Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 415: A World Of Thieves

Episode Date: October 23, 2025

Unfortunately we had to discuss the gooning article in Harper's. From there we went on to talk about the growing "China envy" among Silicon Valley's tech elite, Draft King's entry onto Wall Street, how China's approach to AI differs from America's approach to AI, and, finally, why so many pundits still think that centrism is the best way to engage with politics Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Well, the generals are turning on Pete Hegseth, and it's because he's tried to turn the Pentagon into a goon cave. So this is not an intervention. They don't like substance abuse. There's not, like you think that Quantico's speech was an attempt at Pete Hegseth trying to do a self-intervention? Like he was, it was a cry for help. It was, it was a cry for help. Man.

He's like brother I need you I need you to give me sober That's what the Harper's article was about Is Hegg Seth turning the Turning the Pentagon Into a gun camp Yeah the Harper article

Was it about Pete Hegseth Turning the Pentagon Into a goon cave And They've been doing They've been not doing enough gooning At the Pentagon And it could help them

become pump sluts, hand pumpers, fat, juicy, cellulite, wobble meat, goon craft, and thirsting for goon fuel. The new Pentagon imperative is searching the world for goon fuel so that we can continue the goon pyre. Are we going to, we're going to pillage countries in the future for their goon fuel? Yes. Yeah. That's what, that's what, that's what, it's, that's the, the pretense in Venezuela is. It's not their oil resources or the drug war or whatever pretense we're using. It's that they've got the world's richest supply of goon fuel and we need that.

Lithium and goon fuel. That's the future, folks. Those are the resources the world will be fighting over in the future. So what constitutes a goon fuel? is this like thirst traps you know are these like magazines of your paper magazines print magazines of your well the just of the article okay I'm just going to go ahead and say that like you know there are there are articles out there who like we could get the author on and they could tell us about the thing they wrote about like oh this is XYZ and in this instance though it would never do

justice to how it actually comes across in written form. Like, this article is Primo, like, you have to read it to experience it. And it's just, it's called Goon Squad. It's in Harper's. But it's basically, like, this guy takes, like, a bleeding edge-esque journey into the seedy underbelly of, like, discord, like, goon world. and I can confidently say

and I said this in the He died too soon He died Yeah Oh that was juice world I'm sorry Oh yeah yeah yeah All right PK

I'm just gonna go ahead and call it Like we've We've reached the end of humanity This is the end There's nothing beyond this This is it Man I got a rude

awakening this morning whenever I was I got a I had to take a ride down to the courthouse to settle some paperwork and I had to take a lift to get there and guy that drove me there was from Congo and he just looked I just like you know I did the requisite thing you do where are you from you know the whole routine I'm sure those guys probably get it 40 times a day and he just started Tell me about everything It was going on in the Congo And he just looked at her He's like, I just don't know

Who I am anymore, man I was like, brother I think you're not alone in that But most of us don't have the underpinning of an unstable home gun Well, for now Actually, I can't say that anymore

But it's not It's not Congo unstable Yeah, Tom, Trump's tearing down the White House For Pete's sake He's destroying our beautiful historic East Wing. Well, I mean, you might not know who you are even more or where you're headed, what you're doing.

But, you know, if you're a gooner, you know, if you're a gooner. You do know, you have a sense of identity. Yeah. Well, that was... You have a little identity, you know. The thing about gooning is that it's a group activity. It's like alienation, it's hyperalienation in a communal setting. It's so wild.

It's like they have... these like goon chats where they like sit like you know wall to wall porn all over the screen like hundreds of porn videos at once and like that's like they're trying to basically masturbate for so long that they reach the sort of like goon state like where they're kind of like it's like when you meditate for so long like you reach trends you know what it's like it's like it's like the modern day gooning version of sitting around the campfire as like you like an early primitive man. Yeah.

You know what I mean? Like this very kind of private sort of act, you know, but it's shared communally that everyone experiences in their own individual transcendent way. Yeah. Except as a bunch of niggas in a circle beating they mean. Staring into the fire of orgasm and pleasure. Not orgasm, actually, I guess pleasure and the edging of it, you know. Well, that's like one of them said that like the overstimulation was part of what made it so euphoric and transcendent.

It was just. And they've got these things called, like, porn music videos, PMVs where they, like, mash up, they mash up, like, hundreds of different porn clips into one clip. And, like, every... Compilations? Yes, and every thrust and moan and cum shot is, like, synced up with the beat of the techno song on behind it. It's got to be hard for, man. Like, dude, we, we, humans can... We are, like, capable of...

Such incredible, like, vistas of creativity, but also savagery. It's like the end of context. Which, which camp does this fall into? It's both. A little bit of both. A little bit of both, exactly. Because the kind of perverted, not perverted, but like hyper horny mind to create something like that, you know, to make it have a rhythm and a beat to it, you know.

But it's just a compilation of porn. That's a, I don't know, man. yeah was that that's that's the last word in masturbation no more worlds to conquer after that yeah that's true where do you go from that well that's the thing i mean i'm sure there's more things going on than i even know about well this is at your ceiling post-coital you know and feel the emptiness leave you that's what you do that well this is like what he's grappling with in the article which is like is have we created a new type of human like is this a qualitatively new type of

human being like gooner the gooner right like it's because it's all it's predicated it's it's the result of an innovation in informational distribution and collation which is that like 20 years ago all of a sudden overnight young boys suddenly had access to not only hardcore pornography but like types of porn that human history has never before seen and like this is people may have done but they have never been recorded until now hadn't been wasn't on the cave walls or the egyptian hieroglyphs or yeah i mean you know or the the the the japanese you know they do the waves and stuff what's that called that art form yeah it wasn't two people cresting a wave coital or a guy beating his meet at a tsunami Japanese art wave shooting out.

Nothing in the commo-searchers, like, they've really innovated in recent years. Well, I think it's like, there's not, you're right, Aaron, there's nothing in it that, like, humans haven't already been doing. Like, you could say, oh, two girls one cup. It's like, well, read Marquis de Sade, right? Two girls one cup is like PG compared to the shit in Dessad. But, um... Them Greek Bacchanalias, bro.

They was doing some freaky ass shit. dog in India they were having like sevensons with gender fluid cortisans and while various princes from the provinces looked on and goon themselves you know like there's there's been a lot of wild stuff going on for a long time i think it's the combination of the access to the porn the fact that like anything you want is immediately like if you wanted mediated pornographic images a hundred years ago

you had to go to like a cd middleman who was probably you had to go to the actual hun you had to go to the guy with the trench coat who would open it up you had to go to the actual

hunt like you know that guy that was like the avatar for like the you know a lot of the young gooners out there I won't remember but there was a time

when you had to just dial up a JPEG image and it took it was an all day of fair and if you laid an egg if it just wasn't good then you had to wait till tomorrow i don't even know if younger listeners will even get that reference like is the hun around anymore like it was oh no i could imagine the hun the hun the hun was the hun is like a chimney sweep in the in the gooninian world you know what i mean the hun was handed his walking papers probably around

2009 yeah let me see let me just do a little the hun dot com we'll see if the hun's around You know what I was thinking about terrorists, too? This really is sort of the pinnacle of, I guess, like, these simple, carnal pleasures that I feel like this desire to fulfill. My God, he still exists. The Huns still around? The Huns Yellow Pages. He's still here. And his tagline is still the only bookmark you need.

Amazing. Like, I don't know. Is this to porn what? record stores are like is it like uh trading a little bit on nostalgia is this like this vital version you know the hun is like uh the hun is like uh he's like a physical media guy for perverts you know what it's what was that porn star from the 80s Jeremy Jeremy what was his name Ron Jeremy well there was Ron Jeremy but I think you're probably thinking of John Holmes No, I'm not thinking of John Holmes

I was thinking of Ron Jeremy John, yeah John Holmes was like I'm sorry, I won't tell you what you're thinking anymore The Turkish slinky guy with the head of our mustache Yeah, that's the one Yeah, okay No, wasn't John Holmes like didn't he get AIDS And was evolved in like some murders or something

Everybody hits a couple of tough years there Well, oh, wait, back to something Best to go through those with a 13-inch hog. That's true. Back to something you said a second ago, Aaron, it's not, I don't even know if it's about the carnal pleasure so much. It's like, I don't even get the idea that these guys even like pleasure because obviously, like, he did point out that a lot of them,

the ones that he interviewed anyways, were sexually active, but most of them weren't. and so I don't even know if it's really about like the pleasure aspect of it it's more like in my opinion it's got something something much deeper is going on it's got something more to do with like social media and our fixation okay to put it bluntly and I guess this is kind of part of the message that this article is going for it is David Foster Wallace it's infinite jest all the way down it's like mediated images become so

like I don't know they become so alluring in and of themselves that you become literally addicted to the screen this is the result of the spectacle this is the result of Guy divorce spectacle yes exactly

it's the oninistic spectacle yeah it's got it's not so much to do with like the sex aspect it's more to do with the fact that you're literally addicted to screen to computer and to the point that like you're just yeah you're being eating your meat like for...

It's like video drove, bro. Yes, it's video dro. With the lips kind of pop out of the screen and stuff I guess it's a guy beating his meat. Yeah. But it's like, and they've tried to control for the fact that like it's kind of, um, kind of inherently lonely endeavor

by like creating community out of it. So around it. Bonding through alienation. Community will find a way, boys. I will. I will. I wonder if they're going to take it to the logical next day. which is literal onan worship.

Like, are they going to go back to, like, its roots? You know what I mean? Yeah. And how does that jive with the Christian world? The no-fat people who say that it's better to sow your seed in the belly of a whore than to spill it on unfurtile soil? Well... I think this is another perfect...

Go ahead, Terrence. No, you go ahead. I was just going to say, I think this is another perfect example of the contradictions inherent with the right, you know, and the same way we see these sort of, you know, millinarianists, you know, and also like these tech apocalypticians, I guess, you know. Two seemingly opposing forces, you know. I don't even know that a lot of people, I mean, I don't even know that the gooners are necessarily left wing or right wing.

Like, they're a lot of the-political? Well, a lot of the chat rooms that this guy went into, he said that they were pretty woke. Like, they were like, you know, no slurs. no homophobia you know what I mean like but then there are like just straight like actual pito gooners too though so which is like you know those people are right way or the average American is that what we're saying what's that gooner the is the gooner latent in the average American well that's kind of the point he's trying to make in this article which is that like on a long enough timeline like that's kind of what like meta Netflix fan duel they're

all basically going after the same human impulse, which is addiction to screen. Like, he says here, he says, it's probably more useful to think of a company like ALO, the owner of Pornhub and most of the other major tube sites, as just another large tech entertainment giant, like meta, Netflix, or Fandul. From these companies' perspective,

the ideal consumer would do literally nothing but goon, lose at gambling, and maybe watch other people play video games. You can try to fight this. You can read a book, pet a dog, buy a stupid box to lock away your phone. You can make a joke about the box about the absurdity of your need for it. But what do these companies care? They've won.

If they have their way and they usually do, it's time we will all be, in time we will all be gooners of a kind. Yeah, yeah. Well, the gambling is really, that's very topical, that piece of it today because you see where the FBI's went after a lot of people in the NBA, including Portland Trailblazers, coach Chauncey Billups, and Terry Roseir. The point guard for the shooting guard for the Miami heat.

Yeah. Yeah, they've got pinched for wagering. Well, I mean. Which is, which it has some pretty big implications, honestly. Like, my first thought is, like, why is that punitive? Like, to me, it seems like, oh, well, then, like, if Portland wants to fire Chauncy Billups, because, like, he has direct some semblance of control over the outcomes of game. he's betting on or Terry Rosier, it's like, yeah, they should handle that institutionally.

But also, it's like, can you be that mad? Like, what the fuck did you think was going to happen when you just integrated, like, gambling from an app on your goddamn couch into the wholesale experience of, like, watching sports? Did you just think nobody was going to gamble that could control the outcomes? Like, what the fuck you think was going to happen? Well, check this out. This is from Politico. If you thought finance was already starting to look like betting, boy, do we have some news

for you. Sports betting giant draft king said Tuesday that it was acquiring a federally regulated derivatives exchange, Railbird, as part of its entry into the world of prediction markets. Its entry into the space is the latest sign of the growing buy-in around prediction

markets, the space that has already attracted new investment from the New York Stock Exchange's parent company's CME group and Fandool. So, I mean, it's... Fan duels make an entree into the straight finance world is terrible.

I mean, like, you could, like, we've talked about, I think we talked about this maybe last week or recently, recently, like, there's these stats that have come out that, like, the American economy has grown, like, point. If you take out the AI bubble, like the growth in the AI sector, which is just nothing, then the American economy has grown like 0.06% since January. Like, there's no growth in the AI bubble. I mean, if you're tying in, like, sports betting, if you're making prediction markets like an everyday part of Wall Street at this point, like when the fucking bubble finally collapses, the number of suicides, like people jumping off of buildings that like they saw after the 1928 stock exchange, that'll look quaint compared to like what'll happen. I mean, I think, I think this is kind of like circles back sort of to this bonding

through alienation with the gooner folks, you know, because, you know, when we're even financializing, I guess, like, predictability markets, you know what I mean? When everything has been so hollowed out, you know, and just put up for sale, I guess, you know, or speculation, then what else do people have to go to without a sort of robust communal structure or communities or just even people that they can kind of rely on? you don't know what I mean like it's like I guess the only way you do it when you're affected through alienation is like yeah something like gooning which isn't really bonding I guess but it's a facsimile of bond a facsimile I guess of bonding you know an extremely like hyper attenuated form of bonding it's so strange it's like it's like you're creating the ultimate human intimate experience you know you're using the ultimate human intimate experience sex but like depriving it of the thing that makes it intimate and using that as a way that's a way that you're using that as a way you're using the to bond with other people it's so bizarre it's it's really inverted man well that's what that's what social media itself is it's a facsimile of human interaction that sucks the actual humanity

out of it and just creates a simulacrum which is all to um honestly like ultimately why politics now is completely hollow and insincere the same why well that feels more real than the reality i guess right yeah i mean like early just going back to what we were talking about a second ago like this isn't like a left or right thing. This is like American consumerism like cranked up to fucking 11 on steroids. And it's why like, like I said, when the ultimate crash comes, like it won't just be people jumping off of buildings. It'll be like, like, they'll be innovating new ways of like suicide. Like, oh, I stoned myself to death.

Like, you know, and like live streaming it for, you know what I mean? Like, remember that guy like killed himself, uh, on. on like live stream a few months ago for dude it was something what did he it was like for something like uh I think that was something to do with online gambling I thought dude you're gonna have people we're gonna have like people killing themselves on live stream to pay for hospital bills

that could possibly be transferred onto their children after they die you know what I mean yeah we might go back to the old ways too you know what I mean like when in the apocrypha when you know Paul was or was it Peter was boiled upside down in hot oil that kind of stuff

but you can do that at Chick-fil-A as part of the opt-out opt-out menu items you know the big opt-out they're gonna start selling self-flagellation

whips you know what I mean like whips with like bits of glass embedded in them so you can just whip yourself anytime you feel shameful you want to kill yourself brother I don't have enough flesh on my back to

make it a day in that context I'd be looking like Christ that day on Calvary. Self-crucifixion kids? Yeah, it's crucify yourself in three easy steps. No assembly required. This is an interesting, this is relevant to this article that I saw in the New York Times this past week. which is like okay if there's any theme that I can take from this past week like any

any like common theme that I can detect from all the many stories that I've seen and read it's that like you know it is obviously century of American humiliation but like furthermore like how China is not only well positioned to benefit in the new you know century of American humiliation, but how like they are uniquely positioned to kind of become global hegemon. Like there was an article I read in the New York Times about how like China's not even sweating the tariffs at this point. Like they've got mass production factories and they're opening up new markets in Southeast Asia. They've cornered the global market on rare earth minerals, which is completely freaked out, you know, American leaders in Silicon Valley people.

make no mistake about it I mean the United States going after Venezuela under the pretense of drug war there's no goddamn fentanyl in fucking Venezuela I mean it's the flimsy's pretense to begin with

but that is all about retreat from this Cold War with China we are in effect when going after Venezuela is effectively conceding that China is that we're entering the Chinese century I mean and I'm not saying that's a bad thing

okay I'm not I'm not saying that like oh, we're such pussies or anything, even though we are. But, like, that is what that signals. That is, that is the subtext of this whole Venezuela bullshit. It's us getting back to what we do best, which is, like, picking on places that, like, hold values that we say are antithetical to us or whatever because they got something we want, which is, in Venezuela's case, I'm guessing they're massive oil reserves. Right.

Well, I mean, when you have a combination of imperial, I don't want to say decline necessarily, but sort of like this blowback or exhaustion. might be a better term, you know, coupled with a stagnant economy, you know? I think this is what you have, right? You have America, like you said, Tom, it's like we're kind of looking into our own backyard, you know? Yeah. We're like retreating from the world. Well, the legal framework or the legal paradigm that the Trump keeps invoking as justification for this.

They keep saying this, is that there strikes on these boats in the Caribbean, which, by the way, like, I think every, single one of them like there was this one you'll forgive me if i'm getting some of the details here wrong but like i think they found that like two people on one of those boats this past week weren't venezuelan they were weren't they from like bora bora or something like that they like and then like the trump administration like refused to um prosecute them and then tried to repatriate them essentially just like shipped them out of the country just like didn't just wanted it to go away i'm completely butcher all of these fucking details.

I apologize. No, but you're right. You're right. And indeed the same thing off the coast of Columbia. Yeah. And their justification for this is that it's international waters and that there's no legal governing body for international waters. Which is like opening up this entire, you know, like I said, legal framework for just like, you know, assassinating, oblitering everyone. But hey, I guess if that's the case, I guess that means that we could literally, you know, down, yachts.

billionaires yachts in um you know get a pirate ship there's no legal framework for yeah do some sea shanties what's like kevin cost the movie or water world except instead of like people try to live on the water they're just going to build the new alcatraz you know what I'm saying yeah like in the middle of the Pacific ocean or some shit that's just the new guantanamo bay I think the point I think the point here is that like yes you're right it's a retreat from the globe and then a kind of retrenchment of our own power in the western hemisphere, but it's like trying to carve out this like exception where if you don't, if you hold, like you said Tom, hold values that are antithetical to Americans or you're engaged in some activity that

like doesn't jive with the American political economy. You can just be vaporized wherever you're at on the planet. Like it's just, it's only a few short legal steps from you're in international waters and therefore we can just assassinate you wherever you're at to like oh you're in a political district in the north america that we don't agree with you like a blue state or whatever and therefore like you're just marked for death already which already is happening but you know what I mean like enthrining it into legal codification as a as a whole other thing I don't know I mean it's just it's just a further expression of I guess America's increasing war on everyone you know Yeah, just like Israel.

Trying to ferment civil war between its own citizens and seeing everyone else who get antithetical to the U.S. values or just inherently un-American, you know, because of race, ethnicity that, yeah, you know, you don't have any rights. You can be targeted for death. That's true. I think the point here is that, you know, getting back to what we were talking about a second ago, about, like, century of American humiliation, like, Chinese, you know, rapidly ascending Chinese hegemony.

And, like, getting back to, like, the gooning thing and AI and predictive markets, online gambling, all this, I read this article in the New York Times, it says Silicon Valley has China envy, and that reveals a lot about America. The fascination with China's inability, or I'm sorry, the fascination with China's ability to build things America struggles with, from bridges to advanced tech, risks a dangerous mess calculation about what drives. drives China. I mean, it's a stupid article because, like, towards the end of it, what she's saying is, like, China's able to do this because they incur massive amounts of debt. And that's the only thing she's got against the Chinese system. But, like, overall, what she's pointing out is that, like, all these Silicon Valley people are, like, looking at China and they're just like, why are they so, why is their smoke so good? Why are their hosts so bad? I just like, I just like the term China envy. because, like, I can't help but think of penis envy, you know, and it being this really kind of, maybe Freudian is not the word, but this psychosexual competition of dick swingers, you know what I'm saying? And, like, it's also just being kind of insecure, you know? They know that China got that smoke, you know?

Oh, yeah. And that we don't. Everybody's got a better quality of life there just about it by this point. You know what's really crazy? I was listening, you know, me and Terrance started listening to NPR again, trying to get back on our lib shit. and they had the editor of the economist on there who was basically saying that like

now she believes that the United States does and will continue to have the world's most dynamic economy she's like every time I've gotten you know down on the U.S. economy like they've always proved me wrong and bounced back and then she just laid out this like case that required a lot of ifs and these are not ifs that a man like Donald Trump or anybody in this administration is, you know, capable of meeting, you know, for one.

But two, she's like, but what could also happen is like, you know, the economy could collapse and the United States could end up like England or something like that, kind of, you know, having to, you know, Rob Peter to pay Paul in the international community. But it's just crazy to me that, like, if you're out there and you're like listening to this right now, like you have more financial acumen just by opening up your own two eyes than the editor of the economist like seriously i just i don't understand this and i don't understand like like i don't know i mean it's maybe it's you know it's hallowing the united states economy is like it's built on sorcery soothsaying it's like all vapor it's all vapor like all of our

all of the product, everything we're innovating is nothing. It's a big nothing. It's just nothing. It's prospecting on and not even prospecting on tangible things. Prospecting on the outcome of sports contests.

Prospecting on the idea of a brain in the sky running everything for us. Is that going to work or not? I never want to hear anybody that make fun of like the woo people. Yeah, that's what this is. It's a woo-woo economy. It's fucking, it's nothing. It's just nothing. I mean, it doesn't even have the pretense anymore of trying to improve social life, you know, whether it's in technology or medicine or anything like that. All the aims that

started out with have now kind of double back and inverted, you know. Well, let me spell this out for you too. I mean, there's the thing going around the other day. I sent it to Terrence where it was like Harvard. Harvard. Not Georgia State. Not more. Morehead State, not University of Kentucky, not even the University of Texas. Harvard is slashing a significant portion of their faculty in the Department of Arts and Sciences. Like with these crazy-ass, robust endowments, Harvard's made billions just off being a deadbeat absentee landowner in eastern Kentucky for 60 goddamn years. You know what I mean?

And they're like, they're filling all this, okay? Now, we'll just dial that back to the lower end. of that spectrum okay somebody told me this morning that they're getting ready like in three months preschool and pike county kentucky is going to collapse like they don't have any funding for it yeah and it's a fair it's all federally funded all that kind of stuff and that's go ahead i'm sorry no no you go ahead no i just i was interested in what you had to say there because that's all i heard i was just going to say that what it was was because it's funded by head start and the shutdown is affecting that but also part of this big beautiful bill i mean i read an article in the new york times

a few days ago about this health care franchise uh this health corporation in mississippi in the delta that is going to have to basically start like closing offices soon because the big beautiful bill mandates that like one or two million people get kicked off medicaid in the next i think eight years or so. I think that by 2032, Medicaid, like, one or two billion or million people will be kicked off of Medicaid. And, like, this isn't just, like, let's set aside the fact that, like, those people will not even be able to go in for an emergency condition or whatever. Like, you're talking about compounding health problems when you're not even able to go in for preventative care and screenings and stuff like that. And,

then that ripples out into the community in mental illness and addiction and the the knock-on effects of of care and you know having to have people care for you at home and so i mean it's just uh i mean just to tie that into what you're saying a second ago tom like it's and i want to make a larger point about this in a second but like what we're seeing is just quite literally a policy of social extermination because they're just out of ideas fundamentally but it's i mean it's a little deeper than that but like again i don't want to like fully get into it but um sorry to interrupt you tom i was just going to say i too saw the head start thing about pike counting preschool yeah i mean you sorry i mean you just have to want you just have to wonder man like what is

going to be the political social reaction you know from people being so disinvested and so kind of not even left to their own devices but actually like kind of exterminated as you said Terrence well I mean listen to this the elites of the American tech sector are marveling at China's speed in building infrastructure

it's manufacturing might and the ingenuity of the AI company Deep Seek at the same time they're lamenting aging infrastructure and cumbersome regulations in the United States and an economy that can't seem to make screws or drones or the machines

that manufacture them So, I mean, like, it's, I mean, there's a lot to sort of, like, unpack there, but it's, you know, obviously not anything to do with cumbersome regulations, I don't think. But anyways, what was the point you were making a second ago, Tom? I don't want to, like, lose that thread. That was a good thread, and I fucked it up because my internet was fucked up. No, no, no, no, no. I was just saying it's hard not to see it. I think for me, it clicked when they referred to the people who were sick with COVID and couldn't go into work and stuff like that as the human capital stock.

And then now it's really hitting home that like this, it feels like this is something of a large-scale liquidation project. Like, to me it feels like it's a scary time to be an old person, a person who's, dealing with the disability who has medical issues who is poor any of those things you know what i mean it feels like it's more existential than it used to be you know what i mean and how do you fight back against that like we can either just waltz into the wood chipper or we can make our own kind of war on these people like and how the mechanisms for that remain to be seen like what would be the most effective i think and that's the bind we find ourselves in particularly in a society where You know, I try to talk to, like, even, like, well-intentioned friends of mine about things that I notice going on that I see and stuff.

And they're skeptical of anything I have to say because they just, and not because they don't trust me or whatever, but just because they don't understand where to get information anymore. You know what I mean? Because our media is so complicit in all this, too. You just see this, like, mass right-wing capitulation. Like, even if you're just listening to something like NPR, you know, they'll say something about, like, oh, the budget cuts to NPR, you know, whatever. but then like increasingly they have they're like the people they interview or whatever or like people that are more like friendly to the Trump government it's weird it's a weird thing to hear you see like all these networks all these media companies capitulate sometimes paying Trump out bribe money essentially to stay out of the doghouse or whatever it's really absurd it's like I just don't understand well I mean really it speaks to the failures of the Democratic Party in any a presumed opposition right I mean that's well tried to territory that's like you know our mo in the show oftentimes but like more than that it just feels like an absolute retreat you know they these people understand that are in power that have

all this money that like they that we don't have a bargaining chip necessarily so how can we sort of asymmetrically like start chipping away at them you know with the deck stacked against this in terms of surveillance, in terms of, you know, they have all of our data. They stole our data out from under us, and they used that to surveil us. You know what I mean? It's like, it's really a hell of a thing, honestly. Like, if we were really just scoring this, like, like, you know, of sound mind, just like looking at this from the bird's eye view, like, Mark Zuckerberg should be marked for death.

Okay? Seriously. I mean, because it is existential. I mean, that sounds like draconian and wild. an ultra and all that shit but seriously all these people that stole our data like basically marked us for a kind of if not liquidation at least like a world where they can max extract value out of us constantly with us leaving us a little recourse to do anything about it you know what i mean it not not too dissimilar to when like people had their mineral rights stolen out for none of them

or even further back than that when we stole land from natives it's it's like it's all the same shit it's all a society and economy in a world by proxy that's, you know, predicated on theft. It's just a, it's just a world of thievery. You know, you know what I was thinking of when you were talking, Tom? I was thinking of, um, it's not like there's a lack of outrage or energy, right, for to kind of correct or reform, I guess, any of these things. because even on the lip side of things, you know, you had the, with the No Kings protest, you know. And I read this article that, you know, Democrats there, voters, like many of them were also upset with the Democratic Party, right?

And their lack of, I guess, like, you know, any resistance, you know, anything that they could proactive that they could actually do, you know. and just thinking about like you know there's the energy out there you know and it's just not being harnessed or there's not a vehicle right that we could just kind of aim it right at the people who are making our lives of living fucking hell you know what I'm saying yeah I just got an update on the not to just completely 180 this but I just got an update on the east wing of the white house Trump is building a events arena oh nice probably for UFC fights or something but eventually it'll be us in the Coliseum. I really want to know who is...

I really want to know who is his Albert Speer architect type of dude is, which is Hitler's architect, you know, when he wanted to build what was it called, the Vokesdrome or some shit like that. You know, instead it'll be like, you know, a Maga Albert Spear, you know. Some guy who wants to build like a backyard wrestling pen, you know, on the White House law and some shit like that, you know. yeah well i mean if you if you have any doubts as to like i don't know because obviously uh i struggle with many things in life but um well gooning is not one of them thankfully but um i do

partake in the doomerism from time to time i i goon for doom i'll i'll do that i'm gooning Gooning for the doorman. Yeah. And, you know, as someone who publicly goons for doom for a living, I get a lot of pushback when people say, you know, either they, I get two kinds of feedback that's like one is the kind, like, you know, be a better friend to yourself, get off Twitter, like, stop putting this poison into your mind, like, you know, just don't think about it so much. That's what I want to start telling people that,

Watch porn supercuts. Quit putting this poison into your mind. I will say the difference, though, is that, like, you know, not even by the virtue of what we do on this show, but it's also just osmosis living in a digital social media age, you know what I'm saying? And also having deep-seated psychological neuroses that caused me to check my phone against my will, you know, unless I guess I lock it in a box, you know. Yeah. I think we're going to have to cast in. to the sea. I think it's the only why. Well, okay, so that's the, I get that feedback, but then I get the other kind of feedback

where people are like, you know, you're vastly underestimating the power of people and workers to change the situation. And first of all, that's mischaracterization. I don't actually think that. In fact, I saw a badass video from Chicago this past a few days where I don't know if y'all saw this, this guy basically punked these ice agents into getting the fuck out of his community, getting back in their cars and just running away with their tails between their legs. I'm going to fuck you or what? Or what? You're going to fucking shoot me? I'll die for this shit.

You fucking pigs? Get the fuck out of here. Basically by just like basically bowing up to them, just like, fuck you. Like this is my community. I'll die for my fucking community. Shoot me if you want to. I don't give a fuck. And these ice agents just weren't prepared to like, you know...

Encounter that. Yeah, go head to toe, like head to head with somebody with actual convictions and with someone who actually cared about their community and their fellow human beings. Can I just say for some reason? I don't know why, but I thought, I just thought of like, just kind of fucking with these people. I thought you were going to go in the direction of fucking with these people by orchestrating some home alone acme, you know. Like road rudder

That would be tied Dude situation Where they just like You know Paint like a tunnel On a wall You know the icy agents Run into it

You know what we need to do You know that video Where the baby is sitting on the Like the porch He was like shooting a music video Somewhere in North Carolina And all these gang members Run up on

And asking why he didn't check in He just kind of held his own He was just like I don't have check in with nobody That's what we got to do These ice guys And they run up on it's like Hey did you check in

yeah um but like you know on the doom thing like i i i've been reading if you doubt if you have any doubt as to where this might be going or what could be in the cards for us i i don't know obviously what's going to happen in 10 years the pendulum could swing hard to the left for all i fucking know but i will say there are some concerns Concerning metrics, and one of which is that I'm currently reading a biography of John L. Lewis, who was the president of the United Mine Workers for like 40 years, basically, from like 1920. Okay, so not that John Lewis. Who's the other John Lewis? Oh, is it the Salem?

Yeah, Black, yeah, Black. Yeah, Black. No. A very, very different John Lewis. Yeah, yeah. This John Lewis kind of looks like a mix between Heat Miser and. Linner Bresniff and Michael Aquino. That's true. He had the busiest eyebrows known to man. But like it's a biography of John Lewis written by Melvin Dubovsky.

It's like a response or it's kind of supposed to be a response to Saul Olenski's biography of John L. Lewis. And they're very critical of Lewis. but like I do think it's a very fascinating examination of like how things were going in the 1930s that like you had a guy like John L. Lewis who throughout the 20s was a very conservative labor leader. He started out as a kind of radical labor leader, became a very conservative one throughout the 1920s, almost drove the UMWA to destruction, and honestly had a very like Stalinist approach to the UMWA, in fact, like purged most of its most more radical members throughout the 20s as they were undergoing this crisis in the soft coal market

that eventually spread to the rest of the economy and you know you had the crash of the stock market and all this but like by the early 1930s John L. Lewis had basically changed his mind about where things were going and the thing they keep coming back to over and over in this book is that John L. Lewis was not a principled person by any. means. And in fact, a lot of the people in this time era weren't. You had the obviously principled communists and, you know, Williams E. Foster and Eugene Debs and people who actually stood for things,

but most people, politicians, labor leaders, whatever, were pure opportunists. And John L. Lewis was like the opportunist par excellence. So much so that like he fully recognized that the country was in a deep crisis after the stock market crash of 1928. and fully did a 180 and came around not only to the New Deal in Roosevelt, but went even farther and thought that you needed national planning of the economy, maybe even nationalization of certain industries, and obviously then he started the CIO, the Congress of Industrial Organization, you know what I mean, which eventually merged with the AFL. But like he, I think my point here is that there are no John Lewis.

anymore like there's no one and i say this because people like roosevelt and john l lewis like were kind of opportunists in the sense that they saw that there was rising worker militancy and they were like oh shit like we got to actually meet these demands or else yeah we're going to get pitchforked more or less there is obviously rising militancy now i mean look anywhere you want from the streets of chicago to starbucks to fucking wherever there's rise Rising worker militancy. There's rising street militancy. But not a single fucking politician

is interested in harnessing any of that. Harnessing that. And that's what I'm saying. That doesn't mean that John Lewis was a good or bad person. That just means that he, like, you know, the way that history provides these types of people was just an opportunist that saw an opening for saving the country from communism and capitalism.

He wanted to carve out a kind of like third way that allowed it to continue. you going on and would not like allow it to like either succumb to communism or nationalism essentially right i know this is probably i know this is probably a moot point and you mentioned roosevelt but roosevelt even called his enemies you know these people who are basically calling him a socialist um he called them these economic royalists of which he was also an economic royalist right yeah it was from this dynastic rich family right it was the melancho i think that i think the royalist dynasty it was the melons carnegie's rockefellers and there was a fourth one like there was

like these four families that he would always call the royalists which he could his which his family could have been included in but as you said he was an opportunist right and i wanted to ask y'all like i mean there's a whole other episode but like why is that right is it because you have people who that i would say that maybe even john lewis believed in things not even just opportunity taking advantage of something, but he had certain principles, maybe if they were a little waffly or a little bit flexible, but at least he had principles or some North Star, you know what I mean, that he came back to, would you say that, like, we don't have those figures anymore because of sort of, I mean, I don't know, there are a lot of different reasons, but like, why is there? Do you think

that this hyper-individualism of neoliberalization and sort of this, this kind of adherence to market principles, right? Like, it's almost iron law. Do you think that that is completely stamped out anyone at all, you know, who would see an alternative and try to carve that out. I think it's two things. I think that today's leaders are so deeply, like you were saying, steeped in neoliberal ideology that they can't even fathom that you would make concessions to the left in an attempt to kind of like, let's say you wanted a social democracy as a way to like prolong, you know, kick the can further down the road and keep this thing going a little bit longer.

um like they can't even conceive of that as an option like today's business leaders and politicians they're so steeped in neoliberal ideology that like it goes back to the human capital stock thing the central imperative of neoliberalism is that business is prioritized above everything else and you see that in the way that we hand out like tax abatements to businesses the way we've completely dismantled the welfare state and you unions in the public sector that like any concern that business has must be put in front of every other concern and so like they're just that's just an ideological tenet that they all follow and have deeply internalized that they can't see any other alternative which it kind of explains

why a guy's transparently ridiculous as trump is able to like govern because he serves their interest first and foremost to an aggressive end yeah you know what I mean like so they're all doing fine you know what I mean I mean that may change depending upon like what happens with the AI bubble and other things like that but for now like the reason they're all mum even though things are ridiculous and even some of them are paying fucking bribes to his dumb ass is because why rock that boat when like it's like a great time for them even though the forecast says it might not hold forever you know yeah and I think that's the first thing the second thing

The second reason why I think that they don't even see any point in even trying to perhaps, like I said, like sort of save their own asses, is that the wealthy have simply become way too comfortable and protected in their role and status in society. Like, they don't even, like, let's just, like, let's measure it up, right? Like, let's put it up as opposed to 1930. like if you wanted to fucking go dome one of the Rockefellers let's just say hypothetically your ability to do that was probably a lot fucking easier than it is now because like I don't know let's just I'm just gaming it out

if you wanted to do something like that now you would have to that had that have you pecked off before you fucking got out of the house exactly right like I'm you're right like the consequences would be no less severe if you actually did it or tried to go through with it It's just that now, even having the thought becomes expressed in your own algorithms

and you're guilty of thought crime and like you're surveilled every time you leave the house. Pre-crime, yeah, like now they're trying to be more aggressive about, you know, penalizing pre-crime. Yes. With this NSPM-7 and all these other things. Yeah, Palantir and shit, yeah. Palantir, yeah.

So like now, like even having a hint of a thought will be punitive. You know what I mean? Yeah. So it's what I'm saying here is that like They don't even have a reason to be opportunists And so it's kind of a thing for them to like Have this like China envy like why is China able to do all these things

China wants to preserve itself for the future You know we can we don't have a separate debate over whether it's fucking socialism or cap State capitalism who gives a fuck They at the bedrock of their society is a desire to continue on into the future which means in the social and political reproduction of power in that society you have opportunists in our society we don't have that anymore for a number of reasons right like there is we could probably spend the next three hours you know detailing all the reasons for why we don't have that anymore but suffice it to say that like today's leaders are either so hyper their brains are hyper atrophied like fucking peter till right like that's that's that to me is the best expression of what today's leaders are like like today's business leaders like they are um dude in the fucking 30s you had roosevelt working with us steel executives you know what i'm saying like you had u.s steel executives coming around to unionism and trade unionism like this was it was corporatism right like musilini even said that like oh our definition of fascism is no different than roosevelt's vision of the new deal like it's basically the same thing it was just you know practice the murder The verge of corporate interests and state muscle, yeah. Right, but, like, an important part of that was unionism and the workers.

In today's Captains of Industry in America, they don't see that crucial ingredient. Their whole thing is mass liquidation, it's mass extermination. That's why they're going whole hog into the AI thing. I would, you know, I would even, to circle back, I would even, the way you talked about, sort of China, like, wanting to preserve itself. And I don't know, maybe you could even see that culturally. And maybe listeners could recommend some of these books, man. But I've kind of been really wanting to get into Chinese science fiction because I've seen a lot of it crossed over to the United States

translated by Chinese American or Chinese-speaking authors. And a lot of it is like really hard science fiction that positions China as this space-faring, not necessarily utopian, but actually like a power, you know, like a state hegemonic, at least in the world, especially in space exploration, like an actual power that would rival the United States. And the United States is often included in these stories, but of course, because it's written in China and it's about some kind of Chinese supremacy, it always seems to be forward-looking, right? And maybe I could be wrong here,

but I see a lot of science fiction, which is where I don't read a lot of contemporary science fiction. A lot of it is so mired and apocalyptic, a lot of Y-A-ship, but just even the things that are meant for adults, it's extremely apocalyptic, you know. And a lot of it, yeah, in America, a lot of it doesn't seem to be so much forward-looking as more of a sort of internal, I guess, introspective analysis or some kind of graham kind of straws of, of my micah get us out, sorry, my bad, yo. But like, it's sort of grabbing at straws about, like, you know, what actually is fucking wrong today and where we're headed, you know? Well, this is the difference between American approach to AI and Chinese, by the way. The Chinese are interested in using AI In a pragmatic way

Like working it into services and machines and stuff Americans are after this thing called AGI Artificial General Intelligence It's the brain in the sky like you said Tom It's like they want this like grand Functioning like it's like the fucking oracles at Delphi Like they want this mystical A god of a kind

Yeah they want a god It's like this mystical like general intelligence That solves all the problems gives you all the answers, but the Chinese don't approach AI that way. There's this fully pragmatic and like how can we work it into like machinery and production. It's so strange. It's the same thing

as American tech. American tech has never been aimed at like enhancing human life or enhancing thought life. It's been aimed at at atrophying human like human the way we think, the way we act,

the way we feel. Like ruthless efficiency. Yeah. Right? Like, the things that American tech utopians fetishize is, like, having to reduce the amount of decisions I have to make in a day, right? Like, that's their guiding principle. Like, it's kind of a laziness that they're, like, edifying with, like, with all of our quote-unquote advancements or whatever. Whereas the Chinese view of the complete opposite way, right? Like, their advancements are, and I'm not like, you know, I'm not like a China genius or anything like that. but it does seem like most of their efforts are aimed at the rising tide lifting, you know, all the boats over there, you know, like dignify, the dignifying of human life.

Rising people out of poverty and that kind of stuff. Out of poverty. I mean, you think whatever the fuck you want about China, it's undeniable. It's been the most successful, like, lifting out of poverty nation. It's like what technology used to be conceived of, then again, I don't know, you could even quibble with that. a little bit because Americans like had well yeah because like we had the cotton gin like coexisting with slavery right so it's like America has always had that kind of like dual thing but like I think the point we're making is that like America's idealistic notion of technology has like far far exceeded like any kind of practical use for this stuff like it is wholly and comprehensively chasing these idealistic goals that just

aren't like they don't have any practical purpose honestly the only practical purpose they do have is from their point of view surveilling and monitoring every human being and you know using algorithms to determine the pre-crime and like and honestly like i've i've stayed out of this same thing this am also the same things we've criticized like china for before well yeah whatever well and and i'm and i will say this and i have stayed out of this uh argument and debate. I'm trying to spend less time on Twitter in general these days. But I've stayed out of this debate over Graham Platner for the just most practical. Who is Graham Platner? I'm sorry, who is this like guy renting for Senate in Maine against, I think, Janet Mills, who's like nominally a leftist,

maybe propals. I don't fucking know. And here's the thing, I don't have to know, because I don't live in fucking Maine. I don't care. I don't have to care. I don't have to care about Zoran Mom Donnie because I don't live in New York City. So I don't have to weigh in on any of it. You just don't have to weigh in on those things. Yeah. Hey, I hope everybody has a good time and I wish them well, but it's just not, it's just, I don't live there. Yeah, it would be like, my bag. It would be like me having an opinion on someone running in a prefecture and like suburban Beijing. Like, I don't, what is it fucking? I mean, I guess you could say that Grand Platner's running for Senate and that affects us, but I don't, we also have Federman in the Senate.

And the, what is the Senate? I don't know. Whatever, it doesn't matter. Point is, the big thing this week is that, like, people found Graham Platner had this tattoo on his chest that was, I guess he got it in Croatia 20 years ago, but it's like a, it's like associated with like Croatian neo-Nazis or something. I guess he didn't know when he got it or something. Regardless, I, you know, I don't have an opinion.

I think you want to be careful of anything coming out of maybe like Eastern Europe in the 1990s. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, I don't know. You might see a lot of reactionary shit I don't know man Yeah Like I did a lot of dumb stuff When I was shown But you know

I just yeah I don't know My This is all besides the point I don't give a fuck about any of this I don't give a shit But what is weird about this story Is where it was sourced

And apparently this story appeared in Politico But no one They've been mum about where they got the story from But it's starting to look like what happened Was Palantier used like it scrapes tons of data from the internet right like for videos photos messages uh posts and all this stuff and it's starting to look like what happened was pallioteer managed to find this video of uh not pal i don't know palenteer specifically if it was peter till if it was just like a subcontracted out

peter till personally it was peter till personally but like it was just like maybe some personally peter till ain't doing much this he does not look good yeah um i guess maybe it was like a group that was subcontracted out that uses Palantir technology to do Apo on politicians but regardless it harvests mass amounts of data and found this video of him

at a wedding where he was shirtless and he had this tattoo on on his chest and that really should concern you the fact that they can I just mention something he didn't even probably remember doing which is the most frightening thing yeah and again I mean I don't

I don't have any fucking opinion on whether he should run I don't give a shit shit, I don't fucking care. But regardless, the way that they are able to find all this data about you, and this goes back to the AI, the AGI thing, the general artificial intelligence, gay, G-A-I, gay. Gay. Gay.

Gay. Gay. Gay. This is the American practical application of AI, right? Like, it has nothing to do with making. like you said Thomas second ago, making things more efficient. Like, we're not even interested in that anymore. Not even interested in making the labor process more efficient

and making, like, health outcomes more efficient. It is purely, solely, comprehensively for monitoring every single thing you do on a daily basis so that they can make sure you're not saying things like pro-Palestine, that you're not criticizing our dear president. You know, go down the fucking list. That's all our application is of AI at this point. That's all it has to do.

That's why they want a big brain in the sky, a god that they can tap into. It's why Peter Thiel is obsessed with the Antichrist. It has nothing to do with pragmatic uses of this technology. And so when they're sitting around being like, why is China able to do these things? Why can't we do any of this stuff? It's like they can't even see the fucking disconnect. I mean, I think you could see at the very least, put most simplistically perhaps. And generally, that China is like China's productive capacities are geared to,

towards improving, like, the whole's life. You know what I'm saying? Like, each individual's life and society in general. I thought you said the hoes life. The whole's life. The host need their lives approved, too, bro. They need their lives approved, too, bro. We are certainly not about that here.

We're not trying to... We're not about that here. No, no, no. But, like, it's like, you know, I think in the United States, get, as you guys have said, it's more about stripping, you know, hollowing out any sort of humanity or dignity,

you know, from the artist, from the worker, from the individual being surveilled, only to make, like, you know, a couple weird Peter Thiel motherfucker is richer. Well, and I want to... And stave off the inevitable. And I want to dial in on, like, how, like I said, sort of attenuated and concentrated this notion of any... Like, okay, you remember after 2016, people were like, this is what you get for running Hillary, Like, you can't run Republican light.

I remember saying this after 20, fucking 14 when Allison Lunderg and Grimes ran against Mitch McConnell. We've been saying it, we said it when Amy McGrath ran against Mitch McConnell. Like, we say it every time a Democrat runs against a fucking Republican in the general presidential election and loses. But, like, you can't run Republican light and expect it to beat Republican, right? Like, people are going to go for a Republican every time. People are going to go for the lucky charms, not the marshmallow made. bro. Exactly. But like this notion that you would even

from an opportunistic standpoint try to harness a kind of like street and worker energy and grievance to actually like chip away at some right wing grasp on power is like

there was you know those ideas floating around the last 10 years but really in the last year you've seen all institutions hardened against that idea that there's not even any any like any uh entertaining the idea that you could use a kind of like left wing populism if you want to call it that again setting aside what our thoughts are on that i again i'm setting aside i'm setting aside my uh any kind of thoughts on electoralism a fucking revolutionary get guns blow shit up whatever i don't that's all for

other people to to hash out in debate what i'm talking about right here is how american institutions are metabolizing this idea that there could be any other alternative than what we've got right now. Which is the troubling thing. And to underscore that point here, something I saw the other night, and you said something maybe 10 minutes ago was about like the ruling class of the billioners can't, like, at this point, like they can't even see like any alternatives to, like, like, everything that's an affront to this system is like, but not.

I don't even know how to articulate. They just can't conceive. Like, I saw, like, Mark Cuban and somebody else on, like, a clip of them on Bill Marr the other night, and they're, like, bagging on Mom Donnie or something. And they were talking about, like, Mom Donnie making buses free in New York City. Yeah. And Bill Marr says, like, well, could that be done? And, like, Mark Cuban was like, of course not.

Because, like, it's like, oh, and of course it could. Like, we did that a long time. Like, you're just taxpayer dollars paid for bus drivers and buses. Yeah. Like that's just how things It's about that you're a billionaire For most people that seems Probably fucking impossible right

It's more possible for New York City To have public buses But they're so deluded That they can't conceive of a world Where like certain services are not mediated By a private institution You know what I mean? Well their own fucking wealth is

More often than not They're the biggest welfare coins Yeah exactly siphoned off from the fucking public team Can I tie something in, man, because I saw this headline, and I should have read more into it. But it's like this sort of lack of an alternative, which is some sort of expression of futurelessness, right? You know, it's also, as we're talking, the privatization and austerity. I mean, not only during the government shutdown has NASA, you know, had to lay off workers without pay, but Trump apparently is considering eliminating NASA, which even if he doesn't, I don't know how that would work or if he's even able to. to do that, just the idea that that signals money being given to private space companies,

you know? So even that sort of horizon, you know, with so many senators and so many military generals, you know, with their jingoistic kind of mindset or worrying about Chinese supremacy and space, you know, but even just the country, you know, that put a man on the moon, retreating from not even just the world, right, and entrenching its values, it's, you know, these values, but even just from space dog, you know? I thought about that when you were talking about that. I thought about that a minute ago when you were talking about the Chinese sci-fi writers and stuff like that. It's like the fact that like we're just like the idea of the nation that one of its founding things,

one of the things that hangs its hat on, not that it's founding thing, but one of its points of pride is we were first on the moon or whatever, allegedly. is like now just like wants to kill NASA because like what? Because they probably talked to a couple of guys that said yeah if you mine the moon for minerals it'll probably like cause some sort of like black hole

situation. Nothing good can cover. They're like well okay well you know we don't want that or whatever. So like you know but like okay now what utility to space have? You know it doesn't have any money. You know what I mean? but like for SpaceX or for like Richard Branson's outfit

they could do like space tours and that kind of stuff so they stand to like make money out that but from the government perspective it's like oh there's no money to be made here let's just shudder it you know what I mean what it portends is sadder than anything it just means that like we just don't have any vision of a future you know what I mean

unless that technology is go ahead Terry go ahead Terence all I was going to say is like I think that the idea like growing up or like once I started getting into like the left. Like the sort of lore that you heard about the New Deal and about FDR and about the CIO was that like those were all achieved through left like people power, like rank and file demands, people demanding changes. And that is all true. But the unfortunate thing is that

there was an there was an important link there. And that was people like John Lewis and FDR, these kind of like I said, sort of like opportunists who saw that the country needed a sort of reorganization of the social compact. I mean, keep in mind, this era is when you finally get the right to collective bargaining, right? Like, when you finally get things like the clothes shop and other stuff in the labor movement. But, like, fast forward today, like, even today's labor leaders just don't have that dog in them, really.

Like, I guess they've got, like, some vague ideas of what they would like to see from the country. but like they're not really putting forward any kind of interventionist ideas or things that would like be able to intervene and break us out of this deadlock but like just to kind of harp on this you know like I said this this notion that there is sort of no alternative that could be that we could even use as a way out from our current course I wanted to read this article from the editorial board of the New York Times by the way I mean, this is really kind of a really insane piece. I thought this was fascinating because, like I said, I remember after 2016, I remember after 2018, I remember after 2020, people being like, you can't run Republican lights and expect, it's like, it's the Chuck Schumer thing, right? Like for every blue collar, blah, blah, blah, we pick up white collars and suburbs. That's that thing. And I thought that like at this point that the idea that would be, the idea that would be the idea of, the idea. that that was completely misguided

and proven to be wrong would you know be thoroughly internalized by a lot of America's institutions and you can call me naive or whatever but it's at the same all it did was seem to indicate

their general right word shift you know yeah but well that's the point I'm trying to make this is in the New York Times from the editorial board not from like some guest writer or whatever this is from their editorial board America still has a political center It's the key to winning

American politics today American politics today Can seem to be dominated by extremes President Trump is carrying out far-right policies While some of the country's highest-profile Democrats Identify as Democratic Socialists This is by the way, it's a really funny sentence It's like you guys are editorial writer

It's like you know your editors The fact that like you let that sentence go President Trump versus some of the country's highest profile Democrats, the two are not equal. I mean, I mean, again, I know this is a moot point, but you're talking about a guy who has draconian immigration policies where ICE is busting down people's doors versus people who want to give you health care.

Yeah. I don't know. I know it's a moot point to say, but it's just sort of like, as like someone who writes, you have to say it. As someone who writes for the New York Times, I would think that you would be a little bit more eloquent or a little bit more learned than to invoke the horseshoe

theory, right? It's just like sort of like, what are you talking about? That's a great point, Aaron, because at the end of the day, what we're talking about is a political movement on the right that wants to demonize, exploits, and brutalize every, you know, at least

let's say, 150 million people. I mean, what? Even if we just would just look at immigration policy, just look at that alone, something we can see with the old eyes that's been reported on, right? Right. Like they're the ones talking about they want an America of 100 million people, right? So like, okay, then let's say they want to brutalize 250 million people.

Okay, that's the right wing vision. That's the Trump vision. The left wing vision, you know, like the ones they've pointed out here, Bernie, Zoron, whatever, they just, we just want to tax a few thousand people. It's not even brutalized. Zoron's not saying put people in camps. Did you see him on Andrew Schultz, on that podcast, Andrew Schultz's podcast, podcast. He was like he was like Cuomo has spent more money like attacking me than

the amount that I want to tax him at. You know what I mean? Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just it's it makes no sense at this point because these people are so afraid what it pretends long term for their like wealth accumulation. Like we've become so warped in our thinking we're willing to, we think it more

prudent to brood, try to brutalize and subjugate a quarter of a billion people. Okay, about a 16th of the planet rather than tax like nine dickheads. And also using the law to tax these nine dudes. And people

will look at you with a straight goddamn face and think you're crazy if you make that point. Yeah. But again, using the law like legal deeds to tax the tax nine people, not flouting the law by sending fucking jackbooted thugs to drag them out of their fucking homes. You know what I'm saying? Like, no, listen, you all could have just

you could have shut us all up for what you spent on ass fucking goddamn signing bonuses. Jesus. Back to the editorial board of the

nation's preeminent news outlet. Moderation sometimes feels outdated. It is not. Candidates closer to the political

center from both parties continue to fare better in most elections than those further to the left or right. This pattern

may be the strongest one in electoral politics but it is one that many partisans try to obscure, and many voters do not fully grasp. Yet the evidence is vast. Republicans have frittered away winnable racers in Alabama, New Hampshire, and elsewhere over the past decade by nominating extremist candidates, while Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a moderate Republican, is the only sitting senator who represents a state that reliably votes the other way in presidential elections. On the Democratic side, there are no progresses in the mold of AOC or Bernie Sanders who represent a swing district or state.

instead the Democrats who win tough races work hard to signal to voters that they are less progressive than their party. Can I just say something real quick? Yeah, go ahead. I just want to say something real quick. Just real quick. I think what this indicates is not necessarily that centrist candidates, whether they're liberal or Republicans or Democrats do better, I think, and we'll see this probably elucidated in the article,

but it shows the kind of limiting of the political horizon that most Americans have and the choices that are available for them. And I think some goes something, like you said, that there is no alternative, you know, that there are not many people actually showing you that there is not a third way, but that it doesn't have to be, you know, either centrist politics or milk toast liberalism, you know, which I guess is one of the same. Well, in this conversation, a person who gets a point to frequently is our governor in Kentucky, Andy Bashir.

And like, Bashir is not politically meaningfully different than any, like, failed Democrat that tries to run Republican light. the difference is how he runs he doesn't run republican light he he sort of harkens back to like a 90s clinton era democrat who was like here's what i'm going to do and i do it now we can argue about like are those things actually any long-term good like bringing ford factory to kentucky like doing all these different things that he's sort of brokered and made happen under his watch but that does that's meaningfully different than somebody who like alison lundering grime several years ago when she ran against Mitch McConnell was like taking the pictures of her shooting the

rifle and shit. You know what I mean? All that kind of stuff. Trying to like, you know, do these like sort of more I don't want you call them cultural markers that are more associated with conservatives of the Democrats. Like Andy Beshear doesn't do any of that stuff even if his politics don't veer that much from the people doing that stuff. He just

like cans the theatrics and says, well, this is what we're going to do. And that's not me, like there's plenty to be critical about Andy Bashir about. But like when people point to him like well why does it work why did it work for Bashir in Kentucky and not for somebody here and it's like well it's just a it's a difference in like

how they're campaigning and how they're portraying themselves and whatnot yeah it's kind of like a difference between like form and essence in a way it's like I saw this article in Politico that was about Graham Platner that was like Democrats keep falling for fantasies when will they ever learn their lesson and the gist of it was that

Democrats keep falling for these like um i guess the thing about grim platiner is like he's like an oyster farmer or i don't fucking no an oyster shucker a shucker apologies to my mainer friends i don't know anything about that i don't know about that life um he's a seaman he's a seaman and um he you know he was in the military and his tattoos and stuff like and i guess the point of this article is that like when will democrats learn like what they really need are people like um they don't need like the the cool guys like Beto or like the hardcore like you know ex-military tattooed guys like they really need like buttoned up like serious politicians and it's like I mean that they

they weren't the guy for the West Wing well yeah look at fucking Trump I mean you know what I'm saying like obviously like and then furthermore when you're talking about like presidential elections like obviously what they're saying here didn't win because Kamala ran one of the most centrist campaigns in recent memories and so obviously it doesn't work at the presidential level right now so I stab she gave them she gave them everything but the kitchen sink in terms of concessions like yeah um but but I think the thing is is like this kind of goes to show you how dug in they are because like I said generally Genocide denial is rampant among these institutions.

And a part of that is that it's made them all think that, like, the 2024 election was lost for a variety of reasons that had nothing to do with the genocide, right? Like, they'll find anything under the sun to blame other than the fact that they help facilitate a genocide. So, I mean, that's kind of what this has brought them to. But one way to see the pattern is to examine the 17 Democrats, 13 in the House. House 4 in the Senate, who last year won in places that Mr. Trump also won. Moderation dominated their campaign messages. Ruben Gallego of Arizona mocked the term Latin X and was hawkish on immigration. Representative Vicente Gonzalez of Texas and Senator Jackie Rosen of Nevada criticized other Democrats'

tolerance of illegal immigration. Alyssa Slotkin of Michigan and Representative Pat Ryan of New York emphasized public safety and their national security backgrounds. Senator Tammy Baldwin. None of this is moderation. This is all just capitulating to the right. This is all, yeah. Alyssa Slot is a straight-up psycho.

I like that moderation literally means like heartball and culture war shit on the woke shit or embrace law and order more than you already have. And we can't get out of that. It's like it mirrors the tech shit we were just talking about. Like, why are we stuck here, constantly fighting the culture wars, constantly, I got to run, left candidate that appeals aesthetically to the right.

I got to run a right candidate that appeals aesthetically to the left or whatever. Like, you know, well, that happens less often, but, but you know what I mean? Like, like, well, but then again, they, they have appropriated the color of red and called themselves Leninous. So I guess that's true. But yeah, your point is. Sorry, but maybe this is a bullshit thing to say, but I'm sorry, but, and I know people have said it, I don't want to be like a super radical.

But I think, like, at moderation would be like, even questioning whether or not we should defund the police right not give them more money right that seems more high like if anything like accelerationist than reactionary right you know and i guess the other side you say abolish the police completely but the moderation to them it just seems to be leading more right words you know well i think that we've made this point before but like the entire purpose of the democrats at this point is they are defensive right like the they have all but conceded that the country will just continue going to the right, and it's why they market their candidates like you would,

like a defensive lineman or like a safety or something. You know what I mean? Like a touchback or something. It's like, look at their defensive qualities. Nothing about them is offensive. You know what I mean? And I don't mean like offensive, like, edgy. I mean like offensive like in the...

There are many offensive things about them, but yes. I always like when coaches, who was it that said, our offense is offensive. Yeah, they have no concept of moving the ball forward. It's all about, like, trying to keep things at bay. And so every politician he just listed here, you're right, every single one of them had just right-wing talking points. So it's like that's centristism then, I guess.

I mean, I guess it's centristism in the way that, like, if you consider this, like, mathematically, like, okay, we'll drop a little bit of right-wing racism, with the Democrat branding, and in their minds that produces this potion or elixir that's centrist or something? I mean, the centrist is like, I mean, what is it? Like, you know, eating like a full bite or something and not being able to swallow it because it's too big

and it gets caught in your throat. So it's neither going up nor down. So you eventually exfixiate from a non-committed position. Like, I don't understand. Yeah. What is it? It says, left-wing Democrats and right-wing Republicans have spent years trying to tell a different story.

They claim that reaching out to swing voters is overrated and that the better strategy involves turning out the base by running pure ideological campaigns. They are wrong, but their argument does contain an element of truth. As the country has become more polarized and many voters cannot fathom crossing over to the other party, persuasion has become harder. It is not impossible, though, and it remains far more effective than pursuing the fantasy that America has a latent left-wing or right-wing majority waiting to be inspired to turn out. Again, I mean, I feel like we're kind of just retrading arguments that have been made for fucking almost 10 years now and no one's going to listen. So it really doesn't matter, really what we say here. It's just like I would just kind of like to point out, though, that like what he's saying is never been tried, by the way, at the Democratic national level, like actually trying to turn out a left wing base on a set of left wing platforms that has been routinely stomped out.

but like furthermore I watched an interesting because I'm trying to spend less time on Twitter I've been spending more time on the fucking Facebook AI Slop Factory which is much much better just trade addiction for another

actually honestly I've been wondering what's going on over there yeah it's like it's like trying to quit heroin by just drinking every day Terence is smoking a safe of cigarette it's like i've watched some fascinating debates over the last few days like um of like my more conservative friends and family members or whatever talk about like um that ai video of trump dumping shit like gallons of shit on americans protesting in the north no king's protest did you see that

like that was that official white house material yeah he trump made an official white house video it was AI produced of him dumping shit from an F-16 on America in the streets and all the fucking responses I saw from right-wingers were like I will admit this doesn't look great it's a little trolley and I don't like that

but Trump is doing what we need him to do and you look at his fucking like approval numbers he's still got 90% approval within the GOP like they love this shit we're out of your fucking mind if you think that there is some like silent majority of

interest in this country like no just waiting for somebody to harness them no no no just like there's people on the right who love the brutality they love that fucking people are getting rounded up and displaced from their communities and they're assassinating

people in boats in the Caribbean or whatever there's an equal if not more in my opinion more significant number of people on the left who want free health care an arms embargo on Israel the rent to go down groceries to be cheaper all these fucking just you know left wing policies that are broadly popular abortion to be you know legalized etc etc my bad my bad but this person the one thing I think distinction we have to make is that this person is not I mean I don't know if they bring them up in that article but from their description of the denunciation of left wing not policies but left wing left wing ideas right whether it's like using terms of like Latinx right um it seems as if again their definition of the left is not rooted in anything material right or if it is it's like this is fanciful right this is something how like

mark Cuban how are we going to do this it's mostly again cultural worship you know this is this is an interesting point Aaron this is what I want to point out that like what you're starting to see and I think I've really started to notice this since the beginning of this year but really it it started to really develop with last year's general election what you're starting to see is that politics now only comes down to like two issues and it's like immigration law and order on one and like I guess the second one would be fucking I guess like culture war stuff

but even that is like every politician he listed in here as being a centrist like Tammy Baldwin Galgo all these people their whole like their hobby horse their whole fucking thing was just about immigration so it's like when we talk about like left wing and right wing positions there is not even a mention of any of the traditional left wing positions like again free health care fucking rent to go down cheaper groceries abortion access all this stuff that's not even like

considered in the fucking like constellation of of political positions you could possibly have much less unionization or something like exactly exactly all it is it's just like what is your fucking opinion and thoughts on the border and brown people that's that's what how many genders are there and how many genders are there exactly in the same way that honestly that's what israeli politics has i mean they had the fucking pretense of of it being something else for quite a while. But at this point, it is all about, like, settlements in Gaza. It's just about, like, what are your thoughts on the fucking genocide we're carrying out?

Like, that's the entire political spectrum in America now. It's just, like, immigration and law and order. That's it. Identification in whether or not you deserve to be exterminated. Exactly. Exactly. So it's like when you talk about, like, you're being a left-wing thing that works or doesn't work, they don't even talk about the left-wing things anymore. There's no talk of it.

None. um well i mean anyways uh you know we could keep going here um obviously this is a little long but even mr trump highlights the pattern extremancy is in many ways he moved the republican party toward the center on several key issues he won the party's nominate oh wait wait hold a hold hold oh what issues did he move them to the center what it's like on what it i know they're about the 5 billion people from medicaid like yeah i think that's a good move i think yeah definitely you're right uh wait i just want to say is this is this writer uh i mean they're like a liberal they're conservative i don't know if it really even matters but this is the editorial board

right so okay okay this is perfect actually sorry sorry you're right the editorial board this is why this is important because it is in complete normalization again capitulation capitulation not even by democrats but by the media itself right towards like not even that they challenge trump on anything right But I feel like if anything, they were more maybe combative in his first administration. If not combative, I mean, it seemed like, you know, they saw themselves as his enemy, you know what I'm saying? In an antagonistic position. I mean, and they reported on, quote, the facts, whatever, right? But now it's just sort of like, eh, well, you know.

Well, this is also, we're also getting away from the point that this also might just be like a court-ordered, like, statement they have to put out because they had to give him a bunch of money from me. a lot on him or whatever. This is a man trying to raid his own justice department for $230 million. For investigating, for rightly investigating his crimes. I just, I guess I just want to point out, just to drive the point home from a second ago, it seems like the jury is out at this point. the entire thing has been settled about what we'll do about health care and social security and all this rent stabilization the housing crisis all this none of that even factors in like and that's

kind of the amusing part about abundance it's like not only are your ideas dumb and wrong but like you do realize democrats don't care about any of that anymore right the only issue they care about is immigration that's really it and and in you know putting up like a fucking sandbag you know, buttress fortress against any criticism of Israel. They don't have any anything out of that. Like that, any other thing besides that, it's just like, besides

the point. If they were interested in anything else, Akeem Jeffries, especially in this time, would be getting more than 58 fucking views on his, like, little live streams. Yeah. But they don't. They're not, they don't, they're not interested in anything that real people fucking care about. And

that's ultimately the reason for their unpopularity. It's like, that's nothing else. It's not that like people just don't like so-and-so or certain figures or whatever. It's just that they do not have their, what they're offering is not what anybody gives a flying fuck through a rolling donut about.

He says, they say Trump also focused his 2024 campaign on areas in which the Democratic Party had moved left over the previous decade and was out of step with public opinions such as immigration's, transgender issues, and parts of education policy. What the fuck

are you talking about? I just want say transgender dude like there are so many state legislatures you know where republicans have pushed forward like these really punitive like draconian you know anti-trans bills and democrats in those states haven't done shit i'm not saying every state but like we had a fucking we had a national campaign you know where um um trump was saying about kamala's campaign well um you know Kamala's with they them and the only thing that the democrats had to do was just proved that they were harsher right on trans people than Trump was with that one tweet where they showed oh um Trump is actually actually allowed you know transitions in prisons or whatever you know like that you know putting that

side by side showing that that they weren't amenable to trans people either so I don't understand where this comes from where they're split with the American people on trans issues yeah I understand it I'm saying I agree it's like that list sounds like a high school student just trying to pat out their argument with shit that just doesn't even because like I guess you can make the argument on an immigration because the American public is notoriously very waffly on immigration. Before Trump was elected, they were

kind of like pro-immigration. Now it seems like 75% of Americans are like let everybody in. Like we're all welcome here. So it's like we're so fucking schizophrenic on that point. Transgender issues, it seems like there is broadly supportive. People don't want to kill people like transgender people

at large. Right. So it's like but education policy the dude vouchers and charter schools are they are unpopular anywhere you go in fucking conservative ass kentucky they try to put every fucking election there's a ballot initiative on our elections about like charters and vouchers charter schools and vouchers every time it's defeated so what the fucking and they and even even when they try to trick people in voting for it it still gets defeated yeah there's no so that doesn't make any sense um Mr. Trump's victory over Ms. Harris was telling it another way.

The moderation that has worked best in recent years is not a sober 20th century centrism that promises to protect the status quo. It is more combative and populist. It tends to be leftist. Is it really? Is it the sheep and wolf's clothing type of situation where it seems to be populist, but actually it's about like re-entrenching the status quo? What are you talking about?

Angry centrism is a very potent way to run, said Lakshaya Jane. founder of Split Ticket, a political data firm, rather than locating... I just want things to go back to normal, so I'm sorry. Well, you can bet your ass that this is going to be... I mean, the reason they're running this is because it's already... They're getting out ahead of the midterms. It's like they're going to run as many centrists as they can.

You know what I mean? Like, it's... As Representative Marcy Cap-Tor, Democrat of Ohio said in a campaign ad last year, America has gotten off course she cited the far left ignoring millions illegally crossing the border and trying you're right I am ignoring it because I don't give a fuck nobody gives a fuck

nobody cares somebody somebody should ask people like this like okay if that is if that is even true what are the implications of that why does that scare you so much well this is what it comes down to this is why it's so substantive list like this is a distilled version of what they mean

by centrism she she says America's gotten off course because the far left is ignoring millions illegally crossing the border and trying to defund the police and the far right is taking away women's rights and protecting greedy corporations

at every turn I mean okay the two are no no no no that's the entire rights it's like junior high school political science where you put the pros and cons in separate tricy

the left of the right The dumbest people in America are the people that think the problem is at the extremes. Like there's any equivocation between people that are calling for, you know, basic human rights, health care, you know, all the things that we talk about all the time. And then on the right, it's like, oh, we should let the brain in the sky do everything for us and we should kill anybody that, like, is to the left of, you know, what's his name, that's sacks guy. also also just the idea that you don't think issues could be linked together like i mean i know this might even be a reach but just like saying that the right doesn't care about abortion issues or you know does away with them but the left is too focused on illegal immigration like what about all the women and children coming from other pouring into this country who are having their doors fucking kicked

down yeah and kidnapped and babies deport you know what i'm saying like so those people don't deserve any humanity or dignity? One of those things is real and one of them is fucking fantasy. I mean, it is real that people are losing abortion access. It's not real that people are fucking being hunted in the streets by illegal immigrants and that we're

giving health care to illegal immigrants. So it's like, that's why the centrist's position is completely it's like a super position but it's also completely farcical. It's like you're trying to chase after this voter that doesn't exist and it's why ultimately

the Democrats are pretty much doomed. It says here, and again, this is one of those sentences that's like doing a lot of heavy lifting that makes, I can't believe this made it past the fucking editorial board. Many Americans see the Democratic Party is too liberal.

What do you mean by many Americans? How many? What does that mean? That's too vague. Exactly. Like, it's the Democratic Party itself, like I think like 80% of Democrats see the Democratic Party

as not liberal enough, obviously on things like Palestine. so like does it how can you even say that you're chasing after people who are going they're probably calling the Democrats too liberal because they're conservatives I mean

they're using liberal as a pejorative in this circumstance right so it's like the centrism basically just redounds to fucking conservatives it doesn't mean anything many progressives have tried to wish away these warning signs

and insist that they can insist that they can win by quietly retaining all their unpopular positions and emphasizing economic issues, but they cannot point to a single member of Congress or governor from Sweden districts or states who has pursued this strategy in one. Their favorite examples are all from deep blue parts of the country. The failure of the motivate the base approach is hiding and plain sight. I don't know. Then they, like, you know, cite Joe Manchin.

I don't know. There's not a whole lot here. Go ahead. Again, like I said, I just feel like this is a winnowing of political horizon because if you think that the Democrats can only, you know, run slightly to the right, I guess, you know, or be centrist so-called, but I mean, run to the right, you know, or run alongside with the Republicans, if that's the only way that you think that they can practice politics and that's all the Democrats do, then why would you believe that, like, even if it wasn't a blue state or a blue

district, that there could be a candidate that would do something different, you know what I mean? Yeah. Well, I mean, it also goes to just, like, show you that, like, the thing about Kamala's 2024 run that was that there was no one in the primary to the left of her making any kind of left wing demands that they would have to like cater to because there was no primary and so like they basically

want that enthrined at like every level because I don't know to them it's like I said a second ago like no one sees and no one really cares about like these people talk a big game about wanting to save democracy and save the nation and all this

everyone's kind of resigned them to the fact that we've like crossed the event horizon we're all being like stretched and sucked out into the fucking black hole of our impending oblivion and so like they they have kind of resigned themselves to anything that might offer them a way out um because like in actually they want the end actually the death drive is so strong that they want the end to come they crave yes exactly they crave it exactly to bring it full circle is it any really wonder is there any real wonder that like there's thousands of of people out there just like gooning themselves into a state of ignorant bliss about the world into a state of Nevada whatever helps you man I say

but uh a little strange yeah do you think we'll have our first goon and president out of this with this gooter cabinet I just think of that like scene in Batman

I think it's the Christopher Nolan Batman with Heath Ledger in it, whichever one that one, that one was, where Morgan Freeman had that big wall of, like, fucking videos. You know what I'm saying? Like, hundreds and thousands of videos of people, like, his surveillance, whatever. Like, that's what the goon cave would look like if you were president. You know what I'm saying?

Nah, you know what it would look like, too. It would be like, see, you've got to be your own Batman analogies now. I'm just thinking of the second one, the Dark Night Rises, where he crawls out of the pit. You know what I'm saying? While everyone is chanting? That's all the gooters chanting for the gooter president to rise up out of the pit and reclaim his rightful position. Maybe that's what Trump's tearing down the east wing of the White House.

He's going to build a goon cave. He's building a big. It's good. It's going to have been a Lazarus pit. Lazarus pit of gooters. Oh, my God. The national goon championships. The National Gooners Association?

Yeah. Wait, that's just abbreviated to digger. you can never pronounce it phonetically the NGA what National Gludes association they would do some shit like that don't you dare use that acronym

I didn't say it I didn't say it I didn't say it I didn't say it some people are pronouncing it this way I don't say it There's two in words you can't say. One's nuclear, the others, well, you know.

Oh, my God. Oh, shit, dude. All right, well, we settled the issue why there's so many gooners. So we did, man. It's the process of a byproduct of alienation and, you know, I don't know, some other shit. And hopelessness and shit, some other shit. And some other. shit. Anyway.

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It got showed up. It got pulled halfway through the door. So Tom and a brain trust of other people were the brains behind the Halloween special. So looking forward to it as always. Yeah. um all right well thanks for listening and we encourage you to go uh sign up for patron link is in the show notes um so uh we'll see you next time hope you have a good weekend until next time have a good weekend folks peace out