even acknowledging that yeah that there's soup that we have soup that we're in recession oh that we're in well even worse than that we're due for hyper inflation they've not acknowledged that we're in recession no okay um I think they're probably not going to it seems like they're not going to yeah a lot of things will be happening and they won't be acknowledging that because they they don't like the democrats the difference between the Republicans and Democrats is the Democrats will be like, we hear you. We're in a recession. We hear you. We're not going to do anything about it, but we acknowledge that you're in one. We acknowledge that, yeah, they will

give you the massaged reality. The Republicans are like, we're going to give you Dean Kane. The Republicans are like, this is the best six months this country's ever had, which is just objectively speaking is not, it couldn't be true. Dean Kane went on Jesse Walters. Was that that guy's name or Jesse Waters or something? Something Waters, I think. And he said, these brave men and women need someone to stand up for them. And let's just, you know, set aside whether you can classify troops as brave. There's a whole range of things you can be within the umbrella of brave, like stupid or misled, naive, evil, evil, all those things. But to call an ice agent brave is really stretching.

That's doing a lot of work. In this video where Dean Cain, a washed-up actor from the night-E. Superman. He's talking about becoming an ICE agent. They've superimposed, like on the split screen next to him, video of ICE agents doing raids in parking lots, and they're just running after people. Like, defenseless, like, completely, like, unarmed people. Like, you know, there's nothing brave about tackling an innocent person in the parking lot.

A guy that's not even paying attention what's going on, just doing their job. Kidnappers are brave now. Man, it is a hell of a thing, though. I think age probably be a theme of this episode is... Oh, really? Yeah. I've just... Well, you notice that they...

I guess to kick this all off, you know, they've removed the age limits for to join up with ice. I did see that. I always... Yeah, I think that's so they can get like 16-year-olds. I was wondering, are the kids going back to the racism minds, is it like so that 65 year old dad who's retired like can find some purpose and common cause with his fail sign i think it's both you know i think it's both like they're gonna be doing

it like they said that on that good what are they what are they pay in nice agents what's the sign up wasn't it like a hundred 30 thousand dollars a year 130k a year yeah no education requirement so they they've they've got basically that just the jobs program for chud losers losers Losers Absolutely losers I mean The you know I mean again

I hate to bring up Twitter But the For those of you not on Twitter Homeland Security Has been Posting You know Regularly

Like regularly posting memes About hiring new ice people And one of the ones They posted recently was What was that one I sent you today? It was like, defend the homeland, defend your culture. Save your, serve your country, defend your culture. No undergraduate degree requirement.

So this checks so many boxes for these people. They finally get a six-figure salary. It's the lowest barrier to entry you could imagine. Like, you just have to be willing to be a brown shirt. Yeah. And it solves the male loneliness problem if you're, One of those people who has, the most vulnerable to that because you're off-putting and racist and weird and all those things. So now you get some standing in your community because Dean Kane said you're a real hero.

You know, it's the worst possible confluence of things. They also, we could just spend all day reading off their tweet recruitment ads. One of them is a ad from the 80s. of, you know, one of those massive vans that people used to drive in the 80s. It says, want to deport illegals with your absolute boys. Think about how many criminal illegal aliens you could fit in this bad boy. Wait, what now? That's the official.

That's the, from the thing. Yeah. I mean, they just quote epic stuff all day. Epic Nazi stuff. They, you know, then they also quote, they also tweeted that photo of like a, 65-year-old blonde Aryan white man with his 20-year-old blonde-Aryan son. No age cap. Join us now.

That looks like Kevin Costner from... It said, we're taking father-son bonding to a whole new level. It would be cool. Yeah, I guess that's true. Rounding up Mexicans in a parking lot and stuffing them into the back of the van of a van is a way to bond with your dad yeah I guess there that is man

it's just such a it's just such an absolute failure from top to bottom to bottom here you think about it and at the crux of it all at the crux of it all is nobody wants to take responsibility for any of it

what do you mean like among the liberals nobody wants to be the politician to stand to up and say hey it's over we failed we've fallen behind all this kind of stuff so what they do is they just shift the the blame to illegals you know or you know migrants whatever you're going to say like you know it's these people doing this that are coming here and like taking your jobs as if you know 65 year old kevin costner lookalikes were beating down the door to you know they're offering $50,000 signing bonus for these jobs.

On top of the six figures, I guess he'd get paid for it. Dean Kane is going to be your boss. Can you, like, that's the why, that's like he, like this guy's been spending this whole press run mad at James Gunn for not hiring him for the new Superman or whatever. And now he's joining an ice that tells the tale here, man. You're telling on yourself, man, you've, you've reached some financial difficulty in scenes. be honest about it. Why didn't he hire me for it? Nobody wants you. Yeah, I think he might be a deputy sheriff though. I think he might be one of those right-wing grifter sheriffs that has like an online following. No. No. Um, he probably makes more

money than we'll, in a day than we'll see in our lifetimes just by being racist. It's crazy. You think that's what, they think that's like the, the big money's, the big money's in racism now. The big money is in racism now. I was skeptical about that senior, Sidney Sweeney, Sydney Sweening. I was skeptical about all the outrage over it. But the more I've seen it metabolized by the right wingers, I'm like, yeah, this was a, this was a,

because like no one wears American Eagle anymore. And I think it was just them trying to get right winners to buy jeans. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because how else would they, no one wears American Eagle anymore? Yeah, it's such a cynical boy. you know that is true man it is true it's it's also like symbolic of do you see the video of Tim Cook presenting Trump with that 24 karat gold yeah you know what I mean like all the companies are just cowtown tie it does make you I feel like there's been a kind of long running

debate on the left like how much power do nation states have like our corporations taking over are we past the point historically where the nation state has any sway and It would definitely seem to be true that the nation state is still alive and well. When you've got Tim Cook, Tim Apple, you know, going and prostrating himself. Yeah, gay Tim Apple. Is it prostrating? Prostrating. Yeah.

You prostrate. Pro straight, yeah. You straight yourself in a pro way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. To Donald J. Trump. Man. Yeah, and then you see like, yeah, when you think of it, it's like, like paramount giving him all this cash.

It's like, dude, has there been a guy who had as big of a swing in the last two years in Donald Trump? It looked like they could have buried him under the jail. He dipped, ducked and dodged out of that because everybody in power thought that would set a dangerous precedent for them to be. Yeah. And they're probably all going to end up in jail anyway. Well, it definitely shows that we are living in kind of unprecedented.

than at times. It's like, I've said it before, but the old adage for Madman, actually, like that no one ever comes back from exile, like not even Napoleon. Yeah. Trump has done it. He's managed to come back from exile. He's the only one that ever pulled it off. I think so. I think so. I'm just scrolling. I don't know if you've ever scrolled through the Homeland Security's Twitter page. Jesus Christ, it's the most racist thing I've ever seen in my life. Well, give me some excerpts there. Well, obviously they quote the 14 words every other day.

Really? Yeah. I mean, they've got a video on here. The promise of America is worth protecting. The future of our homeland is worth defending. And it's like tradwife content. It's like white people walking in fields next to Mount Rushmore and stuff like that.

Yeah. See Lady Liberty there. Yeah. And it's got like white people walking on a beach, white people walking in a forest. I mean, it's, you know, know like I said it's the 14 words every day and they um but also i don't know this wasn't even really reported on but they've resumed child separations did you know that like the ice deportations they resumed child separation um which was you know this big thing under the first trump

administration yeah well that was the lynch pin that got biden back in there right as it was a big one yeah yeah and then it just kind of went nowhere yeah dude we're not doing well well well the weird thing about that man is like again it's like to start a whole like what what is the ice recruitment costing like what's the price tag on all that if you're creating what are they saying 80,000 now they've upped it to oh ice agents 80,000 ice agents yeah i think that's what they were trying to higher right yeah either eight or 80 i think it's 80 because i think dean can in the interview said now it's gonna be 80 000 and one do you think he literally thinks he's superman i think he does

i think he literally thinks well you know he's a former buffalo bill so you know he he is brain damaged that's true so he is that's why i say c t superman like so he's like okay i can never he never cut it in pro football so he's like i'm gonna go be an actor and then turned out he was Apparently not really great at that because he never really worked again after. Are we going to have other 90s, watched up 90s actors? Or is Ergel going to join Ice? Jalil White is a nice agent? Dude, if you think about it, any nominally, like, right-wing, like, failing actor is probably going to do shit like this.

Yeah. Because it's content. Like, everything is, like, content plus... But horror. But horror. You know what I mean? Yeah. So, like, they're not really doing this because they think it's like, oh, yeah.

I'm going to be out here actually deputize to like rough up some guys that, like, are at Home Depot or something like that. Yeah. They're doing it so they can have like a YouTube channel because like they would be cool with like that because, you know, Homeland Security will just consider that like free promotion for. That's true. All this kind of stuff. There's two types of right wing content. There's that where they just do it to trigger the libs. And then there's the Israeli kind where they're genuinely doing it as celebration and.

genuinely unaware that it is the most psychopathic thing you've ever seen like when they try because they're so far down the looking glasses yes exactly they don't they don't

it's just like rich people thinking a banana cost eight dollars that joke from the rest of development it's like that is such a deluded society they don't know the rest of the world are not bloodthirsty psychopaths

you know how diluted you know how you know it's diluted is you have seen zero talk of or even consider of a campaign to rehabilitate Israel's image at the global level. Like, even United Healthcare got, like, they got their...

We need to rebrand and rehabilitate our image. Like, Israel is so convicted in what they're doing is right and good. Like, they're just like, no, what are you talking about? They think the world's just going to kind of go along with that. Like, that's how insane psychopathic they are. Like, you're right, completely down the looking glass. Like, no even proximate. awareness that they are gone to most of the world absolute reprobates like they're not even

try to rehabilitate them which is funny because it's like it seems like six months ago they cared about international legitimacy like any sort of criticism they were like a hair more squeamish about you know what I mean now it's like they don't even care it's like kind of the brutality is the point and I think they want to assert themselves as a sort of like muscle state where it's like Yeah. We're the, don't, don't tread on us. We're the big bad boys of the world. And also our spy network is so elite that we can just kill anybody you want to.

So, you know, they're trying to put the image of themselves out there as these big scary dudes, you know. Yeah. Did you see this story today in Reuters? Israel's Leviathan signs $35 billion natural gas supply deal with Egypt. Israel's Leviathan natural gas field has signed the largest export agreement in the country's history worth up to $35 billion to supply gas to Egypt. The deal should ease an energy crisis in Egypt, which has spent billions of dollars on importing liquefied natural gas since its own supplies fell short of demand. They're planning to, this is that oil field off the coast of Israel in the Mediterranean.

And, you know, it says in here, like, they think that they can drill this field for the next 40 to 50 years. Yeah. and they're already, you know, they just got a $35 billion deal out of it. So they're not planning on going anywhere. And in fact, if they're doing business with their neighbors, that's not a good sign either. Well, right. And that's, it's the thing, like, people saying, like, why doesn't Egypt step in or let people in? Well, it's because they have to keep up some degree, some modicum of, like, good rapport with Israel.

Because they are themselves constrained by their own degrowth. Yeah, yeah. know limitations yeah um so Israel's exploiting like yeah it's like it's it's almost like they've helped engineer these bad times specifically to capitalize on them 100% kind of like billy walters the legendary gambler where he would bet the lines to move the lines to where he wanted them and then when they got where they wanted he would pump them yeah at that price well they're going to take over syria that's the whole reason why they got rid of Assad like they will make a play for that soon yeah yeah uh they want full regional domination yeah they basically want the levant and plus they want

lebanon they want syria they'll probably not stop there and probably even try for egypt soon yeah i mean there is the thing you know um it's yeah they learn fake friendship from the best the u.s of bay yeah the homeland security the department of homeland security man there's a video of has there been another agency in U.S. history I mean they're what 25 years old 24 years old I guess rather

kind of established after 9-11 yeah right after 9-11 right well we've talked about this before Hal Rogers was Tapp he was the one that was chosen to oversee the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and how old is ice under that umbrella

specifically? About the same age about the same age yeah so we're talking talking about, yeah, these agencies that didn't even exist when we were teenagers. Yeah. You know what I mean? Are now.

Well, there's all these stories coming out of what they're calling alligator alcatraz, which, you know, it's an awful name. Speaking of rebranding. Yeah. Stick out and back in the oven for a while. But, like, the stories coming out of that thing are just abhorrent. what's the deal with it i know that like people were taking pictures in front of like it was a fucking roadside attraction just you know your typical stuff that you would imagine in a you know hastily built poorly staffed facility it's just

like people being starved people being beaten people like sweltering heat you know not getting ac or anything um i don't know man um yeah i think that that's Oh, shit. So, like, do you think there's a, I mean, I mean, I probably could surmise what you think here, but I'm curious if you expound upon it, like a new mode of production, I guess maybe you would call it. That's strictly carclerly focused now. It's like we don't make anything here anymore. We've basically got the vapors and we got brutality.

That's our exports now, right? All these ice jobs is the way we said. it's a jobs program for chuds and then alligator alcatraz the prison expansion is well noted right and we're not building like ikea jails like sweden where they put up a set rocky for hitting a guy that time you know what i mean it's like we are we have death camps of our own here you know what i mean like we've got the exchange program with the salvadorian one they can you know oasis could do a tour stop there and you know and uh el salvador fill that out you know it's bigger than wimbly stadium i think uh-huh that's like what is like

how do you like how do you i don't know i guess one i'm trying to say it's like how do you make sort of a make sense of that from like a money-making perspective like what does that what kind of what kind of mode of production would you call that you know i don't know that's a good question i mean it's capitalism but it's definitely a a very very authoritarian version of it. Yeah. I mean, like, I think the, I don't know, it's like, I guess you're starting to see the contours or outlines of like the new,

the way that the economy is going to be structured is just liquidation. Yeah. And I guess that there's going to be money in there for a while. No. Right? Yeah. it's like we're selling everything off right it's like yeah it is like going out of business it's america's going out of business it is it's our going out of business sale do yeah yeah yeah

it is funny and it's the funny thing about it is like what i was saying earlier and i was trying to make some sense of it but my brain's fuzzy as per usual but it's like just this evading any sort of accountability like i saw this thing pop up earlier that made me think this and it's true of america more broadly but there was an article in new york post today, which basically is just a Israeli propaganda arm at a certain point. But it was like talking about like how Vegas is struggling. And it's like, uh, there's just, the headline was like it was just naming off Vegas's problems like, you know, tourism's down, like this is down, this is whatever, whatever.

And it says young people are to blame. You know what I? Oh, yeah, yeah. And it's like, you're seeing that. It's like, oh, the reason the economy is so bad is not because we gave nine guys all the money. I mean, this is well-trodden territory, but it's because these guys that are getting paid poverty wages to do hard manual, racialized underclass work. No, those are the guys that are to blame. No, it's the people, the generation that's shackled by massive debt and that can't start families or own homes.

And, you know, in their 30s and 40s, no, they're to blame for, you know, the reason why nobody's buying anything or whatever. It's just, it's a, yeah, it's a, yeah, it's a. very um i don't know it's a very sort of narcissistic mindset okay is alley mcbill going to join ice alley mcbill they need a lawyer yeah they they're going well in the future they're going to need that yeah they're going to have to go they need a lawyer whoever's whoever's playing matlock on tbs these days young matlock oh yeah who's the murder she wrote lady angela lansberry yeah she going to join ice she alive still What are those people still alive, like, inexpliciting?

Well, they're going to have to conscript the Skeleton Army at some point. Dick Van Dyck joins the... He's still alive, though. He's not a skeleton army yet, right? No, no, no, no, no. He's like 98, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But, like, yeah, you're going to see, like, some cutesy little meme. It's going to be, like, the 90-year-old ice agent from Apopka, Florida, who's, you know, retired as a... This is heartwarming. This is a heartwarming story. Yeah, he retired with IBM. at 65. They're going to have ice greeters that like hang out outside the Walmart and chat with the Walmart creators while they're rounding everybody up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they greet the immigrants as they're being put into the van. I mean, I'm joking and I shouldn't be making

light of this. This is what I'm running into. This is why I'm struggling with this show now. It's because I can't even, you can't even joke about anything anymore. Oh, that's so vile, dude that's so vile it's it's beyond it's it's gone from uh look how dumb they are to like now they're ramping up the brutality yeah and it's like it's hard to find the pockets to like even like i can't even find trump's like funny moments funny anymore because it's like i just want him to die him going on the roof of the white house did you like that okay that was a return to form that was good. What did he say? He said this is here to foreseen, unforeseen levels of trying to change the subject. It was. Joyce Carol Oates retweeted that.

Really? She saw me. Damn. Joyce Carroll Outs saw me. J.C.O. Yeah, dude. Yeah. What do you think, like, the decision was like, like, he was he just sitting there and was just like, I want to go on the roof? Like, where did that come from? Did you see the extended interview? He was like, I'm spending my own money to make

this more beautiful all the all the things i do is with my own money was he was he talking about the rose garden how they're redoing the rose garden i think that's what he's doing he was talking about they say what are you going to do he just made a dome gesture oh okay i don't even know what that meant like yeah i don't think he really knows what it meant just taking a little walk atlantis we're building atlantis on the seafloor yeah it's going to be dome like my hunch is he's not spending his own money to renovate the lot house You don't think so? Only Donald Trump spent his own money a day

in his fucking life. Does he have money? I don't know if he does. I think maybe he was put here just to be our cartoon rich guy. He seems like a guy that's cash poor. It seems very cash poor. Yeah.

Like, he's worth a billion dollars by some fuzzy gorilla math or something like that. But like, probably have to borrow a dollar off of you. I bet he's a guy that's probably like, let me hold something. Well, yeah, remember that video of him?

Was it like UFC? he had like $15 in his hand and he just was like looking at it he like counted it and looked at it he's like yeah this wait this is what I'm supposed to do right as the money guy yeah it's like he is like it's like

America needed like a real Uncle Pennybags character and he like stepped up to fulfill the role I think he's an actor uh huh for the most part yeah and as a result

being surrounded by actual Nazis has made actual Nazi policy come into fruition yeah I think that's well I mean I guess it's like you can only criticize them so far

because yes they are tweeting the 14 words every three minutes but the apparatus and all the resources were put in place by George Bush continued by Obama and Biden so it's like yeah I mean

you know it's sort of like the thing with Israel it's like yes they're doing the thing but like we gave them all the money and weapons to do it like democrats and republicans alike gave trump all the money and resources to you know become the third Reich yeah and i don't know if people have really understood this or really internalize it yet that's not going away no alligator alcatraz this is the fulfillment of america's promise these these yeah this like these new ice um you know stormtroopers and stuff who were probably all pulled from the ranks of like patriot front and stuff yeah like those like

i don't know if people do you remember back in 2017 when everywhere you looked there was a new right wing fascist group marching in either charlottesville or pikeville or fucking columbus ohio or lord when they set the fucking uh fire at the uh highlander highlander yeah all those people are now working for ice or in the government you'd realize that yeah like those are all people working in the government well i saw a story too about like uh one of the people handing out aid in gaza like one of the not even oh yeah like one of the heads the managers was one of those guys i saw that he had like crusader tattoos he was in a something called the anti-jihadi motorcycle club yeah which is about big of the jokes you gotta be a skinhead neo-nazzi group for sure yeah yeah

yeah yeah but you know our secretary at fence has infidel tattooed an arabic on his arm well and they hand out they let people come to gaza on tourist visas to basically just shoot kids for sport yeah like that's what that guy that antonio or something was i think it's yeah something like that like he's been making the rounds like he said that like when he went to gaza they stamped his passport as a tourist visa and he was like what like you know i'm a contractor and they're like no no no this is how we get around international law you want to come here and shoot children this is how you do it you have to do it this way tourist visa so you know it is almost like do you remember

what was the movie made by the Zionist Eli Roth of hostel oh yeah where people could come to like Eastern Europe and like just torture people that they had like trafficked you know what I mean like it's essentially the same thing you're right yeah it's essentially the same thing it's from the way they've constructed those facilities in fucking belligerent zones to the people they have staffing them. It's like that dude is like the best guy

you're going to find and he's like a former special force as Iraq veteran. You know what I mean? He did nine tours is what he said. Yeah. And it's like... What if it was in Tajikistan? What's it going on there? Why do we have guys doing tours of service in Shigistan?

Who's to say? What's going on in Tajikistan? I'm going to be honest with you. I'm going to be 100% real with you. Couldn't even tell you where that's at on a map. I think it's near Azerbaijan, but I can't swear to, or maybe it was Bekistan. Tehran's Eurasia.

Tajikistan. Why do I put it in my map? Oh, there it is. Okay. We can drive there if you want. Okay. It would take three days. Really?

Only three days. Just kidding. It would take it. like a week this guy's a trickster it's pretty close to Uzbekistan it's just north of Afghanistan

okay northeast in between Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan Kyrgyzstan another one of those places I don't know much about It looks beautiful

Tajikistan does You want to I think I'm like I don't know I read this other story in the New York Times today. Trump's deals with top colleges may give rich applicants a bigger edge. You know, everywhere you look, the rich have won.

Like, that's what neoliberalism was. It was re-prioritizing every facet of American life to serve the rich. Like, when I go to the library and I do these, I do research, I look at like county governments in the 90s and 2000s. preparing for the drug war, the opioid crisis, and look at what was happening in their communities at the time, you would be astounded at the number of tax breaks and tax allotments given to various companies and banks and everything.

Because that's all they had left. After the decline of coal, after they had destroyed the coal industry, like the workers, I mean, they destroyed the unions and the public sector, all they could do was criminalize everything, because you know you've got a dwindling tax base criminalize everything so you can get more fees and fines to plug the revenue gap but then also just give every corporation a tax break so it's like they don't have to pay into anything in society anymore you've basically sacrificed everything

at the altar to them and so now there's the check come and do and payable now the check's coming doing payable rights. And so what do you even say to that? Like, how do you even campaign against that? You know, we were talking about Andy Beshear's interview yesterday where, like, the interviewer's like, Israel's favorability in the United States is polling at 8% right now. And he was like, Israel's still a key ally. Well, what role do they serve? Yeah. You know what I mean? It's like, if your best friend's a child molester, you know what I mean? And a repeat, unrepentantant that. And on top of that, he wants to just kill everybody to protect his right to do that. At a certain point, you've got to wonder why you're still friends with that person.

Yeah. You know what I mean? And it's like, it's, yeah, man, it is, it is, there is no viable response from any opposition on it. You know what I mean? Bernie's still out here. Bernie is in West Virginia, or is in West Virginia this weekend. And he's like, you know, he's still doing the Medicare, Medicaid, all that kind of stuff. and it's not that that's bad or anything out of hand or whatever

I mean obviously there's many good reasons to criticize Bernie for his refusal to say really what's going on in Gaza and a number of other things but it just feels like it's not adequate to meet a moment where like this is like I feel like this is a hard thing to slow burn through like the virtues of like social democracy yeah do you know what I mean? mean because like how do you like like when when like some disaffected young fuck stick and

where I'm from can now go make a six figure salary with a $50,000 sign on bonus which is probably better than what the military is even given now oh 100% by a factor of a lot yeah you know what I mean yeah and it like I don't know how you say we need to have a a a more friendly handout to the insurance companies is that's the you know like that's our like that's like what the the crux of our whole like best response that we have right now to that is happening or or you know what I mean like I guess I'm saying really who's going to like step up and like say like oh well here's actually what we need to do to to push back against all this kind of stuff and it just doesn't seem like anybody has anything new that's not just

drawing on the old well of like well remember the house 10 days of the new deal well this also just seems like they don't it's like you don't even have to go you don't even have to do that you could just say like fuck israel like then that would be good like i mean like if you cut them off like you would deal them a massive blow well and also you would just give american people what they want yeah yeah if is over 50% unfavorable across all demographics like I mean we're talking all political affiliations yeah and then it's in the Democratic Party alone it's like over 80% unfavorable it's something insane but like just with Americans in general over half Americans half of all Americans do not like Israel you would think that like if you're

the party of popularism you would try to sweep that up you would try to utilize that it's like they can't even recognize their like sort of um like choke points anymore have there's there ever been a moment like this in american history where they're so out of step like they will go to their graves and i know we've said this a million times over the last two years but like i i can't as a student of history i could not tell you a moment that is like this like i mean even with someone and i asked this question on twitter and someone said maybe medicare and Medicare for all. And it's like, yeah, but even then they made a modicum.

Like, they could even, I was thinking about this yesterday, they could even come out and say, yes, arms embargo, fuck Israel, and then get an office and not do that. But they won't even do that. They won't even do that. Yeah, they won't even pay lip service to the notion. So it's like, what do you do when it's that inert? It's weird.

It's like, how do you deal with that? Because, like, I saw that thing where, was it Mike Flood, that guy in Nebraska, went to a town? hall. Yeah. Red as you get. Yeah. And like, everybody in the audience hated Israel and wanted free health care.

And so, like, again, you've got to do something about that or, I mean, you're going to get, but I guess that just gets to how stagnant everything is and how people, like, I had pointed that out and someone was like, be realistic, you know, that can't happen anytime soon. Like, politicians have to do their own triangulation. And it's like, well, it cost them the fucking election. They do so at their own peril. Yeah, so like, they're the ones who should probably be getting realistic.

Yeah, yeah, they're the ones that, like, being realistic, to tell somebody to be realistic about, like, what a politician should push for or not, when, like, the polling says these are the things they need to key on, and they're just avoiding that for whatever reason. and I don't know if they think that Mossad's going to peck them off or if they think that if even in Andy Beshear's case like, what do they have on you, man? You seem pretty haughty duty, you know what I mean? Or maybe it's the other thing. Maybe it's the third thing where it's just like, well, I just grew up in the church and that's God give him land to, you know what I mean?

That kind of shit. It's like, which is not outside the realm of possibility of Andy for sure and just to use that example. But like, it's crazy when we live in a time where somebody's telling you to be realistic about you just opining on something that's the most that's an obvious home run yeah it would be one thing if yeah if that was a marginal position but it's not yeah they're acting like you're a maximalist for suggesting that the democrats should just do what a lot of this own is right majority of people want yeah they wouldn't even what's crazy about that bashir interview is he wouldn't even

commit to an arms embargo until the starvation ends whatever that means They said at least until the starvation and famine ends. Not even until then, would he commit to what? Like, I don't understand. Like, what, I mean. Okay, and how do you bargain with that? Okay, if you have a people, can you imagine going to the Nazis and being like, look,

we're cutting off any association. Well, that's a stupid example. But like, imagine if we, if there were a nation funding. Okay, I'll just use the example in front of us. We got to quit harkening to the past. Come on. Okay. Well, but, I mean, the reason we do is because there's a framework legally,

globally and domestically, that was supposed to adjudicate this. Yeah, yeah. You were supposed to kick in when this kind of stuff happened. Yeah, yeah. And the reason we harken into the past is because it's like, well, you guys set this up. Don't you want to... Does it mean nothing?

Does it mean nothing? And I guess the answer is that it doesn't. And talking about it is even pointlessly. It applies to everybody except for the U.S. and Israel. Right. You know. Well, I was listening to Mouin Rubani on something recently. And he was, and he mentioned that, like, I think it was the German chancellor said that, like,

I don't know if it was a hot mic moment or something like that. But he said, like, Israel is just doing the dirty work that we want them to do. and so I don't know like I think what's the goal there though what they just want to

build fucking condos in Gaza like what's condos and energy security especially in a world where Russia is expanding you know what I'm saying like it's it's to them

it's a and then also you do like I said you've got the kind of like ideological imperative of Zionism that they've all internalized like they they

they wrote the check for Zionism because they were not going to take accountability for the Holocaust. And so, you know what I'm saying? Like, there's not... Right, right. So this is Germany's just like... So the history...

And it's not just Germany. Again, an evasion of accountability. Right. I mean, all of Europe participated in the Holocaust, right? Like, England didn't let Jews in. France shipped them out to your Germany. You know what I'm saying? Not dissimilar to what Egypt's doing.

Saudi Arabia. Right, exactly. And any of these places that could intervene, could use their influence. wants to intervene, but they're just kind of sitting it out just to kind of, we'll see what happens. Yeah. You know, I mean, just the commonplace, like,

sort of, like, racism you see against Palestinians, like, that no one wants them, you know what I mean? It's the, it's a one-to-one, or like Mike Huckabee saying, um, oh, shit, what did he have? Mike Huckabee had this thing a few weeks ago where he was talking about, like, um, like, um, like, uh, if, if, if, France wants to recognize

a Palestinian state, why not let them move to France? And that's, again, it's a one-to-one with what people were saying about the Jews. Yeah, yeah. The lead up to the Holocaust. Yeah, yeah. Like, you know, if they want to recognize...

I don't know, man. It's just a... It's history repeating itself, but without the prospect of any kind of, like, intervention. And to underscore the point of, like, the whole project of Neolithic, liberalism was to just make a world for the rich, by the rich.

The only thing these people are guilty of is being poor. Yeah, yeah, 100%. You know. Yeah. It's no good, dude. That natural gas deal is very... That's a wild-ass move from a... Very bad.

From a Pan-Arab state to just make a deal in the middle of an holocaust with it. Yeah. Well, and they didn't respond. a comment in that story I heard, so they probably don't want to be associated with it. But regardless, like I said, they're constrained by a lot of their own political economic imperatives, one of which is degrowth, which is happening globally. Yeah. So that's the thing.

It's, you know, when you say like choosing between socialism and barbarism, it's not even like it's not a moral choice for most leaders. It's a purely realist choice. And I guess that's the calculation also with American leaders. Because I couldn't really understand why I could never understand why Biden and them didn't in some way try to limit this because surely they would have known the stain would not wash off. But like I guess to them it's wrapped up in a bunch of other things like the thawing of the Arctic. and like securing, you know, shipping lanes in the Arctic. And like, you know, the scarcity of oil in that region, in the Middle East and stuff.

You know what I'm saying? Like, it's wrapped up in a lot of that stuff, which they're not going to budge on because that would entail challenging or confronting capitalism. Right. And so it's just, it's a non-starter. And so what we're doing is following basically the capitalist version of the Soviet trajectory where we're... Yeah.

people it's gangster ismo sort of internally people are going to be robbing the coffers that's kind of what the trump people are doing all this kind of stuff it's cash but i just saw this article in new york times it's weird when you feel like a tinge of sympathy for an fbi i people but cash patel just like retaliating against all these fbii agents that were investigating like trump's epstein stuff or trump's russia connections or any that stuff they they all got fired including one guy who's wife died of cancer a couple weeks ago yeah wow wow like but But that's what you're going to see. And then you're going to see, like, all these XKGB guys became, like, wealthy-ass fucking oil pirates.

You know what I mean? You're going to see the same shit here, man. Dan Bongino, like, all these fuckers are probably going to, like, come out of this, like, mega-billionaires or some crazy shit, you know what I mean? It's death drive shit. And then what we'd be left with, like, a Putin kind of state where it's like... We've got... Yeah, we are...

That's the funny thing. It's like, we've talked about the Chinese century, but the actual thing is... It's the Russian century for America. For us. Yeah. We're just going to turn into like a petro-gangster state, basically. Petro-gangster state. We're going to have a Boris Yeltsin.

Yeah. Trump is in some ways our Boris. He's like the sober Boris Yeltsin in a whole way. Like a total joke, you know. Yeah. Well, they didn't, during the Clinton administration on a state visit, didn't they find Yeltsin wandering around naked and the street drunk as hell? Yeah, literally in the White House lawn, I think.

That'll be the same thing with Trump, but it'll be senility, you know, Well, he was on the roof of the White House. Yeah. It's not that different. Not that far off. Uh-huh. So, yeah, you can look to the Soviet example and, like, how it all came crashing down toward the end of the collapse. And, like, even the, even the mitigating factors and kind of just see what our futures, our future is going to be, you know. Yeah.

Yeah. I think it'll be worse. I really do. Well, because, I mean, what we're going to be coming out of is already, you know, for the rich by the rich. You know what I mean? At least the Soviet project that failed was, for the most part, had no blame, you know? Yeah. I think it'll, like, be, I think it'll be worse because, I mean, this country's a fucking basket case.

Dude, it's so, it's, and the weird part about it is now is, like, you see the relative stability we've had and just the whiplash of that sort of being pulled out from under us all of a sudden. and now we're just conscripting a whole generation of fucking semi-literate fucking brutes to, and giving them social standing in like good money. Yeah. You know. Yeah. The good news for us is that hyperinflation is going to render that six-figure salary about a $60,000 salary real quick.

They'll be in the shit with the rest of us. Yeah, yeah. It won't make a huge hell of a lot difference. Yeah. Which is ironic because deporting with the workforce. is a big part of why we're getting inflation. But also, yeah, and also it's going to create, okay, so I was thinking about this because, you know, I'd mentioned just a while ago about that Vegas article about Vegas's

ills and stuff like that. When I lived out there, there was a situation where they had a hard time, like, it was very fucking easy to get into UNLV's grad programs, not least of all, because I was just like looking at like their average test scores. and stuff like that and it was like their average SAT was like

800. Even for like a mediocre state school some places it's usually like 1080 to 1200 or something like that but you know if he's way down here

and I was always wondering like why is that why is it like dirt ass fucking cheap to go like be a teacher in the state of Nevada and it's like well

why would you go teach and make $30,000 a year and spend you know any semblance of disposable income you had on your own fucking classroom

product when you can go park cars on the strip or deal blackjack and make twice that. It's like this whole service-based economy. And you're going to have a similar situation in the U.S. writ large where it's like, why would you go do this? Why are you going to work in this sector or that sector

when you can just go be a thug for six figures? Well, that's one of the weird ironies and really gross tragedies about this is that being an ice agent is one of the last jobs you can have that has a degree of humanity left in it. You know what I'm saying? Dang. It can't be automated because the whole point is it's premised on you being racist, which a robot can't be. A robot can't be racist. A robot can't be racist.

They try. Well, I mean, I'm saying like you can program it to be that. No, not even that. You can program it to have biases to target people with a certain color skin. But that's not what racism is. Racism isn't looking at a person and, you know, seeing the color of their skin and like doing this like mental calculation. That's part of it, sure. Yeah. Like, but it's really a story. That's why it's ideological. Racism is an ideology. Robots can't have ideology. They don't have stories, really.

Right, exactly. So that's why I'm saying, like, you can make robots to be service workers. You can make them to be factory workers. And you can even work them to be round up people for ice. But, like, that's, why would you do that when, like, they're not going to do it with any bit of, like, enthusiasm? And more crucially, they can't be consumers, either. Well, I guess my point is that they don't...

My point is that, like, it wasn't have the same political valence if you made robots round up immigrants. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, you have to have a base, a fascist base of a sort, to shore up your political support, like your political program. That's why I wonder if this is going away. Because, like, people are like, oh, Trump's finished. Like, the Republicans are going to be finished after this

because they're doing hyperinflation. They're doing tariffs. fucking with the bag and it's like well but they also have shock troopers now so does that you know what does that mean does i give them a stay of execution yeah yeah and also if the republicans are finished i hate to tell you this it's all finished yeah yeah yeah nobody wants to tell any of us that and we can't wrap our head around it if the republicans are finished no just the country in general oh yeah yeah yeah like it doesn't matter that they're finished because this whole project is finished yeah do you know what i mean well i mean it has to be because they got the last word in

it's it they it's come full circle yeah like the the the fact that we've now ended reconstruction or i know reconstruction ended a long time ago but like we've ended even the reconstruction amendments right like we've you know jettisoned the part of the constitution that would have made living in this thing still a liberal republic or liberal democracy That's funny how they just did that It's like, oh, you just got to edit the words on the website Than it is Yeah, right

Like you didn't need Congress You didn't need Supreme Court Any of that stuff And I think the thing is is like it's It's come full circle in the sense that like And we've talked about this many times before But like the settler colonial dream Like the fact that the Homeland Security spends all day

Tweeting old paintings from Manifest Destiny era you know what I mean like and the fact that like Hitler you know when asked like what is you know your I think in mind comp didn't he basically say that like his vision of leban's realm was what America did to the Native Americans I think that it's like there's these resonances there and it's come full circle back to the pre-Civil War situation order and so that that means narratively speaking it's done. What comes out the other side is either just the continuation of that pre-Civil War order, or it's something vastly different from a left-wing perspective. But like, there can't be

an Obama again. There can't be another, I mean, I guess you could. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you can like, I don't know how many times I've said this on this burger. Maybe you can keep the fucking, you know. You can get, you can ring a little more mileage out of the dream. But I think ultimately when you try that, it's just going to like redound back to this what we're at now. Yeah, well look at Israel. Earlier when I said you would think that they would want to do some like

rehabilitation of their image, they would want to try to do a little bit of a maybe let's say they would punch the liberal button for a little bit to get the heat off their backs. That's all that America did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean America, that's, it's, I'm not

saying it was totally cynical and calculated. But we had just killed two million Iraqis. Well, I'm saying like back in the 19th century. Oh, okay, okay. I'm saying that like... Yeah, I'm saying that like, that's all America. I thought you meant like the Obama was the liberal.

It kind of wasn't. That's in the lineage of what I'm saying. Like, America has two faces, and it's the white nationalist 14 words, genocider face, and then it's the liberal multicultural phase. And the liberal multicultural face basically exists to be like, all right, look, we killed a lot of fucking people. And like, you would expect Israel to a similar process if they should, succeed in this genocide, I'm sure the exact same process will unfold over the next four years,

where you're going to have a liberal reform movement coming about in Israel that says, like, look, we did some bad things, let's do land acknowledgements, let's do this, that, you know, there will accept a lot of people in, we'll widen the category of what makes a citizen a citizen and try to do away with like skin and racial ideologies. And what you'll have is Israelis wanting to harken to the past when we were killing Palestinians. Exactly. It'll just the process will play out over and over again. And so the thing is, is that, like, when people get on to our, get on to us for saying, like, there is a difference between Kamala and Trump, there is a difference between Republicans and

conservatives, or liberals and conservatives, you're right in the immediate sense. In a very short term. But in the long term, this was, this is a dynamic that's baked into how America reproduces itself from decade to decade, generation, and if you doubt what I'm saying, if you think that that's not true, look at Israel and ask yourself, how do they pull out of this? If I was, you know, them, you know, you would probably say like, well, all right, we've got to get through this period. We're doing really, really bad stuff, but then we allow a reform movement to form. To kind of like give us a little buffer between, yeah, our crimes and, yeah, yeah,

and our next wave. Every state does that. That's the process of nation building. And that's the only reason why it's kind of silly to get, like, to get onto our asses about, like, oh, Kamala wouldn't have done this. She would have been better this and the other. It's like, okay, yeah, again, short term sense, sure. But it's just not true in the long run. And furthermore, and furthermore, she didn't even run on that. Yeah. She ran on parity with this administration.

You know what I mean? On the things that really mattered, the three big ones. We've talked about that ad nauseum. But, yeah. No, I think that's right. I think that, like, liberalism, I've never really thought about that, but you're right. It seems like liberalism really is just sort of like letting the pressure valve off. It is.

When things get, that's essentially the experience of that. And then at a certain point, people grow tired of that because there's some features baked into liberalism that cause people to want more, dream higher and bigger. or you mean or you mean make them disillusioned? Well, yes, in one sense but in the other sense that just kind of makes people mad because there's some like

you know, there's, I don't even know what you would say it, but like there seems to be some central features of liberalism that limit its long-term prospects in the general population. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In terms, you know what I mean?

Like people like people I don't know if you'd say grow tired of it or whatever. I'm talking about liberalism as in a project not as in like the liberal global global order whatever um and then so then then when that happens what do you see happening you see it ratcheting back up and those intervals are getting shorter yeah like just how it's bouncing like this yeah you know what i mean like biden narrowly won over trump after he made like some sloppy attempt to think about this think

about this i don't know how anybody could see that america still has a fighting chance when we reelected the guy who on his parting shot of his first term was to was some half-ass attempt to overthrow the government right like what did you think he was going to do when you got back in there yeah you know what I mean yeah well they're not willing to do again this kind of gets back to what that German chancellor said like Israel's doing our dirty work like the Republicans are doing the liberals dirty work because at this point like the liberals have also soured on their own projects and they look we've pointed out before they want Trump to do a lot of this stuff gives them a kind of excuse not to have to deal with

it and just liquidates a lot of people um but just as an example the policy of liquidation that everyone is now taking towards homeless people the homelessness crisis is caused by the tenant crisis by rent continuing to go up which is all which is a which is is a manifestation of several different things, one of which is inflation, another of which is just our political economy in general, wages, housing prices being way too high. Two million dollar shitholes in Palo Alto.

Yeah, that's kind of stuff. She showed me. Right, right, right. It's just like, to say nothing of the Black Rock CEO getting popped, we just didn't talk about that. Just went past that. But like, those are all policy issues that liberals don't want to touch, because we've kind of reached this point with capitalism where if you fidget with any little bit of these things, tinker with any little, like

any little aspect of any of these things, you're probably going to set in motion some reform process to challenge the underlying tenets of capitalism, and they can't unleash any of that, because that's what Bernie was. They learned their lesson very cynically with the Affordable Care Act, because they had reached a point where you had to do something about health care reform. You had to pay, you had to pay lip service to it. Yeah, and so they tried to reform it through the ACA. And then that unleashed the Bernie movement and this whole, you know, thing where, like, people

were demanded more. They wanted actual free health care. And that just really soured them. That pissed them the fuck off. Right. So they can't tinker with any of it now. They wouldn't, they'd know that if they did that for rent, any of that, like, that would also.

Set off another movement. That would set off another movement. people would demand communes and, you know, abolishing private property. Like, they, and so, like, even tinkering with it a little bit, like, they can't do because neoliberalism has, this kind of resolved the contradictions to a point where, like, any attempt by liberals to tinker around the edges is going to set off a groundswell of movement and, and, uh, calls for reform and change. So, again, they just can't.

And so they're hemmed in. And so what do they do? They enlist Donald Trump to kind of do their dirty work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And another thing about that, like, when somebody like Bernie pops up as a response to that, another thing that hamstrings those movements is people like Bernie also give too much ground on other things, like Gaza, for example, for that movement to truly flourish. You know what I'm saying?

That's why Bernie's like, Bernie's still out there beating the pavement for all the things, Medicare for all the things that we were enthralled by. and enticed by when he ran for president both times. But because it feels like he can't fully commit on the Palestinian question, which is the central question of our humanity, like it feels like that cheapens any effort on its part. You know what I'm saying? And so when those things kind of pop up like that,

they're hamstrung by like those figures, the Bernies and so forth, being too conciliatory to the neoliberal order in other ways. I mean, and when you have common list, step up, which seems like sort of a middle, like a middle ground between Bernie and not really, not substantively, and Biden, you know, but like her inability to separate herself from Biden, her inability to separate herself, fuck from the Republicans on the big issues, like hamstring, stuff like that. So it seems like, you know, when you talk to somebody and they're like scared of like going, no, it's bad to be fully left wing or like just as bad to be fully right.

And it's like, well, when you do these half measures, when you do this like sort of tepid version of like social democracy, what ends up invariably happening is like any of those movements we attach any hope to kind of get snuffed out because they're too conciliatory on a lot of fronts, even if like they've, they're trying to tinker with a big thing to disrupt things like the Medicare system. Well, yeah, because neoliberalism is above all. It is the prioritization above everything else. profit like people don't I don't know if people have like internalized it's like the Fordist model obviously was capitalism it was like about primacy of profit obviously but it still hinted at a social order and so once you've put in a model of accumulation like neoliberalism which says that everything else must be swept off the table in service to profit because that's all that matters it's the only thing that gives society its value and meaning, then that means that any attempt to tinker around the

edges or margins is probably going to set off some, you know, system of, set off some series of discontents and grievances and what. Bernie. And like the way this plays out on the right is that, like, I just saw a tweet that was like, can anyone tell me why Republicans don't want to cure cancer, which is a variant of a question of like why are Republicans like repealing everything from like fluoride laws in water to banning MRI research stuff that just seems like like the way I would describe it and it's when I was texting you the other day and I was like do you think the lives were on with something

with the Russiagate thing because we're behaving like a society that's trying to throw the match kill ourselves yeah well because I think the thing is is that like for the liberals they say that they want to do these things like cure cancer or harness the capabilities of capitalism to do these grand sweeping you know uh innovations that would improve humanity but like usually it's not just that the economic cost would be too high for something like that it's also that the social and political cost would be too high um and because like i said once you've started tinkering in that realm once you started tinkering in that area let's say like you start spending millions of dollars on government research to like do these things then that's going to

beg a whole ton of other questions about like what the government can and can't do and you saw a little bit of that during the pandemic so it's much easier if you just take the opposite position which is that like well just kill everybody actually it just kill the weeks and the and the vulnerable and the poor because that way you don't have to worry about fixing any of the underlying issues about like why are people you know getting sick is it have anything to do with our ecological paradigm well as we've also seen there's when there's microplastics and dolphins breath yes exactly yeah it's just like it's it's such an ecological problem like that that is rooted in capitalism you can to tinker with it you would start getting at the fun

fundamental underlying causes. And we could maybe suspend disbelief or trick ourselves for decades in the 20th century, like, oh, we can still do science and development and research all this, like without challenging the underlying premise of capitalism. But under neoliberalism, you can't do that. You can't do that. Because there's no society left. Well, I was thinking about this.

And I was thinking about, I was thinking about this after you sent me the microplastics thing. Do you remember when we were doing the bat surveys? And we had to go to that training with that company that was fun. funding, was it Williams or something like that? And they were like a natural gas company, but they were like more geared toward like plastics and stuff like that. Do you remember that land agent that was like quarterbacking the whole thing that was dressing us down over plastics? Do you remember that? Like I remember like this one looked like she was a fucking lunchroom lady. It came in there and was just telling us like, oh, you're against plastics. Well,

I guess you're against this and this doing that. The whole what about. Yeah. Is them kind of thing like that. And I think about that now in the context of like like the microplastics thing and the re i mean you know i see the effects on the show and you dear listener see the effects on the show too and i lose a thread mid thought because of that plastic spoon in my brain rattling around you know but like i think about that in the context of of like how we've destroyed the world and it almost feels like what they're doing with like the cancel and our mnr research and like you know uh uh cutting any sort of government oversight for shit that's in our milk and water and every

fucking thing else it almost feels like when these coal companies were doing um like trying to obscure black lung research and they had pinned it on even though like all these like very high quality surveys accounted for smoking and all these other things right like it already adjusted for that and we were still seeing like huge rates of black lung disease and how the coal companies were trying to like obscure it by saying well it's this and it's that and it's the smoking mostly and all that even though we know like smoking cessation programs have been very successful regardless of you know how cool it still looks to smoke a cigarette most people are not smoking these things uh like so it couldn't have been that it couldn't have been all these

other things you know what I mean it seems like there's something happening there where these coal and natural gas companies and oil companies everybody else have destroyed the planet and now we want to remove any sort of research any sort of anything that could hint at any sort of accountability for those people you know and it doesn't matter to Donald Trump and Bobby Kennedy because they're going to be dead in 15 years yeah you know what I mean also they're million billionaires right and so like they don't have any material concerns in the in the in what little time they have left on the search they've carved out an enclave in like Maralago or whatever

Scottish Highlands. Yeah. So it doesn't matter as much for them as it does the rest of us. But like, I think that's what a lot of that is geared toward.

Either that or we really are in the pockets of the Russians or something just trying to take this. I mean, it's occurred to me multiple times that like this whole Bobby Kennedy thing,

this is one of the great ironies of history. We'll go down if you told Marx something like this, he'd lose his shit. Like, the irony of Bobby Kennedy about Robert Kennedy

Jr. being the person who is writing, you know, being the deformed grotesquery riding on the white, you know, deformed, grotesque horse of the apocalypse and doing things like canceling various scientific research into vaccines and other life-saving medicines or even just, you know, getting rid of food regulation oversight or fluoride in the water, stuff like that. The irony is that it didn't start with him. It started in the mountaintop removal, the practice of mountain mountaintop removal coal mining. It started in Appalachia. Which he used to be.

Which he used to be a part of. He started out as an environmentalist against mountaintop removal. And now he is himself doing the same process that the coal companies went through. We're done. Which is the thing about this, and this has occurred to me many times of the last few years. But the thing about mountaintop removal coal mining was like once we decided it was okay to just moonscape hundreds of thousands of. thousands of acres of land and push the, you know, rocks and mountains into the streams and poison

the waters and make people sick and crush kids in their beds and homes. And like once we decided that was okay, like that's kind of where this all began, honestly. You know what I'm saying? Like, you know, in the 70s is when you get these like environmental policies like EPA and Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, under Nixon, right. And it took 10 short years for them to start peeling that all back because during that process, you get, like I say, the elevation of the profit motive because everything else had to be sacrificed to it. You had to destroy the private sector unions. You had to destroy the public sector in general because black people were getting those jobs and we couldn't have that.

We couldn't have them going to the same school as white kids and couldn't have women being in power to take autonomy and control over their lives. And so we have to bring the house down on everything. And the thing about that woman for Williams telling us like, well, you're against plastics, but you don't realize it's in everything. It's like... Damn if she wasn't right. Yeah, it's like she, okay, was getting paid probably a lot of fucking money to say that. Nowhere even in the ballpark.

Which crazy is the gradations here. Me and you were probably sitting in on that thing making $13 an hour. I mean, at the time, we were like, this was good money. Oh, no, what's crazy about that? Oh, this is a good money. As I saw on, I saw him, uh, the, the ballroom. boss's desk what he was billing the company for like us he was versus what that was paying us he was billing the company a hundred and seventy eight dollars an hour for us and giving us 13

well and then and then like she was probably getting six figures working for people that take home eight or nine figures you know what I'm saying it's just these fucking levels it's really wild but like the thing is it's like like she had kind of sold her soul to basically be the person on the ground being like you have to accept plastics it's just a real part of everyday life that you need to be idealistic and highfalutin and pretentious to not want that and meanwhile like we've consigned all every part last part of ourselves that make us human to that because that's the only way to realize profit anymore to realize surplus and i guess what i'm getting out here is that like that process is

now embedded in everything and like for the liberals to try to do anything to push back against it would be politically way too difficult for them because that would empower the left they are they're kind of constrained right because they don't want to empower the left and so it's much easier for them to just let the Republicans just liquidate everybody like I said you can't you can't do any of this under neoliberalism you could do scientific research and tinker around the margins under Fordism. You can't, that's kind of the iron. You can't do that under neoliberalism because...

When do you think the era was when like we sort of, when the forwardist model sort of dissolved into the neoliberal model? Was it the, like, when the New Deal came in, or was it defeat, when the New Deal was defeated or... Yeah, it's what really, I think historians generally say it's when the New Deal was defeated. Probably started in the 60s, really takes shape in the 70s. By the time you've got thatcherism and Reaganism, like, that's definitely the death now.

No. So, and so like I said, you've started this process where, like, just look at Mountain Top Removal, for example. Like, if you just look at, like, what was Friends of Coal? Friends of Coal was just a populism that basically tried to peel off enough coal miners to say, like, you're not, you don't want

environmentalism, right? That'll cut into your paycheck. Like, you want to be a friend of coal. And which is the irony is that fucking coal didn't do shit for anybody. Like, you go back and you read it in newspapers, the fucking um,

ARAH and Hazard built 1987. Within three years, they're already offering scholarships to the community. When the fuck did a coal company ever give a scholarship to a community before 1990? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's when they started doing that shit. They start, all of a sudden, they were like, oh, we're parts of the community.

We're friends of the community. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because why would they have to do that for the longest time? Yeah. They were just allowed to come get what they want out and bounce. Yeah, right. And then all of a sudden, like, the method by which they were getting everything out suddenly became much more destructive and didn't employ as many people.

And so they had entered an end game. And what do you see in end games? It's like the thing you saw with the coal industry in Appalachia is the exact same process you're seeing nationwide. Play out now. Because they're all in an end game. And so it's just like, well, if we pill off enough people, enough dumb, you know, dupes on the ground who are workers and, like, we can instill within them, like, a sense of, like, civic pride and, you know, use certain, like, uh, key words like community and, uh, heritage and culture and this kind of stuff. Exactly.

Then instills them a sense of like you're actually producing and contributing. You can shore up. And these tree huggers are. are trying to deprive it's all for it's all about dividing workers and people at a time when you need like 99% unity right because that's what they're going for they're trying to get out as much as they can before the whole thing comes down and I don't know it's just like that's that's how they that's partially how they do it right it is the tomorrow's people thought I didn't even really thought about that like we really got a decades long preview of where we're at now

in eastern Kentucky with the friends of coal the war on coal situation like it's just a stand-in the coal miners or like or not even the coal miners just the people that

the lobby really and then the coal miners are kind of stand-ins for like the ice people now yeah you know what I mean and the tree huggers that were trying to do something

about that are just the woke whatever it's true it is true it all springs out of that same thing which is like the I mean the tree huggers

have their own set of like errors that they made to ensure that it would be impossible to actually intervene there. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Basically what I'm saying is that it means that the basis for your struggle

has to be class struggle not a culture or struggle, although I hate to even delineate between the two. I still don't really know the answer, honestly. I think you can participate in the culture world, but I think you have to do it from a, yeah, from a class solidarity perspective. Well, the problem was that environmentalism was so broad base that it meant bringing into the fold a bunch of millionaires,

because millionaires are also environmentalists and right-wingers are also environmentalists. It's just too broad. For different reasons. For different reasons. It's a nice, tidy place to park their money, you know, and not have to, like, suffer any sort of PR head, you know. Right. It's just too broad to, like, do anything really. yeah and also it's just the there was so much money to be made in coal i mean how can you even really

go up against that i don't know yeah but eventually well i mean to to those that don't believe me like what's crazy is in the 90s you start to see um things like cedar coal education what was what did cedar stand for it was like coal education development, I don't know, something like that. It was like, it was a curriculum that they started, that the coal industry managed to get placed in schools. And again, the whole point was like once you had entered the end game, you needed mass participation.

You needed mass consent. Well, and also pseudoscience comes in there. Right, I remember going to a coal fair at Beaver Elementary with my girlfriend, at the time worked there was a teacher there and there was this whole exhibit about how coal was a renewable resource which in the strictest sense is true over a process that takes millions of years but they neglected to mention the chronology or the timeline yeah they it just like and you'd have people being like well if god didn't want us to mine it why is it here and you got the

sense of that during that whole time it's like it's like trying to like argue with like the creation museum people yeah or something like that like you like I like Like, I literally lost my mind. And in a way, it steeled me for these times. And the only reason I'm not, like, out in the street with, like, a fucking sign over my next thing. The end is near and ringing a bell is because, like, I saw this 10 years ago, 10 years ago. You're right. The pseudoscience is a major key here.

Because, like, what they started pushing in schools was pseudoscience. It had the garb and appearance of being actual scholarly science. They would bring in like paid engineers and like scientists. With impressive credentials because you thought no way could Yale or Harvard produce a corrupt scientist. Right. And so what they were pushing was basically they were telling kids in scientific terms how good coal was for the environment and the world. Because like I said, you needed mass participation. You needed mass indoctrination.

And that process is now global or at least it's American. I don't know if it's global because I have never. lived anywhere else but you can after COVID it is now everywhere yeah the push for the widespread pseudoscience you see is a part of that attempt to basically divide everybody in this moment of mass extraction right and it's just like you're right like just seeing it at the microscopic level the way they started doing that at local levels in extractive communities and now you're seeing it just writ large it's like should tell you that like they have no intentions of seeing through the next 50 years like they are going to get as much out as fast as they can to shore up to basically

make sure that their children are taken care of but they couldn't give a fuck about you and you're right like they've escaped to their enclaves and like fucking mara lago or whatever where they don't have to deal with any of this you know what I mean it's like and they're going to be dead soon enough anyway. I'd be dead soon enough anyways. Yeah. It kind of, I was thinking about land man again the other day, not to bring that back up into the consciousness, but how that like, like our entertainment products and stuff

are kind of running the same interference that like the coal fairs and all the pseudoscience and all that kind of stuff was. Yeah. But just like the writing of that show, how it treats like the extraction of fossil fuels as an inevitability. Yeah. You know what I mean? Rather than something we could actually.

actually choose to not do. Yeah. You know what I mean? And how even it goes so far as to make the Mexican characters disposable. Yeah. You know what I mean? While lifting up the hardworking white roughhune boy, you know what I mean, that like went to school, but he still felt the call of the oil field or whatever.

Uh-huh. You know, and how that all, that whole ecosystem plays into all of this. Anyway, not to get back down That's your monthly reminder That Taylor Sheridan is absolutely some sort of asset Well, but it's that show And I know we've pointed this out before You can tell the audience for that show

Is rich people That own oil companies Or middle management But even then mental demand That's stretching it pretty thin Like we're getting to the point of neoliberalism Or even our cultural products Are geared towards fucking rich people

Yeah Well Billy Bob Thorne is that Williams woman That was dressing us down about the plastic. Right, right, right. I mean, there's a line in there where, like, John Helm's character says something to the effect of, like, yeah, we're just trying to get as much out as we can

and, like, make sure that our kids have a nice padding. And I think that that's the mentality. And if you look at it, like, as a product that's basically, like I said, like, look at the product placement in that show. They were, like, advertised, like, Mercedes-Benz, cars and shit like that. Like, it's obviously not a show for workers. It's not a show for the working class. It's not even a show for middle management, really.

because, and the reason I say that is because you ask a landman is this what your job is like? They'll be like, no, no job's not like that at all. Like, you know what I mean? So it's not even a show. Landman's not making deals with the cartels. He's like showing me and you were to set up a bat net. Yeah, exactly, right.

Or mostly just sitting in an office. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In an air-conditioned office. Like, they just, they don't... Let their truck idle somewhere. Yeah, like, the landman itself in that show is just a fantasy of upper-class, like,

uh myth making yeah basically and so that's what i'm saying like we're reaching the point of neoliberalism where like even the the stories they tell like we have to i shouldn't have to fucking watch rich people entertainment i mean i guess i do i bring it on myself because i'm a sicko but like the fact that that's like uh in yellowstone is the same thing same thing it's all upper class like myth people forget about that it's like this guy runs a billion dollar ranch right which again you can fucking make entertainment out of that they did it with sopranos but like what is the message you're trying to tell yeah the message you're trying to tell is that like we have to accept this you don't get the sense that yellowstone's lampooning where a sopranus is you know there's some of that

in there oh yeah when a sopranus is critically examining like the material basis of american life and like the on weave people felt during the time and like you know these cultural trends and stuff like that. No, these shows, and to even compare them is absurd. But I guess my point is, is that, like, they are told to make people, rich people sleep better at night. That's what it is. It's, like, kind of pure ideology.

But, I don't know, man, it's a... Anyways. Yeah. Anything... I don't know. To tie this back around, is there any way to tie this back around? Is there any way to tie this back around to all the things we were just talking about at the beginning? Dean King.

Dean King. We need to get him in the next Taylor Sheridan project. Get him off the streets, you know? Yeah. We can't be letting our beautiful Superman be out here with the Huey Pallui. You talked about, like, what's the mode of production, what look like? What is it going to look like? I guess you can see the contours of it.

prison and detainment detention facilities everywhere shocktroopers roaming your neighborhood and communities kicking down doors dragging people out of their homes kidnapping people in parking lots

inflation like you've never seen basically no one being able to access the pool of equity building wealth building like no one being able to own a home, therefore higher homelessness, therefore more detention camps and people raiding people in parking lots, and you know what I mean, like this perfect loop

or perfect circle of displacement, surplus. I mean, it is like Ruth Wilson Gilmore's thing about the Golden Gulag, but it's even more, it's even more militarized, even more racialized, And it's going to be done in an era where all the jobs are basically automated. So, like, it's a self-reinforcing loop, but one that there's no way out. Because for, like, municipalities, for example, that loop that Ruth Wilson Gilmore talks about in Golden Gulag, that, like, process of using surplus populations and surplus land and surplus labor or state capacity and all that. had a purpose, which was to rejuvenate failing municipalities during de-industrialization, there's going to come a point where that doesn't work anymore. Especially once you've automated all the jobs out,

then you're basically completely cutting your legs out from underneath you. And then not to mention how much of our fucking health care system is propped up by federal subsidies, and they're going to end that too? I mean That's the easy route to liquidate surplus population Exactly I think that that's the thing

Like people are looking at this Like why do they not see that this is They're shooting themselves in the feet Like how many people in rural America Are nurses who vote Republican? Can't they see that they're gonna They don't care Because the reason why is they

If they can shore up enough of their base With shock troopers making $130,000 a year They can absorb some of those other losses And also also because again like we've talked about, everybody lives in their own reality, and politics doesn't make sense, they'll still probably vote for him. Well, and what you see this today where J.D. Vance was meeting with the Indiana governor about the redistricting and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. And you can tell they've already got the political will to do this redistricting to make these elections look legitimate. Like in Texas too, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Same thing. 100%. You know, so they can still put the veneer of democracy on it. Yeah.

They won't lose again. No. You know, like... Well, and in the places where it might look a little iffy, we're probably not that far off from like those ice shock troopers stationed up outside of fucking election halls. Oh you will see that in this

the next presidential election in three years you will see these thugs being deputized as like election watch neighborhoods. Yeah and like they will do everything they can to disrupt that vote. Yeah. So I mean I made a huge error.

I massively called it wrong. I was like there's no way fucking they'd be able to stap out that many jobs with people because no one wants these jobs. I mean, I guess you need to look at the numbers and see if people are actually taking these jobs. But I would imagine times are hard.

So people are probably taking these jobs. Not to mention, like I said, the fucking already bat shit insane right-wing psychos that are going to take them just because they love, you know, cruelty. They revel in cruelty and de-hulize people. And they get to hide behind a mask. And they get to hide behind a mask.

They get to take it off every night when they go home. Um, but I, I don't know, I don't know what you call that. What, I don't know what you call that, uh, economy. I mean, it's like, it's like, um, it's like a kind of like, like, it's like a gangster state. It's capitalist, obviously. It's like a sort of like oligarchic gangster state, though. Yeah.

At the same time, um, that has the veneer, you're right. Like the redistricting stuff is. wild like in Texas and Indiana and stuff like they're gonna make it to where that red state is locked in and that's another thing that like I've massively called wrong although I guess I didn't even really realize it until recently but like the the red state Democrats trying to even make inroads in a red state doesn't matter anymore it's like because there's no point because they are all Bernie's wasting his time going to West Virginia. Yeah, it's basically engineered to achieve maximum Republican success.

Like, the Red State is locked in. There's really no way to break out of it. Even if they wanted to, even if there was a groundswell of, like, support for reform or something like that. It's so tightly controlled by, like, these Republican cadre, I don't see how they would do it. And now the redistricting, like, you know, like if they saw the margins, I imagine, they'll probably start doing the same thing in Georgia soon. you know, Georgia flip blue and that kind of stuff. Like, they see those like narrow margins, like, okay, what can we do to eliminate that slight advantage?

And they just have all the political will to do it. They had multiple secretaries of state willing to just falsify election returns. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I don't really. Weirdly, the Kentucky guy is pretty principled, even though he's like a Republican, but it doesn't matter because Kentucky's just going to go red every time anyway. Yeah.

And maybe this is like doom. dooms saying or something I don't know maybe like if Trump loses or Trump dies before the next election which not outside the realm of possibility I do have to say it was fucking hilarious that they released information about his bad health for the first time

in an attempt to distract from the Epstein stuff yeah yeah that's like oh yeah like you look at him he's got venous insufficiency that's crazy brother you're not telling us anything we didn't know that's crazy like they were finally telling it's like he's just uh he's a little frail he's just a little sick boy yeah you wouldn't hurt a little sick boy you wouldn't heard a little sick birthday boy would you yeah i mean that epstein stuff isn't going

away but no one cares now there was a quick there was a short moment uh that that could be part of what the opening up the age limit and these like good salaries and stuff for these ice ages about too it's like anybody like the same people that would join us for the same people that are concerned about epstein it's like buying them off did you you see that isa i'll give you six figures to go harass people you say you hate yeah did you see that azalea banks thing where she said i try not there i was she's stupid as fuck but i do think she's probably articulating something a lot of right wingers think which is that she said the stigma against men praying on girls over the age of 14 or whatever didn't even really start

until the 90s or 2000 so you know we should cut it at trump's some slack basically saying that like you know in like the 1970s and 80s it was okay for like an older man to like marry a 16 year old or something we should cut trump some slack like it was not okay then it was just accepted it was since it was accepted it was okay yeah yeah which i take to be the way most republicans feel i don't know i mean i have you know i have talked to and seen some Republicans that are pretty pissed with him about this but like

I think it's going to be one of those things where it's they don't really are they really going to care that much it's not going away it's funny because Trump can absorb all that he can absorb it yeah it's funny because it pisses them off though but I don't know if it's yeah he's going to he's going to be yeah he is sensitive about it

and that's the only enjoyment we get out of it but there's going to be nothing happening with it no you know I thought for a second like okay the base is going to turn on him because this is the thing they've been hinging all their politics on. It really is, like, draining the swamp was just shorthand for, like,

let's hold the pedophiles in power accountable. Yeah. Like, the whole impetus for him even running for office to begin with, I think a lot of people thought, well, he's going to, like, get these Mexicans that are taking our jobs, and he's going to, like, expose the cabal? Yeah.

Well, shit, yeah. And then it's like, oh, he is the cabal. Yeah. I mean, I saw that they drag, Greg Gilean in front of, like, Congress. They moved her to a low-security prison and dragged her in front of Congress to say that she never saw Trump doing anything.

It's just beyond all. It's beyond all fucking, it's just... Well, we haven't talked about the elf in the room, but what in the hell was Fidel doing a picture with us? That's... Dude, if I find out Fidel was in the Epstein thing, I don't even know what the fuck I would dare. Someone said,

that's the most he don't have internet of all time yeah yeah well that's true I guess yeah oh man

I don't know you think it's like he Robert Maxwell used to tell everybody that he got cigars sent straight to him from Fidel um

I think Fidel was an asset no I really don't think so he probably just got like who knows maybe he got sent it in on accident or something. But then again, who the fuck knows, Dan?

Maybe he was there. Maybe he was fucking enjoying. He was living high on the hog. I know my man had a weakness for strange pussy, too. Yeah. It's possible, man. Oh, God.

That is the elephant in the room, you're right? When I saw that, I was like, God damn, not him, too. No. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Yeah. well if you like what you've heard that's a depressing episode isn't it no i think we i think

it was you'd say depressing i'd say cathartic cathartic yeah i it was good for me to just talk out some feelings sometimes that's good sometimes it is good you're right i love to talk out feelings yeah i also love to sleep but i wish i could do that Without being forced to wake every three times every hour. That seems like you got everything from people knocking on your door, the wee hours of the morning to... Mm-hmm. Apnea.

To the apnea. I think I am going to do the septoplasti, though. You're going to do the surgery? You're going to get a nose job. Dude, I'm really nervous about it. I'm nervous. You want to know why? I...

Well, okay. The biggest reason why I'm nervous about it is because you can't use the CPAP for a month. after you get it done. That means I'm going to have to sleep. I'm going to have to sleep without a C-PAP for a month. People are like, why don't you use C-PAP? I already do use it, and I'm still exhausted constantly. So, I don't know, maybe I've just got, like, maybe I'm haunted.

I could be, like, SpongeBob in that one meme. Maybe that's why I just don't sleep well. Maybe I just have bad insomnia and I don't sleep well. I'm haunted by my past. Maybe, like, what if you're just up wandering around the halls at night and you just don't know it? That's not possible because I never really get to sleep. Oh, okay. Sometimes I do.

So a lot of times you're just staring up at the ceiling. No, I just go to this middle state where I'm not asleep but I'm not awake. I hate that, man. It's just wasted unconsciousness. Yeah. There's no worse feeling as a man entering middle age than when you have been laying down for eight hours and you feel like you, and you don't really know if you actually went to sleep at all. You know that feeling?

What is that feeling? I hate it, dude. There's, I hate waking up the next morning like that. And it's like, what happened? Do you feel weird? It's like feeling hungover. I used to do that when I was on opioids all the time. When I was on pills and stuff, I would always get like somn, what do they call that?

Somalessence or something. It's like not sleep, but it's not awake. That would happen to me all the time when I was on drugs. It's just unconsciousness, but. Yeah, but you're not really awake. It's not restful. Yeah, it's not restful. But now I'm like sober as a fucking bird.

I don't understand. that's your penance for being sober it's like I guess so I guess you're maybe her or rather maybe paying the price for no you're right oh I deserve this not you I'm not saying you deserve it I'm just saying the body keeps the score no I deserve it dude I deserve it um okay please go check out our Patreon the link is in the show notes we would really appreciate your support um go check it out man check it out stay safe yeah and uh just have a good weekend yeah have a good weekend yeah see you out there all right peace