Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 452: Loosey Theory (w/ Special Guest: Josh Poe)

Episode Date: July 10, 2026

Friend of the show Josh Poe of Kentucky Tenant Union joins us again to give tenant organizing updates. Plus we talk McConnell, Platner, data centers, and Kentucky politics among other topics. Check out Kentucky Tenants: https://www.kytenantunion.org Subscribe to our Patreon: patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

I have some terrible, terrible news at the top of the show today. And it's best just to get it out of the way so that we can go ahead and hit the real pressing issues of the day. But Taylor Sheridan snubbed at this year's Emmys. Oh, my God. Only one nomination, and it was for stunt coordinating on Tulsa King. But Landman got nothing. Snubbed. Dunton Ranch.

Nothing. Snubbed. Nubbed. Mare of East Town. Snubbed. All his other 12 shows, snubbed. Turns out if you spread yourself too thin, maybe everything suffers for it. Yeah.

It's a bad day for Taylor Shed. I did read an article in Esquire, though, that was like, why punish the actors? Why punish Billy Bob Thornton and Sam Elliott and Michelle Pfeiffer? why punish the actors? If you're going to punish Taylor, why I punish the actors too? It's like, well, if the writing sucks, the writing sucks.

No, there ain't a performance that can say that. Uh-huh. Yeah, and I think, too, we're looking at kind of this WWFification of culture and politics, and, you know, Taylor's the heel. So getting snub just, just plays to his base, you know?

Yeah, he doesn't, you're right. Why would he want to be successful in that regard. Like, this is what he, this is what he needs. He needs this. This phase, yeah,

you can go back. Yeah. Yeah, the liberal media, you know, is the victim, is, you know,

unfairly treated to share it in. You know, it just plays into his whole narrative. Yeah. So, so it's good for him then. So I hope he's not complaining. Good for him.

And really, I just can never bring myself to give a flying fuck about the feelings of a guy that's sitting on about 600 million paramount plus dollars. So. You can do

Or you can do commerce, pal, but You can afford cocaine You can afford cocaine and therapy You got you got options Well, to formally and actually start to show this week We're joined by our buddy Josh Poe from Louisville Tenants Union

Josh, how are you doing? Doing great. Thank you all for having me. Always great to be here. Oh, yeah. Well, we're happy you're here, we wanted to get some updates from you about some recent tenant organizing developments that we had covered on the show the last time you were on. That was probably about two months ago at

this point. But before we get to that, there's a whole bunch of news items that I kind of wanted to hit before, yeah, before we kind of like dive into a discussion perhaps on tenant organizing and, you know, what we've talked about, you know, amply in the past. But, like, I wanted to hit some news items. I think that the number one in my world, the number one news item at this current moment, is the impending demise of one Mitch McConnell. I think that, like, it's really kind of wild, right?

that like he rewind the clock 10 years. This guy was the most powerful man in Washington at one point. And so much of our politics has been shaped by him. Specifically, I think the, you know, the rightward drift of politics in general, I think. You could probably pretty much lay at his feet. Citizens United, everything else. But, and then obviously the Supreme Court, like if you're really talking about like Mitch McConnell's impact, I think it's the rightward drift of the Supreme Court.

Well, and all the other courts, too, just padding out the judiciary for generations and generations of which we're not likely to fully recover from that in our lifetime. And, you know, that can't be understated. Something about Mitch that I think is interesting is just to see how, you know, this has been several years ago. Alex Perrin wrote a great article about the banality of Mitch's evil and the way he does politics. and how he's just sort of malleable. There's this anecdote from when it looked like, I guess Mitch's genius in electioneering is when I'm hitting out here,

but there's this anecdote from the heat of the Iraq war era post-9-11 when it looks like the Republicans are going to lose the midterms. And after spending a year and a half, two years, getting everybody in America jacked up on invading Iraq and the way they sold that to the American people, which they don't have to do that now. It's just based on Trump's whims, but it was a different world then.

It looks like the Republicans are going to lose the midterms, and McConnell goes to Bush and begs him to pull out of Iraq after all this fucking rah-rah propaganda campaign of two years because he's afraid they're going to lose the midterms. Could you imagine that happening now? Like now it looks like, you know, like in these, you know,

the electoral prospects of MAGA are sort of, you know, know, in the toilet. And yet they don't give shit that kind of stuff anymore. It just kind of speaks to like the whole how far we've come and that sounds, you know. Did you all read Mitch's autobiography

the long game? No, never did. It's, I mean, you know, obviously take it with a grain of salt, but it's really interesting to see his insights of why he chose to flip on those issues. And he, you know, he lays it out in that book and that he would very strategically

pick certain fights and go against the party on to build more power long term. He also did that with the nerve gas incinerator in Richmond, in Berea, came out of a big champion. So the nerve gas incinerator, the Iraq war, these were all really strategic fights for him that he said, you know, would submit his legacy long term

and that, you know, he garnered so much power off the Iraq for the flip. Yeah, like he comes from probably the most corrupt position in all politics, and that's a former Kentucky County judge executive, which is the biggest misnomer in politics, perhaps, because you're not actually a judge and you don't have to be to hold that office. Well, what were you talking about, Josh? Like, he's, what, what is his relationship with the big tobacco settlements?

Like, I'm vaguely familiar with, like, how Rogers' relationship with that, because that was his district. Mm-hmm. That, you know, where the tobacco farming was. So I don't think people really contextualize what the tobacco program was for Kentucky, and the economic devastation that that was left in its wake. And so, you know, early 20th century, tobacco farmers are organizing against mainly Duke and R.J. Reynolds, right? They're paying them shit for their tobacco.

And so they would get together, like, we're not selling. Nobody's going to sell you tobacco unless you meet our prices. They would actually go in and burn people's crops if they refuse, farmers' crops, if they refuse to join. Out of that came, like, really important legislation in the New Deal, which was the Tobacco. program, which is really a socialist program. So we had a socialist program for decades in Kentucky. Wendell Berry's dad actually helped to write that. You had a quota system. You had a co-op. You had guaranteed price supports. A landowner that owned 3,000 acres could only grow, you know, a certain allotment and then would have to lease it out to other farmers. So it was a wealth

redistribution scheme. And the way I saw politics in Kentucky, in eastern Kentucky specifically, the Democrats had two jobs to protect us from the tobacco companies and protect us from the coal companies. When the buyout happened, Clinton decided that they would do away with tobacco tobacco program largely on the basis of children smoking. Like, you know, they came into Kentucky and it's like, we got this huge problem with children smoking, which was, you know, not that big of a deal to us. We were child laborers working in tobacco fields. Nobody really gave a shit about that. So, you know, there's this huge contradiction. here but suddenly and Mitch in his book talks about this. Mitch sat back and really waited this out.

And what Mitch was so, Mitch's genius was exploiting the contradiction of the Democratic part. So Mitch said at the beginning of the tobacco buyout process, farmers need to settle. You all need to take the money. And he was hated for that, right? Like fuck Mitch. We're going to win. We're going to, you know, the Democrats are going to come through for us. At the end of all that, there's Mitch saying you should have taken money up front. And then Mitch actually went in and negotiated a big settlement. And Mitch got a lot of credit for those tobacco farmers as being the only person that had their back after the dims sold them out. So everybody looks at Kentucky like, okay, we voted for Democrats until Obama.

Then everybody's racist. They don't vote for Obama. They don't vote for Dems anymore. Without really can take into account that the settlement happened in 2004, there wasn't a tobacco farmer that would vote for a Democrat. after that settlement, right? Like I remember every old tobacco farmer I knew said, fuck them, we'll never vote again. Never vote for them again, which really means we'll never vote again.

And I don't really think that's ever really been written about or highlighted in a way that actually contextualizes how many people were affected. And an entire regional economy just absolutely gut it. And the only person really there holding the purse strings was Mitch McConnell. And you book in that with the war on coal. And then you just see how the Democrats just totally lost the plot. Yeah, exactly. They had two jobs in politics. You know, it's just, it's an exchange. It's a transaction for these folks. These folks weren't voting for ideology. They were voting because their livelihoods depended on being protected from these two, you know, corporate entities. Same way, yeah, and the same way like Andy Beshear's dad, let the coal companies walk out of eastern Kentucky. And so you end up with this generational hatred that I don't even know if people in Kentucky understand why the hatred is there. A certain generation does, but I mean two generations out. I don't know if this. the tobacco farmers' grandkids, remember that.

They're just being introduced to, they're being introduced to MAGA right now, and it makes sense because there's no, really no historical merit of no memory of struggle that exists here anymore. Opioids came in and wiped everything out. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a really, like,

astute observation about Mitch McConnell excelling at exploiting the contradictions of the Democrats, and the Democratic Party. I mean, if you look at his, entire relationship to the Obama presidency. That's exactly what it was. I mean, it was basically calling their bluff on the fact that they weren't actually ready to use government to enact transformative social changes because of their kind of either ideological or cultural or social obligations towards norms and decorum and, you know, XYZ. I think McConnell, like, understood

better than anybody that once the Republicans in Congress basically said they weren't going to go along with like in we're talking about a minority party right like a minority group after 2008

is basically able to bring the entire Democratic agenda to a halt and then so like fast forward four or five six years and then you've even got a situation where Obama can't even appoint the Supreme Court justice that he is, you know,

by law, by constitutionally by law, like, you know, permitted to a point. Like, that's astonishing. And so, just totally lay and bare their, like, ineffectiveness. Yeah. And, and then so you ask, like, how we get Trump in a very short amount of time later, like, that is clearly it. You know, I think that, like, what's ironic is that McConnell,

towards the end of his, uh, shall we call, sentience towards the end of his actual functioning cognition. He was a little bit adversarial to Trump. And it's just kind of one of those things where it's like, did he not, Trump might be blowing his lead. Yeah, yeah. I think you're right. I think that's probably it, Tom.

I think Trump, yeah, he recognized perhaps Trump was blowing his lead, yeah. I think, too, McConnell unleashed forces that he really couldn't control also. Did you all read the Steve Bannon interview in Politico last week? No, I didn't. It's interesting. He talked a little bit about this. Bannon talked about how the Tea Party would have been amazing had it not been co-opted by the Koch brothers. Like the Tea Party was his thing.

They were going to bring white nationalism. And then the Koch brothers co-opted it and took it into this huge corporate direction. I think a similar thing happened to McConnell where you can trace everything today. I think you can make the case that Mitch McConnell and Roger Aylesburg, Fox News from his 1984 Senate campaign. But by unleashing these forces, he couldn't really contain them. And Mitch did a really poor job of incubating successors. You know, Daniel Cameron's been a massive failure. And I think Mitch has actually been horrified by Trump and a lot of the forces that he's unleashed.

Because for one thing, they've tarnished his legacy. The man really cared about his legacy. Yeah. And I'm using Mitch in past tense because we don't really know this current status. But in a way, I think Trump and the Koch brothers have tarnished the legacy that Mitch really wanted, which was a respectable conservatism in this country. And now we have this. I think Mitch is absolutely horrified by a lot of what's happening. That's kind of the tension for a lot of conservative politics.

I mean, like the 1970s, like taxpayer revolt. which I think started in California, but obviously spread nationwide shortly, was, if nothing else, basically just a revolt against the welfare state, the fact that, like, the only sector of the economy employing people of color was the government.

I mean, neoliberalism was an assault on the public sector and the welfare state and the unions. And the taxpayer revolt was an attempt to harness that and to kind of direct populist anger towards, you know, programs that benefited communities of color, but do it in such a way that didn't come across as overtly racist. So it was couched in this, like, taxpayer ideology, this taxpayer sort of standpoint position. And then the Tea Party was also similar. You're right.

Like, the Tea Party was also kind of contained this tension where they were like, obviously elements of like white nationalism. That's kind of what underwrote the whole thing. But, like, they were kind of trying to play on these, like, larger symbolic, you know, symbols of American heritage and identity and revolt and all this. And it just, right, like, at a certain point, like, you can't keep the lid on that. Not in a decaying neoliberal state like ours. Like, there's no, like, there's no incentive to keep the lid on that at this point. Yeah, where does it end, right? And what was interesting about that Bannon article, and I don't think Mitch would say this, at least not overtly,

Bannon actually says in that interview, we have capitalism, but not very many capitalists. And actually admits that like, hey, the economy's not working for everyone. And, you know, Bannon's take is like what we can essentially offer people is, you know, socialism for white people only. Doesn't say that explicitly. But that's the offer, right? That's always the offer when capitalism is collapsing. and that's when, you know, fascism pops up to manage those crises.

But I think Mitch was offering a similar version of that. I don't think Mitch would articulate it that way, but I think that's what he was actually pushing for. But you're right, Terrence. If you're going in that direction, you end up with five billionaires that benefit and everybody else is just left to cut each other's throats. Yeah.

There's a contradiction. Like, right-wing populism is so fucking, it's, I don't know, any kind of populism itself contains, anything material contains a contradiction. But it's something I've been thinking about, just more generally, is this article in Financial Times, Iran War, windfall puts big oil on collision course with Trump. So America's big oil groups are set to post-record profits stemming from the Iran

war, because as we saw, like, oil prices were through the fucking roof. So their profits have been insane. But now, like, it's kind of run hard up against the populist imperative of the Trump. administration, which is to lower prices. And so you've got Trump and Besson out there this week saying, like, the big oil companies need to stop price gouging customers at the pump. And well, it's such a which is it? You know what I mean? Like, do you support like your five capitalist donors? Like, is that who your base is? Or is your base like the, you know, Maga Rankin' file who don't want to have to pay $5 at the pump? Like, there's that kind of contradiction there. Like, you

can't just raid the coffers and just expect your sort of politics. The invisible hand just to sort of sort it out for you. Yeah. Yeah. Especially with our, what was the little chart that was going around this week about our strategic oil reserves are fast approaching crisis level. Aren't they opening up like Trump subsidized gas stations? What was that thing you sent me to Oh, freedom pumps. Yeah, the White House Twitter account posted that out. and they're freezing prices at $3.47. For Trump, but it's like, it was cheaper than that before the Iran War.

They're not even a good price. Yeah. So, like, they're subsidizing, they're doing price caps. They're doing price stabilization. Like, it's like some 10-pot dictatorship. But it's like 13 cents higher than what I paid over here at the BP. It's not even a good price. Those are DC prices.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. Completely strange. Well, yeah, so I don't know. We don't know Mitch's status. It was funny seeing people. I think Scott Jennings on, he goes on CNN a lot, was like, I just had a conversation with Mitch, and he's great.

We talked for four hours about God and prayer. It's like, no. You ever know anybody who come out of a comatose state and just they want to have a four-hour conversation, especially with Scott Jennings of all fucking people? Well, and you know Mitch's people, I mean, Mitch's people are so well-pressed. prepared for this moment, you know, like, if we passed legislation in 2024,

GOP passed legislation in 2024, San Bashir, the governor of Kentucky could not appoint someone in the case of Mitch's death, you know? So they've had an AI Mitch Avatar just ready for this shit. So that's who Scott Jennings is talking to. And that's, you know, they're just getting the AI version of Mitch, which I wish they would, I hope they release some audio from that, because I would love to hear. Yeah, we need some proof of life, you know. Hey, as a Kentucky voter, I demand some proof of life from my senator, yeah.

Well, and we, so if Mitch actually dies, there's really, it's just going to go straight to the courts because no one really has any idea how to hold a special election in that amount of time and yada, yeah, it's just, it's a mess. That's fascinating. It's kind of like the, yeah, like the Mitch Clause, like we're, he was kind of so powerful. He reigns supreme for so long. It's this kind of the boomer ideology in general. like there is no end like I'll always be here I'll always exist and so it's like why even make rules for pointing my seat when I'm gone I'm never leaving well I'll have sky net Mitch you know long after he's dead it's kind of crazy what do y'all make of the the idea that like

they're trying to stave off of Thomas Massey uh you know slipping in there and taking that seat is he running for that seat no I just I've seen a lot of people say that like well the you know the reason that they're holding off on announcing that he's dead is because they're afraid Massey's going to slide in there and take that seat. What do y'all think of Massey's sort of like post-exile career or, you know, what he ever is attempting these days? Is the primary closed already? Can he, can he still enter the president?

No, no, no, no, no. I guess what they're saying is that like if they had to do a special election or something like Massey put his name on the ballot, he would be like a front rider to test or whatever. Sorry, sorry to interrupt you, Judge. Oh, no. I mean, I think Thomas Massey has always been like a really interesting political figure. First of all, you have Northern Kentucky, which is a really strange place in and of itself. You know, it's like the Nouveau Ridge of Cincinnati, ultra conservative area, you know, just right for libertarian tea party type bullshit. And so I think Massey was able to harness that.

But what what we see is that Trump has so much power. I think Massey was the ultimate test of Trump's power. That was one of the few races I was actually interested in to see if Donald Trump can go on TV and say, don't vote for this guy or Kentuckians actually going to follow that. And what we find is, yeah, they are following that, at least to the extent that the people who are voting for are following it. I think about 30% of the people are care. And I think about 70% of the people are totally alienated from the process. But I think, there are some weird things about those margins, though.

I have to say. Yeah, not to start Massey is done if Trump wants him to be done. I think because they have the same base, and I don't think Massey will ever be able to build a base outside of MAGA. Yeah, I agree. I agree.

I mean, like, what's the value at? Like, it's libertarianism. Like, they've, they are libertarians. Like, I mean, okay, I guess the Trump administration has done a lot of things that you could consider not libertarian, like taking stock in, I think, Intel and some other companies, and they, you know, tried to, obviously their stance on war is not libertarian either. But I think genuine, I think the entire deregulation thing, like the entire, like the stripping down of the government, Doge, for example, the melee program is pure libertarianism.

And I've referenced the book a lot on the show, but I've been reading this book called The Choice of Civil War from these French theorists. And if you read, like, there's basically, like, three branches of libertarianism, or what we call neoliberalism. But if you, like, read their original writings, like Hayek and Von Mises and everything,

it's like, uh, the goal is to create a society where you have salted the social ground so thoroughly that not even a sprout of socialism could ever come up. Like the entire thing is just pure social destruction

and atomization and every man, you know, head of his own, like, Castle fiefdom. And they've got that in many ways with all, you know, all the contradictions inherent in that.

But by point is, I think you're right. Like, I don't really know what a libertarian, what is the value add there? How can they exist at this point? I don't know. Yeah, what's the vision? Yeah, what's the vision? I have never heard of, I haven't,

I've never talked to a libertarian that had a vision. That is true. Yeah, you're right. I have not either. They're very clear on what they are opposed to that. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, they're against a lot of things. Yeah.

That's true. They're anti-everything. like the classic clip I think of Gary Johnson at the Libertarian conference saying that he believes people should have driver's licenses

and getting booed people booing him that's fucking great I think back to your question Tom like Thomas Matt I mean I think that like so that that election

is already under what the primary's been decided right like who is going to be is it Charles Booker versus Andy Barr, is that the election? Oh, and for the Massey seat? No, no, for Mitch's seat.

For Mitch's seat. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, Charles Booker versus Andy Barr. Yeah. Interesting. I don't know, man. And again, you know, has someone that knocks on doors in Kentucky and has for, you know, since I can remember, I think that's a winnable seat for Charles.

I don't think it's sewed up. I think the problem is that Charles, I think one of the problems is there are no institutions in rural Kentucky anymore that a Democrat can really connect to. Yeah. You know, as opposed to, you know, 20 years ago. So Charles does really well with rural voters. But the problem is he can't, he doesn't have enough money to get on TV. And he's either unable or unwilling to really get out in the state and do the kind of like old school stump speeches to really connect with rural voters.

and so he's largely on social media and so there's a disconnect there. I've got a lot of, I know a lot of tenants in our base that would vote for Charles if they had any access to Charles, if they actually knew who he was. And we're just not able to bridge that gap. Yeah. Yeah. I think that he kind of, when his surge sort of during the COVID time, you know, a lot of people said that like, well, he didn't really lose that election.

He just ran out of time because he got, he was just so far behind when he first, you know, when he started picking up steam in that Amy McGrath race. And of course, you know, he was also running. against Amy McGrath, which is, you know, a layup with anybody with half a brain and the same war chest. But, yeah, I agree with the same thing. I think that, like, those hurdles, like, and then the next race that he ran, like, his fundraising was just in the toilet, and he never really could get out of the, you know, out there,

you know, more broadly like he was able to in 2020, probably based on, like, a lot of those externalities and those circumstances, and again, who he was running against. but I'm curious to see, yeah, if there's, you know, more of strategy short those things this time or not. But because like you say, he's, it's, he's a guy that can, knows how to talk to those rural voters and garner some support, but it's, you know,

nuts and bolts. Yeah, the dims. The dims only exist on social media at this point. Yeah. Yeah. And the trouble is they, they're heavily invested in that as if the algorithms are going to push them, you know, to voters. as if the algorithms are going to support their their ideology.

So, yeah, that's true. It's kind of a death cold. Yeah, it's a misunderstanding of like how politics, like how you mobilize voters. You don't just like put the name out there and let the algorithms do their work. And people will just like organically go to a voting booth and punch the button. Like it's got to like there that is still a continuity with politics 100 years ago. Like you still have to. actually have institutions in places that mobilize a broad constituency and a alliance of various

groups, demographics, you know, I guess in a present day, I don't know what that would look like. I guess, you know, probably tenant unions, actual labor unions, actual, I guess NGOs. I don't really know what that would look like. Churches, you know, whatever sort of civic organization is really left, you know, there's not much. There's not much. Let me ask you. That goes back to the libertarian thing. There's not a whole lot of...

We're all individuals now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. And, you know, I was taught, you know, right out of the gate to organize. Organize the unorganized, avoid activist networks. There's not an algorithm on earth that's going to allow you to do that, right? We can't say, okay, algorithms.

Send us to the undecideds today. You know, they just create feedback loops and polarize and so on and so forth. Yeah, it's not designed for that sort of thing. Let me ask you this, Josh, because you. you know, you're obviously, you know, in tenant organizing. But how do you all see like tenant unions sort of feeling that role traditionally held by like, or is that not really like a primary aim or anything? Is it a secondary aim?

Like where is it priority wise in terms of what? I think, I think it's the primary aim, actually. I think, you know, when we look at the state of Kentucky and this institutional collapse, which like we talked about last time, like the institutions aren't there. and as daunting as it is, it's like, God damn it, we've got to build them. You know, if it takes 20 years, it takes 20 years. But we have to be getting the business of building these institutions. And, you know, I may not see the fruits of this in my lifetime, but we are going to lay the

foundation for a methodology. So like right now, we ran that statewide campaign last year. We're really focused on economic power, focused on winning contracts. We believe that we have to have economic and political power. We're currently all over the state scouting. The goal is after. this iteration of organizing, we go back into politics. So the Kentucky Tenet Union, we haven't done, we haven't passed any legislation or ran anybody from office since

2023. We passed that legislation in Louisville, 2023. We couldn't pass anything else in Louisville or it would just get preempted by the state. So we had to organize statewide, which you're going to see us do next year, hopefully, if we have the base to do it, we're doing this in Brandenburg right now. We're going to start running legislation. in rural areas and running people for office in rural areas, most likely on a third party ticket, an actual tenant union candidate and tenant union candidates all over the state. I don't think, and I think you all said this as well,

I cannot imagine going out here in rural areas and asking people to vote for a Democrat. The party's brand is so toxic at this point. It's not going to work, but people are hungry for independent candidates. And what happens with tenant organizing, you create these sort of divisions in a county or in a geographic area that are already there that nobody has any way to tap into right now.

So, yeah, our aim is to come back into politics with tenants running for office, tenants passing legislation, and try to take over the state. Yeah. And then use it as a blueprint for all the red states. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't know if you had if you'll head anymore on Kentucky politics, on Mitch McConnell, on anything. I mean, if not, we can move on, but I don't know if you have anything else, though.

Do you all remember how Mitch got his Senate seat in 84? I don't. The Huddleston. Yeah, yeah, the bloodhound. Where's D? Yeah, yeah. So Mitch was losing, like, hit the campaign by a lot, not even close. And he hired a media person named Roger Ailes, who was unknown at that time.

and they did a bunch of research on it's huddleston right that this guy wasn't showing up he wasn't showing up for some of the legislative sessions he'd been he missed a few and so they they crafted this commercial where there's a bloodhound running through a swamp in kentucky looking for huddleston and at the time this was kind of frowned upon right there's kind of like lowbrow political advertising people hadn't really been doing it at that point that fucking commercial flipped everything for Mitch. And, you know, him and Roger Ailes basically, I mean, the rest is history, right? They took, you know, 20 years later, they're running shit.

You know, it is kind of a good virtue signal, like to have some blue tick hounds out there looking for this absentee democratic politician. Yeah, you can easily draw a straight line from that to what we see today, you know, with Ben Shapiro walking into a home depot and buying one, two, by four, putting in a plastic bag and walking it out and saying what a real man is. We go from that to you know, UFC on the White House lawn. That's a short step.

That's right. These $2,000 speech in Puerto Rico. Me to Dee Huddleston. Thank you very much. We can't find D. Maybe we ought to let him make speeches and switch to Mitch for Senator. Well, okay.

Maybe this next topic will be will combine or and or collapse all the various things we've talked about too. You're talking about politics. Spectacle. We're talking about like populism. or talking about contradictions of the Democratic Party. But we would be remiss if we did not cover the glam glam, the glam pratner,

Graham Platner scandal. I don't even really know where to begin on this one. Some listeners of our show have decided that we're Graham Platner fans. So I don't know if there's anything I can say at this point. It's funny. It's one of those few things that, like, I've taken. I've had people accuse me being a platinum apologist

and then on the other side I've had people just saying I'm a wrecker for saying that this guy does have some things in his back before this scandal and this news broke and I don't want to play fast and lose with that but like you know being a blackwater guy and then you know

sort of trafficking in the you know the white national circles and stuff like that is enough to you know disqualify man before you know anything else. the proposition on Platner was wild just to squeeze this in real quick if you really think about it

even in the populist era they weren't trying to run mercenaries and Scalawags and like fucking you know what I mean like absolute like pirates and shit like this guy was like a fucking soldier like war criminal mercenary maybe crypto Nazi

and also rapists like what the fuck like the whole proposition is so crazy but I guess in the mind of the Democratic base it was kind of load bearing. I'm starting to think it might have been load bearing. Like I think in their minds they were like, we need

a piece of shit. Like Trump is a piece of shit, so we need our own piece of shit. Otherwise, I can't understand why exactly, dude, Politico had a live platinum tracker. The day that they broke, they had a live tracker tracking all the senators, like,

dropping it. Like the using of this person's like, you know, assault also as this like spectacle and like the live so weird disgusting yeah i took i took i took i've got you know i took an issue really early with the idea that platinum was working class i mean i'm a little sensitive about this working class cosplay right um and so here you have the the child of his grandfather was a famous architect his dad was a lawyer his mom owned a restaurant and then if you look at his

interview with the New York Times, he says, we need an expansive definition of class in this country. Yeah. And because he works, he is working class. Never mind that the only customer for his oyster farming business is his mom's restaurant. Here's this sort of like ne'er-do-well fuck-up of a rich kid who just reinvents himself as working class. And I think before the Nazi tattoo and the rape and all that, that was a huge red flag that everybody was just willing to miss.

And my problem with that is I don't think an actual working class person, particularly if they were from the South, would have received any of the grace that this guy received. You let somebody from Kentucky show up with the Stars and Barge tattoo. They're not going to get the past that this guy received at all. get no traction, yeah. That's true. They're not going to get traction.

Yeah, they're going to be completely denigrated. And it just says everything about really what they think about us, that we can, you know, we can do a cosplay candidate and we will accept it as real. The story I heard about how they picked him, and I don't know if this is true or not, but this is, I think this was maybe alluded to in the New York Times piece or somewhere else. But I don't know if it was like Justice Democrats or Indivisible or one of those groups had sauntered into his mom's restaurant where he was shuck in oysters and just looked upon his visage, his rough hewn visage and was like, yeah, that's our guy.

And just asked me if you ever thought about running for politics. And it's like, there's got to be more to that story. But like, if that's true, well, if there's even an element of truth to that. I think there's an element of truth that. I think mom was carrying a lot more water than they give her a credit for here. His mother's also, well, along with owning a restaurant in multiple business, she was also a Democratic Party operative for years. So I think Mama was doing a lot,

doing a lot more work behind the scenes than anybody cared to admit. Yeah, yeah. What I don't understand about people like that. And of course, I mean, you know, like whatever, you know, if these allegations are right and everything, like this is a moot point. But I don't understand why people from those sort of petty booge backgrounds just can't be honest and candid about being petty bourge,

Instead, they have to try to, you know, like trade on like the working class thing just because, and a lot of people too don't understand like, you know, even within working class, there's like different like distinctions and strata even within that. And a lot of that's dependent upon sometimes, for example, how Cole's doing or, you know, how tobacco's doing or whatever, you know. Yeah, I think it has to do with with the way identity. become politics, right? And if you're, you know, if you're like white and bourgeoisian from the suburbs, it's not a very interesting identity, right? But if you can like label socialist or working class on there, it's like it gives you an identity to weaponize. And the problem with that is like those of us that grew up poor, we got to be honest about what it was like, you know, half my family worked in the nerve gas incinerator and didn't live to be 50. And, you know,

I can get on, you know, I can talk about that. But then you sit down with somebody like Platner and they lumped themselves in with you, it's really insulting for a lot of different reasons. And it's not, I mean, if that's the Democratic Party strategy or even to the left of the DIMS, if that's like the DSA progressive strategy, then we know where that's going to go. And I think, you know, I think like, you know, magazines like Jacobin have just really got a lot of explaining to do for Platner. I mean, they gave us almost like a weekly update on the Platiner campaign and labeled anybody that was against them as some sort of like A PAC Fund. conspirators,

conspiratorialist. But I actually asked people, you know, I said that one, I'm like, what's your class identity? You know,

I make them say it because we have this, we have this, sort of fetishization now that everybody's working class and they, and people want to be a part of something that they didn't

actually maybe experience growing up. Yeah. My question is, did Plattenor ever claim to be a socialist? Did he ever use that word? I said, What I'm trying to like reverse engineer or understand is why so many, was it his anti-Zionism stance? What was it his anti- oligarchy stance?

Like I'm, again, I'm trying to reverse engineer the case for him at this point, but like, or even three months ago. But like, did he ever even call himself a socialist? He's not even, he's not obviously not affiliated with DSA even remotely. like he's he's uh he's more of like a justice vague progressive burning if a federman type kind of but maybe but obviously without the is real baggage yeah i don't think he did actually his uh i mean dan morraf the campaign manager certainly did and so but i don't know that platner actually declared that um i know that he receives consulting from morris cats who also consults in the mom dani campaign

I did see something that said Morris Katz was telling Graham Platner that he was like a revolutionary of historic figure like just imagine like telling like a fucking sociopath Goat Goat theory I mean I don't

I don't know like I guess what I just cannot understand though is the like the dead enders right like I don't understand the Platner dead enders like they're basically like you know he's being rat fucked it's like yeah I mean every well they use that because they're like

anybody who takes on the establishment is going to get ratfucked and it's like okay like they did try to rat fuck mom donnie didn't work they did try to rat fuck Bernie it worked but none of those rat fuckings included allegations of sexual assault so like maybe the fact that this is at play does that not I don't understand like they're fucking they're dead ender thing it's like

it's the same thing with like Biden people and Tara Reid Like they don't, they just cannot countenance that their person is maybe a piece of shit. I don't know. Yeah. And not only that, but if they're missing that he's a piece of shit, what else are they missing? You know, it should actually, instead of pointing fingers and this would not happen, but it should give them pause to say, okay, y'all, we didn't see some of this, right? Any one of these things was a huge red flag, the Reddit post, the Blackwater, uh, volunteering,

the Nazi tattoo. If you missed all of that, maybe we, don't need to hear from you. Maybe take a pause, think about what else you might be missing, and then, you know, come back. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Take a beat and get it straight and come back to us. Yeah. That's kind of what I'm thinking. It's like, I don't understand. I also don't understand why, why is this like the end of the world that he's dropping out? Like, could be a good opportunity to get someone better. I don't know anything about main politics, okay? So don't criticize me. But like everything I've heard about like Troy Jackson, like I'm pretty

sure he was DSA indoors. Like I what what is the like why is that not conceivable or I don't know I guess maybe it's because the Democratic Party establishment is trying to close ranks now and take back over the race. I'm

not sure I guess probably need someone who's a little more of an expert on Maine politics yeah and I think they love the aesthetic of it I think they love the white dude with tattoos and a final shirt I think that was I think that was a big pool for them and if you listen to the to the consultants more at and and i don't i didn't i haven't really heard much from cats uh they were really going they used a lot of terms like authentic repl authentically represent the culture

right and so they were instead they're thrown around like these notions of authenticity for something that they have no you know relationship with and so it just becomes you know it becomes cosplay becomes rooted in fashion i think yeah i think like i saw many people pointing this out, but like it is, in my case, it is a good case for why you want more DSA and diverse candidates as opposed to just

like, you know, four justice dims parachuting into a oyster bar in Maine and being like that's a rough human looking guy. That's our guy. It's just like look at it. It could be a cowboy in a western. Talking about institutions,

what you were talking about earlier, Josh. Like, people have to emerge out of institutions and out of like a community relation, you know, out of like civic institution and trust. It's like it's, what is the, uh, I don't know. To me, it's a good example of why it's very risky to just like, because of a person's like appearance and CV and whatever just because they like look good on paper and, and test well in front of audiences, like how it's like not a good approach to politics. But if your approach to politics is algorithms and social media, then yeah, I can see how that could really be alluring. And that's a good point, Terrence. I hadn't really thought about that. Like Platner was sold

to us as a DSA candidate, but I'm willing to bet that he wasn't on a dues paying member. And I'm also willing to bet that the consultants that chosen didn't consult with the DSA chapter in Maine. They might, you know, about candidates that they actually are thinking about running. Yeah. Maine, I'm just looking it up right here. It says Maine DSA, it says, claims it never endorsed Graham Platner. So, I mean, I, not only did they not, not only did he not emerge out of any kind of like organic like working class or socialist movement. They, you know, he's not even endorsed by them. Like this is.

Yeah, which is another huge red flag. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The hundred, yeah, the hundred we already have. Yeah. I think, but I think that like, you know, as I just can't, I just can't stop thinking. about the fact that I go to Politico last night to like

try to spend as much time off Twitter as I can now and say I have to get my news from like, you know, websites. And like just going to Politico and like the top eight stories. And I'm not even exaggerating or all about Platner. And then they've got this like live tracker, like tracking out all the senators who are like turning against them and calling for them to drop out. And I don't know.

And then obviously today I've seen so many think pieces about how the Democratic Party cannot go on like this. Like the Democratic Party needs to decide what it stands for. It needs to decide what it believes in. And I do think there is a conversation to be had, going back to what you were saying earlier,

Josh about even running a third party candidate in a place like Kentucky. Like, what is the left's relationship to the Democratic Party? Is this productive? Is this like, you know, I mean, I don't know. I think to Josh's earlier point, it's like it can be productive

some places where the Democratic brand's tarnished i.e. New York with mom don't mean it's going to play in branson you know what I mean. I think that it's just like a different strokes for different folks type thing you know that needs to be considering yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think you got to tailor the organizing to the geography to Tom's point. Yeah. I mean, there are going to be liberal enclaves where you know and I think what's going to happen is the DSA is going to take over liberal enclaves as the Democratic. You know, the Democrats have spent all their energy on stopping DSA candidates the last 10th. 10, 15 years, as they're on their way out, I think the DSA is going to take over those.

You also, and Tom mentioned this last time I was on the show, you know, you also have this, you're also going to end up with huge unemployment among the professional managerial class. We don't really need universities in this new framework. You don't really need a professional managerial class. And I think those former professors, former managerial class are going to flock to the DSA. is built for that group of people. And I think the DSA's power is going to swell immensely in the next five to ten years, but mostly in those liberal areas, you're still going to have to have other institutional

partners organize outside of that. And I think that's where tenant unions, labor unions come in. That's a good point. I think that like, yeah, in the new economy, the new political economic paradigm, there is less and less productive capacity or space for professional

managerial members of I mean that's what AI is in general right but also we're talking about like destroying the university

and destroying like several orders of administrative you know apparatuses like at law firms at other corporate firms right

So, like, yeah, you're right. Like, we are basically, it's like sort of sitting on a volcano. Like, you're going to have the mass ejection of those people from the economy. I was talking to a buddy that coach is tennis in New York, and he teaches all these rich people, of course. And one of his clients was some kind of doctor that does some kind of, he was a surgeon. And said that he, in the last two years with the right, and this is, I mean, this is very concerning, but just to this point we're talking about is he had had, I think he said,

almost 30-something support staff in his office and now has three. Holy shit. Wow. Wow. So because of the AI thing, because we're on some Claude or whatever he's doing that. That's how many staff he was able to. And we're not even talking about professional managerial class people. We're talking about like X-ray tech. You know, like, like, like, those people went to grad school and stuff like that.

Yeah. Yeah. And the healthcare sector is the, is the only thing we're really going in rural areas right now, you know, with the loss of manufacturing. That's the largest, the largest employer everywhere. So. Yeah. I think what that means on the other end of this, like, as it comes out the other end of the economy, is fewer people owning homes, fewer people buying into the civic. experience of America, actually acquiring equity, more and more people renting.

I mean, it's, it's, you know, people renting and renting people, you know. Yeah, right. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah, which means like more and more power among private equity. Yeah, more surplus population. And, you know, you know, the plan for this is, you know, more fit and all more prisons. That's, you know, that's all we're really left with.

warehousing humans on a, you know, phenomenal scale. And that's the size, the lumpin. Yeah. Yeah, totally. And made more sobering by this idea that they don't even really need the bottom half of earners as consumers anymore. You know, because everything's a luxury experience. And they've managed to figure out an economy where the bottom half, they don't even need a dime from, which is very concerned. Yeah.

Also the, I don't know, like flock cameras, the proliferation of just mass surveillance. I was reading Bologna book last night, Savage Detectives, and there's like a scene in that book where, you know, it takes place in Barcelona, but like, talks about, like, this scene of people who were into phone freaking. You know what freaking was? Like, it was basically like phone hacking in the 80s. People would, like, hack. I thought it was calling the 1-900 numbers when your mom wasn't home. Yeah, that too. There was that dude.

And then you just, your asshole gets real tight when the bill comes in. Yeah, when that bill comes in, you hide, hiding the shit. That's right. But like, basically people would hack pay phones. And there would be like a neighborhood party where everybody in the neighborhood would come down to the pay phone and use the pay phone for free. That way you didn't have to pay for it. And I was like thinking about it, I was like, something like that,

could not even just even of assuming like obviously no one uses pay phones anymore but like a mass like neighborhood celebration of people just like taking stuff for free is like

it's inconceivable now because there are 20 goddamn surveillance cameras on every street corner so it's like yeah with facial recognition and everything like there is no move that goes unnoticed

there's no crime no you know nothing everything is catalogued, archived, and then you know, you're sent your fucking fee in the mail or whatever, all of which is to say that like this mass lumpinization or surplus rendering of the population, it's like they've already built in the necessary technology

and infrastructure to ensure that there, that will be good cattle, right? We'll be kind of kept in line. Yeah. Did y'all watch the latest Adam Curry? movie, Shifty. I watched the first episode of the one about the Thatcher era in England. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's a scene in there where they talk about the words that the new terminology for industrial capitalism, like industry, proletariat, you know, all these capital, all these words were invented. They didn't exist before industrialization, right? And I was watching this. And I think we're in a similar time where we're almost in a post-consumer era. And the words that we're using to describe this just don't really apply anymore. And that's why we feel so empty and so vapid is that we're not,

consumption isn't really happening the way that we traditionally described. And even the even bourgeoisie proletariat don't really feel apt right now to describe what's happening. They almost feel like cartoonish or cosplay, if you say. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're sort of at the end of some. We're kind of like the residue of this era and we're just kind of left to piece it together. before the new world really begins. Yeah.

But really, we're not really in the consumer era anymore. We still, but we're still left with this useless terminology to try to describe what's happening to us. Yeah. It's, yeah, you're right. It's like, we're kind of just surrounded by like the specters and phantoms and ghosts of the, you know, the old way of doing things. But like, we can't really engage with them.

It's, they're haunted by them, but. Yeah, it's a really strange time. It is weird. It's funny. You're right. It is almost like, the first line of the, communist best they're right obviously like there's a spectre hunting europe you know and the specter communism it is almost like there is a spectre haunting the world but the spector is capitalism it's

like it's like the sort of ghost of it's like obviously it's still functioning like it you know does and and always has but you're right it is it is kind of qualitatively novel in in some very fascinating ways and we're haunted by its sort of ghost you know it's weird because i've kind of notice this in just kind of a strange thing just you know just like going to the store or something like you go to like i can remember 20 years ago going to like a target and that being like a shiny new thing and now like you go to just like a big box store or macdonalds or something they're just sad they're just sad you know what i mean yeah it's decrepit yeah yeah it's weird and it's like i'm like why is that like why does this feel like just something i've done regularly for 20 years

like something from a bygone era and then like a depressing way, you know? Yeah, and what should have tipped us off? Y'all remember that theory, the bottom of the pyramid theory? I don't think so. It was this idea that corporations had that there is actually wealth among the poor that we just haven't tapped into. So we can actually sell products in the developing world. We can sell products to poor people.

we just have to make them smaller. So instead of like a bottle of Advil, you sell one Advil. Lucy, selling Lucy's on the street. Yeah, it's basically the Lucy theory. Yeah. And so once we saw that, like if they're trying to capture that market, it's over. It's a wrap. Like they're literally, and that bottom of the pyramid theory is now, what, 20 years old?

So we're so post-consumer at this point. There's really no market left. except for the AI and the data centers. And, you know, we're just on the cusp of an entirely new industrial revolution that our brains really can't conceptualize at all. Let me ask you this about the data centers, Judge, because it feels like a lot of these are being proposed to be built on farms and the traditional sites or the sites of particularly for the tennis union and so forth

struggle on those fronts. What do y'all feel about, I mean, I know what you feel about it, but like what's what do you think should be the strategy going forward on things like that? I mean, it's been encouraging to see like people that, you know, have had a family farm for 60 years to tell them fuck off and stuff like that. But how do you sort of stem the tide of this that they're going to try to push down or throw? Yeah, I think, I think, Will, I mean, we, I think our colleagues at Southside together in Chicago, they've been battling a quantum facility.

And their approach was to just organize all the tenants around the quantum facility. Of course, that's Chicago, so you have more renters. What we've done is try to engage the anti-data center people. I don't know that there's a lot we can do in the short-term time, because once you're showing up at the public hearing, it's over. You know, I tell people all the time, like, if your strategy is to speak at the public hearing, it's a fucking rap. It's already been decided.

That's a technicality. The public, yeah. Yeah, it's an obligatory gesture at this point. So I feel for a lot of the people out here who are just getting this information and showing up to speak, but there's got to be some strategy. And so again, there aren't the institutions there, except for electoral politics, there aren't really the institutions to contain any sort of organizing efforts. So one of the things we're trying to do in Brandenburg and we're really testing our political work out there is to try to organize the anti-data center residents

with an organized base of tenants. And tap into that anger. We're having a lot of success with that so far. I think we need to do a lot more testing. I think we need to really, I think that as the tenant movement really needs to offer those folks something, even though they are homeowners, you know, like everything else,

there's going to be a ton of contradictions there, but I think we really need to try to force that contradiction and give them some sort of institutional base to organize out of, whether it's training, whether it's running a slate of candidates. But, and I think the Democratic Party, if they really cared about winning,

would be all fucking over. this and they're not. But we're, you know, that's, that's something that's, I think you look for, you look for the issues to do your political education. And I think the data center issue is, is, is something where that we can tap into and flip a lot of Trump voters and a lot of just non-voters in general. Yeah. Because people, people understand that the results of this are going to be devastating.

And they understand it in the way that's just so immediate. And they also understand it in a way that everything that they, work for. Everything that their family has worked for is, is really vulnerable right now. You know, you heard the story from Mason County where the lady turned down. I think it was like, I forget, like three million, tens of, and a massive amount of money to sell her family farm. Life changing. Yeah, she turned that down to sell the family farm. So people understand it. Again, they just need, they need institutions to tap into for, you know, for political organizing. They're just not there right now. Yeah.

Well, you know, we're at an hour, Josh, and we could let you go soon. But like speaking of that on that note, did you have anything else you wanted to talk about like in Kenan organizing in Kentucky? Like any updates on your last appearance? If not, that's totally fine. I just figured out to open. Yeah, totally. I mean, yeah, I mean, you know how organizing is.

You force a contradiction. You win. You end up with another contradiction. So we won a big contract that nobody had ever done before. Now we have to enforce a contract. contract and implement a contract that that no one have been done before. One of the things that we're running up against right now with the Trump administration is, well, HUD's never been on the side of tenants. So let's get that out of the way. Like HUD's never, HUD's in bed with the landlords,

but we've never actually had opposition from HUD until recently. And so right now, yeah, so instead of tenants calling HUD on their landlord and HUD enforcing their regulations, the landlord calls HUD on the tenants and then HUD actually retaliates against the tenants. This is new for me. Incredible. And so, uh, and that's solely because of,

okay. Like the new deal, uh, inversion has come full circle, basically. Yeah. And so, and so not only,

uh, is HUD, yeah, just creating this huge barrier. They are, they are an active opposition to the people that they're charged with representing. Strangely enough,

we were getting a lot of support from Mitch McConnell, up until about two months ago. go. We actually had Mitch putting some pressure on HUD and creating a little, little, just a little, you know, a little buffer there. And then suddenly Mitch's people went black. Just, well, he may be down. So we're not even getting, we're not even getting the avatar of Mitch right now. Not even giving you the AI. We're not even getting the, yeah, we're not even getting the AI version. So, but we've got a contract. We're implementing it. It's going well. We are, organizing all over the state, doing a lot of scouting, basically looking for tenants out there that want to organize their buildings, not really prescribing anything on them.

But, you know, we're going to, we're going to launch those campaigns. Biggest news I have is I've actually transitioned to part-time from the Kentucky Tenant Union. My goal is to leave by the end of the year. You know, you don't build organizations for a career. You know, you build it for power. And so that tenant union is really well equipped to run themselves at this point. and I'm going to be organizing more in the southeast, helping tenant unions get started all over the south with the Tenant Union Federation. We're launching Union School actually tonight, and we had over 800 applications this year from Union School after having, I think, 300 last year.

So really proud of this all over the country right now, including, I think, three non-U.S. applications. We're going to be launching big fucking fights in California, New York, Montana, South. Southwest, Southeast. Yeah, so excited about that. Yeah. Well, if people want to support, is there a way for people to support that? Like maybe in some,

maybe financial, or maybe they themselves want to sign up for union school. Is that a possibility or is it closed already? It's closed already. I think we had a lot of people sign up from the last time we were on the show, so always appreciate the folks that respond from the Trillillies.

Hell, yeah. But yeah, not at the moment. We're in our getting ready for a fight period right now. Hell yeah. Okay. Well, when that opens back up, maybe we'll have it back on the teaser a little bit and see what we can. We can do. Yeah.

Yeah. Hell yeah. Well, also got a real, I heard, Tom, that your old friends from Winterwood are on the governor's housing policy board. So they're doing well for themselves. Oh, that's fantastic. Fantastic news. I lived under the Winterwood Thumb for a good chunk of my youth. So, well, that's not great.

And you know what we realized happened, not to get off track, but I'm willing to guess that you lived in public housing before it was Winterwood, right? Yeah, Widesburg Housing Authority. He had like a local board that was ran by the head, the main guy at the Presbyterian church in town there. Yeah, and so they're still buying a lot of buildings from churches. in the neoliberal era, the goal was to shift all public housing to the private sector. And I don't know the history of this. Winterwood must have had some really close contact with the Democratic Party at that time, because in the 90s, everything that was public housing, not everything, but at least 90, 95%

became owned by Winterwood. So you had this massive transfer of wealth from the public sector, and it all went to one landlord. So right now, Winterwood owns about 3,000 units in Kentucky and manages about 10,000. So we end up with this huge monopoly of what was a public resource. Yeah. Many such cases, I guess, right? Yeah, and there's a version of that in every state. It's just winterwood happened to be the villain here in Kentucky.

Yeah. And so they're on the housing board, the governor's housing board, I assume. Well, I saw Daddy Andy did some epic clapbacks this week and demanded that we see proof of Mitch McConnell. He demanded proof of life. He demanded proof of life. Damn. I saw a really funny, I get a really funny Instagram reel the other day of like someone asking Andy who his favorite gay person was. I saw that through.

You said Nathan Lane or something? He said Nathan Lane. Like there's such a. funny question to ask somebody. He dated himself with that answer. Yeah, it's just like they asked

it in pure earnestness too. Like that was not ironic. Like who's your favorite gay person? Like they asked you very seriously. That's such a weird question to ask. I would go with who was the president

that was, was it Zachary Taylor? Was he perhaps closeted? Or not Zachary Taylor. James Buchanan. Oh, James Buchanan. I go John Waters, I think.

I think John Waters is my favorite gay in the sober light of the morning, Thursday, July, now. I'm going with Marlon Brando. Right, yeah. Some bisexual representation. There we go. Him and Richard Pryor. Yeah, that's right. Okay, all right.

Well, thanks for listening, everybody. Maybe we can have some links in the show. notes to direct you to action. And then also we've got the Patreon link in our show notes as well. So please go support us there. I apologize for the fuck up on the RSS feed, the Patreon. I don't know what happened there. I'm still figuring out how to integrate the two feeds, but my apologies, everybody.

Every, every, every fuck up is an opportunity to learn. And grow. And grow. embrace the contradictions. That's exactly right. That's right, Josh. Well, thanks again, Josh, for joining us. And we'll see you next time.

I have to have you on very soon. Thank you all. Always a pleasure. All right. We'll see all next week. Adios.