Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 450: Amerikkkan Pastoral

Episode Date: June 26, 2026

What happens when hillbillies get too much college and go to Ivy league law schools? The answer may shock you.

Welcome to the show, listeners. I want to start a new segment, I guess. I don't really know quite how to call it. I almost want to call it like terraforming Earth, but it's not quite terraforming. It's more like de-teroforming. I don't know what the opposite of terraforming is. Is there an opposite?

Is there an opposite verb? I mean, I feel like degradation, environment, ruination, perhaps. It's almost like a managed, it's like a managed degradation. It's like a, it is like a D-teroforming. It's like a, God, we need a name for this. We're going to have to come up with a name for this, boys. We're going to have to go to the writer's room.

The same riders room, we came up with Devil's milkshake and, Daddy, is it time for me to feed the hogs? De-terforming. Yeah, we need a new name for this. De-earthing? No bad ideas in a brainstorm. No bad ideas in a brainstorm. Daddy, you want me to de-teroform that earth?

Unearth it? Unearth it? That's the actual word, though, I guess. I guess exhuming. That would be like dig it up to a grave. Grave-digging? Yeah. We live on the world's biggest graveyard.

That it makes sense. Dude, the world's biggest. Isn't the entire world kind of a graveyard, though, when you think about it, dude? I mean, technically, I mean, if you look at, like, the fact that 99% of species that ever lived are extinct, so yeah. Yeah. Everything dies, so it's all one of the graveyard. It's called entropy, brother. famously if Springsteen said that.

Yeah. Everything does. Well, okay, if I could set up the segment, like, maybe a classic example would be, like, we've talked about before, like, they've got that, like, lab. they've got that like closed loop environment in Arizona where they try to simulate what it would be like to live on Mars. Right, right. But the whole point is not to actually simulate what it would be like to live on Mars. It's actually to simulate what it will be like to live on an earth

that we've completely rendered completely uninhabitable, like decimated. So that's like de-teroforming Earth, right? This is another classic example. This will go in the new column. Phillips has introduced skylight, a ceiling-mounted LED panel that makes windowless rooms feel like they have a sky-facing window. It uses signifies nature-connect tech to create the depth, brightness, and color shifts of natural daylight. Phillips also follows the sun throughout the day, moving from cool morning light to warmer evening tones. So hold up.

So when you turn that off, do you see the Blade Runner S. City, like covered in small? You know what I mean? That's just completely overcrowded Like some Cal-Ooned Wall City type of shit Uh-huh, yes Well actually it's basically for rooms That don't even have that They don't even have a window

It's like when you're gonna live in your concrete Like you know Fully closed secluded you know Pod It's for you're living in the pod You're gonna need to simulate an outside I could have used that man

When I was living in New York for a bit before I moved back to Georgia because my folks had moved down here. I hated it. Went back up to New York. And I lived in an apartment in Brooklyn that didn't have any windows. So I couldn't tell like when it was like

I'd have to set an alarm, which I already do. But I couldn't tell like when it was day or night. You know, so I could have used that. It's kind of like the blue light. I lived in a studio apartment called the Eagles Nest. And it didn't have any windows. It was like a building. And like only if you were in the like the,

like the, the, the, one of the apartments facing the front door, did you have windows? Maybe not even then. There was two windows as the front door and the back door is like a shotgun style. But yeah, it's the same thing. You would just kind of lose track of time in there. And for some reason, it coincided with the time

we played Monopoly a lot, which famously could last for days if you really wanted to stretch it out, you know. I think they should have renamed that from the Eagles and that's to maybe the Moes-Hawel, you know. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Moles Hole. I think that was the name of, like, Hitler. Bunker.

The Eaglesness. Was it? I think so. Damn. Or that was at least the place he went to go hang out and like take too much speed and I don't know what you did

in the days before TV and video games like what you did when you were on drugs. Like I've wondered that before. What did you do when you were on speed in like the 1930s? Like what the fuck you're supposed to do? Carry out poggrooms.

I guess so. Yeah. Paramellitary deluxe. with your fucking ricketts legs and fucking salgey va brawn till the till it's time to put one in you don't yeah didn't hitler have ricketts did i'm sure he did i think he had syphilis but that was day rigour in those days a lot of german i think i don't think a single german has ever existed that didn't have cephalus no Every

Every crowd has their bout with It's like how Sickle cell anemia Is very prevalent Among black people Who laugh In fact Every German just has syphilis

That's how Nietzsche died Did he really? With sickle cell or syphilis? I'm glad to say Nietzsche was black And Nietzsche had like One percent Sub-Saharan African

Is there an example Of my nigga Nietzsche? Okay Is there an example Is there an example of a white man ever getting sickle cell? You know the bit I brought it before about interracial head transplant? You find out that. You end up, you get to bequired sickle cell.

Yeah, you just go to the doctor one day as like a white supremacist. They tell you you got sickle cell and you're like, well, how? And then he's just like, I'd like to break us to you. But he shows you a mirror, like, yeah, after you had a crash, you had a terrifying crash. And you wake up like, great news. Mr. White Supremicist We've saved your life. Bad news you have sickle cell anemia.

Like, wait, what? They give you a mirror. You wake up and look down at your body and you're like, no. I guess your body would still be white. You would see white from the body down. But every time you look in the mirror, you'd have a black face.

That was your penance for all those tears. Then it just embraces it. That is truly like a Greek putty. Like an ancient Greek like God like punishment. Like narcissists turning down Juno's nymphs and then seeing his reflection in the water. Yes. Yes. Yeah, I don't know.

I guess the skylight is kind of just already like what they have that like, what do they call it that like blue light? People use it to give themselves vitamin D or something. Right. And I think there's some studies that have been done in some cities that actually have changed their amber street lights to blue. because it's the same kind of, I guess, reasoning why on your phone, if you have like a setting where it, I guess, gives off more ambient light, you know? Yeah. Like when you're sleeping so that it's...

It's supposed to tell you it's nighttime. Exactly. It's a circadian rhythm. Right, right. Yeah, I think the Philip skylight, though, is more for, like, simulating an environment that the... the basically, yeah, simulating an environment

for a world in which we won't be able to live. Like, have you all been following this horrifying heat wave that's going on in Europe right now? I heard about it. It's so bad.

People in Paris are jumping in the sin and drowning. There's been 40 deaths so far, 40 drowning deaths so far because people are jumping into the sin in Paris. I feel like you would get syphilis from jumping in that water, perhaps.

In the French, also. All of them have a bout with it, too. Man, that is crazy. And then the sin famously polluted anyway. So it's like, if you survive the fall, you, you know, you die fucking something else. Heather to unknown diseases. Yeah, yeah.

I think it's, resident evil shit. It's pretty, like, unprecedented, like a heat wave of this magnitude. And it's like a stress test because a lot of their architecture and residences and stuff just are not. equipped for this type of heat. And so, like, in Spain, they're projecting, like, mass death, like a massive death toll. Well, here's the thing about that, though. I think you're, you know, I don't want to play fast and loose with things.

This is a terrible thing, obviously. But you're right, Terrence. They were seasoned this with the Kim trails. They were seasoned. And now they're hitting us with the heat wave to finish the song. To cook us alive, bro. I think it's, I don't know, I was listening to, like, a BBC News Hour thing this morning

and a guy like whoever the fucking moron is it hosts that show he was like interviewing someone in the French government and I don't know there's just something like so

and I've said this a million times but there's just something so surreal about just like what about like just cooking all of us cooking alive very very slowly and like no one doing anything about it and we all know nothing. Well they all have AC

everybody that like that, you know, like they all have the appropriate infrastructure built their underground bunker. That's why they're going subterranean. That's why it's even more important

for us to figure out how to unteroform, de-teroform. Yeah, that's true. That was probably the whole Elon Musk thing that I think about it. Like, the tunnels thing connects with the Mars deadender thing

because what they're actually going to be doing is just going underground. Right, right. People. Especially because I had mentioned before, I think, in a couple episodes ago,

that Mars has no magnetosphere and there's a whole idea of like, you know, tunneling underground, you know, where I guess the Martian rock would like be a barrier from cosmic radiation. But you're right, Terrence, actually, they're preparing us for not being able to lift. Y'all, I've thought about this a lot.

They are, especially since you mentioned that, Terrence, they are preparing us for being mold people, man. Yeah, we're going to evolve, we're going to evolve eyeless eyes. Like, we're not going to have eyes anymore. We're going to, you know, select out the eyes from the human evolutionary chain. The beauty standard would the ideal beauty standard would change crazy when no one can see.

Dude, I'll, I'll be clean enough. I'll be honest with you. If you divorce my looks from everything else I got going on, it's like fishing with dynamite. Hey, brother, don't put yourself down like that, man. You're a good looking man. Elon must know, like a beach wear. He's cooked. All Afrikaners would be fucked

Fright. All his Afrikaner would be fucked too, that Dutch-ass fucking... I was just about to say, the xenomorph isionomy. Yeah. Speaking of Elon Musk, SpaceX is... So they just issued a massive bond sale. And according to the Financial Times, SpaceX bond sales signals markets are in, quote, bubble territory,

warns a lion's CIA basically the gist of this is that when you... Alliance being the company that gouged you for seven extra bucks every time you book a fucking plane ride or go to a concert These are also bad people for sure

The it's like travel insurance basically Right? Yeah yeah it's like they're like hey If you have a do do do ass and can't show up And then like when you're like hey I had a do do do ass and couldn't show up they're like well actually that wasn't covered under the you didn't have enough

doo-doo you didn't have the diarrhea insurance we'll send out our do-do adjuster to you know

check your do-do levels make sure this is a viable claim yeah yeah yeah

that'd be a shitty job being a stool sample collector bobo boom yeah yeah

firing on all cylinders today boys keep them keep them coming that's like I'll never forget the first time

I had to have my prostate check. The hottest girl of my high school was doing her rotations, coincidentally right around that same time. So I had to get down on all fours and have Kitty Gish put her finger in my ass in front of the hottest girl went to the high school

with. I'd tell you something. On paper it seems like, okay, that could have been fun, but it really wasn't. I could have been bad. Sorry. Go ahead.

I was trying to talk. We were talking about it. Oh, SpaceX. We're trending dangerously close to a collapse to the stock market, at least like with the entry of these tech giants into, you know, public investment. And then like Federal Reserve is now signaling it's not actually going to be cutting rights, but raising them. We are, we're trending very, we're trending, I don't know. It's another, I don't know, it's another biblical. Well, like I've heard, I've been hearing that we've been, like, heading towards a recession for a minute, you know? Yeah.

And I guess I don't know how, you know, how quickly the recession of 2008, I guess, kind of happened or what the warning signs were. But it definitely does feel like there was a bubble about the burst. Can I tell you what the warning signs were? Yes, please. When I had buddies who I knew mostly as guys that were all the time. putting their arms around their girlfriend's waist at the cash register. Having two notes on...

Hey, some of us still do that. Having two notes on brand new cars, you know? Yeah, it was a lot of... There was a lot of free money going around at that time for people that did not need it or deserve it, and that's how you knew. This time, it's... This time, it's like...

That was, like, purely... purely, you know, revolving around the housing market, right? Like, too much free credit. Like, they had sunk too many investments. They'd spread their investments around too liberally among, you know, bad mortgages. Right, right. What do they call those? Like AAA?

Like, like, more? like mortgages basically that they knew that people like could not. We're going to default on. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Right. But then they had like developed these secondary and tertiary markets where they were selling derivatives. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, they were just like passing debtor. Yeah. Right. It was like your, it was like your dealer selling you bad weed, you know. Usually my deal will have great weed. But when he wants to get rid of it, he's just like, yo, this is fire. You'll take it. And then I go home.

I'm like, this is a reginal man. That's a reginal, man. I have a headache right now. This is largely seeds and stems. The seeds and stems economy. That's what it was. That, as dumb as it was, was still based in a hilariously, like, neoliberal, I don't know. It was still, like, in this cultural and historical moment where they were still making concessions to a body politic and a public good.

so like the problem being like they we need to bring you know lower class people working people into home ownership so they can build equity so that we can make this neoliberalism thing actually work it was based you know what I'm saying very much like no child left behind was like you know there's been a kind of push in the last few months to like try to reassess and maybe perhaps redeploy no child left behind or something it's like it's just funny to hear people even talk about education policy? Like, we don't even talk about these things anymore. It's not...

Like, we've just spent this... The last 10 years just got completely assaulting public education. And, like, everybody has to be an engineer or, like, you're just going to, like, push you off a cliff somewhere. You know, and now it's like, no, actually, we need the kids to dream again. Yeah. They're too rambunctious in movie theaters. They can't sit still for five minutes.

This go around, it's not even, I mean, it's even, it's not even based in any, like, pretense towards a common good or public good. Well, I guess, I guess it is in the sense that they say, like, going to Mars will be a public common good, but it's all bullshit. It's, as you said, Aaron, it's future hustling, right? So, like, it's, like, even more of a scam. It's even more of a con than 2008 was. Especially with AI, because you're right, man, at least, like, you know,

know, you could see that like, even in their project, you know, even if they didn't really believe that everyone should own a home and, or I guess everyone should own a home, but we don't care if you can pay it off or not, right? We don't really give a shit. But now it's more like, well, we're going to shove this AI at you from every facet of your life, you know, whether it's your fucking phone, whether it's your web browsing. I mean, not even just technologically, but, I mean, guess technologically, but there's also dovetails with surveillance and data centers, you know. Nobody has a choice anymore and everyone realizes that it's not for the benefit of their own future or the future of like their fucking progeny, you know. Yeah, it's the relentless pushing it in your face, ramming it down your throat.

Like there was an op-ed in the New York Times over the weekend that said, this doom maxing has got to stop. And it's basically just scolding anyone who's a skeptic of it. Are they speaking to us personally? Like, I feel like that. Yeah. Wait, wait, wait. Wait, wait. Their doom maxing's got to stop. It's speaking negatively about anybody that's naysaying on the polymarket future.

On AI. Yeah. On AI. Oh, okay. Well, I'm open to it. I'm open to arguments. Basically, it's like every previous technological innovation from like filmmaking to radio to telephone, whatever. It's like people were skeptical and they knew they were just convinced it wasn't going to help

anyone or work out. And now look, like how great everything is. Well, the thing is, all those technological advancements provided tools for people to use to make stuff. This tool, tool, in scare quotes, just replaces the person that would use it. Exactly, exactly. That's the, that's the qualitative difference. I mean, and I think this is the same thing with like, I think I'd mentioned in a couple episodes ago with the whole space exploration, space travel thing, is that it doesn't really, Even the investors and the people that are, like, quote, buying into it, because I don't even think they believe this shit.

They already know that has no practical application, man. It has no practical application for anybody at all. Well, also, I'm starting to just be like, here's the holes I'm poking and all this shit. It's like, you all see that, who could, nobody could predict this, but SpaceX losing a trillion dollars of its market sharing history now. Oh, shit, really? So, that's what I was talking about. Yeah, people were like, oh, that's probably, that's probably, like,

there were some skeptics that were like that's probably happened in like a couple months it happened two fucking days dude literally they fucking went public within a week they issued a massive bond sale and so so naturally people are looking at this like wait what the fuck is going on like why if the stocks aren't great i mean if the stocks are so good then why are you um issuing debt like it's a very strange move very strange tactic yeah and what it turns turns out is there's only one of two explanations for this for and I'm not gleaning this from my own knowledge but rather people that know what they're talking about is either Elon Musk knows there's a massive crash coming it's going to make 2008 look like you know like Easter Sunday

or it was like a just like the the sort of legitimate more legitimized version of like just a pump and dump you know right right exactly seeds and stems economy brother well but like but like the thing The thing about that is, is like, global finance now. And like all the big banks ate it and abetted this, right? Because they all wanted those fees, those billions of dollars in fees they were going to get from this IPO and everything. So everybody was like, no, this is on the up and up. This is on the up and up.

That is shades of 2008 when the bank started like engaging in, you know, like, well, I mean, setting aside the fact that global finance is a glorified carnival game, you know what I mean? If, like, these people weren't lawyers and bankers and so forth, like, you know, they would just be like con man you know right um but setting aside just the overall scammy nature of like how our markets are formulated like it's it's even like worse now they're like engaging in stuff it's like numbers right level yeah yeah shit um well i you know this also comes at the time i just got this google alert on my phone uh this just happened this just in Supreme Court clears way for Trump administration to revive restrictive immigration policy.

So the borders are... Our soccer team's too good. We got to send... Yeah. Filar and back home. Dude, this is weird. This... I don't know.

I just saw this morning. Dog, they are... They're reviving the crack cocaine. into black communities from the 80s, but they are revamping it with fentanyl, dog. So like the borders

will be hardened for people. You won't be able to go through them, but for drugs, like, you know, you can get... A little more porous. What do you have drugs

in your body? Can you get through that? Oh, that's a good question. If you're a drug meal, essentially. Pretty much. I mean, the, this is, is a statement from New Mexico

Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham. This, I'm appalled by reporting this week by the AP in Albuquerque Journal that revealed federal authorities made a deliberate decision to let hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills flood into New Mexico communities despite

knowing that fentanyl is lethal. The DEA watched a 74,000 fentanyl pills were delivered to a mobile home park in Albuquerque and they did nothing. I mean, because like they know that immediately the minute they touch fentanyl, they would die. Oh, that's true.

I forgot about that. They're actually scared at this point. They're like, okay, just let it come through. Listen, if you're within 900 yards of it, you will die. Man, it's just straight up. It's like we're getting AI because it's going to replace the people, but then we're going to kill the people with either. Well, you've got to do something with the excess human capital stock.

You know what I mean? It's classic. Listen, we didn't think it would come to this, but like, if they could create a future where, like, only some, humans are necessary, then you got to do something with the rest of the people, and I'll be goddamn if my hard-earned pump and dump dollars go to take care of these lazy

assholes. I mean, especially if you look at AI and I guess like, you know, the, I guess, so-called future of automation. They don't need people, you know. They could just call the population, the surplus population, perhaps, you know. Dude, on this no, sort of in this same wheelhouse, also talking about immigration

restrictions. So I you know I was after we recorded the episode of Monday I like logged off bricked my phone I got bricked up

bricked my phone I know you've been wrestling with that I'd see my break there and then like was totally offline all day Tuesday and most of yesterday and like logged back in

like last night it was like oh shit we got to record tomorrow let's let's let's listen and see what's going on in the world. Man, I hope there's some fodder for the show. Let's scrape up the dregs of discourse right now. But so, like, obviously there was the elections in New York City, which we could talk about it in a moment if you guys want to.

But, like, and I'd seen headlines about that. Like, when I'm off social media, I still read headlines. And so I'd seen the election results and, like, you know, people freaking out about it or whatever. What happened? I know they made Jailen Brunson. king but other than that I don't know anything else that happened literally they made him a literal king that's what it says on cover of the new magazines and says it's good to be king and this is jel

brunson it is true um they uh I you guys will probably have to tell me more about what happened because I don't have as much information about that what I was going to say and this relates to the immigration thing you wouldn't know it from reading any of the top headlines or mainstream media outlets from New York Times, the AP Reuters, Washington Post, Tril Billetico. What's that, Tom? Trill Billis.

Yeah, Trillillings. The Nicholasville Herald Tribune. I don't know. You wouldn't know it, but, and this is actually not funny, and I'm not trying to make a joke about this. But, like, you wouldn't know it, but these Prairieland sentences came. down for these activists i think in texas right texas yeah 15 of them yeah and um i mean it's just

utterly shocking i think i saw sean mccarthy point out that one guy received more prison time for distributing zines than galane maxwell received prison time like he got 30 fucking years right i mean well we're in these zanes fentany i uh i i can't i don't know i have not uh read the zines I mean, there was something similar in Minnesota too where I think 15 activists were charged with like, I think putting up blockades, just preventing ICE from being able to like, you know, like harass and terrorize their communities. Ken Klippenstein actually had a really good article in this substack that talked about this sort of, I forget what it's called, man, but there's this initiative that Trump has been pushing through since declaring that anyone who's anti-capitalist, anyone who's anti-capitalist, anyone, who's anti-Christian. Oh, yeah. It's like it has PM7 or something?

Yes, exactly, exactly. And he's kind of liking this to pre-crime, you know, which as a sci-fi head, I immediately thought of a minority report, Philip K. Dick, the Steven Spielberg movie. And how, I mean, it really is like, I mean, I know this is like really hacked to say, but it truly is like, you know,

you are being targeted not for what you did, not even for what you said, but for what they think you're going to do, you know, based on your political views whatever so if just imagine if we could apply that same logic to the ruling class oh we we already could they know what they're going to do they say it openly actually yeah you'll you'll be prosecuted for things you haven't done yet or that like and even if you did do is not actually a crime four years ago yeah yeah these are not crimes even exactly um but but

But someone posted this in the Trilley Subreddit, actually. Flock cameras is installing AI powered audio recorders to listen for sounds of distress. The flock camera thing is fucking extremely dark to me. I didn't hear about that. What's that? What is that? Flock camera is these law enforcement cameras that are going up all over every single city in America. And they basically use AI facial recognition to detect when you've run a stoplight or spend.

or whatever, and then they'll just send a ticket to your house. Like, they've already got cameras that do that, but these are more automated. And again, they use the facial recognition. And there was this video going around of this guy, I think, in, like, Alabama, you know, he was talking to his local city council that, like, he's been ticketed multiple times by municipality in Florida, although he's never been to Florida in his life. But the AI thing misrecognizes him as someone else. And so it sends him the ticket, though.

You know what worries me about that man? Maybe this is like, maybe this is like kind of, um, a little bit too far field, but like when Kodak started making color film and I don't know if you know, man, like, I don't know, maybe mid-21st century, mid-20th century rather. Um, um, they could not accurately process like the skin color of black people, you know, and just the reproduction of black skin tones or darker skin tones was just like, I mean, it was, it was, it was not even just poor. You could even say that it was racially offensive. You know what I mean? They just didn't think that niggas would buy cameras, you know what I'm saying? That they would be using film like that. And I've also read in that same kind of, the same sort of lineage of this kind of racialized technology, if I could say so, that even AI can't really detect.

Like, I mean, I don't know if it's good enough to do that yet, but it can't really differentiate between, because I guess the models that they're basing it off of, right? I don't think that they can differentiate between, you know, different, like, ethnicities or different features or whatever may have you. This guy is not even black, not even a person of color. But how do we know that they're actually going to be able to target? I mean, that's not even the point to target the right people, you know? It's just like you can just look like some other guy, right? Or you can be targeted, especially because you're a person of color.

You know what I'm saying? That's the scary part about it. That just seems like a drag net that, I mean, because it's all based on. racial biases that humans are inputting consciously or otherwise, and this time especially it's consciously, that you can just terrorize whole entire communities, you know? There is this, you know, thing about like the prairie land sentences and like the fact that like I didn't see anything about it in the media. Like that is very, you know what I mean?

Like I was offline, didn't know anything about it. Well, it's kind of wild. It seems like that would be if they're passing like sort of crypto legislation that says if you're passing out literature that says, hey, data centers might be a bad thing. They can just throw the book at you. Yeah. Like, you think that would be spread more far and wide. You know what I mean?

And, like, as people, like, you know, there seems to be more homegrown resistance around these things, around the sort of locus of these, like, AI-driven data centers and stuff like that, that, like, what are you going to start doing next? Like, just, like, fucking, like, carting off, like, grandmas that on farms and just saying they're an enemy of America when they love America more than fucking anybody. They just don't want to ask. It seems like a flimsy pretext. You know what I mean?

And another case of them like sort of overplaying their own hand, but like what do we do about it? I don't know if you guys wanted to talk about the elections in New York City. If there's anything there to be sort of like mind or you know extracted for a larger

kind of discourse, you're talking, you're asking like what is there to do about it? Like do these elections offer a kind of corrective do they offer a solution is it much to do about nothing is it a big deal i mean where's jaylen brunson land on data center and where is jaylenz land on not just data centers but the squad 2.0 i think that's the real question here i mean man i don't know being from new york man um you know even when mondani got elected um you know it was heartening dude and i i don't want to discount anyone who's really excited but i do think that

we tend to go through this cycle where, you know, progressive candidates, and especially at this moment now, it's probably especially pertinent, right, with the Americans sort of shifting their opinion on Israel, you know, and especially in the city like New York, you know, which has, like, the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, you know, that's like, that seems like seismic, but I mean, at the same time, man, I mean, I don't know, dude. You know, it's, it's, I see a lot of people saying that, um, you know, socialism in New York. And it's like, well, dude, like, that's a fundamental, I mean, I'm speaking to the choir probably, but this is a fundamental, that's a fundamental restructuring, right, of the economy, right? What we're seeing in New York are like

reforms. And I think that they are important like for candidates like this to like, I don't know, even exist because it pushes the, the window, right? I guess of like what's possible. But I don't know, man. I feel like we've been here before. And, um, I mean, you know, I guess it's just a wait and see thing, but I did see silly tweets, like people saying that, soon we're going to have primaries between DSA caucuses, you know, and I'm just like, shut the fuck up, dude. That's, that's not, that's not happening. Yeah, that's not happening, man. Oh, they mean like, primaries like, uh, between like, you know, DSA's, a socialist libertarian socialist caucus. You mean like primaries that anyone can vote in? Like, and not just within a DSA thing, but I guess, yeah, I guess,

within a DSA thing. In Fayette County, Kentucky, I can vote between a caucus. Yeah, yeah, I guess so. Hmm. Which, I mean, as democracy. Well, I, I, um. Social democracy. My own thoughts on it are like, it's good. I mean, it, yeah.

Maybe it doesn't, maybe it's not good. I don't know, dude. I'm, I, I am a little concerned. I've been sort of haunted by this book. I read a few months ago called Architects of Austerity by this writer Aaron major, or this researcher. and like he's got a case study in there about the Harold Wilson Labor Party government in the 1960s that was elected like on a groundswell of support for social democracy and it really

it's collapsed kind of paved the way for the rise of thatcherism and the you know to make a really long and complicated story really short really what kind of like hamstrung it was the global political economic system and that like what's considered sacrosanct is you know independence of central banks neoliberal restructuring globally these things that like it's almost impossible for a nation state to really sort of buck up against but I don't know then again like you look at like Venezuela under Chavez, like China right now. There's a lot different global situation now than it was in the 1960s and 70s.

So I don't know, man. I remain agnostic. I do, what I do find funny about it, or what I find pertinent to our show and our interests is the right-wing freak out about it, for one, which I logged back into my, Like I said, locked back to my Twitter last night, saw that Avina had sent us a tweet in the group chat from Christopher Rufo that said,

for months, Lomas, who the fuck? I don't know, this is just guy just goes by Lomaz. Lomaz and I have been pressing the idea that the left is moving from, quote, woke to third worldism. That is, from symbolic politics to material politics. Yes, we ruined the reputation of, quote, woke, but third worldism is a more serious threat to life, liberty, and property.

Well, listen, I'll listen, hope that's I hope I hope that a rare instance of I hope Rufo's right I found I found I found the responses from some of the Dem Party loyalists to be especially interesting like there was a tweet going around from Jamie Harrison who was like with the head of the what the Democratic like the D&C I guess or you know managing their strategy which suffered under his like kind of rules suffered catastrophic losses like not just in the House and the Senate but they lost the presidency And I just really find it interesting that this guy was like, well, if you

don't like the Democratic Party, then don't use our resources if you attack the party. And I'm just like, dude, what have you won? Also, what are your resources now? Fucking Jamie Harrison tweet, like a guy that, you know, lost his election by raising $80 million.

Like, you don't have resources. Also, too, you use those resources and raised like over $100 million to lose. I don't think that you should be the one telling people what they should be. What's the value add there? Yeah, what's the value add there? Yeah, I'd say that.

It's like, I mean, I think there's a good reason to be optimistic, but cautiously so, because, you know, all those sort of externalities and so forth. But, like, a good thing, I think we can all celebrate in that is, like, it's causing the worst people in the world to have, like, connection fits. So, you know, good on. Well, I think that it, my position on whatever you want to call electoralism, I feel like I've tried to take a position over the course of this show for several years now that like I'm really on board with pretty much anything. Anything that forces the contradictions.

And I mean that like on all sides, on all fronts. I have always, you know, said proceed cautiously, you know, don't give into hopium or copium. stay away from both and just do it under the knowledge that it doesn't guarantee anything. It's just another chance to move the ball down the field. But at the same time, just be aware of what history is. And I say all this is someone who's not involved in any of this, right?

So it's like I'm not going to try to like Monday morning quarterback it. It's like I'm not involved in it. The only organizing I do these days is the toys for the 8th, eight month old. Organizing my bookcase is what I've been doing. Yeah, I don't know. I do think that there is, like I said, it is very interesting to watch the takeaway,

the upshot of this has been among the mainstream press and among the Democratic Party elite is that this signals, if nothing else, the end of, or at least the formal end of the long reign of pros, pro-Zionist politics within the Democratic Party. And I myself, I say this,

as someone who fucking hates the Democratic Party, and that is my biggest area. That's kind of my sticking point. It's sort of my biggest area of like, sort of confusion around this and hesitance because I just don't really see, like, I mean, I know it's a sale in New York City. I know it's a cell in other sort of like metropolitan areas,

but like you're just not going to gain any traction with a lot of America on the Democratic Party brand, even if it does try to like rebrand itself as like, we're no longer pro genocide, you know. I just don't think it's. Now it's 67% less genocide. Yeah, I think it's a tough sell. So that's my biggest hesitancy. But again, I'm not involved in this stuff. And so I can only really criticize it so much.

But what I'm trying to say, though, is that, because, Historically, I think this is kind of being seen as the end of like a kind of Zionist era and a more Zionist, skeptical liberal Zionist era. I mean, because that Brad Lander guy is still, I think, a Zionist, or at least a liberal Zionist. But I think the other two people, Darya Lisa and I think their name is Vasquez. Valdez. I think they're, I don't think they're liberal Zionists. I'm pretty sure they're pretty anti-Zionist, correct?

I don't really know much about them. And also, too, if you can make that a sticking point of your campaign, You know, like, you know, we said this on the show, and I'm not saying this to like take a victory lab, but I remember we got a lot of criticism when we said that the Israel-Palestine thing was the primary contradiction. And people were like, oh, this is so stupid. This is like such a minute thing in the grand scheme of things.

But, like, I think that's proven to be just like data centers and people's aversion of that, like a real, like, sort of visceral sticking point in people's politics now. And to see that there's people that can, you know, like with their whole chest, to put that into their campaigns and not have to back down from that or sort of count out to the apex of the world and so forth or just pay lip service to them I think is supremely encouraging and like you know that's not that's not like uh you know picking up carrying it in three yards

you know that's like you know yeah 20 yards downfield Jerry rice on a little fade round you know I mean when you have somebody like Joe Scarsborough I think on a show that was actually calling out the atrocities of like you know what he called the Netanyahu government, which, you know, that's always what they do. Now, no, that's where we, that's where we have to really, really, really, really, don't let them fall into that scapegoat and just let them put this all on Netanyahu because they've been doing this for a minute, you know what I mean? And I don't know Netanyahu's been, you know.

Well, it's funny, they use NetNahu not only as a way to sort of whitewash the crimes of the entire nation of Israel, but also of the Democratic Party. Because it's like also like Trump's involvement in this now has not for me, not for a lot of people I know, but for a lot of these Democrats has allowed them a convenient way to absolve themselves of fucking Joe Biden's role in this and fucking AOC being like, you know, he's working tirelessly for a ceasefire. The entire democratic establishment going along with what was clearly a genocide by fucking day two. so I mean it's just I don't I think that like they are going to continue to try to

you know maneuver out of any kind of accountability evade any kind of accountability for their role in abating and abetting this and you're right Tom that cannot abide no no no no no no we got that we have to fucking carve it in their forehead

you know what I mean yeah also also too I think like I think that part of like the, like, the, like, ideological jump for a lot of these people is that when you realize that Israel is just, like, sort of, like, you know, just not even copying America, but again, like this, you know, shared history of settler colonialism and the material support, right, exchange between, you know, the United States and Israel, right? I guess, like, the jump is, like, making people also be critical of America itself and realizing that those same kind of, like, processes.

of imperialism and colonialism already endemic in this country, you know, and that it's not just about like just Israel in and of itself, but like how, yeah, this entire framework and system of the United States also operates under the same premises, right? You know, and making people be able to criticize that, but that's, that might be a step too far for some people, you know what I mean, so I don't know. Yeah. I was talking with some folks yesterday that did some work in the West Bank and, and they were talking about like speaking to Palestinian. there and how like Palestinians there will be like well you all have the same sort of set up in America right with like the reservation like you have people that are basically just banished to

like one part of the country and sort of fenced in and like control everything that comes in and out like we have that same thing in here you know it's like we don't think of it in those terms you know what I mean but every criticism we levy against Israelis we need to levy against ourselves yeah yeah that's what's strange about it is that like Israel is a founding society and as in its own like sort of like foundational documents and and creeds and all this is explicitly ethno-nationalist in the United States started pretty explicitly ethno-nationalist even though it tried to like sort of cover its tracks this but then like after a hundred years had its like actual bouchoer revolution I'm talking about like

reconstruction the civil war where it like became a kind of like multicultural democracy but the weird thing is this isn't weird at all it actually makes a ton of sense that was a pretense for the further genocide and land theft in the West

like I've talked about this before but like I'd read this book like a year or two ago by Ned Blackhawk called the Rediscovery of America about like how the union

under Abraham Lincoln used the Civil War actually as a sort of like pretense for the further land theft of like the pious

and Ute territories out west and the Sioux and everything else. So it's like, you know, it's in the United States, like the United States has been a little more savvy about it and like tried to sort of like hide its tracks. And I've talked about this before too, like how in like the Shawnee Wars, how like there is like a document I think that went to Abraham, or I'm sorry, George Washington, something along the lines of like, we don't want to be remembered by history like the Spanish.

and I think that that is like a big you know if you're engaged in any kind of like political organizing or like propagandizing or political education it has to be this kind of like demystifying of America it's because it's clearly just that I wonder if the difference is that Americans are so like held down by shame you know what I mean like even if they support these things I mean maybe there's like a nugget in the back of their mind that they have to be sort of overperformative and over correct, you know, because we know our terrible history, whereas Israel just embraces it wholeheartedly, you know what I mean? Yeah, the MAGA movement is basically the Israelization of a significant, not insignificant portion of the American population where it's like, oh, we're just going to lean into the things that we kind of know. Dude, that's true, you know. And that actually, that actually perfectly tease up the reading, the thing I wanted to read for

today. This is a very long piece in Politico. Can I pee real quick before we did the long thing? Yeah, actually, let's do that. Before we strap in, let me go back to you. This actually is a perfect segue into what I wanted to read. Today, this is in Politico. This combines a lot of different Trillbilly's themes going back from day one.

You know, Appalachia, economic. economic development. Appalachians involved here. Yes, Appalachian cultural fetishization. Oh, they're back to that now? Yes, but in a different way. Oh, no. Sounds worsen. Okay. Also, you know, right-wing populism. Also, it also confirms a thesis that I've had for a while that I think I received a little bit of pushback on. But like, I've said it before, but it felt like we are exiting this era for sure, and this is why things like this are happening. But I said it before, but it kind of felt like the years 2019 or 2020 up until about

really the middle of last year. Once it became clear that the Trump Coalition could not contain its many contradictions and was about to fall the fuck apart, I felt like that era was kind of a kind of replay, but an inverted replay of the 1960s. So, the counterculture was these right-wingers, you know, dime square people, the new right, alt-right or whatever,

that was the counterculture, as opposed to like the 1960s being a left counterculture. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I felt like there was a kind of right-wing countercultural thing going on. And now to verify, and what I thought is a, I think there's truth to that, and I might have been overplaying a little bit,

doing a bit a little bit, but to verify that is this piece, this piece from Politico magazine, which confirms that the right wing, the countercultural right wing, is now doing the same thing that the countercultural left wing did in the 70s, which is there going back to the land.

It's a back to the lander movement. Okay. So unable to really transform and change society to the extent that they would like to see it, they are retreating from society and creating communes. Like a free soil movement, but rather than,

Fashes? I mean, what's... Human potential movement? All these things, right? And someone in the Patreon comments actually said that we need to, I think they were commenting on our doomerism and general pessimism about everything, said, why don't you just drop out of society and join a commune already? Start a

brother, I've considered it many a time. Well, to which my response is I ain't got enough money. Not enough money. Land values. Land costs too fucking much now. I have no agricultural skills either. the city boy through and through.

Bro, yeah. Also, too, I don't know. If, if hillside land in eastern Kentucky is cost a goddamn war pension, then you can't live no damn way. Yeah. See, this is in Politico. The new right has a blueprint print for building a Christian America.

This was from Whitleyville, Tennessee, which, I don't know. We need to bring that up on the map. They write it like it's like from like it's in the mountains. like it's in eastern Tennessee, which it might be, but it looks...

Okay, it's like... Is it like south of Whitley County, Kentucky? It is sort of south of Lake Cumberland, Kentucky, but even more east. So it doesn't really seem like the mountains, but I don't know, man, Tennessee's... Those hills go all the way to... Jackson County, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jackson County, Tennessee. Yeah, I know I've been to Jackson County. on a Tuesday morning earlier this spring, Josh Abatoy steered his pickup truck through a grassy meadow in central Tennessee. The field was empty, save for a few patches of yellow wild flowers. But from behind the wheel,

Abatoy, a soft-spoken 38-year-old with a boyish face and a stubbly beard, described a town that was visible only to him, a cluster of English cottages and craftsmen-style farmhouses, their front porches opening onto a communal town green, a farm-to-table restaurant tucked alongside a repurposed barn housing an organic farm store on the ridge overlooking the field a pasture dotted with grazing cattle and other livestock. And at the center of it all, Abatoe said, gesturing toward the middle distance,

a church spire rising into the pale blue Tennessee sky. For now, the town exists only in his imagination. But if everything goes according to plan, the field will soon become Brewington Farms, one of the neighborhoods that Abatois real estate company Ridge Runner is devout. developing in rural Tennessee. Oh my God. You can't have the communal sort of, what is it,

farmer, yeoman or whatever sort of thing, but it's also funded by real estate. It's also captured by real estate vultures. That will be a central tension in this piece, Aaron. The central tension will be this. They want to create a pre-capitalist, pre-modern, traditionally hierarchical commune,

but they keep running up against the fact that all the people attracted to this are like neoliberal libertarian high-eck people who only understand things through market terms who only understand things through market terms get off my lawn my fence is my you know fiefed domain you know that i know i know you get into it and it's probably not including this piece but i mean maybe this is just a bit but i'm just imagining the church being a front for a data center you know i i think actually to erin that actually probably will be what winds up happening. Brother, you just unlocked a primordial fear in my brain. The data center will actually look like a church to be more palatable to these people. The preacher will be preaching and everybody will be like, where's that humming coming from?

The data centers are like hidden in the walls, you know? Everybody has rare forms of cancer because of the water that they're drinking. On paper, Brewington Farms will be a neighborhood like any other. In practice, it's anything. thing but. The development stands as the cornerstone of the Highland Rim Project, an audacious effort to build conservative Christian charter communities throughout Appalachia. Backed by the venture capital firm New Founding, a Dallas-based fund with extensive ties to ecosystem of conservative intellectuals and activists known as the new right, the plan embodies

that movement's core conviction. The conservatives need to use the levers of public and private power to remake American life in their own image. As Abatoe readily acknowledges, the project is much an ideological experiment as an entrepreneurial one. What would it look like to build a microcosm of the new rights ideal society in the middle of central Tennessee? All told, Abtoy said, as we reached a clearing near the top of the ridge line, the company has purchased or contracted to purchase over 4,000 acres of land, which it has subdivided into 200 lots of varying sizes.

About half of these lots have already been purchased or are currently under contract. Abbotoy has specific visions for Brewington firms. The bulk of the land he explained will be parceled out and sold for single family development, the aesthetic continuity of which will be ensured by a homeowners association and an architectural control committee. English farming village in Appalachia feel, Abatoy said of his desire. I just want to know, like, there has to be something stipulated about who can and can't live there, along racial lines as well.

Oh, we'll get to that. We'll get to that. I just like it's, this is kind of like playing with like your little toys. And it'll actually, this will become much clearer once his intellectual background, it comes out. But like, it's like you're playing with your little, like, toys like, I want it to be English farming, but it's also like in the mountains. And it's like cool. This is like pastoral monopoly or some shit, dude. It is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. In each neighborhood, the company will hold some land to operate as communal farmland. or shared amenities like parks or playgrounds. Other parcels will be rented out or sold to, quote, aligned businesses. Crucially. That sounds sinister. Crucially.

If they're with the shits. Crucially, the communities will be infused with what Abitoy describes as a distinctly Christian cultural ethos. Some developments will be centered around, quote, an architecturally significant church, and the company is placing a premium on developing communal spaces where large families can gather to work, worship, or social

lies. In accordance with anti-discrimination laws, the communities are theoretically open to anyone, but in practice, Abadoy, who is a practicing Southern Baptist, expects them to be populated primarily by right-leaning Christians. All right, this fucking got me. He has described his customers as, quote, good-based people who want to build something inspiring and authentic to the region's history. I don't want to hear nobody that's talking about no pastoral living. Use the word based, brother. I think you should have to talk like you lived in the 16th century like if you live here You know what I mean?

He wants that He wants that he is going for a medieval Is he going back old English? Yeah Actually they should They should do that how like Israel brought back Hebrew Like they should bring back like old English Nobody can read the signs at all because nobody in America can read

It just because it's old new language. You go to the church service and they refer to Satan as old Nick and you're like, who's that? Who's the old Nick? Brother, it's like new old English but like new metal with like an omlot over the U with some shit like that. Oh my God. He says, having faith integrated with neighborhood design, that's just inextricably linked with the whole design process, Abbottoy told me.

It's thinking structurally. about the things that Christians want in a neighborhood. Abbottoy, who holds a master's degree in medieval history, knows all too well that the idea of bringing like-minded Christians together in intentional communities is not a new one, nor is it always a recipe for radical politics.

So this guy just went to college. He just, like, did too much college. Just like J.D. Vance, just like all these guys, Christopher Rufo. They just did too much college. Brother, it boiled their brains. It's like when I went to school and I was taking political science

and I rejected everything that I was learning. I guess kind of inverse and I really got into Marx. You know what I mean? And it was almost like this fetishization. This is this guy, you know, which I also do think too, in dovetailing with all this like kind of medieval,

like, you know, like living, I think that they should eschew all modern medicine. That's what I think they should. Well, they are trying to do that. They're bringing a lot of the old diseases back. They should bring back leeches, you know, to suck the humorous out of your body, you know? They should be about it.

You can't. Yes, dude, bloodletting. Half ass it. Yes. They should have to do bloodletting, your leeches, you know, various powders and elixirs. You know, eating gold, you know, this kinds of stuff. Like all the old fads of like the 17th, 18th century.

Be about it, brother. Back at Ridge Runner's offices in downtown, downtown Gainesboro, a small mountain town just south of Whitleyville, Abbotoy was explicit about the company's aims. The project he suggested as part of the New Rights broader effort to a revitalize America by beating back the forces of progressivism, globalism, and secular liberalism

that they believe have led the country to the brink of destruction. The only difference is tactical that the new rights approach at the national level is top down to remake the country by seizing and when necessary abolishing the primary institutions of political and cultural power, then Ridge Runners is the inverse,

building local communities that cede a conservative transformation of the country from the bottom up. Ridge runners move. Okay, we talk about Trump, J.D. Vance. And about the fact that the right wing is kind of currently splintering at the moment under the fact that we just got our shit pushed in

by Iran, that a lot of right wing base, Republican base, doesn't want data centers, and yet Trump is all about. about it. You know what I mean? Like there's too many. Right. Too many contradictions for them for the center to hold. Yes. For them specifically. Yes. Um, and so like, you know, you get a little bit of like, the background of this community was once like a very, uh, agriculture heavy. Had some manufacturing, but it's like seen better days. So, you know, anybody that's listening to the show

for a long time will recognize this. Like, right? Like, this is a community that people have targeted for like economic development. ED, when you're, when in your community gets some ED, dude, a bad sign. Devastating. But it talks about like avid, abatoy during a short stint living in Israel where his dad worked for a... Oh my God.

I knew it was coming. I was waiting. I didn't want to say he thinks that I was waiting. He developed an interest in medieval history, especially the history of the crusades. and after finishing up his undergrad studies at a Baptist college outside Memphis, he enrolled in a master's program in medieval and Byzantine history at the Catholic University of America and Washington.

Dude, this guy's a Southern Baptist who went to Catholic University? Not about it. Bro. But also to how you go to Israel and be like, I mean, I guess that makes sense, but how do you get inspirations for medieval living going to Israel? You know what I mean? I mean, this guy has too many. He's too many ideological.

cooks in this kitchen. Too many fetishes. He has too many fetishes. He has too many fetishes. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, that out there just to be one one kind of guy. Like, he's, he's, he's, he wants to do ethno-nationalism, but they didn't really have ethno-nationalism in medieval times. Like, they had religious and cultural chauvinism, but like as

organizing principles. And, you know, and there was the, like, the reconquista and everything in Spain and obviously like a huge anti-Muslim sentiment. Right, right, right. But like, trying to transpose that into the modern era

with like these communitarian values but also being trying to be libertarian about it but also trying to do it through a business. You know what poke a hole right through that shit, bro?

Bring the first like black Christians who may even be evangelicals into that community. The exact people that he was, but they just don't look right. You know what I'm saying? at grad school Abbotty developed

What? You what Tom? No nothing Go ahead. At grad school Abatoy developed an appreciation for the complexity

of pre-modern ways of thinking. People just act like pre-modern people were dumb but they were very intelligent and they had a lot of insights that modern people are just like

completely ignorant of Abatoe said No, I think they were pretty fucking dumb if they were doing bloodletting brother How old is this guy? He looks like he's probably

in his like late 20s, early 30s, maybe early 40s. I think I've seen this guy. I think they interviewed him on like a Channel 5 thing. He looks kind of like Shane Gillis. Well, he kind of does.

A little bit like J.D. Vance. He fits the end of that. A little like J.D. Vance. Yeah. He does. He does. Abitoy had grown up in a conservative Christian family, but as he waited deeper into conservative politics as he entered

the world of elite liberal institutions, oh, but he waited deeper in a conservative politics as he entered the world into elite liberal institutions. So once again, it's the JD Vance trajectory. He went to Harvard law school and then he was a private equity attorney. What the fuck?

This guy's going to like every college. He felt like a pariah because he got jealous. He got jealous, like, weirdly jealous, but he saw his like white cohort fucking black chase. Yeah. Dude, I tell you this, man. Like, you know, a hillbilly with like just

a little too much education can be a dangerous. I'm serious. Like, we got to look into this. Like, I think every hillbilly should tap out at a bad, I think every hillbill that needs a liberal arts education. But when they start saying, maybe I'm looking at grad school, that's when you got to shut it down.

I'm like, brother, I'm sorry, but you were put here to toil. We've got to put you in a works program. Yeah, we got to get you in a jobs program before you become, yeah, Mountain Hitler. help hide it you know I get that the legacy of the company town and the coal mines were like a net evil

but there were some good there were some you know good thanks to it they want to do like trad life want to do like the trad community but they want to build it along medieval urban development lines

like they want like a you know a castle in the center and like the serfs working on the castle grounds and like a church like that like that book Montayyu but one some sort of like

closed system where I guess but they want a libertarian I don't know it's like they can't really understand because they don't understand that like libertarianism and neoliberalism

are born out their ideologies born out of political economy about the capitalist mode of production they did not exist prior to capitalism and so it's kind of funny

trying to watch them jam the square pagan of the round hole. They don't, I can't figure it out. I really do think again, man, not only should they succumb themselves to medieval level diseases, but I think also, like, I think

you know, the biggest recorded in history, the biggest, or the most recorded wolf attacks, right? We're like in medieval towns like this. I think what they should do is that they should actually live the way these people lived, where they have to fear for their lives from hungry wolves

in the mountains. I don't think it's babies. Dude, I don't think it's fair for you to say that you want to like, kind of like have this like sort of melding of like, you know, modern like economic tactics and politics all infused like racial politics, especially, but you want to live like a medieval life. I think you should go through the, the trials and tribulations that medieval people went through, whether it was disease, a wolf caron off your baby. They need a satanic goat. They better have a satanic goat in that motherfucker. Here's the thing I would say. And I think this governing ethos trickles down to even our consumption habits, okay?

If anybody's trying to revive something, that should be a dead end. We don't need to revive. No, we don't need to bring the old things back. Brother, I'm 100%. But if something's classic, if something never ended its run, like if something was like started in 1800,

but it's still kicking. Dude, that's fine. For example, the electric guitar, Like, they've tried to end the run of the electric guitar, but they have not been successful so far. Sometimes people still rock. I mean, it's like, you know, you could bring back the Mick Reb, but we don't need Sprite remix, you know what I mean? Right, that's what I'm saying.

We don't need to bring back. We don't need to, like, a new idea could be influenced by an old idea. Right. Like, if a band is like, if like a new band comes out and they're like, they sound like Led Zeppelin, I'm out on them. Oh, yeah. I'm okay. I'm 100% with you.

But if they sound. Kind of like Led Zeppelin mixed with like Porta's head mixed with like Tribe Called Quest. That's fine. That's fine. Future and they got like some organs and guitars in it or you know what I'm saying? That's fine. You can be influenced but you can't like retro ideas. You know what I mean?

Yeah. You can bring you can't bring back shoe gaze, but you can bring back or you can make shoegaze, right? Yeah. That would be a kind of thing that's not really been. Explorable Pecks first out. Okay, true. Good point. Not really taking that into account, but thank you for the court.

Anyways, he said this was influenced because he was working in corporate America, and he said, you don't have a ton of autonomy when you're making a lot of money in corporate America. He said, it's a very consumptive, low-agency lifestyle. So then anyways, that combined with the pandemic,

he said that when the pandemic hit, he was living in Houston, the lockdowns in the ensuing Black Lives Matter protest deepened his sense of civilizational unease. In late 2020, he and his father began purchasing a handful of properties in the Highland Rim area. He was rimming it. He was rimming with his dad. I'm just rimming with pa. I'm rib-jobbing with pa. Doing some rim jobs with pa. In 2021, he reached out the fellow Harvard Law School. Dude, I was like... He went to Harvard Law. Yeah, he went to Harvard Law. He did too much college. He did two fucking, he not only did a grad program in medieval

studies, but then he went to fucking Harvard law. I'm putting another guardrail on the hillbilly and his educational trajectory. A hillbilly that goes to the Ivy leagues is out. You can go, you can go to the goddamn land grant school of the state. Okay? And that's it.

That's the height of your education. Has there ever been a time of history, I mean, modern history perhaps, where having an education at the level of like going to an Ivy League school, right? With all the ideas that you're introduced to, you know, just the diversity of opinions and sort of like this kind of widening of the aperture

of the liberal sort of like mind or philosophy, ideology, whatever, has there ever been a time where it's actually led to a, like, a more regressive, regressive politics for individuals? Because that seems like contradictory, you know what I mean? Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, um, in many ways you could say, that that's kind of like

like for example like neoliberalism the story like you know of von Mises and Hayek like we're very influenced by Red Vienna and it's clear that like

guys like J.D. Vance and this guy like they go to like they go to college and they don't quite fit in socially and that becomes their entire like regressive. That's true. That's the animating thing

of their things. It's like oh they get access to they back door to the Tony's like high society and like they're a little unfit for it based on their experiences and they make their whole program look what I endured at the hands of these elites. Dude, yeah. While still doing all the jobs the elites do and like, yeah. Like, dude, if you went to like yell law and then became the third worldist, like,

you know, leading a peasant revolt in the mountains of Appalachia or something, like, that's cool. Yeah, yeah. But like, don't be like all these elites and you're the vice president of the United States. It's just like, it's so unbecoming. Yeah, it's funny because, like, I have a similar trajectory to a lot of these people. Like, I grew up in an oil patch where we had no manners and public education was bad. And then went to college and, like, was sitting in classes with dudes that were, like, extremely intelligent and had all this knowledge. And not only...

They had been doing ram jobs with their dad. They'd been rimming with their paw. Rimming with paw, man. They were rimmed with paw for many years. And I remember, like, there's this story like J.D. Vance tells about, like, how he didn't know. I think it's in Hillbilly Elogy. Like, he doesn't know, like, the fork on the left is for salad or some shit. But I remember having a similar experience in college.

Like, we didn't ever put our napkins in our lap growing up eating. And then, like, going to college and, like, encountering that and feeling kind of like a backwards rube. But it's just like, I just kind of thought that was amusing. and funny. And then because I could fit in socially with people, it didn't cause me to become a Nazi. But I guess with those guys, like, they just don't fit. Not only do they not have the social cues or whatever to fit in into these, like, sort of more elite worlds, they don't have the charm or charisma to do it either.

Right. Right, exactly. They're not social commemians, exactly. But, but, like, you know, the deck stacked against them because they all also look like cabbage patch dolls. Not easy to navigate the highest rungs of society when you look like, you know.

This guy is, this guy's yes, very square and round simultaneously. He's both square and round at the same time. And that's a very interesting look. He says he went to Harvard Law School and then he met another guy named Nate Fisher and his

venture capital firm new founding Fisher, who got his start buying distressed real estate in Florida and Texas after the 2008 financial crisis, okay, so he's a vulture parasite, had founded the company to fill what he saw as a void for an unapologetically right-leaning

venture fund working on, quote, critical civilizational problems, not only in tech and business, but also in politics and culture. Our motto from the beginning has been build the America you want to live in, Fisher told you. Here's what I... Girl, you already living at America.

Here's what I hate about that shit, too. I hate, like, because I've known a lot of these types of guys, and, like, they have, like, even if it's, like, you know, fed through the lens of, like, ratling politics or, like, just revanchous, whatever. Like, they have these, like, grandiose mission statements for their, like, vulture firms, but, like, really and truly, like, just behind closed doors, they're just, like,

bragging about how much fucking money they're going to make. Yeah. And all that kind of shit. It's like, there's no, like, there's no, like, there's no real sort of even by their fucking like civilizational blah blah blah blah blah

blah standard you really just want to make fucking money dude and you got to pick an archetype to be to like whatever and you're like some for some reason that's outside the scope of my education

you picked this one but that is and Trump kind of embodies that contradiction like that he himself that like he rode to

office on the wave of a kind of settler fascist movement but at the end of the day it's all falling apart now because he is ultimately not a settler fascist he is just a settler capitalist like he only cares

about how much he can extract for his own private personal gain like he is you know what I'm saying he doesn't really have an ideology beyond my favorite things about Trump is how he performs the presidency like people come up to him and he just acts like very august

and like serious like what and it's like you know in that fucking stupid ass head of his all he's thinking about's a fucking filet of fish and you know playing the back nine at fucking wherever I mean it was like the other day where you know you had this guy behind him I don't even know what the fuck it was for man I think you had sent to Terrence in the chat

but you know the guy was talking about Albert Einstein and Trump was being like no one cares no one cares that is what his braid is like operating on all the time And I think it's true for these people, too. They don't really give a shit about it.

If that guy, if that guy would have stuck the landing on the facts of that, like the first time Trump would have nodded sagely. But because he's like stuttered two or three times and changed himself, he's like, okay, let's just cut through this. What do you say? It was like 130 years ago. It's some shit. No, 140 years ago.

A hundred and 30 years ago, brother, pick one. Pick one, dog. I was getting impatient. Trump's a one take guy, man. Like, whatever he says, that first time is what's right, even if it's totally wrong. I feel you brother Trump I'm the same. The difference between him and these guys is that I do think that these guys

they do want to make a ton of money but they also kind of want to try to do it while being based and there is a kind of inherent contradiction there. You know what I'm saying? Archaically based. Yeah only one guy archaically based. Archaically based. It's like only one guy

in history has really been able to do that and that's Trump, right? It's like it's not um he has a very unique sort of of, well, I would say diagnosis, but also like a superficial charisma that aids and abets that these guys don't have. Well, the thing with these guys, too, do you think with these guys too is that they're ruled

by like this hauntological sort of perception, you know what I mean, of like this idealized past, but they live in the modern society. So like, they have no other choice but to like kind of like, you know, fulfill their base is most base, I don't mean any good way. Their basis desires, you know. Which is in stark contrast to Trump who never left the 80s. Trump is not even You're right actually

But another thing is though Is that like Trump kind of flew too close to the sun And because he also at the end of the day Managed He wound up Really kind of Because he knew he was riding on the wave

Of this settler fascist thing He kind of started to get high on his own supply a little bit And I don't think he ever personally Like read about the fucking tariffs Of the 1930s or William McKinley or about immigration restriction or any of this other base stuff that people like Stephen Miller and J.D. Vance are into.

But he did let it become policy in some ways. And so he was, you know, because Trump doesn't give a fuck about history, right? Like, he doesn't fucking know William, McKinley from William Henry Harrison. But like he let himself like traffic in these circles for long enough to where like the base guys did start to start to get their policies through a little bit.

And it kind of ran up against Trump's own, you know, like we've said before, sort of naked ambition and thievery and criminality. And it's just kind of... Well, these guys are fooled by this hauntological, again, to use that word, they're fooled about this like kind of hauntology,

but Trump himself is not at all, you know? Like you said, Tom, he's perpetually living in that time. There's a difference between wanting to bring it back and actually existing within that time. Yeah. Yeah. He's not, he's reviving anything he's making money the same way he did in the 80s the tools and the tools and mechanisms have changed yeah because history for him is only his own personal history because he's the protagonist of reality so like history began the day he was born and so that like that's his only

conception of history you know the heat death of the universe will occur when he dies right right it'll just be a blink out of existence it will all fucking die together but um remains to be seen if that's correct or not. He is kind of Ayn Rand's like genuinely like Alan Greenspan just died last week

or earlier this week I know he did like he's kind of like the quintessential like libertarian subject right like he can only conceive of time and history

within himself like through himself right anyways back to this this Fisher guy who's some Nazi from Harvard law school there wasn't

really anyone doing that in the way that was aligned with the right or even with the theme of American revitalization. That pitch had caught the attention of some big names in Silicon Valley's growing conservative sphere, including billionaire venture capitalist Mark Andreessen. Around that time, Fisher also... The egghead. Dagged. Deghan, motherfucker. He also struck up a friendship with J.D. Vance. Abatoy and Fisher hit it off, and Abatoe joined new founding as a partner in late 2021. blah, blah, blah. They also saw it as a chance

to put some political ideas into practice. They joined the Claremont Institute. I don't know what they're going. I thought you were about to say they joined the clan for a minute. I don't know. I just heard K.L.

I was like, wait, what? Okay. Jay DeVance wanted to bring back the gay calendar? January should be called Wonderful again. Aventoy was particularly interested in the work

of Balaji, Shrinivansen, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur whose 2002 book, The Network State, How to Start a New Country, was enthusiastically passed around new right circles. In the book, Shredivars... Okay, okay, we're way too far as start new countries. I think you missed, again, haunted. Haunted by the past. You miss that boat, brother. I'm still like trying to get caught up on Cape Verde, becoming Cabo Verdei and Czech Republic becoming Chetia.

Oh, and Turkey is now Turkey. Turkey. Turkey. Turkey. Okay. In the book, Shreda Vosin argued that the proliferation, has it always been called Turkey? Did I just reveal my own?

I think they call it. Yeah, we haven't always called it that, but they have always called it. Cut that out, dude. Don't, don't get it on there, dude. Maybe it was once just called the Ottoman Empire. Actually, they should go that like that as that in the World Cup. Because, like, USA's playing Turkey today.

They should go as the Ottoman Empire. It should be like the revived Roman Empire, which, again, America's a nostalgia idea versus the Ottoman Empire. Uh-huh. Or I guess it would be Byzantine. That would really be. That is true. That would be fucking tight. Yeah.

The Western Roman Empire versus the Eastern Roman Empire. I think all these countries should just be like former shelves of themselves and they should go in the game with all the kind of attire. You know what I mean? You should be dressed as an 18th century Turk. You know what I'm saying? I think we've stumbled upon a truth as real as, as agriol imposed conception of like the arabesque, the grotesque, and the classical. And I think it's this.

The arabesque, the incest. I think you have the, yeah, the arabesque, the incest. That sounds a little bit too close to Baham-Dadean for me, brother. I don't know. Well, yeah, I know. It does sound that way. But interestingly enough, it's not. like pastiche and nostalgia ideas die out it's like it's like pastiche versus civilizational

that's why iran will always be but america will be a flash in the pan you know what i'm you're on some freder jameson shit okay i feel yeah yeah yeah i've taken the grand view okay um in iran dude if they're they're gonna get like a serious serious boost after this like, 100% because if they don't, then it's back to war. And it's the last thing

Trump fucking wants. I mean, dude, it's a, I don't know, really amazing to watch. In the book, Shrinivassan argued that the proliferation of internet communities

and digital cryptocurrencies was rapidly rendering the modern nation state irrelevant. In its place, he predicted the rise of what he called it network states, communities of like-minded

people that formed online before migrating into the real world is decentralized, but sovereign states. Abbotoy told me he was, quote, skeptical about some of Shrinivossin's broader prognostications about the demise of the nation state,

but that he thought Shrinivostin was essentially correct about how the internet generates new possibilities for communities organized around common values rather than economic notes. Can I tell you something? And now, I got on this idea a long time ago when I was in my brief dalliance with anarchism, and I'm not saying that to knock anarchism. You dallying with

Antibald. I read some letters in 2009. There's this guy Peter Lamborn Wilson who also wrote some pedophile poetry. So, you know, take this all, everything's got to say. You caught me with Dally with

Anarchism and pedophile poetry. Cook, brother. Go ahead. I think may have been, anyway. So, I just want to say I don't, I don't support that choice of his. but I did before I knew all that I read like a couple of his books one was

um um sacred drift on the on the margins of Islam because he was also a Sufist a Sufi anarchist pedophile okay um but he wrote a book called underrepresented community indeed well this speaks to the danger of you know when you tried to jam too many ideologies into one thing one vessel but in the sense of a blind squirrel finding a nut every once in a while. He did just was really against internet culture in the sense of like you actually can't commune with like by distance, by digitally. Community refers to, you know, like the physical, you know, being able to touch somebody.

Hopefully not kids in his case. But anyway, I just think like a lot of these ideas are of like online community or like it's not the same thing it feels like what i mean it's going to go it tom go ahead no no no go no go ahead you cook for a while i've said too much i see it's like rooting in locality where it feels like this is more what this guy's talking about is a more of embrace of alienation especially like in the digital era you know what i mean which i mean i can't say which i won't say can't form communities i mean it definitely has for me um but i don't know man it's also we have to take account that maybe some of these communities are either in your mind kind of overrepresented, right?

Or like kind of like outsized in proportion to how like realistic or how like prevalent these communities actually are. Which seems to me to only lead to further alienation, you know, perhaps. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, go ahead, though. I was just going to say. And also if you're a Sufa Stannochist, pedophile, you're probably not finding a lot of, a lot of community. I'd have enough. it's a completely like dematerialized conception and I mean that both literally but also economically

like what he wants to do is create a mid-millennial medieval commune centered around a value rather than a political economic imperative Right. And so, of course, that's going to bring together like several conflicting, bizarre, ideological formations.

But basically, like, like you said, the internet generates new possibilities for communities organized, organized around common values rather than economic nodes. It's just a fucking, like, back to the land or commune thing. It's just like, let's escape society.

The internet has, and there's actually a lot of evidence, uh, there's no, There's no, you know, it's not coincidental that a lot of the founders of the internet were themselves countercultural figures from the 60s. 100%. Who tried to, you know, create this like decentralized network of like-minded people that spread information and, you know, collect people and collate them into, you know, various ideological channels and chambers or whatnot. It's no coincidence now that on the other side of that you're getting a kind of right-wing

countercultural commune movement. But let me ask you a question though. Like, so do they use money in this commune? Like, do they use currency? But even if it seems as if this is like sort of like, I don't even want to say anti-capables. They give rim jobs. They bought them and trade through rib jobs. They're creating rim.

Yeah, they're not creating jobs. They're creating rim jobs. The rim economy. But it's all. funded by capital though. So there lies the contradiction as well, you know what I mean? Yeah, basically what they're doing is

they're using a investment vehicle to buy tons of land, and then they're hoping that people who have like-minded values and who have the privilege of not having to go to an office every day and can work from home, we'll just move to that place, buy a mortgage

from them, I guess, get a mortgage from the bank, and then buy the land from them. Paying through rim jobs? Okay. Yeah, I don't. It's like, it's, it's kind of a scam a little bit. You know what I mean? It's like, I can't imagine it's like actually engineered to help anybody.

The currency thing, though, I'll get to that in just a second because they do address that. They're trying, yeah, they're trying to reverse engineer like 3,000 years of political economy. But like, doing it through the lens of like communitarian Christian libertarianism. It's fucking so got it. So you get like five cows for your daughter or some shit like that? Boweries. Dourries, okay. So far, about 40 Ridge Runner households have moved into the Greater Gainesboro area.

Many of them renting or buying in a short-term basis until they can break ground on their new properties. The primary hold-up to construction is burying electric lines, which turns out to be trickier than expected. None of the customers who have bought in the developments agreed to speak with me, but Abatoy described the customer, race is divided more or less evenly between, quote, high performing remote workers,

primarily tech employees at tech companies, and quote, people who are economically portable for one reason or another. That sounds dark. That sounds very deferious. I don't like that. Many are wealthy transplants from blue cities or red state suburbs. One buyer recently sold several locations of a national franchise

for enough money to retire early. Another is a firefighter of California who moved his family to Tennessee. and now flies across the country for the four days out of every 12 days. Jesus Christ! Imagine you as a kid from these well-to-do families and your whole college fun were just spent on moving you to the middle of fucking nowhere.

Here's the difference of that stuff, dude. I think some people are totally happy with rural life and I'm obviously from a rural place and all that kind of stuff, but I was from a rural place that brought the world to me there. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like through like Apple Shopping some of these different things. And I just wonder if like if I had grown up, I just think of like if, you know,

in like Central Tennessee Farm Country where I just hear the little buzz of cicadas and that hot Tennessee sunshine on me. But like just like nowhere to go or nothing to do with that. Like I would, I think I would have blown my fucking brains out because I was fortunate enough to get the best of both worlds in that in that context. You know what I mean? Like so like and I'm not shi. didn't know people that enjoy that. But to me, that's just such a... The idea of leaving

California to move to Tennessee farm country to live a bunch of fucking dickheads and box stores is like... Also, flying back to California every 12 days. Dude, where does your money come from? That's insane. Like... Is that what it meant by economically portable? I was thinking he was meaning like, people so desperate

they'll work these fields for us. I think they do mean that eventually. I think they want that eventually, Probably. I mean, if you want to make a medieval village. Because I won't

go ahead and tell you right now, this motherfucker ain't filled with work. He's like, like, I can always tell a motherfucker

that drives a duly truck and wears a barber jacket. He needs to be hung up by a fucking time. Oh, dude, Tom, he's gone to three colleges. He has an undergrad

degree of master's degree and a law degree. Like, this motherfucker's I don't even think I went to one college fully. Like, God damn.

Let's see. Several of, of the Ridge Runner customers have formed a homeschooling co-op that follows a loosely classical Christian curriculum. Many have joined a congregation run by conservative Presbyterian pastor

Andrew Isker. Without dedicated gathering places the customers are making do with what they've got. As we looked around the Brewington Farms, Abbotoy showed me into a damp limestone cave where a few residents had set up a bed sheet and some straw bells. Wait, hold up. These things are living in caves?

For Lord of the Rings. They went that far back The cave bed next. Oh man, this is worse than I thought. The charter Enrich Runners charter communities as a nod to the emergent charter cities movement.

We got a community of overly educated upwardly mobile people aspiring to be mole people. Tom. Dude, white people. I've said it

before but I'll say to you like white people are the worst people of all the people I hate saying that they are the nastiest fucking people dude think about James town think about like when white people showed up in Virginia and they were just disgusting as fuck and like just like started eating each other because they couldn't even like farm or anything and the natives were like what the fuck you do you know how like yeah Europeans were like can you believe these like these black and brown people eating with their hands and it's like, well, brother, you're missing the context here. Like, to you, eating with your hands is gross because you wipe your doo-do ass with you.

You know, like you. You ain't take a shower like a year, bro. You handle your viscera and all that shit together. Like, these other people can eat with their hands because their hands is clean. I think they should go, again, they should go back to take a yearly shower as like they did in medieval times.

You know what I'm saying. True. You got to be about that fucking life, dude. A Silicon Valley Okay, so the charter A nod to the emergent charter cities movement A Silicon Valley adjacent push To build semi-autonomous city states

That are exempt from local laws and regulations And fueled by cryptocurrencies So there's your answer, Aaron. The currency is crypto. Okay. I was waiting for that shoe to drop. I know it couldn't be just ram jobs. Abbottoy said that Rich Runner

is hoping to replicate the community cohesion of the charter community but it isn't seeking specific exemptions from local laws or regulations. In any case, Tennessee's low tax rates, coupled with Jackson County's extremely lax zoning restrictions, makes such exceptions largely unnecessary. One of the reasons the company chose the area in the first place. As for cryptocurrency, Abbottoy said that the community's adoption is being driven by his customers, many of whom are already crypto-curious.

The company recently agreed to its first land sale using Bitcoin, and they will accept crypto as pavement. So you got a bunch of you got a bunch of like wannabe peasants walking around with smartphones and shit like that

and having like computers again the data center man as the church living in caves dude can't get Wi-Fi the report the report

so I guess there was an investigative segment on a local TV news segment about them the report focused in particular on the views of Isker, the pastor, and another of Abatoi's customers, a conservative commonator named C.J. Engel.

Isker and Engel are not formally affiliated with Ridge Runner beyond buying land from it, but they're both friends of Abotoy and have been on the Abatois podcast. Damn, Abatoe's got a podcast, bro. I've heard all I need to hear now. Crypto, podcast, Rim job. Living in caves.

Living in caves. Isker, a self-described Christian, nationalist who is ordained from Doug Wilson or by Doug Wilson has mused about his desire to dissolve Congress and the judiciary invest all power into a sovereign ruler named Donald J. Trump. Engel, meanwhile, has led the online charge to promote the nativist slogan Heritage America. And I clicked on that and that whole thing is goddamn hilarious. The Heritage America is a basically like an online vibe thing that's centered around images of Daniel Boone and Norman Rockwell paintings.

Oh, so it's like it's a fascist Pinterest mood board. Okay. I understand. I'm reading this. You know, like here's the fundamental problem with a lot of this stuff, like a lot of this like obsession with like a frontier America or America that was or once. It's like most of it is just horses. shit anyway.

Like, dude, I've listened to this Gary Stuart audio book right now. And they're talking about like his forebears and he was like, oh and his, it turns out like one of his cousins was a friend of Daniel Boone and they did like all this adventures and stuff

together. And then I start thinking about the subject of one of mine, Terrence's earliest live shows, Corporal Fess Whitaker, who claimed to have been fought in the Spanish-American War with Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders, which he didn't fall into any of the traditional recruiting pools of the rough riders. He wasn't a member of the 18 whatever Harvard football team.

He wasn't a Ponny scout and he wasn't a New York City cop. He was a con man. He was a con man. The thing is when these countries are in their nascent states, like you can just say, oh yeah, man, I was like, I was at the Alamo for sure. You know what? Because every person couldn't have been, every person's great, great, great grandfather couldn't have been running around with Daniel fucking Boone and fighting Santana.

You know what I mean? I think about that with like there will be blood. And like how like Daniel Plainview's whole story is kind of just a lie. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's just I don't know. I mean, carried these myths into the set of context with us.

That is fundamentally part of the problem with Israel. Right, right. These 2,000 year old land deeds that they claim that, you know, and all this bullshit. It's like, Doug, we just don't, we just are not grounded in reality. Like, this is why history is so important. This is why good historians are worth their weight in going. because it's like they can just rightly say, no, this is horseshit. This was like incredibly

unlikely and, you know, all this stuff. Because bringing, like, the myths we make carry into this stuff, like even in the Bible. You know what I mean? Like, how many times you hear, like, that Ham was cursed to be a black man? You know what I mean? And, like, that was like the origin story for, like, African people. It's like,

well, yeah, well, I think what it is, too, is that these myths have so much salience in this unpredictable, chaotic world, right? where nothing seems true or nothing seems like concrete, you know. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. It's like we cling to myth.

That's why story is important, but the story's got to be right. You know what I'm like? The story has to be right. The story has to be edifying and uplifting to everybody in society. When the story becomes like, I'm the great hero of my own journey and everybody else is just like whatever. Like that's when things start getting sideways, man. It's just, I hate this stuff, man. These motherfuckers just like, you.

Dude, like, I promise you. I promise you. Like, what's this guy's name? Which one? Isker, Engel, Abitoy. Abitoy. Abitoy? Abitoy. Abitois.

Abitois. Yeah, like, I just, I don't know, man. The, the conceptions these people have of themselves, as these great men of history that are, like, leading all these. It's just like, it's all rooted in fucking horseshit, there. Isn't that, like, isn't an abattoir, like a slaughterhouse? Is it, this guy's, this guy's, name is like, his name is literally just cattle.

I am, I'm cattle. He looks, like I said, he's both square and round. A, B, A, T, O, I are. He looks like cattle. He is cattle. Yeah, it is. It's a specialized facility where livestock is slaughtered and processed for human consumption. I don't think,

denominator of determinism, perhaps. Yeah, I don't think I would move to a commune with a guy with his name specifically. And especially what following him into a guy. damn cave. I want to read this part. About Engel. This guy, Engel, he described his own decision to leave California where multiple

generations of his family had lived as quote, a metapolitical statement. The quote, frontier spirit that had pushed his ancestors west couldn't survive in the land of Gavin Newsom. Instead, that ethos is rebounding back across the continent, reconstituting itself

in more rugged climbs like Gainsburg. when you come out here, we can actually start from something that is more frontier-like, he said. We can create a vision of the future that is built on heritage and history, but it doesn't have to capture any institutions because the institutions don't exist here. They're obsessed with the institute. This is also great. This is such a reversal. It went from going to the frontier for a quote, easier life, for land, for soil. You know what I mean?

But now they're like, no, we actually want to suffer. We actually want to go back. When you wasted that precious white skin, now you got to go back to reclaim it in Gainesboro, Tennessee. You know what? Let them have fucking Gainsborough. It is fascinating, right?

I'm sorry, maybe there's good people in Gainsborough. We shouldn't just cede that to these fuckers. I'm sorry. It's pretty fascinating that, like, they, okay, so the part of their thing is, like, they want, quote, a layer of protection. It's like, well, what is it? Do you want, do you want a commune,

or do you want to settle the frontier? Those are not the same thing. dude. But they are, they've conceptualized this in their minds as an almost like sort of reverse manifest destiny. It's like we're not going out west. We went out west. We hit the fucking coast. Go southeast young man. Yeah. So they're going back the other way. They're re-conquering the Appalachian Mountains. Some might call a retreat. Some might call it de-teroforming in some regard. Dude, okay, this part, this part fucking destroyed me, dog. As soon as I read this, I was like, you guys got to hear this.

As part of that effort, Engel, whose day job is running a company that manufactures off-road camping trailers, is teaming up with a friend and recent Jackson County transplant named Ryan Green to turn an old community center outside Gainesboro into an old-timey gas station and diner. They planned to call it Rockwells, an homage they claim to Norman Rockwell. Engle told me their goal is to recreate the nostalgic fill of mid-20th century filling stations before modern rest stops became grimy microcosms of America's hedonistic hyper-consumerism. Listen to this. The duo has taken the calling their store the anti-buckies. No vapes, no lotto, none of that stuff.

You know, you know, you're going to be the last thing they do when they feel. finally build it like you know you put the plaque on the wall to commemorate the founding it's going to be a like colored no colored side is such a white yeah yeah there's other there's other things that were hallmarks of those places too you know also to bucky's perhaps the only good thing that ever came out of hyper capital that's how you're going to call the anti-mug what is a gas station with a vape salado what the fuck you're going to sell brother if i can't buy if i can't buy blood raps at the gas station and like energy drinks then I don't, I don't, what, it's not a gas station.

It's not a gas station. It's something else. If they don't have a horny goat weed, it's not a gas station. Yeah, they got fucking, uh, boner pills. And if I can't fucking buy a spritzy cologne and a condom in the, in the bathroom. The attached diner, which will sell primarily locally sourced food. See, dude, it's like they're trying to combine too many things here, locally sourced to, they're trying to merge the bourgeois with like,

Yeah, it's ultimately bourgeois. It's like you guys like you got fucking grossed out by like vape's and and lotto tickets and like that gas stations are like, you know, where you know, if you're a lower income bracket, you go to get certain things and like, you know what I'm saying? I already, I already know these motherfuckers are too online as well because it's just like all those right wing accounts when they say like America used to be like this and it's like a hot chili pepper song. Like video or some shit like that. Or this is high school in the year 1990. It's too much, man. Like, you have to pick which part of the past you wouldn't be a part of because the medieval past is in, just contradictory.

It's just, it's incongruous, right? There is a mid-century shit you're talking about. There is a pervasive anti-presidentism. I don't know how else to call it, but like, I was talking to Tom about this the other day, like during in the World Cup, that Polly Market commercial with Rick Rubin, or Yeah, Rick Rubin. Yeah, Rick Rubin. And it's got this

fucking Kanye song from 2010 on it. Like, you know what I mean? Like, just... Future's in it. But there's like some symbolism. We gotta get future. Yeah.

And the whole premise of the commercial is like, will borders exist in 100 years? Like, it's this whole like deep presentism where it's like you exist in this future that's false but you're because you're betting on it. And it's, you know, it's all about like a sort of like

destabilization temporally, and again, that they're using a Kanye song for fucking 15 years ago that hasn't been relevant. You know, it's just very creepy. It's a lost future if the time

that they love so much was trapped in amber, like one of the mosquitoes from Jurassic Park, you know what I mean? Yeah. The attached diner, which will sell primarily locally sourced food,

embodies the back to the land agrarianism that has become a quietly influential force in New Right politics. Indeed, a kind of Maha adjacent preoccupation with sustainable food systems and niche health trends suffuses the entire Highland Rim project. As part of their membership in the Brewington Farms Homeowners Association, residents will receive credits to redeem it the community for which will sell. There's

some script. They're doing script again. It's like it is like I don't know. It's like a it's like a right winger a 90s right wingers parody of like the Soviet Union like you'll have your credits you know and you'll eat your slot which they'll be able to read when everybody else does it but we can do it

yes which they'll be able to redeem at the community farm store for beef raised on the neighborhood's pastures in downtown Gainsborough an Italian restaurant that's popular with the Ridge Runner crowd proudly advertises its use of beef

tallow rather than seed oils. Food was honestly the most radicalizing thing for me in any of my political thinking, Green, Ingalls being as this partner said. Food was the most radicalizing part of my thinking. Oh my God. Another thing people need to

get the fuck out of is like fine dining. Not against good food or healthy food or that kind of shit, but just like too much education and too much foodism can like really destroy you, man. Truly.

culinary preferences aside England Green's plan for the gas station points to a deeper source of tension between the Ridge Runner Project and the local community and one that can't be chalked up to a bunch of pesky liberals a few days after I left Gainsborough I spoke with Bo Smith, the chair of the local Republican Party in a seventh generation Jackson County native

Smith described the prevailing political mood among the town's conservative residence as more libertarian than communitarian. Good fences make good neighbors, he said. We take that very seriously. that vision is at odds with the ethos of Highland Rim, which like the new right more generally, rejects that live and let live mentality. Its stated aim is to use public and private power, whether channeled through a government agency or a gas station to promote a conservative and Christian way of life. But I mean, can I also just say, too, that you would think that if they really wanted to go back to the sort of communal living, that the symbol of a gas station and car culture in and of itself and how hyper-individual,

realistic and alienating it is. But of course, these people don't think about it's incoherent, Aaron. It's like It's exactly. It's like they want to go back to the 50s in like the old time a diner and Norman Rockwell, but then they want to go back to the 19th century and settler colonialism, but then they want to go back to

premaritan. The Neolithic age, apparently living in caves. But then they want to go back to the Neolithic age and living caves. It's like, what the fuck? What tradition do you want to embrace? Yeah, yeah. I get your reject modernity, but your traditions

are incongruous. Exactly. Anyways, just to finish it up here, the surrounding community's preferred path towards economic revitalization runs through a mix of small business development and tourism.

Last year, a small contemporary art museum opened downtown Gainsborough on the opposite corner. There's a hotel. This whole approach to revitalization and the contemporary art museum in particular is anathema to Ridge Runner's crew, to the Ridge Runner crew, who see tourism as a Trojan horse for progressive governance in its attendant cultural malaises.

Abbottoy often speaks scornfully of places like Asheville, North Carolina. I do too, actually, so that's fair. For different reasons, though. Yeah, for different reasons. I ain't the tourism part. No, not, no. He says, imagine the people who built Asheville coming back and seeing it today, he said, with an air of disgust.

It would be completely cold. culturally alien to them. Well, yeah, I mean, I think that, like, anybody, like, who built any of these cities coming back today, I mean... I mean, my city wasn't built for black people where I live, so I think anybody who built back then would be appalled. So, yes. And also, like, the idea that someone in medieval times, like, the idea of someone from

ancient times going to medieval times and seeing any continuity, I think that there would be a huge cultural difference between there, too. It's just that like these guys are so literal-minded but simple-minded that they see anything before like 2008 as like just this culturally homogenous traditional, you know, era of traditional values and conservatism. Like they really do think that anything that is just old by virtue of the fact that it's old means that it has like nobility and heritage and like, you know, good cultural value. This is why bourbon, like bourbon, boom, happened. It didn't happen because people are just crazy about bourbon. It happened because they could harken back to, you know,

Don Draper. They could harken back to, you know, rough-hewn whiskey makers from the Scottish Highlands or whatever. Like, it brings a lot of things that are evocative for them to mind. You know what I mean? And, like, also to build in that some snobbery. Right, exactly. 100%.

I mean, because this is ultimately at the end of the day what we're talking about here. We're talking about fucking snobs. People that are like too good to live even in the suburbs. We've talked about this before, but like white flight from

not just urban areas, but from suburbs resulting in like the Yellowstone thing. But the Yellowstone thing is a little more of a libertarian vision of this, you know, white flight,

like rural experience. This is a more communitarian vision. that keeps budding up against the, you know, very liberal, very libertarian indoctrinated minds of the people doing it. Well, all the things that they lament are connected to capitalism, and they seem to want to not divorce themselves from it, but at the same time, they want to enjoy all of the creature comforts that they've gotten from capitalism. Yes. Yeah. Especially in the mid-century, you know. Can't have it both ways, pal.

You can't. Well, there got, like, Abbottoy to be like, I know about medieval history. People think those people are dumb. But it's just like, will you yourself have compressed like 3,000 years of history into like this very simplistic, like, vision? And I, you know, something you're saying a second ago, Tom, Abbotoy says it's not only a possibility, but an inevitability that more people will move to rural areas.

And like, you know, and I, like you were saying earlier, Tom, Look, if I had my choice, I would live in a rural area. I would rather live in a small rural community than a fucking city. I don't know why. I'm just, just my disposition. But there's nothing noble about that. That's the thing. Just a preference.

It's just a preference. You get into trouble when you start attaching a nobility or virtue to it. Or the same thing on the other direction with cosmopolitanism. It's like you just like to be around like things. that you like to be around and there's nothing wrong with that either way. It doesn't make you a better person. Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah.

Abatoe's bed is Ridge Runner's communities can function simultaneously as havens for like-minded conservatives and as engines of durable economic growth. He predicts that the two communities that Ridge Runner is building in Jackson County will generate about $100 billion in local construction business and that in the longer term, the neighborhoods will bolster the local economy through local property taxes and spending at local businesses. I mean, we'll see. We'll see how that works out.

Once you have to start, like, sending your kids to schools with people whose children are not white. Right. Then we'll see what your views are on property. The first black family to move there. Yeah. He pointed to Engel's gas station revitalization project as an early sign that the network effect is already working its magic. So, I don't know. There's a reordering going on to rural areas.

I think that we're early movers in that. Our hope is that the project draws a lot of attention. He remains vague though about how exactly their hopes to move the needle politically beyond channeling the symbolic effect of building a model conservative community. So on my last night in Gainesboro, I went to the only restaurant that was open that night, a saloon-style steakhouse in the corner of the town square.

The tin-silling room was full of families eating meals together and patrons chatting amnably over $2 domestic beers. So, you know, I mean, just like you're kind of standard-ended into this. But I think that, like, take away here, long, really, really, really long story short. These people are trying to use venture capital to recreate a medieval community in a libertarian landscape or, you know, moonscape that, like, is going to produce a... Yeah, a lot going on here. It might make for an interesting, like, sitcom plot.

They should do that. Like, home improvement in a community, in a communitarian, libertarian commune. I got you one better, brother. It would be like, guess who's coming to dinner, but little mixing with blackish, but maybe also at night Shyamlawns the village. Oh, yeah, okay.

The first black family to move into that town. They need an Atlanta, but for this. This could be an episode of Atlanta. It really would be, yeah. It's like the inverse of when Paperboy moves to the farm for a little while. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, shit, man.

Well, I wish them to the best. I don't think it's really going to work. I don't, actually. You wish it was a lot more? spectacularly. You hope several people get syphilis. Yeah, if you want to embrace tradition, embrace it, motherfucker. that fucking nose fall off.

Again, I think they should release wild wolves to encircle the community and nightly to recreate the effect of living in a medieval community. You're right, like rewild the surrounding area. Not just with wolves. I also think that you need like gnomes, ogres, trolls,

like any kind of like enchanted, mystical, like, you know, monster demon from medieval time. witches too and wizards you need that in the surrounding forest yes yes so maybe throwing a sask watch to terrorize

we're rewilding we're rewilding central Tennessee not with like elk but with wolves and witches with cryptids yeah cryptids yeah interesting oh god dude

no I don't wish them look either in this top of it I mean it probably will work out in the sense that like they'll have their little you know, land and their farm commune. A little bit of land. They'll live on it.

They'll live on it. You know, it won't turn the country into a conservative Christian, whatever. I mean, by all indications, it looks to me that conservatism is thoroughly discrediting itself and that will probably have a rise in a, I don't know,

not like fully symbolically empty. Like, I think there is some substance to it, but like a rise in a kind of social democracy, a rise in a kind of more left, you know, socialist, democratic socialist politics. And it'll probably go to its grave in the Democratic Party and the cycle will restart again in 50 years. And then we'll have neo-neo-liberalism. And by that point, people will be like neo-concerted. Yeah, yeah. And then the global temperatures will have raised like six degrees Celsius. And you know what I mean? We'll just keep doing it. It'll be, it'll be new liberalism. you know what I'm saying and you know like new metal once again you know oh yeah in you

new liberalism bro god damn that's so depressing to think about uh huh it's all fine though everything will work out it can only good happen i yeah yeah that's true everything will probably work out because yes it's all fun so um me and the boys are rockwells later yeah we'll see what rockwell is after we'll see at rockwells for a couple of two dollar miller they're not selling that they're selling fucking uh malt shakes made out of gas station i'm sorry that's the gas station i rockwells is the gas station i my sweetie baby we're gonna go get some mulch now go up the inspiration point neck a little bit are those colds seen hmm i'll say if i make sure give me a little leg later

this is these guys getting horned up at the gas station off of like an ankle, a girl's ankles. Yeah. Got them damn, see? All right. We've not done a two-hour episode a long time, so, so sorry? I think maybe, maybe I don't know.

It's either you're welcome or you're, I'm sorry. Yeah. Well, thanks so much for listening to everybody. Tell your friends about Patreon and goes on. You guys froze. No, we did. Me and Aaron are pros. Oh, okay.

Are you proud? Sorry, yeah. Please go subscribe to Patreon. We can get Tom Better Internet, so we stop freezing. So yeah, so thanks for listening. I hope you all have a good weekend. Stay away from the commune in Central Tennessee and go spend your money on Patreon.

Please. So anyways, we'll see you next time.