Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 52: The Chosen Vessel, Part 2: The Grit Grift

Episode Date: May 11, 2018

We argue that it's time for appalachian nonprofits to go the way of the dinosaurs and chimney sweeps. That's how this idiom works right

Is that Dire Straits? Who is that? Yeah. I mean, I guess you sort of expect that from a song that its main message is... What is its main message? I say I think it's a critique of consumerism. Oh. Interesting.

Interesting. We got the movies, color TV. Interesting. We got the movies Color TV Interesting Oh Microwave oven Custom kitchen Delivery I tell you what Dire Straits I think is

Are extremely underrated though Do you like them? Hell yeah dude What was the guy's name Who played guitar in that group? Fuck what's his name? I think are extremely underrated, though. You like them? Hell yeah, dude. What was the guy's name who played guitar in that group? Fuck, what's his name? He's a good guitar player. I'll give him that.

Yeah, they're fucking awesome. I'll give him that. Goddamn, man. I've given up all hope of trying to get this massive chords unraveled beneath my feet. My house is a mess, man. I think it's fine. I had an extremely traumatic experience last night. Go on.

I came home after we were at Summit, and for days I've been smelling something kind of weird in this house. You asked me the other day. Yeah, I was like, does it kind of have a smell to it? Like something might be dead in here? Let me tell you a little bit about... The stench of death. I've had some horror stories lately about the cats bringing shit in.

And having to mercy kill a few animals here and there. But I've really learned a lot about decomposition. You know the body farm down in the University of Tennessee? Under Neyland Stadium. Yeah, where they study decomposition of humans. Well, I've learned a lot about the... It's not really under Neyland Stadium. That's like an urban legend.

Is it really? Yeah, but it's still fun to say that. Well, it does exist though, it's it's it does exist though right yeah it does exist they basically it does exist but the urban legend is that it actually is under the football stadium okay all right um well uh you know in that batman movie um with bane didn't they like blow up the football field? Yeah. What if they did that at the University of Tennessee and there's just a bunch of dead bodies out there? Vince Foster's

under there? Yeah. Anyways, my house has become a sort of laboratory for studying decomposition and I'll tell you something that I've learned. This is going to gross out even i

bet you have to beat the women off with a stick don't you you know that you know that meme that's like damn bitch you live like this you know which one i'm talking about that like my house the version of that is just like dead things everywhere it's really not that bad it's really not the body farm but for small woodland creatures well i've learned that um amphibians like frogs and stuff when they die and like sit out they don't decompose the same way that mammals do before you go any further have you heard uh saw baby like the rapper he's got a song called marsupial superstars which is really kind of a cool title it's a very cool song yeah but in this one like he's like i want a fucking amphibian and i'm trying to figure out what he means by that i'm sure it's got something to do with like you

know uh some sort of big ticket well it's a consumer. Yeah, you're probably right. But at the same time, you know, we're, you know, saying that kind of stuff, it's pretty big and wrapped now. Well, sob baby, if you're out there, you can hit us up. You're feeling climbed. Explain yourself. Mysticism. Yeah, no, an amphibian will just sort of like get really hard

and like not actually decompose but a mammal chipmunk squirrel what'd you find i found a fucking you know i couldn't even look at it long enough because it was in an advanced stage of decomposition and i kept having to tell myself because i'd been smelling it for a few days but what it was was it was back behind my record player back there and i had some amazon boxes back there and i looked back there and i was like i can't fucking find anything but i'd also had some uh wrapping paper you know for like Christmas wrapping present wrapping paper

so basically your cats treated this creature that you're getting ready to name like Andrew Cunanan treated that Chicago millionaire I just wrapped him up in a fucking rug pretty much they wrapped him up in some present wrapping

dude it was but as soon as I stuck my head back there I knew present wrapping. Dude, but before, but as soon as I stuck my head back there, I knew. So they must have brought it in in the last like maybe three days or so.

Because, you know, what deteriorates that fast? Just like a... What was it? It was like a chipmunk or a squirrel. Again, I couldn't tell because I didn't want to know.

But I think it was a squirrel again i couldn't tell because i didn't want to know um but um i think it was a squirrel but have you considered just making these house cats they're really doing a number on the floor and fauna i feel very bad about it i've tried okay so for all the people out there being like you dumbass why don't you just leave them outside and so they can't come in, why don't you just leave them outside so they can't come in? Or why don't you just leave them outside so they can't come out? Or why don't you put a bell on their... I've tried all of these things. Well, I can't leave them inside because I live in a cabin and it's too small. I can't leave them outside because they're my friends.

I can't put bells on them because i've tried that and it don't like they always fucking managed to find a way to get them off not that one uh b is a dumbass um she brings in pine cones and shit that's her uh that's her bait yeah but leon is a stone cold murderer anyways anyways it fucked me up it really fucked me up but as soon as it was out of the house i was like man i can think a lot better now you gotta smudge this place you know there's something about that smell though that like i told myself going into it like terrence you're a scientist Think about this in a scientific way. It doesn't have to be traumatic or whatever.

Just like think about it. Detach yourself intellectually. Didn't help that. No, because the smell is really what it is. The smell of decomposition. There is nothing like it. When I decompose, I'm going to smell like baby wipes. Speak for yourself, you rotten motherfucker.

So did you enjoy the show last night? The moth radio error? I'll tell you this. I think that's why I was telling uh friend of ours i was saying that uh i've spent so much time in the last year trafficking on like the mean cruel world of left twitter that i just couldn't even enjoy the earnestness of it i was just totally cool facing it the whole time but these people were like know, coming up with these life lessons. My favorite was like the guy that got wrongfully convicted and went to jail for 11 years.

Yeah. And he's telling the story at the end about the cop pulling him over in Missouri. And like at the end, they had like this human moment around the Grand Canyon or whatever. Like they both wanted, the guy had been to the Grand Canyon. The cop wanted to go. And he goes, in that moment moment my hate for cops went away and i was like yeah you turned to me afterwards you said buddy don't you know the cops are the one people you can't hate it's okay it's okay to hate yeah um i was laughing though this morning in the shower thinking about that story like could you imagine if it wasn't and

if it was still equally as earnest but had a really weird sort of sociopathic bent to it like if that story was like so uh i spent 11 years in prison um wrongfully convicted for a crime i did not commit um and for years decades i hung on to this guilt you know and or to this hatred i hung on to this hatred and it's what propelled me um and then so you know i i started going to these conferences and learning about wrongful convictions and everything and he said wrong wrongful conventions wrongful conventions i was and and uh and one day I was just driving on a rural road in rural Oregon and I came across a man and his young and his son and their car broke down and so I got out and I and I and and then that's in that moment that's when it hit me that the crime I was

convicted for doing was something that I always kind of wanted to do myself. So I murdered the guy. I made the kid watch. And then I murdered him. And their bodies are buried in a little roadside ditch. Everybody's like, yeah. But I've already did my time for it. What if you could pre-do your time for crimes?

Yeah. That'd be good the whole crowd's like yeah well what or or you know what would be cool too is if like the whole thing was bullshit and like when he's telling his story it's like verbatim what happens in a movie everybody's like what it's like and so uh my child was the victim of a violent crime and it was my fault and i took out these three billboards outside ebbing this town called Ebbing Missouri A dingo stole my baby I was convicted of killing it But Oh man yeah no I feel you On that on the whole jaded

Thing cause like that's the kind of stuff I was thinking about during the whole thing Everybody was like oh this is fucking great And I was like damn imagine if like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed got to tell A story at the Moth And that's how I did 9-11. Everybody's like, yeah!

He found himself! Dude, man, I tell you what. Libs love bad guys that rehab themselves. That is one thing they fucking get off on. If you even act like you're contrite and learn some sort of lesson about it and can tell it at the moth, it doesn't matter if you did 9-11. They will forgive you. Right, right. Even like, it's stuff, but they'll also turn on you on the dime too.

It's like Gaddafi. We know now that Gaddafi probably didn't have anything to do with well i think it's confirmed he didn't have anything to do with locker b bombing right this kind of shit right right he just had two leaky barrels of mustard gas yeah right but then like he kind of rehabbed himself in the international community even though he like really wasn't that bad to begin with oh then they turned on him and then they turned on him again then hillary clinton that fucking psychopath yeah yeah that like it turned with. And then they turned on him. And then they turned on him again. They had Hillary Clinton, that fucking psychopath.

Yeah. Fucking turned on him again when they were of no use, when he was of no use in the region too. I want to hear a coal miner who voted for Trump. This goes back to my,

I want to hear a moth story about the Bathurst coal miner. That was such a good tweet, man. That should really take off. I'm a Bathurst. I'm a coal miner. And hell no, I don't regret my vote for Trump. Oh, shit.

Because I was thinking last night, I was like, what is the funniest identity to tack on to a coal miner? Someone who supported Saddam hussein in the 80s and also voted for trump and is adamant about not apologizing for it if you don't like it leave well dude it's funny how we were joking about that the other day like the whole um uh the whole like media search for the coal miner unicorn because it's i really got to thinking about it and this is kind of one of those situations where like the libs laid the groundwork for that you know and the best examples are like that that guy that the thoughtful coal miner

or like or that fucking guy we gotta talk about that guy so stick a pen in my head yeah yeah yeah but i mean like they kind of like listen to the whole uh his name itself the thoughtful coal miner but it's like but anyways the point being is that like they're trying to tack on identities the coal miners that like you wouldn't really necessarily expect for some larger sort of like message about people contain multitude ideology and about like what motivates people and i don't know it's just really bizarre to me uh that that uh he had a post the other day that um fucking was hilarious the the thoughtful coal miner now now whose blog is now, that's how fucking late this bastard is. Thoughts of a coal miner. Now it's just thoughts of a coal miner.

Like, after years of this dumbass, like. Of exploiting the notion that, like, coal miners don't really have. Not actually have opinions. Right, they don't really have rich interior lives. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fuck you, Nick Mullins.

Let's say that right now. But the funny thing is is like he had this post the other day that was so goddamn stupid um and a lot of people do this a lot of activists i've noticed this a lot of activists in appalachia do this because um they don't know what site they're all pretty much opportunists including me in some ways they don't know like where to fall in the sort of um triangulation thing. And so a thing that I see a lot is the leftist who thinks that environmental organizing was detrimental to the larger leftist project. this project and as a result you um uses things like the environmental movement itself protesting mountaintop removal um that whole sort of scene to suggest that it's like anti-worker yeah yeah which is a a really hilarious notion because basically what you're saying is that, like, some parts of the working class's interest in whatever is superior to those of another part of the working class.

So basically you're saying that, like, one part of the working class must sacrifice its land and health and shit for the fucking noble coal miner who goes to work every day and like puts food on the table hello west virginia coal mine you work a 40 hour week for a living yeah send it on down the line i'm gonna blow your mind like you don't have to actually break it down into that kind of dichotomy yeah yeah yeah dude it's so absurd he's such a fucking crap i mean it's and he's not the only one obviously we're going to talk about some of those people but yeah i just like to get that out in front and say fuck nick mullins yeah no i mean um it's there's been a little cottage industry of people who have really sort of like tried to play both sides of the fence. Like the environmentalists came in here and they ruined everything. And they, you know, they put divisions up in the community.

And there's a reason the coal industry not only went under, but why the reactionary Friends of Coal campaign was so virulent and successful and all this. It's like, fuck off. That's one of the worst opinions I can come across. Also, you're just setting this thing up to where people have to choose between their health, their land, and their livelihood. Right, right. And that's like, what are you getting at? Right, yeah. what are you getting at right yeah their health their land and um the notion that it's like that like reactionary coal miners exist and that they uh we should therefore like

i don't know i haven't fully thought this one out but it's like i don't know. The notion of it, the idea of it is a false dichotomy. That'll blow your mind, too. There's reactionary coal miners. Those don't exist. Yeah, that's the other thing, too. It's sort of been lost in this whole weird valorization of coal miners. Yeah. it's it's sort of been lost in this whole like weird valorization of coal miners yeah it's like we shouldn't really gloss over like shitty reactionary opinions either because but we

should also acknowledge that they are not exclusive to working people either you know dude one of the things that pisses me off so much about that that type of grift um that maybe we should come up with the name with that because i have a really good i'll stick a pin on that but the one thing that pisses me off about that type of grift is that it's like um and i've experienced this a lot People who basically say that just because a certain person wants clean water and to not have mountains reduced to piles of rubble and to not risk getting cancer just from drinking the fucking water that you're um that you are creating an archetype that the reactionary friends of coal campaign can then point to and say there's your enemy and so therefore we should not buy into that archetype we should not care we should not put so much emphasis on these things we should de-hippify ourselves and all this set of stuff it's just like it's a common example of having a conversation on the right wings terms yeah

and it's and it's just like fuck i don't know you don't have to do that you don't have to have a conversation on their terms you believe in what you believe in you stake out your space and then you try to expand it and build on top of it and organize more people to work towards some sort of like larger goal i don't know it just doesn't it doesn't feel like but the thing is is if you acknowledge that then the whole grift would be invalid people can't make money on it they can't fucking do the little goddamn blogs called doffle coal miner or whatever and so therefore um and so therefore yeah it would render it all invalid and then people wouldn't get their paychecks and the transition economy would crumble the transition economy is largely

pasted together by grift yeah well that's a good i mean in that in so much that it even exists at all which it really doesn't but i'm saying there's a cottage industry like you say that's a good word for it well i've got a good word for it i've got a good term for it that i came up with last night going to your legal pad i'm going to my legal pad notes. I'm going to my legal pad notes. You and Tanya always make fun of me because of my legal pad. God damn it. Listen, this is what drives this show. That's true. This is the fuel of this show.

That's the straw that stirs the drink. Yeah, you know in Back to the Future, do you ever watch Back to the Future? Dude, I used to love Back to the Future. Uh-huh. And I had a traumatic experience losing my virginity. And the next day, the next day, I was just in this horrible headspace. I guess residual Christian guilt or whatever.

I don't know. But it was a Back to the Future marathon. Uh-huh. And so now I get this like PTSD response that I'm coming out of. Like I think I watched it maybe a year or two ago and this like PTSD response that I'm coming out of. Like I, I think I watched it maybe a year or two ago and was like, I made it through fine, but yeah,

I always get this, like this crushing guilt, debilitating guilt comes over me when I watch back to the future. Fascinating. I didn't know this about you. I'll try not to trigger that next time. Uh, we're hanging out.

I think I've made strides. You know, the third year year did you ever watch the third one yeah and the third one they build this time machine out of a train and they fuel it with these like colored logs right they are it's like when they go to the wild west right this is the logs that fuel the time machine my friends they'll be a little heel pad probably could have got to that point a lot quicker yeah you're right yeah well content baby is the content making this is our grift um no so the so the particular grift i want to talk

about today we've talked about a lot of them on the show before the creative place making grift the thoughtful coal miner grift now we're going to talk a little bit about what I like to call the grit grift. The grit grift. The grit grift. You hear a lot about this, especially in relation to investment and philanthropy. You always hear some invocation of grit. It's not going to be easy, but we're tough. We've always made it. Yeah tough we've always made it yeah we've always

had grit i was i was uh and i should i should just say that uh you know perhaps we benefit from the grid economy a little bit absolutely absolutely but it was funny because i i was interviewing somebody that was starting this business and they said you know it's one of these deals where they're like trying to like uh drive retrained coal miners and like get them to do something else and the person that started the business was like well if they can make it seven miles underground surely to god they can do you know they can learn linux they can learn linux yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah you hear a lot because um what they're saying i don't know i i now i start to sort of dissect it and think about it a lot but i feel like i hear it talked about a lot when

we're discussing sort of like new economic models or sort of like transitioning to a new economy or whatever because i guess what they're saying is that like we're determined enough to beg rich people hard enough to get them to give us money to dance for our dinner that's great baby that's great yeah I also like when in these same, invariably in these same pieces, they always say something like, now coal miners aren't dumb. Yeah. Now you go try going seven miles underground and running a bolt machine. Now you call that dumb.

Yeah, right. Let's see if you can call that person dumb. It is so bizarre. They use the coal miner. Yes, exactly. That's exactly right. They do it in the same way that the right wing does but for their own sort of like purposes yeah um but the best example of this that i've seen lately is this article in the leicester hero leader and the the the headline for it itself could be a perfect sort of example of the great grift. It says, Appalachia, the next great investment.

And I've only cut out one little section of this that I want to read. Like, here's the nugget. I went sifting through this thing just to find the nugget. This shit is hilarious, dog. I laugh so fucking hard national foundations spend four thousand dollars per capita annually in places like new york and san francisco in appalachia that number goes down twelve dollars per capita annually it's so fucking hilarious it's such a race to the bottom it's uh last year our foundation distributed 3.4 million dollars across southeastern kentucky we didn't do

it because we have a lot of financial resources we did it because we have a lot of grit oh god we did it because we have enough courage that's just the kind of people we are to believe there is a future for a big swath of our nation that does not exist in urban centers or on the coast. That's the nugget. That's the nugget I wanted to cut out of that motherfucker. Here's my question. Here's my question.

And I guess the two might be inextricably linked at this point, at least where Appalachia is concerned. How would you differentiate between investment and philanthropy? Like you oftentimes hear like an ex-rich person is setting up a foundation to put money in to invest in the lives of young people like a scholarship fund or something like that. But like in Appalachia, that usually translates to we're going to give a little seed money to this ambitious coal miner that wants to start a, fuck, I don't know, a farm or something.

To me, the best example of the grit grift or the best sort of commodity, the finished product, the shiny object that comes out on the other end of the fucking human centipede or whatever, is the art space. That's it. The art space. Which is an abstraction. Yeah. The art space.

That's it. You got to wave your hand like this. Picture it, man. It's a LEED certified platinum building. It's going to run off uh fucking uh glue and uh three-day-old chipmunk carcasses yeah right here baby right here in this house is where we're we're supplying the uh the shit for that for that power plant um but it's funny to me um because basically what it's saying is that like it's bellyaching over the fact that appalachia doesn't get

as much philanthropy dollars in rural areas in general i mean and that's it hints at a larger sort of like prejudice in our society right you know what i mean like that that um we don't prioritize uh the lives of people yeah but basically what you're saying is that all you're saying is rich people don't prioritize the lives of people and we already fucking know that and we are that's that's not news like this reason the reason that poverty and all these other problems exist here is because of that basic fact and that and that too connected to that is my i think you know you know if many episodes back when we were talking about i made that joke about like going to mcdonald's for lunch and i'm asking for money for the ronald mcdonald house yeah like

right i was like fuck no in my head but i still gave him a buck because like i didn't you don't want the person behind you my problem with philanthropy is i'm not saying that philanthropy doesn't do a lot of good like i think we'd be remiss to say that like if some if even fucking some vile son of a bitch like jeff bezos gives fifty thousand dollars for somebody to go to college that's a good thing what we're saying is philanthropy lets them off the hook when we could just take all their fucking money and put many more kids through college than just like the 12 they pick you're exactly right you know what it does is it doesn't address the fundamental issue of the the power dynamics it doesn't it doesn't address power relations and if you're not doing anything to up in those things you're you're not doing anything to upend those things, you're not changing anything.

Right. It's just an aesthetic change. Right. So, I mean, it's interesting to think about. And the reason why I'm harping so much on this and the reason I wanted to talk about it is because if you're a young, like, let's say, for example, you are a young idealist like us. You know, you have a leftist sort of like political view and you live in an Appalachian community. You can even probably extrapolate this to other rural places. But let's say you've identified a problem in your community that you want to fix.

And let's say the problem is poverty and all its attendant issues that are contained within that. Just going for the big one, aren't you? Just go for the big one. You're like me. You want to change the world. You dream big. You really only have, like, let's say, like, okay, so for example, like, you know, you really only have, like, a few routes to go to sort of, like, engage with that problem. Yeah.

And it doesn't matter, though, what route you take, the two that I'm about to lay out here. It doesn't matter what route you take, the two that I'm about to lay out here. It doesn't matter what route you take. It's going to be mediated by a larger nonprofit industrial like industry. And so there's really two kinds of nonprofits that fit into this sort of industry. There's the first kind, which is one, the kinds that are basically holding shit together. You know what I mean? They're providing basic resources like housing or food or legal resources or representation or whatever. And so they're sort of just holding things together

while everything is becoming more and more privatized, more and more just sort of unraveled because of the relentless drive of capitalism right um in markets and the second route would be the second route is the kind of non-profit i've worked for both of these kind of non-profits the second route is the kind that thinks that it's going to be able to somehow influence or manipulate the political system to pass some sort of legislation that's like bolsters the middle class or some vague bullshit like that yeah you know what i mean regardless it is a highly idealistic utopian vision that thinks that like it's going to somehow and i guess maybe you could sort of put a third

sort of non-profit in there which is more along the lines of the grit grift, which is that like, oh, we're just going to build art spaces, you know, and that'll, or community theaters or whatever. And that will somehow blip people out of.

Man, I preached the gospel of the arts based community for a long time solely because I liked the aesthetic of it and not the efficacy of it to change people's lives. And I think that's what people do. Yeah. In that space. Yeah.

And well, so, you know, I've noticed that there are there are obviously far more resources of this from my personal experience or far more resources available for the second and third kinds of nonprofits. The ones that think that there's some fucking magic or political power of persuasion they're going to go to hal rogers and beg him to to treat us like we're uh human beings or something you know what i mean and then and there's more resources for that kind and for the third kind the kind the art space or whatever there's not a whole lot of resources available for the first kind which is just holding shit together right but regardless none of them

address the fundamental problem here which is a system that pushes people out of the political and economic process and um as we were saying recently you know you've got a system in all these local counties where there are quite literally like six people at the top. Yeah. The very wealthiest people. Right. And any kind of development project, whether it's a piece of legislation like the Reclaim Act or whatever that uses abandoned mine lands money or whatever to fucking clean up, subject abandoned coal mines to the market and try to squeeze as much fucking capital out of that as possible. Or like the other kind, like building art spaces or whatever.

Like, if you're not addressing the fundamental issue that like... Let's also just say we're not against pretty buildings either. Yeah, I'd be like, yeah. We like art spaces or these ideas of art spaces. Right, right, right. We just think you should go about that a different way. Well, I think what it is is it all comes down to ownership and it all comes down to autonomy and if you're not addressing the fact that like what are you laughing about art spaces are uh

before the people they can be they can be like i may follow the people, if you're not, like, addressing the fundamental issue of autonomy, ownership, and who gets a say in the direction of the community. Right. And how its resources are allocated. That's really what it is. That's the fucking thing. And how they love to navigate that. And I've been guilty of this. And even in my own work, I've been guilty of this, is we want to hold community meetings for community buy-in and input.

But that basically means we just want to get the same 12 people we've been organizing with in a room together and have Little Caesar's pizza, fucking sandwich cookies. Right, and blow smoke up each other's ass. Blow smoke up each other's pizza. Fucking sandwich cookies. Right. And blow smoke up each other's ass. Blow smoke up each other's ass for about two hours. Build the non-profit for that time. And go home.

But that's not what that should look like. Well, yeah. You're absolutely right. Well, and so the reason that it pisses me off so much is because so much energy and resources are poured into that whereas in and so i think the effect that that winds up having is it takes energy out of a movement that would otherwise be building sort of revolutionary tension and trying to a movement that challenges the power relations that keep the people out of the processes of resource

allocation and all these other things. It is quite literally detrimental in a lot of ways to liberation and to empowerment. And I think we gotta be real about that. But it also has this weird way of rehabilitating people that

have taken out of here. Yes. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, it does. Because then the original people that have taken out of here yes do you know what i'm saying yeah it does because then the people like the original people that i mean like all these coal barons give money to shit like yeah you know what i'm you know what i'm saying like like some of the worst elements in society the real worst elements in society are the most ballyhoo people in these kind of things it's true yeah no um yeah no i i one of the reasons that this has been on my mind so uh so much lately is because i've been hearing this word a lot in the non-profit world and maybe you've heard this too i don't know but um if you say synergy i swear to god i'm throwing this microphone no but it's about as good as synergy um and i found and i

heard this word first in this article that was actually you remember when tanya was on like three weeks ago and she was talking about that conference she went to in chicago yeah i found this article written in the daily honor actually about that conference um that was about like how you know a lot of the things at the conference didn't address rural issues and all this other stuff. But this word they keep using in the nonprofit world is equity. Have you heard this? I mean, I've heard it in the sense of like equity and inclusion.

They're using it for a specific... Equity, diversity, and inclusion is kind of like the common refrain here. It's just like tokenizing. I don't understand it and i've and i can't get a clear answer from anybody on what it actually is i've got i i get i get a lot of like sort of subterfuge yeah and meta yeah exactly people say it's an ongoing process and it's inclusion and it's like and it's it's different from equality in the sense that, like, equality indicates that you could have political rights like voting but not, you know, egalitarian status with other people. I don't know.

Whatever. Regardless, it is this weird nebulous term. And we got to talking about it yesterday at the office. And it's just like – and I think the fact that I can't get a clear answer on it and that nobody can really define it. It's the same thing with the thoughtful coal miner grift. It is, if you actually defined it, if you actually addressed what you were doing, like by, you know, making a big deal out of whatever it is. The grift would be up. The grift would be up. Exactly. Once you create clarity, the grift will be up the grift would be up

exactly once you create clarity you've yes the grift is up the grift is up exactly exactly once you've cut through the bullshit it renders it all invalid and and not and and the scary part about that is that there is an entire non-profit industry built on that idea and and so like once exactly once you've created clarity with that once you've actually started saying like um we're going to actually uh organize people to have literal control over not just the means of productions but resources themselves then you know and you're cutting out all that bullshit philanthropy dollars uh philanthropy obligations and all this other shit well then exactly the grift is up there's no more use for

any of those non-profits or for any of these uh foundations or anything like that and this is i don't know it's just it's just a very simple thing of existential interest it's It's so funny and this is like something that like, you know, I think people that I work with think I'm a little bit nuts sometimes. But when you look at what like our sort of nonprofit sector is doing and then compare it to leftist organizations that build programs for communities in the past have built programs like that's the model they need to look at yeah building the fucking program

yeah giving people money giving people what they exactly meeting their material needs right creating a not creating opportunities that they had they might have a chance at doing something in but actually giving them a chance literally yeah if you actually believe this shit if you actually buy into this that Appalachia is the next great investment I really want you to examine deep down what

it is about that sentiment that you find so compelling or that you find opens up pathways to empowerment and liberation? Seriously, because every time you use that word investment, I don't know. I'm just, another thing about it to me, and again, you know, like we have, we work in this world, we have a lot of friends that work in this world, and we just, we want to tell the truth about it.

You know what I'm saying? friends that work in this world and we just we want to tell the truth about it you know what i'm saying another thing that just is so off-putting to me is just using the language of capital in relationship to a place that has been so ravaged by capital exactly is really really really short-sighted at bed and that's being generous i'm being very generous with my assessment here exactly because we've seen this before yeah you know what i mean and it didn't turn out so well you're exactly right reeling from it yeah no this place is a case study in how capitalism it's it's it's a case study and i've realized that from the moment i moved here it's a case study in the sort of terminal logic of capitalism but also also the the sort of mechanisms that capital works through this it sort of mirrors

exactly sort of what we're talking about with the non-profit jargon with like equity and like you know creative placemaking synergy all these sort of words that don't really mean a whole lot right they're just abstractions like i'm saying like there's people that work in wall street that don't fucking understand the derivatives market yeah because it's fucking bullshit and that's the whole point yeah and that's the whole that's the whole fucking point once you create the conditions for confusion confusion is profitable right but once you create clarity and lay bare what it's about then the grift is up exactly and it's the same for capital it's the same for non-profit yeah well and so like okay so you could reasonably look at us and say tom terrence like these people

don't have actual power why are you spending so much time like trying to demystify what it is that they do the reason is is because of the scenario i laid out earlier imagine a young idealist wanting to change things in their region wanting to literally alter everything about it uh to upend um subjugation and repression and undo the ravages of capitalism and and redistribute resources in an egalitarian way. Create a better society. The reason why I'm preaching about all this is because if you're that young person,

your attempts to create that better society are so often stymied by, and I've experienced this personally, they're so often stymied by this industry, this this personally they're so often stymied by this industry this non-profit industry they either suck the energy out of you to where they make you feel like a fucking commie lunatic like um you know naysayer ultra leftist or something yeah or they uh try to redirect your energy into a complete just dead ends right dead ends and it's what and it's and it's the reason why we can't uh it's the reason why we can't realize anything greater it's why we can't

build anything greater than that yeah i don't know it's i don't know if that makes sense no i think that's exactly right yeah well anyways that's the grit that's the grit grift. You like that? I think this is good. You like that? Yeah. There's something else I want to say about it, but I have got to pee so bad. So hold on one second. Because there's something else I want to say. Thank you. Every night I lay to sleep I prayed to the Lord

I saw your kiss I pray to the Lord, my soul he keeps If I should die If I should die before I wake I pray to the Lord, my soul he takes I go to Jesus in secret prayer I asked the Lord if I could leave my brothers there He woke me up and started me on my way He helped me see another day.

Yeah. Every night I lay to sleep. I pray to the Lord, my soul to keep. Okay, so this is part two of a series we were doing, and I'm trying to tie it back to the first one. The reason why we spent so much time, I feel like, harping on Blankenship and harking on his sort of like rise and fall and about how the coal industry created the very specific conditions of this place

and the reason why I'm now talking about the wide spectrum of the grift is because if you look at the history of this place, there have been a few moments when the sort of future of it and what it could mean and who gets to run it and who gets to allocate and distribute its very many resources there's been a few moments where that has not been clear um and and it's important to think about that because right now we are in one of those moments. The coal industry has, I mean, I can't really illustrate how quickly it's just sort of vaporized,

just totally left, other than the anecdote that our county used to take in about $4 million of coal severance money every year, just as recently as about three years ago. And now we're struggling to even get about 200 000 like we're fucked that's just the city that i used to be on the city council we used to bring in a million a year right and that was half our budget and that number went to zero by the time i was left in 2014 so this doesn't have a whole lot to do with the current power structure as it exists in the sense that like this will not really affect the elites of the county in terms of people like uh jim booth

and martin county don schilder's here what it will do is erode what very little sort of public welfare state we have here in the county public services um the whole notion of public service in general and we'll sort of concentrate even more wealth into the literally like five or six people who own everything in this fucking county i mean you see that happening with the prison like the people that stand to gain most from this federal prison being built are those same characters. Exactly. Exactly. And so this is an important thing to keep in mind. Because as we're trying to attract young people into a movement that says things don't have to be this way.

We can live in a better society. We can live in a more egalitarian society the wrong thing to do is to make them think that with enough fucking community theater art spaces or whatever enough enough uh pining to these rich ass yes enough enough groveling their money for those things exactly enough groveling to fucking hal rogers what to to give us like fucking scraps that that's going to change something yeah because it's not and and and again i'm saying this is someone who has operated in the sort of non-profit world for a while and i'm just telling you what i've seen yeah no i mean, I completely agree with that. And what we need to do is we need to flip

that on its head instead of, you know, begging Hal Rogers for our own money. Yeah, yeah. For his guys to create things that maybe, in theory,

you know, they'll hire more people and they'll have some sort of generic benefit to the local economy. What we need to do is hold his feet to the fire for his failures

and, you know, fucking tie him to a horse and slap it on the ass but and this got cut uh out of the first part of this series i because it was towards the end and i cut it out but like um i was in a meeting the other day um and someone said oh you know, I guess Hal Rogers didn't have enough clout to get the Reclaim Act put into the budget. And it's just like, and Hal Rogers is our congressman or whatever. And I was just like fucking like flabbergasted. managed to get a federal prison that the executive branch of the United States government managed to remove from the budget

had enough clout to get it included back in with 50 million more dollars. After, mind you after, there's already sort of and I hate to use phrases like bipartisan consensus, but bipartisan consensus on the fact that we need less prisons. Yeah.

It's like it's not even a popular idea yeah yeah so anybody so that person who had enough power to do that didn't have enough power to get this little rinky-dink fucking economic development bill yeah past i'm sorry but you're you've put it best many times the rehabilitation of this asshole is fucking disgusting yeah and if anything the war on poverty should have shown us that like trying to grovel with these assholes or trying to like take private money or or or build some sort of um robust industry that is outside of the coal industry's influence or the larger sort of extractive industry's influence that that will somehow, as you like to say, move the needle.

It's not, it's a pipe dream. It's utopian. I got a new one for you. It's foolhardy. It's foolhardy. The only thing that is, and I'm not the first person to point this out. Plenty of people pointed this out.

Like, the only thing that has historical precedent is revolution. And again, it sounds hokey, but what I mean is that the only thing that has historical precedent of working is upending the systems that exist the power relations the power dynamics and and literally taking the resources that already exist in redistributing them yeah that's it's that is not utopian there's nothing about that that is a pipe dream that is the that has way more fucking historical precedence than uh your stupid ass

idea of of reformism of groveling with these assholes to give just the treatise like human beings right right anyways that's how you podcast that's how you podcast motherfucker that's how you podcast that's how you podcast motherfucker dude how funny was it last night how funny was it last night when um the host of that show said is it appalachia or appalachia and everybody in the crowd was like everybody you can oh my god it's appalachia i want to say something that's going to piss off a lot of our true believers. And I'm sorry, but I have to say this. Like, snobbery over the pronunciation of Appalachia is literally the dumbest goddamn shit. Go talk to the mayor of Whitesburg, James Craft.

I dare you to find somebody more Appalachian than fucking James W. Craft. And ask him how he pronounces it. I can't wait until I'm head of the Appalachian Regional Commission and I can just sort of start systematically eradicating all the last remnants of Appalachian culture. Instead of me busting into your house and being like, it's full of people, I bust into your house and be like, I heard there's a fucking iron skillet in here somewhere, a cast iron skillet.

I heard there was a banjo in here and some food some literature about foodways just cough it up yeah just systematically doing away with it somebody somebody had uh i think it was uh i can't remember who it was now, but on Twitter said that James Beard Awards are circle jerks for people that pay their dishwashers $2 an hour. That's Katie. Katie Slinner just said that. Yeah, that's right. And I think that's spot the fuck on. Yeah.

And the reason why it's spot the fuck on, it's actually funny that she tweeted that because literally i think the week that she tweeted that was um the same week that i had gone to this um uh this award ceremony in heinemann and it really got me to thinking the whole reason i know it sort of sounds uh it's just sort of a bit like oh i'm ahead of the air see i'm gonna start you know fucking kick you in your door to get your um your banjo and etc but the reason why is because like those things are not pathways to change they're not emblematic of any sort of like transcendental state of of reality or nature or society they they food ways uh cultural preservation or whatever they are not some they are not pathways to political change right i'm sorry that they're i'm just they're just not but i mean i mean as again as a sort of like anthropologist scientist

historian whatever i appreciate it's kind of cool, I like to learn about food ways. Sure. I like that. I even like eating at some of these places. I hate that about myself. Yeah, but to pretend like that is the way to a fucking new economy or whatever, the just transition, these fucking dumbass terms. It's a pipe dream.

The only way forward is through upheaval. I don't know what else that i can't not say it enough i can't say that's it that's it we don't need to need to sugarcoat that don't need to try to change that that needs to be what we're about period right right right yeah but anyway we should do a whole episode about the james beard y'all culture yeah you y'all the y'all culture we'll do that. Yeah, well, this one's pretty close to mine. And again, it's kind of like this.

It's like I'm kind of making fun of myself a little bit out of that because I came out of that shit. Buddy, I'm a fucking literal outsider. I'm the epitome of like a liberal sort of upper middle class do-gooder who wants to whatever. You know what I mean? Yeah. sort of upper middle class do-gooder who wants to whatever you know what i mean but like um but at the same time i mean that's i don't know yeah yeah yeah poking fun at ourselves just a

little bit yeah i mean i live in a fucking cabin there's nothing Is there anything more cliche than that? We work at nonprofits. We live in cabins. Like, we are who we're making fun of here in this one. So if anybody feels any kind of way about it, just know that. Right, right. We're trying to better ourselves, too. We're trying to push you on the right fucking direction. Well, and also because, like, day-to-day existence in this world is a bit like a sort of Kafka esque nightmare.

Just in the sense that like you go, you open up your emails, you get six requests for a coal miner who fucking had stage four lymphoma and voted for Trump and like it doesn't regret it. Also happens to be a bath. Also has to be a part of the bath party a member of the bath party uh and then you go to a meeting where they talk about equity and no one knows what it means and um it's just this constant like it's this constant like sort of game of trying to like parse out like what it is exactly we're doing yeah Yeah. And if it's, if it's moving the needle.

Ultimately, if it's not moving the needle. Motherfucker. I will never not laugh now every time I hear the term moving the needle. Man, you know, it's funny just talking about it. And that's just a little teaser from when we do the y'all thing. We should just like cut that well this should be like i don't know anyway i got that uh the oxford american kentucky music issue yeah and without without even fucking opening it without even fucking opening it you know it's got

like the cd with all the songs Yes. From every region or whatever? Without even opening it, I knew beyond a shadow of a fucking doubt that Shady Grove by Gene Ritchie was going to be on that. With no other knowledge. Shady Grove by Gene Ritchie is like the fucking Hickster, like goddamn, what's the Journey song? Don't Stop Believin'. Or Free Bird. Wagon Wheel.

Or Wagon Wheel, whatever. You are absolutely right. The person that is tangentially related to Appalachian, loves to play old time music and all that bullshit. Shady Grove is their fucking... That's the thing that really... And I like Gene Ritchie. I'm just saying that song.

That's the thing that really is really confusing to me. It's like people who work at like Double Quick gas stations don't go home and play the banjo. I'm sure that there are one or two. There's the random unicorn anywhere. No, I mean, yeah. Listen, listen. I'm not discounting that.

Like I'm not discounting even like people that are into the banjo or whatever playing that old time music. But know that is not everybody's experience and i think if you're very feeling put this mess which is that the real appalachians don't drink bourbon and listen to old time music right they uh drink crown royal and listen to eminem yeah yeah well but but again it's this issue though it's this problem of thinking that through culture and cultural expression, cultural preservation, things like old-time music and foodways and stuff, that you're going to get to some point where we have created a local political system and economic system that is not dependent on this totally just vampire-esque um political economic system capitalism markets and and that's a pipe dream it's not it's literally the opposite yeah it's and i'm not again i'm not the first person to point this out but like culture is created out of political

systems it's put it's created out of this sort of political economy not the other way around right it's i don't know it's really bizarre man and that's the whole thing about like uh creative placemaking too it's like trying to just sort of like dodge around the issue of capitalism and subjugation and marginalization and be like oh well we're just going to create a separate culture entirely where we tell stories yeah man if i had a nickel for every time i've been invited to a story circle fucking kidding me i feel like banging my head against well anyways is it appalachia or Appalachia, my friend? Call it... Fuck, who said?

Never mind. You were at the finish line and you... You were at the... Let's put this one in the can And this way I can get on the road Alright man Head to Ohio baby Columbus Columbus

Columbus Ohio What song did you want to go out on Young Bands Rap 3 Alright I'll check that out Man really I just been going through a lot of shit You don't play my cards Rap 3 Push it, nigga Yeah, yeah Bass

Yeah, I see right through it Nigga, I see right through it Hard times, I been through them On the block, get to it Set up shop, I'm gon' move it Pussy ass nigga, I see right through it Lame ass nigga, I see right through it Catch you down bad and I might do it I'm a real solid nigga, nothing like you But my brother, yeah, I'll show you what this pipe do

Young ass nigga, I've been going through a lot, ayy I'ma shred the pipe, and the game is do or die, ayy Gotta go and get it, saw some niggas getting got Only God know my fate, but I'm just trying to see the plot I know these niggas plot 12 watchin' free my niggas out of jail Once I get it, then I got em, ayy Walkin' through hell with a bankroll in my pocket

And my shawty said she ridin' If I'm rollin', then she rockin' All designer options, push up in a Maserati Bitch, I'm so geeked up All that purple in my body Smoke a nigga like a blunt But I can't hurt nobody If a nigga try to rob me

Then I might just catch a homie Ayy, hard times, I've been through On the block, get to it Set up shop, I'm gon' move Pussy ass nigga, I see right through Lame ass nigga, I see right through Catch you down bad, and I might do I'm a real solid nigga, nothing like you

But my brother, he gon' show you what this pipe do