Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 429: The Price is Blight

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

Tarence and Tom discuss the ongoing situation in Minneapolis, whether or not poor kids benefit from their proximity to their well-to-do friends, Giancarlo Esposito's call for revolution, and naturally what would The Price is Right have looked like in feudal times. Subscribe to our patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/trillbillyworkersparty

I was at the eye doctor the other day getting my retina examined. And on the TV there, they were playing old episodes of Price is Right. And it's kind of funny. What's that? Bob Barker era, not true carrie era. Definitely from like the 80s. It was like 80s era prices, right? And it's funny because, I don't know, like Boomer,

nostalgia is kind of like a very strange thing because like I was watching it and like half of the devices and shit that they were giving away like aren't even things that exist anymore. They don't even have that anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like film cameras, for example, right? Like Polaroid cameras, you know what I mean? Like stuff that's just like old lost artifacts. Kind of obsolete now.

I guess the only thing that's still relevant is a new car. I don't really understand the utility though of watching an old Price is right like could you it would be funny if you went to the eye doctor and they were playing Price's right episodes from like the 15th century they were like they were come on down to your your price is a new oxen pow Make your life of toil and misery Little less toil and misery That would be funny

What are like other elixirs I guess This new set of elixirs From Colloidal silver Which people still drink But Uh huh You're right

Moulton gold Molden Yeah Now you can And now you can live like your overlords by drinking molten gold. Uh-huh. The stone of madness. You know, they had like...

That's why they trippanned people, by the way. Because they thought that, like, madness was caused by a stone in your brain. And there's that hieronymus Bosch painting called, like, removing the stone of madness or whatever. And that's... They, like... Turns out it's a plastic fork. It changes over time. It was lead.

It was like a lead ball 50 years ago. Now it's a plastic cord. Dude, that's true. Every generation gets driven mad about the concept of something being lodged in their head. And it's not even a concept. It's actual. Yeah. It is.

Now we're innovating, though. Now we're worried about something lodged in our balls, which is also plastic. Are we worried about that? I mean, I don't really sleep over it, but it's not a great development. I guess I'm not really worried about it because I'm... You've already carried out your biological function. Well, yeah, I've clearly proven that I'm not infertile. You made a plastic baby.

Sterile, yeah. I don't have a plastic baby. So that's good news. What are other 15th century... implements that you could I would maybe you'd think probably in that era they'd be doing some torture device stuff

like instead of Plinko or like you know the big the big you know will that they spin it'd be like you'd be strapped to the big wheel you know what I mean

like stretch down strapped to the big wheel they'd spin you and like disband you you're broken on the wheel and like a gnarled hunch respect gentleman with like one working eye, like breaks your arms with like a Florida club. Yeah. It's like you get a one-way ticket trip to Mount Vesuvius.

Something like that. Exactly right. You know, I think I know the function of boomer nostalgia, though. I think it's, do you think there's a generation that's more plagued with nostalgia than them? I mean, it's shaping all of our policy right now, right? Like, we've talked about, like, 70 million population in America, like cutting the population of America by two-thirds is something like, as a policy aim.

And that's, what, because they watch too much fucking mash? Oh, hey now. Hey, now, mash, if you watch too much mash, you'd come away with the opposite conclusion. Yeah, well, no, no, mash is a bad example, because that's also a little bit later. Like, 50s, nostalgia's probably what. I love Lucy area kind of show

Well this is the thing I think the 70 million people are more mostly alt-right millennial and Gen Z kids right They don't think the boomers Are like that Mature They're not making it in that number long term anyway

Like I see that boomers is like an overripe Population Like they have gotten Everything out of the system that they want And then they could ever have have and they're just like hoarding wealth and over nurtured they're over nurtured it's over they fatten themselves like yeah for like hogs but like i think that the all right gen z millennial fascist movement are at a point of maturity i don't mean that literally like at an emotional

mental level like they're obviously stuck like did you see that video that did you see that video that guy melting down on a line of like literal children there was a line of children standing outside of a store waiting for Pokemon cards to drop and this guy like it was like in somewhere in California maybe close to San Diego or something like this guy like got out of his car and started like harassing them and screaming like racist stuff at a bunch of them and and and one of them was like you're a fucking loser your life is meaningless you have nothing worth living for and literally just watching him deflate, it was such a...

It's like Homer sinking into the bushes, wasn't it? That'd be funny if somebody went on a tirade like that and somebody responded like that and they'd be like, you know you're right and that's why I'm this way. Uh-huh. I'm just instant recognition of it. That's like, yeah, there's like a Stephen Miller quote

where he says that. He's like, I have nothing left, I have nothing to live for, I have no family and no home. What was it? Who was it? I think a Viener. you sent us in the group chat it was uh or maybe it was aaron about miller being a star trek

guy oh yeah he is he's a star trek guy yeah wonder what wonder what was it about star trek to let him down this path he just hated that george to kai a gay japanese man was overrepresented uh-huh the price is right from the year 2235 would be tight like you get on the holiday Yeah. You get Like my favorite shit from Star Wars Or Star Trek when I was a kid was Obviously those little stun gun laser things that they had were pretty tight

But I liked Georgie Loforge's eye visor Oh yeah, yeah, yeah I was tight dude, I want one of them That was my favorite shit too Yeah, that and I was trying Yeah, yeah I'm, you know I wonder

Like you see this with like You know we kind of skipped over us last week, but you see the thing about Trump calling the weapon they used in the Maduro raid, the discombobulator. I did, yeah. Do you think, what did you make of that? Well, first of all... They get some Havana

gun fake shit, or... Didn't they say that they discovered that during the Biden era? Like, didn't the Biden era didn't the Biden administration pursue the discombobulator research or something? Did I get that mixed up with something else? Sounds like they might have used the president as a test subject.

right before that crucial debate he's like I volunteer's tribute Jack I can't be I can't be discombobulated turns out he could be discombobulated that's what that's what that's what it was Biden walked in on those trials and he got fucked up

and it was a precipitous decline It's like the guy on watchman who wanders into the fucking atomic, you know, room or whatever and like gets his every tissue of his body like stripped away from him and then reassembled and he's like Superman or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. With Biden, it was the opposite. Our buddy that said he was on that project with a bunch of physicists and that one guy from Russia got hit with the gamma ray or whatever.

Yeah. Got Dr. Manhattan. He'd just like put a clean hole through his brain or something like that. Dr. Manhattan, that he didn't die. That was his name. I guess Biden would be like Dr. Scranton instead of Dr. Manhattan. Dr. Scranton.

He was like, nah, I'm not going to say that. That's a little callous. What? Say it, dude. I was just going to say he's trying to treat his cancer or whatever and nothing it works

I forgot about that we've not got an update on that is he still alive what is like is Biden is such a non-entity he's just like a he's just such a nothing guy you just kind of forget that he exists yeah that's probably why he was a perfect

agent of evil you know but well that's all I got to say about the discombobulator I just think it's I didn't know if it was a real thing or if that was like one of those like or if the Havana gun was like the beta version of the discombobulator and like

everybody actually that was hollering about it being a Cuban thing was you know it was actually an American thing nothing's real I mean did you see that video going around of Alex Prattie like spitting on CPB agents and and busting out tell lights it was just like a deep fake

it was a fucking AI made You have never It goes back to what we're talking about With Eddington The reality you want to see Is now fully available to you You can fully construct your own Fantasy your own reality

And you can make it true on the terms that you set And so like the stakes For planetary survival, humanity You know Health, wellness, happiness You know existence in general have never been higher, but your means for accessing an alternative version of that

have never been easier. And so, like, you can, it's just, people will see that video and fully believe it's real. And they'll have no, not that it really changed their minds. Even if you tell them, though, it's fake, it won't change their minds. Because they're already so pot committed to it being real. And also, their bar for what is a,

a capitally punishable offense is extremely low. What? He spit on a guy and busted a headlight out. I know that's not real, but like even if that were real, he didn't deserve 10 fucking shots for that. Jesus Christ. Well, it's the thing.

It's like... It's the no angel Michael Brown thing. Oh, he stole cigarrillos. That's why he deserved to get like shot in the back four times by that cock sucker, yeah. Well, this is the thing. It's like there's nothing about the guy that is even remotely...

dishonorable questionable you know he was an upstanding person yeah they worked in since the yeah like someone pointed this out but he is like quite literally the archetype of a martyr in the Christian church like devoted his life to service to others like yeah not just in the moment that got him killed but but in his everyday life in his career right like he was quite literally a martyr but this is the thing like you the right wingers have no, they have really nothing to attack him on there. So it's just creating completely false,

you know, realities out of his life in an attempt to essentially, like, justify, I guess, like, you're right, like, why he deserved to be executed. In a way, it's like something I've thought about in the last couple weeks. It's like how that, like, your legacy, whatever that means now.

Like our very definition of legacy. Like I don't mean legacy is in the sense of like some self-important. Like what am I, what work of art or what thing I'm leaving behind or whatever. I mean like legacy in terms of like just where you decent, where you for the right things, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like they're even like taking that from us. You know what I mean? because like if you are like if you yeah it's like just kind of out of your hands now because like you know if somebody didn't like you they can just like make up a i pretense of why you were a shipbag or

whatever or they can just say something on the internet or whatever and because everything is that the truth is so fluid in most people's minds now it's just uh yeah it just i don't know i don't know what the end result that's going to be. Is that going to create like an apathy in people or like, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Like what that really portends for the future. But, yeah, it's interesting because it's just like it does. Like they could just say anything about you that they won't if, you know, people in power or whatever.

Yeah. It doesn't really matter. Like there is, people say we're post-truth. I mean, we've obviously nodded to it with the e-crisis, but it's just like there is, what I took in, and I said this before, but like, the message that I took from Eddington was that if you want to, if you want to live in an alternative political world, if you want to live in a world that doesn't ever challenge the way you think about anything or any of the things that you encounter,

um, like make you uncomfortable or anything like that. Like you have, you now have the, you know, tool at your disposal to make that happen. And I don't know, sometimes like acts of insane violence

can like rip you out of that, but like, or, or it can like, you know, drive you further back into it. I don't know. Yeah. It's a very banal point, I guess. But the, I guess the point is, is that like,

if we talk about like political action and like how to change the world, it's not a good thing that you are able to essentially simulate the world at a micro scale in such a way that would allow you to, I don't know, essentially like wash your hands of it or like walk away from it. Or conversely, you know, create a version of it where you are the way. winner and then I don't know I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about dude this is not not very uh outstanding analysis by any means it seems like I had a better point about this the previous episode I'm just thinking about like the price the price is blight the price of blight

the price of blight that's 14 that's 14th century like it's like it's like you get like come on down, you get like one of those medical masks that they would wear it looked like a massive like bird head, you know what I mean? What do you call that? Plague Dr. Mask or something?

Plague Dr. Mass. The price of blight. The price of blight. If you didn't yield enough to people, if you didn't pay enough peonage to somebody, then you have to run the gauntlet of all these medieval torture devices in a Price's Rat style game show for your life.

Dude, the price of blight would definitely have a, like one of the prizes you could win would be literally like a chunk of black and bread. You know what I'm saying? Like a bowl of soup? Yeah. Just here's your gruel for the month. Oh my God. Yeah.

Man. Tie dude. A lot going on this week. The, um... You know, something that has been really fascinating to me is, yeah, a lot going on this week. Before we get into it fully, something I just wanted to, like, sort of separate out and mention just for a second. The Erica Kirk Make Heaven Crowded tour. That's a real thing.

That's the name of it, right? Make Heaven Crowded? What? Yeah, it's like, I guess they're going to. you know, open up on the crowd with a 50-cowl. That'd be so tight, dude. Yeah. Yeah, it's like you could take that one of two ways.

Either like getting soul saved or we're going to kill a lot of people on this door. Yeah, that's the other part about it. You know how you have to get there, right? Yeah, it is real. It's not, I guess you made me double, you made me like think twice for a second. I was like, oh, shit, man. Maybe it's not real. Maybe it was...

Oh, they're going to Roswell, New Mexico. For the... Of course they are. Of fucking course they are. I saw that band skillet in a Kalishi pit outside of Roswell, New Mexico, when I was like 13. What was that one?

It was a weird... It was very weird. What did they have to they... Is it just like a if you know you know show or like did you have to buy a ticket to go hang out? Oh no, it was like a, I don't know. I don't know why they had it in a collegiate pit. It was like a whole big deal. Like they had a concert stage and a PA and everything.

It was like a big deal. Did they just like give you a map to get together? Here's where it's at. That was before Pins were being out. We went with their youth group. So I don't know. I don't know how they found it. I don't know how they knew about the kids.

Kalichi pit coordinates. Seems like it be a hard thing to organize back then. I mean, you know,

there's a lot of Kalichi pits out there, man. You just, uh, just go to one. You're bound to hit one of them

with a contemporary Christian metal band. You'll find some, you'll find something. In any collegiate you go to, you'll find something interesting.

There's something, yeah, they're doing prices, blot, reruns and one. Exactly. Ah,

you just hear this tortured sounds of your futile subjects. Yeah, Make Heaven Crowded Tour. So what,

okay, so like, what's the tour, though? Well, here's what I don't understand about like some entertainment

products these days. What are they off? What is, Erica Kirk just gets up there and talks? The Make Heaven Crowded Tour is a gospel-centered gathering calling people to repentance,

faith, and bold obedience to Jesus. Join us for our... That's weird, dude. That's weird, dude. That's, weird. Dude, even when we were growing up in that culture, there wasn't language of like submission and dominance.

Well, yeah. The Father in the Sky. You know what I mean? It was like, yeah, maybe people getting saved. It was like, for sure. It was more like, it was more focused on the fellowship aspect as opposed to the be dominated by God aspect. Yeah, it's very weird language.

The way they're, like, it tells, it's like a weird tale these people have. it has changed a lot you're right since we were teenagers what did they what's she's what's she do like what's the value add here like why would I want to buy a ticket to the fill heaven up to her

whatever feel it to the brim feel it to the brim I think it's just you get to touch the hymn of her garments you get to be close to someone who was close to a martyr you touch the hem of her garment

and then you immediately get a get hitting the throat by 30 ox six. And then you instantly go to heaven. Yeah, that's the, in my understanding of it, that's the value ad. Is Charlie Kirk the first AI martyr? Well, this is how bad... Like, it makes sense that an absolute reprobate would be, like, the first one that they, like, sort of run the beta program to see, like, if you can upload consciousness.

or whatever, you know. It is funny. It is really bad that we live in an era where, like, the actual good people who would be martyrs, like René Good, Alex Prattie, Keith Porter, etc., would be the... Like, they're not actually the martyrs.

Like, people like Charlie Kerger are the martyrs, right? Like, we live in a very satanic era. Obviously, this is a very trite point, but... I don't think, yeah, listen, that's not a trap point. I actually don't think we can say it enough. Did you hear the video of Erica Kirk like five days after Charlie was shot? She's like grinning and very boisterously. Like she's very exuberantly talking about all the merch they've sold.

She's very happy. There is so crazy. It's like spawned the meme of like when your husband dies, it's like nothing. It's like Erica Kirk and it's like the Dallas Cowboys cheerleading. yeah dude anyway heaven's getting full under erika kirk's watch that's what they say well you know we've well i guess we'll see erika there when like the world ends because it seems to me like the world is ending like let me ask you a question i stepped in some hot water on twitter this not this week um because someone had said that

like we need to plan for an economic general strike. Like, it's the one thing that they feared the most, like is economic collapse. And I just said, you know, I don't know, like they're tweeting out pro-suicide videos. Like, I'm kind of starting to get the vibe that maybe they don't care as much about economic collapse as they used to. Like, some of them do. I think Bezos and maybe Mark Zuckerberg or whatever would like to see the, you know, the hits keep on rolling. the train keep on rolling but like I'm

but at the same time I think there might be another wing of capital that would perhaps I don't know crave some sort of mass conflagration that would end in the death of at least 90% of the world's population well dude here's the thing is it's like there is this is the insidious nature of capital it's like there's money to be made in cataclysm too It's true.

And so if you've got the resources to sort of insulate yourself from it in a way that say we are not, or, you know, people living on the street or just normal people, whatever, are not, then you can see. Like, I'll give you an example. I've mentioned, I think I'd mentioned to you the other day about this idea that the founder of Este Lodder, or the CEO is the one that put it in Trump's head about the Greenland stuff. and his rationale was that as the polar ice caps melt there, it'll be less overhead to get their rare earth minerals out.

So it's like we should buy now so like as the planet warms, we can just get them out of there. And I used to think that they were just kind of indifferent or like kind of in denial. Like I think climate denialist is kind of a misnomer. I think that like really what it is is they see opportunity. in the warming, in the warming earth. Very few people actually deny that it's happening anymore. There's like two camps.

There's like people who are like, yes, I mean, it's obviously happening. It's been happening. And there's the other camp which is like, yes, it's obviously happening. And that's good. And that's a good thing because we can get those rare earthmen. And I just, it's a weird calculus to make because I don't know. I think they think, I'll tell you this. I'll tell you this.

The other day I was in the airport. and this is before the snowstorm that we're still living through and if you've if you got hip we're thinking about you out there but I was sitting over there and this is you know the week before it happens and I'm getting ready to fly back to Cincinnati and then there's like a little you know the the gate over beside him he's going to Greensboro North Carolina and this guy this kid says to his mom they're sitting there he goes they're saying Greensboro could get 20 inches of snow and three to six inches of ice.

And as mom says something interesting, she goes, they're not going to let that happen. That would be like, end of the world stuff. And I was thinking like that is like, it told me a lot about the American mindset. Like, we have been so adjusted to the idea that like there is this like hidden force that just keeps everything perfectly regulated specifically for us. It doesn't let it get like, you know, get let things get too wide. That's so tight. That is amazing.

They won't let that happen. They won't let that happen. And I could see the sun just been like, I don't know, it says right here on the weather app that it's like a whatever good chance. To be fair, that was literally my, that was literally my attitude towards the 2016 election. I was like, they won't let Donald Trump win. You know what I mean? I was like, I don't know who I meant by they.

Like I guess the captains of industry, of the stock market, I don't know, I just like, there's no way they would let him win, but... Listen, if we could get to the bottom of who they is, we would really correct the code. There's no consensus on it, you know? I think there's a good... Western leaders, central bankers,

the IMF, you know, international monetary fund. I think we know the players. I'm just... What I'm saying is I... The mechanisms through which things, they meet, you know what I mean? Like is it, and who is it?

Who knows the most, you know, of that group? Is there tears? That's a good question. You know? Where does the buck stop? You know, who's like the guy? That's a good. Or is there not a guy?

I mean, I know that. Yeah. We've just paying to the guy from the Price is Blight. And it's the guy with the fucked up eye and the mask. He's like, I'm the guy. I don't think it's Igor. The, uh, and I've always been. Ben.

I don't think there is a guy. These are like epiphenomenal, emergent structures, right? It's like there's no, I mean, I'm reading a book that we are reading in our book club. You were and maybe are in it, but I don't think that you are going to be reading. This one, it didn't seem like you were that interested in it.

And to be fair, I don't have my, I didn't have my notifications on. I came back to it and saw y'all were well into the clubs. Dude, it's fine. It's a very dense book, so it's not like, it's by Aaron Major, it's called Architects of Austerity. Architects of Austerity. But it's, um...

So it's asking the question of who is, who are the days? I mean, it's, as far as I understand it, I'm only like 35 pages into it. but as far as I understand it, the argument is something along these lines. When the Brettonwood system began to break up in the 60s and 70s, which was a process of actual human choice, what led to the breakup of that system was governments allowing, they were basically deregulated capital controls.

They allowed more foreign capital back into their countries. And, you know, prior to this, this was during the Keynesian era. Like, the Keynesian era was established because the gold standard was kind of like what essentially, like, quote, unquote, regulated international markets. You're talking about John Maynard King? Yes. His namesake economics. Yes, the... His eponymous economics.

The singer of Toll. That's right. Yeah, that's right. During the gold standard, they had to create this like sort of disembodied, abstracted, god in the sky called the gold standard or, you know, the rules of the game is kind of like how they referred to it. Like the gold standard kept everybody in check. It kept all like ledgers balanced. It meant that like long term like bond sales could be good, solid investments. and it was a good way of curbing democratic demands from social democratic parties,

Marxist, communist, socialist, whatnot. The problem was that it was inherently deflationary. And so what wound up happening was like, yeah, you wouldn't have social welfare policies at home because you could just defer to, quote unquote, the gold standard, the guy, or whatever. but at the same time, like you weren't going to be able to grow your economy along certain parameters. And so, and also this created, in some ways,

this fueled a lot of the nationalism that wound up feeding into World War I. And so during... Nationalism that guys like Ron Paul felt like that we needed to harken back to... And our Ron Paul and all our friends at the John Birch Society. There is a reason that... right wingers love the gold standard and it is this it is pretty much this it allows you to

implement a form of austerity that keeps the banks in line quote unquote because they have to defer to some disembodied other but also allows you to run insane austerity policies at home revanchist racist white supremacist projects at home gives you a kind of autonomy um but like when they tried to establish the international banking system after world war two they tried to thread a needle and they tried to basically practice this thing called embedded liberalism where they would imbue international you know bodies of law and institutions with the ability to regulate transnational finance while also emboldening nations to embark on social welfare spending and stuff. And so, like, he takes the three examples of England, the United States and Italy.

Like, they all did this after World War II. They kind of embarked on this, like, sort of centrist, right of center, social welfare state. Fordism, you know, I call it, you know, a kind of, yeah, like, I don't know, like a social democracy of a kind. And then in the 1960s and 70s, they slowly started to peel it back. Because of a number of reasons, one of which was that this system was also kind of inherently unstable. It led to speculative attacks on currencies and like currency wars. And so that was the reason Nixon took us off the gold standard. in the early 70s because

our currency kept destabilizing because people would like speculate against it in these kind of currency wars. He thought to do that in between calling Indian women sexless. He, look, the man had a

wide aperture of how he viewed social action and policy. The goddamn queer Obviously, I'm only 30 pages into this book, so I don't really know the full details of this, but suffice it to say that, like,

this demand for a global international system after World War II, another kind of disembodied other, basically a gold standard without the gold, and you could say, is, well, I guess that would be more neoliberalism. liberalism would basically be a gold standard without the gold, which makes it ironic that like Ron Paul would be so into it,

into the previous version of it. But, and honestly, if you look at neoliberalism as a gold standard without the gold, it makes sense why so many neoliberals have allowed the libertarians and, you know, race realists and white supremacists into their coalition. Race hustlers and so forth. Anyways. Race hustlers, thanks with that.

hustlers and things of that nature. Anyways, you could say that, like, so, like, this demand after World War II for it to be, like, an international framework, an international system that, like, essentially helped states maintain balances on their ledger books, while also threading the needle of embarking

on social democracy at home, set up the parameters for what would be neoliberalism, because it emboldened central bankers to start working, together. And that had never happened before, I guess. Like, there had been a lot of competition before that. But, like, in this era, like, you get central bankers starting to work together, and they start sharing ideas. And once they start sharing ideas, they then start to, like, land on these policy prescriptions that in the 70s begin to look like the early stages of neoliberalism.

So, like, when we say that Thatcher and Reagan did neoliberalism, I guess you could say it literally in the, they executed it, but they're not the ones that came up with that. It was, drafted up. There's a bunch of central bankers sitting around naming guys to each other one day and then saying, you know what?

We got more in common than we have and, you know, different about one another. Why don't we rig this game and get these peons out of it? Exactly. Isn't it kind of weird

how all this stuff happens, though, at like these stratospheric heights? Like, you know what I mean? Like, how would you even... A lot of this has to do with monetary policy and, like,

geopolitics. Like, how do you even make that relevant to like Joe the plumber, not the literal, not the literal Joe the plumber. My question is how you get word around fast enough at a time before like the internet. Uh-huh. Like how did you hear, how do you get that to, do you just send a wire to Istanbul and be like, here's what the new order is now? Or does it like have a, they had conferences, you know, or is it like a game of

telephone, you know, where by the time it gets to Istanbul it's a different thing, but it's, you know, they build on that and what they have by the time it gets there. It was like the, it was the party line. They had the neoliberal party line. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Dollar 99 a minute. No, we've had conferences going back millennia.

People had been going to conferences, shit showing the night before, showing up really hungover, cheating on their spouses. Sharing some half-baked ideas. People have been doing that forever. That, you know. Yeah.

That was essentially how they did it. They shared ideas. ideas or conferences I guess well I wish I'd known that last week in the airport I'd have shared that with the young man in question I've been like the day she's talking about it's actually a loose assemblage of central banker during the Fordist era that's why she thinks that this thing's not going to happen because she's been lulled into a sense of complacency and it's neoliberal error then here we are son on the precipice of collapse and she's still not adjusted for it's not her fault you see

You see all these, you see all these nameless automatones in this airport. They all think the same thing. I forgot that we were trying to red pill a 12-year-old at the airport with his mother, who probably believes in like cloud seating and, or what, cloud seating does exist. But, you know, it's like the Candace Owen's tweet this week where she was like, has anyone noticed the ice is different this year? It's almost like dry ice. It's not the same.

It's not the same kind of ice. Dude, like, you think people's perceptions of reality have been so warped that like when a normal but not really regularly occurring thing happens, people just think it's novel. Like, there's something different about this. And really, when you get down to anything, there's nothing different about anything. It's just a slightly different iteration of something that came before. 100%. Yeah. Uh-huh.

That is true, dog. You know, for example. AI deep. We got AI deepfakes now, but in yesterday year, we have the Groucho Marx mustache and cigar combo. That fooled a lot of people. That got a lot of people, especially in the time that these people wanting us to harken back to. That is true, dude. That fooled a lot of people.

Yeah. Uh-huh. Well, that raises an interesting point. The thing is, is that's true, but, like, nothing can really be the exact same as it was before. Like everything is a kind of crude copy And it kind of like makes it really strange right now Like I was like the other day I was like

I need some fiction I need to read a fiction book You're reading Bologna I was like Tom's reading some fiction I need to get back into some fiction I don't know why the fuck I chose this book to read Because I guess I've got like I don't know man It's just like I have an inability of just like like picking, like, pure escapism.

Everything I pick plunges me right back into it. But I chose this book called The Oppermens by Leon Fugtwanger, who is a German. He was... I never would have guessed that. Thanks for the clarification. It was written in 1933. It was, he was Jewish.

And it was... It's basically a story. I got like 70 pages into it. And I was like, I got to put this. down, dude. This is a little too real. It's a little too real. It's basically like how, you know, this is a

very good job of like, it follows this family named the operamins who were a Jewish furniture making family in, like, Berlin. And it just kind of like follows their daily lives as they like slowly start to see

the encouragement of, you know, Nazism in their lives. And how like everyone at the time was like this will just go on for a year or two and then we'll get it out of our system and then uh well the midterms are out around the corner yeah no seriously literally like i was reading that kind of stuff i was like oh man like they were saying the exact oh damn the exact shit yeah but i don't know i mean it is true that like we can't literally repeat the past so it's like i don't like one thing that I think is a major difference is that like

I do kind of still think that there is mass opposition to ice and let's just call it to Naziism to white supremacy like I use the statistic for example on the Patreon with Kate Wagner this weekend that like after Kent State 58% of Americans supported killing those kids at Kin State like is that true that you just told me that I was like Yeah. What the fuck was, what justification that they were blue hairs?

Pretty much, yeah, they were college students. One, dude, I saw this one tweet going around of an excerpt from a book where one person said, like, if it was my students, if it was my kids doing that at the university and the National Guard reacted like that, then good on them. They deserved it. It's like, this country has always kind of been a little fucking unhinged. they they people love the idea of like our arm like we love the armed forces because I think you know I was talking about the woman in the airport and the they I think the they in their mind is the armed forces kind of yeah because like they've always sort of you know kept us from being you know in our minds that's the reason that we're not newped or whatever it's like it's funny because

when you think about that it's like it betrays like our suspicion that we deserve something like You know what I mean? Like, we know we cause great evil in the world, and we probably deserve the full force of retaliation. And fortunately, we know that at a psychoanalytic, like at an unconscious level, right? Like, we repress it every day, but yeah, we know it. Yeah. And like when people are like, oh, we would never turn the armed forces would never turn on American citizens. And I was like, brother, I don't know about that.

Yeah, I think it's an open question. I don't think it's a settled question for sure. Yeah, I don't know, man There's things like Blair Mountain people reference all the time in like Appalach and stuff That's like, you know, that was like a thing That like a lot of people thought was like Apocryphal or whatever

And I don't even I don't know what the story is on that But there's plenty of examples of, you know You know, the U.S. military You know, turning on some citizen Um Yeah, I don't know I mean, I guess, you know, that actually might be a good way to talk about,

like the fallout for Minneapolis. I had it on my list of things to talk about. Greg Bowvine has been released from his duty as, like, central commander of, you know, border patrol operations. I don't even know what the fuck his job was. That gave him a fucking cobra from G.I.J.OS, like, title, you know? Yeah. Cobra Command

Bovines out No one else is though Christy Nomen's still At her job Stephen Miller there was a lot of Articles going around Like Stephen Miller is increasingly isolated Like the walls are closing in

On Christian Noman Stephen Miller's like no they're not Dude In a bunker together They're fucking each other Stephen Miller's wife Doesn't even care Because she's fucking the dude from Fox News Yeah

Hold on a second. I got to let my cat out. Okay. I want to piss real quick while you do that. Before we get back to the Christy Knoem, Stephen Miller discussion, and you think it's funny how the rapper applies the guy most famous for being, If I rubbed on your pussy, would you like that? It's like now like a liberal commentator.

I didn't know that. Yeah, he's like, he's, you know, in his own style, you know, he's just so posted a public's receipt and said man four hundred dollars don't get you what it used to and that's true especially at publics but that is that is true dude everybody everybody talking about like Stephen miller's getting getting ready to get bumped out he's increasingly isolated yeah it put the ice stuff in minnesota's got such bad press that trump's going to oust him or whatever it felt like wish casting and wouldn't you know it's exactly what it was there's no there was no chance of him losing his job uh trump loves stephen miller like they want

ethnic clinton right like it's no i don't know i don't know about you but like watching the responses to this have been interesting so since we last recorded that was on monday um trump decided to i guess make it cut a deal with waltz i i the details of it aren't entirely clear, but it seems like Trump basically agreed to take some ice agents out of Minnesota and take bovine out and send in Tom Homan instead. Which is like, what's the value add there for the people of Minneapolis there, governor? Like Tom Homan, there's a picture of Obama putting a medal on his neck so he's better or something? Yeah, yeah.

The guy that's been out here, like saying the most Bible. shit for the last two years. Yeah. You know, I read an interview with Tim Walts in the Atlantic where he talked about that. And it was a little more nuanced than the headlines made it seem. Like he was very skeptical that Tom Holman wasn't going to be able to really, quote, unquote, turn down the temperature. That's the phrase everybody's been using lately.

Everybody wants to turn down the temperature. Dude, I've seen so many people, like, lives on the internet praising. Trump and Walsford turning down the temperature. Well, that's all they want. Here's the thing about America. America never wants solutions. We just want the temperature turned down. That's true.

I think it goes back to what Benjamin Franklin said about the founding of the new republic about he kind of said our, or what's he says, like our mediocrity or moderate mediocrity or something like that. Like he envisioned that, or, you know, to hear, you know, people that are founder-pilled say it, that he imagined is like, sort of a, where every man is just kind of middle class. And so I think that, like, that has lingered in American society. It's why, like, the middle class is worshipped, even though they're the biggest rubs on the planet. And they're just basically feeding their money to the upper classes.

And then, you know, we're just trickle down to where, we're just trickle down to where, We're just like, yeah, good enough is good in our buck. Well, that's kind of what, that's interesting that you say that, because it's kind of the vibe I've got in the last few days, basically since Trump capitulated somewhat. It was a slight capitulation. It wasn't like they agreed to fully get out of Minnesota. It wasn't like heads rolled.

Like he didn't fire anybody or even reprimand anybody. he other than i guess bovino bovine was the only one that had faced any consequences and i'm sure he'll now have a cushy desk job which maybe for him that is a huge punishment because this guy is obviously like um an s stormtrooper like he likes being out on the streets and i guess maybe it's because he's like five three or something like that but also like he likes to walk around in that dust or that like drags the ground yes yeah he's like he like he likes to walk around in that dust or that like drags the ground He looks so short. He looks like a bad guy on, like, Star Wars or something.

He likes that, I guess. Looks like a little terrible king out there. Well, if I just like that now, like that Tommy Robinson guy, I think, from England. He also dresses like that. Like, they love to look like they are one of the henchmen commanders from, like, Empire Strikes Back or some shit. Yeah, like they command a battalion, a stormtrooper for some shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In their minds that

They love that shit. They think that plays anytime they show up on the scene In their own minds. Everyone's 12 now, right? So it's like that's... Right, right. Yeah.

And in a debatably teenage planet, that's, yeah, that's going to have some purchase. Yeah. So maybe bovine had some consequences, right? Like, also there was a video of him saying, like, we're not the Gestapo. Like, the way he pronounced,

He announces it? It's like only a Nazi Oh, dude. That's a man that's read Mankin from the original German. Dude, there's a few things that... That's so weird. But he looks like a lesbian

EMT driver. He does. He does. No shade to the lesbian EMT drivers. I mean... No, no, no. I'm sorry to even put that on you. He's he's made some choices.

Right. Yeah. He's still in your culture. There was another thing that made me think of that where Homeland Security, you remember after Israel bombed a hospital in October, 2023, and then they released a quote-unquote audio recording of Hamas fighters being like,

we must bomb a hospital. And then the other one's like, you're right, I love to bomb hospitals and kill children. You're right. Yeah, you're so right. It's the only thing to do right now is bomb hospital. It was... That makes you're full of Jews.

It was obviously made by IDF, by Israel. Homeland Security did something very similar. They released this audio recording of anti-ice agitators threatening the families of our law enforcement. We will hunt these sickos down and put them behind bars. and if you listen to the recording, it's someone saying they hope an ICE agent's wife gets quote fucked by BBC's every day,

which as someone pointed out, is not a sentence anyone who isn't already a Nazi would say. No, that's not anything. What are you doing? Oh, my God. BBC's, dog. Anyways, um, yeah, these guys are all Nazis, right?

My point being, is that like, and this goes, back to your point a second ago. A lot of people will see Trump's kind of waffling on this or at least like slight capitulation, slight stand down

as good enough, right? And this goes in hand in hand with like the Democrats this week. Like there's, you know, a looming, another looming government shutdown. And this is from the New York Times. Trump and Schumer moved toward

possible deal to avert a shutdown. The president and the top of, Senate Democrat were discussing an agreement to split off home security funding from a broader spending package and negotiate new limits on immigration agents. And so if you look at what these limits are, it's just your classic shit. Like they can't wear masks, they have to wear body cams and they can't do warrantless like no-knock rates, which is like that third point is really like, yeah, I guess that is important. But the fact that we're even wrangling over this is when I was reading all this with regards,

like with reference to reading that book, the Offerman's, it's like we are just genuinely, every step of the way, normalizing, like the Democrats even negotiating with this normalizes it to an extent so that you get to a position where

when you debate it, when you try to like negotiate with it and be like, okay, we'll give you X, Y, and Z in return for, you know, us not shutting down the government, what you wind up doing is you normalize a situation where it's like the government's going to, its right to do this is already enshrined

in a kind of de facto, you know, normative framework. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I don't know. That's what I was thinking about it too. So this is a de facto normative framework. Fucking, God damn it. You motherfucker.

When I don't, when I can't find, the words, you go for words that make you sound smart? That is true. I did that too. My problem is I end up just humping one word, one smart word for like three months and people be like, you know. He really loves to

say that a lot, doesn't it? You made me blush. I'm blushing. Sorry. I've been caught out as a goddamn fraud. No, I was outing myself as a simp. Anyways. You're in the clear. I will say this. On this note, about

Minneapolis and about the death squads currently roaming the country in general companies reap $22 billion from Trump's immigration crackdown this goes back to what you were saying a second ago that collapse is actually pretty profitable

it turns out Palantir and Deloitte among beneficiaries of spending by government agencies companies including Palantir and Deloitte this is in financial times have collectively reaped more than $22 billion from contracts with agencies at the heart of Trump's aggressive immigration crackdown over the past year.

And then there's also groups like Fisher Sand and Grable, a group headed by Republican donor Tommy Fisher. Fisher Sand and Grable. Fisher Sand and Gravel. That sounds like a goddamn tax dodge in eastern Kentucky. Fucking front. They're the ones contracted out to build portions of the border wall. The single biggest beneficiary of ICE contracts has been CSI Aviation, a broken broker of charter flights to the agency,

which has secured more than $1.4 billion of works since Trump returned to office last January. So, like, CSI Aviation, if you're out there asking yourself, what can I do to perhaps throw some gears in the wills of this death machine? CSI Aviation is the company that is doing the human trafficking. So basically, when you saw that video of that five-year-old being used as bait to entrap his parents and then sent to a concentration camp, they contract out with CSI aviation

to fly that five-year-old to a concentration camp. So there is a company that aids and abets the trafficking of minors across, not only state lines, country lines. Yes, exactly. And if you told a right-winger that and told them that Trump was doing it, they would say,

no, he's not look at this AIDP. fake where Joe Biden's flying the plane. Yeah. Which fuck Joe Biden. And Chris Stapleton's in the back with appendicitis. Dude,

like they really do believe like comic book shit. You know, you remember that that that lib wish casting ass fucking graphic novel that was like

get in Joe and it was like Obama and Joe going to set all the wrongs in society right? That was so tied, dude. Like, boomers believe, like, that probably, like, happened. You know what I mean? Uh-huh. They're like, man, I saw Joe Biden and Barack Obama last week over with the BP,

and they, I swear, they put three, five-year-olds in the trunk and sped off. Which, you know, maybe, maybe there's some truth to that. I don't know. I mean, Joe Biden's, like. He's liable to do anything after getting his brain scrambled by the discombogical. He's liable to do anything. He's a real wild card now. And he's on his way out.

He has nothing to lose. You know, anything else to say about, like, the fallout. Everyone I've talked to in Minneapolis says that this is still going on. There's been no abatement of the, you know, onslaught on their communities. Talk to someone the other day who had their window. their windshield smashed out by an ice person. That's what ICE does, by the way. They have counterintelligence operations.

They have people who essentially follow the people like Alex Pready. They have people that follow the ICE agents to disrupt them and to terrorize them. They know where they live. I don't know if you saw this, but they... That's why they... Dude, that's how the cream rises to the top of that organization. The guys that end up doing that Are guys that are like 3 a.m. U. Up guys

That have harassed women online for generations Like it's a kind of perverse like Tracker that you're breeding there You know what I mean? Yeah, Alex Prady was known to them already There was a woman shot in Chicago During their Operation Fucking Metro Blitz or whatever the fuck

Midway Bit Blitz I guess They had They had docksed her They had been following her for a while. Like, people that are organizing against ICE, like ICE is creating databases.

Tom Homan himself said this. This is another irony. Like, Waltz is like, we can work with this guy. Tom Homan himself said it on fucking public television. They were creating databases of, of, anti-ice agitators and protesters, probably made by Palantir, right? Palantir probably uses its surveillance

and algorithms and whatnot to compile these databases and then gives it to ICE. Ice runs counterintelligence operations where they then target these people. They target the anti-ice agitators. Like, what I'm saying here is that there is no putting that back in... I mean, I know this is a trite point. Our audience already mostly agrees with this,

but like there's no putting that back into the box. Like masks, making them not where masks are not going to cut... not going to address that, having them wear body cams. They're literally stalking people. You know what I'm saying? They don't give a fuck if Democrats say they can't do warrantless raids on houses. They're going to do them anyways. They don't care if a judge says they can't do it because they're going to do it anyways.

They're going to do it until somebody makes a true example out of them. And when I say example, I mean like actually throw them in a dungeon. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like there has to be actual political repercussions. You know what I'm saying? Like criminal courts Like actual tribunals We live in a repercussionless era

Yeah You know what I mean That's part of the problem You know Yeah Um Well I don't know That's the thing

Like With that in mind Do we still live under quote unquote democracy Like I don't If the government is running Counterintelligence operations On you

Tocks you And stalk you And then assassinate you even if you've got like multi-party elections which hey we've got that right now but we don't know if we're going to have that in November then that's not when things have qualitatively changed at that point

yeah yeah I think it goes back to that line and inherent vice about paying the rent where you still respect me you lost any chance of me respect and either day you paid a dime or your kind paid a dime of rent. By the way, everybody's favorite civil libertarian, Thomas Massey signed on to Amica's

brief to the Supreme Court in support of denaturalizing U.S. citizens. So this is the direction. So all the Massey people out there. Yeah. Structurally, I'm saying this is the direction things are going. Like, I don't see Trump backing down for just a second, or Democrats suddenly get. getting a spine on three meaningless reforms will change that. There has to be a meaningful intervention,

like a mass movement essentially, that harnesses the widespread hatred of DHS and ICE. It's not a fringe belief. There's not a fringe position. You know what I'm saying? No, but I think what it's going to require, and, you know, I think it's going to require the polling being reflected in the streets.

Yeah. You know what I mean? And I think that's what it's got to, like, because to me, it feels like, I mean, we've seen this on the Israel question since, like, October 7th,

you know what I mean? Like, Israel, you know, like in the intervening years after October 7th, I should say, like Israel polling in the single digits amongst, like, you know, bodies that used to support them.

and people still finding excuses because like, well, you know, you know, it's just, I guess there was, yeah, I don't know. I don't know, like, where the threshold for political demand and demonstration actually starts to tilt the needle in, like, the halls of power. And I think that's a, that's a good question to ask. Yeah. Like, what's it going to take? You know, and I see people, it's like, you know, we got to, like, mount up with our guns

and meet them in the street. And it's like, like, I, like, I don't. don't disagree with that as like a tactic and maybe an effective one, but the reality is most people are not going to do that. You don't even need to, though. It was kind of what I've been saying this whole time. Like,

um, A, we've got the numbers. B, you've got several resources at your disposal that like jam up their operations. Um, like, there's ways to do it like creatively and

in my opinion sort of ingeniously that could potentially keep jamming up their operations and that's going to continue regardless though that's the thing like any amount of reforms of Democrats try to put on this isn't going to stop the death squad mentality

they're all operating on which means there will be this is the thing because like people are getting nervous now I read this article in the New York Times where like Eric Erickson and some of these right-wingers are like getting kind of nervous like, oh shit, like American citizens are now getting shot and killed. Like, oh, maybe we're going a little too hard, too fast. I'm just like, no, the reason that American citizens are being killed is because they are standing up in mass and saying they don't agree with this.

We don't agree with brutalizing entire communities of people, brutalizing children, human trafficking, like this kind of stuff. That's the reason. Like, they're putting their bodies on the line, and that's going to continue happening. Yeah. Yeah, that's going to continue happening. Yeah, I don't, when I say all that, I don't, I'm, yeah, I sometimes speaking like these grand arcs or something.

I'm not saying that to denigrate anything anybody's doing and continues to do, and that's, I want to be clear about that. But to your point, what you say about, like, it's even reflected in, like, what Ted Cruz says in closed door meetings. Oh, yeah, that was interesting, yeah. like him said, you all are going to lose the midterms and you're going to get,

after that, you're going to get impeached every fucking other week for the rest of your tenure. Like, what are you doing? And I think for people like Trump advanced, they've just,

they've always been allowed to be habitual line-steppers with not much pushback. And so why would they correct course? You know what I mean? Yeah. So, yeah,

I think, I think you're right. I think it's just going to take, yeah, the polling being reflected in the street and us, you know, having the numbers. And that's like, that's really, that's really what we've got going for us and we need to leverage that. Well, you know, I think that there's like, I don't really have a whole lot left on my list. There was the Ilhan Omar thing, which was concerning, but also at the same time, the fact that she squared up with that dude and was ready to knock his fucking ass out was pretty tight.

Yeah, she's like, this motherfucker. We're not stopping for this motherfucker. So there's that. I've also got Robert Kraft giving BB Nanyahu a football. I fucking hate Robert Kraft. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Robert Kraft busted in a rubbing tug a couple years ago. Like getting jerked off by trafficked women, something like that. My buddy went to the Broncos Patriots.

game the other day and he sent me a photo of Robert Kraft was literally sitting right behind him in the suite right like right behind him like not very far he said with what I can only assume is his 22 year old masseuse so I think that's what it was I guess that's what the rumor was um you know I had this story with missing a good opportunity to make a great is rightly mm um um I had two stories. I had one story I wanted to read in an op-ed I wanted to read, but we're already over an hour, so we don't have to spend a whole lot of time on either of them.

But I was interested. I kind of wanted to see what your thoughts were on this, because I think it might be somehow related to what's going on in the country, but I'm not quite sure how to make the connection. I just thought it was an interesting story. This is in the New York Times. A municipal debt boom is driving public projects and tax break, for investors. Municipal debt issuance surpassed $500 billion last year, a record that's found a deep

pool of buyers. Across America, state and local governments have been selling bonds at a record clip to finance projects like airports, roads, and utilities. They have found a deep pool of buyers keen on realizing the tax exemption benefits from holding this muni debt, which also provides relatively high returns. Borrowing in the muni bond market surpassed $500 billion last year, breaking the $498 billion record set in 2024, this market is now worth well over $4 trillion, roughly equivalent to the market capitalization of NVIDIA. People really don't understand how big this market is and how it impacts a lot of things that everybody does every day, said Mike Bartolata, an executive managing director and co-head of

public finance at Hilltop Securities. You drive to work, you go to school, you flush the toilet, you drink water, you're likely going to use something that's been touched by municipal securities. Spreading out the cost and funding schedule for long-term projects through a long-term, through long-term borrowing, freeze-up room for competing priorities and annual budgets. I think that the takeaway here, and something that I just find interesting, like, I guess municipal, United States and most countries have always funded a lot of stuff through bond issuance. Like, I think that's how most railroads were built in this country in like the 19th century.

and we didn't really hear much about that until the Mom Donnie election. Right? Like that's when bonds kind of came back in the news because of how's he going to do all this stuff because he still has to like pay all these like the bondholders out and stuff like that. Yeah. It's like the main way that municipal infrastructure is now financed. It's not like through direct outlays through federal government programs. It is now subjected to speculative market.

forces. And I guess the point is, and this is something, I think that like we could draw maybe two conclusions from this. One is, one is that it's just another example of how thoroughly neoliberalized everything is. But two, this is something that I've really found interesting. And this, and I kind of see this in the ICE deployments against certain cities. But the question of what a municipality even is, at this point in history is an interesting one. Which what I mean is like, who does it belong to? Like, who does a city and a community belong to? Like, a lot of these people in Minneapolis, they come out and they oppose ICE.

And it would be the same if it happened here in Lexington, you know, to the degree it's happening in Minneapolis. It's like you go out to support and defend your community. That's why I do, you know, any of the things that I do or, you know, wherever I live. and also it's you know also what drives the mom donnie campaign but then on the other flip side of this you've got a pool of investors who also lay claim on the community and it's just an interesting

I don't know it's an interesting like set of forces that I've like kind of been wrestling with over the last year or so and I think that you know Trump himself like oh it says president President Trump himself is among the investors piling in the municipal debt. According to his latest financial disclosures, Mr. Trump has bought about $100 million in municipal and corporate bonds from mid-November to late December,

with a majority of the purchases from municipal bond issuers, a range of cities, school districts, utilities, and hospitals. There, that's, man, listen, to harker back to the pension thing from an air vice, I've been meditating on. Like, if we don't start demanding, figuring out a cohesive way to demand more from American life, it's going to deteriorate to the point where, I mean, I say this,

and I already pay like a private water outfit for my water supply. You know what I mean? But that's just going to kind of continue. Like, there's going to be, we truly, I mean, this is a point everybody knows, right? But we really don't, and I think it baffles people from other places that we just don't get.

anything from our taxes except for like detritus after the billionaires have picked it over yeah you know unless it's like military you know because that's key for you know those people to continue to defend their property and and their investments and so forth but that is that to me when you have a city president like investing that much money and that kind of stuff you know it feels like I don't know, it feels like yeah, especially because he's not long for this world and bonds are usually like a long-term investment. Right.

So it seems like maybe, you know, we're going to see some crazy shit in that market. Well, I think that the, yeah, I think that it raises the question once again of like who does the community belong to? Like, who does the city belong to? Like over and over again, I've felt many times that they target various cities and states in order to kind of like force that question to the surface, right? Like in many ways, like there's a lot of different reasons why they target Chicago, Minneapolis, L.A., Portland, every other community, right?

but like I think a big part of it is like to essentially force this contradiction of like showing that elected officials often don't have a lot of autonomy at the municipal level and the state level and that they must basically pay fealty to the federal government and even more so it's convenient though because what the feds do when like they kind of get back into a corner is well we're putting it back to the states. Right. The states get to decide. You know what I mean? Especially when Democrats are in office. It's this constant like hot potato keepaway thing. Yeah.

But this arises out of a contradiction which I find very fascinating. State and local budgets are in good shape and the rainy day funds are generally at highs, this one economist at Wharton said. Largely the downstream result of a strong economic recovery since the, 2020 and $350 billion in federal aid designed to refill municipal coffers after the pandemic shock. So a lot of these bonds are issued with the assurance that they'll be paid back because a lot of a lot of municipal municipalities did get direct outlays of federal aid. Like I don't know, but like Letcher County, for example, in eastern Kentucky had a windfall after the pandemic because the IRA, the inflation

reduction action, a lot of these other acts that were passed as emergency measures during the pandemic basically just gave municipalities just money straight up. So I don't know, it's like this bastardized version of a kind of social democratic policy kind of running headlong into neoliberalism, gold standard without the gold. It says still such an accumulation of debt and such a short. short time has spurred some weariness among economists and money managers. Analysts say the biggest risk is a bursting of a financial bubble in artificial intelligence. So, you know, that, that...

Notable that the president's not over leveraged in that area. Municipalities may face credit downgrades from bond rating agencies or even defaults if a bubble burst in AI is bad enough to prompt a downturn so severe that tax receipts from wages, commerce, and property greatly declined. You could see this, right? Like, a bursting of that bubble will have a kind of like chain reaction throughout these markets as well. With like cascading effects rippling through each. Everything is so apocalyptic. I mean, I hate to...

I'm laughing, by the way. I'm not saying this in a dumber way. laughing because the price is blight the price is blight the price is blight it's just the bottom line oh my god well we'll just leave that as something to continue watching i just want to close on this brief article from nicholas christoph in the new york times i was kind of in disbelief as i was reading this um i opened it thinking oh this will be kind of quirky and funny because the title alone is promising. Nicholas Christophe,

how to bring back the American dream. We need some good news now, and here's some out of left field. Okay, great. Here's some out of left field. An important new study suggests that there's a highly effective way

to overcome one of the most intractable problems in 21st century America intergenerational poverty. First of all, good news is results. Like a study, a promise of good news is not good news. Like, just rhetority. Rhetorically speaking. We like to think of ourselves as a land of opportunity,

but researchers find that today the American dream of upward mobility is actually more alive in other advanced countries. The new study highlights a powerful way to boost opportunity. It doesn't involve handing out money, and it appears to pretty much pay for itself. It works by harnessing the greatest influence there is on kids, other kids. The study, just released, is the latest landmark finding from Raj Chetty, a Harvard economist, and his Opportunity Insights Group. The team dug into the long-term effects of a huge neighborhood revitalization program called Hope 6, sorry.

beginning in 1993, Hope 6 invested $17 billion to replace 262 high-poverty public housing projects around America. Remember the high-crime dysfunctional Cabrini Green and Robert Taylor housing projects in Chicago that the government emptied and then demolished? That was Hope 6, which replaced them with mixed income homes, meaning fewer housing units for the poor, something that was controversial. Critics protested... Controversial's ass. Deplace. displaced so many people. Critics protested that the resulting gentrification, as more affluent people moved into what had been exclusively low-income neighborhoods, was harming the most vulnerable.

When Chetty's team come through income data, one finding from Hope Six was utterly disappointing. Adults who lived in the new public housing units did not benefit economically. That fits in with other studies. Turning around the lives of adults is difficult. Here's where the redevelopment succeeded with kids. Children moving into public housing in the redeveloped mixed income neighborhood stayed only five years on average but saw a 17% increase in the likelihood that they would attend college and among boys a 20% increase in the prospect that they would end up incarcerated.

Okay, those are very paltry numbers. 17% and 20%. It goes back to what I'm saying about expecting more out of American life. We have come to praise the crumbs. We have come to worship the hint that something might get better. And even then the crumbs come from... It's pathetic. Honestly, it's pathetic.

It is pathetic. And even then the crumbs in this case come from, as it says here, the secret of the success, it wasn't the nicer housing as such. Rather, the low-income children thrived because of something that can be hard to talk about. They acquired better off friends and thus a window into middle-class lifestyles and aspirations. Dude. Oh my God. They saw what the little,

the little ragamuffin saw what was possible. Dude, let me tell you what I saw. Can I tell you what I saw? This is what shaped me. My interactions with well-to-do friends were me going and staying at a more well-to-do friends house and them not letting me play with their toys. Like just two kids in there.

And I'm trying to play like with one of the, whatever. No, that's mine. Yeah, dude. That for me, and that's what actually how, that singular experience is how I pay bills now. So, I honestly think it's, yeah. So I guess he's not wrong, but not for the reasons he said. That's true. I just remember a lot of shame. It's not like we grew up insanely poor.

We were on like lower middle class though, like up until I was like 17 or 18. but I just remember in eighth grade I won't dox him on the program but this kid he was like from one of the wealthiest families in Hobbs his family owned all this fucking land this big like cattle operation

they were insanely they had this huge house and I remember he wanted to walk because I just lived like fucking two blocks from the school he like wanted to walk home from school with me one day and I was like oh no no no no

that's not it was mortified no dude we're getting we're getting No, we're getting like a new addition built on the house. Place is a wreck. Yeah, I was mortified of him seeing our, like, dead grass lawn with, like, you know, fucking shit all in it and like a tiny house with, you know what I mean?

Like, 1,200 square foot house. Let me tell you, a tough sell is trying to get your friends to come to a sleep over in the housing projects. Dude, some of those kids, like, they smelled the pissy hallways and, like, they scared them straight. The real ones came back. but how you could tell who the folks were because they never came back. Yeah. You see,

Hope Six mostly created mixed income communities and links with neighboring areas that were better areas that were better off. So poor middle class families interacted more. The researchers used anonymized Facebook friend networks and cell phone location data to show that children in these redeveloped neighborhoods spent more time in homes

outside of public housing and befriended kids in more affluent families. Those friendships were the driver of increased upward mobility, the studies found. Oh, yeah, well. Giving birth to the, you know, when we were kids, we had the, you know, if you read,

you got like a little personal pan pizza from pizza. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, now they're doing adopt a poor programs for your peers. Uh-huh. That's, that's tight. darn. Well,

you know, fucking Nick Christoph, man. This is the kind of hard-hitting shit. I mean, this must be the

reason why his race, remember when he ran for public office in, like, Oregon? This must be the reason

why that race was so goddamn close. Man, he appealed to the working man. A lot of broad cross-section

of people. Oh, my God. Um, um, um, well, I think that about

brings us to the end of the program and I just I will say breaking bad star Giancarlo Esposito says it's time for a revolution he says some people would die but the rest of us would survive they can't take us all down well yeah

he said they can't take us all down if the whole world showed up in Washington they'll kill a 550 million or however but the rest of us would survive look people know i've been calling for human wave attacks on the white house for some time now so you know i i he's in the he's got his mind in the right place right like he's his mind yeah i love that's the good people in hollywood i i like i i get really tickled with them and i appreciate them

because they'll say something like um you know that's like really like considered inflammatory by normal standards, but then they're like blunted on the back end. I just like the concept of the whole world showing up at Washington, D.C. Like all eight billion people. The nations of the earth descend upon 1600 Pennsylvania. What is this scenario? All eight billion people on the planet show up and then they drop. We just keep coming.

Is that what he means? Like, five, 50 million people will die. Like, they'll nuke 50 million. There's no daylight between John Carlo Esposito's. We've got to keep hitting them in waves versus. versus our, we need the working class to acquire a nuclear weapon, right. His mind's in the right place.

I agree with him. That's, he goes first and unfortunately gets hit first and he turns around and straightens his tie just like him breaking bad and then just falls over with half his face missing. You got to make that the episode art

for this episode. That screenshot. That's still Yeah I was going That's some dark Speaking of like Nukes

Dude the The crack up And dissolution Of America Is he gonna be Wild dog Like Dude could you imagine

Like a Christian Nationalist group In like Arkansas Getting his hand On a tactical Nuke Like that's gonna happen

At some point Like small sectarian Groups Will get their hands on tactical nukes Like It's gonna be It's gonna be

fucking wild Yeah Because here's the thing, dude, it's cracking up. And the right-wing things that the only way you can cohere it and hold it together is just through pure brute force and show of strength. But they don't really have the, weirdly enough, like they've got all the resources. They've got every branch of government, the whole military and nukes and whatnot. I guess that like they've not broken the seal on just nuking entire cities, which I assume. they'll eventually get to if this goes on for long enough, but like right now,

they're reaching the hard limitations of what they can actually achieve and accomplish. But as we've said, there's no counterbalance, there's no countervailing force. So, like, what I just see is just several decades of increasing fragmentation and maybe the rise of several city states and maybe breakups of territories across North America. but like there will be a few millionaire in groups that get their hands on some tactical nukes. Like that's going to happen as the United States lose like its ability to reproduce its hegemony.

We've created a powder keg. Long after the empire falls, the powder keg remains. Yes. Which you just can't like make 500, you know, almost half a billion fucking brain-addled people and think that anything, yeah, I don't know what you do with that. They just don't have the numbers for it.

It's just like, again, like the Nazi Germany comparison is kind of useful in this situation. Like, you just, the mass of the population is just not, you don't have a critical mass of people down for that. So it's going to create some insane fragmentation. Yeah. Yeah. That's why we need John Carlo. Until John Carlo Esposito steps up.

That's right. Stans of Thornt history. Okay, let's sign off. Let's call it there. But thanks for listening. Please go check out our Patreon. We had our buddy Kate Wagner on the show on Monday. We all know how much you love her.

So go listen to that. And you know, that's also the episode in which we discussed in real-time reactions to Alex Prady and everything. So if you were tuning in to this episode for that, it just now dawned on me towards the end of the episode. Like, oh, people might have been tuning in for that. We talked about that on Monday's episode on the Patreon. Anyways, thanks for listening.

And I guess we'll see you over at Patreon on Monday, but have a great weekend. Try to stay warm. Have a blessed weekend. He's out.