Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 77: Pissed Off Big Dawgs

Episode Date: November 7, 2018

T & T sit down to debrief after last night's midterm elections. Please support us on our Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

If you gotta get out of bed, then you ain't living the dream, Tom. Oh, fuck. You ain't living the dream if you gotta go out of bed. If you got a really small pain. I hope Sturgis Simpson becomes Sturgis Simpson and starts just dressing like a biker and performing in like Myrtle Beach and Sturgis. Sturgis. It's kind of like a Garth Brooks to Chris Gaines thing.

Right, right. But tasteful. Right. I mean, since politics is basically entertainment now since it is basically like kayfabe entertainment like how long how long is it going to be until we see politicians start having chris gaines type um side projects like what if ted cruz had like, a side project, like, um, he was, I don't know. Like he,

I don't know. Like maybe he, um, tries to create a character who is like a skeptical atheist or something like that. You know what I mean? Just as like... An irony project. Yeah.

You see what I'm saying, right? Yeah, yeah. A Chris Gaines type situation. Never mind. Sorry. We got... That was... I'm shaking the rust off this morning.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it was election night in america last night it was it was election night in america last night you got any takeaways no tom i don't have any takeaways not a single one well here's i think what everybody's asking themselves this morning is whether or not the blue wave came. Yeah. Well, okay.

My friend Alex, who we had on the show earlier this year, was texting me this morning. We were talking a little bit about it. He was like, oh, the takeaway that the Dems are running with is that this was a blowout for the Dems. They ran a score? Yeah. They flipped the house by one seat. Did they? I think they needed 218 to flip the house

they got 219. Interesting. So what does that mean? So like I guess by two seats but yeah. So like what does that mean basically like you know just because so like let's say they didn't get those two seats and they had like a majority. How this change that how does them having this two extra seats because here's

what i saw we're going in for the super majority oh you gotta have a super majority yeah i think that's what they were going for uh and then it seems like they um of, you know, petered across the finish line. Interestingly, all the people I thought that were shoe-ins to win shit the bed. Yeah, same here. And, you know, I think if you're looking at Randy Bryce, Iron Stash out in Wisconsin shit the bed. That was pretty crazy. I mean, I was looking, again, I was up

till like 2 a.m. As soon as we left last night, as soon as I left Mets last night, I was like, yeah, I'm not getting any sleep. Richard Ojeda, West Virginia shit the bed. Totally. And I think what Democrats will take away from that is like,

okay, that's cute. You progressives have had your moment and it's proven that you're no i did see several tweets like that obviously but what i would say is that i think that the dsa school just needs to change their strategy stick a pin in there that's what i would say i want to come back to that all right because. Because that's kind of my takeaway. I did see something absolutely hilarious at about 1 or 2 a.m. Some numbness that works for like NBC or something was like, breaking news. The Democrats plan to investigate Trump's tax returns.

Oh. Damn. It's like, listen, y'all. I'm'm just gonna go ahead and spoil this for you every billionaire millionaire in the country's a goddamn tax cheat next next thing next question i don't understand it tom i feel like i've lost my mind in fact that's that's kind of a bipartisan thing i think everybody in america's's tax cheat yeah they just get by with it more egregiously than we do we get audited if we're trying to totally fucking reduce our burden slightly yeah yeah yeah well um it's also just bizarre it's like

you think a guy got that rich without cheating? Stepping on someone. I don't fucking understand. But anyways, I saw several tweets, though, that basically made the point that you just made, which is that, like, they were like, Andrew Gillum, Randy Bryce, blah, blah, blah. They enlisted a whole bunch of people that lost. They were like... They were quote-unquote progressives. Yeah. Even though I'd argue Beto and Andrew Gillum weren't even anything near progressive,

Even though I'd argue Beto and Andrew Gillum weren't even anything near progressive, Richard Ojed is a rape apologist that said, yeah, I just don't see any evidence in the whole Kavanaugh thing. And fucking Iron Stache, I don't know what his deal is, but he had some shit birds campaigning for him. You know what I think is very fascinating about that? What? Is that I remember when he first launched his campaign, a lot of people on the sort of dsa twitter left or whatever were like oh jenna uh bryce richard was his name randy um he ran this video do you remember this he ran this video that was like

powerful lots of shots of the sun going down behind him and he's like at a steel you know i got a bunch of steel wires around and stuff and now like everybody was like this is it this is exactly the kind of messaging and communications that the democrats need to have yeah it's like oh okay that didn't work it's like a blue collar guy uh cosplaying as richard trumka uh yeah all right it's it's like um well another thing too in that whole thing was was when paul ryan announced he wasn't gonna seek re-election right everybody's saying he's got this in the back that's because he's afraid he knows that he's behind in the polling and that iron stache is going to body slam him like Sergeant Slaughter or some shit. Look, you know, I think the results are so mixed.

It's so hard to say definitively whether like running more, you know, more progressive socialist Democrats. Like, I mean. Well, I think Felix Berman had a good tweet about i don't know if it was actually about this but it kind of works for this but like people's political opinions vary so much and there's so much variation in what people believe that like you just like it negates everything that this whole fucking, like, consulting class tells you about, like, focus groups and testing and, you know, messaging and all this shit. It's just like there's no rhyme or reason for it. You can just kind of spot trends, but, I mean, they're different from one place to the next. Yeah, and I think it's probably because that sort of professional managerial class thinks that people plug into politics through single issues and that's that's sort of true but um if you're talking about a larger political

project um people need to uh the entire reason that anybody would care about politics is to improve their entire lives yeah and those in the lives of those around them otherwise they wouldn't really give a shit about it right so um i don't know that's a whole other issue like that's a whole other sort of um you know like getting into like non-profits and how like there is along with the democrats there is this entire sort of industry that's tailored towards engaging people on single issues and anyways yeah yeah you know in in some ways i think the results last night were and i mean i don't mean this i'm trying to think how to word this without sounding callous um but that's sounding callous.

Without sounding callous? Yeah. And when I say this, I'm just talking specifically about the Democrats flipping the House barely. I think that may have been the worst of all possible outcomes. That may have been? Yeah. As opposed to them just not getting it. Them getting a super majority and all this kind of stuff. Or, you know

the Republicans holding on to the house if the Republicans would have held on to the house we would have at least known that the DNC is actually dead

right right basically if they would have gotten the super majority and all this stuff it's just like okay fuck if

this is what people want you know it's like yeah we gotta keep organizing doing what we wanna do but like it is what people want you know it's like yeah we gotta keep organizing doing what we want to do but like it seems like people want this and you kind of accept it but this is just kind of like they won just enough clout to be able to call it a blowout to hang around and say see y'all just got to trust the process and all this kind of stuff

and you know we take a fair amount of flack and a lot of people kind of in our sphere take a fair amount of flack that that kind of have serious criticism about electoralism but what i want to say to all the people that were you know and i don't disagree entirely with with this notion but like you know putting up the little things that are like um you know every everybody that like that thinks electoral politics is rotten but went and voted yesterday did this whole like self-flagellation thing like where it's like um you know i know this doesn't change anything, but I think, you know, if we're talking about marginal improvements and it's like, OK, yeah, like, of course, like every rational adult knows that like minor gains are better than no gains. Nobody's disputing that. at a certain juncture, like, what I think those people need to know

is that, like, there's never gonna come a time where there's not gonna be a lesser evilism thing under this system. Like, we were like,

oh, we gotta vote and then we gotta organize and organize, but it's like, if what you're trying to do is not tear down the system as it currently exists then what makes you think in 60 years that we're not going to be doing the same song and dance yeah what i find so fascinating about that is um you're absolutely right it's like amnesia in the sense that like oh we've been told the past 20 years that every election is the most important election and everything the stakes

could not be higher never been higher but what i find so weird about what you were just saying earlier um and and and okay this this kind of connects to my point that i made yesterday in the dm which is that everything that's bizarre and weird and a little just unsettling to me about the whole get out the vote process is located in the i voted selfie and it is exactly for that reason i hadn't really connected the dots until you just said that. It is either, it either serves two functions. It's either to say I'm a good civic participant in the society, et cetera, et cetera. I'm doing my duty as a.

I put my sticker on Susan B. Anthony Graves. Which is fucking weird in and of itself but it's either that or there's the second kind of i voted selfie which says voting is harm reduction i know it doesn't change anything whatever it's really fascinating to me that we even have to cater to that sort of liberal notion it's fascinating and all of that stuff make no mistake about it is to take a dig at leftists yeah it's weird to me that like we always have to defer to the liberal hegemony like we there is a hegemony of liberal thought and liberal theory and we always have to defer to it right and. And it's so cynical. And this is why what you were saying earlier.

Do you find it funny that liberals are always the vulnerable ones in the electoral process? Yeah. Republicans are never vulnerable. Either they're going to win or they're going to lose, but they're going to stick. Like Republicans vote for Republicans. Right. It's always liberals trying to gain ground. And occasionally win like is in the case with obama but in order for that to happen first the republicans have to tear up 70 of the goddamn planet i.e the iraq war whatever for

just to put them in a position yeah to make big gains if the republicans were strictly a managerial party in the same way the Democrats were, with the way that their voting loyalties lie, they'd rule for a thousand years. But they're so craven that, like, it's like the movie Rounders where Ed Norton's character is stacking the deck when they're playing this poker circuit. And he has this line, he says damon says that worms technique is flawless and cutting the deck but his judgment's a little off so every once in a while i have to fold the winning hand just so it doesn't look obvious and that's what the republicans are not so good at

they're so craving that once every 10 years or so you know it's going to happen with trump trump's going to invade venezuela or fucking iran or something's gonna happen probably next year around the election time i when i say that i hope that does not happen god but if john bolton's at the helm you can rest assured that i mean it might be cuba you see his fucking bat shit thing about about like um the troika tyranny right i forgot about that walrus ass motherfucker yeah yeah man it's uh it is pretty bad what i want to say though about this whole continued deference and and um kneeling at the altar of liberal thought and liberal theory is that like the i haven't fully like sort of thought about this so these are just kind of

you know ideas that are just floating around up here i need to preface that in case i can get in trouble again or something um but like a lot of the people I talked to yesterday and this morning on the left are generally pretty hopeless, you know, still. Like, they're just, you know, there's really nothing. Or nothing really changed yesterday. Yeah, nothing really changed. There were a few things I thought were interesting.

In Louisiana, they voted to where you don't have, juries can't rule unanimously in Louisiana now. And the same, like, the only two states that do that now are Oregon and Louisiana. So that's good. And then the voting rights stuff in Florida was good. But what I would say to that is that, I mean, that's a seriously important thing. But Rick DeSantis is also your governor.

And you know with these ballot measures, it's not uncommon for Republicans to come in and undo those. That's exactly what happened here. Yeah. Literally, Beshear, didn't he restore voting rights for felons? And then Bevin came in and undid it. And undid it immediately. So look for that to happen. Stick a pin in that.

That is my one big prediction. Rick DeSant, however you say his name, who is a fucking bona fide racist, is going to probably try to undo that. Yeah, there's some really, really bad... You know, I don't understand how even if you are um sort of on the more progressive liberal side if you're looking at things i really don't understand how you look at it and not come away with some really dark vibes like you see the the

brian kemp shit in georgia yeah that's what i mean like it was the most egregious example of like electioneering vote fixing i think i've ever said it well the fascinating thing about it is um i'm not really sure how to start going in here but i'm just gonna fucking do it the fascinating thing about that about the election in georgia and in Florida, is that you had, and this is probably a sort of liberal talking point or whatever, but you had elections that were very openly and publicly rigged. And that just goes by without any commentary. Yeah.

No serious commentary. Machines breaking down yeah uh one one poll for a whole fucking community in a metropolitan area you know what i'm saying like wait times three four five hours sometimes you know and brian can't let it out that he started months ago purging people from the rolls right and then when it got the day of like he like he was tweeting out shit like stacy abrams is supported by the black panther party if you believe stacy abrams is supported by the black panther party which would fucking rule but if you really believe that you're a fucking idiot yeah it's uh just you know dog whistle and everything else it's pretty dark. But, yeah.

I don't know. I guess what I was saying, what I was trying to say earlier with this whole notion of, like, how, as leftists, we're continually having to bow down to the sort of liberal mode of thought, and you always get this on election day, is that, like, if we're really invested

in changing the system as it exists and not just saying it as some virtue signal on Twitter, like, I want the revolution, you got to change the system and all this. If we're really serious about that, we have to start laying the organizational and institutional groundwork for revolution. And that requires an entirely new reorientation of how we approach politics i think right now there exists a sort of you know over the obama years there sort of rose up a a sort of managerial professional class of common you know commentariats or pundits or whatever

and shit we even kind of fall into that in some way but like for the vast majority of regular david axelrod and rick santorum here yeah totally i'm wearing eyeliner um but you know as a result the discourse over the past 10 years has become so deferential to liberal thought. And all of our sort of engagement with politics is only fixated on a specific class. We're talking about the bourgeois. If we're serious about this revolution shit, if we're serious about changing things at the sort of root level we have to totally reorient how we view politics and how we view power is really what it is yeah

because we don't have anything even remotely resembling power right now we have nothing we don't have the unions we don't have any sort of like mass militant defense network or anything we have me and you sitting in my living room talking into microphones and that's a lot of what the left is and we need to get our shit together because this is serious and this whole like i don't know we're just i just feel like we're wasting time that we don't have, and you should feel that way too, and you shouldn't feel bad when people are like, no, you got exactly what you're saying. Trust the process.

These things take time, whatever. They do take time, but I'd much rather be trying to, like I said, lay the sort of groundwork for a revolution. I think we could do that yeah i don't think it's hard look there's there is political will for that yeah in in spades we just don't i don't think we understand how to harness it or like anybody people need to start thinking about it seriously not just as a meme or a stupid thing that you say or not like a twitter identity or exactly and we need to i think sort of dsa is a political project that's all it is it's a little political project it's not a party it's not invested in trying to coordinate mass action

in this country or put pressure on the system or force tipping points or political crises it's a it's a project and that's good for a lot of reasons it was especially good two years ago because it got a lot of people through the doors and talking about some of these things right but it's time to take this shit to the next level like we you know we are just we're just at a point where we don't have any even semblance of power and even if the house and senate was packed full of fucking bernie sanders the most you know socialist whatever democrat part people the democrat part of the fund 28 lee carters yeah even if you had that you still would not have power power is with capital and how they use the state and we have to fucking take that back that's all there is to it i don't

know i don't know man i'm just tired no i agree man i i think um yeah a couple things i was thinking about yesterday when i wanted to to talk about this today was it was what I was just saying earlier about how that Republicans are almost always never vulnerable in the election cycles or at least not nearly as vulnerable as Democrats. But also how Democrats stress the importance of voting and all this stuff and their undying belief in the system. But none of them ever challenged gerrymandering or like that's just never a conversation that happens yeah or why do we have undemocratic legislatures like the senate well it's like i was saying on twitter yesterday if they don't fucking if they don't start doing that they're gonna have a situation on their hands where this is one of the weird sort of um paradoxes of our current moment like in the sense that like you know you're constantly looking around and seeing how history can't move forward how we're

just sort of stuck in the mud and i think that the voting stuff is a is an interesting sort of example of that because the democrats have um totally they've adopted this strategy of trying to get, what they've done is they've passed off these sort of obligations for civic duty and all this stuff onto individuals who then try to coerce their friends into going to vote. Or bellhops. Exactly. Whoever. exactly whoever what what you're gonna wind up what's the situation that you're gonna wind up having is if they continue with this gerrymandering stuff is that you're gonna force people to go out and vote get high voter turnout and the only shit on the ballots are gonna be republican led initiatives and and referendums and candidates well yeah that's that's the other thing too is

like i i was you know i sometimes i just get fucking bored and I tweet out dumb shit. And I was talking about like Joe Manchin yesterday, for example. And, you know, talking about how Joe doesn't deserve your vote, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever, whatever. And somebody had responded that I only voted for Joe just to to to to to motherf to to to to to to to to to Mitch McConnell. And I was like vote for Joe Manchin is a vote for Mitch McConnell. And then somebody came in

and and agreed with this guy and then said oh no well at least Joe Manchin will protect Social Security and Medicare.

And here's the thing about that is is that people don't understand is that and I just I mean I just see this because I have a mother that just is is you know retired Here's the thing about that is that people don't understand is that. And I mean, I've just seen this because I have a mother that just is, you know, retired, no Medicare and all this kind of stuff now is. Policy in this country has shifted so far to the right. Joe Manchin doesn't have to explicitly vote with Republicans to nix Social Security or Medicare or anything like that,

they're not doing enough to push it back left to increase those polls. This is what I'm talking about, a reorientation of the way we view this show. It has nothing to do with who votes for what. It's like, it's like, we are, we are, we're, it's a right wing government. They're all enemies of the working class right doesn't matter if they're a democrat or republican and i'm you know okay like i'm i'm what i'm saying about like a reorientation of how we look at this shit it's like you need to start looking at the democrats as your enemy yes they are your enemy you and like and the reason i say that is because they don't have your interests at heart they don't give a shit about you no and so i mean like and but also they

they know too that the next election cycle will be the same thing oh i hate these guys but i'm gonna i'm gonna hold my nose and vote for joechin. I'm going to hold my nose. At some point, we have to break from that orthodoxy. Seriously. At some point, exactly. You have to come to a point where you can't take that anymore. And the last few elections have been extremely hard on me and a lot of other leftists because we have not reached a point

where we've been able to break with that orthodoxy. We find ourselves constantly virtue signaling to our liberal friends and to our more progressive friends and people like that. Like, oh, you know, I'm going to hold my nose and vote and all this other stuff. I don't know. I don't know how we do it, but we have to fucking break with that. Yeah. Yeah. We have to fucking break with that.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, continuing in that pattern, like if 2020 pops up and we're still doing that stuff as an electorate. We will be. And here's the thing. Here's the thing, too, though. It's like, you know, it's like and this is the same tug of war you have when you go in that booth.

It's like, fuck. Well, if I do, if I don't vote for these motherfuckers then there's other people out there that are going to be hurt by this all this kind of stuff but here's the thing if that trend continues to go in that direction and we continue to vote like that and make no mistake when you do vote like that you're voting it's a vote of confidence that this thing's just going to correct itself on its own it's kind of the way people talk about the markets under capitalism or whatever right that's never going to happen that on its own. It's kind of the way people talk about the markets under capitalism or whatever. Right, right, right.

That's never going to happen. That's a fucking dream. Totally. Okay. Totally. You know, and... I don't know, man. I don't know.

We are wasting time we don't have, though. I know that. We're wasting time we don't have. Yeah. And things are getting progressively worse and I want to just I don't know man I was just like I've been listening to this I've been listening to the revolutions podcast about the Mexican zapata yeah miliano zapata oh yeah baby and um you know the thing about it is that like 100 years ago 200 years ago whatever if there was discontent there

was mass discontent um you know there you would have a convention you would have a congress or something like that you would try to gather all you would have a congress or something like that. You would try to gather all of these sort of various people in your sort of radical realm, in your radical sphere of influence, and bring them together and say, how are we going to work towards revolution? That is the main thing that we have to do.

And look, it's not even me saying this to you. Go read the IPCC report about rising global temperatures. It literally says it in that report. I mean, it doesn't say explicitly revolution, but it says to adequately address the growing climate catastrophe will require the greatest upheaval of institutions power structures norms everything in human history that is what we have to do and like it's going to take you know it's really hard for people to grasp this it's really hard for people it's hard for me to grapple with that but i guess what i'm saying is that this thing spells it out that we have to we have to change everything we have a mandate damn it dude i just don't think it's that hard i mean i i think it's i think it is

in the sort of action once it comes down to praxis, once it comes down to actually building it up and doing it. But I don't think it's as hard as we think it is. And I think we think it's hard because the liberals keep telling us that it's hard. The liberals keep telling us that the left doesn't have a vision that there is no we're crazy we're wingnuts we're unrealistic etc exactly what is really unrealistic continuing to incremental yourself all the way to boiling sea waters and this is the thing is is like you could we can say this we can say like oh like that's unrealistic the liberals blah blah blah the fact that we're even having this conversation about what they think is proof of their hegemony proof of their hegemony exactly and it's proof that like our movement currently dsa is still a bourgeois

movement it is a bourgeois liberal movement and we have to totally adjust that we have to readjust it we have to stop talking to liberals we have to readjust it. We have to stop talking to liberals. We have to, I mean, like, granted, at a certain point in the future, we might need them to coalition with them or something like that. But eventually, they're our enemies as well. Well, here's the thing.

Here's the thing is we have to set our terms. Exactly, we have to set our terms. We have to set our terms and we have to just abide by them. I mean, it's not comfortable. It's not easy. I mean, I hate to sound like nutty to people i hate sound but it's like the stakes are too high to really give a damn about shit like that totally totally i mean and that's the thing i struggle with too it's like i know how nutty it sounds yeah i'm fully aware of that

trust me i know i've not lost my mind. I know what we sound like. I know what it comes off as. But part of the reason why I think that a lot of us are hopeless and struggling is because the liberals are constantly telling us that we don't have a vision. We actually do. It's a very robust and well thought out vision. It's called, I don't know, there's all kinds of different roads for how we get there but the fact is we're not even trying like we we are in the sense that like oh um you know we're in dsa we're trying to organize we're trying to canvas we're trying to get these uh medicare for all

this other stuff but we are not working towards a break a rupture. We're not trying to work towards a tipping point. Seek out the pressure points and lean in on them. Exactly. And what I think would actually be required to do that is, I don't know, there needs to be some sort of central organization. There needs to be something that can coordinate mass action and can put political pressure on the unions to do this and that, that you can actually shut things down and make demands.

Because that is power. That is power. That's true power. That is actual power. You have to understand that in the eyes of the elite, the mass strike or whatever, just striking in general, labor power is nuclear to them. It is equivalent to a nuclear bomb because that's when they know that their fucking game is up.

And another reason why we're running out of time when I say this is not just because of the climate stuff because I'm starting to realize that, and people have been kind of making this observation for probably since Trump was inaugurated and everything. I'm starting to realize that what's happening right now, especially with the expansion of the police state and all this other stuff is what we're

doing right now is we're laying the groundwork. The elite is laying the groundwork sort of philosophically, institutionally, organizationally for a new form of governance, a new form of managing the masses, keeping the rabble in line because they know that in the next 10 or 15 years, as the climate accelerates, as society accelerates, we've got more displacement, refugees, crises, stuff like that, they have to readjust how they manage people.

The sort of Bill of Rights, Constitution, all that shit is totally inadequate. So what they're doing is, in the in the perfect example of this for me is how they've started like these hate crime bills about cops like the marcy's law or no no no no that uh no this i'm talking about the thin blue line laws yes the thin blue line laws how they are creating a class of citizens who are separate from the rest of us and i think that what you're going to start seeing probably in the next 10 or 15 years, and you've already seen sort of hints of it, like when they said you could run over protesters in North Dakota or whatever and get away with it.

I noticed this last week. Do you remember this story in Florida of this student? I think it was at Florida State. She poured chocolate milk or something like that on a Republican. It was after the massacre. And got arrested. And got arrested. And got arrested for it. And the Republicans cried

and fucking bawled about it for days like, we're being targeted, blah, blah, blah. The thing I kept saying about it, the hashtag was jobs, not mobs. They're obsessed with mobs, all this other stuff.

Yeah, and think about that language. It's always aimed at, let's keep it as small as we can. It would not surprise me if you started to see in the next five or ten years, and the liberals will go along with this hand in hand. They will die. It would not surprise me if we started to see the transfer of these sort of hate crime laws from cops to politicians. Oh, it already exists.

It's a felony to punch. In some places, it's a felony to punch it in some places it's a felony to punch an elected official and then not just that but republicans party officials in general yeah you know what i'm saying like they'll have like draconian protections like the guy that whipped ran paul's ass would probably land in jail for 15 years totally totally but he's part of the elite and so they kind of just uh kind of act like that right whatever yeah but like um you know and i think this has to do with the fact that we are entering a new form of capitalism we're entering a form of capitalism that the west has not seen in over a hundred years where i mean i'm talking about like a brutal form of it yeah and they are laying the groundwork for

that well and it's one thing i know i, and this is something I keep coming back to. It's something I said on the earlier show about when I would go swim those laps at the pavilion in Hazard. And I would see all those, like, young men filing in there to take the POPs test to become cops. And what's happening is it's the same thing with the military. It's like you've sowed enough desperation and discord and all this stuff. You already have this like hyper patriotic message. And like if I am a younger guy that needs a job that pays all right, good benefits, whatever, that also has a certain amount of valor to it

and has a lower barrier to entry what am i going to go into gonna be a cop i'm either gonna be a cop or go to the military honestly i'm at the point where i think it's i think that that specific yeah it is is militarism it's just the large umbrella of militarism it is yeah it's like what are fucking drone bombs for i mean yeah today it's all about terrorists or whatever but also next it's going to be about we're going to congress and fucking uh fucking buenos aires and they're going to blow us off the map in one fell swoop you know what i mean it's everything about that military police apparatus is designed at quashing out big mass collective stuff.

It's always about shrinking. Well, dude, I don't know if you noticed this. There were two stories in the last week, one in Boston and one in El Paso, where they were doing crowd control exercises. exercises you know the cops were doing in boston it was with the cops they were doing like a crowd control exercise where they were trying to train the cops how to deal with crowds and in el paso it was um the border patrol that kind of got buried in everything but there was a mass demonstration i mean sorry there was a uh yeah well that's what it was it was a demonstration it was a show of force of military force to to people in Beto's home district or whatever. I guess what I'm trying to get at here is that current American law upholds the rights of the bourgeois, right?

Yeah, absolutely. That's the sort of hallmark. That's why police exist, is to protect rich people's property. Exactly. That's the sort of hallmark of the Enlightenment, you know, the bourgeoisie have rights, etc., etc. What you're starting to see now, and I've noticed this with the girl who poured chocolate milk on whatever, and the expansion of these sort of hate crime laws and others towards cops, is that the bourgeoisie is starting to lose rights. is that the bourgeoisie is starting to lose rights.

Like we are, and so it's the creation of a sort of, well, not the bourgeoisie, but certain elements within it are starting to lose rights. And so, you know, and you could come back to me and say, oh, well, Terrence, but there's courts and they pass these laws and things can always be ruled constitutional. As people did tell me yesterday with the Marcy's Law stuff, like, oh, it could be always be ruled constitutional. as people did tell me yesterday with the Marcy's Law stuff. Like, oh, it could always be ruled constitutional.

Well, that's always the caveat. Even they were saying that on the local radio reading the returns. Like, a lot of people think this is not going to pass muster or it'll be voted down, but, you know, because of its vague wording or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it doesn't matter, though, because the elite has already started pivoting to that. And I think that they have become incredibly adept at using the liberals to enact that agenda.

Right now, they still keep the liberals around because they need them to enact those kind of laws and initiatives and stuff. Because they can always rely on liberals to throw the left under the bus. Always. And the left is the real thorn in their ass. Yeah. And that's why we need power. We need actual power. Yeah.

And the sick thing is the left supports these people too. Totally. And that's why. Every election. Yeah. And this is why trying to get good politicians in office or whatever, if that's your thing, I don't have the energy to fight that battle right now. But the only energy I

have right now, the only thing I'm interested in is that we need to... Elections that we should start running people in is for union leadership. Because look, I was talking to my friend Alex today, who's in a union. I don't want to dox him or whatever. But after

Janice, it is... is unions are shrinking man yeah i mean they're not attracting newer members and you i mean you don't have to pay dues well it's well it's interesting because we were talking about um the my union and this little work meeting we had a couple days ago and i was amazed at how easy it is to get into like being a union steward because nobody wants to do it. And I was like, right, that's interesting.

Yeah. And I ain't gonna season that opportunity. Seize it. I guess. Whatever the fuck that means for my kind of work. But,

well, but yeah, you're right. It's, it's, it's, it's, when you think about unionism as it stands, it harkens to an era of, like, you know, guys that look like Randy Bryce

and, you know, I think of, like, you know, the wars in Burnside and Harlan County and all this kind of stuff. It just seems like all that's bygone. Not to people like us, but I'm talking about people in general. I think a lot of people don't even think about. I mean, you know, in plenty of liberals I think, oh, well, unions are good, you know, generally. But they're not concerned with whether they're protected or not.

Like, they just, you know. Look, people think that this is a lot harder than it actually has to be. You know, are you familiar with the manganistas the magoon brothers oh yeah they were like as a part of the mexican revolution they were like anarcho-communists um who agitated with iww leading up to the mexican revolution like it's to, you know, go to any sort of, it's like we were saying, the workers at McDonald's or any of these, like, other workplaces. I read this, I read this incredible investigative piece a few years ago. I've told you this before. It's stuck with me ever since because it was so horrifying.

It was about a furniture factory in North Carolina and about how the workers there, just after working there for a few years, their hands start to go numb, their feet go numb, they can't smell anything, and it's because they're surrounded by glue all the time. They're breathing fumes from glue in a furniture factory. that if you went to them and said look you know for your own survival you need to band together with your fellow employees regardless of race color or you know sex gender whatever if you're going to survive if you don't want to have to work to stay alive here's a pamphlet that's all it is hand them a fucking pamphlet they go they set it down on their counter when they go home, and then they keep looking at it, though, and they say, oh, shit, I can't feel my left hand today.

There is that pamphlet, though. Well, you know, I can't smell anymore. I can't pay my bills anymore, but fuck. The union's telling me that, you know, there might be... That's all we've got. Like, and there isn't even an organization or anything. We don't have entrenched unions or organizations or anything like that anymore. But we can make it if we want it.

We can do it if we set our minds to it. I don't know, man. I don't know. Look. I don't know. I just think humans working together can do some really incredible things. If we build fucking pyramids in Mexico or Central America, surely we can do this. We can topple this fucking government.

I think this is more hopeful than we were last week. But that's all it is, man. And that's all it's always been. And it's right here in front of us. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. It's like we've been sinking our time and effort and resources into all these like electoral strategies and stuff. And I'm not going to beat that horse anymore.

That's fine. It's whatever. but what are we doing in the workplace we internalized the deeply liberal notion of innovation innovation is counter-revolutionary it is and we and we had somewhere along the way we thought oh we can innovate the political process we can enter we can innovate social justice and change and it's the same it's that same kind of hubris that's going to fuck us when climate catastrophe exactly because we just think we can out engineer our way out of any climate crisis yeah the only thing that can fix the climate crisis is the worker state the peasant state yeah i don't know man uh it's you're right we don't have to reinvent the wheel this is it this is the left does have a vision it's just that 1848 but well the thing about 1848 was actually 1848 is a good example because 1848

probably looks a lot like what's going on right now it started it was a it started out as a petty bourgeois movement and the problem with all bourgeois movements and petty bourgeois movements is that they are indulgent and they are hopeless. I mean, in the sense that like eventually they tap in, the emotional reserves they tap into is despair and hopelessness and indulgence. Yeah. What we need to tap into is materialism. Yeah. That's our greatest weapon.

And it's the working class' greatest weapon. Yeah. I don't know, man man I just don't have that's it there's nothing else to say it's just it's just it's just pretty

exhausting pretty exhausting Tom but I think that we can do it Exhausting. Pretty exhausting, Tom. But I think that we can do it. I think so, Tom. Look, people have done way more with far less. And people always say, you know, and every time I get in these conversations, people are always like, well, what about the fact that they have nukes in the military and the greatest surveillance apparatus ever? We're going to die anyways. You realize that, right? It doesn't matter. We're going to die anyways. You realize that, right?

It doesn't matter. We're going to die anyways. Like in 12, 15, 20 years, we can either choose to do this now. We can choose to fucking fix this now. And we will incur some consequences. And I'm not doing what I did last week and trying to tell people to be martyrs, whatever.

Because I think that sacrifice looks very different for every single individual. But I'm saying if we set our minds... We're not even talking about, like, without even getting into stuff like laying down your life or all that kind of shit. We're not even talking about that. What we're talking about is showing up to pull a lever every two years ain't going to fucking... Exactly. Yeah. And that's it. I ain't gonna fucking... Exactly. Yeah, and that's just, that's it.

I ain't gonna get it. Well, and it's the thing is, is that like, I'm not even saying, because I don't even know if we have any liberals in the audience at this point. The only reason that I'm even going on about any of this is that like, I think that the existence of despair and hopelessness among a lot of us on the left is because we're

always looking in the mirror of liberalism and what we're seeing back is we don't like it no because they don't like it no and that mirror also tells us this is you exactly it pulls you back in you know what i'm saying liberalism is a hell of a drug and i'll tell you what it is It is. It's because it's like, I find myself like nostalgic for a time when I was like a liberal almost sometimes. You know what I'm saying? It felt good because you had none of the responsibilities with all of the satisfaction of feeling like you were on the right side of things. Totally. Without having to do anything. Yeah. It's very...

Other than be called a snowflake or something by your racist uncle. That's it. That's the worst persecution as a liberal you will have to put up with. Yeah, you're absolutely right. But it is also this deep faith in the system and in a view of humanity that does not exist.

The view of humanity says, the liberal view of humanity says that the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice. Look, it doesn't. History is made by humans. That is materialism. That's what is at the heart of it. History is made by humans,

and society is made by the struggle between classes yeah so like i mean i love martin king i think he's one of the best americans we ever produced he was not a marxist but that's not that's not right look we you know and um that that's not to discount because he's i think he's the shit but you know that's just not where he was at um but regardless like um i don't know man um i i just i don't think that uh if you're if you're on the left the i think the hopelessness and despair and everything i think that it's um it's the liberals winning. You know, that's how they win at the end of the day.

They actively want the left to be repressed and impotent and not, you know, capable of enacting any kind of program. And if we aren't going to deal with what's at hand, you know, growing fascism's at hand, you know, growing fascism, climate change, et cetera, like we have to re-pivot

and reorient how we view this shit. And, I don't know, man. I don't know. I got nothing else to say, Tom. I got nothing either, man. I think that's where we stop. Well, we're not even at an hour yet.

We're still 50 minutes. But I'm going to pee and then, well, I don't know. I want to read the, I don't have speaker pieces this week because I haven't been in the office yet. But I want to read that press release from the Florida GOP. Okay. I think that's a pretty good press release.

Pretty good speaker piece. guitar solo Peter demands Lead our demands We want control of our bodies Decisions Will now be ours You carry out Your noble actions We will carry

our noble scars scars scars scars scars scars scars

scars scars scars scars scars scars scars scars

scars scars scars scars scars scars scars scars

scars scars scars scars scars scars scars scars

scars scars scars scars scars scars scars Reclamation Reclamation

Reclamation Reclamation No one here is asking No one here is asking No one here is asking But there is A question of trust You will do What looks good to you

Not paper We will do What we must, must, must do My problem is that I... The quality of this show suffers because I am holding in the biggest piss imaginable every single episode because I invariably chug coffee before every episode. Let's read this. This press release is from Florida State University College Republicans.

Statement on Tuesday's incident while tabling on Landis. This Tuesday, while tabling out on Landis Green. You just said that! Our vice membership chair, Daisy Judge, great fascist name, by the way, Daisy Judge, had a drink thrown on her by a passerby with a communist button

while talking to two missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints who had grabbed Trump stickers the student approached the table and began yelling that our organization and our members were racist for supporting their president despite continued civil efforts by Ms. Judge to resolve

the situation the student continued to yell and berate her for her beliefs. They then escalated to yelling about the recent shooting that occurred in Pittsburgh and proceeded to hold us responsible for it. Which you are. You are 100% responsible for it. She then proceeded to throw her drink on our member and continued to scream. And when a passerby interjected to calm her down, she threw the remainder of her drink on them. After this, she kicked down the DeSantis sign we had placed by our table and yelled at the camera. When asked to leave, she said she would, just because she had class.

I think she said, if I don't go to class, I'll kick your fucking ass. I've used that one before. By the way, this is not a knock on this girl because I think this is pretty fucking hilarious and badass. This latest ordeal, which hits the home for many of us on the executive board, is an alarming display of the extremely charged political environment that has arisen in recent months and years. No person, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum,

yeah, sure, i highly doubt you believe that should be targeted and assaulted because of their political beliefs oh these are people that are absolutely going to vote to execute communists in 10 years gets on a ballot measure in fucking florida absolutely we are glad that no serious physical harm came to our vice membership chair and we'll always stand up for the basic rights and respect that every one of our members is in down we must never be afraid to stand up for our own beliefs but we must always remember the elements of love respect and dignity that every person deserves this kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier this week about how i saw this um you know every few months you see these like studies that come up they're like oh my god they're sort of like scientific

sociological studies they're like liberals and republicans just aren't living together close to each other they don't want to be neighbors they don't shop at the same places or anything like that so it's like no fuck no fucking shit like i don't want to be friends with people who think it's okay to like try to convert gay people to being straight or who like indirectly foster genocidal rampages in synagogues those people need to be pushed out of society they need to have their political rights stripped from them yeah yeah no i agree there's this picture floating around of this this guy colton who was a beto boy and a person i'm sorry i saw that i saw that we can always be friends at the end of the day yeah

look this is kind of relevant because someone was asking us the other day like oh i'm not fully on board with the socialism thing because the dictatorship of the proletariat and all this shit look the dictatorship of the proletariat just means that those people who who push this kind of violence and reactionary uh paranoia and everything else on the masses we push them out of polite society in fact we probably send them to a fucking labor camp on an island off the coast of south carolina where they can break some rocks and think about what they've done. That's what the dictatorship of the proletariat is about, and I'm all for that shit. Because fuck these assholes, man.

Yeah, that's right. I'm fucking tired of this shit. Oh, man, I'm so fucking tired of this shit. I don't know, man. It's just like, and I don't think it's impossible that we could do it. That's it.

I'm with you, man. I don't know. Anyways, anything, any additional thing? I was just wondering if you wanted to comment. It is now remember your talking point season.

What is that? Oh, because are we... Thanksgiving dinner's up. Speaking of civility. Just be yourself. I i mean just fucking be yourself that's the thing like it's weird that's what's really cool totally totally i mean well the thing is man is this like this is a this is a lesson i learned in christianity that does transfer over to this and then i think that you should think your actions do speak louder than your words. If you want to argue with somebody

about not being racist or whatever, that's your prerogative. But unless you're out trying to build a mass movement that can actually defeat the racists, then those relatives are just going to see you as a little, you know, like, oh, that's cute. Make them think you're not cute. Yes, let them know.

That's your way to go. Yeah, let them know that you don't give a fuck what their political beliefs are because you will win and quite possibly subject them to. And one day you're going to be very embarrassed for the things you've believed in now. Exactly. Exactly. Let them know that they will one day regret every fucking belief they held. Yeah.

Because that's what we... And that their life, in the closing moments of their life, they will rue the day they ever believed this shit. Exactly. That's justice, my friend. That's justice. The justice is letting your racist uncle go to his grave knowing his life was a sham. That's the best justice. I mean, it ain't about like fucking cutting motherfuckers hands off with the gear ain't nobody even seen a goddamn guillotine exactly 100 years exactly all right it's you know what it is yeah no doubt just fucking winning that's the thing man

it's easy to get despair because like look elections bring out the fash that's all there is to it elections are reactionary moments they bring out reactionary uh tendencies and beliefs even in the left you know and especially among the liberal bourgeoisie and they push that shit off onto the rest of us and have us thinking like oh we'll never be able to win like look at these hooting baying masses of fascists and all this other stuff we can beat them the workers working together can beat them it's possible yeah we can do it yeah and we can send them to their grave knowing that their whole life was a fucking a farce you know what we need to you know what we need to i know we need to we need a snappy slogan that echoes through eternity you know i was thinking i was watching you talk about the mexican revolution i was

visiting my my uncle rerun the other day and he said is that zapata on the back of your shirt so man i just watched something on the history channel about him i said oh yeah did you he said, is that Zapata on the back of your shirt? I said, man, I just watched something on the History Channel about him. I said, oh yeah, did you? He said, yeah. He said that it's better to die on your feet than live on your knees. It's like, god damn, that is good. That is a good fucking saying. That is really good.

Yeah, no, the thing about the mexican revolution and the thing about our current moment that i find so interesting is sort of what i was saying earlier like you know 100 to 150 200 years ago if you um if you came to the conclusion that things were not working as they are currently you would organize organize a congress, let's say. Organize a convention. In our case, what I would like to do is like a communist congress or a communist convention or something where we get together and we say, look, if we're serious about changing this shit, we've actually got to start working towards that. Yeah. And we have to coordinate sort of nationwide, not just nationwide, technically internationally is really what we have to start doing.

And the thing is, it's just so interesting to me that like all of us seem to think that like that's beyond the Pell or that like starting a party or that doing anything really is just sort of hopeless. And, you know, the best we can do is just sort of like we work within our sort of dsa circles and stuff like that we can do anything we want yeah we know the fuck we want to do yeah and we don't really have a lot of time left as like the so the point i'm trying to make is that like the you know the sort of philosophical undergirding of Marxism is that like humans make create and change history we can do that yeah we need to start having more faith in our instincts this is what I'm saying believe in yourself believe in yourself really

that's what we need to do man we need a communism that is mediated through self-help, but in a real way. But in a real way. We don't need to fall into this trap of, like, you know, when things are bad, we need to obviously point that out, but we need to try our best not to devolve into nihilism. Yeah, seriously. If for nothing else, for morale. Yeah, exactly. For nothing else, for morale. But also, i think nihilism is just indulgent and this is why this is what i mean when i say the working class

doesn't have the luxury of indulgence they don't have the luxury of nihilism no it is make or break all the time that's just full stop that's it it's make or break like we don't have time for this um we don't have time for this getting our hopes up for um a democratic candidate here that we're running out of time yeah and you know let me tell you when it comes when it comes when it comes we need to always keep our fucking foot on their goddamn necks totally and we don't need any liberal scabs like fucking gorbachev and soviet i know that that's a very simplistic read of the soviet union fell and all that but there's a strong argument to be made that gorbachev's commitment to innovation and assimilation everything else with the world that's a good point he he bought into the liberal theory

of change right he did he did not buy into the liberal theory of change. Right. He did not buy into the revolutionary theory of change. Exactly. And that's why in 2010, he went from being the great communist leader to appearing in Louis Vuitton ads. Totally. Is he really? Yeah, he really did. That's pretty funny. Is he really?

Yeah, he really did. That's pretty funny. My first reference for Gorbachev, well, I mean, obviously the whole fucking, you know, when the Soviet Union, the tension between the US and the Soviet Union was all over pop culture with like Rocky and Yvonne Drago and all that shit. But the one thing I really remember

is remember Street Fighter uh the game video game yeah remember Zangief yeah

the big burly Russian guy right right right did you ever beat the game with him no if you beat the game with Zangief Street Fighter 2

and the victory screen it's Zangief doing that little like yeah whatever dance that is you know hold your arms up.

With Mikhail Gorbachev. And you see this little pixelated guy with, like, the red thing on his head. The port wine stain. Yeah, he's got a birthmark that looks like the country of Lithuania. I guarantee people thought he was the Antichrist because of that. Oh, yeah, you're probably right. You're probably right. Definitely an Antichrist mark of the beast or something.

Well, anyways, anyways, is there anything else that we did this past week or something? Any news or anything you want? I'm sorry for, this has not really been a very laughable episode. I'm just not really in the mood to laugh or make jokes right now i'm just like i'm pissed off tom i'm not a democrat or republican i'm pissed off you're pissed off big dog i'm just fucking exhausted man i'm tired i'm tired of

people i'm tired of people who have the exact same educational background as me are sub are knowledgeable of all the same trends of history and books and authors and everything but at the end of the day still think that we can reform our ways out of this you're smart don't devalue yourself like that yeah look like the only the best piece of advice I ever got, excuse me, I think I'm fucking got Lyme disease or some shit, was just be somebody. Be somebody. Isn't that the message of A Star is Born?

You just got to have something to say, and you got to know how to say it, bro. Yeah, that's something I got to talk about. R.I.P. Jackson Manes. You know, a funnier ending to that story, a much more complex and potentially interesting ending to that story would be if Jack Maine was Me Too'd instead of... Oh, for being creepy at first, like in the bar? Or just for some other thing.

But rather than spiraling down the drain of addiction and depression he just gets me to it in his career just sort of you know what i mean like that would have been an interesting movie for our times yeah yeah the whole a any idiot can piss herself with the grammys totally no no that was yeah pretty depressing movie that's also yeah yeah don't watch that shit if you need a little bit yeah yeah for sure well i just want to remind everybody uh please go check out our patreon www.patreon.com p-a-t-r-e-o-n dot com slash Trill Billy Workers Party that's t-r-i-l-l-b-i-l-l-y

workers no apostrophe party and like and subscribe please click if you like us click if you like us on Facebook and you know $5 a month will get you generally about 4 or five episodes a month.

We put one out every Sunday. This coming Sunday, I think I might give you the weekend off if you want it. I mean, Katie might do an episode about Rosa Luxemburg and the Trotsky essay, What is Fascism and How Do You Stop It? I think that's what the title is. What Fascism Is

and How to Stop It. I think. I'll take the weekend off. I hate to tease that out and not actually come into fruition, but that's currently what we have planned for this weekend's episode. Sounds good. And you want to plug the show?

Yeah. Not this Friday, but next Friday, November the 16th. Beautiful Wattsburg, Kentucky. Come on down. We're going to have Tommy Wright III. Lee Baines III and the Glory Fires, Nicholas F. And many, many more. And the rumor is that the Street Fight guys are going to be in the building.

Means TV. Big dogs. Going to be in the building. So, yeah, I noticed there's – we only have one hotel. And it ain't the Ivy Leagues, I'll tell you that. I have a couch and a half couch and I will not give it to just anybody. You've got to make a strong case

for why you will not come into my house and murder me and steal my podcasting gear. And also, I think there's a lot of rental houses, people Airbnb-ing their houses out and shit like that. But yeah, come hang out with the big dog now we're pissed off big dogs all right we're done all right we'll see you later