Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 441: Everything Is Mystical (w/ special guest Alexander Aviña)

Episode Date: April 24, 2026

Our old pal Alexander Aviña stops by to talk about Argentinians eating tree bark, Javier Milei's obsession with Zionism, and the world descending into multiple overlapping holy wars, before pivoting to talk about the state of the U.S. empire in Spring 2026 Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Yeah, okay, so the Inca invading France, an alternative history. You remember like 15 years ago, like when the whole like Jared Diamond germs, guns, and steel thing was popular? Like the whole thing was this kind of like pop anthropology, like asking like, why wasn't it the other way around? The Incas didn't have navies, right? A lot of the indigenous Americans didn't have navies, correct? I mean... They had bobs. It depends on how you define...

Yeah, yeah. Defends on how you define navies. But, yeah, definitely, like, Caribbean indigenous peoples had been, you know, traveling throughout the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico for a long time. But their naval technology was appropriate to their circumstances, I suppose. Their boats were tight. that like the Shawnee

the Potawatomi like all these like North Midwest tribes would be able to

just take a tree and strip the bark off of it like the outer bark off of it and turn it into a boat within like just half an hour that's so tight dudes

it's better to use that as boats than to eat it like they're doing right now in Argentina but are they're eating they're eating they're eating wood in Argentina they're eating bark and the economy got that bad

they're eating bark donkey they're eating guanaco they're eating what is guadaco what's guanaco is it's like a relative of the llama I think oh shit they eat out of pocket wait wait wait

apparently this libertarian paradise is not going well for Argentina right now why are they eating trees so all right so I think it was about a week ago, just Latin American Twitter just started going after Argentines because they started doing, there's reports came out of Argentina that the economic situation is so dire and poverty rates have

increased so exponentially and quickly as a result of Malays, Javier Milay's insane, insane radical libertarian policies that people can't afford beef anymore, which in Argentina is kind of like a big deal, right? Yeah. is one of the biggest producers of beef in the world. So people, so reports started coming out that like people were eating donkeys. And then malaise politicians and like media allies started to do interviews and programs where they started crowing about the nutritional virtues of eating donkey meat. They're teaching people how to like properly spice their donkey.

There was one video. Like it turns into a cooking show. There was one video of a journalist who like was like on camera eating it. And you could say, oh yes, it's good. but her face like totally gave it like no that's not good it's not good while while milay was in israel like doing insane shit yeah this this society has regressed so poor so badly so fast they're eating donkeys and trees there was let's shit latin american twitter did amazing things with donkey from shrek oh no we're not eating and all these really funny memes

of, yeah, I mean, it's, it's, the things are pretty dire economically in that country that, that, you know, I mean, it's not if you read like the economist, or I think even the economist now is being a little bit more honest about what's going on in Argentina. While Javier Milay was traveling throughout Israel and, you know, giving lectures about how Marxism is the satanic theology and Satanism, yes, wearing, wearing the most insane Power Ranger outfit I've ever seen or like Dragon Ball Z outfit. Like Aaron, you got to look it up, dude. He's dressed like, he's genuinely dressed like a villain on an anime or something.

It's like the outfit is like black with like green trim, I think. And I think it's before, I don't know if he was, that was a speech before the Knesset, I think. Well, I think it said it. It says the placard in front of his dais says Bar-I-Lon University. Okay, it might be at a. But he says Marx was a Satanist. Marxism is a satanic theory. A program opposed to God's program.

The choice is not political. It is moral. Dude, he looks like a Final Fantasy 7 villain. He looks like a Final Fantasy. It's insane. It's insane because, so, like, Argentina had one of the most horrific military dictatorships from 1976 to 1983. And one of the most infamous quotes to come out of that time from, I don't remember for

Argentine Colonel or General in which he says that like the three existential enemies of Argentina are like Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Albert Einstein because they they all like, Marx troubled the Christian conception of history. Freud troubled the Christian conception of the family and Einstein troubled the Christian conception of time and space. And this military dictatorship was super anti-Semitic. Like that was one thing that distinguish it from other Latin American dictators. Yeah, one of those three guys have in common. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Also, too, having a vendetta against time and space, E equals MC square. Like, that's just, I don't know, man. That's the anti-Christian. Yeah. But now, and they would torture, they would torture Argentine Jews. I think we, it's like somewhere between two to three thousand

Argentinean Jews were disappeared by the dictatorship. And they would torture some of them underneath, like, portraits of Adolf Hitler. Or while their torturers would, like being doing say like that that account comes from a memoir from an argentine jewish journalist hako bo timerman which is like i think it's prisoner without a name prisoner without a number which is a really horrifying uh account of course the dictatorship did business with israel right for arms right but it's insane thinking about that and then watch and then watching malay in

israel dressed up like what you say er in a final fantasy village yeah like you said like a eight-foot sword yeah you got the buster sword yeah yeah There's also a video of him singing singing at a concert and like Netanyahu's in the crowd. He's just, I don't know, man. So yeah, our Argentine brothers and sisters are forced to eat tree bark

and donkey meat and guanaco meat. How is this not? Like, I mean, it's not a story that I've seen actually. So it could be a bigger story. But I mean, that would seem like just an indictment, right? Well, on this whole... You would think. I know when the Soviet Union collapsed,

like Cuba and North Korea and some of these like you know peripheral states that were really dependent on a lot of Soviet aid had to innovate and like sort of like work on the on the fly right in like you know Cuba as far as I understand it didn't do as bad as North Korea but it seems like now the tables have turned a little bit North Korea is actually not doing so bad these days but drawing the parallel though like our Argentina is like what I guess happens when capitalist states start to implode. I assume I would not I would not recommend eating trees. I don't think I would recommend that. There are a lot of plants you can eat. But I don't think it's a specific tree bark. Like it's not any tree bark that they're eating. Oh, so it's an edible tree.

Okay. Well, now I feel stupid. Maybe a texture like akin to beef jerky perhaps because I'm just thinking that. Like that's a little more powerful. The beef jerky tree. Yeah. Yeah, the beef jerky. There was also.

I thought an article the other day about the nutritional virtues of eating rice with a cooked egg on top of it. So, like, they're just, like, it's just really, like, tough economic times. And it's, you know, it's just what libertarian it is, right? It's an attempt to discipline labor to or to wipe out labor, labor's power and to try to radically transform or undermine people's political and social consciousness. I mean, that's what they did in Chile with the overthrow of Salvador Allende in 1973. I mean, you know, these people like Pinochet and his other military officials, they talked about extirpating the Marxist cancer that had had sickened Chilean society. Like extirpate is quite, I mean, there's some like weird religious Spanish Inquisition connotations to it. But what they meant was like we have to like extract people's socialist consciousness so then we can apply this radical neoliberal economic policies that the Chicago boys were going to implement.

And like, of course, inflation went up. way more than under Allende, and people were living in extreme poverty. Right. Just to give like an astronomical reference, you know how Venus had said that Venus is what Earth would look like with runaway climate change? I feel like Argentine, Argentine probably looks like what the United States would look like when it's all implode. But I cannot imagine Americans going quietly in the night eating bark. What did you say, Terse? They do have the beef thing.

There is that similarity. We love our beef. They love their beef. Yeah, they have their anti-blackness. That's another, you know, they have a settler colonialism and the eradication of indigenous peoples in the late 19th. There's a lot of, yeah, there's a lot of through lines that we could connect. Malik. But yeah, it's, I guess Elon Musk becoming, I mean, obviously he can't become president of the U.S., but like he would be like the gringo, Javier Miley, maybe.

I don't know. Yeah. Well, he got pretty close. I mean, he started the whole Doge department. He got pretty close, you know. Yeah. Malay loves Zionism, obviously he's in Israel, but something that... Recent convert.

Oh, yeah, is he a convert, did he convert to... What is his religion, actually? He converted to Judaism, like, last year. No, last year. From what? From Catholicism? Was he Catholic? I don't know.

I don't know, like, how practice he was, but I assume, yeah. I just, I know we read this article. on the show twice. I was because I was so kind of taken away. I just kind of, you know, it's just like an absolute Nazi screed. But it was the tablet mag essay Zionism for everyone. And something that just I keep coming back to over the past few weeks is her,

is the writer saying that Milan, Argentina under Millet was the best example of what Zionism for everyone would look like. And I really think they should keep saying stuff like that. I really think that actually... I really do think they should while showing pictures of Argentinians eating donkey and an ancient tree omelets, tree omelets essentially. I mean, the crazy thing with our, I can't believe we're spending this with time on Argentina, but the crazy thing is like there used to be in the 60s and 70s,

there was an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory in Argentina called like the Andean plan. And La Plainandina. That sounds like an original Star Trek, this original series episode, honestly. And the conspiracy was that, like, Jews were going to come and, like, take over Patagonia. Like, they were, like, they were, like, infiltrating Argentine society, and they were kind of, like, building their forces, and that they were going to, like, take over Patagonia. And then we fast forward to now with Mila. And, like, I don't know if you guys saw this, but, like, earlier this here, there was, like, these massive fires in Patagonia and other parts of rural arts. Argentina. And like there was all sorts of like weird connections with like Israeli tourists. And now there's

been all sorts of neoliberal reforms that have opened up like national parks to like private to the market essentially. So like private forces that can come in and buy up some of the most pristine, some of the most beautiful land, natural landscapes in Argentina's while presided over by by Javier Milay. So like it's just a weird who's, who's an extreme Zionist and who's. a recent convert to Judaism and who was doing, you know, every time he goes to Israel, he, he, he, it's quite a performance. I mean, it's just this weird, I don't know what to make of it. Like I, yeah, I don't know what to make of it. This is, um, I don't want to like go into the trope of like Latin American magical realism, but like, it's like, what the fuck is going on?

But this is obviously like really dark, right? I mean, I, that tablet magazine article, I read all of it too, Terrence. And I think listening to you guys has helped me kind of like put it in a place, but I can't stop thinking about it. Because in one way, I think that's kind of like the stakes of where we're going, right? Like, if you think about, I think I've talked about this before on the show, if you think about the speech that Colombian president Gustavo Petro gave at the end of 23 at one of these climate change conferences, he says like Gaza's a rehearsal, a dress rehearsal for the future, and he offers an alternative point.

Well, the other, so that's like the civilization, like that's the socialism part. The barbarism is this like the tablet magazine, although it's not framed that way, but man, like, it's just, it's there's, it's, it's so open about like advocating genocide, but like dressing it up in a way where that's palatable to like an American audience that's reading this piece. Exactly. Because, I mean, because I think what it does is that invoke some sort of nationalism and sort of some sort of civic pride. But, I mean, essentially what you're talking about is like just this siege mentality, you know what I mean? where we're all living in our walled cities under surveillance all the time. But I guess to some people, that means freedom if the undesirable is, you know, are not a part of that future.

You know what I mean? Yeah. It's like a global yellow line, right? Like these lines that the Israel set up in Gaza and they're trying to set up in southern Lebanon, right? Like, they're in another, they're in a country in a land that's not their own, but they're able to militarily set up these lines that demarcate like a free fire zone where they can kill anything that moves versus an area that's under their control, right, but that this shit is becoming global, right? We can see it manifested in some other ways.

So that's like what I thought of when I was reading that tablet, the Zionism for all or whatever it was called. It was just like, it's just, yeah, I don't know, man. It's something that I'm still trying to think through. I'm going to write a piece for the Journal of Palestine studies, and I'm kind of thinking of how to, how to tie in that, how did I think about that tablet piece in a smarter way that kind of ties in to that civilization,

barbarism, diad or the Palestine-Mexico border that I've talked about in the past, right? Like, there is something there where that's what that's, what is that stake in our current moment is either to go the tablet way or to go the Petro way. Do you go for liberation of Palestinian people that then will allow liberation of other peoples or do you go, you know, if you've, like Judge Dred, right? Like the walled cities and Jabotinsky's wall like on an iron wall, but like on a global scale. I don't know. it is weird

I think the thing that was most striking to me about that essay was that if you were to ask somebody in like 1918 what is when you say socialism or barbarism what do you mean by barbarism

and I think they would probably be able to like show you a few examples of like imperialism extermination of people in Africa in South Asia and these other places but like by 19 1930s, you would have a clear answer, which is Italy, Nazi Germany, etc.

Same thing, like for now, like 15 years ago, if you would have asked people with socialism or barbarism, like, what do you mean by barbarism? It's still kind of vague. It's still not fully fleshed out. You know that capitalism can devolve into fascism and that it can become this complete bloodbath. But, like, now, like, that essay basically was just, it was kind of just, like, announcing its arrival on the stage. Like, we're the barbarism. You know what I'm saying?

like Zionism is the barbarism of the 21st century. And like, and this is the thing like, you know, I hadn't, similarly in the same way you had not planned on talking about melee, I had not really planned on talking much about Israel today. But. Because you guys are broken by it. Our brains are broken by it. Because you guys refuse to coexist and think that genocide is like a normal thing that we should just a lot live alongside. your brains are broken. I don't know.

It should, the fact that it's the ambient background noise that's trying to normalize that is something that I refute with all my soul. Yeah, for sure. You have to.

I just, I think that something that I've just kind of been astonished by is, I'm not going to say anything that's not already been said, but just like, you know,

I'm listening to NPR again. I'm like listening to the other side, right? I'm like trying to understand how people think and feel. But like yesterday they had on the editor for the Al-Aqbar magazine about the murder of Amal Khalil, the journalist in Lebanon. And it was on BBC News Hour, which I know is not the same as NPR, but they might as well be. But this guy, the guy that hosts BBC News Hour was just grilling him. Like, why would Israel kill a journalist?

Like, how can you guys say this? And it's just, I just like, I don't know, it's just maddening to be in April 2026. It is just well established at this point that Israel kills journalists for several reasons. One, that it can, that just because no one in the international community is going to stop them. But two, the, I think something that's just kind of astonished me over and over is that Israel is fine releasing or letting video. get out about them like I saw a video just today of them chasing a abusing a brutalizing a puppy in Lebanon just that kind of stuff right like just doing common cruelty and violence or like you know putting on women's underwear in their homes that they've invaded but you know what I mean but like yeah but as soon as a video gets out of them like crushing a crucifix statue or um you know or just anybody. going to great lengths to show that like the Israeli narrative is not what they say it is, then that person must die. And honestly, what's really kind of astonishing is that they sent that

IDF soldier to prison. I mean, like, never mind the fact that like they've killed them are 100,000 Gazans and, you know, several thousand Lebanese already. But like, you're going to go to prison if you upset Samaritan's purse Christian Zionism. So I don't know. I mean, it's just, I all of which is to say that like the international community doesn't um they still hold Israel to the same standards as every other right I don't know if this makes sense but like they still they still treat it as like well let's hear the Israeli side like not because I guess because they have to adhere to objective journalist standards or because they do have latent Zionist tendencies of their own but they just are still dug in on this that they're

not an exceptional state. They are. Well, dude, I remember, you know, I've mentioned this before, but I just remember sort of seeing the normalization in real time because right after October 7th when Israel was attacking civilian targets, bombing hospitals, universities, libraries, you know, killing journalists and their family members as well. Excuse me. It was just like, everyone was like, well, you know, these pundits, these Western journalists were like, well, Israel never bomb a hospital. They would never bomb a school. They would never do it. And they were just like, and they, more that we saw that come out, I mean, that kind of sort of defense just completely went out the window. And there was also the fact where, you know, Western politicians and pundits would say these

things and Israel would come out if you just listen to any member of the Knesset, you know, on Israeli TV, they would be like, oh yeah, every, every Ghaz and every Palestinian is an enemy combatant, even a child, you know? So like to your point, Terrence, just to see the international community still treat Israel's insane country? Yeah, it's just sort of just, mind-boggling. It's weird though. We're in a very weird state because there was a New York Times article just yesterday that got into the fact that like within Germany's government, even within Germany's government, like there are now some people that are starting to be like, okay, this has gotten a little out of hand. Like, I think specifically...

Oh, when the Germans make it about face then, yeah. Yeah. Like, like, you know, the, the government in Europe that would back, you know, Israel fully and anything that they do, Like even they're starting to have some questions now specifically about that law Israel passed that sentences Palestinians to death in captivity But also the there moves in Lebanon And so I think that like there is a situation and I don't know If you guys have detected this or if I'm just kind of off in la la land But like it is kind of notable that in the last week Trump did basically tell Natanyahu like all right this is what we're doing Like, you cannot assassinate Iranian leaders anymore.

Like, I'm not saying Trump did this altruistically or benevolently. I'm just saying that, like, Trump wants out of this war clearly, and he understands that Israel, like, their MO is to just keep antagonizing and ramping up pressure and tensions. And so, I don't know, I just feels like in the last week or so there was some kind of pivot where the international community was like, because like we should be clear, the international community, at least. in the next five years unless something insane happens will never abandon Zionism, but I do think they will abandon Netanyahu. And it does kind of feel like maybe that's what's happening right now. I don't know, though. But it's just my conjecture.

I could be totally wrong. Well, I mean, you know, like we've said this before to, sort of individualizing or atomizing the problem to just one individual, that being Netanyahu is not the solution, right? So, I mean, even if, and also, I mean, I don't know, I just saw a tweet. Maybe somebody who's making a joke. I shouldn't, I probably shouldn't say this, that Netanyahu had an early, uh, early stage prostate cancer or something like that actually sounds like a joke but i mean either way even if he you know dies of sickness or he gets fucking blown up i mean you still have this apartheid state

that exists in the middle east so i mean you know as much as bernie for example could say that oh you know nton yahoo's a bad guy still doesn't deal with the fundamental problem and the contradiction of having a country like that still existing in the year 2026 so to your point terence i mean i don't know i say this you know all the time i mean i hope that my nephew who's like five now can grow up in a world where Israel doesn't exist, you know. But that feels so much more unrealistic than living through the, I guess, through South Africa, right? And seeing that kind of dissolve, you know what I mean? Over like 30 years ago, you know.

I genuinely think that this is me totally taking a stab in the dark here. But like I was reading that Andreas Malm Vim Carton book overshoot about like how in the last five years, basically all global governments and oil companies have decided specifically after 2021 and 22 that like fuck it, let's be legends, let's just burn all the fossil fuels on the planet. Like who gives a fuck?

I genuinely think that in that context we are kind of seeing the rise of more apocalyptic thinking and I'm, and I don't know how to like thread this needle but like something that is just kind of a ston me, and I pointed this out on Patreon last week, is that, like, all the belligerents in this current war are instantiations of a kind of religious theocracy. I think maybe Iran might

have taken the opposite route. I think Iran may have started as a theocracy and is now becoming more of like a meritocracy or some sense. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's not like a the theology in the sense that, like, Israel, the United States is. But like the United States is clearly becoming one. Israel is one. I mean, the Gulf states are all theogynosies. It's just, it makes me wonder if, like, we're actually going to see more of that rather than less. It's just, like, when growing up, Aaron, like, when you would read, like, science fiction stuff,

like, the future is, like, secular and it's enlightened and it's whatever. If you were to tell me that in the year 2026, like, all these major governments were actually just, like, theocracies at this point? Like that would really kind of be astonishing. Yeah, this is why I make my kids read Walter Benjamin's on the concept of history. So the future is actually shit. And the poor angel of history

is getting, whose wings are getting sucked. No, we got to discard that shit. I know, but that is like the cool thing about science fiction. I mean, but to your point, it's something you would appreciate as well, I ask as, man, man. Man, like, I love children of men, man. You know, I mean, Alex, you know, I've talked about this is one of my favorite films of all time.

Right. And, you know, man, when that movie came out, I think that it takes, it came out in what 2008, I think, or nine, maybe. And that movie takes place in the year. Seven. 2007, exactly. So next year is 20 years. Right, right.

We'll be living. Dude. So, like, yeah, that future seems more likely to where we're headed than anything that I've ever seen before, you know. And I think a part of that is because of this field tea to Israel, man. And sort of this subscription to this. apocalyptic, you know, like pseudo-theocratic form of government that we're seeing in the United States that obviously we're seeing in Israel and the Gulf states as well, you know what I mean?

It really is this, it really is a sort of like, how can I put it, man? Like this, this, this, this, this, electic, if that's the word, kind of millinarianism, millinarianism, right? You know, just pulling from all these sort of different kind of sources, yo, whether it's religious, whether it's political, but it all trends towards like, well, what kind of future are we going to live in, you know? Yeah. Children of my future. Yeah, I mean, here I can plug.

There's an edited volume that's coming out next year on Children of Man. And I have a through Rutgers University Press. And I told you, Aaron, that I have a piece coming out in the edited volume called Children of Man at the Palestine, Mexico border. And like, Aaron, you just basically described the thesis of my piece, right? But I think there is, yeah, I think there's, listen, I'm sorry for bringing up. Israel. I thought I was going to come on. I thought this was going to be Sunday service. I thought we're going to talk about how Tom is not here because he took communion when he wasn't supposed to and we see the consequences of it. As a lapse Mexican Catholic, this is very, you know, I understand

why I thought it's sacrilegious. And he's suffering for it right now. And I thought, you know, we could talk about my own weird variant of Mexican Catholicism and liberation theology. But I do I want to go back to the Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil because it wasn't just that Israel targeted her and I think it was two other journalists that were with her I think but it was also the fact that they double and triple tap paramedics and medical services who were trying to reach her under the rubble and she was alive for at least six hours and able to communicate from under the rubble with her family and anytime someone tried to rescue her is real. Israeli forces would bond the shit out of them.

And apparently there's a, on WhatsApp, there's some sort of like Israeli IDF official who you can contact to judge, whose job is to interface with journalists and like basically send out threatening messages to Lebanese journalists or anybody else. And I guess some American journalist WhatsApp that number to like asking, why did you guys target these Lebanese journalists? And it was like, no, they're all Hezbollah affiliated. Yeah. So they all deserve to die.

Like, and that's at the bottom of it. I did what we're facing it. Like, who has the right to die and who has the right to live? And who has the right to determine all this, right? And this is that that tablet piece is that's what it's essentially about, right? Like it's that we have the power and the might to determine who must live and who must die. Dude, it's necropolitics all the way down. It's horrible.

And it, but again, it's like, it's not a new thing, right? that's always been at the core of like European and American settler colonial projects that are on the one hand based on like exterminating all the brutes but on the other hand trying to find ways to dominate the quote unquote brutes who survive the initial conquest right the initial genocidal impulse the event I guess but then also may you know how do you dominate the people who survive genocide thinking about settler colonialism as a genocidal process right so it's it so part of me as a historian is to think about well this is not new right that what's new about it is maybe some of the technological aspects of it the fact that we can actually see it and that

we have access to visual mediums that like people didn't have access to like when king leopold was doing the genocide in the Congo right like more than a hundred years ago but it does feel like in this moment like that's the you've said this before terran's like this a central contradiction right so for someone to say you got Israel has broken your brains i mean this is is the fucking central contradiction of our times, right? You can, this is one way that the elites, global elites, whatever we want to call them, this is one way that they've stumbled upon or have thought about resolving the contradictions of our time, right? Contradictions that have to do with capitalism, with climate change, with the consequences of climate change and forcing people

to leave their homes and move so they can survive. Like, how do you deal with surplus populations? how do you deal with populations who are deemed, yeah, surplus to political economy? And like, we're witnessing it, right? And we're witnessing it in real time. So this is why it's, this is why it's breaking our brains and this is why we keep talking about it, right? This is not like some epiphenomenal thing. Like, this is the crux of the struggle today, I think. Right, right.

Just a real quick. Go ahead, turn it. I was going to say, you had pointed out like this is a long, tradition, a long historical trend, but that there is a few things that are new to it. I think another thing that is kind of new is that the elite themselves are now vulnerable in a way

that they'd never have been before because of a few things. One of which is that like you can just fly an FPV drone into someone's house now and just kill the tank. I watched a video of it being flown into a tank that for some reason had a hatch open. Right.

I mean, it's... That is expert piloting, by the way. Yeah. Oh, no. I've had RC cars when I was a little kid and would always be hitting the curve of shit like that. Oh, but just think of the stupid race cars around the... Yeah, the hot wheels fly off.

Yeah, it was hard to control those, yeah. There's like these technological innovations that are new to war, that we don't have any agreed upon framework for how to use them or deploy them or if they can be or whatever. They're very cheap. Right. And then just, you know, also considering the fact that Israel just assassinates, you know, leaders, diplomats, whatever, in full violation of international law as well, that, like, we've just blown through any of the former frameworks we would have put on this thing. But, like, I guess what I'm saying, though, too, is that, like, leaders are kind of vulnerable in a way they never have been before.

And I'm referring specifically to climate change because, like, I was reading the London review of books the other day. and it was like an old back issue, and it was this story from James Meek, who went to Greenland, and he was reporting from Greenland. And I was, like, reading about the effects of climate change on Greenland. And just the, you know, you've got warmer atmosphere that's warming it from above. They had rain in Greenland for the first time ever, like, or at least in modern history, last summer. And it's at the same time, it is, as these glacial,

ice sheets break apart, they start to pull on all the other ice sheets around them. And so you've got this just, you know, this huge cascading effect. Cascading effect. And there is so much ice on Greenland right now that like when all that ice has melted away in whatever, I don't know how much time they're giving it 50 years or so. But as it melts away over time, the entire island of Greenland will actually rise. it'll actually get higher. And then this will also be happening at the same time that sea levels rise

and inundates other parts of the globe. So like Greenland is actually kind of looking not too bad. That's probably why Trump and won it. That's why he's trying to trade it for Puerto Rico. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He learned his first administration. He was like in the World War II star in Kevin Costner. Right, right.

Atlantis was real. It was Greenland, yeah. What's so kind of crazy to me about this is maybe it's just because I have a kid now, but like just how surreal it is, it feels like a dream. I'm not, I don't know how else to put it. It feels like a dream like we're really doing this. Like we're, you know what I'm saying? Like we're really, this is the world we've accepted it.

Like we're really going through with this. But the capitalists themselves, like the leaders, they don't understand. Like you can't get off this rock. Like they put all their fucking. There's no plan B, for example. You're not going to call. colonize Mars. They're not going to colonize Mars. They have the fantasy that they're going to be able to recreate Elysium, right?

Like the movie, which is like, yeah. No, you guys are. No, everybody was bored here is going to die here. I'm sorry. I think, yes, and I think the point I'm trying to make is that like if you are a person like that, like, psychologically you have to think about like, what does that do to you psychologically? You have a few, you can deny it. You can live in a state of denial. Like, oh, Elon will figure something out and we'll get to the moon. Or you can fully repress it.

it and do the elysium, you know, apocalyptic, you know, maneuver mentally. And I think that kind of accounts for a lot of the, like, rise in apocalypticism among these people that they, you know, they see, they see, like, these developments, they see the fact that, like, we've punted on climate change. They see, like, what Israel's doing.

And they do, I literally think they consider that cutting edge, like, both technologically but politically, like Israel is a cutting edge. social technology. You know what I'm saying? In the same way that like debt was a cutting edge social technology like 2,500 years ago, people were like, oh shit, they were really cooking with that. People are really seeing Israel in the same way, like at least these leaders are. And that's why it is, you know, coming into focus for them.

I didn't mean to cut you off earlier, Aaron. No, dude, I mean, I really do think. I think that's part of the reason why, and I've mentioned on the show before and nobody gives a shit. But I think that nobody really cared about the fact that like we did a flyby of the movie. for the first time in like what like fucking 70 something years that is crazy no one gave

because like literally I don't think people have hope and optimism so it's like I've seen so many articles saying like it was a great thing that NASA did this but what is the point you know like why do it you know the idea of a moon base or do you know it's no cares anymore that was the praxis of

the new science paradigm of faith in science of empiricism that was practice that was their missionary work You know what I mean? The Christians went out and tried to proselytize. The scientists, they had their own faith that was like, we're going to explore the stars. It's kind of crazy to have this like, you know, side by side.

We're like, people don't give a fuck in science as an explanatory model or as a faith for the world. Nobody knew what was happening, dude. People were like, we're going back to the boo. I don't know. That shit was depressing. But then, like, you did see, like, a lot of, like, reporting of, like, kids watching it, losing their lives. Oh, yeah. And, like, my kids watched it.

And they thought that. Right. We talked about that. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, we watch. Yeah, I don't know. It's, but I think you're right, Terrence, at the elite level.

That's, that's what's happening, right? I think, uh, my, my, my late grandfather would have loved to be alive right now because he had this idea where any new technology that would come up for him heralded at the end of the world. He's very Catholic. So like when cell phones came out, he was like, we've never seen things like this before. It's over. We've called it this terror box. So he's not wrong.

Actually. I think he was ahead of its time. Like when the year 2000 happened, that was like big for him. But I always remember him like when my one of my narco uncles showed up with a cell phone the first time and he was just like, it's over. He's like, wait, he's like, you want him to leave right now. He can do this and this and that.

And he's like, no, that's the end of the world. Things are going to end. Like he would be so, like you have to have that to feel at home in this particular moment. Like you do have to find a way to. like thrive with that apocalyptic mindset and it goes to speak to what maybe I say something about what you guys have been talking about the last few weeks right like why and you just mentioned that terror it's like why this rise of a religious religiously infuse apocalyptic thinking that seems to be that seems to be spreading right maybe I mean that's one way that people can kind of try to

make sense or live through on an everyday level like really a really catastrophic genocidal time like or else how else do we do it right? Like how else do we, there is, like, it also seems like we're in a moment where, like, in the past, you would have had some sort of, like, political ideology that you could have turned to as a way to push back against this. Yeah. But if we're in a moment where like, at least within the U.S., if we're in a moment where mass politics is over, and we are in an era where there is no rival ideology to whatever it is that governs the world today, like, it's, then it, like, to me, it makes sense why people are like my grandfather seeing, seeing, like, should happen and be like, oh, of course, the apocalypse is coming. Right, right. People. I mean, you used to.

Go ahead. No, no, I just want to say real quick. I mean, it used to be like, I'm kind of just reiterating what you said, Alex, but it used to be like, you know, I guess initially religion was a way to explain the world, right, and to explain one's lot in life, you know. And then, like, you know, science and technology and some different varied forms of politics and economics, right, serve that purpose, right? Maybe supplanted religion.

But now we've just kind of made a 360 back, right? Where people are so hopeless and bereft of any sort of community or any sort of purpose, I guess, you know, any sort of reason for why any of this happens. and you get this religious-infused apocalyptic thinking, you know. I mean, communism was, I mean, it was a faith. I mean, genuinely, I'm not saying that like in a cliched, like, sophomore dorm room way. I mean, like, it fulfilled an existential purpose for people throughout history.

And that's, I don't know. I don't go down too far down there. No, dude, it did to your point, just real quick. It did for me, man. When my father had passed away, My mother went back to the church. She's a Seventh-day Adventist, and I leaned more heavily into Marxist politics, economics, and politics and theory, you know what I mean?

As a way to explain, or maybe as a way to, like, I don't know, resolve these contradictions that I had within myself, you know what I mean, and what I was dealing with. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I just find it really insane that, and I think I've said this on the show before, but just genuinely, like, 15 years ago, the concept of the president beefing with the Pope, like would have been inconceivable

even President Bush wouldn't have fucking beefed with the Pope I'm not saying that like you got a hint at to Bush what I'm saying is that like it seems like a very notable development that the president now

is beefing with the Pope both politically and theologically and that the majority of the headlines you see these days are in some way like religiously tinged I don't know I don't know how to put it Like, it's just, you know, I saw in Texas, they're a court ruled that they can put 10 commandments back up in schools and that like they can, you know, the curricula, they're reintroducing the Bible into it.

It's just, I am just kind of routinely astonished by like how much we exist in that my asthma, right? Like how much of it is, how much of political currency now is like we're talking about like Protestants versus Catholics and you know what the fuck? What? I mean, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, that, uh, that, uh, that, uh, that ad I saw with, uh, what's his name. And was Raffersburg or something, shit like that? Who was a secretary of state of Georgia or running for governor? And dude, there was no substance in his campaign ad. It was literally just like, I'm a Christian, you should vote for me. It just felt so like 2003, maybe, you know what I mean?

Maybe late 90s. It felt like of a different time, you know? I mean, it's a very, it's very like gringo-centric, right? Like, I think one thing that helps me kind of like think through some of this stuff is to, like, step outside of the United States and to see what political projects. are doing in other countries, right? So like in Mexico, which apparently the CIA agents just died doing some sort of of cicario shit. Yeah, I wanted to bring that up with you.

I wanted to bring that up with you. But like, mass politics may or may not be done with in the U.S., at least it's how it was practiced earlier in the 20th to mid-century. But like in other parts of the world, like mass politics is a thing, right? Like, there is a mass political project. with all of its, it's popular, but with all of its internal contradiction and wards that's happening in Mexico.

That is different from what's going on in the United States. It's obviously happening within a country that's a developing economy that's subject to the dictates of global capital. And with all sorts of internal contradictions. But there are things, there are like there are mobilizations and mass politics there that seem different

particularly when you compare it to the U.S. where they seem not to exist at all in the current moment. I mean, part of that has to do with the fact that, like, what's the last mass movement or mobilization that we saw in the U.S.? It was like Palestine solidarity. And what happened to all those folks? Like, you know, it's, I still have students. I still have a student who as of earlier this year was still going through the legal

process because they had participated in the encampment of April 2024. Like, you know, that there was a very clear, uh, that was imparted by liberal institutions and a liberal president at the time. And they just set the table for Trump. But in other parts of the, you know, the people of Iran are like showing something different, right? Like they are like they are organized and willing. And if you watch videos coming out, if you watch interviews with their political leaders or social movement leaders, like there you have a type of mass politics based on the existential dictates of defending national sovereignty. So I think it is sometimes interesting to pull back and to try to see what's going on in other parts of the world as a way to kind of maybe help us think through what's not happening here in the United States, which is as we live in the entrails of the belly of the beast, as Jose Marti wrote about.

Yeah. I just think living in the Imperial Corrasona kind of precludes any future thinking for people. You know what I mean? It's very hard to think about tomorrow in the next decade. I mean, you do think about those things, but not with hope or optimism. Yeah, I mean, I don't know about you guys, but the Pope was invited, Tom Homan invited the Pope to be on a ice ride-along. Of all people, the Pope, why would you think that the Pope would be cool? All right, I think it's time to excommunicate Tom Homan, that human thumb.

Is he Catholic? He's Catholic. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, that's, I cannot. that is, I had, I missed that one, thankfully, but now I didn't miss it. Thanks a lot, Terence. I mean, that's, I've seen his response to the Pope, right? And it's a, if, I make sense now, because I've seen him give interviews, Holman that is where he's like, if only, you know,

some of these figures came with me and to see how we've defended the country from this dangerous border and dangerous migrants. It's just, come on, man. It's just, it's bullshit. I mean, it's just, it's setting up, again, it's like, it's setting up, um, it's setting up, it's setting up, literal and ideological borders to keep people out and to expel people who are already been here for years and for decades, right? I mean, that's part of the, it's one of the reasons why people have been talking about these mass deportation campaigns as ethnic cleansing. I mean, that's what it is, even if someone like Homan tries to justify it some bullshit way.

I mean, can you imagine, like, Dr. Phil went on a fucking migrant, like deportation rate. Bro, that's like, can you imagine, like the hope? That's like Jesus coming back, bro. You know, we're doing great things here. I know you may have some qualms with what we're doing here, but check it out how we're making the world safer. That tradition is like as if, if, like, Paul had his road to Damascus moment,

but kept working for the Roman Empire. Like, he didn't become an opponent of it. But, like, it's just, I mean, a lot of this is U.S. A lot of this is, like, the muscular Christianity that came, you know, developed in the late 19th century, like Josiah Strong and some of these other folks that like managed to develop a form of Christianity that melded really well with U.S. imperialism and colonial expansion in the late 19, early 20th century.

But like, I can't, yeah, I cannot admit. I don't know if the Pope responded, which would be interesting to see the response. But, yeah. Isn't the Pope in Africa right now? I think he's in Africa. Well, I did say, I did see that the Kempstein published a report confirming that U.S. intelligence agencies have for years, has been spying on the Vatican, and that President Trump's April 12 broadside against Pope Leo has now turned that surveillance into an operational priority.

According to Clippenstein, when Pope declared Leo, quote, terrible for foreign policy, the U.S. intelligence community took the president's remark as a directive to prioritize spying on the Vatican. He's going to hit him with the Hibana gun. The first asset was Michael Corleone, man. He's the one who started spying. Do they have, like, bugs in the Vatican? Like, are they opening up Bibles and not knowing they're being recorded?

by a little camera the size of a bead or something like that? Like, what's going on here? Jesus. Now I'm just imagining James Bond surveil its equipment. Like in the cross, there's a gun perhaps or something. I know the famous Stalin quote, like, how many divisions does he have about the Pope? But, like, I don't think I would underestimate the Catholic Church. Something that's been around for 2,000 years is, like, clearly figured out a few ways to, uh, to,

think on its toes and prevail over the counterwind. So I don't know. I just, I don't want that smoke, the literal smoke that comes out with a big of I would not want that smoke is all I'm saying. Yeah, I think it'll survive Donald Trump. I'm just saying I think we can accurately predict that, uh, yeah, I feel like the church is kind of hermetically sealed against anything else that happens in the larger world. Can you imagine making the Catholic church look like the good guy?

Like that's the thing like, like, you know, it's, yeah, like this. Their fortunes have turned. The hierarchy, at least, at the institutional level, they had, they had institutionalized child abuse. Yeah, dude, think about where they were 10 years ago, like, what they, like, their reputation was. Now, they're, in Trump, Trump made them into the guy. I mean, I think Francis, Pope Francis helped go back to the Argentine connection. For sure. Definitely.

Yeah. And Leo as well, right? But like, yeah, it's just what? I don't know. It's, yeah, I think the church will survive Trump. And if any, there's a lot of Catholics around the world. I mean, and that far outnumber the variant that is Tom Homan and some other these really concern. Even within the U.S., I would say like Tom Homan's variety of Catholicism is probably in the minority.

But, yeah, I don't know. It's interesting. I want to talk about the empire in the second. I want to talk about some of the things going on with America. But maybe this would be an actual segue into it. You had sort of distinguished between social movements, mass movement in America versus other nations.

Like, what are our thoughts, fam? I mean, I don't think that a mass movement is impossible in America, just for the listener. So I don't get really. that but I don't also though don't think that anything currently on offer is really that promising either I don't if you were to press me on it I don't think you're going to get a mass social movement from AOC so no that's what I'm saying but I could be mistaken I come out of time that's a bold move that bold bold call

turds that you're saying that the Democratic Party is not going to inspire a social movement in the US that is I mean, when has it? Right? Like, if anything, it's there to co-ops and to contain. Oh, it's a graveyard of social movement. Yeah, right. Exactly.

So listen, I think we had one. We've had a couple. We had the Palestinian Solidarity Movement. The second one we had was what happened in Minneapolis. And there's a reason why ICE and the Border Patrol are no longer doing what they did to Minneapolis. Because the Trump administration saw that an entire city came together and expelled and resisted. and organized and got to know their neighbors and their community members

and they worked together to counteract what ICE and the Border Patrol was doing. Now, of course, it cost the lives of two people who were martyred, right? These two people were martyred for their community and for immigrant rights and for refugee rights. And that's why they pulled back from that model. If Bovino could still be,

he could still theoretically be in a position of power. But because the people of Minneapolis, one, because the people in Parameda, California and Compton, California before them, organized, and we're willing to, like, defend their communities against these ice, you know, Gestapo's and Border Patrol. Like, that's why now we have a more silent, more quiet way of deporting migrants and sending them to concentration camps where they're not getting food and they're getting sick and they're not getting access to medical care.

So that's, like, kind of like, for the, that's kind of like the next scale of it, right? Like, I think a movement that develops around the humanity and the rights of refugees and migrants, to me, is the one that offers, like, the most promise, right? Because it hits at, like, the central political project of Trump, which is their willingness to engage in an ethnic cleansing campaign. But they're also, like, not dumb, right? There's dialectical. Like, they saw what happened in Minneapolis, so they pulled back. They got rid of bovine. And now, I don't know what he's doing, that motherfucker.

I can't stand that guy. So, no, I think there is a possibility, right? I think, and in, you know, we still haven't really seen the concept, the fallout from this war on, war out thing with Iran, too, like the economic impact of it as well. We're making fun of Argentina. Who knows, we might be eating tree bark in a little bit. And we'll see. Hell yeah, dude. You know, we can't get helium now.

So, you know, the tree bark is next. Braised tree bark. I'm just do a little bit of stir fry. I asked my mom if she could curry. Yeah, that's going to be the biria. It's not goat or beef. It's the tree barking. Yeah, dude, they're going to be going crazy in Austin with text-makers, freebark shit.

The famous breakfast tacos in Texas are going to have been made out of tree bark. You all know it well. That's where Martin Luther King gave his great speech. And he had a million people. And I had the same exact crowd, maybe a little. little bit more, but they said I had 25,000 people in July 4th. I have pictures of Martin Luther King's crowd, my crowd, the exact same everything, but it was 70 years difference.

The exact same crowd, but I actually had more people, but that's okay. They gave him, they gave him a million people. They said a million people, I had 25,000 people, so, but these are the things that we had on July 4th, a few years ago, first term. So, well, we're almost at an hour. I just kind of, there's a few things I wanted to just run. I was going to read this article in the Atlantic from one of our faves, Thomas Chatterton, whatever the fuck. I don't know even, but about like progressive chic stealing from Whole Foods.

He was triggered by Hassan Piper. I'm going to do something personally about that motherfucker when our turn comes, bro. I'm telling you. But I don't know. There's really not a lot of meat on that bone. That guy's also like 120 pounds, so maybe I mean that, like, lived in bedroom. Living in Paris also. But I do want to, I do just want to check in with a few items of note from the ongoing war, empire collapse, whatever you want to call it.

So the first thing I had here was this story in the New York Times. Iran war has drained U.S. supplies of critical costly weapons. And now this is an interesting little article because you have to assume, first of all, that the New York Times would never publish anything that would imperil U.S. imperial directives unless they thought that the empire and war could be running better and more efficiently.

So they're saying that we've run. ran out of missiles because if we used them all in this war with them. Dude, I just thought, just not to draw up terms, I just thought that something like missiles were always in production like Nike's Air Force One. I kind of do. They always just make them.

You know what I mean? I know that we can exhaust. Missiles getting dropped on Saturday mornings at 8 a.m. on the gas. People lot it up like I need it. No, they are very expensive to make. A single Tomahawk missile costs like several million dollars

to make. but just to give you a sense of what America has expended so far in this war the U.S. has burned through around 1,100 of its long-range stealth cruise missiles built for a war with China. That's half of its stockpile. It's exhausted half of its stockpile. Going great. They fired off more than 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles. That's roughly 10 times the number it currently buys each year.

The Pentagon used more than 1,200 Patriot Interceptor missiles at more than $4 million a pop, more than 1,000 precision strike and ATA CMS ground-based missiles. And it says here two independent groups say the expense is staggering between $28 billion, $35 billion, or just under $1 billion a day. I just want to give people have a visual. Like there's money that essentially gets just transmuted into rubble. essentially is what it is. All that money is just spent on destruction.

That's insane, dude. No, it's, I mean, it's, it's really astonishing. And it's also, like, I think another example of how, like, I think the Trump administration didn't know what they were doing or what they were getting themselves into. Like, I've pointed to this before because there's been all this debate over, like, how much influence did Israel exert over the United States? Like, did the United States?

States joined because of Israel. And I think I've always just pointed to the fact that, like, Trump has spent over a year trying to get Jerome Powell to lower interest rates. And now this fucking war has made that basically impossible to such an extent that the Federal Reserve, even under the new chairman, Kevin Warsh, might wind up raising interest rates. I don't think he really wanted this, at least not from economic standpoint. Like, it kind of imperils his dumbass. economic plan.

But this is another example. Like, you've exhausted half of your missiles built specifically for war with China. Which I think if that exposes, they never had the industrial capacity or base that would have enabled a war against China. I mean, this is what this is revealing, right? Like, neoliberalism did not somehow

bypass the military industrial complex, right? Like, they neoliberalize that shit too. So they can't produce at scale in a type of war against a, I mean, they can't produce at scale for Iran. Like, why would they be able to produce its scale? And, you know, the interesting thing is, like, Ukraine kind of exposed this. And they didn't really learn the lessons from that.

Like, they couldn't produce enough. Like, Ukraine expended pretty quickly, a lot of their missiles. But even, like, less high-tech stuff, like shells, like artillery shells. There's no money in those artillery shells. So, like, the five military industrial defense contractors that are supposedly private, but they're not because they have always public money, they don't see any profit in making artillery shells, right? So like when Ukraine went, ran through their lot,

like the U.S. had to go into their reserve. It's a similar thing. So that's like on the lower end, like the low value end. The thing that with their THAD systems, there's like eight THAD systems that the U.S. has around the world. And like half of them are not destroyed. Yeah, right. Half of them are not destroyed thanks to Iran.

And now they've had to move like the one from South Korea. They're like, sorry, you guys are on your own. We've got to move that one to West Asia. they don't have like this is one of the really interesting and we saw this in Gaza too with with the with the with the resistance there it's like the the and this is part of like guerrilla warfare right like these in Iran in Hezbollah in south in Lebanon in the different defense the resistance factions in Palestine they developed a military capacity that correlate that correlated with the way that they fight and so there was like indigenous production of low cost of low cost of weapons that were effective against much more powerful, but also vulnerable high cost weapons systems against their enemies. And that's what we're witnessing right now. Like, Trump fired the secretary of the Navy because the Navy guy couldn't give him a

battleship. Why the fuck are we still making battleships? I want to talk about that. Aircraft carriers are now obsolete. Like, drones and missiles have much cheaper production value. You need to be doing that shit that like, just make an aerial aircraft carrier. You need to be doing that shit that marvel machine. You need to be thinking to the future, brother.

I think Trump thought that we could get the USS Nevada up on the off the coast of Iran just pounding the coast with like those huge guns. Yeah. Bro, like those speedboats and their like drones and their anti-ballistic or anti-naval ballistic cruise missiles would have taken you out. Yeah. So it's really interesting to see like guerrilla warfare happening in actual military tactics, but also at the at the political economic scale. And like this does not portend well for the United States. No. Also, too, I guess it betray.

like what their initial sort of strategy was, that this would be over quickly as long as they pounded Iran with as many missiles as possible. And now they're finding out that that's not the case. My friend, G. O'Mar, talks about how this is a special forces empire. Like, they really thought that, like, they could do to Iran what they did to Venezuela. Yeah. Because they can do that, right?

They have technological logistics. They can kidnap people in, like, quick operations. But the moment you have to engage in either boots on the ground, or a longer protracted military struggle than all the contradictions, all the political economic contradiction of the U.S. comes out. It's not just military.

Like, look at what the Strait of Hormuzes do. Like, that is jacking all of our economy, like the global North economies, right? And in the moment that Ansar al-La says, hey, you know, the Mendel Ababre straight is we're going to close that shit down too. Like, it's just, it's a imperial hubris that is being exposed.

Right. In so many different ways right now from like Lego, from like Lego AI Slop to the contrast of like the U.S. Trump saying I want a battleship that's going to take on drones that cost like $1,000 to make. And those drones are actually going to win

because you launch a thousand of them at a battleship they're going to win. It's insane. It's like they're too big. It's like a giant if you're swarmed by like a million bees, you don't stand a fucking chance, man. You're not going to, you know, saying like a giant versus a thousand toddlers you're

bro yeah not even a giant just be like an adult male an adult baby like a massive baby but on that note um on that note this is another item from that like you as you said Alex like they clearly don't have the industrial capacity to like meet China because the military industrial complex was not skipped neoliberalism that also counts for the cultural knock on effect

as well, because I'm looking at this article, annual flu vaccine no longer required for U.S. military. It's like, dude. I watch that video. I love watching Heggsets videos when he signed something because it is so, like that gives me hope. Actually, I'm like, oh, yeah, this empire's done. No, I used to die in Trenchfoot and now you're going to get the flu. We're going to see like Mexican-American War civil war shit now. Like, cholera.

Morgan Trail shit, dude. Yeah, trench. It's not a dysentery on the battle. You talk about an own goal. Like, I mean, you just don't, like, that's a pretty easily avoidable thing, like, flu outbreaks in the barracks. Like, but that's what I'm saying. Like, the cultural knock-on effects of neoliberalism have now even infiltrated the imperial

reproduction. It's just beyond. It's not that the Spanish flu didn't kill, like, tens of thousands of U.S. army soldiers, like, at the end of World War I. No, it's not. I mean, I just have to wonder. I think I said this in a group. Chad, so you and Tom Terrace, but I just have to wonder if the goal is just not to just

annihilate the U.S. military and just actually lose, because now losing an award means winning for certain investors and, you know what I'm saying? Like, the military industrial complex. As you said, it's been so neoliberalized, like, whereas maybe like 40 years ago, 50 years when Eisenhower made like the military industrial complex speech, she was probably like referring to maybe like two, three thousand people. Like now it's been so. thoroughly attenuated, it's like we're talking about like eight people. So you know what I mean?

Just like that, so they don't care. Who are given half of the defense budget. Yes, exactly. Trillion. It's trillion. And now Trump wants a trillion and a half. Also, well,

so also on that note of the cultural knock-ons of effects of that, Trump this week was crying for the release of eight AI hostages from Iran. Like, Wait, so they were real? Eight sexy babes. They were just bots. They weren't even real. They were real.

Dude, his spokeswoman went on Fox News and started, like, crowing about how Trump had released. Dude, wait, wait, how is this? Okay, I've been kind of offline, but how is it's not a bigger story? So hold on up. I saw that image of all those people, but I just, I didn't look at it. Not real. That was AI. All real.

All fiction. We made it up. Because she went to the podium and was talking about it. She went to the podium. She went to Fox News. But someone reported a couple days ago that there's an Israeli program. It's like making up AI Iranians to talk about how horrible it is to live under the Islamic Republican rule. So like some people are wondering if that's where the eight, eight bay Iranian.

Dude, you just you just have to believe that mostly AI is going to be used to make the losing guys and the bad guys actually seem like good guys who are winning. I'm like, hey, seriously. I mean, because it doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. This is part of the genius of like whether it's the Lego video, the Iranian Lego videos or whether it was like the Palestinian resistance videos with the red triangle. Like that technological capacity to to not just provide an alternative perspective to what's actually going on, but then to really undermine or contradict like the imperialist narratives. That's why they've been so effective, right? Yeah.

So now we're at a point where Trump is tweeting or truthing. I just thank you Iran for not for deciding not to hang these eight women that I asked as a as a part of our ceasefire negotiations. I mean, he might as well have just been like, yo, I just freed the telotubbies from prison, bro. Like, it's not real. This is when the Mexican president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was in power, he got a lot of heat because he said that when they were building the Mayan train through the Yucatan Peninsula, he said that an engineer,

had caught on a photograph had caught an alush which is like a Mayan elf so he's like listen and he tweeted it and he was like an engineer working for our Mayan train um captured in alush on on on camera and then everything is mystical which I love I think about that quote a lot everything is mystical everything is so much shit that the distance from that to like Trump saying I saved the lives of eight AI Iranian women from hanging. Like, dude, we literally have the boomer. We have the boomer Facebook president, then. Well, Amlo is very boomer, very,

and face, as they call it in Mexico, and Facebook, yeah, no, he said, that's it. Like I saw a video, someone did an AI video on Twitter. This is why it's good that you're no longer on, Terrence. It's like a, it looks like it's an airplane on an aircraft carrier and a humongous, like, great white, shark jumps out of the water and bites the plane and takes it into the water next you get to see trump saying that we need like white shark defensive missile someone retweeted it was like i'm going to post this on facebook and shit is going to go off right like because there's you know the boomers might believe that kind of shit yeah

i mean i well speaking of boomer speaking of the boomer boomer rot like something that was fucking killing me yesterday was this reporter asking trump how long are you willing to wait for a response from Iran from Iran Trump said don't rush me we were in Vietnam for 18 years like invoking Vietnam that's your model I just love how much is very clear that he does not give a fuck about the troops he's like yeah nix die so what

I watched that yesterday that was I'm like okay you're gonna go to the Vietnam route That's good. Don't rush me. Don't rush me. We were in Vietnam for 18 years. I don't know who I'm speaking to because it's not our audience. But if anyone was to join the military right now, I'm telling you right now,

there could not be a worst time to do it. Yeah. They don't give a fuck about you, man. No, in that article, in that New York Times article about, like, the depleted artillery, the depleted warheads and all this shit. they like quoted some like general admiral who's like speaking in pegseth talk he's like our warfighters are primed and ready to fight the biggest battle it's just like dude actually what we're going to do is going to turn our war fighters into missiles

biological weapons yeah yeah yeah yeah with them to silo and like launch them iron iron man kamikazis they'll put him in like trebushes and launch them over the city walls because they'll have flu Yeah, that is... Ironman, Comacazi biological warfare. That sounds like some shit the Caucasusadors are new, bro. Oh, my God, damn. Dude, well, on that, okay, on that note, I just wanted to end with this.

There's a few other things that were pretty funny. Trump is, like, he's cleaning the, quote, unquote, filthy national mall. He, like, pointed to a photo of MLK. addressing the National Mall with I Have a Dream and was like, I'm going to do it better. And he's, he, he, I have a nightmare. I have a dream to clean up the national. I have sleep paralysis. Yeah, I see the hat man.

Then there was the drug price thing, like him saying he brought drug prices down 600, 700%. That was pretty tight. Don't they have some sort of a portal on the website where you buy cheaper drugs or some shit like that? Is that part of his reasoning? Uh-huh. But it's mostly Ozempic and like fertility drugs. Like literally that's what it is. It's new tropics and.

Yeah. But I wanted to, you mentioned it a second ago, Alex, and I wanted to just kind of close out on this. I thought this was pretty funny. Because when I saw the headline, I was like, oh, wow, like another example of Heggseth Canning a military leader in time of war. But I don't know how the military works. And I didn't know that the Navy Secretary is just some like bum-fucked civilian position that they appoint a lump in billionaire. But like this, the headline was Navy Secretary is out amid Pentagon infighting. And again, this was the front page of the financial time.

So I was like, oh, man, like, you know, like this is clearly. a sign the U.S. doesn't know what the fuck it's doing, fighting its war. But it's like way stupider than that. It's like way more hilarious than that. So like it says here, this is in Politico. Navy Secretary John Phelan abruptly left his job on Wednesday in part because a hugely expensive new battleship he championed sparked friction with the superiors, including defense secretary Pete Hexon. They wasn't feeling him no more. They wasn't feeling him no more. They was not feeling him no mo. That should have been that lie, bro.

He said told him that. He's like, we're not feeling you. Not feeling. No more. I did say Hexedth slip up in a press conference today, actually. He was saying, like, we've got the best war fighters, but he said, like, breast on accident. He's just, like, fucked up at, like, 8 a.m. He's like, I got fucking breasts.

three gin and tonics in and he's already just cooked um trans wolf fighters hell yeah Phelan who served just over a year in his post

had helped conceive of the new battleships to curry favor with President Trump the quote Trump class battleships were a major source of frustration for Heggseth

and deputy secretary Stephen Feinberg because they did not serve the Pentagon's broader strategy to pivot toward smaller, cheaper uncrewed ship right

um I mean, also the idea of just presenting Trump with a shiny new toy, like a child, though, Chris was, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, like, the, the naval equivalent of the F-35 are these, like, literal ships that they've spent, like, billions of dollars on for, like, 10 to 15 years. They can't, they ended up abandon it. I think there was only, like, a couple that are in service, and they're always breaking down. What are they, like, you mean? Something like that? No, they're, like, smaller naval warships that are supposed, I can't remember, like, they're supposed to be, like, high-tech stuff.

Oh, like, frigate class probably, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, like, much smaller, right? And they can't even do those right. But they want to do like a World War II era Iowa class battleship and shit. But call it the Trump class. The Trump class is his golden fleet, right? That's what it's called, I guess.

The golden fleet. The golden fleet. The golden fleet. The golden fleas. He wants like, he wants massive gilded ships. The golden fleas. The golden dome. We got the golden dome too.

Don't forget the golden dome. He should just turn us all into gold. Guild every United States citizen. You should. The massive ships will cover. the Defense Department billions to even begin developing, and our quote, not at all aligned with where Hexeth and Feinberg want to go, set a source. Phelan had also recently seen some of his key responsibilities pulled away.

They said Feinberg had taken over management of submarine programs and the O&B was running the shipbuilding effort. I just, I guess what I found so funny about this, it says the Aster of Phelan comes amid the U.S. military campaign in Iran and a week before Hexseth is set to testify on the Pentagon's proposed $1.5 trillion budget, which would involve significant boost to key Navy programs, and this includes Trump's proposed golden fleet. Phelan a wealthy financier was one of several businessmen tapped for top Pentagon posts by Trump. He came aboard a service plagued by problems in shipbuilding with promises to shake up the

process. So it's like, it's just funny because it's basically like, and I've said this before, we've pointed this out before, but like Trump's like, in. Like his way that he runs the government like a business is he's kind of like a mob boss. It's like go out, get me a shiny, you know, earn. Get out there on the streets. Earn me some money, right? Like make me some money.

Earn that scratch. Earn that scratch. And then like they'll bring him a project like whether it's Chrissy Nome and or Stephen Miller rounding people up or what. And in this case, it was this guy being like, picture this. It's a massive, massive ship. The biggest ship you've ever seen. And it's gilded in gold.

Trump was like, yes. Yes. That's perfect. Can we put my name on it? That's how the golden dome was sold to him, too. I mean, that's how you get to him. That's beautiful. It's perfect.

I just love the idea of a fleet of golden ships, like, off the horizon, which makes it easier for the enemy to spot. No, no. Because they're just shining in the sun. It blends in with the sun. Yeah, it's like, or it blinds them because it's so bright. Oh, man. Well, yeah, I think, go ahead, Alex.

The thing is, what I worry about now is the wrong thing is obviously he wants to get out of it. He's going to get out of it somehow. And the front there will remain in southern Lebanon and continuing the West Bank in Gaza. But then Cuba's next, man. And that's like, that's what worries me and worries a bunch of things. worries a bunch of people that it's and this is like a historical pattern anytime the US gets his ass kicked

the US Empire gets his ass kicked in West Asia or Southeast Asia whatever they come and take it out on Latin America and and they've been kind of setting this up for Cuba for a while particularly considering the people that are in the in the cabinet right so Cuba is is definitely on the on the hit list and then the story that I mentioned earlier

about these CIA agents in Mexico who were maybe they were Jester Maxine it didn't work out against and narcos, but they, like, got taken out. And now we have this, you know, cicario situation where, like, it's out in the open now that the CIA is, is involving itself in counter-narcotics operations in northern Mexico. And it's a really, it sparked a huge controversy in Mexico because the, the,

the federal government, President Clyde de Shanebaum, are saying that they were not aware or informed that the CIA was going to be working with the state police and the northern state of Chihuahua, which, I don't know. We'll see the type of recording that comes out. You know, the CIA has a long history in Mexico. There's like four Mexican presidents who were on the CIA payroll from like the 1960s up until the early 80s. The CIA was doing all sorts of crazy shit there in the 80s.

Again, ostensibly on supposedly fighting against organized crime while also protecting Mexican state assets who were really good anti-communists, also very good torturers and disabilities. peers of people. But because they were good anti-communists, the CIA would protect them from when the DEA or the FBI would try to come get these Mexican state agents for, you know, being involved in narco trafficking or stealing cars from Southern California and then bringing them into Mexico. So like it's just weird. It's a really weird moment in Mexico. And obviously the more immediate context of the constant Trump threats that he, the Mexico, as he said the other day, Mexico's a lost cause and, you know, we're just, is there's going to be some sort of, what type of intervention is there going to be, particularly with our mad king? It's kind of a, I just, I just have to

wonder if he wasn't tapped as the perfect individual to take out a lot of grievances, right, against certain countries, you know, whether it was Venezuela, Iran, now Cuba, Mexico as well, you know, especially with sort of, you know, the disastrous failed war on terror, you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. And it's, I mean, the Venezuela thing is also, I mean, we don't, like, you know, Nicolas Maduro and Celia Flores are still in jail. We, we haven't gotten a lot of information as to what they're, you know, how they're doing,

other than from the rapper 6-9, who apparently was hanging out with Nicolas. Oh, I saw that. Nicola-Maduro signed his sponge bob. That was tight. Stuff. Again, more more evidence that I'm just like my brain is cooked. But like I never thought that I six, the rapper six nine would just be hanging out with Nicolas Maduro talking about working out and and SpongeBob. But that situation is ongoing as well, right? Like ongoing pressures that the US is exerting on the current leadership of Venezuela to to essentially undo some of the gains and the achievements of the Bolivarian revolutionary process. So again, it's a pattern. Anytime the US. empire gets defeated abroad or as exposed as being weak, it comes back to Latin America and it does horrific shit to the people here, which then will inevitably spur migrant flows and refugee flows from those countries to the United States, and then the United States will crack down

on them, and we get that nice little feedback that we've talked about in the past. We didn't even mention, but this was a headline that showed up on my Apple News Alert, so you know it's serious when the normie news is finding out about it, but that like one of these soldiers involved in that raid on Maduro's compound made like $400,000 off a polymarket bet that they would, you know what I mean?

And his name, his name was so deranged. His name was Gannon Kin Van Dyke. What? You thought you about saying Gannadorf. That's the fucking character from Legend of Zah. Gannon Kinn-Vandike. What the fuck is this name. There's like five ins in there.

Too many ends. If you ask me. Or McCarty-McCarthy's name. What the hell? Yeah. That's a, well, maybe that'll,

maybe that'll be a good thing. Well, we got to follow Paul Marquis Betts on intervention in Cuba or Mexico, and that might give a little forewarning to, yeah. To the governments of both countries. But yeah, it's not,

it's not looking good for, for the America, at least. No. Well, we will continue monitoring the situation. I think the upshot here, though, is that, or the TLDR, at least of the second part of the program, is that the empire is overextended, neoliberalized on cinder blocks, sick with the flu, thinking about breasts.

The car is parked on the front lawn. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The grass underneath it is dead. There's rust. Yeah. No seatbelt. Right. No seatbelt.

But yeah. But yeah, so I don't know. Anything to plug, Alex, before we say goodbye for this episode. Anything to plug. Listen, I'll just say this. Stop. You're setting up the lost episodes. Like, it's Nas releasing his lost tape.

Like, they're really good, man. Like, stop being so hard on yourself. Oh, dude. He's such a perfectionist. You don't know, you don't understand how bad it is. We recorded one yesterday. I was like, me and Tom did. And it's, I just, I went home.

I was like, oh, fuck, fuck, talk. No, I don't believe. You had to do this on purpose. Like, gnaws has lost tapes to be a patient. Because you look at the comments and people are like, we love this shit. So I think it's like a clever, uh, marketing ploy. No, this one was actually, I, I do genuinely think they're all bad. And then when people like them, I'm genuinely surprised.

So I don't. I, I just feel. guilty sometimes. I don't want to like demobilize anyone or take the wind out of anyone's sales or like, you know, I don't want to like, I feel a sense of responsibility. Like Dumer. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

I feel a sense of responsibility. I don't want to like give people some sort of like reason or excuse to like jump off a building. Yes, or disengage or like retreated to like retreat into religion or fantasy

or compounds or something. You know what I mean? like communes. No, no, no. So I'm just, I do feel bad. That's why they're not canonized. Okay. No non-can. Well, I don't have anything to plug, but I was at, I was recently at a conference at Yale.

I was put on by some brilliant history graduate students. And the scholar, Manu Karuka, who does work on settler colonialism. And, oh, a fan of the show, Christina Hetherton was that. So shout out to Christina. Oh, yeah, shout out. She told me how much she loves your Sunday service. Yeah. And in this conference, it was an assortment of really like committed, brilliant people. It was organized around Greg Grandin's latest book, America, America. And anyway, the scholar Manuka Ruka, I think posed a really important question that, that is one that I come back to. Maybe it'll help not demobilize people. And he asked, you know, what is our responsibility living in a country that governs through genocide and bipartisan fashion? And I think that's, that's the question that, um, collect. and individually, like those of us who live in the United States need to continue to reckon with,

and perhaps that can serve as a foundation for mobilization. Because I think to me, again, to go back to what we talk to, that is the crux of the matter right now globally. And we are directly complicit in it, right? So I don't know, I'll, that's no plugs. I'll just leave it with that because I think it's a really compelling question that could serve as a beginning of something, not at the end or as a demobilizing thing. But as always, thanks for having me on, guys. It's always a lot of fun to chop it up with you guys.

Of course. We'll do it again very soon. And you can all go check us out at Patreon. Maybe I'll put it out yesterday's lost episode on Patreon. I was just about to say listeners, you probably have another lost episode coming up. Just beg hard enough. And hopefully Tom will get to leave purgatory

by Monday. They might let them out. Don't mess with the Catholics, Tom. Don't mess. Eternity is a long time, though. So we'll see. He may be in purgatory for a long time. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Just don't make the same mistake Tom did. If you're not baptized, do not take the wafer. Well, no. No, I don't know. It's baptism and it's also a first communion. So he, like, messed up, like, on multiple levels. He's like, Tom is going to hell.

He's in there for a while. Like, he's in there for a while. Like, he's done. Poor bastard. I think also confirmation. Oh, I think.

So, yeah, he messed up like. I've done all those things. I went to a mass recently. So I'm, I'm already on my way. You're fine.

I'm good. And I didn't take communement. I sat back. I set my white ass down and I didn't eat that white weight. All right. Last thing I promise. Just imagining the priest coming over to Tom and Tom just like, just to open.

Because his mouth, it takes the way for his. He's a little... He's a boy. He's a boy. He's a boy's sense of wonder about the world. You can pretty much feed him anything. Poor time. I don't know how that got me so good.

He does that. All right. Don't make that same mistake. And please go to subscribe to Patreon. And we'll see you all on the Patreon and Sunday. Have a great weekend. Adios. Peace.