Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 440: Grand Nephews of Anarchy

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

This week we look at the rise of the jester and jesternetics, followed by a rousing new journey into the mind of The Ethicist Subscribe to us on Patreon (not a phishing link): www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Okay. The mountains are cutting and I must go. Have you given up on any new perspectives on Paul? Giving up? Yeah. You've had a, you're having something of a crisis of faith. But it's a crisis of the study of faith. I don't know what to make of the world anymore, Tom.

I swore I'd never go through this again, but here I am. Well, I'm traumatized. reading all this religious stuff. It's re-traumatizing me from my religious trauma. The mountains are cullen and I must go. That's going to be... Is that John Muir saying that? I like...

Is that the big at John Muir that said that? I like that one and I like when people say, not all those who wonder are lost. That's me right now. Not all those that wonder. With the crisis of refra- You're enjoying the journey. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. I'm not enjoying that. the journey at all. What's... I was tired I am. I'm not enjoying the journey. What's, uh... Well, we gotta save that for if we ever do Sunday service, yeah.

Well, I open it, I open it up and it does say, the first thing that pops out to me is John Hagey says, anti-Semitism is alive and well in America. Right now in America's major universities, professors and many whose positions are funded by Saudi Arabian oil money, blast Israel as the cancer of the soul of humanity. Okay, so that's a product of its time. 2005, six, I think that was written, Saudi Arabian oil money.

Hadn't yet came into partnership. Yeah. Yeah. So, dated himself, man. He's always been against the Asiatic cords. John, Aegee? Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Because not all those who wonder have lost. That's true. Not all those that seek to infiltrate society. Mm-hmm. Dude, J.D. Van truly is that's going to be JD Vance soon

he's going to be like the mountains are calling and I must go let's go what if he drops out of public life sort of tarred as a

genisadere war criminal the one you know he kind of has this image I feel like of

and maybe this is just because the Iranians have way too have an estimation of him but he has this

this reputation is like he's the one adult in the room of the Trump administration and the only one that serious people will meet with but they don't count they don't account for his bitch assness which negates any sort of like maybe intellectual edge he has over like some of his more remedial counterparts like heggseth quoting uh pulp fiction thinking it was from the bible what's even funnier about that is that that was in a prayer so the heggseth's logged that one. He's doing the Samuel Jackson monologue in like

a somber. In a prayer. Prayer meeting. So he logged and not only that he interpolated the pulp fiction scene with like it was like and we will strike down bombs on our enemies with a glorious vengeance. Like he interpolated like

fighter jets and like he did his like little GI Joe stuff like into the Pulp fiction scene. Wow. Like, here, I'll play it for you. If you're Quentin Tarantino tucked somewhere in a Tel Aviv bunker,

you've got to be flattered on some level. Cesar 2517, and it reads and pray with me, please. The path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tier. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

The path of the downed aviator. I see what he did. He did the thing. Well, his whole thing is that there's guy this downed aviator was is jesus christ remember he's been saying that since easter somebody made a very cogent point about this they're like 20 years ago this guy would been plastered all over the news the down david yeah the down deviator he'd been a national hero yeah you know what i mean yeah nobody's seen the guy he probably does not exist he is probably

like the ghost of keiv maybe that was what what jesus was too maybe he didn't exist it was just they rolled the tomb away So, like, there's like, you know how there's like tennis jail for all the, like, guys that got deposed during the Arab Spring? We're all, like, living in Paris, like, kind of in semi-reclusion. And there's also, like, this club for, like, it's like the ghost of Kiev, the downed aviator, Max Weber. There's also the ghost of Kuwait. The ghost of Kuwait. Max Weber.

It wasn't Max Weber kind of a... He was not real? An amalgam. I've never heard that, but I think that's true. Because he was a sociologist, correct? And most sociologists aren't real. Most sociologists only exist in our imagination. Like bell hooks.

People didn't take my bell hooks, brage bait. They didn't really bite. They have the most engagement you got with, what's your beef with bell hooks? I didn't really get any. They didn't even pushback on it. Honestly, it's because on these. episodes when we're talking religion, people have so many opinions that Bell Hooks doesn't

throw away. Yeah, it doesn't even track now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ten years ago. Ten years ago, you might have been up on the chopping block. Dude. And I've always been kind of a Bell Hooks hater. But I really don't care that much.

I mean, like, I really don't think she sucks, which is what I said on the episode. Yeah. But I also just don't see the appeal. The hype is way out of proportion to the output. to the output. I've tried read, trust me, I have tried reading it before.

I've tried reading this stuff before. I'm like, what the fuck is this? What is it trying to say? I would love to have been a fly on the wall when you were trying to tackle on love. You're like, you're like get a little weepy-eyed

in the corner and you're like, no, no, I won't fall under the spam. Well, I would get weepy-eyed if I could understand what the fuck it was trying to say. I don't understand it.

I'm like, what the fuck? I don't know. Am I not opening my heart now? I don't know. The mountains are cullen. It is funny in hindsight now how clearly setting aside the possibility that the Iranians do actually value J.D. Vance's input and stature within the administration, which I kind of wonder if they're just fucking with them and us a little bit.

But let's just set that aside and just go off what we know. what we've seen from Trump and JD in the last six months or so. It's very apparent now that Trump knew he was going to be on one in Trump 2.0, just raiding the coffers. I saw this chart the other day that was like putting into perspective Trump's public graft and corruption. Versus other administration. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like, we're like in three billion range at this point, right?

Yeah, somebody was saying that it was. like that like basically in year one of trump two was like equal to like so many different administrations like whole sort of rack teapot dome yeah other stuff uh uh hell the hellop button uh huh but he knew he was going to be just completely raiding the coffers and going crazy and he was like, I need a fall guy. And when he told everybody, I love J.D.'s his beautiful eyes, what he was trying to telegraph, what he was trying to say was like, I found the perfect sucker. I found the perfect Patsy.

That's how he buttered you up, dude. It's really astonishing in hindsight. That's all J.D. ever was to him. He would tell you why it's very potent for him, too. is like you can just look at JD and see that that man needs a father figure. No, yeah, that's his whole. And Trump saw that. Yeah, Trump was like, this is perfect.

Precisely. Trump sees that in his own sons. Exactly. He's like, these guys really need a father. I'll exploit this. It's like the tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy thing, like I was saying before. Trump knew that because of J.D.'s father complex, J.D. would never challenge him or question him on anything.

and that he could just use this guy and exploit him to the maximum. And like, wait, to tie the Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy Connection. Before you get too far down the road. Tie that one up. Just the George Smiley knew that Colin Firth was Dyson his wife. Do people say Dyson? We were talking about the other day. Like, people don't say up in them guts anymore.

You've noticed it? Or cutting. We used to caught cutting. Cutting. Smashing cut. Say smash. Yeah, we heard cut. Anyways, Colin Firth...

I'm sorry, I got that backwards. Colin Firth knew that George Smiley knew that he, Colin Firth, was dicing George's wife. But also knew. But he was also a double agent. And so he was like, it's the perfect crime and the perfect situation because he can't face it. He can't face the fact that I'm having an affair with his wife.

wife so he'll never suspect that I'm the double agent yeah and he was like not all those who wonder how I lost it's perfect for me so I guess my takeaway from that is if you ever catch somebody sleeping with your wife also assume they're an aide their stooge of the criminal they're a double agent yeah exactly right dude yeah yeah dude yeah dude Well, you know, that's politics for the week. So let's move on to talk about culture. Clavicular is in the news. Clavicular.

Almost died. Says he's going to have to take a respite from streaming. That guy is definitely going to die in the next three years. Here's the thing, man. It's too much. It's too much. You know, he got a felony in Louisiana for shooting a crocodile, or an alligator rather. So there's that.

I mean, if he came on the scene Smashing his bone smashing his face up So that it would go back more angular or something If he shot a crock I was already pretty pissed about the shooting in the gator But if he shot a crock He's like, I gotta have some, we gotta have some parity here It's motherfucking on

You don't fuck with crocs You can fuck with the gators a little bit But do not fuck with the goddamn crock Do we have crocs in America in Texas don't we? I don't think so I think they only got him in the Knobacco on shit. Yeah, for some reason I was thinking there was one species of crock we had.

They've got that crazy drug in Russia called like Crocodilla or whatever. Crocodile, yeah. Causes their arms to like rot off and shit. Where are their crocodiles? Where do crocodiles roam? They do have them in the U.S. I thought we had South Florida. oh, we don't have the big saltwater boys or anything like they got in Australia.

Salty boys? Yeah, big salty boys. What the fuck, dude? Why was the goddamn crilvicular shooting a gator? I don't know, dude. This guy's... I will say this, though. He has had an impact on the culture.

Let me tell you something. Everyone knows my fascination with outsider cinema. Right? Mm. One of my favorite videos is the dash cam video of the guy. stealing the cop car in northern Virginia. I thought you were going to say like the color of pomegranate's 1967.

But you're actually talking about... I'm talking about actual outsider cinema, bro. Well, one of the best unintentionally, in my opinion, artistically brilliant and hilarious videos I've seen lately. And now I can't find it because the guy took it down because he received a lot of pushback, probably rightfully so. but I'm going to have to describe it to you in terms you can understand.

In terms you can understand. I'm going to... Goog gangin. The... Okay, so this was a video. This is on the Lexington subreddit. If you're listening to this and you have this video, please, I need this video. I need you to put it in my position.

Yes, because it's one of the best videos I've ever seen. So you know where the Red Miles at? The horse track. Everything you know about me. Is it? Seem likely, I don't know. We're not only have I spent many afternoons there. You probably...

Maybe you're trying to forget. Maybe you're trying to forget. I'd like to forget sometimes. So what it is, is it's a dash cam video taken by this guy in traffic who... like, you know, the title of the video is, I caught this fight on my dash cam, and I had to call the cops. But that seriously undersells the video.

Because, like, what happens is that he's a recent thing that popped up on... This is just a few weeks ago. Okay. And I think he took it down because he said he sent it to the police, and the police were like, dude, I don't give a fuck. Well, he didn't say that, but you can deduce that the police were like, cool, thanks. Cool, man.

Well, we're on it. Because when the, yeah, when the police got there, he was like, I got it all in my video. They're like, awesome, bro. Don't give a fuck. Like, that's not going any. We don't care. Anyways, so what it is is he's in traffic at that intersection right in front of Red Mile. And there's this car of, I guess you could call them teenagers.

Probably kids. Hey, hey. I mean, I don't know. I can't tell age anymore. Dude, it's hard. I can't tell anymore. But you could at least say they're no older than 20, 21, late teens, early 20s. It is, especially in this town, you see a guy that's like seven foot tall, but he looks like a child.

It's like, oh, he's on the basketball. I did see one of the basketball players the other day at the bagels shop. You can always tell. But you can tell because the old ladies go up to them. Yeah. They're like, thank you. You did such a good job. You did such a good job.

You could do so good. And then they'll try to tell them how to improve, too, you know. Yeah. She should really work on this summer. this guy is in traffic and there's a truck full of teens well I guess you can't tell who's in the truck I'll say that

you can't tell who's in the truck but this guy in a motorcycle comes up besides and he starts cutting lanes up through the middle of the road and he comes up to the truck and the kids

squirt him with a water gun and he gets pissed off and then it hits the rear view mirror, like the door rear view mirror. And so you can't really tell what transpires. Like if they're like pull over, let's fucking sort this out like real men. But the adult doing this to the kids that squirted his truck?

Yeah, I mean, I guess I kind of fucked up the detail here because it is kind of important that you don't know quite yet. Oh, my bad, my bad. No, no, no, no, it's my fault. I'm the one that said they were kids. In the film, it's kind of important that you don't know that they're kids. kids. But you know, you're watching the film and you're like, who else would shoot a guy on a motorcycle

with a sword gun? Anyways, he fucking knocks the rear view of mirror because he's pissed off. And so then they pull off onto that road where the red mile is. And you know how this is like that big grass median? Or not a median, it's like a grass. Kind of a no or cars far from. Right. Yeah.

During the horse races and stuff. So the truck pulls up onto the grass and the motorcycle drive. pulls up onto the grass and then the guy filming it pulls up onto the grass and the guy on the motorcycle gets off and you can tell he's like this older guy he's like in his 60s 50s 60s like he's not taking any shit like he's an old rough biker guy right and he's like fucking talking shit like let's fucking do this motherfuckers and like the guy behind the camera is like I saw everything go down I saw everything happen and got it all on tape and no one interesting I'll Twitter style, you know, like live narration of...

He's doing live narration. That's some high level stuff. And so the door opens to the truck. And a guy gets out, like I said, he looks about 19. But here's where the whole thing goes completely off the rails. And this is what I'm saying. This is clavicular's impact on society. So you're deeming this the clavicular effect.

kids these days are fully jester maxed bro like they're too silly they're too silly like there's so much so that they don't understand when they're in real peril sometimes oh well you could maybe say they were in real peril that's up for the viewer to decide i i don't really know if they were or not my thesis with this film is that employment of the jester max actually is a very potent combat weapon because here's what happens. Oh, I see what you're saying.

So it's like when you run up on something that 20 years ago been perceived as like a danger, you just laugh through it. This guy. And it kind of gets in their head a little bit. It was wild watching this because you see this old-timer, hardened biker, walks up to the truck,

squares up, gets right at a fucking fight, and this kid gets out of the driver's seat. But then another kid tumbles out of the back of the truck. I'm not fucking making this up. a barrel roll tumbles out of the back of the truck and another kid on the other side basically like somersaults out of the other side of the truck. And so you can see the look on this

hardened biker's face where he's like, wait, what? He's like, what, what? Like it throws him off. He was ready to throw hands in the old style. The old school style. The rules have changed. Kids are now gestures. They're gestures.

They're two, they're like, and it throws the, you know, the old heads off. They're like, oh, shit, what? They don't take this. quite seriously, but maybe they do. It's kind of Joker-esque, you know what I mean? Like, they do take it seriously, but they're employing the jester card. And so you see it.

Fistichuffs has been gentrified by the jester. That's a traditional, see, the traditional role of the jester was you had to make the king laugh so he didn't cut your head off. Exactly. And now, it has some broad application, though. It has a broad application because. the entire dynamic of the fight changes after that and you can even see it you can even hear it in the voice of the narrator who at first is scared for the kids because this is an old-timer biker who's probably like bashed a few heads in with chains and brass knuckles and whatnot and you can tell in the tone of voice because as soon as the gesture starts the gesture maxing starts the biker gets thrown off and i shit you not he stumbles backwards he's like oh whoa and so then they all kind of, one of the kids goes, and then they encroach on it? They encroach on him.

One of the kids starts going up to his bike and fucking with the bike. He's just kind of like messing with the bike and going, round, round, round, round. Just your stuff. And then one of the other kids is like I said, he just starts it up, takes it like a little spin around them. And then one of the other kids is doing like

somersaults like, what? And then the other kids kind of just like slapping at him. It's like, it's not. It's like, it's not. When you can tell, like, the way that the narrator changes, the dynamics change multiple times. At first, he's scared for the kids because this is a hardened biker. Then as soon as the biker stumbles back, he's scared for the biker because these are some crazy kids. But then you can see that, like, he's kind of scared for himself at a certain point.

He's like, who are any of these people? Like, what is, what have we become in society? And then that's where he's like, I'm calling the cops. The cops are coming. And then he wants to moralize. once he's outnumbered. Oh, okay. Okay.

Man. No, no, the guy behind the camera is the one that calls the cops. The biker still keeps it 100, right? He's not going to call the cops. Dog, he's a fucking old school, you know, son's anarchy. He's not going to involve the cops. Yeah. But the guy behind the wheel is like, I'm calling the cops because then you notice the moment

where he's like, this is all out of control. Like, these kids are crazy. This old biker might get stomped out. But, like, maybe I'm also in danger now because these kids are, they have no morals. Like, they don't believe in anything. These kids, he's like Ed Tom Bell. Kids believe in nothing. Like in the middle of the fight, though.

And really and truly, the kids are just, have inherited a rich tradition. Yeah, dude. I wonder what would happen in this scenario. He, Tom, an old son of anarchy stumbled backwards and fell on his asses. ass to three shithead college age jesters who are like

somersaulting and roll barrel rolling around and fucking what is like one guy just breaks out a unicycle or something just like doing trips okay the rules have changed my friend

we do not live in the same world we lived in 20 years no those guys would have gotten a rude awakening you know I see I thought the way direction you were going with that is like they gesture at their own peril. And really they jester.

We don't live in that world anymore. No, right now. The jester is now at the top of the ecosystem, brother. The biker is maybe in the middle of the ecosystem these days. Listen, I'll tell you this. As a man who largely avoided conflict growing up by deploying jester tactics. Oh, you were at early jestered. You know how many skits I had to do for pork chop so he wouldn't want my ass?

Well, but now they have the upper hand. Yeah. Now they just say. assume that they're the ones who have the leverage in the situation. I know, I feel a little tinge of pride. Yeah? I survive so they could thrive. You don't feel a little nervous that the biker has now been knocking down a few pigs

and like maybe we're in a world now where it's totally amoral and gestures could be running the show? Here's what I wonder. Okay. What if we got to a little sort of arms race in this situation? What if he had called up 60 grizzled bikers with like, you know, varying degrees of liver failure from lifestyle they all roll into the parking lot

but then the gesture's like okay we got something for that ass and then it looks like there's a goddamn you know carnival coming to town who wins in that scenario the jester's 100% because they don't fight by the same rules is true there's like really and truly I know there's three gestures for the one guy

but really if you express this in real mathematical terms you probably need three bikers for every one jester. So he was probably outgunned nine to one. A hundred percent. That's exactly my point. A guy like that 20 years ago could have taken three kids. Easy. No question.

No question. Beat the brakes off of it. Not anymore, dog. We now live in a world where the jester throws you off. It destabilizes your sense of reality and it makes you vulnerable. So then you're like, oh, shit. The rules aren't the same as they once were. I'm curious now that you bring.

this up. The other day I told you, I walked over to the BP over there by my house to get a drink and I saw a guy doing donuts at the intersection by the church. There's like a church, like an old bank that's nothing, not there anymore. And there's a BP station. This guy gets at the three-way stop and just starts doing donuts in the stop and screaming out the window, I hate my life. I hate my, and just starts screaming it. Me and the Indian guy that runs the gas station were just kind of standing down on the porch. He was smoking cigarette. He was just watching it.

I just kind of looked at it. I was like, I wonder, now I wonder if we've been, we've been gesture maxed that day. Yeah, well. Seems like something in the toolkit. It didn't really get much. He did about eight donuts, kept screaming, I hate my life, and then sped off. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Well, what do you make of that? And what do you make of that, Ed Tom Bell? It's possible that was jester man. It could also be possible that someone was crashing out and was soon to become a jester. Does that make sense? They were pre-gester. Like every jester has a trajectory where they crash out first and then they go full jester. I don't take a big gamble here.

This is going to be a big swap at this, okay? I know this is going to make me sound like, it's going to make me sound like, I'm the joker, baby. Uh-huh. but does the legacy of the Joker loom large in society? I think the Joker, that's kind of what I'm getting at here. As media studies and as a piece of outsider film, outsider art, we can peel back the layers of this. And none of you will ever see this video because it probably will never surface again.

Because I think the guy got, like I said, shamed into taking it down. And he's probably now he's going to have it. Well, there's a coat. There is a code, sure. That's true. Yeah. But my thesis with this is that the, what started out as Heath Ledger as the Joker, what started out as an amazing cinematic performance and then progressed to Jared Loders Leto's Vanity

Project and then who was the Joker after that? He's, uh, Joaquin Phoenix? Uh, walking Phoenix. Like, I think that artsy Joker. Artsy Joker. They've taken the larger lesson of the Joker, which is that like

they don't give a fuck, dude. Like they could be out number 10 to 1 by old bikers, and they're not, they're still gonna be. They're letting them, they're still gonna be joking around

somersaulting. They get the little hats with jingles on them and shit. Dude, they don't give a fuck. That's what I'm saying. This is the world, this is, the rules of change. The rules have changed, brother.

Like, because if we're doing the math, This is no country for old men. This really is no country for old men. If we're doing the math, 60 bikers couldn't take 30 gestures. 30 gestures. No, three to one. Three to one.

20 gestures are washing 60 bikesers. 20 gestures would wash 60 bikers. It would be so brain melting. 20 gestures would easily buy 60. I wish I'd have a crystal ball. Like the world of, uh, of this is the thing dude the world of Taylor Sheridan sons of anarchy type shit that's going that's bro the Cowboys

Overrepresented in terms of influence it's like I was saying well you've said this before he's like the Cowboys we imagine it and popular imagination really only had about seven year run this is also ties into my thesis from the Patreon on Monday which is that populism sloppilism these like deep-seated archetypes of American identity and like class-based, um, yeah, populism.

I think they're going out the window. And I think that like we're seeing the decline of the son of anarchy. You know what it is, man. We're seeing the rise of the grandson of America. It's,

the grand nephew. The grand nephew of anarchy. It's a different relationship altogether. It's a different relation altogether. And ain't even blood in some cases. Yeah, dude. Man,

oh, I'll tell you this. It's, it's fine. I'm going to do like, I wish I'd have had a little crystal ball. I'm going to do something right now that we in the business call, a little callback. Uh-huh. Do you remember an episode we did early on? I forget what it was called, but I remember that was, God.

There's an old man moment like we were talking about. Tanya's name is in the title of the episode. I can't remember which one it is, but it was me telling a story about this guy Norman I used to work with. who was like fits the archetype of the old grizzled biker tell me more he was also a sovereign citizen and got him for 20 years of unpaid taxes uh-huh germane to yesterday being taxed uh-huh and he would always say like he would always sort of what now we would call vague posting but he he would vague post in real time about a coming threat oh yeah i remember this now yeah and he kind of And I've seen this play out over the years because this is an archetype very popular.

It was even popular with Johnny Paycheck, who his lawyer said he had a delusion when he was up on trial for attempted murder for shooting a guy in the head. The guy didn't die, I don't think. But he was still tried for this crime. He said that Johnny Paycheck was in such a fragile state mentally. And he was kind of older and sicker by this point. But he had this delusion that 30 Hell's Angels were going to ride up to the courthouse in Ohio where he was being tried and like. Save him? put him on the back and ride off in the sunset.

Abcond with him? Yeah. I've always wanted to be absconded with. Yeah, well. Now you'd just, it'd be better absconded with gestures instead of these hell's angels. It's exactly the point. You want the last thing you want to hear coming into your town these days. It's not Antifa, not a motorcycle game.

You hear those loud pipes, you might as well hear squeaky horns now. Exactly. It's squeaky horn. It's clown cars and carnals. Now that's when you. that's when you put the women and children into bed is when you hear the squeaky horns and the and the squeak of the bike tires

of the unicycle. I'm just saying. You know who the archer? I mean, we talk about that, but also the little doll from Saw. Oh, yeah. That's another, that's another sick and twisted ingredient into this mix.

Yeah, you can throw the suns of anarchy down. Anyway, normally, would always say stuff like he would just look at me some days and he would he would just laugh to himself he'd say like our boss would like bitch us out for not doing something or something and which was funny because i was like 20 at the time norman was like 48 but we'd still get reprimanded the same one after the boss would turn away norm would go he doesn't even know what's coming and then he did he'd tell me he'd say look there's going to be a legion of us rain down i'm there ain't going to be a damn thing anybody can do about he had this image in his head

of a sort of Armageddon where the bikers show up. Yeah. And now I look at him with just a little pity knowing this now. Like, that day, A, is not coming, but B, even if it does. I'm just relaying the information. Y'all better get your hordes up. I'm just relaying the information to you and anybody else out there who still follows the old rules and the old playbooks. Not that you follow it, but that you...

No, I mean, I'm interested in this information because I don't want to get left behind. You don't want to get left behind, and I'm just telling people out there, who think we live in the old world, we do not. I have seen the new world. Best situation. Best situation for you. If you get travilled upon by some jesters, just let them pie you in the face or squirt you with water.

Don't try to fight back. Just let it happen. I'm just telling you, this video is incredible. It's like the old world meeting the new. It's like World War I when they tried to ride cavalry and like machine gunfire. It's like the polar show up on horseback with. neighbors against panzer tanks. The minute you see this kid barrel roll out of the truck, you see it dawn on this

biker's face like, whoa. This is not. The rules have changed. You imagine him going back to his wife that night and trying to explain that story? He's like, yeah, dude. It just would trembling and fear. I felt bad for him. I did feel bad for him because at first I was like, um, at first I was like, dude,

come on, like trying to like fight some kids. Like, I know. They squirted you with the water gun and all this. But it's like, come on, dude. But then, like, I did. They baited him. They baited him as a gesture. Dude, they probably didn't even squirt him with an act.

I didn't even see the gun in the video. Poor bastard didn't. They know he was stepping in. I'm just conjecturing. They probably actually had one of those little flower things on their lapels. Squirted water. And he did. This guy didn't know that that's the gesture equivalent of.

We got some nice dresses for you. They're just right around the corner. So, no, it's okay. Go right. It's in there. Uh-huh. And I felt bad. So it was a mixed emotion.

it was a mixed emotional ride where at first I was like dude shut come on and then once they start jester maxing him and they overwhelm him they flood his his cortisol spikes with gesterness they've got signs behind them too now too and I felt bad for him I was like oh man come on like y'all leave him alone and they weren't even beating him up or anything they were just doing tricks man and it's scared them having the science behind him is scary too you can see the fear in his eyes and I feel bad because they know about they know how spot Cortisol. They've optimized, they've optimized.

Didn't have a chance The poor bastard. Didn't have a chance, dog. See, the thing the biker should did a long time ago is what my biker uncle Don did, where he's a straight man, but sort of became culturally gay. He opened an upholstery shop. He loves lifetime movies. Oh.

And a lot of people listening will understand this if they were raised in the South. But there is like this kind of, people tend to think of like old Southern men as like rough hume. but like they really are kind of gay because they're like, you know, and they're like intonations and stuff because my uncle Don will call me like honey and baby and stuff like that.

Like you would talk to like a younger woman like as a man of that age, but gender doesn't really factor in for them. Yeah, that you mean, yeah. The bikers need to take a page out of my uncle Don's playbook. Maybe it'll be a little gayer, a little more metro. Yeah.

But, but. A little fruitier. But something just occurred to me. I've told this story on the show before, but there were actual gesture origins of my uncle Don's biker arc. Okay. They started out as what they call puppet club before they got dissolved into a club called the Pagans, who were like a 1% like kind of bad dude kind of motorcycle game.

What we were thinking of as like Sun's Van Ardardt. Are outlaws 1%? 1%? The outlaws are, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. They have a clubhouse here in Liston and it got shot. That makes sense. There was a big new story about it.

I hope I didn't just put myself on an outlaw. Look, though, if they come from me, I'm fucking fully gesturing. Well, you've got the antidote. It doesn't matter. Just greeting with a red nose and they'll cower and shake their hands and it shocks them. Fall back on a wooky cushion. That's right. Sorry.

So, this is an interesting arc. So my Uncle Dodd told me that the Proto Motorcycle Club he was a part of was called the Cherokee Indians. And he said it was all carnies because they were all carnies in those days. And he said that they would turn the initiation ritual was they turned the scrambler on at full speed. Like full, they were they were a scrambler maxing. Well, yeah. Okay. And to get in the club, you had to jump from the control box and stick.

the landing into one of the little buckets that spins around like on the little octopus arms well those are familiar with the who have experienced the who've been scrambled have been scrambled you know and i was like well did you do it he's like no i broke my ribs on one side i just jumped and smack me down it knocked me out called i was like is that how he's like yeah you're not supposed to stick the landing but just to show that you're tough enough to do it i was like well like how was the club constituted you all just do rides and stuff he goes well it was was eight of us working for Casey's rides, and we'd all just kind of take turns riding a 47 panhead.

So it's a motorcycle club in the literal sense. There was one motorcycle. Well, there's like, remember how, you know, you've seen clowns come in, and maybe like eight of them are stacked onto a motorcycle. You know what I'm saying? That's what I'm saying. That's probably what, but this is the thing.

The biker, the American biker has actually has origins in gesture. But the video I'm talking about shows. The carnival? Yes, exactly. The video shows how the American biker has lost sight of his jester origins. That is his fatal flaw there. It's his fatal flaw. He's drifted so far from his jester origins.

He's got how on his own supply. That's true. I didn't even think about that. It's a reckoning, basically. There's a fun game to play. I heard about this on time crisis, but they do this game where it's like, you take three bands and the game is like grandfather, father, father, grandson. So the example they used was like Captain Beefheart grandfather. Wing father, Hunter Geck's son.

Yeah. The three generations. Ween. I think he said wing. Okay. Not wings. I was like, Paul McCrney. Okay.

Yeah, well, I don't really see it, but okay. Yeah. We should, the same trajectory would be Carney grandfather. Mm-hmm. Biker father. Fother. Jester's son. But the bikers have lost sight.

There's been a, disruption in the circuit, they don't realize they're in the same lineage. Yeah. Genealogy. We view it as the gesture is rejecting tradition and embracing modernity, but really, it's the opposite. It's literally the exact opposite. He is embracing tradition and rejecting modernity.

That is true. And frankly, we're going to have to embrace a little more analog stuff if we're going to make through all this. They're marrying the two. They're doing what Marvin Gay did on sexual healing. They're marrying the sacred and the profane. The gestures aren't. The gestures aren't.

Because they're still online because they're posting the videos and stuff. But they are in the real world doing skits. So you got to give them a little credit for that. That is true. They're not inside anymore. They're not inside anymore. Which is good. They've ventured out for sure.

And they've got little clubs now too. Yeah. Like they do drugs together. They do Chinese research chemicals together. It's also very homoerotic, like biker culture is. Yeah. You know? Well, that's what I was talking about.

My uncle loves lifetime movies, even though he probably did some crimes in the 70s. In fact, I'd know he did steal Jerry Lee Lewis's hubcaps. Actually, this makes a lot of sense. Wait. That was his big highest claim to find. Jerry Lee Lewis. Yeah, he, uh... The comedian?

Or the piano player? The piano player. I'm thinking of... Jerry Lewis is the... made. He did the Holocaust movie. Right, right, right. They got canceled.

Yeah. Jerry Lee Lewis was, they were... He married his cousin and he got canceled for that. There's never been a Jerry Lewis. Well, not only did he marry his cousin, he married his 13-year-old cousin. Oh, right? There's never been a Jerry Lewis in American culture that hasn't been canceled, right? In some way.

I'll be honest with the other than Grandpa Al Lewis. I don't know too many people with the last name Lewis that haven't been canceled. Ginny Lewis, the singer of Rilohkelly. I don't think she's canceled But I see I like Jenny Lewis I mean it's not broadly applicable But a lot of Lewis's

A lot of Lewis's A lot of cancellation Sorry I cut you off What were you saying about Jerry Lee Lewis Oh He was telling me about He worked in a factory

In Detroit for a while And he's like That's where I learned Spanish And she's like I worked with a bunch of Salvadorian guys He'd go He'd say Capasanino

I'm like Nailed it Nailed it Nailed It Yeah And then him and some of the guys he was in the motorcycle gang with

Jerry Lee Lewis was coming to town to play a show and they kind of triangulated his position and all this kind of stuff and he like rolled up in a Cadillac and they stole his hubcaps well good so what happened to the hubcaps and he said he lost him in his first divorce like his ex-wife made out for him

there's an ex-wife out there somewhere with Jerry Lewis's Cadillac head cap the fucking yeah they'll Bose poking wine. Yeah, this actually makes a lot of sense now that I think about it. Like, the Lux Maxer is the modern biker. Yeah.

They don't have an accessory like the bike, but... But they do all the same, like, their vein, they do meth, they... They do... Yeah, they do... Skits. They do speed. They do... They probably stay up for days at a time.

Yeah. They do crimes, obviously, in the case of... Lovicular, he shot an alligator. They need an accessory. I'm just giving them some free game. You need an accessory. And jesterdom has a lot of those, the unicycle. Yeah.

There's a lot of tools of the jester that they could really, that they could really tap into. Yeah. I think they should just stick with the bike, but just go back to the origins and put eight people on a bike. Like the Cherokee Indians of Koload in West Virginia. And they're right in. I'm just thinking.

of like the pagans, imagine this, the pagans roll up into town. The pagans being like a 1% club, right? They start out in like Baltimore, like Maryland area. They come into Virginia and West Virginia. They roll up in Colloden, which is a small town kind of close to Huntington. And they see these biker, they see these carnival guys. Eight dudes that have a clubhouse and share one motorcycle. It's just like, this is just a funny image of all these.

guys just taking turns riding one by. And how do you go in there and say, and I was like, well, how, like, what was the, like, how did y'all end up joining the pagans? He said, you didn't really have a choice. It's like barbarian invasion in like the fourth century. It's like the Persian showing up. Yeah, they price you into a gang, onto like a chain gang or something. Yeah.

They just show up and they're like, this is Persian territory now, Roman territory or whatever. Like you're a pagan now. He's like, and what happens is like you start having some fun with your buddies. You know, y'all are traveling most of the year all over the country doing the carnival circuit, but you come back and when you come back, what you want to do? You want to hang up the boys and take turns around in a 47 panhand. Instead, the pagans had other ideas. They said, you're with us now.

Oh, by the way, the other seven of you're going to have to get your own bike. What was that movie we wouldn't watch together with the bike riders? The bike riders. Tom Hardy. Tom Hardy. We're shot partly in Louisville. I thought it was a good movie. I didn't think it was, like, amazing, but I did like it.

I like, what's his face from Arkansas? That's the director. Did Mud to Jeff Nichols. Jeff Nichols. Yeah. Yeah. I like Jeff. It was good.

It was good. Yeah. I mean, not enough gestures, but how could they have known? That's what was coming down the pipe. Well, if they would have had probably, another year to put research into it. I could have, and they would ask me, I could have drawn those associations.

Well, I thought you needed to know about this video. I thought you needed to know about how the terrain has changed because... No, I appreciate it, man. I never want to get left behind. Now, I think I have a clear grasp on the future. Well, we, hopefully the video services. Do they have, I'm a question, these modern gestures.

Do they have, like, some protections enshrine and a law like jester's privilege or are they kind of raw dog in it in the era of Trump? They don't have I don't know. I would say they don't have justice privilege. I don't think many of us have justers privilege and that's partially what makes them a

jester. You know what I'm saying? It's the fact that they don't give a fuck. They don't care that they don't have juster's privilege. You know what I'm saying? What the jester is telling you in the modern day and age is I'm vulnerable and I don't care. And I don't care. I'm going to what are you going to do, kill me? What are you going to do, kill me?

it sucks here anyway yeah go for it it's not a nihilism when i was a kid my mom took you know and then they'll do like a little monologue want to know how i get yeah i get these scars like they don't know how i got these scars bone smashing my mother bought me a ball peen hammer which i then took to my bedroom and i started and i started smashing and smash him dude until i had the perfect jaw line. And then I taped my mouth while I was sleeping to improve my VM2 max. You're right. It's like a marriage of, you're right, is the Marvin Gates, the marriage of the sacred

and the profane. They've taken narcissists. Narcissists. They've taken... They're like the literal Greek character. The literal Greek character. Refused Juno's nymphs and then saw itself and fell in love with him. And they've wedded it to the nihilist.

Joker mindset And Some men just want to see the world burn Yeah they just want to see And that's what I'm saying They don't have gestures privilege And that's precisely what makes them so dangerous

Yeah But Is there a case in history of gesture's privilege Actually saving a gesture Is they're just kind of bound to the whims of the king I think you're bound to the winds of the king Yeah I remember there was one story about an unfortunate gesture

that by unfortunate, I mean, I think his name was like Bimbo the Unfortunate or something of that nature. Probably because of his like physical abnormalities or normalities in certain company. Right. You know, the body shamed the jester. But apparently a king, perhaps somebody in the French court, because it seems like that was more right for jester max.

It seems like the English probably didn't have the same. Maybe they did, I don't know. But the king gave him an option. He said, I'm going to cut your head off unless you come up with a perfect joke in 48 hours. Which is a lot of pressure. That is a lot of pressure. And 48 hours is like not enough time. But I think he ended up saving his life.

But I think he ran afoul of the king again later. Oh, so he just prolonged his life. Yeah. Basically is what you're saying. Yeah. Wow. I mean, I'm trying to do the, I'm trying to open up some ethicist here, but it's, I think we may be cooked, bro. No good?

Nothing good. No, it looks like there's a lot of great stuff, but my paywall, oh, it worked now. You give up hope too early. I don't know what I'm working. We can do ethicist if you want. We haven't done it in a little while, and we need a little break from the, apocalyptic doom saying that we've been doing for the last few weeks. Before we get to the ethicist, can I make one request?

Yeah. Would you hit up the Wikipedia page for Gesture's Privilege and tell me the real story that I'm referencing? So I don't really think that guy's name was Bimbo the Unfortunate, but it does sound like a gesture. I love when you bring up Gesture's privilege. It's like ASMR for me. It's a vocal stem or a concept stem. I love when you bring it up because it's one of the funniest things I can think of. Yeah.

That's the height of comedy. like even inherent in their in their in their in their rights their bill of rights is comedy just that like societies at certain point in time in human history were like we need to protect the jester yeah a jester also known as a joker court jester or fool was a member of the household the king's fool was a king had a fool back in the day did have a fool was a member of a household of a nobleman or a monarch kept to entertain guests at the Royal Kirk. Wait, this is not Jester's privilege.

Where is a privilege? There's a tab to that. Yeah, you're so familiar. I've read this many times, but I was trying to remember this guy's name. Because he had a good joke that saved his life. You're so familiar with the Jester, you know, Wikipedia, Jester page. You know that there's a terrible. Jester's privilege is the ability and write of a jester to talk and mock freely without being punished.

That's the difference. It's a right. It's a right, not a privilege. See, the king treated it like it was a privilege when it was a rite. An inalienable right. The cap and bells. The crown and scepter marat mirrored the royal crown and scepter wielded by a monarch. So it was almost like a jester was like the anti-king in a way.

He was like his mirror image. Martin Luther used jest in many of his criticisms against the Catholic Church in the introduction to... I'm just not putting that together. Surely you jest. Mm-hmm. It's what a jester does. That is. A jester jester jester.

He calls himself a court jester into the Christian nobility of the German nation. And later in the text, he explicitly invokes the jester's privilege when saying that monks should break their chastity vows. Damn. And when they start looking at him sideways, he just goes, Jester's privilege. What does he mean by that? Come on, bro. He's like, they should fuck.

They should have sex. Yeah. They should bust raw. They should cream pie. They should do cream pies. Just for privilege. They should do cream pies. Just as a privilege.

Right before they catch your head off. Juster's privilege. They go, fuck. They should bust and do cream pies and backshots. Just your privilege. Damn, he got it again. You imagine.

You imagine eating some pussy with a jester's hat on with those bells going. That made that go so hard. Jang-lang-lang-ling-ling. Hang-on. I don't know. You can't create a Pavlovian response where your woman can't come unless you got the male hat on.

A famous 16th century Polish court jester named Stonjik who used his position to critique a Polish Polish foreign policy and expressed concern for the country's future through satire. He was afforded justice's privilege. But there's not.

See, I don't like the idea of it being afforded to somebody. I think it's like When a gesture is born In the Magna Carta They have privilege They cannot be killed for their comedy They can't be killed for their art

Or otherwise punished Um I don't I don't know They must have edited the Wikipedia tab Because there's not a ton of examples in here We might have touched on this In episode

Perverted backstabbers Dogg we've touched on this at least Like 20 or 30 times We bring it up a lot You specifically bring it up a lot And I'm not complaining and I love it when you bring it out. I'm going to go ahead and tell you,

I'll bring it up 20 more times, especially now that it's relevant again. I bring it up only because it's back in the news. Yes, that's exactly right. It's back in the news and it's, like I said, it's the world we're inheriting.

We're inheriting a world of religious tension, ethno-nationalism, and jester as, without the privilege. But they don't care. But they don't care. Check your gesture of privilege. Man.

Check your gesture of privilege. No one even says that anymore. No one even checks your privilege anymore. It sucks. I miss Woke so much, dude. It was the funniest thing that ever... Woke produced a lot of unintentional comedy. Woke was the funniest thing that ever existed in history,

and I'm so fucking sad it's gone. It's funny because I didn't appreciate it for what it was in the moment. I just approached you with fear and trembling, thinking that my reputation would be ruined if I... Calling someone... Calling someone out. Calling out a white person for doing the worm for appropriating black culture,

black dance culture. That's the high of the form. That is the funniest thing. That's the height of the form. I have ever seen and will ever see in my life. And you saw this video. I saw this, and I saw that video, you're right. But I got to see firsthand someone call someone out for doing the worm.

And dude, I'm telling you, we have lost so much by getting rid of woke. We're poor for it. We're poor for it. That's the funniest thing that's ever happened in humanity. And now it's gone. Like tears in the rain. Dude, think about this, dude. You would have, you would have crunchy girls educated at Vassar take an actual stack of forms.

to a man and with a straight face wanting him to do a privilege audit. I get Oberlin. Yeah, people that went to. Privilege audits? Yeah. Are you kidding me?

There is nothing funnier than a privilege. That's good stuff. There's nothing funnier than a privilege audit. Yeah. The fact that people could get like mad and offended and like defensive about that stuff, instead of just treating it like we did, like gestures,

dog, come on. Just you got to. to see the inherent humor in a privilege on it. It's the funniest thing that anyone's ever done. No, it will not. It's the height of the form. I'm telling you. It's the height of the form.

Just, dude, I remember that night I was called out for wearing moccasins for cultural appropriation. At the time, I was offended. I should have just bust out laughing. I thought it was funny. I busted out laughing. I could have been 10 years ahead of the jester match. I was 10 years ahead of the jester match because I thought it was funny.

God. And then when I called out bell hooks, people didn't take the bait. Ten years ago, as of now, right now as well. We've lost it, dude. We've genuinely... That's what, dude, that's why it doesn't work anymore. Woke's dead. Woke's dead.

Exactly. The Bell Hook's hook, it's... It could have got me 10 years ago, but now it's dead, dog. You live under a different pair now. We're cooked. It's just not fun anymore. I don't have any fun anymore because I can't rage bait people. It's time, Terrence.

It's time to put on a funny hat, that red nose, and get a squeaky instrument. Oh, man, what's the last time we did, ethicist? I saw a child who seemed neglected should I have done something? My sister's crime shattered our family. Do I have to help her? That could be good. I need to know what the crime is. Let's look at some of our options here.

You can tell me if you want to take any of these for a spin. My aging mother won't stop driving Should I take away her keys? Yes, there's not even a question about that. I hate when they ask Captain Obvious question. Come on. Should I tell my people what my principal did? Well, you can't be vague about it.

And the headline. I have to know this one because that could be a broad spectrum of things. I guarantee you it's probably pedophilia-related. Either that or it's like a very minor administrative. sexual predator. Oh, sexual predator. Okay, yeah. Yeah.

Should I tell people what my principal did? Yeah, I mean, if he was a sexual predator, probably. If somebody did a sex crime, I think you do need to tell somebody. Uh-huh. In this Me Too era, such revelations had become depressingly familiar. I would say we're not in a Me Too era. We were in a Me Too era. True.

We were at one point. But it definitely doesn't seem like it now. Like, it feels like everybody just, kind of covered for Eric's Walwell. Yeah, like the people leading the charge were covering for, it's really and truly it's just the, the lib version of Epstein in a way.

Uh-huh. Not quite as sprawling and not quite as, like, deranged. Well, I mean, it's not, I don't mean to say that to diminish his crimes. I just mean that, like, they were covering for all their own bad guys at the same time.

They were like, they're eating children, all this stuff. So, yeah, that's true. and that is you gotta have your own house in order to my first child has a genetic syndrome

can I use IVF to spare my second there's a lot of genetic stuff you see in the ethicists which hey that makes sense there's a lot of ethically ambiguous questions in genetics I want to tell you how sick

in the head I am on this riff I actually entertained the possibility of uttering the words just genetics and I'll be honest with you If it had rolled off the tongue a little bit easier I would have definitely introduced that absolute bullshit to the discussion

Justernetics Justinetics What I don't know I guess I guess that would have been what Patch Adams was though The ethicist My longtime housekeeper's work is slipping What should I do

We know she depends on this income And we have hesitated to raise the issue with her My husband and I are both over 50 and work full time. For the past seven years, we've employed a woman slightly younger than we are to clean her house. She also cares for our pets when we travel. When COVID hit, we kept paying her for a full year without asking her to come in. And over time, we've raised her pay voluntarily each Christmas we give her a generous bonus. Every few years, she goes through periods of mental health difficulty.

Now, this generous bonus, is it generous in terms of the slavery you've introduced her into? or is it generous in terms just like objectively generous? That's my question. That's a great question. I know I had a buddy one time whose dad was a doctor from Bolivia who came under some fire

and rightly so for. It turned out he had a native woman from Bolivia, basically living as a slave in their house. Uh-huh, which apparently is more widespread than I realized. We check in with her by text, but do not press her or complain. Eventually, she comes back and resumes a regular schedule because she gets mental health difficulties.

Over the past year, though, the quality of her work has declined sharply. She spends less time on her house, does less overall, and often leaves the job unsatisfactorily done. We suspect some of this may reflect physical problems, and she does not have health insurance. Still, we know she depends on this income, and we have hesitated to raise the issue with her. We can afford to pay her every other week, but we are not wealthy. I don't know, man. I mean, I think you could probably just have a conversation. Man, here's the problem is if you have a housekeeper, you are wealthy, like usually.

Yeah, I mean. Like a regular housekeeper you've employed for many years. I love how a lot of the ethicist stuff is like, how can I go about this without having a conversation? Without having some sort of like conflict or conversation. That's true. Everybody, everybody, basically they should just call this segment the easy way out. Like, hey, is there a way through this without causing me any sort of strife or discomfort? Uh-huh.

All right, that one's easy. We'll just move on there. Is it okay to lie in order to feed hungry families? I worry that taking extra food for the people of our organization serves means that others won't get what they need. I volunteer for a small nonprofit organization picking up free food from pantries and delivering it to an unpoverished local community. Recently I learned that one of the... Unpoverished. I probably said unpoverished because...

I'm sleepy and the mountains are calling in MS. Go. Recently I learned that one of the directors of the organization lied to food pantry personnel to obtain more food for our clients. The pantry normally allocates one bag of food. per week for each family. Our director said we were delivering to twice as many families, so each family actually received two bags a week. When, oh my God, when asked to provide the names of the clients,

we were delivering to our director gave fake names. This guy rules. Who's the director? Give this man an award. I'm uncomfortable with lying. I love how they're not really uncomfortable with this. They just want to, like, show off how good people they are. We actually gave them double, but I got to catch it in this, like, moral question about lying to show what a good person I have.

It's like in a job interview when they ask you, like, what your strength is. You know, like, I care too much. I care too much. You know what I say? You know what I said? I literally dead ass said in a job interview one time. I just told them I didn't see color. That would be true for me because I am literally colorblind, even though I do see color.

It's just not the same as everybody else. It's kind of different. I'm uncomfortable with lying... Whoops, I clicked off of the page. Oh, I'm uncomfortable with lying to sister organizations so we can procure more food than our families would receive under the establishment. Oh, you're taking food out of other people's mouths to double your people's out. And I worry that extra bags for our families mean that other needy clients don't get what they mean.

Oh, that's new information. When I discussed this with another volunteer, here's the thing dude I've worked at these fucking types of organizations I've worked at these goddamn suit kitchens that's not how it works dude you're not taking food

out of another fucking person's mouth by giving one person we live in a fucking dude you know how many fucking mountains of plenty in society yeah how much food waste there is like when I was a little anarchist fucking whatever in Austin

we go like dumpster diving and shit. Just how much fucking food waste there is. Oh, no, yeah. Go out to the dumpster behind a crispy cream at closing. Mm-hmm.

And I worry that extra... Not that I've done that. I worry that the extra bags for our families mean that the other needy clients. Anyways, we don't need to fucking dwell on this. I love the ethicist,

though. His first lines, oh, dear. Accepting donations from a food pantry, pretending to deliver them to twice as many families as are actually receiving help and fabricating non-existent recipients.

Whatever the motives in this case, deception of this kind raises serious issues of integrity, especially because your organization's leader is lying to people who are themselves trying to do good. I mean, is he, or is he, like, I mean, maybe he has a relationship with his community and, like, wants them to eat good. Or maybe he has a vendetta against the other community served.

This doesn't really make us... It's like, yeah, because I fuck those people. I need to know his motivations because this doesn't make a whole lot of sense. You know what I'm saying? Like, just think about it on the face of it. Like, what does he gain from this? Yeah, I'm writing this one need more information. Incomplete.

Probably a lie. Yeah. Incomplete. My brother keeps falling for online romance scams. Should I bail him out again? I feel like we've done this one multiple times. Right? We've done this one multiple times.

What kind of romance scams we're talking about? My older brother is in his early 70s and lives overseas. I love that. He's in his 70s. Except the Ginerian. Does he happen to live in Thailand? That's one way to put it. Another way to put it is your brother's a sex tourist.

For many years, he has repeatedly fallen for scams, most often involving, quote, women he meets online, who claim they are about to receive an inheritance and plan to marry him. He's divorced and says that these women, whom he has never actually met and who probably don't exist, give him comfort. He lives on a small pension, has no savings, and owes money to me and another sibling

for a loan for medical care following a motorcycle accident if he had a few years ago. See, we could have saved me a lot of trouble if he'd just known the new paradigm. Right. It'd been a unicycle accident.

That is true. That actually, I'd not thought of that before, but like, the jesters do need to literally be on unicycles. Like, too many wheels. Motorcycles are too many wheels.

Take one wheel off. We're going to cut emissions. Cut emissions. Our risk pools for our Obamacare are going to go down because less people on motorcycles. Exactly. Typically, those people on the motorcycles also are on a healthy dose of statins for heart disease. So everybody wins here.

The rise of the gesture is a net positive for society. It's a net positive for society. And we'll have less wills. That's true. Fewer wills, which is better for... Cutting wheels in half right off the jump. He acknowledges the debt, but it's made. no attempt to repay it.

I got some things working over here in Thailand. I was spoken with him many times about these scams and the predictable outcomes. Despite this, he continues to send money, often giving away most or all of what he has. When the inevitable happens, he comes to me and other family members for help with basic meats like food. When I hesitate, he guilted me saying, if I can't count on my family, who can I? I have probably this unscrupulous soup kitchen runner over here. Actually, actually, I know a guy. He's running a nonprofit food scam.

I got his car. Here you go. This just should be doing that. He should be making connections like that. Yeah, that's true. Making referrals. I don't know why this makes me laugh so hard. Like, if this was a guy in his 30s or 40s, it's just another fucking guy.

but if it's a guy who's like 74, like, it becomes immediately more impressive to me. And like, as I read more about it, I'm like, this guy rules. Well, hey, good to know my own family won't even help me in my time of need. Just being like 77, having maybe 20 years left, if that, like 10 years. That's been generous. And just like doing online scams, sending all your money to like bot, Farms in Cambodia.

Because you're so hungry for connection and then becoming a suck on your family's resources. I'm also concerned that if he has a major medical issue, such as another accident, I love him. I had none wrong with him. He just likes to ride motorcycle. We will be under further pressure to pay for his treatment

because he'll have nothing else set aside. Although I have more financial resources than he does, any money I give him would come from my retirement funds for a line of credit. I'm struggling to balance competitive. passion with responsibility. Am I obligated to step in when he may face real hardship, even when doing so reinforces behavior that repeatedly puts him at financial risk? I mean, I've got a question.

You say he lives overseas. Like, what do you mean he comes to you? If he's just sending, if he's like guilt tripping you over an email, like, look inward, maybe a little bit. Like inward, yeah. The ethicist says you shouldn't let up on reminding your brother about the reality here. You can certainly point him to the FTC's page on romance scams. Yeah, okay, that'll really help a 74, a septuagenarian, like, romance scam addict, which provides tips about spotting these companies. Let me go ahead and tell you something about addiction. Okay. This guy, you're not going to break. He wants to do this. He wants to be scams. Can I tell you something about addiction?

Addiction has never once been cured by, by here's some literature on the subject. That is true. You know what I mean? Don't matter what it is. No, you always have to hit rock bottom, basically. Dude, all that stuff is, is like just these, the people, the, the sort of addiction emporium runners covering their legal basis. Like, with, like, internet gambling, for example, like sports betting.

They need a tax right on. Yeah. Well, but it's also like, oh, well, here we got resources. It's called 1-800-4 gamblers. If it gets a little out of hand. It's basically to provide cover for this industry that we all know is completely immoral and fucked up. Well, did you see this yesterday? What, 54% of males are on the gambling apps now, more than half?

And that's... That's insane. That's sobering enough, but when you consider 82%, if you just drop it to 18 to 24-year-olds, 82%. What? 82%. It's that common? Everybody else, Jester Max. It's pervasive.

Damn. Well, I've never gambled online in my life. I know that sounds crazy, but I literally haven't. I mean, I did do fantasy football. We never put any money on it. Yeah. Maybe I did like a few March Madness brackets when I was like 19. I was like, I'm going to put $5 on you.

It's $5. He's the manager coming. Well, it's even more pernicious because the sort of relapse rate on, or the, I'm sorry, the recovery rate on, gambling, about 2%. Well, yeah, no shit. Which means 98% of people that start gambling and become addicted to it will always battle that. Because think about it. What you're asking, I mean, I've realized this getting off Twitter, what you're basically

asking people at this point is to completely detach from society. It's so pervasive. Alcohol isn't even that pervasive. Like, when I first started trying to stop drinking, that was the hard. part. It's the hardest part for everybody who tries to start drinking, like the social aspect. Because people are weird about it. People are like, oh, so-and-so's not drinking. They call, they call fucking attention to it. But even then, it's a lot easier than stopping gambling because alcohol, you don't walk into your house and have one shoved into your fucking face.

You know, I mean, like, you make the choice to go to the fucking store and get some and bring it home. but like it's not on a device that you have to interface with to do a million other things like apply to jobs just like pay your bills i have to fucking pay my bills on this thing i have to apply to jobs on this thing i have to do all kinds do emails you know all this shit and so it's like it's hard to just like like like i said like i'm been struggling with this like with twitter and social media it's like okay so i'm off those things for the most part but like i still have to fucking pick up my phone and do other things and then it just kind of like does trip the dopamine temptation and craving to just... Are you still doing eight hours worth of tweeting in 20 minutes though?

You're just like, I gotta make hay while the days there? No. In fact, I've mostly started to lose interest in it, but... That's good. But even then, it's not like gamified in the way that, like, gambling is, so it's not going to be, like... There's not that dope, like, the same dopamine. It's not the same thing, right.

Yeah, well, and then gambling has the... is, like, pernicious in a way that, like, drug addiction isn't in the sense that, like, gambling also has lost chasing. So, like, you get virtually the same dopamine hit from losing as you do winning. So it's like, you're fucked. You know what I mean? Like, there's, there's, rock bottoms are hard to hit. Yeah.

Because of that. Well, it's like I was saying a second ago. You're harder to hit. Socially, like, you know, if you're working a program or whatever, people will tell you, like, stay away from older people that might bring you back into it. How the fuck are you going to do that when everybody on the fucking

planet does it and it's a part of your... It's in the fabric. I'm just saying, there's no wonder there's a 98% relapse rate or whatever. It's like you need strict fucking regulations and controls in these goddamn things. These devices. Anyways, I'll stop preaching.

We swore we wouldn't do analysis. My family, my fiance Dante's mother is out of control. Does she have to come to the wedding? It's just a mother-in-law ethicist. Like, that's pretty fucking... Come on, boy, what is this? Who are you afraid of Flintstone?

Yeah. She's an alcoholic. She was arrested three times her DUI, spent six months in jail. Sounds like she likes the party, man. She might be fun at the wedding. That's what I would tell the... I would give people advice only that.

Inviter, bro. He would be... What's the opposite of ethicist? You've made the unscrupulous. unscrupulous. On Thanksgiving, when my fiance's mother was driven to our new home by her grandson, she stood up drunk, stumbling, and

yelling. She ruined the day, yelling at her grandson when he refused to sneak her booze. He's also been known to hit people when she's drunk. Snake your drunk grandma some booze with. I mean, I feel like this is not... How much time she got left anyway, you know? Well, I feel like if this is one of those things

where their addiction is like spiraling and like really damaging you kind of have to draw a line somewhere. It's the thing we were saying earlier. It's like, how can I get out of this without having to have a conversation? Well, in fairness, and it is like a weird thing because I remember going to a function of a friends one time and their mother who was addicted to drugs.

I remember looking over at one point and seeing the melty ice cream and her plate running into some ketchup. And for some reason, that's always stuck with me. sticks with me. Like while she was nodding off and drooling into the plate that had melted. But that's fine, dude. Like, to me, you can nod off on a pills at a wedding.

That's fine. What you can't do is drink all the punch and take your clothes off and try to fuck the groom on the dance floor. Yeah, that's true. And you're not going to do that on pills. Yeah, that's true. That's true.

Yes, suggest maybe she switched from booze. the pill, that's the answer. That's the answer. Yeah, if you really want her to be there, yes. Yeah. Get her going off those perks. Yeah, you have to subdue her somehow. My friend wrote a book about her trauma.

Do I have to read it? Nope. What? See, I'm going to say yes. What depends? I've had a close friend. Okay, I don't, what am I talking about? I don't want to open this one.

I don't want to wait into this one. I guess it depends on the, trauma. If it's bad trauma, it is bad trauma. Okay, that's the next one. Next one. Can we ask our son to go on weight loss drugs in exchange for a house? That's a hell of a deal. You get the looks, max, and get a house out of it? I'd really need to know more details. Several years ago, my husband and I purchased the house for our son with an agreement that he would pay us back. He remodeled it from scratch and has been... He got fat as hell. He remodeled it from scratch and has been... making his payments to us

fairly regularly, though he misses occasionally when other priorities arise. We both agree that we would like to gift him the remaining balance on the house. The money he pays means much less to us than to him, and it would be beneficial for him to have that extra cushion. However,

our son is morbidly obese and my husband wants... He looks like Martin, Marlon Brando around the time of apocalypse now, if I'm being honest. Yeah, we walk in on him running a sponge. over his bald, glabrous head

and muttering philosophical axioms. Our son, however, is morbidly obese. I thought there was going to be more to it than this, that he was not paying or that he was fucking up the house. It's just like, no, we just don't like him because he's fat as fuck.

And my husband wants to condition the gift on his getting a GLP1 program, which would mean using about half his monthly savings to pay for the medication. I'm frankly appalled by this. I feel that a gift is a gift. I feel like these are the worst parents in the world. Like, you give the kid a gift because it's going to be a boon to him.

You don't condition it with, oh, hey, fatty. Like, we need to have, like, a celebrity death match of ethicist writers because, like, I want to see these people square off with the guy that, like, wanted to make sure, who wanted to make his neurodivergent son get a vasectomy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I need to. It's like, listen, we need to, like, have, like, a battle to the death of these, like, eugenicists.

Then we can call it the anthesis eugenicists. The jesters. The justercest, the justinist. The justinist. I love the ethicist, trying to be tactful. It's not always wrong to attach conditions to a gift. But your son is fully capable of judging the evidence and deciding what to do with his own body.

What the fuck? I don't understand. Our son is morbidly obese. I'll go ahead and tell you. There's not a day that your son's woken up where he's not thought about that. So it's not like... Why did we come up with that adjective, morbidly,

to tackle into obese? Who started doing this? It's like, what? Okay, what... You know, you can be morbidly skinny, too. We just call it emaciated that. You know what I mean? Is it okay to cut ties with a friend because of her views on vaccines?

Is it okay to cut ties with my fat son? It really bothers me that she is selfishly choosing to put her children and others at risk. What do you say? Is it okay to cut ties with a friend because of her views on vaccines? Oh, that's stupid. I'll tell you this. There are straight

liberals that read this stuff that actually think we should genocide homeless people so yeah there are like Palestinians

you're right it's just it doesn't you're right it's just whatever it's like sometimes your friends just have beliefs that is true

it's just like if this was written for any other audience in any other publication I might be willing to like countenance it but it's the fucking this magazine

is actively promoted genocide yeah yeah so I think I think I'm, I think, uh, spare me the fucking moral high ground. Yeah. I'm the family breadwinner. Do I have to fund my wife's bad habit? My wife doesn't work. She depends on me financially.

What the fuck do you think for better or worse means, pal? This is an agreement we've had for years. When I met her 10 years ago, she didn't smoke. I knew she had smoked before. And I thought she might smoke again. But she assured me that she had stopped entirely. Some months ago, though, she started smoking again. We talked about it and I told her my position was.

that obviously she was free to smoke as long as she did so outside the house and that the money for her cigarettes would not be included in our budget planning. Hey, hey, as long as you keep that shit outside the house and brush your teeth when you come in, we're good. She would somehow have to find the money

somewhere else. I think her smoking is terrible for us as a family since it increases the chance of her getting sick. But it's clear that she resents my position. Well, it's kind of clear that you resent her position as well. Like, if you really, you clearly have a problem with it. Like, why not Why didn't you just say that?

Like at first. Here's what I feel like, man, on this stuff. It's another entry in the hard conversation. Yeah, like, how do I avoid having a hard conversation, but get my desired outcome. But also the other thing is too, dude, it's like my hunch is she's not offering you anything that wasn't in the brochure before you got married.

And when you marry somebody, you'd take them warts and all, you know what I mean? Like, you're never going to find any. that doesn't do something that doesn't aggravate you, but like... Preach, Tom. I just hate that shit. It's like my loving wife of

20 years likes to have a cheeky little when she's not around me and I hate it. Like you said it was fine as long as she didn't smoke in the house. So what the fuck are you mad about? There's a compromise. There you go. But he's not happy with the compromise. But you set the terms of the compromise.

That's what I'm... This is a... This is an entry we have seen many times. In fact, I even literally remembered the specific previous iteration of this. It was probably around this time last year. You think they're recycling? Yeah. We got to probably...

It's the same guy. We have to stop doing the ethicist at a certain point because we've done so many different... We've done so many of the same types of injuries. And I'm starting to think it's a little unethical. Paradoxically. Personally, I think the masterpiece, the coup de grace, the best one of every scene, was the guy that wanted to have. his son have a vasectomy. That was, that was good stuff.

That was the funniest thing I've ever seen in the ethicist. It wasn't the funniest thing I've seen in real life. I gave my son my undesirable genetic traits, and now I want him to do something drastic about it. It's kind of a cell phone in a way. Yeah. It wasn't the funniest thing I saw in real life. The funniest thing I've ever seen in real life

was a white person calling out another white person for doing the worm. That's a close second. That was the funniest thing I've ever seen. And it'll never be tossed. I desperately, they've teased it for months, woke two coming back. Yeah, they have. But it's, I don't, I think the piss is gone. We'll never be that, we'll never be that good again, you know?

It's just like, you can only get that in a specific set of sociopolitical economic circumstances, you know. And so we'll never have that again. It's funny because they'll try to bring it back and they'll bring something to you. They'll accuse you a privilege or something. You'll just look at me a bit of it. like I was around in 2013. It just doesn't have the same. It's not as fun as it used to be.

It's like when they try to bring back like fucking pesti like past it like disco. Yes. Proto. Yeah. Things from yesterday year. Yeah. It's like yeah, it can be kind of whatever but it's never going to be the same.

Never be the same. No. I mean you might be able to, they might be able to have some variation with it. You might be able to call people out for like having sentience privilege. You know, in the world of AI, like, you be like, oh, you're sentient privileged. Yeah, that's true. Yeah.

You think. Must be nice to have an O'Natural operating system. To think. On your own. On your own. When we call them out for, like, just being, like, shitty and not really getting that. Oh, well, it must be nice to have a real flesh and blood corporeal brain. Yeah, woke two will be the machines, be the machines making us do privilege on it.

Yeah. Well, I could I could maybe get any of that. That sounds kind of fun. There's some room there. There's some rap potential for comedy. This is another iteration of a previous one. My friend's husband is a tax deadbeat, should I tell the IRS.

You remember there was one we did. I'm pretty sure it was around this time last year. There's a lot of snitches that ran into that. Right. That's a big theme in the ethicist. But there was one we did where it was these two, it was this older couple who, was paying their gardener under the table,

and they were like, should we report it on our taxes? Remember that? Oh, yeah, yeah. That was another one from, I'm pretty sure. Like, they do a tax-themed ethicist every year. And my thing is, is if you've bothered enough to ride into the ethicist with that, my hunch is you ain't been reporting that for years. Right.

Also, did you see that thing for Scott Bessent, where he said people should change the withholding status on their tax. Dude, it's hilarious. So tight because like four years everybody's going to go to jail that took the stuff. The fucking, his advice. Dude, it is hilarious. I saw someone saying, I got to, fuck, I wish I could remember whoever said this, but they were like, now they want us to molest our money.

They want us to molest our own money now. But they genuinely, that is a hilarious thing. to say. Did you ever, did you ever go to Pat's tax? No. You remember? No.

I was waved away from there. Yeah, I remember there's like the tax prep on the Knox County that was a Fed that was working for the Fed. Yeah, they got busted from like, for like massive tax fraud or something eventually. Yeah, I said the barbershop

with a guy that was getting his last haircut before he was going away for tax evasion. Whoa! He was like, yeah, man, I went to, I went to Pats over there and she got busted by the feds. And the barber It was like, oh, I go to Pat. He's like, anybody else go to Pat?

And almost everybody in the house went out. Yeah, it's tax season, so the ethicist has to do with tax. Turns out, guys, if you make six figures and somebody tells you you only need to give the government $40, they're going to flag that. Oh, they fucking buried. A close friend of mine who was getting a divorce recently told me that her husband has not paid taxes for a very long time. well okay even then no but you didn't specify that it was an enemy i mean i don't know maybe you could rat out an enemy to the irs yeah i mean not what if you take a swing and your enemy had the taxes in line though then you look then you look stupid and they ought at you yeah i would never rat out of anybody for

How do you know, though? Or I guess the husband admitted to it. I think the only things you should ever rat out anybody for is if you know about like something dire like a child sex crime or the concept of genocide. Mm-hmm. You know. Right. Yeah. Like if you know somebody's in another neighborhood's doing an ethnic cleansing, I think that warrants a diming out.

If you know somebody is, you know, doing crimes against children, I think that weren't. Anything else is like, mind your business. Mm-hmm. Damn, this is interesting. Well, that's a little ethics. Maybe let's end on this one, because we're definitely towards the end here. This is the sister's crime one.

I wonder what the crime is. The one, my sister's crime shattered our family. Do I have to help her? What's the crowd? I don't know. Let's find out. My sister has bipolar disorder and late-onset schizophrenia. About five years ago,

she beat our mother so badly that she spent months in a coma. At the time of her arrest, my sister said she believed an alien had taken over her mother's body and was going to kill her. She had stopped taking her medication

because she didn't like how it made her feel. Our mother died two years later after a series of strokes that doctors linked to the brain injury. Just that curiosity, was your sister in Fallujah in 2001, 2002?

Or about 2004, I guess. You mean like the burn pits? Is that what you're referencing? Yeah, it was like, Did something... Oh, shit. Referencing the fucking... What are those things like, Camp Jejun?

Yeah. I should have to. This thing is really fucked. Yeah, I don't know. This is dark as hell. Well, but also... I like how we've had a lied episode in the close episode. My sister did something terrible.

I can't even speak of. Well, for the ones that are really fucked up, I'm just going to assume they're not real. Also, I just want to say something because somebody emailed me, like, a couple weeks ago when we were talking about the NFL player that had CTE and put in chat, GPT, how to like, it's like, I want to be clear, you guys do realize that we're laughing at the absurdity of somebody riding in to talk about this and not somebody's individual plan.

I don't even. Like, surely to God, you have enough fucking sense to know that. Did we even laugh about it? I don't think we, I think we were literally just talking about how it's emblematic of the times, which is kind of like our job. It's the exact same person that would write. into the ethicist say I want to dime somebody out for tax evasion. Yeah, surely

you have to realize like I don't I'm not making fun of somebody getting murdered. No, of course not. CTE-riddled boyfriend. I am laughing at the CTE riddled boyfriend saying something in chat GPT about it. Which is completely like I said, emblematic

of the times that like we've even outsourced our criminal inclinations and compulsions to machines. the machine in the sky. While our mother was still in a coma, my sister's lawyers and psychiatrists negotiated an

Alfred plea with the prosecutor, allowing her to plead guilty while maintaining her innocence. My sister received a suspended sentence that included several years in a mental health facility that followed by supervised probation. Those years passed quickly. My sister will be released soon, and I am simply beside myself.

The trauma her actions caused is indescribable, especially to her children who are teenagers, and my own children who are very close to their grandmother. my brother-in-law divorced my sister my life was upended when my mother was my spy husband none of them ever wanted to see

this is fucked up doing nothing about me fucking his partner my now my sister he sat there and acting like nothing was wrong now my sister's psychiatrist wants to reunite us so she will have family support after release and says she will do better with the strong network no one

wants that I think you could just say no I mean I understand I understand understand the ethicist has a long as fucking response. This is what might be above our pay grade. We're fucking gestures. We don't have the credentials to be weighing on on fucking heavy-ass shit like this. Well, and in fact, I'm talking with a lot of people about rewriting into law that gestures privilege means we don't have to weigh in on heavy topics.

Part of juster's privilege is we get to insulate ourselves from, you know, commenting on Not funly salacious. That is so true. And frankly, hey, that's our right. Yeah, I think we could invoke Jester's privilege on this one. I'm part of the International Brotherhood of Jugglers, local six or six.

Was it a Simpsons joke? Wasn't it? I don't know. I hope it was like that. It was going to make me sound more lame than usual. All right, well, the emphasis, you ask for it, you got it. That's an hour and a half, so that means it's the end of the show. Time to clock out and go.

Time to clock out. Going to draw a couple of beers with the boys down at the... Out at the Bikers Bar. That ride the dust off the old unicycle. That's exactly right. So if you've wanted to enjoy Jester's privilege a little bit more with this, you can go to patreon.com, and the link is in the show notes. and you can click on it and then go click on it.

And if you go and click on it, you'll sign up and then it'll sign you up automatically. Click if you like us on Patreon. And then you'll click if you like it. And when you like it, it will take $100 out of your bank account. And because it's a fishing link. Yeah. It's a scam fishing. You think you're signing up for $5 a month.

Well, the joke's on you. We get a hundred bucks and you get no bonus episodes. Hey, hey. We should be doing that. Why are we doing that? Like doing fishing scam links in our show notes. It's like, go click the link in the show notes. And it's like takes all your money.

They call us to complain about it. We just squeak our nose and hang up. Yeah. Yep, well, go do that. And thanks for listening this week. We hope you have a great weekend. And well, maybe we'd be back with more serious analysis on Monday. But just you'll have to go click the fishing link to find out.

So we'll see you next time. Madios.