Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 453: Acrid Vibes

Episode Date: July 17, 2026

We discuss the T levels of our nation's military, and check in with our friend Jonathan Chait who says we already HAD universal healthcare we just didn't know it. Support us: https://www.patreon.com/c/trillbillyworkersparty

I have a theory. I would post this. Yeah, I would post this in art slash theories, but... Another one. I'm just going to go ahead and get it out here. I feel like further proof or evidence that we live in a simulation is that Lindsay Graham died the same week that Graham Platner also died, in a sense.

And, like, I keep... It keeps fucking with me because all the... the top stories were about Lindsay Graham, but my brain was still in Graham Platner mode. And like, do you think that like in the simulation, like the order went through to, you know, shuffle Graham Platner off the stage, but there was also a glitch. And so like Lindsay's, Graham's heart exploded as a result. The simulation had a hiccup. Yeah, there was like an associative algorithm thing that went on that like we got to get like Graham Platner into the dustbin of history. but like someone coded it wrong and in the and then the process Lindsay Graham's aorta just exploded.

You know how they, you know how they talk about, you know, or there's evidence of AI like I guess performing hallucinations. Yeah. And maybe it's just a sort of, I don't know, like the only way I could think of it is like you have too many ideas going through you had the same time, you know. Yeah, to process all of them, you know. Maybe that's what it could handle it. Or the simulations racist. They can't tell, I can't tell Graham Crack. Packers apart.

They can't. They all white grams look to say. You know what? I will say, too, that I feel like if y'all could remember, because I can't think of any other examples, actually. So maybe this isn't a thing. But it always feels like somebody like who's just beloved, or I guess it should say first, Lindsey Graham, who's like this atrocious, maligned individual, you know, that even his

own party hated, you know, because they just like snicker behind his back and call him gay, you know, but do you, but Sam Neal died like the same day within 12 hours, you know. So maybe it's like, you know, maybe it's the ying and the yang, the balancing, you know, like one demon has to leave, an angel has to leave and then, you know, there's balance on the treasurer plane, you know. Damn, that is an interesting thing. Like, is there a, uh, imagine though, like you lived your whole life not knowing that Lindsey Graham was the yang to your ying, or yin to your yang, you know, what a hell of a thing. I don't know if, probably best. that that was never revealed the same name.

I mean, I hope that in my case, I hope that when I die, that Corey Walker guy dies as well, you know? That's more like bizarre old erred, I guess, you know, but yeah. I'm like, brother, you have to, I'm coming with me. I'm dragging your back. You hate him so much, you just dome yourself just so he has to go out there. Query writing becomes Corey dying.

Yeah, Corey dying. Yeah, Corey died. It's just the world is like a, functions like a 17th century physiological, you know, like you have, your humors. The world needs to be drained of like certain humors and like,

it has too much bile and needs to like get in balance again. That's what you're saying. We need to apply like leeches, you know, like we need to apply leeches to suck the bad blood out. Yeah. For sure. of Gaia.

You know, I saw, let me tell you all this. I saw a very, I think I was telling Tances that. I saw a very strange thing that I hadn't seen in a while. And the talk of this is kind of reminding me this for some reason. But I guess themes of dying so somebody else can live and vice versa. I went to see a hit movie obsession about three months too late. Oh, you did? You went to the theater?

I went to the theater saw it. Really? Yeah. I saw it on, I just, that's interesting, because I saw it on streaming, so it's still out in theaters now.

Yeah, it's still out in theaters. And I thought I was going to go in on a leisurely Tuesday afternoon and just be like, have the run of the theater, you know what I mean? Like, pick my seat. It was so packed out.

Like, I moved down to get, you know, like, you know, the seats that are there for like, like, uh,

like, uh, like, uh, attendants of people in wheelchers or whatever. Like, you know, if nobody claims them,

you can go claim them. And I was like, well, hell yeah, I want to go. And I slide down there and whatever. These two people came in 30 minutes late and kicked me out of the seats. I said, you're in our seat or whatever. What? People still do that for movie seats? Dude, it was packed out.

And also, too, so I had to go sit under the screen. Okay. And an attendant came, and there was 10 kids on the front row of this movie. They bought a ticket for Mona, but they weren't old enough to go see Obsession, but they bought a ticket for Mona to sneak into Obsession. session and they came in there and kicked them out. What is, what is, oh, Moana? You know the Duane Rock Johnson? Oh, yeah, the Moana.

They did live action version. Live action version, yeah. And they, they, uh, took the Rock's nipples off in that because apparently there's like a rule about seeing a mammal's nipples and. Really? But that's, yeah, or something. But you're making me think of Joel Schumacher's Batman series in the 90s. He specifically gave Batman nipples.

They did the inverse. Well, he was a maverick, though, Aaron. He famously said, nobody pays for under the top. Where's the business, brother? They came in, the ushers came in, kick those kids out. I will say, though, I saw backrooms again last night, because that's also one streaming now, but I didn't pay for it, guys. There's ways around these things, not.

But some movies you should go see in theaters. I did see this in theaters, but I started to watch it again last night with my partner. And I don't know, man, it feels like maybe this is maybe relevant somehow. It feels like these movies made by young directors, especially these horror movies. Not only are they like, you know, films made from big studios like that come from internet creepypastas and horror memes, you know. But it's also like I feel like there's something in there that these young people are tapping into about sort of, I don't know.

I don't know what it is, man. Maybe, you know, our socio-political state, you know, on, nostalgia's a big thing, you know, the way we remember events. Well, the difference is, though, Scorsese and them didn't have to die so they could live. Anyway, I'm sorry, I just didn't mean to get us far afield there. I just saw that. I was like, man, it's just a positive thing. Kids are still breaking into the movies.

They're too young. Which is a good thing. Good time. That's a good time, brother. The movies are back, you know, hopefully. Anyway, carry out there. Well, I mean, there's a lot. A lot I have to cover today.

have an entire page. And so maybe the best way for me to do it is like, I'm just going to throw out a bunch of different things, items from this week. And we'll just all put it together into the broth. And then at the end, maybe we can read a little bit of an article from Jonathan Chate about how you don't have to vote. Oh, an aperteeaf. Is that that called? Sure. Yeah.

A pallet. I mean, I think it's maybe the entree, perhaps, I would say. But I, you know, about how you don't need to vote for socialists to get universal health care. So I just tease that out a little bit. But there's also another article I wanted to read perhaps about water wars in the West. So maybe we can, like I said, survey the landscape. we're flying our plane here we're like J.D. Vance

taking a free ride in his helicopter. We're dumping crypto, whatever, what's it called? Saclosporo, whatever, all over the crops and stuff from our bio weapon. We are.

Playing. Yeah. So the chemtrails are real. That wasn't Taco Bell. That was us. Sorry to all you chemtrail people, my bad. So, you know, like I said, we'll just like, you know, Cover the landscape a little bit. But, like, there's a few things, okay?

So, like, I don't even know where to start. Maybe I'll just start. Well, let's just start with the Iran war. Why not? Why don't we just start with the Iran war, okay? Dave. Um, so this week, Trump said he's going to continue hitting Iran, right? And the war is back on, obviously, for those of you who don't know,

who are not tuned in. The war's back on. MOU is done. Trump went to Congress, said the war is officially back on. they're talking about doing everything from seizing Carg Island all the same shit they've been talking so they've been seasoned Carg Island since March you can't even say playing the hits because those aren't even

hits that's a recent development they're playing the duds man yeah no it's it's it's pretty bad because like Trump has no options here right like he his pathological aversion to ever taking an L and to make up and to making other people take the L for him or whatever.

It's like it is basically made... Even in a resolution like this, he still, I guess, views himself as having lost, you know? Or like being like, I guess maybe he was just reading, well, not reading headlines. I guess he was just, they were being dictated to him and maybe watching the news, you know, and being like, oh, they think I lost, you know.

Yeah. Thank, brother. You did, you did. He did lose. Yeah, no, there's no easy into this. And, you know, I just wanted to point out, there's a few things under this subheader that I think we should point out here. The first is that, this is from an article in Financial Times, oil traders warn market is close to running on empty as Hormuz shuts again. Stockpiles that acted as shock absorbers early in the Iran War are running low as crucial waterway closes again.

So, you know, for those of you haven't been paying close attention, the only way that they have avoided. A $160 barrel of oil since March is through market manipulation and through drawing down on the strategic oil reserves that they have. Well, I mean, I guess theoretically the market manipulation, the whole pump and dump thing can just keep going on forever because traders are that gullible. But you can't argue with the depleted oil reserve. So, like, that's going to be running out.

soon. God, man, it's just been teetering back and forth and back and forth, you know. Yes. Like a constant state of uncertainty and unease. Yes. Which I also have to say, too, the fact that they can manipulate the markets like that to kind of keep this thing afloat for as long as it has been, kind of just, I don't know, shows you how completely false, fictitious this all is, you know, at the whims of certain people.

It's riding on air. Yeah, exactly. So, like, I wanted to, like, point that out, but there's another, aspect of this I wanted to point out and this was reported on DropSight News but I don't know if you guys saw this but DropSite News reported their source was

like a high placed official in the Iranian government that in these negotiations that have been ongoing between the United States and in Iran that Iran has like continuously strinuously

objected to Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner's presence at these negotiations because Kushner's not even a employee, like he's not even an official. He's literally a civilian. He's not has nothing. He's not employed by the government. He's essentially there for Israel, right? I mean, he's the guy that you bring that your boys don't know, but for some reason, he's just always there. And I'm like, why do you bring this motherfucker? Everybody swears. He's cool, but you don't see any evidence to support this client. No, you do not. His vibes are accurate. Yeah. Accord vibes. But he, you know, and then Steve Whitcock, obviously, is another, you know, paid Israeli agent. But, like, the Iranians in these negotiations sent, like, a back channel message to J.D. to J.D. Vance.

Basically saying that, like, look, you have to get Whitkoff and Kushner off of your negotiating team. because these guys are literally using insider information to cash in on stockmark, like on stocks. Like they're using this to, you know, either make polymarket bets or speculative. It's, it's, can I just say it's very interesting that there are people like, I guess, who are trying to do their jobs, you know, or what they job, whatever job they think Trump wants them to do with what they should do for America. I mean, I don't know. But it's also that there are people who just can't see it and they're not in on the game, you know. So they have to, like, respond to JD as if like, I mean, maybe JD himself is aware of this or not. But it's like, yo, that's been the whole program the entire time, you know.

You guys are not just now alarmed about it and trying to get this intervened. This process of self-enrichment, it's insane. We have never seen anything like this, though. You know what I mean? All these people's supporters have been yelling about Nancy Pelosi. And that's putrid too. don't get me wrong like insider trade and all that kind of stuff

but this is just like they just create reality so they can assert reality so they can cash in on it. Yeah exactly. It's wild. It's wild and we're all subject to it. And now I saw like,

you know, related to this, just a quick diversion, but polymarketer, Kalshya, I can't remember which one has opened up a division where you can wager on if planes are going to arrive on time or not.

Oh, is it called like Kalshi? flight delay or something? Yeah, flight delay, yeah. That's an insane. Which, you're pretty, you're in the clubhouse if you just assume that every flight's going to arrive late. Yeah, that's true.

Yeah, you're going to clean up. It'd be bad about 90% if you just adopt that mindset. The, I think the, so I don't know if like that's what Kushner and Whitkoff are doing. If they're doing like polymarket bets, I do assume that they're doing a little bit of that. But I think it's also. like they're making speculative bets on oil futures, right?

Like that's probably the biggest, which is basically a form of a polymarket bet. But like I think the gist here is that Iran is basically like how are you going to negotiate here if two of your biggest

negotiators are not negotiating from a position of bettering the United States interest in these negotiations but rather are just looking to personally. enriched themselves. And I think that it kind of comes back to that over and over. Like, Trump this week, you know, is very clearly pissed off that Iran is not playing ball now. And it all

comes down to these waterways in the straight-of-moos. The fact of the matter is, is that, like, whether it's Trump, Whitkoff, Kushner, like, none of these guys are operating from the position, including JD Vance himself, which is maybe that's the Iranian's biggest error is thinking that J.D. Vance would be able to intercede in some way. But look at it from their position. Like, how the fuck... If you're the Iranians, how do you negotiate at all in good faith? Like, these guys are all either Nazi Groyper's or just completely morally vacuous and enriching themselves.

They're not, like, trying to... Like I said, better their sides' possession. So I don't really know... All of which is to say that this is seemingly endless. It's just, man, it's the goddamnest thing I've ever seen. It's like, you know, we throw around words like kleptocracy and all this stuff, but you don't even understand the scale of it to you see, like, like the number one grift of all, like Trump's made billions of dollars during his second term,

which is not even close to over. The next biggest grifter in American, and we're talking about like a murderous row of, like, you know, grifters, but usually it's like, you know, they get speaking fees and write these bullshit books that end up at the Goodwill bargain bin or whatever and they get huge advances for them and stuff so that, you know, people can curry favor or whatever.

But Trump has made billions. And then in his first term, he made like 40 million or something, which was like still like staggering for the time, but now it seems quaint by comparison. Yeah. It's just also just the worst confluence

of like just depraved, but also incredibly just greedy, people, you know, you have like the Trump administration who is just trying to make as much money as possible, as quickly as possible, and has no intention for this to ever end, no matter the detriment to the United States'

reputation around the world or whatever it is. It's purely self-interested. But then you have on the other hand, Israel, who also doesn't want this to end. For the same reasons as too, except it's definitely tinged with just like, you know, racism, you know, and

colonial sentiments, you know what I mean? that's just the worst like mail strong for this shit to just keep going you know so I think that like on the on the on the topic of Trump and his

self enrichment like obviously there's a few Trump things I wanted to include here it's like yesterday he said that or maybe that was today he said that like because of his big beautiful bill one of his best friends

bought a private jet that he's not been able to like buy before. We delivered 100% expensing, and that expensing, I think, where you write it off in one year, I have friends that bought things that frankly they didn't need. I have a friend that never flew on a private plane in his life,

and he ended up going out buying a very expensive private plane because of expense in one year. You know, like that mixed with the fact that they're minting a Trump coin and tweeting out that Trump is him, capital H, you know, Jesus Christ. Can I just say that I really like him telling like everyone that, you know, because of the big, beautiful bill, one of my rich friends was able to do this. It's like, it's like when people were

getting stimbyes, he was like, dog, can you believe they give me all this money, bro? I just took care and missed this and this. But that's like his frame of reference, right? Like he thinks that, like, that's very normal to him. You know what I mean? So like, it's just lost on him like what a slap in the face that is to like most people, especially in a week where the Supreme Court, ruled against his tariffs and like they returned the money to the corporations who had already like passed that cost down to the consumer but they just stole our money twice you know they're just tossing it back and forth like hot potato we are like we are as a as a population as a society we are basically like you know the fucking guy at the circus that like thinks that you know he's throwing the ball

you know, in the ring that's like too small for the ball, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Hoping to get a different result every time. Yeah, it's, you know, and this also comes, like Trump's supposed to give a speech tonight. By the time this is out, I'm sure the speech will have been made. There's a lot of speculation, and it's probably going to be about the 2020 election and the need to essentially require birth certificates when you vote now. That's insane.

Yeah, I like it's his, you know, continuing like ongoing obsession with 2020. You know, it's interesting. I don't know if you all saw this. Like John Ossoff yesterday was interrogating that I think Bill Clayton is his name, the guy that they're trying to get to replace Tulsi Gabbard. And the line of questioning, like, Ossov kept trying to get him to admit, like, he kept trying to get him to say who won the 2020 election. And the guy, like, would not say it.

he refused to say it. That was so funny to watch. Just grown-ass men, like, scared to death to wrinkle the feathers of this old fucking turkey-necked fucking sociopath. Yo, you really do have to think that almost like there's some supernatural element going on. I mean, obviously there's not, but just people that are so frozen by their allegiance to the sky and by his possible retribution, that they just cannot just admit, not even just the truth, but just reality, you know. it's frightening it's frightening dude

it's something else yeah well but so you know he's threatening to pass this new election law and like it's based off of the you know 20 20 20 fiasco

they're gonna start doing blood drop test next bro they're gonna do they're gonna do the equivalent of brown paper bag test you don't yeah they're gonna do I mean just brown paper bag test

oh man dog they would put if you were um If you're black, and just to see how black you were, actually, you know, have you got any new mixed skin color? If you were darker than the color of a paper bag, you know, you were seeing as black. Really? Yeah. Uh-huh.

That's coming back. Yeah, they're doing one drop, one blood drop test, you know. I mean, also, and this comes at the same time, like Trump is in Marco Rubio are talking, and Mike Johnson, they're all talking about, like, the new, menace, the new threat to America is communism. Well, I mean, they've been saying this, so it's not new. But, like, they're, like, I think Ken Klippenstein had this thing about they're calling it, like, the new left terrorism or something like that.

I can't remember what it's called. But, like, the gist is that, you know, they're classifying any kind of, like, subversive political activity as terrorism. This is what radical leftism is. It may wear various different slogans and ideologies across place and time. They can call themselves anti-capitalist or anti-imperialists or communists or anarchist or Marxist, but the fundamental character is always the same. It's always the same.

It is a poisonous resentment cloaked in the language of equality and justice and liberation and overwhelming need to tear down what greater men have built to wreck what is beautiful and what is right on behalf of people who are only filled with ugliness and have nothing else to offer the world. world. Through violence and through terror, they once again seek to impose their ugliness on all of us. It feels like they're gearing up to do a red scare at the same time that they're trying to shut down elections. But like, I guess we're, I think the thing is, is that like, if you're Trump, like, there is no future to right wing, or MAGA. If you're, if you're MAGA, there's no future to right wing politics now. It's like they have clearly driven it off the, driven it off a cliff. And so you've kind of

have to, you would kind of have to do a red scare and like, you know, you would have to elections to stay in the bar. You'd have to, you have to continue to govern through a liberal means like the Republicans I've already been doing, but just now everything is heightened, you know, so I mean, I remember, I was just thinking about the citizen, bring your citizenship to approving your citizen to vote. Just remembering like, you know, the ID, right? And how like weird that was for me going back to New York, or remembering when I lived

in New York and never had to show ID, you know, you just say where you live and then you You know, you just tell them they would check it off. But moving down here and be like, okay, I think the first time I voted down here, I went to my library. And she told me I needed my ID, you know. And it didn't really feel like any sort of affront upon my liberties, I guess. Because, you know, you bring an ID everywhere. But it's like this slow encroachment, you know, which now it just feels like incredibly heightened. But at the same time, I could very well imagine people saying, like, why is it a problem for me to do that, you know?

Yeah. And that's sort of the ideological project that they're building along with. with this, you know, including with the anti-communism tip they're on now. Yeah. What was the deal with Mike Johnson saying that they're requesting $350 billion from Congress to fight communism on our own shores? That doesn't seem promising. Not a good time.

Particularly for guys like us, but yeah. Not good. Yeah, not good. I mean, also, just like the petty indignities in like great, like, Like the fact that like the United States military keeps doing these like low level flyovers like on beaches and shit and like, you know, completely fucking people's, you know, day at the beach up. But like Pete Hex had text tweeted today like the flyovers will continue until morale improves. Like every day is just like every day is just like waking up and just, you know, what indignity will I suffer today? Dude, imagine, I mean, you already have the indignity of, like, you know, fucking, you know, sliding money into the pocket of a fucking corrupt middleman, you know, for you to just die a little bit slower, you know what I mean?

Yeah. Like, you already have the indignity of just like, all of this shit, man, you know. Just your work conditions, your housing conditions, but you can't even enjoy a day on the beach, you know. We will rob you of the sun and warmth and cool lapping waves, you know. When you see that stuff and you see like Hexeth doing all that and then, you know, this news this week that he's going to start testing the military for low T. What's what, dude, you fucking want. It's like, they just better hope this works out. They just better hope this works out.

Because if anybody with an ounce of gumption gets power, anybody with a drop, we talk about one drop laws, if you have a drop of Hegsef blood, you will be, you will be, you. They will patch you on the shoulder, walk you into a tiled room, and only one of you is walking back out, you know? Well, dude, I'm sure people have pointed this out online. I don't know. But, like, the irony of trying to ban transgender people from the military and then introducing TRT therapy. Like, come on, man. Like, that's... That's so crazy.

It's so crazy. I mean, he said... Some of the shrinks your nuts, reduces your fertility, like, all these things. It's like, dog, you're basically doing a form of, yeah, sure, your energy's going to be up and, like, you know, you'll build muscle more easily or whatever. But like, but the tradeoffs are that you, you know, essentially become a eunuch. Well, and what is the fucking, what is the America's, they use this term war fighters that he loves so much. But like, what the fuck do they do? They sit behind a screen and launch missiles all day.

Like, they're not fucking fighting on the sands of Carg Island. Like, I mean, I guess that does make sense. I mean, you could be, that does make a lot of sense now that I think about it. You'd be like every other American man that takes testosterone that takes tests. Like, you just sit at a fucking desk all day, but it helps you feel like you're... Yeah, yeah. And look, and look, I want to be clear. If you're like, test is out of range or something, like on the...

I understand why people would want to do TRT. But, like, he's opening, like, a can of worms here. Like, with TRT, you got to watch your fucking labs, like a hawk because you're like, a very increased risk for heart disease and other things like that, all the cudgels that come with testosterone and stuff like that. And the reality is, it's like, if your testosterone's at a normal range, like, it's not going to benefit you to, like, if your testosterone's five or six hundred, it's not really going to benefit you that much to get it like at 800. You know what I mean? It's like, you're fine at that level, you know. I mean, it also just makes me think too where like,

you know, like, like America's, I think, I mean, these war fighters, it seems to me, just the general public, but I mean, you think these guys are really ready to die for the things you guys are like pushing them towards, you know? It doesn't matter how, it doesn't matter what the mythology is of the American military being incredibly manly, you know, and being full of men and eschewing any, like, you know, whatever they would assume is like, you know, detrimental to being a man and having a powerful fighting force. These people don't want to fight anyway. You know, you need to give them the will to fight. You don't have any will to do this, man. Yeah, yeah. Maybe instead of tea, They need like ideology.

They need ideology. You guys are providing it, you know. They're not able to. It sends a very strange message. I didn't know this. This has a, this nearer times about this has a statistic. It says the TRT has legitimate medical uses. The hormone has been skyrocketing in popularity in the U.S.

As a lifestyle drug to build muscle mass. Demand has grown from fewer than one million prescriptions in 2000 to nearly two million prescriptions in 2000 to nearly two million prescriptions in 2025. That's fucking crazy. 12 million. Did I say 2 million? 12 million.

Yeah, that sounded dramatically low because I know so many people and I want to be clear maybe saying a military of Unix was the wrong comparison because that would be the opposite.

That would be like losing your nuts. But I'm just saying like there's a lot of things you have to consider like when you're taking TRT and the other thing too is like once you get on it for some people

you have to stay on it forever because your body will just quit making it naturally. You know what you were making? So is TRT for muscle mass? Is that like what people use it for? A lot of people will use TRT just like bodybuilders and that type of thing. Okay, but what do you do? You're a U.S. soldier.

They give you a gun, dog. Like, what do you? What are you thinking to be GI Joe and be fucking niggas up, giving them uppercuts on the battlefield? I love going to the gym and it's like I'm like a gym gun now. on us. But here's the thing. Here's the thing that drives me nuts about it. It's like you have guys that

like want to like build like Arnold Schwarzenegger and his like bodybuilding prime Jay Cutler and his bodybuilding prime esk physique's to just go work a desk job. Yeah. It's like

I don't know how to tell you this because and it's kind of body dysmorphia for guys. Me and my friends joke about this all the time. It's like well here's what we want done. It's like man listen to how we sound. when we just say that out loud. But like, dude, like, you look bad in clothes. You don't look natural.

You look like a trapezoid is some shit like that, bro. If you're doing it for sport, if you're bodybuilding as a sport, I get that. Like, that's fine. But you have guys wanting those physiques that aren't really, like, they aren't competing or anything. They just think, like, oh, I will be, like, whole if I look like a hulking mass of, like, humanity. And it's like, for what to, like.

Yeah. I also wonder if there's something symbolic about. it like men like feel sort of like emasculated or so you know what I mean like like the knowledge that their tea is not quite where it used to be like weirdly enough I think testosterone TRT reduces your fertility which is strange it seems counterintuitive that's definitely a common side of fact what they need to do is just make everything like all equipment that you can hold in your arms make it heavier in the army so these guys can work

them. Actually, make the computers and the office. The computer buttons are hard as fuck to push it down. The mouse. The mouse weighs like 50 pounds. You have to drag it across like granite. Yeah. You have four arms. Yeah, that's exactly right. That's so funny.

When you lift up the toilet seat and some shit like that or you put it down and take a shit you shit yourself straining to handle it. It is it is crazy dude. It's like Again, there are legitimate medical uses, and particularly if you know, you're, you know, I'm just turned 40, so I'm, you know,

my testosterone's fine, but like, I was like, man, when I go through periods where I don't feel so good, I'm like, well, is it that? Is it, you know, so, you know, you think about those things, particularly as you get older. But, like, you got guys, like, that are producing tea out the ass and they're like early 20s and shit

that are, like, getting on TRT and it's like, brother. Yeah. Like, you don't, you don't understand the concept. It's a concept like protein. too, where it's like, more is not necessarily better. It's like you have to have an adequate amount, and then after that, there's no benefit to it. You know what I?

Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, the Hexat thing is like, we're in the middle of this war where we are just daily getting our shit pushed in, just daily getting humiliated. Now, that's not to say that the United States isn't inflicting mass fucking terrorism and casualties on Iran.

and they bombed a cancer ward, I saw yesterday. They're bombing like multiple, I think, like water and sewer infrastructure in some places. Like these are war crimes, obviously. It's like straight from the, you know, Israeli U.S. playbook. It's not anything new. But like it's just very clear that like we, the United States has no advantage here.

And these are all symbol. ultimately. I mean, I did see Trump said he told Axios that there are, quote, no limits to his power now after Iran war. It's like sounding like Emperor Palpatican or something. Athanos or some shit, dude,

no limits to his power. This is what happens when you get Stephen Miller on board of anything. You know what I mean? Like these, I just the overwhelming joy I'm going to feel when these guys finally get their comeuppance and I know what I mean? I think it'll, I think will happen. I'm not going to be

cynical about that. I think that just as like when a demon dies, an angel has to die with it, well, when an angel dies, a demon has to die, and hopefully we get about 40 or 120 of them in the Trump administration. I mean, well, as brain...

Who would y'all rank? Who y'all want to see die most? Oh, I love this one. I like how we, like, talked 10 minutes ago about a new red scare, and then just, like, giving all this fucking just material Here, please arrest us

And Yeah, Perry scrapped The last three minutes Incriminating I would really get a lot of fulfillment You know, Beria That guy that ran the KGB In like the early days of the Soviet Union

He was like a complete monster He would just like torture people And stuff I think I could do good job At a job like that I think I said that like almost Russian I think I do good job like I'm saying like if they needed anybody you could find the stomach for that kind of I think I could

those guys and JD to some degree like for some reason I have not it's I wouldn't call it a soft spot it's not that but it's just that like he's just I know that he is just pathologically like a like a social climber you know what I mean which is disgusting enough on its merits but like for some reason it's just like I don't anymore clock that maybe it's like a scots-irish like genetic which actually is not even scots-irish by the way he's so maybe it's not that i think what makes these people especially vile man is that you see that there's been a complete absence of any like i mean maybe this is what they've always wanted but there is no indication at all that these people are thinking for themselves you know it's almost as like sure i know that

their interests are combined with trump i know that's why he attracts these kind of people But I mean, even if we just come to criticism about things they said before or just the fact that they seem actually uncomfortable when it comes to questioning, you know, like just even giving a straight answer that comes from what they truly believe in, that's like that's where you are in my opinion like inhuman, not even subhuman, you know. That's where you start to dehumanize these people, which is important. We got to make sure that these people are monsters, right? Make it known that they are physical, corporal beings, but this is insane, you know. Did you see the clip of JD on Joe Rogan show talking about Joe Biden suggestively eating ice cream cones? The thing I couldn't get over Biden is just bad staff work, man.

The way that he ate ice cream, I mean, it's like, you know, we could bring some of the stuff up, but it's like they would get him eating ice cream in the most ridiculous, suggestive way imaginable. Very strange comment. Very strange comment. That means you had to be looking at him with a lustful lie to begin with. I mean, JD wanting to fuck Joe Biden I didn't, I didn't have that on my bingo card

even though before we just got, well, never mind, I'm not going to tell you what we were just talking about before we got on. So never. It had to do with J.D.'s sexuality,

but it was not a PC way of talking about it. Nope. So I'm not going to talk about it. Who is it? God, what's your fucking name, man? Isn't it Chris, Chris,

Christy Gnome's That's her name Christy Gnome? Yeah, her husband Yeah, but I heard that apparently she's filing for a divorce Against all that Because of his

It's a bummer Big Banzangas Yeah, she's jealous of his big Why is she? Yeah, like what don't You got Don't fucking Look at give torts to the mouth

That's how the saying goes I'm just gonna go ahead And tell you this Like, you know She's an idiot The thing about that is I'm sorry but there's just no way you didn't know about his whole

like, uh, well, of course, of course she knew about it. Of course, like, that's why she was fired. She wasn't fired because of like the shit ice was doing,

which by the way, they fucking killed someone in Maine this week and in Houston this week. She wasn't fired because of the heinous shit ice was doing. She was fired because they got word that that scandal was about to come out. And they're like, oh, fuck, we gotta get rid of her. They asked her,

they asked her about her. She was like, uh, Yeah. My hunch, that ain't the first time that you've. I found big balloons, already blown balloons in the closet, but I don't think anything else in, you know. Yeah.

You know, speaking of the war, speaking, you know, we haven't really checked in on the Israel front for a while, but it is very relevant this week. I needed a break, frankly. There are, in my opinion, like three or four major stories on this. this front. The first is that, I don't know if you guys saw this, but did you see that Israel had tried to recruit Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to, they tried to basically groom him to be the next leader of Iran after they killed the Ayatollah and every other fucking person in a position of power that they

killed back in April. But they were trying to get Ahmadinejad to be the leader, essentially. of a new democratic Iran. Which, I mean, you know, I think that that's... And I think Iran, as a result, has placed him under house arrest. Like, no, I'm a motherfucker. So I guess Iran itself already may be suspected that Israel's gonna try to do this

and, like, we're keeping... Well, they read... I think they heard about... Or maybe they, yeah, they probably found out about it through their own intelligence that works or whatever. They're like, son of a bitch. I just pointed out to just like show how

you know if you had told me that 15 years ago I said you were fucking crazy yeah but like what do you I mean even making a deal with that even if he was to like you know be willing to go through with this like what deal do you think you can make with Israel that wouldn't only lead to your own demise

to your own demise yeah yeah they ain't making no deals that ain't you know bolstering the cause that's for sure I mean, it's just, it's just again, interesting that they would even try to make that deal instead of like, okay, we just need to assassinate as many of these people preemptively and prematurely as possible, you know, to leave the country in a constant state of destabilization. It's just a hubris, you know? Yeah, we've been like, you know, killing people all, you know, around the region for the past couple of years now, but how about a deal? Yeah. He just can't gloss that over it. Well, that's like, that's the Israeli mindset, though. You know what I mean? It's like, you know, they don't value human life at the same level as other people.

And so they think that just like, well, that's just cost, that's just charge it to the game. And then most people are like, no, I remember when you had my aunt and my uncle and my cousins and all my brother killed, you know? So, well, it's this hubris and this failure in thinking that you can just kill enough. people and beat as many people down that they can just acarious to your every will but it's like no man they're people who believe in things that want to fight you know or resist

yeah um well I mean you know speaking of resist uh the Democrats have

Terrence as the new field manager for uh resist Democrats I don't know if you'll follow at all, but the Democrats, I don't think the measure passed, but Thomas Massey had introduced the measure to cut off aid to Israel.

And a majority of Democrats voted for it. I mean, like really a shocking amount. I was really shocked at how many people voted for it. All Democrats. And then, or not, I'm sorry, not all Democrats, but, or I'm sorry, all the people that voted for it

were all Democrats, but not all Democrats voted for it. And then the only Republican to vote for it was Massey himself. but the uh i i think it's a very interesting thing and i'm also like roping that rocana thing into this i don't know if y'all saw that he was i think arrested in west bank in the west bank this week um really that was last week but regardless dropside head him was yeah and then dropside news had him on and like jeremy skahill was like interviewing him and really pressing him on this question and this guy got fucking arrested and like brutalized by the

IDF and still had the fucking gall to say that like Palestinians did not have the right to resist that. That Israel essentially had the right to you know drop bombs. Yeah. That's like being like kidnapped by Jigsaw and going through the

heretic thing and be like you know what? Maybe I deserved it. He made some coached points. He made some code in the sick and twisted game for my life. He did make some, what had to When I had to cut off my old goddamn leg to get out I had to fucking knuff off my

cock and balls to escape with my life but you know I had a kid I always went to be a pirate with a peglet bro so it's fine fucking pussy dude yeah it's not fair it is weird though and we are seeing a kind of pivot

on this and I think it's interesting and I'm not quite sure what to make of it I do find it fascinating that a lot of these Democrats voted against or voted to cut off into Israel. And I've even, you know, obviously this has been talked about a lot so far in this like midterm primary season. But a lot of these candidates are also vowing to not take any A-PAC money. And I don't know like what to make of this. I mean, I see it as like a good. in a sense

it's the kind of like over 10 windows shift that we've been calling for for a long time but something about it does also make me wonder like are they really is the Democratic Party really going to go through the motions of

trying to distance themselves from APEC you know cynically because they understand that the base is completely fed the fuck up with Israel they're going to go through the motions of doing that and and trying to cut aid to Israel and all that. All of things I support.

But are they really going to do that without any acknowledgement that this is the thing that cost them the election in 2024? I know that may sound like a kind of semantic point, like a kind of like insignificant point, but I would just like someone to fucking articulate it out loud and publicly that the Democratic Party aided and abetted Israel in its genocide and that's why that's what cost them the election in 2024. I would like them to admit that, I guess.

But that would require that, man. So on the one hand, they can vote against a bill providing aid to Israel, right? You know? But on the other hand, they can say and vocalize and alert voters that they're not going to be taking APEC money because as long as the thing still happens and continues,

it's not even that they may just agree with it. It's just that I think that they, benefit in other ways probably from this, but it's not their fight, you know. It's not a really fight that they want to have without a fucking immortal pact with Israel. But as long as they can individually personally, like, kind of alienate themselves from that issue, they can just use in a self-serving way. So it's just like for them to understand that, like, that's why they lost the election. I mean, that would be just looking into like the abyss for them and provide them to do actual, make actual concessions and amendments, you know what I'm saying? I think the abyss, that's the abyss, that's

the best metaphor for it. It's the best way to explain it. And again, this isn't like me quibbling. Like, I see that's a good thing that they're making some headway on this. It's just that, like, I am skeptical of their ability to internalize their own culpability and involvement in this. Like, I cannot stress enough that the Democratic Party aided and abetted this. It's not like they were just like helpless and sat on the outside and like oh isn't it crazy that israel's doing this and very sad and unfortunate they did including the fucking person who they're all saying is going to win in 2028 aOC saying Joe Biden worked tirelessly for a ceasefire I need them to publicly do a struggle session we aided and abetted the slaughter of over a hundred thousand people

this is not just some like fucking minor thing and like you will not absolve yourself by cutting some meagerly cutting some aid to Israel which by the way it didn't even pass it was just purely symbolic for them to fucking make a vote try it right you need to do the

rhetorical or maybe ideological self-flagellation version of like whipping yourself or maybe little or maybe they could whip themselves but a little bit of salt you know I need them to disembowl themselves publicly. Because those people that died aren't coming back.

Those fucking bloodlet, those entire family lines are not coming back. The fucking Gaza Strip itself, just fucking leveled, people displaced, killed mass graves of children, not coming back. So it's not fucking good enough. I'm sorry, it's not good enough for you to not taking impact money anymore, right? This states you, right? This is what you want to hear, right? It's a start. it's a start but I need to I need some fucking I need a little bit more I need a little bit more

reconciliation would be a good lot just like me just they don't even understand they're so fucking like is real sick that they just don't understand how far something like that would go just to acknowledge like the scope and the scale of the crimes that they allow to happen you know yeah and also too man I have to say man when someone like Bernie you know who is like you know for a lot of people was sort of this forerunner to like this democratic socialism that we see now. I know there were other movements too, but just electorally speaking, you know, but for even someone like him to individualize it to Netanyahu, you know, and for someone who talks about systemic issues and institutional issues so much. And I mean, this is what I think, I mean, not even maybe among

the left, there's a small portion of the electorate, but maybe just Democratic voters writ large generally, this is what leads them to have lack of faith in this fucking party doing anything because you can't even admit what people are seeing, you know. What you brainwashed... Well, and Bernie can't, especially Bernie can't, and that's been his whole thing since he's, you know, since the 2020 run and onward, you know, or the 2016 run, 2020 run, all of it, you know. Yeah.

And I think, I don't know. I mean, like, I think that the, I'm like looking at this video right now in Aurora, Chicago ice agents surround the car of a U.S. citizen in a parking lot, fire into vehicles windshield with children in it as the woman screams that her children are inside and they drag her from the car without presenting

a warrant or probable cause. I mean, we've said this a million times, but like their inability to connect that to connect their own culpability in participation in a genocide of people.

It is rebounding back. on their inability to form any kind of opposition to what ICE is doing. I mean, fucking killing this guy in Maine, what was his name, John Sebastian Duran Guerrero, like while his daughter is in, like, I mean... I mean, you know, again, man... It's just... I mean, Tom, you said this before, man.

You know, all the people that was screaming kids in cages, you know, who went around and voted for Biden, you know, And the kids in cages continued and didn't have anything to say about it. And I'm not saying that there aren't people resisting this now who are horrified now. But my worry is that this kind of violence happens so quickly, you know, and it becomes so easily normalized. And it's kind of baked into the way people already think about, you know, you know, migrants or the way they think about people who live in their community who don't look like them or whatever the case may be that like at the end of the fucking day, it's just, yeah, man, we'd rather you do it more quietly. you know yeah but we also realize

that we don't have any real political opposition to this any reaction to it you know and maybe I'm also fucking scared of going out there and getting myself killed or in trouble you know I don't know dude that fear that that combination

of you know fucking fear and you know the maybe idea that you can't do anything about it you know yeah um well I think that like we're at 53 minutes

There's two things I wanted to read to you guys. This is in the Washington Post. This is not directly related to what we were just talking about, but I do think it's like a background thing that needs to be discussed because this is one of the hottest summers I've ever experienced. There's currently a catastrophic drought going on in the Southwest right now. And I don't know if people are really aware of how bad it's getting. and how bad it will get.

And something that is just kind of like routinely astonished me is the lack of any urgency over this, particularly as it relates to elected leaders, both nationally and globally. But this is in the Washington Post. A major Colorado River decision looms. Here's how it will affect millions. The federal government is poised to announce a major decision

about the fate of the shrinking Colorado River. A crucial water supply for 40 million people across two countries, seven states, and 30 tribes. Over the past few decades, the worst drought in at least a millennium has parched the western landscape and caused reservoirs to dwindle. A historically warm and snowless winter reduced this year's flow to a trickle. Water levels behind two of the nation's largest dams are in danger of dropping so low that the dams stopped functioning. At the same time, 19-year-old regulations for managing shortages.

in the basin are due to expire at the end of this year and the river's disparate users have been unable to agree on a rescue plan. Now it falls to the Bureau of Reclamation to find a way to stave off complete collapse. Is the Bureau of Reclamation

is? Is that a governmental agency? It is. It's within the Department of Interior. They usually handle like strip mining and shit. Okay. Oh, so you know he definitely put somebody in that position to do the exact opposite of his role. Okay. It's like, yeah, it's like the worst.

And I got to tell you, I had relationships with a lot of those bureaucrats in that agency over the years, working for Sierra Club stuff, and they weren't really good during the Democratic years, so I can't imagine who they got in there now. You're right, right. Let's see. So, you know, what is the Colorado River Basin? Who depends on it? 1,400-mile river originates in the Rocky Mountains.

The river is home to two of the largest reservoirs in the country, Lake Powell, which is behind the Glen Canyon Dam, in Lake Mead, which is blocked by the Hoover Dam. This river, like this whole water system, it says here roughly one in ten Americans draw water from this basin. Oh my God. Something like this that you didn't even fucking know the name of probably. You know what I mean? It's just an elemental factor in your life.

This is the when you used to have like geologists and like engineers have these agencies season now you have like Danny Bonaducci or whoever it's like on a fucking sitcom or reality show in the 80s, you know. You have a Batman villain

essentially. No, more like a Superbad villain essentially. The oil tycoon you know. Yeah. Yeah, or a hat, yeah. Yeah, basic cable TV star or like the most evil, cartoonishly evil man you've ever meant. It says here,

the major cities of Denver Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Phoenix all draw their water from this water supply. If they turn Vegas into like one of those citywide spectacles of like a carnival cruise with no water where people are like shitting in like toilets that aren't, you know. Dude, when I lived in Las Vegas, that's like 2011, 2012. When I lived in Las Vegas, there were signs everywhere asking people not to shower or use water between the hours of nine. 9 a.m. and like 5 people, like during business hours, basically. Yeah. Only use it before 9 and after 5.

Like, that's how bad it was. Yeah. Well, and we know. More than 10 years ago. Did you see that video of, what's that guy? Is his name Andrew Schwartz? Like, he's that podcaster. Is that his name, Tom?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, Zoron had asked. Andrew Schultz. Andrew Schultz, yeah, people. Zoron had asked people to turn their thermostat during the heat wave to turn their thermostats to set it at 78 so that the grid didn't collapse and Andrew Stolt's like like was on his podcast like man it's crazy like he's a white guy he was like he was like he's like I would never do that I keep my shit at 68 or whatever like people like people have

no concept of like a society anymore or so like that's not oh you know what I was going to say what we should do we should like maybe have it be a little more like up front of there and where like I don't know like we lived in the society where someone was powering that you know but we actually kind of fucking do and resources do and anyway they would be okay with that you know they would be like oh let you run in a hamster wheel as a slave to run by AC actually you know what I mean

there's no way to make them conceptualize the idea of a society exactly no no um there's another element to this though that is like completely overlooked and that it really gets to the heart of the of the contradictions of the matter the basin is

also home to 30 Native American tribes though many of them are unable to fully access water from the river because of disputes over their rights or lack of necessary infrastructure. That's one way to put it. It's a very euphemistic way of saying that their traditional access to this river was completely fucking stolen from them. The overwhelming majority of river water, roughly 75% of direct human use, goes to agriculture primarily for irrigating feed crops for cattle. Oh my God, bro. So you can get your fucking ham.

Burger, man. Burger. It's burger, bro. We're fucking dying by burger. It is the literal burger right, good note. Somebody said, yeah, the, maybe it was Jake from Pendale time.

It's like, the burger has screw worms, the lettuce has cyclospore. Like, they're trying to kid, they're simultaneously putting the burger on a pedestal and killing the burger at the same time. Uh-huh. While killing you. Yeah.

I just thought this was fascinating. It says the fundamental principle governing the Colorado River is known as first in time, first and right. In other words, the earlier someone started using water from the river, the higher their priority if supplies run short. So what didn't that mean that? Okay. More junior users, which include several large cities and newer farming areas, are the first to see reductions during drive spells. So you're right, I think where you're going with this, Aaron, it's theoretically the Native American tribes should have fucking first primary rights, but they

don't. They have last rights here. They don't fucking get any access to this. It goes back to this sort of really racist view of looking at nature as if nature is inherently pure and unless it's not used, then it's useless right at the same time, you know?

Yep, it says though Native American tribes traditionally have some of the most senior rights on the river as they have used its water since long before the U.S. even existed, they were not included in the negotiations over the compact. Most of had to go to court to establish how much water they are entitled to use. And several still don't have their rights quantified, said tribal water law expert,

Heather Tanana, and citizen of the Navajo Nation. So, yes, it's like, you know, a kind of like settler colonial framework that, like, completely fucks over the people who should have theoretical access to this. But in the process, like, we're going to wind up, like, draining four major American cities. LA, Las Vegas, Denver, and Phoenix. Dog. Dog. Anyways.

Waterworld, two years later. You imagine Phoenix without water? God damn. Well, that's the thing. It's going to crash the American economy. I mean, fucking... Imagine if you took out those four cities, okay? Or, like, significantly reduced them in population size.

Like, how much GDP, how much of our GDP is, you know, comprised of those four cities? Like, it's a fucking massive chunk, I would imagine. Yeah. And also, too, when we think about, like, climate refugees, I think a lot of people think about people coming from outside the United States. But it'll just be people moving to another state to use its water supply and whatever resources they have. And then, you know, it'll suddenly be like, no, you need. like you need citizenship from fucking Arizona.

I'm going to end up being a boarder. I'm going to end up being a borders guy. Let me see your papers. Hmm. Denver, huh? Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. And then like make them like recite, you know,

some sort of arcane creed or something like that. No, I'm going to be, we'll be in touch. I'm going to be keeping shaggy-haired white guys from Colorado in my attic, you know. Don't do that. As long as they bring weed with them, we're good, brother. Yeah, yeah.

Well, just a nice little doom, sprinkle of doom. Just a little bit. Just a little topping. I wanted to read this article in the Atlantic. I got to pee really bad, though. You mind if we take a quick break? Yeah, I want to pee. Okay, well, then to close out today,

I wanted to read this article in the Atlantic. Atlantic. It's from a guy, like, we don't really, I don't think we've ever done one of his articles on the show. If we did, it was a long time ago. He's not very fun to do an article on. He's kind of, like, maddening in the same way Brett Stevens is, in the sense he makes you grind your teeth. But it's not like, very rarely, very rarely is it, like, are you going to get good content out of it? And I also have to say that I didn't read this entire thing because it's long as a motherfucker. And so I don't really know, like, how it ends or what. You never need to know how these in. I feel like you start reading them, like, before two-thirds of the way, even, you know? Yeah. But, like, as a writer for the Atlantic, he very much fulfills the Atlantic's role. One of the Atlantic's role, you know, which is to ensure that a left-wing vision of the world in the United States can never actually come to fruition.

whatever. This is Jonathan Chate. Oh, it's Joe. Oh, yeah, you didn't mention that earlier. It's the boy Cheney. Fritters Dork is, he's more of a contrarian, right? Like, Vreder's Dorf is like a,

he's not a quote-unquote partisan. He's probably more libertarian, but he's, if somebody says something, he's going to disagree with it because he has no principle because he's kind of like an automaton or a coward, one of the two.

He's like, he's like the huge. human version of a metronome. Yeah. Yeah. Chate, on the other hand, like, Chate is a, obviously a huge

booster for the Democratic Party. They can do no wrong. He is a propagandist for the Dems. And so anything that smells even slightly, or, you know, comes across even slightly as left wing,

like he's going to freak out about. They're going to need to update their personal. hell because I just who reads Jonathan Jay? I know. They're really you're right. You're right. And honestly Well who reads any of these people Which begs the question

Oh you know it just invites Invites maybe just criticisms You know what they're writing this for What their role is in life as a human being I used to see things passed around By lives and they'd be like Walter Kern Is on fire with this one or David's Corn or you know like those guys

And now I don't see that with the Rearsdorfs and the chates of the world. No. I mean, dude, you could even say that like these people were just, I mean, I don't know, maybe this is just an overblown kind of example, but they are the AI. They're the AI of liberal intelligentsia, right? For sure. Ideology, right? They don't, there's no really engaging with what they have to say because this is like just,

it's just, I don't know, man. It's kind of like, you know. It's kind of like an immune system. Like as soon as a foreign body enters, a foreign object or, or. or pathogen enters the body, they swarm to it and immediately try to neutralize it. Like, that's what these people are. And they're self-replicating, which is even more terrifying.

Yeah. Yes. So, he says, you know, his choice for this article, though, is the only reason I bring it up. Because it has to do with one of my favorite topics, health care. The name of the article is you don't get to, you don't need to vote for socialist to get universal health care. which, you know, is already a rich fucking concept.

You don't need to kill a cow to eat meat. Eat cattle. Deep beef. I mean, I guess not this lab-grown meat. I was just about to say, that's not a guy. Right, correct. Lab-grown socialism. It's a curious argument to make.

You could have made the argument in 2007 or eight. It's weird to make it in 2026. You could have made it in 2016 even. Uh-huh. Well, I'm just saying, like, after Obamacare, after the Affordable Care Act, after, like, a stance that I have, you know, maintained over the years is that you probably don't get Bernie without the Affordable Care Act. Like, I think that, like, the Bernie movement was a big backlash against the Affordable Care Act in many ways. and so then you could make the argument you don't even get the DSA

without the very without the Affordable Care Act which would mean like his whole fucking argument doesn't make any goddamn sense because like their failure to fucking pass universal health care is what created a socialist movement in the first place

or it's one thing you could also say not to let you get to it but you could also say too instead of a living under this long 2016 liberal paradigm you can say that we've been living under that paradigm since 2008. Yeah. Totally.

I'll just begin here. The Trump administration is implementing the most sweeping rollback of social spending in American history. Millions of Americans are being thrown off Medicaid. The president and his Republican allies in Congress refused to extend enhanced subsidies for people buying individual health insurance on ACA exchanges, which Democrats have warned since last year will cause millions more to lose coverage, while health insurance premium spike for those still enrolled. Last week, as Democrats predicted, insurers on the exchanges announced premium increases averaging 14% coming atop a 20% hike the previous year.

Yet here's how Bernie Sanders responded to this grim news. We have a fundamental choice to make, the Senator wrote on X. We can maintain a broken health care system that allows insurance companies to make billions by raising premiums by 14 to 35% next year, or we can enact Medicare for all and save the American people $650 billion a year. Sanders claims that the only alternative to storing premiums is to replace all private health insurance with a government-run single-payer health system,

but there is, in fact, a much simpler alternative. Restore the subsidies that Democrats enacted under the Biden administration. Before the ACA passed in 2010... So not actually curve the rapaciousness of the insurance companies but just throw it back to Americans, which really throws it towards the health insurance companies.

Okay, all right, I get you. I got dealt with the health insurance companies a lot during the Biden errors of my mom's stuff. And I just don't, I'm not sure what he's referring to harkening back to. Well, he's talking about the subsidies that were included, I think, in the Inflation Reduction Act or one of the acts that they passed earlier that year in 2022. I know what he's talking about

The subsidies were good But the fact is Is basically like what you were just saying, Aaron It's just another handout To health insurance companies At the end of the day It's not like It was a stop money to give them money

It's exactly right, right Right Right It's basically a siphoning off of You know average consumers' wealth To upwardly distribute it It's a classic neoliberal thing.

They were trying to, like, you know, the Biden administration was kind of like between a rock and a hard place where, like, they did not want to expand actual social safety privileges for Americans. They didn't want to, like, do a great society or New Deal type of thing. So they, like, tried to carve out social welfare programs within a neoliberal paradigm. So it's just like, well, what we're going to do is we're just going to expand ACA. Like, right? We're going to make it more, even more accessible by sub-liberal. subsidizing even more health care, you know, which is like, again, classic neoliberalism.

Instead of attacking the free market itself, instead of attacking private health insurance, the government essentially steps in and says, we're going to subsidize private health insurance. We're going to try to stabilize this naturally volatile inflationary market by pouring public money into it. You know what I was thinking, man, you could think of insurers as the middleman and the laundering. of your money, right? You know? Yeah. These healthcare companies,

but it's really the government that's doing that through these subsidies, you know what I mean? You're giving them money, but you're the own money that you actually earned, you know,

and paid into, but they are like transmuting that towards, to wealth, into wealth. It is literally the same thing with like Trump's crypto scams and the pump and dumps

and the fuck, all that kind of stuff. It's just got a veneer of legitimacy because you technically get something out of it, shitty-ass fucking health care system that leads you bereft and, like, stressed out during the lowest points of your life. But yeah, you do get some coverage. That's true.

Whereas with Trump's thing, you get nothing, but... Well, it's working from the backward principle of, like, you have to spend money to be healthy, but they have to make money for you to be even a modicum of healthy and secure. If we're not making money, you ain't having an improved health outcome, Tom. That's the deal. Yeah. Yeah, um, like the, the statistic here, before the ACA passed in 2010,

nearly 20% of Americans under 65 were uninsured. By 2023, that number had been cut in half. Okay, still, 10% of Americans under 65 not insured is still really fucking bad. That's really, like, I don't, um. That's a failed society, especially when it's rich as ours. It's like, we can't, we can't separate the indignities of, like just the deal in here in America. It's like there is a class that gets everything and you get crumbs.

We can't separate ourselves from that. It's like, well, okay, well, you know, I agree with you in principle, but like what about the billionaires and millionaires and stuff? And it's like... Also, what about go ahead, turns. Well, I was going to say, like, a big sticking point in these negotiations back in 2010, 2009 and 2010 was that you were going to put a lot of people out of work

who worked in the health insurance industry, which is that like it had a contradiction built into it, which is that like these kind of PMC types, these middle managers and professional bureaucrats that worked in insurance firms, like claims adjusters and all this other stuff. What about the guy who sharpers, the executioner's blade? What's basically?

What's that time? What about the guy who sharpens the executioner's blade? Yeah. It's basically what they're saying. It's already cut you up there. Well, but the point is that, like,

that's the kind of natural constituency for the Democrats. Like, those people are all going to be Democrats, but they didn't want to, like, put them out of work. So it's like, it had a, it had a kind of contradictory thing to it.

But, like, and their, and their idea of government is so delimited, they can, they could not actually see a situation where they used the government to create a robust bureaucracy that they would just reemployed.

those same people. They just, they had no political imagination like that at the time. Their conception of government is like not to use it to help people, you know, or even brought an opportunity

if that's what they always say, but it's actually to just make sure that, you know, the people who we believe can run this system best, right, are enriched, you know. Yeah, I think that the neoliberal

vision of government, and there is one. Like, it's a common misconception that neoliberalism and libertarianism, pairs down government. It basically expands government

services because government is a very effective conduit through which wealth can be rechanneled upwards, right? It's like that's the role of it. It says, Sanders' message did not mention

that Democrats had done anything at all on the issue, nor did it mention the Trump administration or the Republicans, which caused the problem. American politics is, to a very substantial degree, a fight over health care.

Democrats believe that all Americans should have access to medical care. Do you really don't? The access, though. It's that goddamn access word. It's the word access. People that love to fucking focus group, every goddamn word that comes out of their mouth cannot figure out that's a fucking loser

and's been a loser for 20. Everybody knows what it means now there. Actually, I don't even think they actually even believe that. I think that like truly they believe that there are certain people, right, based on like whatever merits that it is that you are like, you are working a good job, right? If you're not working a good job, then why don't you have health insurance? If they were being literal and honest, they would swap out access with punchers chance. Based on your deployment, based on your fucking job, you know. Well, I think the word access gets at a feature of neoliberalism, which is that,

it's all about access pay for it I think what they mean is the you should have I theoretically have access to go buy a jaguar in the sense that I can like it would ruin you financially

but you could get one to that or in the sense I can walk in the building and inquire about how much it costs and be like well this is how much money I have and they can politely show me to the door but like that doesn't mean I can get it and it's the same shit here the privacy

access basically means there's a there's a store. There's a store. And you can walk into it. It doesn't mean you're coming out. Again, one of the pre-mirate, one of the primary functions or

prerogatives of neoliberalism is that the primacy of the market must not be violated. The market has to, it has to transcend. It has to sit on top of every other societal consideration. The market's agency

confers you agency to interact with the market. Right, right, right. It's a quid pro quo of perverted one. Yeah. One of the biggest obstacles Democrats face is that they have adversaries on both their right and left flanks who each for different reasons wish to obscure this basic fact. The basic fact, the basic fact being that all Democrats believe that all Americans should have access.

I was just about to say, I don't believe there are people on the right who are confronting you about that at all. And basically, they wouldn't take it to its logical conclusion by giving nobody health care. Yeah. Yeah. Health insurance is becoming a crisis again because Republicans decided to make it one. Other than occasional vague promises such as making Obamacare much better, stronger, and far less expensive, Donald Trump rarely mentioned health care during his most recent presidential campaign. His 2024 convention speech ran for more than half, more than an hour and a half without ever referring to his plans to cut the ACA. Yeah, healthcare ranks among his most consequential legacies. Nearly three million Americans lost their health care coverage last year, blah, blah, blah. Let's get to the part where he starts talking shit about the left,

because we already know all this stuff at the right. Democrats were wrong about the long-term fate of the ACA, too, but in a different way. They assumed that once the public experienced the benefits of Obamacare, Republicans would be unable to take those benefits away. That calculation has proved mostly false. nearly the entire Republican caucus voted to repeal the law in 2017. In 2025, the GOP set on its hands

and allowed a portion of health subsidies to expire, then voted to clawback menacheem. The DSA has set itself up in opposition to the Democratic Party. Would you have believed that, like, would you have believed that, like, maybe, what was it, 2016, so it was, like, what, 10 years ago that we'd be seeing the word DSA,

just that the term, in articles so frequent. And reference as a legitimate threat. Yeah. His thing is that, like, he says here, the task of the Democrats, you know, flouting their success on ACA has been made more difficult because progressive activists,

and especially those associated with the Democratic Socialists of America, are blaming the wrong party for the crisis that socialists say they are fighting to soul. So it's not the... attacks upon the ACA in Republican-led states like Georgia, for example, which is why I'm not on the ACA anymore, because I just can't fucking even, I mean, there was no, there was no exchange done at all here. Dog, some of these premiums are four or $500 a fucking month.

For bullshit, for bullshit, for an $8,000 deductible. It's a scam. But dude, I mean, it's the people that actually, again, want this to be taken. I mean, I mean, again, it's just his choice, like. to always decide upon like, oh, these people want good things. That's the worst thing you could ever imagine. It's incredibly interesting, you know. Just the way he ferries this idea of like you shouldn't want anything.

You shouldn't deserve anything, you know. Uh-huh. The DSA has set itself up in opposition to the Democratic Party, selling itself to progressive voters by promising to do what Democrats will not. Its candidates and advocates routinely say that one of the group's primary goals is to ensure that everybody can get health care. as if this is the thing distinguishing democratic socialist from the Democratic Party. Well, I mean, once again, I have to ask, like,

are these people that fucking out of touch? Like, what's the last? They really believe. They really believe there's a value add to being Democrat that doesn't exist. Like, how else can you just say the most insulting thing in the world and just think that's like a pro to your argument you're trying to make? It's so crazy. Also, have you ever noticed?

I don't know if you guys have noticed this. Look, I have been in media, whatever, left-wing circles for a long time. You can find detransitioner people to write the most insane anti, the most transphobic shit you've ever seen, right? You can find former socialist people to write the most anti-communist shit you've ever seen. You can find just about... You can find self-hating black menace... You can find... Yeah.

To write anything against black solidarity, right? I want to ask you, have you ever in your life ever seen an article written by someone who's actually had to navigate these fucking exchanges? Like, I'm saying, like, on the pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post. And then said it was a good thing, said, like, actually the system makes sense. I'm sure. I'm sure you could find plenty of them back in 2011, 12, 13. Fair enough. Like, there were some good stuff going on back then.

But since COVID, since inflation fucking topped like 8% in 2020, since fucking premiums have been topping out at $400 a fucking month with a deductible around $7,000 to $8,000 a year. Have you ever seen anybody trying to actually defend this fucking shit? No. Chate doesn't have to fucking navigate a health care exchange. He's never had to fucking sign up for Obama. Had the indignity of debasing yourself to sign. Having to have a way. Having to think, can I really afford the bronze plan?

Well, it becomes interesting when the things that you write are not even to bolster, like, I mean, sure, I guess you're a class position, your ideology, but you personally benefit from this shit. You benefit from everything that you're talking about, you know? So it's not even that you get paid to do this or you get prominence to do it. You are actually personally invested in making sure that people like me don't get health care. Yeah, yeah. But they've diluted themselves into thinking that this is actually like... correct adult position. Yeah, the correct adult position.

The Wall Street Journal recently surveyed, also I want to point out, though, this position has got to be shrinking. Like, I have talked to plenty of old heads, like 65 and up who fucking love this shit, who think that this is like, who thought Obama was the second coming of Lyndon Johnson for doing this shit. But like, does anybody... But most of them have never had to navigate the bronze plan. Yeah, right.

You know what I mean? A lot of them are in fucking Medicaid. Or, yeah, or they just, yeah. Yeah. Yo, I think, I was going to say earlier, I think that's why so much too that young people are increasingly attracted to, like, progressives in the DSA, health care being like that kind of lynchpin issue. Because a lot of the young people are increasingly attracted to older people.

Well, dude, you don't, you know, I mean, a lot of people, the younger people like, you know, like myself or like a couple years ago, trying to navigate this shit, you know, and trying to be like, well, like, I, I guess these people actually don't care about the future, right? If they can't afford me health care, you know what I mean? Well, also, something I want to point out is that, like, the economics of this, when the Trump administration,

when the big beautiful bill starts kicking people off Medicaid and Medicare, which, you know, they're talking about is going to be catastrophic, right? We're talking just in Kentucky, I think, a fucking, like, million people or something, 900,000 people alone are going to be kicked off of these programs. What do you think that's going to do to the cost of health care? And then what do you think that's going to do to the fucking upwardly spiraling premiums in these fucking health care exchanges? I think someone like Chait would say, well, then that is a argument for why the government

needs to step in and redo these subsidies. You fucking moron, once they fucking get rid of Medicaid and Medicare, no amount of government subsidy in the market is going to stabilize that thing because most of it is already stabilized through Medicaid and Medicare, which the Democrats aren't going to fucking do in the first place because they fucking hate those kinds of programs, right? Like they don't want a government-run fully, you know, either public option or full government-backed health care plan.

they want to just mediate everything to the fucking private market. I guess my point here is that like and I'm not finished the article, but unless Chate is willing to say like, well, we need to expand Medicaid and Medicare rather than be shrinking it, your argument is already fucking moot. And what I'm saying

is that like the only way forward now is through a universal health care program. That's the one. Because the only thing liberals have to offer is a technocratic financialized you know, like inverse of that system that's just meant to keep you sick. You know what Exactly. And in debt.

The Wall Street Journal recently surveyed the four DSA-affiliated congressional candidates, and all of them cited universal health care as one of their core beliefs. The DSA platform calls for universal health care an idea long since implemented by their counterparts in Europe, which was reported in New York Times Magazine. There are two very odd things about defining the group this way. The first is that support for universal health care is probably the least controversial element of the DSA's official platform. Kay, thanks for admitting it, I guess. Why is that even relevant, Jonathan?

The group supports government ownership of major corporations, ending all immigration enforcement and, quote, abolishing the carceral forces of the capitalist state, among other things, its members can be expelled merely for defending Israel's rights to exist. All good stuff to me, man. The second odd thing is that the Democratic Party also supports universal health care.

It is, in fact, one of the party's deepest and most consistent causes. Okay, dude, if you've supported something for 40 fucking years and you've had power for like, what, half of those years and you still can't fucking get it done, you don't support it. I would also say maybe you need to

fucking get kicked out of that job, you know? It clearly can't do your fucking job. Forming a competing organization that is primarily dedicated to the same goal to which the Democrats are currently dedicated makes little sense. No, dude, can I just say, can I just, can I just, can I just, can I just, can I just, if you won't do the fucking job? Can I just say that these people who, like, believe that American democracy is the most hallowed institutions and, like, you know, political practices around the world, you know, these people really don't want democracy.

They really don't want any, for people that consider themselves purveyors of democracy, they sure put some tight guardrails on. I mean, basically what he's saying is that there shouldn't be another party or an offshoot of that party where people who have the same belief. who also want to fight is equally... But he's also suggesting it's redundant because qualitatively, the fucked up system we have now is not meaningfully different from your Medicare for all or whatever. I mean, he's basically saying

kind of like, why do you need May Day? Why do you need mustard and ketchup on your hot dog? Why do you need relish? Why do you need an abundance of choices? But we're talking about politics here. We're not talking about condiments brother. Well, and also, the idea that the Democratic Party supports

universal health care is it's just not true. I mean, it's simply not true. If it was true, why are you writing this fucking article? I think in his mind, it's, it comes down to that question of access, I guess. Everybody has, again, I have universal, there is universal access theoretically, but I don't, I mean, once again, like, it actually does make a lot of sense to form a competing organization if you won't do your fucking job.

It is, it is funny as well. let you go on Terrence, but I have to say it is funny as well that he's such like, you know, um, you know, he just, just loves the Democratic Party so much and loves their methods so much that like, it's actually not about the government doing its job and providing that access, but actually constricting it because the private market can do better. So I think what he actually thinks is that DSA would, it does not really believe in universal health care because the mechanisms that they would use would keep health care from people because I myself don't trust in the to do fucking anything, you know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because, of course I support the Democratic Party because they fucking do nothing, you know. Well, he says the Democratic Party's commitment to giving all Americans access to health insurance dates back to the New Deal. Again, once my thing, if you fucking have supported something for that long and you have had power for that many years, how many fucking presidencies have we had, Democratic presidencies? FDR, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama.

Biden and in none of those fucking presidencies you did the thing you said you fucking support, then you don't fucking support it. You don't sport it. Also, while you were saying those names, I was just sort of imagining but maybe it reversed that famous picture of like an ape evolving into man.

But instead it's like oh, Verro, maybe a little old but Verrole again, maybe a little but now we've gotten to like the thing that's in the crypt when you open it, you know what I mean? Uh-huh. Clinton would be a little too viral. Yeah.

Yeah. Unfortunately. Yeah. He can say it a little less virile. Other Democratic presidents pushed through incremental expansion, since his Medicare and Medicaid under Johnson and the Children's Health Insurance Program under Bill Clinton. Under Obama, Democrats finally did establish a universal health care program. It's not a fucking article there, bro.

Words mean things, you fucking moron. Words mean things. It's not a universal health care program. I still have to pay a $300 fucking dollar premium to get one. Jesus. Well, I guess it is universal in the sense that if you don't sign up for it, you get a $300 tax penalty. But I think there's a qualitative difference between,

I'm going to herd you into the slaughter pen, and if you don't like that, then, you know, versus, here, here, just go to the doctor. Yeah, I mean, there were some good things about ACA, like Medicaid expansion. And, you know, what do they call that, conditions? Pre-existing conditions.

Pre-existent conditions. Yeah. That was good stuff. Like, I'm not saying that that wasn't good. And I used it for a couple months until my premiums, you know, the next year went up exorbitantly, you know. Yeah, I think the thing is, though,

is that history is a thing, Jonathan. The fucking last 20 years have happened. Maybe in the first opening years it, like, actually achieved some things. But they sold it. I don't know if you guys remember this. but Obama and all these fucking assholes sold it to us as like well this is the first step towards something like a universal health care thing and then the in the last five years when the whole fucking inflation has gotten so bad and you know premiums have taken off and and insurance itself is just more expensive because you have a rentier economy like it's it's proven that this approach this market driven approach will not get the fucking job done. You need

the government fully stepping in, whether it's like an NHS style thing, or just something like Medicare for all, or Medicaid for all. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's... Obama's plan... Okay, conservative-controlled Supreme

Court nearly overturned the ACA. The court's final ruling was a partial rollback that made the Medicaid expansion optional for states. This ruling, not any decision by Democrats, made Obamacare a non-universal program. About 40% of uninsured Americans live in the states that have not expanded Medicare.

Since then, Democrats have continued to fight to extend coverage to more Americans. They have campaigned relentlessly to get red states to accept Obama's Medicaid. So I would just argue, too, that if it was truly universal, then there wouldn't be any recourse for the states to reject it, right? You know what I'm saying? Right. Like input, like for legal mechanisms to be in place, right? That can stop this, you know? I'm not saying it couldn't be challenged by some private companies who can be.

maybe do elective surgeries, but they were not even there yet, you know. Yeah. Well, also, let's see, what states rejected Medicaid expansion? Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin, Wyoming. Mississippi rejection is the wildest shit I ever heard. That is crazy, dude. Alabama, too, actually. That is crazy, because it's free money.

It's free money. Yeah, dude. Some of these poor states, like, what are you doing? let's see but y'all you all bathe in the fucking uh you know insurance company money exactly yeah i mean they benefit from having people being healthy in there's pharmaceutical companies yeah you'd fucking wipe your ass with that but yeah it says um

democrats have campaign relentlessly to get red states blah blah blah they've won ballot initiatives in seven states supporting Medicaid expansion and have elected governors in kansas kentucky louisiana and north carolina by emphasizing the issue. Just 25 states in D.C. were enrolled in the Medicaid expansion after the court's ruling, but 15 more of us joined. A major weakness in the ACA was that their subsidies were too stingy for middle class people at the higher end of the income spectrum. When Democrats gained control of Congress or control of government in 2021, they fixed that problem, expanding the subsidies. When many progressives say, quote, universal health care, they actually mean universal government

provision of health care. You know what I hate about this motherfucker, man? These motherfuckers are so down for fighting over little peace, over little peace, over little peace. Like, if that's what they professed that they want, it's all the little fights that matter. It's not, like, not the literal panacea, right? When he's contorting himself into these ridiculous positions over semantics, how does he deal from the guy that's supposed to replace Tulsi Gabbard?

It's true. It's like, dude, like, quit fucking just doing this dance with me. Quit doing this fucking, you know what time it is. Just say that's what time it is, and that's what I'm behind that. That's true. It's just cult shit. Yeah. He doesn't, he doesn't believe this

what Tobit is. Depends what your definition of his is. Somebody, when the second Bill Clinton said that, not that I give a fuck about that whole scandal or anything, but the second Bill Clinton said that somebody should just dipped him in a vat of acid. Well, this is, this really gets into the whole, like, I never fully rejected the notion that, like, the South and conservative Americans were essentially killing.

themselves out of their own like either racism or conservativeism whatever but coming from the mouths of liberals it's it's pretty fucking rich like i guess the idea that like you would get all high and mighty and insult as stupid like southerners because they won't take the handout the government's giving them when the handout that they're giving them isn't really much of one to begin with like It is a improvement, but if you are not actually, like, addressing the root of the issue and approaching their lives and problems from a holistic standpoint, then you kind of, like, lose your own ground to criticize them on. I mean, maybe that sounds like I'm quibbling.

No, no, I mean, I mean, man, it seems like a sort of mirror of the Southern strategy as well, right? Like, you've created the conditions for the, quote, welfare queen, and now that people are using these government services, you want to demonize them for it, right? And take and snatch it away from them, you know what I mean? Well, you know, it's one of those like things you do when you're rich that are classy and things you do when you're poor that are trashy things, which is like Trump or any of these people that are looting the coffers would say, well, I'm just operating within the bounds of what is what I'm allowed to do, what's about being allowed to go on and all that kind of stuff,

you know, or maybe he's not even saying that anymore now that he's saying he's got absolute power, but that would be their argument like two days ago or something like that. but if somebody were to game the system with like snap or any of these programs, which is infinitismally smaller amount of money. Like, you know, I think like Fox News would put it in like the cry on, like in these big flashing bold letters, $15 million worth of snap fraud last year. And people don't understand like, really, that's just like, you know,

not anything in this conversation. But like, you know, when it's poor people, you know, maybe trying to cut corners for scrap of dignity and not that that really even goes on in a meaningful way, but like that, they would be rebuked openly for that,

besmirched as the welfare queen or whatever. Well, also, it comes down to like your theory of power and change, and this is like well-trodden territory, but just bear with me for a second. I open Twitter right now. First thing I see is this tweet from Polymarket.

Just in. Mamdani proposes banning NYC landlords from requiring both proof of income and a credit check while forcing landlords or brokers to pay any credit check fees. It's like setting aside the tone of polymarket, like,

whatever, but like what I'm getting at here is like if you are in power, you got the mandate, brother. And Momdani understands that in some respects, right? Like at least when it comes to landlord, you can fucking actually challenge

entrenched interest and power. And that includes the motherfucking health insurance industry. No one gives this shit about the health insurance industry. But they're so fucking Democrats are so scared to actually go up against them. And what I'm trying to say here is that like, Chait,

it's like, you're quibbling over this whole like fucking access to provision of health care and all this. Because you do not want to buck up against the primacy of the market. If you are in government, you have the popular mandate to fucking challenge those assholes.

That's what we're talking about here. Well, one of the most visceral examples of their complete rejection of at all challenging the health industry, I actually think was like sort of like it was just seen in the reaction to Brian Johnson's death, right? Thompson. Thompson, sorry, the health your CEO.

Brian Johnson's getting killed by stomach. Yeah, yeah, slowly, slow death, right, indeed. But like, it was sort of like, I think that Elizabeth Warren at her most milk toast and Bernie Sanders as well, I think they just even maybe just expressed that they could understand the frustrations before we knew anything about this, right? But the reaction, I think, was so especially strong, you know, among these people where everyday people either didn't give a shit or some of us might have been making jokes and memes, right? But that sort of apathy towards the healthcare industry is something that they can't even imagine, you know?

So an example like that, instead of them saying like, shit, maybe like we really should, like, think. about like you know how angry this is making people you know what it motivates them to do they're like oh shit no we got to protect these people even more uh-huh we got to bolster the system even more you know well it's i do think i do wonder if chate's gonna become more of an endangered species guys like this like dude i mean oh their first about to get replaced by claude by claude yeah yeah yeah yeah well and i also just mean that like i don't know i'm a little out of touch I live in Kentucky, so it fucking skews. It fucks up, it warps my whole analysis on everything.

But it looks, just reading the winds right now, the DSA is kind of positioned to harness or capitalize on a few mass grievances, one of which is support for Israel, another of which is the need for universal health care, another of which is like anti-AI data centers and all this. And the Democrats aren't doing any of that shit. and it would is pure that the DSA is actually making headway on that. So I don't know, man.

I don't know if the Chait's way of doing things is the order of the day. It seems like it may be more destined towards the dustbin of history. Or on the opposite side, if you're a Republican, like all of them pointing out, like they have the infographics on the Fox News

saying that the DSA wants to universal health care. They want to get out of Forever Boy. They're thing about, like, them being scandalized, the DSA wants to abolish the Senate. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's so. I don't even know how, dude, we are talking about fucking, like,

Herculean feats of ideology to justify keeping the Senate. Like, I'm serious. Like, the fucking... It just has no purpose. No purpose. And, like, trying to actually argue that it is democratic is fucking mind-blowing.

I mean, again, just the fact that, like, South Dakota has two senators and Texas or California has two. senators mind blow i mean at that point you're arguing for just like a gerotocracy you know what i'm saying you literally think like like i don't know like we need older people who lead the tribe you know because they operate on wisdom due to age and i mean that would make sense if we didn't live in a fucking capitalistic society you know what i'm saying um he says even this narrower definition does not do much to distinguish the DSA from the Democrats.

The Democratic Party is roughly divided on the practicality, not the morality of government provided health care. Many Democrats favor single-payer health care. More than half of the House caucus has endorsed Medicare for all. The remainder favored universal coverage by building on Obamacare. Nobody in the Democratic Party opposes universal coverage. So don't be mad. Don't be bad because we're fucking useless that we can't do it.

Just realize that we're useless and we can't fucking do it. You better, Joe, you better hope that's not true, Jonathan. Because if it is true and you still haven't done shit, like, that's really fucking, makes you look really bad. The American healthcare system was built around private employer-provided coverage, which has made transitioning to a fully public system difficult. Why? Why would that be fucking difficult?

So why wouldn't you just get rid of it? Why didn't you just get rid of that? If that is the impediment to you. Not making a strong argument here, John. even people who dislike the current system tend to resist new taxes or policy changes that would cut off their existing coverage. Obama has said that if he were starting from scratch he would design a single pair of system. He settled for

a hybrid model to avoid having to disrupt care for the majority of working adults who get coverage through their jobs. That is not listen, if there's a glimmer of hope we could take from the Trump area, it is this is that when you have power, you can use it to do basically whatever the fuck you want to do. Exactly. No, the only problem has nobody's ever done that really meaningfully to try to help poor and working people in the average American or the middle class even.

It's like at least not 100 years. Yeah. Well, but even then, it's like as it's limit. I feel like the reason why people mostly say that is because like, you know, going up against these powers seems like this like Sisyphian task. Like how can you even do this? You know what I mean? But it's

very clear that Trump also sometimes goes against like business interests and does things purely for self indulgence, you know. If you just Just inverse that and spit that out. I don't know why you can't use that power to fucking help the majority of people. Well, also, this whole thing,

just how cynical and, like, half-ass it is. And I remember even thinking this back when they were fucking deliberating the ACA. Just that, like, the majority of working adults don't want to have their health care coverage disrupted. Well, how the fuck did you even pull that? Like, how did you ask the question? Because there is a world in which,

with all the fucking resources and administrative capacity at your disposal with the government, you can't just push people over onto new plans to just fucking take over, nationalize the entire healthcare industry, and they keep their plans? The fucking lack of imagination, right? Like their whole cynicism and like blinkered worldview just doesn't allow them to conceive of any.

Like they make excuses for their own inaction. It's mind-boggling. We've talked about it before, but it's like alky behavior. It's like genuinely like what are you? Dude, it's also like they can't imagine again that the government can be used in a transitionary, in transition insurance transitionatory sorry stage or process, you know, that it would automatically be throwing people off. You'd have people on breadlines. You've had people waiting at the hospital forever. I hate to break it to you, brother.

I've seen a lot of people in dire straits in the last 48 hours just out and out and about. says advocates of singer pay we're almost done here advocates of singer payer health care in particular and the left in general have directed the bulk of their efforts into pressuring dims to accept their preferred measures rather than supporting the programs dims have fought to enact and expand Sanders' decision to condemn the consequences of republican health care policy without blaming the Republicans for it is typical of how the left is communicated on the issue

decades of the left refusing to credit democrats for advocating for universal health care coverage Dude, this motherfucker lives in an alternate reality. I told you, he really does believe that the DSA also wants to take away health care like Republicans do. He truly believes that because he cannot imagine government doing anything for people. Republicans already don't. Our argument is that, yes, it can be used to do this, but he's like, no, why would you believe that? He's also committing to the same rhetorical thing that he says the DSA does. Just to recap, he's claiming the DSA has not properly blamed Republicans for how this is all gone bad.

and they've blamed Democrats. But he is literally doing the same thing. He's not blaming Republicans. He's blaming the DSA. He's saying that the reason we have, the reason that the Republicans have able to do all this stuff is because the DSA doesn't give the DEMS enough credit.

It's like, motherfucker. What would they even do if they did give them the credit? Fucking like, ride into fucking Congress, like, high on those... We're good people. What the fuck are you talking with? I love how these people, like, really think that ideology is, like,

straight up, like, mind wave that you can. can see like in a comic book like when professor x uses his telepathy and if we just if we just angle the right vibes and the correct parabola to war as certain individuals then we can affect the outcome you know what i mean it's just insane dude about it says about a third of americans trust the democrats to do a better job on health care than the republicans according to polls what are the other two-thirds, dude? Like, what the

What the point? Meanwhile, oh, he's saying that's because the DSA has disparaged and tarnished the Democrats' name. He's saying that, like, only a third support Democrats do this because the DSA has dragged their names through the mud. That's like saying a third of people

prefer these live-action Disney adaptations over the animated movies. Who cares about the other two-thirds of people? It's like the result. should speak for themselves, man. If your fucking shit was that good, would it matter if the DASA was talking shit about it? Exactly. You know what I'm saying?

That speaks more. Meanwhile, congressional Democrats have prioritized the provision of health care to such an extent that they recently shut down the federal government in an effort to defend health insurance subsidies. Yeah, well, they failed. Young people often say they are let down by the Democratic Party. One source of their disillusionment is their belief that the party lacks a commitment to health care.

That belief has been instilled through endless repetition, but it is completely mistaken. and healthcare is probably the issue that least differentiates the DSA from the Democratic Party. If you favor public ownership of the means of production I think it's the most animating difference

which is why you're writing this article in the person. I can't with this motherfucker dude. Yeah, he says if you favor public ownership of the means of production or believe forming coalitions with communists is important

and joining the DSA makes a lot of sense but deciding to be a Democratic socialist because you care about universal health care is like ditching a Toyota for a Rolls-Royce because you want your car to have a steering wheel. Well, I think... That's the worst analogy I've ever heard. I think...

I would say it's reverse, actually. I would say that they're trying to get you to ride like the 18th century car without a seatbelt. You know what I mean? I understand how he can get there because, again, to his mind, and to a lot of liberals,

I think Chate is a... I do think Chait is a vanishing breed. Like, I do think that, like, a lot of libs have been kind of radicalized in the last year or so. But he is kind of, like, older type of lib that you definitely saw more of in, like, 2017 and 18 and 19, who, like, they've mystified themselves into thinking that, like, there is no such thing as power. There's no such thing as capital. There's no such thing as labor.

You know what I mean? Like, they, like, humans are these, like, monads that exist and, like, this vacuum and they like go they're like amoebas and they just go to various like things that they like and you know what I'm saying it's this very like animistic almost libertarian view of things and I think the reason that he cannot see that there is a fundamental difference between the DSA and the Democrats on this is that he does not understand that for the for you to have a universal health care program you actually would have to challenge like the entrenched interest of the of the insurance industry and not just unit health care industry

insurance industry like we're talking about like the entire rentier like insurance and that includes natural disaster insurance which we're seeing more and more of with fucking climate change you know what I'm saying like this is well it's like the neoliberal sort of um disbelief in government right and that government can actually do anything except and I like that you pointed this out except expand its aid and facilitation of wealth, you know, earning two corporations, right? Yeah. You know, to loan, to sell services out to them, you know. And I feel like truly, like, in this deep, deep heart, deep heart, he, even though he, like,

subscribes to the Democratic Party using governmental institutions and flexing power to do things, he actually revels in the fact that they're unable to do things, you know. Yeah, they, they love their own inaction. Again, like we talked about this. Like, it's lost chasing. It's like genuinely, it's like it is a feigned helplessness that they are addicted to. You know what I mean? It's like fucking very bizarre.

Well, anyway, that's Jonathan Tray. That's Jonathan Tray. John Tray. John Trader. Jonathan Trader. Jonathan Trader. But, you know, I'm sorry for taking us for two hours today, fellas. But if you'd like to hear more content like this, you can go to Patreon and you can subscribe there for $5 a month.

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