Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 67: The Story of You, The Story of Me, The Story of We

Episode Date: August 31, 2018

The socialist left's premium tennis podcast is here to bring you all the latest from the tennis world. But really, in this episode we take down the Narrative Industry, philanthropy, and Jon Bon Jovi. Here's more information about the prison strike: https://incarceratedworkers.org/phone-zaps/support-prisoners-who-vowed-strike https://incarceratedworkers.org/get-involved And be sure to support us on Patreon: patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

I got a new spot. I got a new spot in the room. I'm back on the couch. It was a fad. It'll come back. Maybe when Tanya comes back. We'll put Tanya in the straw chair next. Yeah.

Good little wicker chair, man. My cats have fucked that thing up. Look at it. It's pretty fucked up. It fits with the whole decor here, though. Yeah, yeah. Rustic. Damn.

So, interesting day, interesting week online. But we're not going to talk about that today. What are we going to talk about today, Tom? You tell me you've got about 20 manuals over there printed out in staple. Let's cut it up for a minute before we get to that, because what I'm about to unveil to you is one of the darkest things I've ever encountered, come across in the wild, in the nonprofit wild. Oh, God.

So let's cut it up for a minute let's let's establish some baseline let's talk about our norms let's establish our norms let's establish the norms let's get some baseline levity um what we recorded yesterday and i feel like there's some items i had yesterday. And I just need to... What we need to do is tell... We need to reintroduce... Man, I was thinking yesterday, we remember we were talking shit about the thoughtful coal miner

and then in our group message, I was like, oh, you know, they're all the same. They're all the same sort of general format of activists, like Thoughtful Coal Miner and Morris Dees. And Tanya was like, who's Morris Dees? Do you remember that? Yeah. She didn't know who Morris Dees was.

And which is particularly strange if you're a woman. Which is particularly strange if you're a woman. Damn. Yeah, and anyways, I thought a good cold open would be... Jimmy Carter wanted some... Call me one time and said he wanted some real local people. He called me one time and said he wanted some real local people. Who was this telling us that Morris Dees was buck dancing with somebody and Jimmy Carter was there? No, it was Joe Begley.

Joe Begley was buck dancing. Right. And Morris Dees had to be the center of attention attention too, so he jumped up there with him. What is your thoughts on Joe Begley? Because he's one of these guys that like, I mean, there's this, what's that guy's name, the Chicago sort of oral historian who. Studs Terkel. Studs Terkel, there's who Studs Terkel Studs Terkel

there's a Studs Terkel book I was going through a lot okay so I signed up on Instagram the Trailbillies account right and

in doing so I was like um I need two things I need I need some good accounts to follow and I need content

so on the first one I went to your page and I started following all the people you follow. Well, I did the same thing. Everybody liked True Billy's page that I see on Twitter. I just kind of added. I don't know. I just feel like we should be friends. Yeah, no.

I did that. Or wait, on our Instagram account? Did you follow people on our Instagram account? Yeah, but you know that we've interacted with them. Okay, all right. The internet. So you're operating on the Instagram account now too. No, I'm not operating on the Instagram.

I'm talking about my own. Oh, okay. Personal account. Well, you can. You have access to it. Okay. But I think it'd be fun just to put up, like, we shouldn't even have to do anything

except for put up Speak Your Pieces. Just wall to wall Speak Your Pieces. Every day we just need to post one gem from Speak Your Pieces and that'd be our whole thing. Well, I mean, I've got some. Occasionally pics of us recording or something like that. I've got some good ones. Back when I was recording that Mountain Eagle story,

I spent days in old speaker pieces. And there's a multi-day long conversation at one point about Bon Jovi, about trying to get Bon Jovi to come to Whitesburg. When was this? Must have been the 80s or something. The 80s or 90s, I think. We've always shot for the moon here, haven't we?

Shot to the heart. We really have. You're absolutely right. We've always shot for the moon here, haven't we? Shot to the heart. We really have, you're absolutely right. We aim high. Yeah, and everybody's like, man, why don't they just bring Jason Isbell back to Summit City? Yeah. No, we were aiming high in the,

it was probably the 90s. Yeah. Regardless. After Bon Jovi bit on the Wayne. Yeah, exactly. Who says you can't go home hadn't. Or what's the other song he's always got on the radio? There's. It's like from that early 2000s. Oh, no, no.

Bow wow. Now that's the. That's. This ain't so for the broken heart. But what's the other one? Now he's got. Yeah, that's the That's This ain't so For the broken heart But what's the other one Now he's got For the broken dick Yeah that's it

That's right Yeah that's right Tommy and Gina It's my life It's my life Never back down Which might be the worst song ever Recorded

Conceived of I I can't believe I'm gonna say this but i kind of like it i ironically kind of like it yeah i kind of like the voice box in it peter frampton uh roger roger troutman thing i like the message of it it's my life it's now or never i like the message it's got a good message it has a good message never back down tom um it's bon jovi sucks john bon jovi it's poetry i don't care what you say my little nephew uh was doing a doing a watershed project with my girlfriend,

and he goes up to her and says, I know this might have been a little bit before your time, but he's 13. He would just turn 13. He was like 11 then. You beat him in basketball, and you were like, you made him say communism will win. Yeah, yeah.

He's in serious danger of becoming alt-right, say communism yeah yeah he's dang he's in serious danger of becoming all right i'm afraid i'd say he's already or at least maga he's mad he's already maggot out anyway no yeah yeah absolutely he came up to alex he said no he said no this might be a little bit before your time but you like john bon jovi so much confidence it's just like like he knew about this cool band right right that maybe she did right this might have been a little before your time yeah but have you heard of the goo goo dolls um i wonder if we ever did that i did that to my sister I was like Yeah

You know when like All the like The shoegaze Post punk Stuff Goth 80s stuff Came out I went to my sister

I was like Hey did you ever listen To the Cure She was like My bloody valentine Yeah I did Because

You're like Did you ever listen To Talk Talk She's just like my brother is uh angsty and you okay buddy yeah damn um anyway where are we going john bon jovi well uh speak your pieces yeah i got a lot of i've got a lot of speaker piece backlogs, so we're good on the speaker piece content. We can push that to the Cal's Come Home. That's already put the highway one. Yeah.

The highway racist. That's one of the all-time GMs. I mean, there's so much Potentially there What was it Tom? You had to remind me Because there's so much I mean I have so many questions I have so many questions here

It's like I did not mean to To a certain person I am not a racist I didn't know it was you on the highway And I'm sorry about that Just a little So much there it was you on the highway, and I'm sorry about that. Just a little. So much there it leaves you wondering. So, all right.

Yeah, but I followed a lot of people you were following, too, like tennis stars. Oh, really? Yeah. Wow. I don't know. I want to see the world the way you see it. Okay. I want to see the lifestyles of people who make a living swinging a racket.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's basically all you're going to get out of my account is tennis players, rappers, and NBA players. Yeah. That's about all I follow. Well, now I follow those people too. So I'm going to – Who are you following specifically? Let's go down the list. Let's give us a who's who of who's big in the tennis game these days.

We've got – First up, we have, just give me a second, Federer obviously, I mean that's obvious. But who's this? Oh Nick Kyrgios? Yeah. Yeah Kyrgios is the man.

Is he good? He's considered maybe the most naturally gifted player of all time, but he's like a huge asshole. Like in the middle of matches, he'll like, I mean these guys will be driving the ball at him as hard as they can, he'll just like hit it back between his legs, which is really poor for him during a match.

Like he's been fined several thousand dollars for his bad behavior. I think I've seen you do that before. I like Andy Murray commented on this one photo. When are you going to announce Muhammad Layani as your new coach? And then he replied. Or wait, no, that's someone else.

Sorry for Layani, but I have agreed with Nicky to be his coach next year. Am I right? Don't panic and accept the challenge. That's Feliciano Lopez said that. These dudes just talk to each other on the comments. It's a very insular world. But I want to know, we're the Soviet tennis players, man.

Man, the last great Soviet tennis player was Yevgeny Kofelnikov. Really? Number one in the world. And now Yevgeny Kofelnikov is a world-class golfer. So he made the crossover. He retired from tennis, maybe in his mid-30s or something. And then got in the... He's not PGA world-class, but he's ranked in Europe. Fascinating. So he's made money playing golf, too.

But I guess he was probably the guy that was like the best russian player around the time the soviet union fell probably retired like maybe in the late 90s or early 2000s what about thanasi kokonakis kokonakis thanasi kokonakis is the um he's the uh mr steel your girl of the atp world and actually there's a funny video he's very attractive damn there's a hot as fuck there's He's the Mr. Steal Your Girl of the ATP world. And actually, there's a funny video. He's very attractive. Damn, he's hot as fuck. There's a funny video of Kyrgios is playing this guy,

and Kyrgios does something to piss the guy off, and Kyrgios goes, I'm sorry, mate, but Tenasi fucked your girlfriend. Well. So, so Kyrgios and Kokonoks are kind of the bad boys. Are they? The heartthrob bad boys.

Look at him. He's hot as fuck. What's his nationality? French? I think they're, he's Australian, like Greek-Australian. Jesus Christ.

Kyrgios is Malaysian-Australian. That's an extremely attractive man. Greek-Malaysian-Australian. People should not be that attractive. Imagine if you were that hot, man. That's an extremely attractive man. Greek Malaysian Australia. People should not be that attractive. Imagine if you were that hot, man. That would be deadly. I'd just like to be about five these days. I'm a strong four.

Well, what is he? Ten, right? About 12. Okay, like a 10, right? About 12. Okay, like a 12, right. Very, very good looking. Juan Martin Del Potro. He's the big Argentine. This is the premier tennis podcast of the socialist left.

Yeah, Del Potro was, he's huge. He's like 6'6", number three in the world. Oh, really? He's one of the guys, he's the Carmelo like 6'6 number three in the world oh really he's the one of the guys he's the carmelo anthony i would say of the atp tour because he just hovers around the periphery of greatness but never really uh-huh you know pokes the bubble what about oh fuck i i uh i clicked off naomi osaka no she's a Japanese tennis player. She's a badass.

She is... Grigor Dimitriov. Baby Federer, they call him. Really? Yeah, he's an interesting character because he's got all the talent in the world, but he, like, chokes a lot. He's got the yips perpetually.

Fascinating. Which I guess happens when people call you Baby Federer. I can relate to that. I can relate to perpetually having the yips. So he's been beaten out in the first round of the last couple of majors, and he was the guy that's picked to be the next great thing. Also very attractive, though. Do you just have to be extremely hot to be a tennis player?

I think so. Why are they all so attractive? They're not all that attractive. I mean, go look at Yevgenygeny kafelnikov the aforementioned soviet well you didn't need to be in the soviet union there was no social mobility or anything it was just pure talent he was born to be a tennis player and he's gonna have to carry that out exactly right yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The other big Soviet player, well, there were a couple, but the other one is Alexander Zverev,

who actually, after the Soviet Union fell, moved his family to Germany, and so he's raised two, Misha and Alexander, the younger, who they call Sasha Zverev. Uh-huh. They're German, but they're Russian, but German. Excellent tennis players? Oh, yeah. Zverev, he'll probably win like a million grand slams or something.

Fascinating. He's like 20, and he's already beating Federer and shit. Misha's brother's kind of old. He's in his mid-30irties And kind of a I could Middle of the pack player But I mean I could probably Beat Federer if I needed to I mean he's going out of

He's not as good anymore right? I do have Nah he's still number two In the world At 37 I do have the strongest legs In Letcher County So

You know I I was reading this article yesterday It was They had all these old So, you know, I... I was reading this article yesterday. They had all these old, like, really great teams. Like Andre Agassi talking about playing Federer. Mm-hmm. And Agassi said that Federer was the only player he ever played that he never knew where the ball was going to come at him from.

Really? And said that he basically, Andre Agassi, who's one of the three or four greatest players of all time, said that Federer rendered him a very pedestrian player. Fascinating. I mean, wasn't Agassi, by the end of his career, doing meth and stuff?

That was mid-career, man. So he was doing meth at the height of his mid-career, man. He was doing meth. Like at the height of his career? At the height of his career. Like he was number one in the world and kind of fell out of the top 100. Smoking meth, my man. Married Brooke Shields,

lost all his damn hair, but was wearing like a wig. I mean, you know those shirts that's like, give me the confidence of a mediocre white man? Yeah. Give me the confidence of a mediocre white man? Yeah. Give me the confidence of Andre Agassi doing meth at the height of his career. Oh, yeah. I've got it under control.

Well, what's funny is that you could tell how corrupt tennis was because he actually failed drug tests, but it never really came to light. So I guess somebody paid somebody off. What do you say when you're drug testing one of the best play tennis players in the world and he's smoking crystal you've got it the drug test right in front of you like i think they probably knew it'd be horrible for the game because like you know it's like tennis wasn't super popular and like finally you had a guy that was like exciting and making people watch yeah so they're just kind of like Finally you had a guy that was exciting and making people watch.

So they're just kind of like, we're just going to pretend we didn't see this. No, it would have made it more exciting. That's another thing, man, in sports is we just need to quit with all the bands on PEDs. It's so stupid. Tweaker culture and tennis culture can coexist. It's so weird. That might be the ultimate crossover. Like the ultimate unexpected crossover.

It's like posh, very Tony like, you know, this week there was a headline, the director of the French Open won't let, or is trying to get Serena Williams not to wear her cat suits like the little skin-tight body suits anymore. And she wears them not for fashion,

but she has blood clots, and so she uses them to kind of control them. Really? Yeah. And so it's funny that you got this, like, these people have a stick up their ass about tradition and all this kind of stuff. And even yesterday at the US Open, one of the women's players, Cornett,

took her shirt off during the match just to kind of switch it over to the other side or whatever. I don't forget what she was doing. But she got like an ethics code violation. Remember they did that? But men can do that. Men can do that but women can't.

Remember during the Women's World Cup in the 90s? When, I don't remember who it was uh abby wambach was that she took her shirt off or maybe it was hopes i can't remember one and she just had like a sports bra underneath it was like the most pg thing ever and people were absolutely my god it's like if you guys never been to the beach yeah yeah no yeah fuck that um you're right allow pdes into all sports it would make sports so much more fun if everybody was fucking juiced out of their mind and hitting home runs that week that would solve baseball if all tennis players were required to get high on club drugs every time you pitched pitched, you had to be on LSD.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All out Doc Ellis. Seriously, sports are declining, right? Attendance is declining at games. NFL's in the toilet. Baseball attendance is in the toilet. Basketball is on the rise again. The Trillbillies have your secret to success,

to bringing it back. Drugs. Drugs. Drugs. Drugs. Just all the, like you've got like the French Open or whatever, and just the stands are filled with just incredibly wealthy people and tweakers. Yeah. Well, it's funny i think uh you know people get their get uh in a tizzy about um you know there's like runners that have like both sex organs right yeah and so like

specifically a south african runner and her name escapes me right now but she competes for the women's but she has also has male sex organs too. And so everybody gets like in a tizzy about like, oh, well, if, what's gonna happen in sports if we just, you know, normalize, you know, trans rights and all that kind of stuff.

Is that, how's that gonna work out? It's just like, all these motherfuckers are roided it up. Anyway, it's, they're all ostensibly jetpacks yeah i mean yeah exactly so that's that's fascinating i don't know i mean it's it's i mean it's you know i just i don't understand the the dehumanizing of that when like sports is already kind of like just everybody's on PEDs anyway. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, just play music, man.

And mostly I just say that to spur a little conversation around that because I can't wait to see the dumb shit people come up with. I thought I had to be a little bit of a provocateur. You're crazy, man, if you think women can compete at the same level as men level and all that kind of stuff it's like okay you know whatever let's just uh i mean i guess um i i hadn't really thought much about it hadn't given much thought because you

know i'm not really a sports not really a sports guy sports guy i stick to the arts which is much more accepting of diversity. I'm just kidding. It's all fucked up. But yeah. Anyway. Anyways. Why you got printed out over there?

All right. Now that we're a sports podcast. All right. So what I'm about to read to you is going to make you grind your teeth, is going to make you feel incredibly disturbed and disoriented, sort of like you just wandered out of a bomb shelter that you were in for like 10 years or something like that. And the world has passed you by and you're not even sure you understand reality anymore.

What makes people tick or anything like that. I want to preface this by saying that I don't know anything about the organization that the person who wrote this works for. I don't think this is reflective of the organization necessarily. And I don't even have an opinion of their work because I don't know anything about it. It's just kind of indicative of a larger trend in our sort of culture and a certain segment of the industry right now. But someone sent me this in my work email. And this was sort of going around in the sort of nonprofit circles for a little bit. You may have even seen it.

Maybe you've seen it. Okay, check this out. It's called Changing Our Narrative About Narrative. The infrastructure required for building narrative power

by Rashad Robinson. This is from April this year. Narrative is now a big buzzword in the field of social change. That is more a testament to people wanting to understand narrative, however, than it is to testament to people actually understanding it. Evaluating our overall approach to narrative, as well as the specific narrative changes we have determined to achieve,

comes down to a foundational question. What is our own narrative about the role that narrative strategy plays in social change? Our own narrative about what it is, what it takes to do it well, and what's at stake in our success. We tell ourselves a story about storytelling. A narrative about changing narratives.

What purpose is it serving? Is it the right narrative? Is it the one we need? The story of me. The story of we. The story of us. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes yes all right dude look all right so look um this this article it's it's written more as a paper and this isn't just some kooky the the

person that wrote this is the executive director of the organization color of change which is a racial racial justice organization all right so that's why i preface this with i don't know anything about their organization really or the work that they do. I don't think that this is reflective of their work. I have got no opinion about any of that. All I know about Cobra Train is I've signed no less than 17 of those petitions. I have too. I mean several.

I get their emails. I'm a sucker. In my personal email inbox. I'm a sucker. In my personal email inbox. But no, this thing is taken seriously in the nonprofit world. So this isn't just indicative of just one organization. This is something that a lot of people buy into.

A lot of people sort of incorporate into their sort of activism, praxis, whatever the fuck you want to call it. And it is deeply concerning to me. It's deeply concerning to me and I'll get to why. Say more about that. I'll read on but I'm sorry. Say more about, oh yeah. About why it's concerning to me? Yeah.

Alright, alright, alright. Okay. This paper presents a high level outline of just some of the components of strategic thinking required to create the right story about narrative change within the progressive movement with a focus of the components related to building the infrastructure we need to build what i call narrative power three needs for change in our orientation stand out one we need the ability to follow through on narrative and cultural dispersion and immersion over time across segments and at scale okay okay let's let's unpack that a little bit so let's read that again what did they say there we need

the ability to follow through on narrative and cultural dispersion and immersion over time, across segments, and at scale. Here's what I don't understand about a lot of the social change space, I think, is the new... The new way to describe it? Yeah. Oftentimes, there's a lot of words like that that are strung together that don't seem to... I don't know what he's talking about here. I don't either. Respectfully.

I don't know what he's talking about here. I think I do. And he hides it far into the piece. I'll get to that. I'll get to what the actual crux of this article is and what he's calling for. Okay. I'll quit interrupting.

That's okay. No, it's, please weigh in. If you see or hear anything that triggers your senses, your bullshit senses. Number two, we need actual human beings to serve as our main vehicle for achieving narrative change. People who are authentic, talented, equipped, motivated, and networked.

We're out. I just like the framework for this is actual human beings. It's like, yeah, that's the whole point. You need actual human beings to create social change. Right. But again, I'll get to why that point is so absolutely bizarre in a second number three we cannot this one is really really good we cannot forsake the power of brands their relationships responsible for the way that most people come to change their thinking

reshape their feeling and redirect their behaviors. So, just to recap, we need to be able to infiltrate the culture. We need to be able to use actual human beings as spokespeople for our, I don't know, beliefs, movement, or whatever. And we gotta get those brands, baby. The left needs brands. So the whole framework of this is basically saying

the left can't compete currently. The left can't compete with the right wing's propaganda machine. We don't have brands. We don't have the actual human beings. We can't compete with them because we're not playing by their rules. I guess that's it. Or, well, no, that doesn't make any sense.

We have to double down on playing by their rules and in their system if we're ever going to affect change. Yes, that is it. That is it. So part of doing it's part of achieving those three goals is creating narrative infrastructure tom narrative infrastructure infrastructure with respect to building narrative power and achieving narrative change is not about

these things that he just listed about uh developing framing putting more pr firms in position of speaking for us, et cetera. Narrative infrastructure is singularly about equipping a tight network of people organizing on the ground, baby, and working within various sectors to develop strategic and powerful narrative ideas, and then, against the odds of the imbalanced resources stacked against us, immerse people in a sustained series of narrative experiences required to enduringly change hearts, minds, behaviors,

and relationships. So we're going to send everybody to narrative camp. You're going to go to narrative camp for the summer. Exactly. Here's my problem in there, and I don't knock people that like narrative is their thing, because I think there is a purpose there, but

here's why I think ultimately it's not necessarily the best way to convey all the ideas and like effect change or blah blah blah whatever. The reason is this. Take for example something like

the right or enemy has already I think I'm trying to think of a way to phrase this but let me just give you an example what I'm talking about maybe the verbiage will come but think about like

let's take an issue like gun control which I know not all leftists are anti-gun or whatever it's not what I'm talking about in the general sense yeah yeah yeah like you had liberals you know him and in hong kong for gun control and all this kind of stuff well the reason that narrative doesn't work in for that example when it became okay to just slaughter elementary school children like in sandy hook yeah like what what what what how can you narratively one up that to push people to change exactly you know i'm saying you're exactly right the extremities

have been so well that's not the right word let me think how to say this basically the right has normalized the most grotesque stuff on every issue, has pushed it to the margins to the point that, like, almost nothing matters anymore, that there's not any story that's going to one-up that. No. No, the closest you can do is, like, the closest I get to sometimes that is reading about, like, Marie Antoinette getting guillotined or something like that.

Just like, yeah. That's the only place to go from here. I'm saying, the narrative is we start cutting heads off. Exactly. That, to me, is the only thing that fulfills any kind of... That trumps. Yeah. That the, you know.

Yeah. You know what I'm saying, though? It's like, things have just become so, like the most, the shit that was just deplorable 10 years ago was just like standard now. Yeah, man. We have children in concentration camps. Yes.

Yeah. No story's gonna undo that. You know what I mean? We have children in, we have ethnic cleansing on what is looking to be a massive scale. There was a story this week about how the Trump administration is trying to take passports away from people living at the border in the United States. Yeah. Yeah.

That's the best example. More fundamentally, narrative power is the ability to change the norms and rules our society lives by narrative infrastructure is the set of systems we maintain in order to do that reliably over time what i'm confused about is like how are you going to convince anybody of of this for example if this is really what you believe, are you really going to go out into the streets, up the hollers, into the projects, into the slums, into the factories, and be like,

listen, bro, the problem isn't power. The problem is the stories you tell. The problem is the story you have in your mind. Which is patently false, because we have all the stories you tell the problem is the story you have in your mind which is patently false because we have all the stories out there and again and again look look look i'm not anti-narrative just out of pocket like i think that's that's still important but i don't think that's like the narrative can't be your main thing in my opinion no well no and i'll get to i'll get to why this is funny we need to build the infrastructure that will make those um okay well hold on we can make videos and put them

online and have them reach a few hundred people or reach a billion people for a minute for the moment even leaving alone the question of whether those videos have the most effective approach to content and framing in service of our ultimate goal and ultimately they don't because i'm gonna tell you this i could watch a fucking aj plus video or a fucking here now video or whatever's out there about like the most like evil shit being done to somebody uh-huh and two weeks later i'm gonna forget about it because we're on to the next thing. Exactly. Like, really, honestly, the best thing the narrative folks can do is end the 24-hour news cycle. Yeah. Trump's not completely right.

We need to be organizing against the big networks. We need to build the infrastructure that will make those videos known and loved and referenced by millions more people in a way that influences their lives. And we are simply not set up to do that in the way that corporations, religious organizations in the right wing are set up to do it. So why the fuck do it? Why not do something else? Why are you trailing them? Why are you trying why are you trailing them too like why are you taking their lead it's another thing that's another thing that kind of speaks to your whole idea about the the pathology of the of

let's say the left and heavy air quotes the democrats outside yeah uh and they're like fetishizing their own impotence that phrase you come up with that i repeat so often but it's also like like why take cues from your opposition in that in that way dude so this gets at something that i've found very fascinating um i don't know if you remember this but in in our world our little non-profit world right after to the 2016 election there was a i was approached by more than one individual who was, had some harebrained scheme to basically recreate on the left

what the Koch brothers had done on the right. You remember this? I remember, I know who you're talking about. Yeah, specifically, people wanted to create a progressive Koch brothers.

And I can't figure out if it's, They exist, pal. It's called Michael fucking Bloomberg. And Warren Buffett. And I can't figure out if it's... They exist, pal. It's called Michael fucking Bloomberg. And Warren Buffett. And Warren Buffett. And like all these... George Soros. Like, it exists already, you fucking imbecile.

No, I can't figure out if like 2016 broke their brains so badly that they started just desperately grasping for anything that could help them win again. And so they just looked to the right. Or if they're just craving sociopaths who just want as much foundation money as possible. I think that's part of it. But also, too, they don't know that there are no new ideas under the sun. Yeah.

You know what I mean? So when you think you've got some sort of innovative scheme to upend the Koch brothers, trust me when I say that you don't, and there's already a blueprint that we have in place that works, and we just can't get these motherfuckers on board to save their lives because they want to hold on to the last thread from fucking the well resistance order two points i want to make about that the first

is that this is why i can envision a world after trump this is you know i mean i can't hear some people say um you know like trump was the sort of, was the sort of, what would the word be? Was the sort of thing that like, broke the narrative, or I don't know. It's the thing you can't see beyond. I can very easily see beyond it because this just cuts through the bullshit.

This just shows you that like, most social change, I'm using scare quotes, is done in a business environment that is attached and entrenched in the status quo. That's exactly right. We can't even talk until they get beyond that. Exactly.

There's nothing to talk about. And listen, I'm not saying, me and you had a little back and forth about this the other night. I'm not saying that we can't win liberals over to our way of thinking all this kind of stuff but it's not going to be done by appealing to their sense of like narrative and you know anything that they've done in the past that they that is their current conception of how we affect change,

whatever that means. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you know what I'm saying? Well, just reading this document, what I realized is that you have an entire sector of society that is totally siloed off from reality. Yeah.

Like, that's insane. It would be one thing if it was just like just some sort of wing nuts who didn't have a lot of money but man we are talking about the most powerful people on what passes for the left look look look i want to read you something there's this article in the new yorker that came out this week about like about how philanthropy has exploded in the last 15 years. In the past 15 years, some 30,000 private foundations have been created, and the number of donor-advised funds has roughly doubled.

At one point, this article even puts a number on the amount of, let's see, the growth in foundation assets in that time, since the 1930s, has been staggering. From less than a billion dollars to more than $800 billion. That's how much money is tied up in the philanthropy sector alone.

$800 billion. That's a defense budget, man. That's a yearly defense budget. That's a defense budget man that's a yearly defense budget defense budget that's fucking incredible yeah so it's just not like this isn't this document isn't just some like loan work of some isolated individuals these are people who have billions of dollars at their disposal and and they're so siloed off here's what's interesting to me too about that. Like, and I know a lot of leftists would disagree with this notion, but like

all these like wealthy benefactors that want to sink money into again what passes for the left would be much better served if they would just give that money to poor and working people. I mean, seriously. I mean, just go find, if Appalachia's your thing, if

Southside Chicago's your thing, whatever. Make a Drake video. Yeah. Get Drake out there to give big, whatever you need to do to feel good about yourself, just put resources in the hands of people that need them. That would bolster change far more than sinking millions and millions of dollars into liberal organizations. Listen to this.

The Gates Foundation alone—this is from an article I'm reading that was in the New Yorker this week. Gospels of Giving for the New Gilded Age by Elizabeth Colbert. The Gates Foundation alone will disperse more than $150 billion over the next several decades. billion dollars over the next several decades in just the next 20 years affluent baby boomers are expected to contribute almost seven trillion dollars to philanthropy that's incredible that is well and so okay so like in the region what in the reason why this article is so maddening to me this or this uh this thing about narrative is because it shows you that like you've got a multi-trillion dollar industry this document is a perfect representation of it because it it floats around in these circles this isn't just like something that was sent to me um just sort of

like uh on a list serve yeah people in philanthropy really buy into this shit i mean i'm telling you personally just because i know these people and i've read their uh grants and i've read you know what i mean like they think this is how you affect change right i don't know um oh it's cult dog it's cult talk it's totally cult talk listen to this this is this is totally something you would hear in a cult narrative power is the ability to create leverage over those who set the incentives rules and norms that shape society and human behavior no no it's not let me just scratch out narrative and put money money is what yields leverage over those people exactly material material power property no nobody except for like fucking fred rogers has ever been moved by somebody's story like in a meaningful way like i think most decent people can sympathize with people's

hardships and so forth and whatever but that doesn't spur everybody to like you know what i'm saying it also means having the power to defeat the establishment of belief systems that opposes, which would otherwise close down the very opportunities we need to open up to achieve real impact at the policy, politics, and cultural levels. Dude, it's just cult talk. When I worked at the Clinton Foundation, the big refrain was, Bill Clinton would often say, we need private citizens doing public good and so basically instead of holding any power structure accountable including ones he's cozy with that butter his bread he thinks it should be incumbent on me and you and you're not well not even me and you poor

and working people to sort of take care of their own to like you know you see you see a guatemalan farmer that's you know been been hampered by the monsoon season you need to send him 100 yeah well what this is we're all kind of micro landing yeah and we're still and what we're going to do what we're going to do is we're still going to charge him interest but uh it's going to be a reasonable interest yeah no well that's the thing it's you've got bill clinton saying that and then the sort of other end of the spectrum is of that is like this is basically saying that like you have to go to the people and convince them that like there is another story they have to believe and that's the only way that

they can envision any kind of like political horizon yeah it's it's insane dude yeah there was i remember when i was there too i mean i keep sharing clinton stories but they all gave us this this this book and it was about it was called clinton on giving all right it was like his tome all about philanthropy and he starts with this like really like heart-wrenching story about this lady in in new jersey that was had been a housekeeper i think she was a haitian immigrant had been a housekeeper yeah the details are fuzzy but stay with me and so she had like saved up her whole life as a housekeeper and all this stuff and when she retired she had like two hundred thousand dollars like to to live

on the rest of her life which is also just like insane that like you retire at 65 and if you're gonna live 25 more years you have to live on god a pittance right right but and and whatever you know social security's throwing at you i guess but he tells this story. It's like, but there was this girl in her native Haiti who was so sick from full-blown AIDS that she had to be carried to her desk in school and she was on death's door for several years or whatever. And that woman, through the generosity of that one poor and working person who gave every dime she had

ever made to get this girl the antiretroviral she needed to be healthy again. And like on the surface of that you're like oh god damn that's so moving. But then it's like if you had knowledge of this why didn't your ass pony up for that? You could save that

poor girl a lot of heartache. Listen to this. This is dude I want to print this off and frame this. This is fucking perfect. This symbolizes and encompasses, embodies everything the nonprofit industrial complex stands for. Yet we have not developed a coherent narrative about poverty's injustice that is motivating, nor a set of experiences that will be anywhere near compelling enough for people to internalize that new narrative and the mental model embedded within it. That is, we have not invested in the right narrative infrastructure, neither for developing

the narrative itself, nor for making it powerful. That's just, I wholeheartedly disagree. Stories abound of the, like, you know, the guy that died because he couldn't afford insulin. There's a story of another guy that had an abscessed tooth and put off going to the doctor because he had to work a factory shift and he ended up getting a fever and dying.

Like, stories abound of, like, just, like, senseless deaths and destruction over just here here's a here's um here's a convince a motivating convincing narrative about poverty it exists because capitalism all right it exists because a small amount of people at the top hoard resources and just grind people's lives to admireseration to extract as much capital out of them as possible, out of their labor as possible. And this has been going on since the beginning of fucking time. That the history of the world is the struggle of class.

Right. That's a convincing narrative. That is convincing. And it's one that I think people could fucking plug into. And it's one that if think people could fucking plug into and it's one and it's one that if you were a fucking surf or if you're a fucking wage laborer now you're going to identify with exactly yeah exactly it's like what more do you need yeah people understand that on a intuitive level they're not stupid they don't need a new fucking narrative go talk to them and they understand class warfare every every day these people bill gates or whoever they wake up and

engage in class warfare they're not asleep at the will no but but we're fucking getting bogged down in this bullshit about it's pretty good it's it's like it's like even if you, you know, Scandinavia is big on the news this way. Even if you like that sock dim model or whatever, all this kind of stuff, even if you think the banks should just be a little bit nicer, eventually all that shit is going to lead us right back to where we are. Let's say you create the nicest form of capitalism you can. Give it a little time and we're going gonna be back in the same fucking crisis. Yeah, look, you've not fixed the problem

until you have the proletariat, you have working people running shit. Prisoners running shit. The indigenous running shit. That's a narrative I can buy into. I don't need to get some micro individual updates on my narrative software to understand what injustice is. And I don't think that regular people do either.

The only reason this exists is just because there's fucking money in it. Yeah. That's the reason why they have to do this song and dance about like narrative and about like about not addressing the actual core roots of these problems is because there's trillions of dollars in it. I'm just calling it for what it is. It's all bullshit. Okay, look. Earlier I said we were going to get to the crux of what this article is really about,

what it's really looking for, what they really want. And so now I'm going to get to that. It comes under this. We need actual human beings serving as our main vehicle for achieving narrative change. Okay, this is what it is. The right wing beats us here almost all the time. They create echo chambers, as we know. But they also provide...

Because dims don't do that. They also provide platforms and create their own celebrities who are always on script and trained to build dedicated audiences you know say what you want about us but we're not on script baby we don't have a script it's all off the dome baby yeah creating narrative networks that entangle millions and millions of people and extremely deep and immersive experiences that reinforce specific values ideas desires and norms dude this the oh like it's also just an exercise in just prosaic like teeth grinding like you read this and it's just we we're so like we i don't this it's so ill-defined like we're so lost at this point

like these people are the people who want to recreate the coke brothers on the left or whatever that they just throw whatever words they can possibly come up with into the mix and those audiences become motivated empowered and confident emissaries taking on their families taking on their families their social and work communities and other spaces far outside of the right wing spaces in which they were first immersed in these ideas and which they keep going back to for deeper and deeper immersion it is tireless expensive work that they do well it is far beyond comms it is a culture a business a community life what is the common denominator of the average fox viewer it's not a poor and working person it's like what i was telling you the other day

have you ever been you ever walked through a project and seen a fucking campaign sign or anything not once no these people the poor and working people they don't give a shit the only people the only reason why fox news's message is able to disseminate into what they call the you know their communities the only reason they're emissaries is because they're upper middle class wealthy people and they have the power in their community to enact changes on a national scale right these are the chamber of commerce people these are the pta this is exactly they don't just they don't listen to fox news in a vacuum and just like oh i, I'm going to go out there and they're incredibly powerful people. Yeah. Dude, but okay. So the last point is though,

we cannot forsake the power of brands, Tom. The relationships responsible for the way- I'm going to buckle up for this one. The relationships that are responsible for the way most people come to change their thinking, reshape their feeling, and redirect their behaviors um uh so no there's really nothing to say about about brand but they're um it's a really telling thing you've got this it's actually i got another article i didn't know if i wanted to talk about it or not but there was an article in the Washington Post, an op-ed. People don't vote for what they want.

They vote for who they are. All politics is identity politics. And I think that this is interesting because you've got two examples of people making some insane deductions about human nature that have no evidence. You can't, okay, so you've got on this side you've got people who say that like the only way people to relate to anything is through brands and through um

through uh i don't know like symbolic narratives right on the other side you've got people who say identity politics is everything all politics is politics, and that people only relate to the larger body politic or getting anything out of it through who they are, through their own identity. Which, that is making a deduction about human nature that has no basis. It has no evidence. I guarantee you, if you went to people and appealed to them

on what they want on the things that would make their lives materially better you would you would get quite a bit of positive engagement 100 and also the other thing too is like if you're in the discussion of talking about what the opposition does, that's what advertising does. Exactly. You know what I'm saying? Exactly. If you buy this thing, and this is going to make your life materially better because whatever.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I'm not trying to, listen, I'm not trying to necessarily throw away the entire concept of narrative building or whatever. I mean, it has use. It has value. When you put trillions of dollars behind it, it becomes an industry and this external thing

that's really creepy to me. That is very, yeah, that's the thing. You know. Right. If it's your thing, if you think it holds water and you're kind of organizing. Right. Do it.

Right. But if you're pumping literally amounts of money that could change the lives of a lot of people on the face of the earth. Right. I mean, you could give every person a dollar. Just on what you're sinking in the narrative. Every person alive, a dollar.

So I'm not trying to totally discard that idea. I'm not trying to totally discard the idea of identity politics either. But if you also believe that all politics is identity politics, you're going to have to explain to me what your plan is for going to white people because if that's true if you think that all politics is identity politics explain to me how you're going to appeal to white people people that don't have a bargaining like have no right because nothing to gain by doing the right what you're going to do is you're going to wind up appealing to them on terms of their whiteness.

And that is going to be very dangerous. I mean, you have to do that to some degree. If we're talking about racial justice, if we're talking about liberation, we have to engage with that. I'm not saying we don't. But if that's the first thing you're going with right out the gate, you're going to, if I had to guess, you're probably going to engender a lot of reactionary politics.

And you're going to get the kind of articles that we saw a couple weeks ago from our boy Terrence, the Wah Terrence, the Dark Terrence at the Washington Post. Yeah. So creepy. You have to go to people with a vision for how society can be based on that is

rooted in class warfare and I'm not saying that in a class reductionist sense I'm not saying that class is everything and whatever hopefully we'll get into this if and when we have Assad on the show for his book but it's complicated We'll get into this if and when we have Assad on the show for his book.

But it's complicated. I don't know. I thought you might like this article, though, Tom. As soon as I read it, I was like, Tom's going to love this. Changing our narrative about a narrative, baby. That's how we got to keep the money flowing in yeah we got to change right now next year we're changing our narrative about changing our narrative about changing your narrative yeah we'll do this the thing and we'll just keep how it all till it becomes increasingly ridiculous to the point where these like even

these philanthropy tryhards are like look capitalism, there's always going to be money in being the sort of loyal opposition and in creating alternate narratives and all this other bullshit. Well, you have to have that for capitalism. Yeah.

Otherwise, the mask is completely off and it just boots to the neck. Exactly. Dystopian. Exactly. So it behooves the elite and powerful to have an enemy or to have or to have like an opposition that's why i can very easily imagine a future after trump there is a future after trump it's the gates pouring 150 billion dollars into philanthropy

every year for the next 20 years yeah they're going like they don't want Trump, all right? They want a world that is, you know, ruled over by managerial elites, professional elites. Yeah. And they want means testing. They want all these, you know, they want to be able to sleep at night without feeling guilty over the fact that they've enacted massive exploitation

on a massive scale. Yeah. To get their money. Yeah. That's exactly right. And unless you deal with that, I don't know. You're just going to keep changing the narrative about the narrative about the narrative about the narrative.

It's going to keep being a cycle that just pulls more and more money into the drain. Yeah. And nothing's going to change. Yeah. Anyways. I agree. You know, some of the most infantile bullshit you'll ever hear

is the people that throw their hands up and say, well, that's just the way it is, and that's the way the world's always been. And it's like, yeah, I know it's a little cliche, because when she died, you saw those memes, but was it the Ursula K. Le Guin quote where she's like, the divine right of kings was also thought about as being insurmountable.

Exactly. You know what I mean? There are other ways to organize the world. Exactly. To reorder the world. Exactly. Outside of this, and we've done it. It's happened a few times.

There have, you know what I mean? Like Haitian Revolution, French Revolution, and we've done it. It's happened a few times. There have, you know what I mean? Like, Haitian Revolution, French Revolution, there have been times when the established order of things have, I don't know,

people reached a point where they needed to rupture with that. They needed to break on a mass scale from that. What better way to do it than hang some Frenchmen?

Exactly. S, um. What better way to do it than hang some Frenchmen? Exactly. Suck it. Um. Yeah, absolutely. Um. So, anyways, that's all I got planned for today. That's just at an hour and two. That's good. Let's wrap it.

You wanna wrap it up? Wrap that shit and put it out. Direct to you, baby so before we go then Couple of things I said this on the Patreon episode But I'm gonna say it again Because when we recorded yesterday We didn't know what would be going on Patreon But I might as well just say it again

Because I want to maximize Coverage baby I want as well just say it again because I want to maximize coverage, baby. I want as much narrative spread as possible. We need out there, we need as much narrative spread as possible. We need the story

out there, folks. Can you do a good John Madden impression? A good bit would be John Madden quarterbacking a narrative strategy. Yeah. I think he'd be lost on so many people

though. They only know his voice from the video game now. You're right. I guess you're right. That's of a different era. Are we that old now, Tom? Have we outlived the John? Who are the big football commentators now?

What was his name? They're all old football players now. Yeah. I guess John, was John Madden a football player? Steve Young. I mean, you got- Troy Aikman. Troy Aikman, all those guys, yeah.

You've got, what's the guy's name who coached for the Raiders, and then he coached for the Tennessee, and then Lane Kiffin? Is he not? Or wait, no, he's probably still good. Lane Kiffin, yeah. Where's Lane Kiffin. Is he not? Or wait, no, he's probably still good. Lane Kiffin, yeah. Where's Lane Kiffin at now? Fuck, I forget. This is totally disgusting.

He's in Alabama for a second. I think he got fired or something. Anyway. I forget. Anyways, John Madden quarterbacking in narrative spread. It's pretty funny. Okay, so like I said, I mentioned this on the episode. You'll hear

it twice this week but i want to give a shout out to all the prisoners striking right now um a personal a special shout out to all the prisoners in the lee county correctional facility in my hometown of hobson mexico um in a what used to be a Wackenhut prison. That's really weird. There was a private prison company called Wackenhut. I think they've changed their name now. I'm not really sure where the name Wackenhut came from. But they were sort of like Geo Group

and Correctional, CCA, whatever. Didn't CCA change its name? Didn't one of those... Yeah, CCA's.... Yeah. Didn't CCA change its name? Didn't one of those... Yeah, CCA's... What is it? It sounds almost like Union Carbide or some shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I forget now.

But there's three prisons in New Mexico currently participating in the prison strike. Hopefully by the time I'm saying this now, it's still going on. But I remember when they built that prison in the 90s and it's a it's a state prison and they do some really horrendous stuff there um just as like they do in all prisons but um anyway shout out to them and hopefully i can find some links to put into the bio this

um to where you can support that um it's a big story right now that we haven't really covered on the show a lot, but in our personal lives, we deal with a lot. So, I don't know. We just kind of let it go by the wayside. But we're trying to maximize coverage here. So there's that. Try to see how you can plug into that in any way you can. And then I want to say, follow us on Patreon.

And by that we mean, give us money. Yeah. My roof fell in, people. Yeah, Tom's roof fell in. I need it, goddammit. Tom's roof fell in. I personally just paid off a fuckload of debt last week.

And I was joking on Twitter about how, like, debt collectors will just keep calling you. Like, it's not just the easiest thing in the world just to ignore the call. But at a certain point, it really does wear on you. If you're getting two calls a day, voicemails, they're sending letters to your parents' house. Oh, God.

Every time they'll send one my mom will send me a screenshot of it like is everything okay same here too so with your help I paid off a lot of debt thank you I will always love our fans because you helped me get out of some debt. We got some shout outs too. First off, tell them the link.

It's Patreon, if you don't know what that is, you've probably heard us say it. We probably need to stop taking it for granted that people know what it is. Patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash Trill Billy Workers Party, no apostrophes or anything like that. We do weekly episodes.

Every Sunday we put out an episode. This Sunday we'll have an episode with Tanya. Next Sunday we're going to have an episode with the homie Scott Benson at Bombs Fall on Twitter about Christian music. I think we're recording that today. Yeah, we're recording that today. I'm excited about that one. Tom's about on Twitter about Christian music. I think we're recording that today. Yeah, we're recording that today. Excited about that one.

Tom's about to head out. I've got a song in my heart, too. Do your good. Yeah, it's by the Newsboys. Perfect. So we've got a couple of new Patreons to shout out. And I think actually we've been shouting Patreons out on the Patreon. On Patreon.

Let's give people the... Yeah, we're going to give you a shout out on the public. We'll go. Free episode. We'll just go down. Let's kick it off with our latest Patreon. Kellen Singer. Kellen, thank you.

We've got Michael Park. Michael, thank you for your support. We've got Eric. No last name, but thank you, Eric. Thanks, Eric. You don't need to give us your last name. It's probably better than you don't. Probably best that way. Shout out to Stephen Wills.

Shout out, Stephen Wills. I like your last name. I hope it's spelled like, till the wheels fall off. It's not, but... Stephen till the wheels fall off will. Yeah. Dom N. Shout out, Dom N. Shout out, Dom. Shout out, Stephen Pate. Shout out Dom N. Shout out Dom. Shout out Steven Pate.

Shout out Steven. Robert Jones. Shout out Bob. I don't know if my dad's name is Robert, but people call him Bob. Open Source Farm. Shout out Open Source Farm. Clay Moffin. Shout out Clay.

I apologize on behalf of my co-host Who can't pronounce your name correctly Clay M Big shouts Let's shout out Tanner Jarman Shout out Tanner Thank you for your support Bless you

Your name made Tom sneeze That's a good thing Joshua Zuck Shout out Josh Let's shout out Max shout out max thank you thank you for your support mike andrick um shout out mike i think that that covered i think that that gets us back around to the ones we were doing yeah i was just going through the list last week no because i want to read off every page everybody's shout out Everybody that's in my email. Hannah Arias, Thaddeus Weigel.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Listen, $5 a month will get you access to all the episodes you want to check out. There's some good stuff, really good stuff on our Patreon. There's some bad stuff, but mostly good stuff. Mostly good stuff. And like I said,

if you're sort of wandering through your week like I need more Trilly Billy's content, go there, because that's mostly good stuff. And like I said, if you're sort of wandering through your week like I need more Trilly Billy's content, go there because that's all good shit and it'll make you laugh. So patreon.com slash Trilly Billy Workers Party and that pretty much covers it. That gets it. All right.

So we'll see you all on the other side.