Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 462: Mad Cow Disease (w/ Special Guest: Alexander Aviña)

Episode Date: September 18, 2026

We're all insane cattle now. We welcome back friend of the show Alexander Aviña to talk climate change, the wages of 9/11, the coming collapse, and whether or not leaf blowers have to go. Support us: patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Welcome to the show this week, everybody. It's September 17th. We are joined by our good friend, Alexander Avina, who's sitting in for Aaron Thorpe. Before we really get rolling today, boys, I wanted to know if y'all saw the early scenes from that new Ben Shapiro movie, Infidel. It takes place on a college campus

and like the, it's like pure right-wing fantasy. It's almost like a libidinal fantasy, probably. but the whole thing is like, what if gay pink-haired pronoun people met actual Islamic terrorists? And then there's a really funny scene going around where this guy's like, I'm gay! And it gets thrown off of a roof.

I mean, it's just... They have like one joke, man. They really, like... They're obsessed with jihadi terrorists throwing gay people off of roofs. They love that show. As someone who works at a university, if that ever happens,

I know exactly what I'm going to do. And it's not going to be anything like that movie plot. So I won't detail it for, you know, for the sake of self-reservation. But, yeah, I know what I'm doing. I would hide in the bathroom like that, like that woman on In Savage Detectives, who hides in the bathroom for like a week during like the 68.

Right. What was that? What was something happened in 68 where like the Mexican military, like, invaded the camp. Well, there was one. incident where they invaded the national university, which is a big, no, no, because like most Latin American universities, the national university in Mexico, UNAM has autonomy. So the army invaded it. And then obviously, on October 2nd, there was a horrific massacre at the Plaza of the three

cultures in Tlatelolco. Is that the one that's depicted in Roma? That one's another, no, that's another student massacre. That happens in June of, of 1971. Got it. I love that movie. It's got some pretty complicated politics. I like it. As a movie, like, I mean, I really like Alfonso Quarron's work. I'm like obsessed with children of men.

But that's a 1971 student massacre, yeah. I've told you before. I wasn't a fan of the black and white because I don't, I don't like black and white shot on digital. I don't, for some reason, I just think it looks tacky. Like, if you're going to shoot black and white, you have to shoot it on film. Look at you. Just, oh, what a smile. Alexi's an autort.

Yeah, of course. Yes, I've heard you talk about autort on fucking TikTok. But yeah, okay, go ahead. Keep preaching that you didn't like Guadone's use of black and white. But listen, if I were depicted in the Ben Shapiro movie, I would definitely, I'd be wearing what I'm wearing now, like a Mexico, Palestine jersey. I have a kofia on, and I'd be one of the first people taken out if I were included in the picture. You would also have a Kalishnikov, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.

Actually, so then I wouldn't get taken. Actually, I would be joining the so-called terrorists, apparently. Did you see this email that went out from the Daily Wire? Is Islam a true threat from Ben Shapiro? Hey, I have a question. When was the last time a major studio made a movie where jihadi Islamists were the bad guys? Take your time. I mean, every movie?

He slept through the 80s. Have you watched Delta Force? Like, what are the worst movies ever made? Like, I don't know if you guys have seen this because I'm like older than you guys, but Chuck Norris is in it. The old leader from the Dirty Dozen is in it. And it's like one of the most heavy-handed, like Zionist anti-Arab, anti-Muslim depictions. There's a really, anyway, I'm like, go watch this piece of shit.

It's, it's really interesting. Since the Iraq War, like Zero Dark 30, how many TV shows? Homeland, like 24? 24 was insane. That was an insane show. They had narratives on WWE right after 9-11. Come on. The second paragraph of this is pretty funny.

It doesn't exist because the people who made our movies, who make our movies are ready, willing, and able to make a villain out of a pastor, out of a cop, or even out of a guy who owns a lawnmower. What the fuck is that? He just watched David Lynch's straight story for the first time. They're so mad at Training Day. They're like such an unfair depiction of a honest police officer.

I'm having a harder time coming up with non-terrorist depictions of Muslims and movies. Yeah. Like seriously. Yeah. No. Like American? Yeah, for sure. I mean, the one interesting depiction of an Arab leader is like Kingdom of Heaven, right?

The way that Ridley Scott depicts Salahadim. And it's like, ah has his problems too. But that stands out to me because it's one of the few instances. Everything else is Delta Force Chuck Norris. Yeah, yeah. That's a great. Other standard is a crazy thing. Just that movie that came out last year, warfare.

I mean, like, it's this, dude. I enjoy that one. Yeah. What green zone? Remember green zone? Was that good? I remember liking it, but it was probably propaganda. Yeah.

The one with Jamie Fox when they're in Saudi Arabia. What was that one called? Oh, Oh, Sireana. No, that one is. George Clooney. That's a George Clooney. And that was based on a...

Three Kings is Ice Cube. Ice Cube. I think. I always get Syriana Three Kings. And the one that Alex is talking about mixed up. The Kingdom is the one I'm talking about, which actually, if you remember the fight scene on the freeway, that was actually filmed here in Arizona, apparently. Oh.

On the 202. But yeah, no, I can't. I can just think of something. Allah Hadin and really Scott's Kingdom of Heaven. That's all I can think of. Yeah, well, and the new movie, infidel. I think it was what is what it's called. I want to know what movies are making bad guys out of people who own lawnmowers.

Is that like a... Well, I mean, if they're about like undocumented gardeners. They're a threat, too, to the nation, right? Is he talking about like a horror movie? Like, I feel like there's... Isn't there a lawnmower man? There's a lawnmower man. That's a weird movie, yeah.

I don't know if it's... I don't know what he's talking about. Yeah. He should be more scared of leaf blowers. I feel like leaf blowers really scare. That actually scares like white folks across the political spectrum. I'm not, um, I am vehemently anti leafblower. Not the people who work, uh, who use the...

Oh, here we go. You are huge... Is anti-Colon? Keep going there. Anti-Roma, anti-leblower. Okay, I see what's happened to you. You've been in the last couple of years. Okay.

About the end of the show, it's going to be Alex winning common sense immigration reform. We need border security and walls. Now, one of the most black-pilling things I had read in the last 10 years was like the carbon footprint of small engine motor, like small engine, like anything, like a leaf blower, anything like that. like a moped like they put out tons of fucking car they're there

interesting they're very they're very bad for the environment um health reasons too like for the actual workers is not

yeah they're not very good my father my father was a gardener for a long time and uh he was always very hardcore

about facial protection when he was when he had to use a leaf blower so why not what happened to the fucking broom and rake fucking rake

rake the goddamn You got to take that up with the clients. The clients need the suburban middle class, upper, middle class, upper class. They want spotless lawns and whatever. It's insane. You know, it's funny. He brings up the lot. I don't know one person that would be Ben Shapiro's target audience that doesn't have a brown guy cutting his lawn for.

I'd like to be perfectly honest. Yeah. So I don't know what the fuck he's talking about. Dude, I went, this is some deep lore, but that guy Will Boring or shit, Jeremy Boring, who, you know, made that pin dragon cycle thing for Daily Wire, like sunk like $80 billion into it. And it was a huge commercial failure and did that Lady Ballers film, like, he's like, he is like I died in the wool of fascist, just a dead-eyed psycho. but I went to community college with his brother who also did the soundtrack for that lady's baller thing and uh

is that one Jennifer Lopez and them no it's like some daily wire right wing it's just like anti WNBA oh I thought she talked about the movie ballers for Jennifer Lopez yeah it's much different okay now I went to community college with his brother who is also an insane psycho one of the biggest dickheads I ever met my life

but just the daily wire. I get such bad vibes from the daily wire. Like Matt Walsh, like the whole thing is such bad. Bad vibes. They're so bitch made too, like in real life. I guarantee they just fold. Oh, dude. Bitch made. Yeah. That's just that's why they're so awful, right? In their everyday lives online

and the bullshit that they produce. Yeah. Well, there's a little bit of a tangent. But anyways, speaking of fuel, let's get it right into it. I like the first 10 minutes of the show was just you all name of movies and me naming a movie that wasn't that and you all said no no no it's

well J-Lo and lady ballers would be kind of hilarious let's let's bring like the like West the money train crowd and put them in lady ballers that would be if I had to

you know I don't know how many times we've done this show and I've come out and said like oh another pivotal week in late America decline. But I would say this has been a pivotal week in global economics, geopolitics. It has been a very interesting week, to say the least. You know, there are multiple overlapping things going on, crises going on.

But suffice it to say that since the war began with Iran, it was this constant, like, game of watching like Trump and Bessent, like see how long they could calm the markets and calm the public on what were clearly dwindling oil supplies. And perhaps

this paragraph from this article in the Washington Post sums it up on this pipeline that the Houthis hit, this East West pipeline in Saudi Arabia. The East West pipeline was a key factor in keeping fuel prices from

soaring even higher than they did in the past several months. It was part of what this, you know, analyst calls a three-legged stool that helped mitigate the economic damage from the halting of most shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. The other two legs of that stole were China cutting back its imports of oil substantially, easing the global shortage, and the U.S. and other countries tapping hundreds of millions of barrels of emergency reserves. Now the reserves are mostly tapped out. China's appetite for imported oil has come roaring back, and the pipeline has been knocked out of commission. I don't know if y'all've seen these photos, but like, there are several photos circulating

from one was a gas station in North Texas. Another one was a gas station, I don't know, maybe it was Pennsylvania, where the diesel is out. They're out of diesel. Diesel's gone. Can I tell you something I've been seeing, too, just yesterday driving around to get gas? The fluctuating price of gas on the sign. Like, no, I'm serious.

Like, one second, it's like three seconds. The next minute it's 419, then 429, then they bring it back down. And it's like, where do you lock it in at? You know what I mean? I've never seen that in my life. I've also never seen gas above $4 in Kentucky ever. Yeah. Other than earlier this year, but yeah.

Also, there's like limit to like diesel prices, right? Like on we've hit the, like there's no more numbers. Like I think it's like 1099 that like the limit. I think it was Galabov, the foreign minister of Iran posted, posted a clip from the Simpsons where Homer goes to fill up. Something happens where the price of oil is too, the gasoline is too high, so it goes to zero, zero, zero, and he gets like to fill up his truck or his RV for free. The Iranians just like, their Twitter game is so good, just dabbing on us.

But the interesting thing about the bombing of the East West pipeline is it's most likely it was Ansar Allah. But the Saudis were blaming these different, like, Iraqi resistant forces. and the Iraqi resistance forces response was so good. They were like, no, we did not have the honor of bombing your east-west bike one. It's just so good. Hey, trust me, we would have loved to claim. Yeah, yeah.

I'm glad you brought up Saudi Arabia. They're just like, we had, you know, talked about this on the premium episode on Monday. But it is very fascinating to be in the middle of this, like, global geopolitical realignment, this sort of reshifting of tectonic plates globally, and then have smack dab in the middle of it, the 25th anniversary of 9-11, which Saudi Arabia was obviously heavily involved in. And it's just like, what is the first I've heard of this? This is breaking.

As an immortal technique fan, I've heard an entirely different narrative of, uh, like you were saying on last show, then, it's like they, they were in the first five minutes after the second plane hit they were quick to just they could rule that out safely yeah wasn't suspicious at all what yeah and so it's like it makes you ask yourself like brother was it worth it was it worth it like did you get your return on your investment like when you you know did you get what you wanted did you get the world you wanted and uh I don't know granted who knows who was the mastermind perhaps Saudi was just the willing patsy you know what I mean who yeah It went along with it, the bushes are the ones.

I bet we could hazard some guesses, though, and we would be probably within a range of action. Yeah, 100%. But, like, something that is just fascinating to have witnessed over the last week is, you know, Trump. I want to get to Trump in a second in the week that he has had. But really the month that he has had. But, you know, the last six, seven, eight years. have been an ongoing show. Do you all remember?

One of the first images that come out of Trump won was Trump and I think Muhammad bin Salman and someone else like all standing around that glowing orb. Yeah.

You know what I mean? Like the Saudi royal family has tried so hard since Trump won to cozy up to Trump to basically get like security pledges out of him and all this.

And to see it all just completely fall apart really in the last six months, but in the last week, it's like they've been completely bitch slapped. Like they, Mohammed bin Salman, you know, the royal family asked Trump to intervene with this new Houthis thing. And Trump was like, no, the Houthis call this. We don't want to, we're not going to hit the Houthis. He's not even taking their calls. They're not taking their calls. The Houthis and Mom Dani, two people that for some reason, Trump just adored.

Well, remember when, so Biden got defeated by, by, by, um, They almost, they attacked, the answer a lot used anti-ship ballistic missiles. They found out why we don't have health care. Right. It's that supposedly led to a couple of airplanes falling off of an aircraft carrier. So then Biden, so Biden leaves the Red Sea, right? And then Trump comes into office. He sends in a carrier group once again to the Red Sea.

That operation lasted even like last time, right? And I remember when they, when Trump recalled the carrier group and they were asking him in one of these insane press conferences, he's like, oh, no, they're just, the hoot. These are great fighters. They're just a great fight. Like, so yeah, it's, yeah, he has a really interesting. I mean, but like, his instinct is correct. Like, this is an area of the world that's been kicking ass of, you know, of invaders for like 500 years. Like, whether it was the Ottomans or the British, like, yeah, you probably don't want to mess with. with a group that like i think americans were fed this like steady diet of mainstream media coverage that represent answer a lot one as a hootie so it makes it sound like they're star wars rebels the villains they're also always described as like rag tag rubble like they're not they're ruling over 80 percent of the population in yemen they have pretty advanced if people have noticed they have pretty advanced like ship and drone technology and they're also part of a political coalition that includes like 14 different groups including socialists and

communist parties. But we're being told that they're just a bunch of rag-tack rebels up in the North Yemeni mountains. So when they do something like force a carrier group out of the Red Sea, we're supposed to be shocked. But like, they've been doing this. And Saudi Arabia is finding out and looking good while they do it too. I might add. The outfits are, I want one of those daggers. That's what I want. Oh, yeah. We all need. We need staffs and we need daggers and we need staffs that you pull out to reveal a dagger. Yeah, that's right. No, I don't know.

I want the Yemeni dagger that you just think you tuck into your belt. Like, imagine going to teach. Is it like a crescent-shaped? Yeah, like the handle is the... Yeah. Those are times. Those are pretty tight. Walk around one of those in Phoenix, USA.

You don't want to mess with a man with a crescent-shaped dagger. In my experience. You're going to need that. That or a machete. Step aside. Step aside. You're right this way, sir. you're going to need that in the

I'm already jumping around here but in the coming I saw this today the Colorado River crisis will be a defining moment in U.S. history the river supplies 40 million people blah blah blah blah but filling them filling the reservoirs that supply

40 million people would take eight consecutive very wet winters a statistical impossibility all things are possible with God Okay, I'm not going to hear that, Meg, stop. We are living here in the Southwest. We are approaching, I guess this is the way to connect the two stories. We are really going mad max.

Like, we are running to have guzzaline, and we're being told not to get addicted to water. It's dire, man. You need a bullet farm. I'm working on it. I'm working on a bullet farm or a dagger farm. You need a dagger. It's got to make some connections abroad. No, I mean, it is, it's dire.

I mean, the United States alone is facing at least several different overlapping crises of which there's really no easy solution and, you know, really good that we have really smart, compassion of people in charge. The GOP governor candidate for governor here, Andy Biggs, who's just the biggest piece of maga shit, his proposal for water is to start building desalination plants in the Sea of Cortez. He hasn't said how Mexico is going to give them permission to do that. No, he just says we're going to go in there and start building desalination plants. So, yeah, it's getting dire. It's getting dire. I remember 10 years ago, people were saying, like, well, we'll just carve up a glacier and fly it in. And it's like a big ice cube and you big ice cube.

Into the Colorado River. You know, fellas, I've kicked benzodiazepine, sugar. Water should be a breeze, you know what I mean? I bet it might depend on water. It shouldn't be too hard. The problem is that someone like Immorten Joe is going to have access to the water telling you to kick your addiction to water. That's the problem.

He's not the most stable guy or democratic. Yeah. Good looking, though. Very handsome. healthy yeah yeah well yeah how prescient are the mad max movies just a disaster presided over by grotesquery well there's a few headlines i want to like read on that note right so like let's just start globally um there was a headline in the new york times that i thought really summed it up just perfectly like just like the cost of all this right

fuel riots spread around the world and Trump approves $2.8 billion arms sale to Israel I mean if you couldn't ask for a better example of what this is all for and I say this is someone who is yes a climate environmentalist of climate activists

someone who would like to do some sort of economic degrowth would like to sink shrinking anti-leaf lower yeah yes getting rid of Leaf blowers. He takes a principal line, though. He does. Yes.

We have to get rid of our dependence on fossil fuels, obviously. But I don't think, and I've said this many, many times, I think that a capitalist-led degrowth is not going to be fun, not going to be good. Granted, maybe the degrowth crisis itself presents an opportunity for some sort of intervention from another group, prefer. on the left. But I just, you know,

while we're in the thick of it, though, I mean, I written and read the New York Times article about the global, like, fuel riots and in, like, the Philippines, and Syria and, you know,

large parts of the global south, obviously. And, you know, you're seeing unrest. You're seeing people not able to make money. to support their families. And that, the nuance of like we need to break our dependence on fossil fuels, you know,

this is not something I'm celebrating is what I'm saying, because it is coming at the cost of a lot of pain and suffering that could have been mitigated had we had some sort of more equitable distribution of goods and resources and a more managed decline from fossil fuel dependency, rather than like the Zionist colony and the great Satan go to war with Iran and close a global shipping channel. Do you know what I mean? Like that's not really the, I don't know.

Do y'all think Trump against? I really think they think there's like an oil ferry. You know what I mean? Like they don't understand that they destroyed the oil fairies, you know, like house. You know what I mean? Like they don't understand like fundamentally like, it's not even like the oil it's like there is no mechanism to get it out because you've made this mess sort of and then like you've closed the straight and all this stuff i don't think they understand

i think most just most people in america don't kind of understand like we just expect that to always be there you know what i mean we've not wrestled with like fuel crisis at least not since like the 70s right or was it the 60s when you know you see all those images of the cars lined up and everything but well they think that they believe in new oil ferries so they knew oil fairies in Venezuela. That's right. And that's the plan, right? I think if it was up to Trump and his people, well, I think there's internal divisions

about it. But let's say like the Vance people, their thing would be to pull out of West Asia and come and come and punish Latin America. And I think they're kind of setting it up like that anyway. Yeah. I don't know if you guys saw, but they took Venezuela off of like the drug trafficking countries. So all of a sudden, who knew?

The cartel of the sons wasn't a real thing. But Venezuela now is off of the. the naughty list of countries in Latin America that are facilitating the drug trade. But before we jump to that story or that headline, the one that you mentioned, Terrence, the bombs that are a couple of things. The bombs that are being sent as part of that package are like some of the biggest, most destructive bomb to Israel, that we know what they're going to do with. Right. Like I saw a couple of reports that said that like the U.S. didn't even use some of these bombs when they were bombing Iran because of the blast radius

and the high probability of high civilian casualties. But then I also saw another report that talked about how carbon emissions are down this year. Why? Because of what's going on, the Strait of Hormuz and what's going to happen and what's been happening to Saudi oil fields as well. So, I mean, maybe that's a way forward toward what you want to see, Terence.

I mean, I think that there are certain forces around the world who are working to bring that down carbon emissions while Trump is helping, and the U.S. Empire is spirally out of control and sparking fuel riots around the world. I think there's truth of what you're saying about the oil ferry thing. I think that they think, I don't know if they think this, but I think that it is kind of cope, perhaps.

I think they think that you just go into Venezuela, you know, knock off the leader, take over the leader, the new leader, like a virus or some sort of you know what I mean like install implant your own uh technology in and all this and um that like you can just overnight start turning turning Venezuela back into like a profitable oil field that like replaces the same volume of oil lost in the middle east and it's just like as Aaron I think pointed out recently like there's no world in which you could do that on a quick enough timeline profitably that's just not how capital is.

works. The bourgeoisie has kind of like become fantasist about their own mode of production. Like they don't even understand like what it even requires at this point. It's just that's yeah, that's so disconnected from the people that make the value. They forget that there's some steps in between that. They just they just know that it's always going to be there. Yeah. Yeah. And it's also their horizon right. Like you guys talked about this and I know Aaron talks about it. The their notion of temporality it's it's they're not they're not far cited. Right. Like they're at this point they're just balls to the wall who cares like we are going for short term massive extract and profit as much as possible in the short term and damned whatever follows and that's really dangerous

I mean I think and that's been a process we've seen probably in the last 20 30 years that has just accelerated or it feels like it's accelerating now particularly when you're like Tom driving around seeing in real time changing gas changing gasoline prices 30 40 cents in the space of five seconds Right? Like, yeah. Yeah, it's, it's a, it just, I can't, it's just really hard for me to fathom how the bourgeoisie does not, is not willing to acknowledge that this short-term vision is going to lead to mass catastrophe. I think maybe that's why they have these escapist fantasies that, about AI, about consciousness transfer, about going to Mars or, you know, building bunkers in in New Zealand or, or, or, creating neoliberal floating cities, sea-steady in the Atlantic or Pacific, but it's not good. We talked about that.

The greatest evaluation in human history on an IPO was, you know, Musk's company, SpaceX. And like the whole pitch of it was, how can we fucking get off this rock? Or how can we get underneath it? You know what I'm saying? Like basically how can we terraform it in such a way to be able to survive at a critical population mass

without completely ending capitalism as a mode of production. Because what are we talking about here, man? If you are, if they're serious about this, if they're serious about like just pushing the fucking world to the brink, that's what you're saying, Alex, like there's a certain level of profitability that like if you scale it back far enough,

you're not even talking about capitalism anymore. I mean, you could still have the sort of labor social relations, the laboring class, the relations between them and the capitalist class. But what I'm saying here is that if you scale it back far enough, you can't have a degree of growth that would even make it profitable to continue as a globalized mode of production. You're talking about something way more localized, way shrunk, way more shrunk down. Yeah, I don't. I don't know.

That's the problem they're running into, right? That's the whole question with AI, right? So this week, all these like, what, six AI psychopaths came out and said, we really need to slow down on AI and we need the government to step in and kind of give us guardrails because AI is going to lead us to, which I think is bullshit, right? Like, there are people behind AI. Like, you, they're the ones fantasizing about mass extinction events. But honestly, what I think this is really about is that these, companies are not profitable. No, they're not.

So, okay, what is the way out of this trap, right? This money pit that they just keep dumping money into that's not producing any sort of profit. Well, let's like talk about how we're going to eradicate humanity and the government has to one step in and save our companies, which is the only thing keeping these companies up afloat to begin with anyway, right? I mean, we already see what AI does. We've seen what they've been doing in Gaza for three years. That is an AI genocide, right? Like, we don't need to imagine that AI is going to turn against humans and eradicate them.

This is more a problem of, like, declining rate of profit and like, oh, shit, we can't make this a profitable endeavor. Government, please come in and save us. And if you don't, AI is going to kill humanity. Yeah. Yeah, it's like they're putting, it's, yeah, they're, well, I'm not going to say what kind of standoff it is. But, you know, when I, you know, okay. Maybe facts. All right.

This, this, this, this, this, this trill Mexican gives you permission to say the M word, Tom. Mexican stand now. It's, they've got a gun to our head basically saying, yeah, if we don't get it. Also too, but also part of it, I think. Damn it, I wish Aaron were here. We'd have M word and N word. Sorry, Tom, good. I just think it's like, part of it too is like maybe to give these companies a stay of execution.

If they slow it down, that, you know, sort of, um, um, shortens the lag time to where we see this is or most people see this is all vapor anyway holding up the economy so it's kind of you know steady probably steadies the markets if we could kind of slow down AI and all that kind of stuff too yeah so much of economic growth in the US you guys have talked about this is based on AI like what happens to US economic growth if you take AI out of it it's a dire economic situation this is why it feels like it's being pushed on us right here at the university it's insane the way that the mixed messages that we get from our university leadership talking about AI is the greatest thing ever.

And then we have to find ways to incorporate it into our research and teaching. But then at the faculty level and the student level, it's like, this is what? What are you guys talking about? This is horrible. Yeah. This is not like actually helping learn. It's it's accomplishing the opposite. Probably every classroom built is pelted with the ugliest flyers you've ever seen.

I don't know. I have to start every class like at the beginning of semester with like an anti-AI rant. I have to, right. We were talking about how like academic dishonesty is like very like, like the early odds version is like very quaint by comparison. Like, and they would say if you use Wikipedia, you can get expelled from school. Now that seems scholarly in fact, in fact, in. No, I have to go back to blue books. I don't know if you guys probably use blue books, right?

I had to explain to my students what blue books are. They were really confused. But I'm like, I'm not, I'm tired of reading AI generated essays. I love writing. I love to teach about writing, but I don't want to read anymore. Obviously, AI generated assignments. So we're going back to Blue Books. Yeah.

Did you see the thing? So you mentioned the AI news and this strange agreement among the AI CEOs, which we talked about on the Patreon on Monday. But something I saw that was very interesting. And part of my thesis or theory on the show on Monday was that like the anxiety over AI being a humanity extinction event or tool was, is I feel like a kind of repressed, sublimated anxiety about the climate crisis? And as if to really just drive that home or verify that, Jacob Coxon, that guy who quit anthropic to blow the whistle on the fact that like all these CEOs

think that within 10 years AI will bring human extinction. I saw him making their rounds I think it was like yesterday the day before saying like well I always agreed with Trump that the climate crisis was overblown. It's like, wait, what the fuck?

I like, but that's, that really kind of gets into it. That really, you know, I think that Trump is a guy and I've seen him in the last month and I said a second ago, wanted to get into his last month. But I have, and I don't know if this is verified or not, but this is my own theory, and I need to, like, actually check the numbers on this.

But the numbers of times I've seen him say or heard him say in the last maybe three to four weeks, everything's going to work out fine, has exponentially gone up. And that to me is an interesting indicator that, like, bro, like, you know, are you okay? like it's kind of desperate it's like Bessent doing that you know buyback of of T-bills it's like it's a little

it seems a little desperate and uh meanwhile they got Vance out on the trail begging for one more term begging for just one more chance it was just like old sound like an old R&B song baby baby one more chance

sounds like he's in a matching suit it's staying outside window begging for pussy in the rain it's crazy man like also like then they then they also use like the specter of china right so like hearing you know i'm like ted cruz i'd rather be killed by a mexican robot than a chinese robot or an american robot right it's just so it's insane man certainly more dignity in that though yeah it's it's it's really

the AI stuff is um i don't know the example that you just cited terens i mean it's just they're dabbing on us i think that's what it feels like yeah yeah wow something awful is happening, right? Like you said, like the, it's going to be all right. Like when you, you know, the Iranians have been saying this for a while, right? Like the Iranians six, since they restarted the war, they've been accused the United States, particularly Bessent, of using all sorts of financial manipulation and to offset what we are starting to see now. And they've, I think they're correct, right? I think they're, they've been proven correct, right? even like Ghalibov and other Iranian officials will,

they've gotten really good at anticipating what Besson is going to do, right? And they do it on Twitter. So it's, yeah, no, this is, sorry, I'm becoming, I'm launching into the Dumerism. I'll stop. Well, no, this is relevant because the choices that the United States face is right now. I genuinely find it to be one of the most interesting historical, like sort of paradoxes or, entanglements that have ever been like drawn up genuinely it is kind of astonishing and totally self-created it totally which makes it funny which makes it kind of funny like

totally avoidable too just yeah i kind of so here's another headline from the washington post gas prices are about to take a big jump analysts say with the worst still to come the um like we've been saying this for months but like i don't know if people are a that like how bad this will get, especially in the next few weeks to months, because so much of American industry has run on diesel. You need diesel. And we've already got pretty bad inflation, right? And the diesel shortage is only going to make that worse. I mean, there was a story in the Financial Times that was equally pretty, like, shall we say, arrested. a little bit.

It is a little concerning. The U.S. manufacturers hit by fresh burst of supply chain cost inflation. The United States is now talking about an export ban on diesel, which would not make the situation any better.

I guess they're trying to go for autarky or something, but you can't. Price controls. Yeah. Let's do it. That's what I'm saying. Well, this is from the, Guys, what if I knew of a little system that might help string-line things along a little bit?

We'll start with a little central planning. We can text this pretty quick. Yeah. We could set up cool command and control centers like the Chileans did under Allende, the Cybersyn stuff. Yeah, we could do this. That would be tight. That would be tight. It says here, one of the remaining options for the...

the diesel oncoming diesel shortage would be an export ban on diesel, which would create chaos in global markets and not necessarily lower prices in U.S. as domestic refineries, they're already running at capacity. Oh, so that's how we know that that's what they're going to do. Well, they're going to do it. Because that was the thing, what was Trump's thing like last week where he was like, we need to stop trading with any country we have a trade deficit with? Yes.

What could you talk about? $190 billion trade deficit with Mexico. Therefore, we're going to stop trading with our biggest trading partner. I don't know, man. It is like, we deserve this. We deserve this. But it's still really painful to like to live it and watch it. And also very funny.

I'm sorry. It's very funny. The thing, like, you know, I saw these. I saw, you know, there's all these like footage going around of 9-11, obviously. in the in the world trade center and because it's online you can't

you kind of get sucked into these conversations that are kind of like completely absurd but like there were so many there were so many tweets I saw that were like I feel no empathy

for these people you know it's just like because of like you know the Palestinians have to experience this every day totally valid point United States does a 9-11

just about every hour on the dot to countries around the world but it's also like this thing where there's this kind of aspect of 9-11 that like people kind of like lose in the context of everything which is that like no one ever expected that to happen

you know what I'm saying and so you kind of like people are just like going to work and fucking you know just get like a plane through their window and what I'm trying to say here is that like Americans are so ill-equipped for what's coming like they can't even

conceptualize fuel riots, water shortages, inflation that is so high, you know, you're taking will barrels of like $100 bills down to the fucking supermarket to get a loaf of bread. You know what I'm saying? Like it's like what's coming is like we're so ill prepared for it because we've never experienced anything like that. And 9-11 was an early preview of that. Does that make sense? Well, we don't have the solution that the U.S. has always had for this,

right, which was frontiers and free, quote unquote, free land. Yeah. Like where there is no, that's like the old historical form of the U.S. resolving its internal contradictions. There is no frontier. I mean, the AI guys do talk about pacing the frontier. So AI is a frontier, right? According to them.

But there is no, how do you resolve this contradiction? Well, that's one of the ways that people have explained the rise of Trump, right? Like Trump is nowhere to go and the contradictions stay in the United States. and that leads to internal warfare in myriad ways. And now it's just getting even more intensified in this situation. I think you're right. Terence, like, I don't, there's. Also about the 9-11 thing, it's interesting to see how, like, very online people

have been making fun of 9-11 for so many years. And then, like, not online people are discovering, or they discovered on the 25th anniversary that an entire segment of Americans have been making fun of 9-11 online for a long time. And to see these two things come together is really, We've like 9-11 was the first, it's the first thing they got Kirkified, right? Like, if you think about it. Like, it just took a lot longer, whereas where that guy took less than a year.

It took a couple days. When you start to see AI videos of Chalino Sanchez with the Charlie Kirk face, you know it's over. It's like, just like, come on, man. That is such a good point. 9-11 was the first thing to get Kirkified. First, we got all the conspiracy theories, right? which like they're very, I mean, I like conspiracy theories. I think they reveal something broader about the culture in that particular moment in time.

But then it definitely got Kirkified online and to see like people who are very solemn about 9-11 and they have to like deal with these online young people talking shit about like some of the insane memes that I had students and friends sending me. Like if I show these like some of my neighbors, I'll like have a heart attack. Yeah. I was watching the U.S. Open and when Ben Shelton was playing in the semifinal, he got on there And he said, yeah, I'm not going to lie, I was a little hard out here today, just thinking about all the families of 9-11.

And I was like, brother, was it really that hard? I mean, I'm not trying to be insensitive about that, but like, you know, just the nature of things, the more time that elapses we try to find humor in it, you know. It's like man's pain. You'll never understand. I was really depressed about the human condition today while playing tennis. Yeah. We have our existentialist tennis player.

Yeah. But what I'm just as a historian or an amateur historian, someone who has a bachelor's degree. We're all historians, man. Don't do that. Don't do the professionalization shit. That probably is a benefit to you. Uh-huh.

Well, you would think. Knowing historians, I think it is. If I ever write a book, I want to put comma. a BA, you know, like, well, listen, like in Latin America and Mexico, you do have an official title for a BA. You're called Licenseado. So people are like, take that shit seriously.

Man, that's, you should bring that here. I like that. Um, but, okay, but yes, as a historian, an actual one, um, not just one who plays one on a podcast, I'd find the, the, the, what would be the, even the term for this? this.

The sort of existential dilemma, the political economic dilemma facing the United States at the moment to be a very fascinating one. I mean, let's just set aside the fact that for the past six months, all economic trends have defied any kind of rationality or precedence, anything that we would even, you know, regard as normal. Let's just, you know, just keeping it within the confines of what we've talked about here. And I don't want to get like too wonky on this. because I'm not smart enough to get too wonky on this.

But yesterday, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates, okay? The thinking is that this will help curb inflation. Trump hates this because, as you said earlier, Alex, this is just a, you know, the Trump administration is a massive raid on the American public and really the global, the globe in general. And so for that to, you know, really get going, for it to really get firing, He personally wants interest rates as low as fucking possible. This kind of, this is putting a squeeze, though, on, I think, people, because I don't really think that the cause of inflation is too much easy credit.

And I don't, there's tons of different theories on inflation. But if I had to guess, the fucking cause of inflation is probably the war, the fuel shortages, the supply chain issues that are still carried over. from COVID, it's not really an issue of like just too much easy money. I don't, it just doesn't seem. But it's putting a squeeze on American consumers because if they raise interest rates, once again, you're not going to be able to build any equity, but that's been already been foreclosed on. We've already fucking agreed on that.

But I just, what is it? So it becomes this weird thing where like I'm reading Financial Times articles where people are like, hell yeah, Kevin Warsh, we're glad you're glad you're glad. you raised interest rates and I'm like, fuck, no, I'm not glad. I need, I need a loan. I would like to buy a house or some shit. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'd like to buy a new car. I don't know, but

like, you know, people, it's just no one has any real coherent way to root for anything, I guess, with that, like, getting into some entanglement or quantum entanglement. I don't know, man. Strange. That was strange.

But I think, I think economists, well, let's say a certain type of economists who would tend to be on our side. I think they were pretty clear that the initial inflation that happened during the pandemic was an issue of supply chain and not because workers were getting it or having it too good. Right. Like the person I read on this kind of stuff is Tim Barker, who's a historian.

He has a really good substack. People should check out his stuff. Because what of the, like I remember one of the articles he wrote a few years ago on the Fed in the 1979, 1980, and raising interest rates, right? And how that contributed to the decimation of the American working class, but also had huge impact in the global South, right? Like it led to the biggest default in history in 1982

in the Mexican case, right? And that allowed for the euphemism, one of my favorite euphemism, structural alignment or realignment, which is like neoliberalization, right? So part of maybe one way to think about what's going on to the US is we're going through the most naked, corrupt form of neoliberalism. because what we're seeing under Trump is a massive

reconstruction of wealth from the bottom to the top, which is, again, it's part of a longer process that's been going on in the US since the 70s, but I feel like it's happened so brazenly and so quickly and in our face under Trump. And we're witnessing, well, we're witnessing that consequences of that. Yeah. Other than just his weird idiosyncrasies, right?

Like stuff that ideas that he developed in the 80s that he cannot let go of, like interest rates, like tariffs, loves like. In his mind, he just replaced China with Japan. It's really weird, the kind of stuff that animates and obviously declining human being. In the last month, I have seen, and I don't know if y'all have seen this too, but in the last month, I have seen a decided pivot, like a whole shift in thinking on the deficit, on the

national debt. there is like and you know and I talked about this on a recent Patreon episode and someone in the comments was like this is never going to be an issue the debt will never be an issue

it is an issue if fucking global investors suddenly wake up and decide that the United States is not a safe investment anymore suddenly that $40 trillion debt becomes a fucking huge issue politically

and I you know there's an op-ed in the New York Times this morning from one of Biden's economic advisors about the four I've never been a budget But $40 trillion is too big to ignore. This is tied to inflation.

What I'm trying to say here is that like if you're an American policymaker, you don't have a ton of options left within the capitalist field of action to really dig yourself out of this. So that's what I'm trying to, I'm just trying to track this. I'm trying to market bookmarked. No, and politically we know then what comes. Politically then we know what comes next. Oh, the bet the debt is out of control.

Therefore, we need to like get rid of the last remaining. quote unquote entitlements that exist the United States. So we'll continue to give a billion dollars to military defense contractors. But Medicare, Medicaid, all this stuff that Republicans have been dreaming about getting rid of for decades seems like a possibility under Trump. And they could use that debt and that deficit as justification for it, which is. This is why, you know, I said this recently, this is genuinely why they have RFK Jr. because you cannot destroy the welfare state at this point

without destroying the healthcare industry. So much of it is propped up by welfare expenditure that if you were to cut those, those entitlement programs and social spending, you basically wipe out one of the only fucking industries that you have any kind of steady employment and growth in. And so what do you do instead? If you can't fucking prop any of that up anymore,

you start to pivot to these, like we've pointed out, before, on-demand services, concierge services, uh, or healthcare, uh, you know, the, all a card approach to health care, homeopathic even. Triage. What, what labs do you need most, actually? Humors. Yeah. Where can I get my humors analyzed? Yeah. They've, they've done those cuts, right? Like, we haven't seen yet the consequences of the one big, beautiful bill cuts to health care, right? Like, as I've mentioned on the show before, my piece of shit brother-in-law is a congressman in Southern Arizona. And like, he keeps trying to run away from the fact that he voted for the big beautiful bill. That in his district, which is like part of Tucson

and then the rest of eastern, southeastern Arizona, it's like $100 million in cuts just in that district alone for rural health care and hospitals. So what does that mean? You're going to have no health care, very little access to health care. We have closing down of rural hospitals. This is, and we haven't even really seen, like, we haven't seen or felt the impact that, of that aspect of the one big, what it was, BBB, BBL. Yeah. I wish it was BBL, BBB, whatever it is called.

Yeah. It's going to be catastrophic. Totally. And setting, you know, we even talked about this on a recent Patreon as well, which is that like the Trump administration. also recently changed the structuring of like tax um like i don't know there's some program in place where states are able to like you know make certain taxes that they can then you know reinvest or replace back towards the health care industry um and they've changed that formula as well so i i think

it's going to be probably catastrophic um is there going to be a point though where like they can't draw any more blood out of that turnip and it's like Like what they're getting and like the biggest slashes to Medicare, Medicaid and all this stuff is just like, you know, $5 and some belly link compared to what they gave Elon Musk yesterday or whatever. And I don't know when like that tipping point would necessarily hit. But I think like it's also connected to just how they pass the buck to people like on everything. Like COVID was not a problem of like, you know, people in charge and planning and getting out ahead of like. potential pandemics and all that kind of stuff. It was, you know, like the onus was on us not to kill grandma and grandpa and all that stuff.

Stay in that. Personal preference to not kill grandma or grandpa. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, same thing with, or with like, climate change. You know what I mean? Like, you know, you got these people out here talking about ending leaf blowers when really, like, the, when they should, when the government should be giving them electric leaf blowing, right? Yeah, right.

Exactly. Or, like, holding BP responsible. Yeah. You know, like the big... More structural analysis. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it's the same thing all the way down.

It's like... My analysis is structural. God damn it. Sorry. Anyway, no, no, no. It's just like, it's just like, it's just vulgar to just be like, no, this is a problem of like people's consumption choices or their selfish habits or whatever. Or not nine dickheads like setting the tone for all that because they're getting money off of that. And then pointing the finger back at those people and said, no, you're selfish actually because you don't.

driving Nissan Leaf or... I mean, U.S. Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, he said, Americans should drive less if they won't lower gas prices. She said that yesterday. A question of individual supply and demand. Not global. No, no.

It's just on us individually, which is such a neoliberal thing, right? Like, it took a lot of years and decades and coercion and government policy to create a form of human subjectivity. in the United States that correlates with neoliberalism. In Chile, it took a horrific military dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet. The first 9-11, which I always tell people, oh, did you remember 9-9-11? Yes, 9-11, 1973. And they get mad at me when I say that, but whatever.

Right. So, like, how do you create a personhood or an idea of an individual that correlates with the capitalist logics and demands of neoliberalism, right? And this is what you guys have just been described, what Tom has been describing like you you the idea that health public health in the united states is actually not public at all it's just based on individual preference and whether you wear a mask or not or whether you do this or whether you it's like it's it it took a lot of work to create us in this way right we had to become cattle but we had to become insane cattle you know what i'm mad cow to say because

because like something that i think is so fascinating is that during the great depression The FDR administration had to make some asks of the American, you know, populace. Like, okay, you're going to have to make some sacrifices. For this to actually work, for us to actually have some sort of like large, you know, public expenditure, large government welfare program, you're going to have to make some sacrifices for the greater good. And it's funny because now Chris Wright saying the same, basically the same thing, but it's been neoliberal, It's like, don't you want to, like, you want to lower gas prices, don't you, piece of shit?

Like, you're going to do it anyways. Or, like, Trump going to North Carolina and being like, this is one of the worst piece of shit states I've ever been in. And if you go elect that Republican, we're not going to give you any more federal relief money. And the entire audience goes, oh, it's just like, we're insane cattle. We are insane cattle. Or the, the $5,000 check promise. Yeah, yeah. It's so insulting.

Oh, God. We're depressed and sane cattle. Oh, we do have some sort of, I'm telling you, dog. With too many antibiotics in us. Like that's, yeah, we definitely are. There's too much plastic in our bloodstream. I've been saying this for a while, but Americans have some sort of like repressed libidinal thing with animals at the moment.

Like with RFK. Especially at the FBI. Well, I was going to say, like, I was going to bring that up. Like, there's. Cash got that dog in them. Can you talk about leaf blowers? No. I'm sorry.

dog that was one of the wilder things i've seen like like you know you think like the guys that just know every state's age of consent by heart is like you know creepy enough but him to say like hey getting bistral with uh with an animal not disqualifying at the they were forced right people who were forced to have that could then become it was insane like the the question and answering with john kennedy yeah insane That is just like... It was premised on the idea that... I can't do John.

Basically forced into a situation where someone holds a gun to your head and you have to fuck a dog or something. Like that was the scenario that Cash Patel can... That doesn't disqualify you from joining the FBI, according to Cash Patel. Does that...

I forgot his rap name. K-A-dollar sign H something, something. Oh my God. I wish they didn't even go away. Well, he's at a weird week. It came out this week. it came out this week that he so understated he's at a weird week

he like he like directed one of his underlings to go after this account called like i love retards that like cash a retard and so he like that's what he spends his time doing oh i find retards that's what it was he spent uh he spends his he spends his time getting his employees to go after x accounts they call him retarded. Dude.

I want an assistant. I'm going to hire an assistant that does that. You guys should hire an assistant. Anyone talks shit about Trillillies online. You got a hatchet. Got it. Yeah. You have an online Anton Shiger going after people.

Yeah. Anybody that supports leaf blowers. See, the thing, people bag on this show, they're like, oh, these guys are a bunch of Dumers. Look, you do 50 minutes of Dumer, 60 minutes of Dumeers. consumer content and then you get so fucked up about it that you eventually punch through to this other side where it's just

kind of silly and fun, which is where we're at now. We're having fun. That's my pedagogical approach. Yeah, that works. It's called a pallet cleanser in the business. I speaking of two pallet cleansers, I wanted to talk a little bit about the last week that Trump is

had. I wanted to talk a little bit about the Joe Rogan turn on Trump. And I wanted to just mention in passing, no pun intended, the state of health and mind of one Senator Mitch McConnell, which is a bit an interesting political story saga this week as well. My man's was so gone. I think he accidentally voted for Democrats on one thing, and they had to literally like hold his hand and force him to vote. No way.

Do you see when he was getting asked, he just shot him the deuses? I don't know if he meant like, no, I'm out. Like I'm, this is it, I'm dying. Like the meme that just disappears at that point? The people pulling the strings in the pulley, like

they hit the wrong button. That's why they voted for Democrat. He looks so bad. I think he was dead and I think they resuscitated him. I think the reports were true and they just let him stay like brain dead for like an hour or two and they're like no no we've got to get him back to it because he is like

They gave him some experimental therapeutic thing Where like he died and he was called cocaine They called cocaine They gave him the crazy In every orifice of his body they put cocaine And that got him going That brought him back to life Everybody always called him the turtle

But now he really does look like a turtle But now he's a turtle just chewing on a cocoa leaf I want to be that. I want to do that. Yeah. Well, you know, go ahead. He doesn't look good. He has a weird smile, right?

Which is, that's why he looks high as fuck. Like, he's got that perpetual smile. But yeah, it's not good. I would not want to be. I mean, they're Diane Feinsteining him. But she didn't look as happy. She really looked gone. Like she's, you could do this in front of her.

and she wasn't like blinking. He looks a little bit more high, more happy. He looks positively thrilled. Here's the thing about it. If you wouldn't give that man a driver's license, I don't think he should be voting on legislation. Well, he... Oh, no.

Give him a driver's license only in Kentucky. Let him go wild in Kentucky. He wasn't voting. They were holding his hand and making his vote. No, this is what the senator would want. to put a bow on my statement from just a minute ago conservatives are pretty much out of any kind of capitalist any kind of actions within the capitalist field of action terrain

that could like conceivably get them out of this we've not really talked about Democrats at all over the last fucking two three months because what is there even say really but genuinely like there are no good options for Democrats either within this range of options, what I'm saying, right? If you've got a debt situation, for example, that the entire, you know,

global financial system has decided is not tenable any longer. A war that, you know, I don't know, maybe the political will is there for Democrats to get out of it, but like they would need a massive diplomatic effort to patch together some sort of geopolitical situation, but that's going to run up against the reality of Israel

and the genocide. So once again, not a whole lot of options for Democrats either. So I don't know what kind of insane distortions this is going to make, but we will all continue to become more insane cattle. Mad cows, yeah. But there's like in the Iranian case, they signed an MOU. Just follow the MOU. I mean, you have to be realistic, like, be connected to reality,

acknowledge the situation on the ground in West Asia. And you have to follow the MOU that you signed. That's it. I mean, that's honestly the only way out. I didn't, the Democrats, I mean, apparently Hassan Piker's taken over the party, which is probably a good thing. Although I did see he gave an interview to Axios

where he said the U.S. Empire was way worse in Al-Qaeda and you have people like near a Tandon freaking out about this. I'm like, again, talking about reality. That is objectively true in Hassan Piker's words, pound for pound in terms of like body count. it's no comparison. But again, because we have to treat Americans like infantilized mad cows, we have to continue with these fairy tales about American exceptionalism

and how we are morally and civilizational superior to everyone else. And that's how we get people to vote for us in the midterms and in the presidential election, which is part of the reason why we're in this fucked up situation to begin with. Yeah. Well, you know, I, a big portion of the Republican base is turned on Trump. I don't know. I don't, you know, I did see one thing like this,

Maria Elvira Salazar from Florida. Oh, yeah, one of my favorites. Broke with Trump over immigration. Bullshit, bullshit. That's a 15, Dave Weigel pointed out a 15 plus. He'll get her back with Cuba. You know, South Florida. Is she?

Is she? South Florida, Cuba. Yeah, yeah. She's part of that trio of her, Carlos Jimenez and Mario Diazbo-Alar. Part of that, a mafia down there. I saw Joe Rogan say

Trump supporters are fucking nuts, man. They're rabid. It does make me, it does make me wonder if there was like that whole vibe shift thing like a year and a half ago. I think that like the the whole cultural scene

decided that like okay, let's do this. Let's do this. This is cool. Like, we're not, we don't want to do Brat Summer. And now they're realizing that, like, they don't want to be lumped in with the insane cattle. And so they're trying to distance themselves around. I think that's also the case with Salazar.

Like, they don't want to be lumped in with insane cattle. They're like, I'm not cattle. I'm not insane. But maybe I don't know. They're cooked. I mean, in terms of the midterm, I think they're cooked. They think they're cooked anyway. They're persuaded.

They're cooked. if they got JD out there begging in the rain. Begging. I mean, really like no dignity. He's jodicey shit. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, the most whiny jodicy song, not like the cool, like, Macing jodicey song. Yeah. Desperate jodicy song. Yeah. Baby I made a mistake type jesus.

Yeah. But then it's going to filter down. I mean, I think something you guys have talked about, right? like how the issue with data centers is like the one issue and that is across the political spectrum at the local level. It's been really interesting to see how that develops and the type of unwieldy coalitions and alliances that are developing for municipal and state level politics and elections.

I think that's also going to be have some interesting results in the midterms. But in the end, I'm still holding hope for a Portuguese carnation revolution style type of, you know, change in the United States. But all those officers and generals that were purged by the infidel PXF will launch a coup d'etat someday. I think it's probably the only, go ahead, Tom. Oh, no, no, no, no. Well, I was going to present a bleak alternative, but we're on the, our palate cleanser shit.

That's not bleak. No, no. Already pretty bleak. Yeah. Well, I was just going to say, You know, another thing that could be going on is, you know, you know the scene in Goodfellas where it's like, when you can't borrow another dollar, when you can't do this, you can't do that, what do you do? You light a match and you blow the joint. Yeah.

Well, probably the worst possible time for them to announce they've got weapons in space. I saw that. Oh, no, no. Okay, no. Staying on your movie, Tom, what if we just see a rash of like social banditry and we have. have a lot of like theft of million dollar airplane shipments. And apparently Papp's blue ribbon trucks have been getting hit up on highway jacking. So hopefully we get a rash of social bandits, you know,

bandits with a social consciousness that they can kind of help out. Just gangsterismo. Yeah, let's bring it back to that. Yeah. Totally. Totally. Trump wants to unite Ireland again. so Trump says he wants to United Ireland

so that's it. He said he described it as it'd be a feather in everyone's cap. It's because like it's so obvious at this point like he can't solve a single global conflict and he's only made them all worse and that was the whole pitch.

Remember the guy I sat next to on the plane who was like Trump's gonna bring world peace and I was like, oh my God you actually believe this. But a lot of those Trump people thought that And so it's like he himself thought it. It's why he's obsessed with the Nobel Peace Prize. But like seeing that he obviously can't solve a single global conflict and is only making

them all worse, he's like, what's the one Ireland? He's like, everyone wants that, right? Well, not everybody. Yeah, we're two years past Star Trek's prediction of a United Ireland. So I hope I hope he makes it happen. That would be kind of funny though. That's like his one accomplishment. It's not even his accomplishment, but he's obviously going to take credit for it.

Stop the troubles, folks. They're over there doing nasty things. Well, Alex, let's let you let you let you let you let's cut you loose, my friend. Thank you for joining us today to talk about the headlines and latest news. Anytime, my pleasure. It's always fun to chop it up with you guys. Anything you want to plug before we get you out of here? What I want to plug?

Oh, so I joined a podcast. So I'm part of the Turbulence podcast. So if you guys want to, I got to get better this plugging shit. If you want more forum policy analysis and interviews, check out the Turbulus podcast with my collaborators, Dylan Saba and M. Sanisa. Other than that, I'm a proud owner of a Toyota truck based on what the answer a L are doing. I may have to trade it for a Toyota Hilix, Hylix. Dude, if they come to the U.S., I'd be all over there. Yeah, just in like as a form of solidarity.

So totally stolen valor. Like I'm driving around in Toyota and I'm like, yeah, just like those freedom fighters over there. It's Toyota Thorn, but it's only for, you know, the Toyota models driven by, you know, rebel. Yeah. Yeah. So other than that, I won't use my leaf blower. so just out of respect for Terrence, I'm going to get rid of it. That's progress.

Thanks again for having me. Yeah, there's progress, Terrence. Progress. Thank you. Don't ever say podcasting doesn't have some effect, even if it's marginal on the world. All right, well, please go check all that out. Go check out Turbulance.

Go check out our Patreon. The link will be in the show notes. And there's been a lot of good content over there lately, in my opinion. so go check that out. We would appreciate it. Also, there's the video of our live show. I posted it up on the Patreon. So if you'd like to see Tom and I do a live show on video, go sign up.

It's over there. And you can pay for that. Oh, one more thing. Aaron and I did that episode on the sci-fi short story collection, Palestine, plus 100. we will eventually do one on another short story collection called Palestine minus one. So for our dear listeners, be on the lookout for that. Hell, yeah. Yeah, y'all did.

That's so fun. I really like that episode they all did as well. Very good. That was great. Go check that out and be on the lookout for that as well. All right. Well, we'll see you next time. Thanks again, everybody.

Peace.