Trillbilly Worker's Party - FEMA Ice Cream Truck

Episode Date: August 15, 2022

Unlocked episode with more flooding updates, should be getting back to your regularly scheduled programming soon folks Link to Baffler article: https://thebaffler.com/latest/flooding-in-the-sacrifice-zone-ray

Hold on one second. I fucked up. I'm sex intelligent. I know how to work it right. I know how to work it right. I'm fucking sex intelligent. I know how to work it. I know how to work it, right?

What? I got this. Don't save. Hello? I'm all over the goddamn place. Can I be in your movie Grace please that's my impersonation of Olivia Newton

John hello can I be in your movie Grace please she an Aussie she is Australian can I be in your movie Grace please every time I see some Can I be in your movie, Grace, please?

Every time I see some tweet, shout out friend of the show, Joanna, down in Australia, every time I see a tweet that's like, I need to hear an Australian girl say something, I always ask her to say it for me. And I hate that. I hate when people do that to me, but I don't really care.

I do it to other people. You hate it when people parade your accent? Like, just ask me to say stuff. No, I don't care about that. I just be like, hey, say this, say this. I'm like, I don't really want that. Dude, you know what you could do to get around that? What? You could lose your accent.

That would be really fucking funny if you went through... Losing my accent is a bit on the show if you like went through like a two-year process on this show to like whittle your access accent down to and i sound just like a weatherman by the end of it uh-huh you've got the name of a weatherman tom sexton q6 weather watch storm watch god dude i fucking loved it let us down 10 days ago you let us down i loved it growing up when they were like we've got new doppler technology and they would show like a photo or a video of like a big balloon type structure at the top of a mountain, presumably outside of Albuquerque. And like, look at our new Doppler technology.

And as a kid, I'd be like, yes, hell yes. We got Doppler, mom. My mom's like, shut the fuck up. She's just like, shut up, you little pussy. Dude, it is like, I've never been clear on whether TV weathermen are like scientists or just guys with communications degrees. Or do they have a team of scientists and then you are like, the guy with the communications degree is like the mouthpiece of the scientist.

So there's like a writer's room. There's a writer's room for the meteorologist. Yeah. What is that? If anybody has any insight on that, I would genuinely be curious to know. I mean, you've got to be two things at once. The first of which is knowledgeable of weather. The second is personable and charismatic.

Like a weatherman is one of the few jobs, like the few remaining jobs. What's the old joke about weathermen? It's like the only job where you can be wrong 90% of the time and still keep your job. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. But it is one of the few jobs that still commands some type of respect in a community.

Because this is one of the last, this is one of the fascinating things to me about the flood. The first news crew to arrive on the scene was the Weather Channel. That was like before CNN, before anyone, it was the Weather Channel. That was before CNN, before anyone, it was the Weather Channel. And I remember reading an article about them a few years ago about their recent rebrand in the last 10 years and how for them...

Isn't the Weather Channel a very valuable asset? I think their plate... I guess it could be a public service well i mean obviously weather is a public service it's fucking crazy that it is like all privatized or whatever but like their business model like their plate is made man they just follow around natural disasters of which there are more and more every day you're hearing more and more about them every day folks dude like right now

it'd be the time to buy weather channel stock honestly because this this train ain't slowing down none i'll go ahead and tell you that right now yeah but i guess that is their way of like you know i guess in a regular news, you have to wait till there's like a crazy salacious story like this Trump FBI raid or something like that. Or you just take liberties with the news and like stretch out like an otherwise boring topic and try to make it interesting. But the weather is, yeah, there's something, there's some bad weather shit going on anywhere in the world at any given time you could just zip over to yeah i'm trying to find that the guy who was here like i saw him everywhere like everywhere i would go he'd be like i'm matthew brand reporting live and even like behind him would be behind him would be like a mountain of twisted metal he's just like reporting live for mick roberts

you're going a little tanner hesterberg there yeah i went to college with all these guys i can't figure out for the life of me which one has accused me of fucking their girlfriend. That was a contentious thing. I remember that. And that's really funny that they are all so uniform and unremarkable that they blur together in your mind. And so you can't... You're like, I know one of them accused me of fucking his girlfriend. I just don't remember who it was.

I'll never forget that quote, though. Can't believe an unemployed loser that an ex-girlfriend cheated on me with in college just won a city council seat. It's like, hey, that's like the old saying goes, baby. Well-behaved women rarely make history. The same thing with the fellas. You're right. He should be thanking you.

Yeah. I'm trying to find this reporter. He had a nice haircut. My man was looking clean. He was looking fresh. He had a nice haircut. Nice shoes. Did he have the windbreaker on?

Of course, yeah, he had a windbreaker. I would love to know who makes the Weather Channel windbreaker because you know that has to be made to stand up to the elements. Uh-huh, yeah. That's not a bullshit windbreaker it's probably kevlar it's probably guys from kevlar and i have several questions already in this episode i need to crowdsource somebody needs to find out who makes the weather channel windbreaker and i'm so brain addled i had another oh yeah i need to know the inner workings of a television weather room mhm

are there scientists there is it just writers what's going on right uh they've got Erlemeyer flasks and beakers they're doing science experiments

oh shit one of them pours science experiments. Oh, shit. One of them pours carbon dioxide or whatever into... He's got like a mock-up volcano and he pours it in there and it bubbles up. And he's like, oh my god.

And the camera zooms in on his face. It's a volcano! Oh! Comes in the next day and accidentally makes mustard gas kills the entire case the gorgeous guy with the fresh air gun delivering the weather oh i can't remember what you add to make volcano To make a volcano I thought it was just like Alka-Seltzer and water Like Mentos and Coca-Cola or something

Something like that yeah I never got to make one of those I always wanted to but I just didn't have the initiative I like the idea Of someone who Is addicted to making those in the same way that some people are addicted to like puzzles or legos you know what i mean like you can't stop making mock you're like 40 years old and just like trying to fit constantly figure out

new ways to make like fake eruptions uh-huh it's like hey man he's been doing this since fifth grade uh right it's like someone's got a model train in their garage and you've got the biggest mock volcano your wife's like if you don't stop this right now i'm leaving but i'm taking the kids i'm taking the kids and stay and it's like listen baby if the choice is between you and the fizzy stuff well that's no choice at all cue up i'm gonna miss her oh fuck you don't want me to be who i am that's the volcano guy uh-huh you know rod stewart's really into uh model trains so is neil young i'm told i think neil young's like way into it

really like he has his like he has his own like model train company that makes model trains really yeah i don't know what those two would have in common except for being rock gods, but, you know. Mm-hmm. A lot of our venerated rock and roll icons are also in model trains. I don't know what it says.

Maybe it's a, I don't know. I guess we all have things that are like hangarounds from our childhood that we just never really quite grow out of. Right. Yeah. Like Christian, like CCM. I was literally listening to Switchfoot this morning.

Yeah, he'll send me a, so you're like, man, you remember this song? And I'm like, I hate to like just tell you that like I only knew the hits because I don't want to seem like a poser, but I only know the hits usually. Damn. That one album, it was secular. It went mainstream. It was secular.

For a little while there, they were like, No, dog, we're not Christian. Yeah, bro. We're spiritual i i do we're followers of christ but christian i i do like switchfoot and actually given the same like situation i would have done the same oh yeah Just got breaking news. The Mountain Heritage Festival's been canceled. It's been canceled.

They canceled the Mountain Heritage Festival. No heritage this year because on account of the floods. They're trying to rob us of our identity. They robbed us of our homes and belongings and now they're coming for our culture and our heritage. And your accent. Well, I'm working on getting rid of that.

Yeah, well, that's... I'm going to do it. I'm going to try to flatten that just as a bit. And then, like, if I never get it back, I'll just be the most, like, unremarkable white man that ever walked the face of the earth. They're going to start doing that, like, sore... Because of, like like just transition and

economic development and all that stuff is basically dead now and it is been consigned to the dustbin of history i mean just for now i'm sure it'll be back like let's be real but i'm sure that it will become when it does come back it'll be even more farcical than before and you will have like entire city county-wide like re-education attempts to eradicate the appalachian accent to make you know the area seem more a minimal to investment right oh my god that would be hilarious we tried it their way now let's try ours and like they have to teach some kind of accent so it'd be funny if it was like the mid-atlantic william william buckley yeah, like the trans, what do they call that? The transcontinental?

Transcontinental, yeah. It's like it's almost British, but the American version of it. Yeah. I'm gonna go work in the coal mines, father. I'd rather work in the coal mines, father. But papa, it seems to have a touch of the black lung. minds, father. But, papa, it seems I have a touch of the black lung.

Father, it seems I have COPD. Mama, it seems that I've been stricken with the co-worker's pneumoconiosis. Yeah. man. What is the, what do you think, there's,

what do you think are the best Eastern Kentucky festivals? The Black Gold Council? I like the Gingerbread Fest, just because they hand out gingerbread, and, I mean, that in and of itself is pretty cool. What's that one over in Floyd County Where like they have that huge Cast iron skillet

And they fry everybody Drumstick chicken drumsticks in it I think it's funded actually By chicken fighters I would like them to The Coxman Association Oh really? I think so

Wow I would like to be fried in it it would be pretty fun you walk up to a hand of a ticket like it's a carnival ride uh-huh you're like wait no i i would like to be fried alive i would like yeah i'm do you not notice i'm breaded. I'm a ticket holder. I had someone dip me an egg in like breading. I want you to make me a cut, but here I've got a ticket. Oh, shit. I like this

email I got from Hal Rogers. It's the East Kentucky flood relief update. So you got everything under Rogers. It's the East Kentucky flood relief update. So he got everything under control? He's got everything. I love this photo of him. Like 97 year old Hal Rogers like strapped

into a helicopter dude like with at least like 20 different straps. And his body is completely lifeless. it's being like sucked towards the earth by gravity as the helicopter tilts sideways he's just holding like a gun just strafing appalachian villagers like get some get some they're looters uh-huh he's just who's gonna who's gonna be the first local politician

that like long after this crisis is cleaned up they're like they're just gonna run on tough on looters and like you know like looters will just be canonized as just part of like what's going on and we have to be tough on them. Yeah. I do have to say, I am kind of embarrassed for like scoffing at the idea of scammers. Like the scammers are out everywhere, man. It is fucking crazy how after a very bad disaster, you know, like a catastrophe, they come out of the fucking

woodworks. Oh my god. Like, I'm, let's see, Katie Meyer sent me one the other day called Central Kentucky Restoration. There's another one.

Appalachian. Or wait, never mind. Okay. Central Kentucky Restoration. Let's see. They just go around. These are known scammers? Yeah.

Let's see. kentucky restoration central yeah central kentucky restoration and it's made it's made my shit harder because like i've been trying to like help people get signed up for various stuff and like no one trusts they hear you not have an accent, and they're like, oh no, we've read about this guy. Dude, the other day, Zelma comes into the office with a bunch of checks that people sent her for mutual aid. And she's like, can I just give these to you?

And I was like, I don't know. I don't know if you can just sign them over to me. I think we might have to go to the bank and sign them over together. And she was like, well, do you want to go do that? And I i was like i can't be seen walking with you it's just so i like walked over there with her which was an ordeal and i get there and she's like talking to the teller to the bank teller and in like after about 60 seconds or so it dawns on me like this bank teller

thinks that i'm probably some like young rico suave like some young turk that's that's swindled this older woman out of her life saying yeah and at some point the woman asked zelma she's like what how would you like your money like in what denomination would you like your bills and zelma's like ask him he's getting all my money and i was like god damn they're like the tellers just looking at me like because and again there's all these like rumors of like scammers and swindlers going around. There ain't no help. The situation is we slip on a banana peel and find ourself in. That is hilarious.

Like, listen, I'm not with Central Kentucky Restoration or any of that. I'm just a simple gigolo taking all this woman's money. I've been doing this before the flood. What if that was the case? What if you were one of these guys that takes one of these older women for all their money

and you just so happen to be posted up in a flood zone? No, trust me. I've been doing this. And you just so happen to be posted up in a flood zone. Yeah, just... No, no, trust me. I've been doing this. I was doing it long before. Long before the flood came. Long before it was cool.

I've been here 10 years doing this. You're just noticing now. This guy on Facebook named Charlie Wright has been posting about central Kentucky renovations. Oh, yeah, I know. Charlie owns a street sign. The first day, the guy said a rough estimate to complete the job would be $20,000. Day three, he changed his mind to $30,000. Day five, he showed up and said he stayed up all night thinking about quoting me that number and now he's

thinking 50 000 or above at that point we've been all already been completely unhappy with everything he's done to that point we were waiting for the right time to fire him and we were instructed by my attorney early on to record every compensation conversation with him blah blah blah uh this guy has a crew of hispanics that he drops off day one unsupervised 90 of the time and they don't speak english i have to communicate with them through a translator app on their phone they didn't have tools didn't have boots didn't know what to do man like just just the the situations you wind yourself like i have we both have worked for like contractors before and like wound up in some dodgy ass like sketchy ass situations like did i get hired by a company that's like set up to be a drug front for a money money laundering corporation or something i've

never worked for a contractor that wasn't a con man i know there's varying degrees of that you know what i mean from like run-of-the-mill tax cheat to like guys that you know will get like you know like we'll just like pay a bunch of day laborers like what charlie describes here like bullshit money and that kind of stuff but i one thing they all have in common is i have never met one that was like, that had any scruples. No. No, and they take advantage of people when they're down on their luck in times like this.

And like, oh man, I don't know. It's just, dude, it is the Wild West, brother. It really fucking is. dude it is the wild west brother it really fucking is like um i was trying to help this woman get applied to fema and she has a hard time getting what a leap of faith coming to you yeah yeah no yeah as a like like with all the rumors floating around about scammers and stuff um well i met this i met her son and he kind of reminded me of your uncle rerun and so i was like all right i'll give him well you know i'll give him the benefit of the doubt like he seemed pretty cool we hit it off and uh he told me his mom needed help so i went and visited her and i was

talking to her she kind of has a hard time getting around and getting to town, because she's old, and she doesn't have internet out where she lives. You've now taken all of her money, all of her social security money. So you can imagine how destitute she is after i got done with well i don't know why do no rumors of those kind of scammers go around after a disaster like this like warning have you seen this man in your neighborhood it's just like me looking sexy as fuck yeah yeah he comes through there promising to, quote, sling good dick, end quote. But what happens in the end is he walks away with your Social Security money.

Don't get caught like I did looking for some good dick and ending up broke. So, like, she called FEMA, like, at the very beginning of all this and they were like yeah we'll get back to you in eight to ten days and she's like i haven't heard a thing no one's been out to see me and so i was like all right well i'll try to call like um i'll go to town uh where i have cell service and like call them and And so then I called FEMA and I explained the situation. I was like, look, she's not going to be able to make it to town to your mobile registration

unit, which I heard isn't in the place that you said it was going to be in. I've had multiple people be like, yeah, it's just not there anymore. We don't know where it went. It's like an ice cream. FEMA trucks like an ice cream trucka truck's like an ice cream

truck you gotta wait and hear wait for the jingle run inside get a dollar fifty off your mom and then hope that he's still in the neighborhood except in this case it's a pin and all your pertinent information for the application yeah um ah fuck he laughed i guess i'll just have to wait and listen for him tomorrow he's just jesus christ so it's like so like i was explaining the situation to this guy i was like is it possible you could send someone out there to see her and assess her situation like i'm out of my element here and uh and she really needs help he says to you now now bro when you say assess the situation you're talking about like fucking her and taking her social security check what kind of scam are you running here, pal?

So I tell him the situation. I'm like, can you send someone out to see her? Because she really needs help, and how else is she going to get it? He was like, oh, we don't do that. He was like, she's going to have to come into the mobile center. The FEMA guy said we don't provide any help. Yeah, he was like, she'll have to come into the center center the fema guy said we don't provide any help yeah he was like she'll have to come into the center or call or do it online and i was like well as i just explained like those are difficult options for her can you go send someone out to see her and he was like no

no we just don't do that those are the only ways and i was like okay before i get off the phone call with you i want you to repeat what you just said to me, but I want you to rephrase it like you were on the radio. So what did you just tell me? And he was like, we do not send representatives out to meet people at their homes. They have to come into it. And I was like, all right, thanks, man.

That's all I needed. That's all I needed. And then that guy hung up and was like fuck i got god just like what the fuck what it's it's honestly it's like that office space thing like what what is it you say that you do here like what do you do yeah yeah yeah yeah okay what does fema stand for what's the acronym stand federal merchant emergency management administration i think okay now you go to a crisis zone with the hallmark of this crisis is people displaced and trapped in places it can't get certain places right so the thing that they have found is the most efficient

is to set up shop somewhere and let displaced people come to them pretty much that's what's going to streamline this process pretty much and at this point like there's all kinds of even our representative angie hatton is just like posting stuff about how everybody's getting denied. Not everybody. I have talked to some people who did get some money from FEMA. But most of the people I've talked to, it's like it's just like we said on the last episode.

Like they're gonna run the clock out until you just get fatigued and tired. And it's like that's what makes it so surreal. It's like if you're not gonna do anything just dissolve the agency stop pretending that we have one just like just let us that's i don't know like that in and of itself was one of the reasons why in the first like couple days of this whole thing i myself wasn't sure exactly what to do. I was like, okay, boots will arrive. You know, boots will hit the ground soon.

There will be boots hitting grounds. FEMA's here, baby. Everybody will say it together, and they'll ride in on horses. And the horses will neigh, and then they'll hop off and say, I'm with the government, and I'm here to help. And then everybody will get their money. That's how I imagine it going in my head. Uh-huh.

But as we stated last time, it's not boots. It's like boat shoes and Ralph Lauren polos. Like that's your FEMA agent. Is being a FEMA bureaucrat, is that the fake email job of like federal jobs i get i guess i can't name really and truly a much more useless agency i guess maybe like uh uh bureau of prisons or bureau of land management doesn't seem to be doing too much it does seem particularly rigged to frustrate you yeah because um obviously even our disaster response is means tested and they can't just run through like run through the haulers giving money and supplies to people

like that's unheard of that's ridiculous not even that to even more even more sort of substantially than that like or substantively than that they would be building new like if this happened in china they would have built like new cities by now like entirely new fucking cities for people to just like migrate to and use you know what i'm saying it's just it's just uh and so that's why the whole thing just becomes a farce it's like where are people supposed to go exactly that That's what I've never understood. I mean, I know we've talked about this a little bit before with the Rand Paul, everybody should just move to South Dakota thing.

But like, you know, if you've got... And everybody's ever... Like, when you bring this up, people will be like, oh, well, people moved and migrated for generations and did this, this, and this, and it's easier to do that now. And I would argue maybe it's not. I'd say it's harder. Yeah, I'd say it's harder yeah i'd say it's harder because like you let's say you know how fucking hard is to do anything in a place like

eastern kentucky like without a vehicle without any cash yeah like yuck you're fucked you know i did it for two years man worked at the fucking bar without a car fortunately it was three doors down from our apartment but like i couldn't go anywhere without borrowing a ride or bumming a ride or anything. Yeah. No, I mean, it's not like the halcyon days when you could trade some beaver pelts for passage to

Detroit, you know? Gone are those kinds of days. Gone are those days. I mean mean from transportation to housing like the situations we make people live in is astounding like i've never just as a matter of growing up the bookish kid in an overly masculine conservative house, I made it a point to not learn anything about home construction or tools or any of that stuff. But I feel like I've gotten a crash in like how we build various types of homes for various types of classes and like when i tell you that if you went to the store and bought like i don't know let's say a thousand packs of those like 500 page college ruled notebook

packs that you get in college or high school to fill your thing with, and that was your house, those were the walls in your house, that would probably be stronger than the material used to build some of the houses around here. We're talking about material that melts in your hand

when you touch it, tear it away, because it's been you know just water damaged and molded all the fuck yeah uh i mean it's well i mean that's and that has to do with these companies coming here and throwing shit up that was never meant to be permanent right they wanted to create these camps where people would live a few years and then once they got what they wanted out of it then they would just dip out that's why there's that's why people i mean people talk all the time about like there being no sewer and all this different stuff in eastern kentucky it's like it all stems from that and if you're a person that acquired one of these homes and have made that your home like and they

act like these people are uncivilized but why would you pay like if you're especially if you're on a fixed income poor working person why would you want to pay the utility you know what i mean yeah yeah it's it's it's all held together with popsicle sticks but it's it's maddening man because it's like a lot of these people or people in their family created so much wealth for the world and are just left high and fucking dry. And I hate to sound like one of these Appalachian exceptionalists or anything like that, because I don't believe that. I mean, there's plenty of places and professions that created a ton of value for the world, and they deserve every bit of the attention when they are going through their own individual crises and whatnot but it is just it's just super infuriating well yeah i mean it's i mean like you had a working class that extracted this mineral from the earth it wasn't just that it's not just that like the the housing situation here is just a byproduct of capitalism at large. It's, I mean, granted, the way people live here is how they live in a lot of parts of rural America.

So it's, again, it's not necessarily entirely exceptional, but it is at the same time, entirely exceptional but it is at the same time you really can draw a direct line back to the entire political economy of coal extraction the way it i mean unlike other kinds of industry uh like i don't know uh maybe it's closer to maybe like a chemical industry, but not the same thing as like perhaps like textile or even, I don't know, fucking military parts. I don't know. Even that is pretty environmentally harmful. But regardless, coal mining requires the complete destruction of the natural environment. So, I mean, it was always going to result in things like this. Yeah.

Yeah, it's just a matter of time. You see this... I'm just going to quit doing the Twitter dunk because it feels about as tired as... You're doing Twitter dunking. I'm hanging it up. I'm putting my jersey in the rafters, whatever. I get so emotional and mad, too, at the smallest things. I'm not fit to do it anymore.

I think basically my body's broken down. It's time to hang it up. Well, dude, I mean, I've been trying to be intentional about not seeking out things that piss me off and agitate me. Because, again, like my tummy can't handle it. Like every little thing adds up. It creates like an ambient stress level. And so I've been trying to like chip away at it with small things.

Like trying not to seek out things that piss me off and agitate me oh dude i i mean you know what i've been going through last little bit somebody had some i'd posted a stupid tweet about this cabbage patch kid my at my cousin adam you know adam had that i defaced as a kid out of jealousy and i was just making a joke about like just my lifetime commitment to destroying the property of the more fortunate and some this some dude was like he wrote something uh it was like uh i can't remember what it said but basically it was like the uh 30 something year old grudge over a baby doll seems like, you know, not a good way to win somebody to your position. But I don't make $20,000 a month on Patreon.

What do I know? And usually those things just kind of wash over me. But with what I've been going through, like, I immediately, dude, I went in. I was like, what's this guy's deal? He lives in Greenville, South Carolina. Like, I don't think you understand like bro i live a few hours from greenville i will come dog walk you the mood i'm in right now but i was like cool i sent him a message i was like bro yeah i'm sorry i made this like shitty little comment about keep

grinding out them letterbox reviews buddy i'm sure that you're gonna write something somebody cares about one of these days or something like africa what it was that's it i was like man my bad you know whatever and it's like dude you don't know what people are fucking going through and also i mean i hate to break to everybody that thinks that we're rich but when you split a fucking dentist salary 19 goddamn ways like i'm sorry there's it's not it's not as glamorous as it looks i'm telling you but uh anyway i i've quit duncan but there was one tweet that caught my fucking attention this morning it was this dude that writes for a bunch of papers and he said one of the odder things in recent years and i posted a dunk and immediately deleted it but he says one of the odder things in recent years is to see how the left has passed from having many minors in its ranks, fighting for better wages and conditions, to a left with few minors.

But many activists who are anti-mining, a position the older left would have found unrecognizable. And then here's where it got really obnoxious. unrecognizable uh-huh and then here's where it got really obnoxious is somebody said was like was pointing out mining is inherently unsustainable needs to be limited in almost any case anything from sand to fossil fuels to rare minerals to phosphors are reaching the limits of sustainable use the biggest problem is coal and that needs to be stopped as soon as possible and the guy goes i agree about coal the rest i don't know if i agree with but what's funny is like what when you think when you think it's such a weird position because when you think about the left like supporting miners i'm sorry but they don't write songs about cobalt

miners right yeah so it's like it's like man it's crazy they had all these miners in their coalition then he's like oh yeah i agree but like coal mining's gotta go that, it's crazy. They had all these miners in their coalition. Then he's like, oh, yeah, I agree. But coal mining's got to go. That's bad mining. But everything else, I just don't understand. It's like, eh. Before anybody says anything, that's not to put down any form of extractive work people have done,

tar sands or whatever it is, wherever you're at. And I'm sure there's been all kinds of labor struggles around that. But in my estimation, I would venture to say that it probably doesn't get more... Like, what he's talking about is echoes of the Harlan County mine wars and different things like that. But in the next breath, it's like, no, coal mining's gotta go. Such a weird fucking thing to say. He should listen to Trill Billyy's year zero interview with timothy mitchell i feel like that's a good explanation of why the u.s left or the left in general had coal mine

it's because like they could like you know clench their fists and grind the entire economy to a halt you know it was yeah yeah pressure points like they could uh be um you know they could i don't know their position in political economy was very crucial uh sort of like logistics workers today you know right right yeah that feels like that has supplanted like ups fedex and even like the federal employees usps and so forth it feels like they have kind of supplanted like extractive industries as like the real choke points of any kind of thing like that yeah like if if american if the american oil industry went on like a nationwide strike which is insane to think about it did happen it used to happen like in the 40s and shit but it's crazy to think about it did happen it used to happen like in the 40s

and shit but it's crazy to think about it happening now but if it did i don't know would uh i guess the u.s would have to import its oil from opec honestly if you would really have the economy like you really have the capitalist class in a tight spot because with opec on one side and striking oil field workers on the u.s oil field workers on the other side you would really be putting the heat to them i feel like yeah uh but i don't know like coal coal mine just no one mines coal anymore i mean obviously there's a lot of coal mines still but not anywhere near what it used to be and it's all fucking mechanized there's just fewer miners in general it's just a mechanized industry right that's the thing is it's it's moved from needing a lot of hands to not and then the

other thing too is like the the i don't know if anybody's been paying attention but the price of coal is through the fucking roof right now ever since the ukraine russia thing kicked off if those jobs were going to materialize they this would be the time they would be materializing but it's just a mechanized industry now yeah dude i thought you were gonna mention the kelly craft tweet i was getting i was teeing that one up that was next on the thing that is beyond egregious. That is insane, dude. They built, in 2007, they built the practice facility. Have you been following all this that's been going on with UK? Not really, no.

They've been, in 2007, Joe Craft, Joe and Kelly Craft built the craft center. It's where the UK basketball team practices and the wildcat coal lodge and all this stuff and now calipari's throwing these tantrums wanting like updated facilities for recruiting and all that sort of thing and he's been retweeting like kelly craft stuff that's how it came on my tl like i would never have kelly craft on the tl otherwise but like what did trump she's got like an ambassadorship or something and basically her only credential is she's like a coal baron's wife i think she was the coal baron's wife yeah she was the ambassador of the un oh okay um i was thinking it was like finland or something goofy it's a picture of her not a speck of dirt on her like not even a you know not even like a particle of dirt or anything on her like you would think that they would at least be like kelly come over here like come over here like

let's put some mud on those things or something all right um yeah she's standing next to some uh probably missionary workers or something next to a pile of rubble. And she says, there is so much going on in our world and nationally, but we must not forget our brothers and sisters in Eastern Kentucky as they rebuild together. We will meet the moment and help them come back stronger than ever. Meet the moment is a hashtag. I love it.

That is so crazy. Everybody in this picture looks like they've been like rolled hard and put up wet, like working to get their homes lined back out and she's there in like some fucking hunter rain boots or something with not a speck of dirt on her or her pants or anything she did not even bend over to pick one amazing absolutely amazing as you pointed out like you can literally draw a straight line between her like from her to the flood to the flooding from her husband yeah the craft family some of the bigger coal profiteers in the world i was here I heard on the radio today that they said something like 70% of the rainfall went into the creeks,

which I think is insane. Like usually in a normal situation that hasn't been strip mined all to fuck, the hills would retain a lot of that water because they're porous, right? Yeah. But in this case, like

70% of the rainwater went just straight into the fucking creek. Like it had nowhere to go. Oh my god, dude. Thanks, Joe and Kelly. Hey, this flood made possible through the generosity of joe and kelly craft as well as appropriations from the kentucky general assembly

dude it's it's really been a master class in leadership i fucking love it one of something that i just found out yesterday is that uh terry adams our county judge executive would not meet with andy brashear when he came down here not that i really give a shit because i don't like either of these individuals like fuck it who cares but i just thought it was pretty funny he also wouldn't dude is that that is so terry needs to kind of understand that when you've reached the level of that local politics like you don't you're not a you're not a partisan anymore you're a representative and you there's something called diplomacy like you think fidel castro liked coming to new york and like shaking hands with like yeah you know all these like people from america and shit and making these deals and stuff like that which obviously america reneged on but like you you have to do that you have to

keep up some sort of level of decorum almost well i just yeah i just thought it was interesting that like especially after a disaster i think that that's really the thing it's right yeah like if he's just yeah like i get it in certain circumstances but after a disaster like yeah like go instead of just like not meeting with him how about you go and like ream his ass that would be fair game like nobody says you have to be cordial but like you need to have an audience with people that can make decisions. You could have a Beto moment. Like, F you, Mr. President. This is fucked

up. This is fucked up! Yeah. Listen, it's important to me, motherfucker. Beto's back on his cussing shit. Did you know that? I did. I heard that. He's back on his cussing shit. That's pretty that's pretty tight he's like the cussing guy this is i love that i love that he's like in 30 40 years

his wikipedia page will have like cussing phase 2019 through 2023 or something like that cussing robert beto o'rourke uh-huh cussing that's what he'll be known as they'll like render of uh the artist because we're going to be regressing in society after everything melts down yeah but they'll drop beto in like a uh like a fucking daniel boone style like like coon skin cap and like teddy roosevelt tall tale type thing yeah yeah it'd be cussing rock made o'rourke uh-huh the filthiest mouth in the west and like but all all of modernity will have broken down by that point and then they'll just nobody remember that he was just like this huge pussy

that wore like a blue oxford shirt i that liked to say a couple of dirty words. Like, damn, he didn't need six shooters. Yeah, all he needed was four. He didn't need six shooters, he just needed four-letter words. Didn't need six bullets, just four-letter words. You know, there's a phrase the tongue

is mightier than the sword and that's coined for cussing beta aurora because he didn't need he didn't need six shooters like the rest of the frontiersmen of the time that's right that's correct another another fact i learned this week about the long-term recovery of Letcher County and of Eastern Kentucky is that the coordinator for long-term recovery efforts in Letcher County is not... It's also Terry Adams, the guy that wouldn't meet with the president. That, to me, would make a little bit of sense, weirdly enough. That to me would make a little more sense. Instead, the actual person is our

quote-unquote economic development coordinator. It's like an unelected position. It's like a bureaucrat role that they created 15 years ago to get the prison here. It had no other purpose than to like roll out the planning commission it's like it sounds official but actually it's just completely

undemocratic and just appointed by like powerful people yeah it's in its literal mission from day one was to like roll out the red carpet to make sure that letcher county was uh an amenable place for a federal prison and so i guess that position still exists i don't know why the fuck it honestly it's even crazier to think about like i remember a few years ago when the county was completely fucking broke and they were having to like lay off uh trash truck drivers and like bus drivers and shit like that who the fuck knew this whole fucking time they still had an economic development coordinator they're probably paying like sixty thousand seventy thousand dollars a year to do fuck all just you know sit on the computer and like talk to people

about like tourism a classic east kentucky grift is and you have to open up the books to see it but you think some of these positions like county attorney and city attorney are like just like unpaid out of the goodness of their heart. But no, they get big money kind of obscured from the budget and stuff like that. So I know they're paying somebody. Yeah, but they'll send the garbage guys home. That sounds funny to say it that way. They'll send the trash men home.

They'll send the trash. We have to lay off 12 trash men this month sorry guys so we're gonna give y'all a morality test and the 12 lowest scores go home um i just thought that was like perfectly i mean it's just like like perfectly neoliberal it's just like perfectly neoliberal. It's just like, okay, yeah, the rebuilding coordinator. Economic development coordinator. Yeah. All right. Yeah.

Yeah. We can't afford to fully staff our garbage sewer and street departments. But by God, we have to make sure that some pointless guy that gets on a phone call like once every six months with how rogers stays gainfully employed would you think of the poor economic development coordinators like surely his only success in the last nine months that i've heard anything about is bringing a bitcoin mine to the industrial park outside of jenkins which didn't even pan out because the price of bitcoin completely bottomed out so it's just like i like oh a flood happened uh all right here like just uh this is your job now like there i'll tell you what's insane. Think about that.

People that were so excited about the coming Bitcoin economy in the mountains, and then it all just bottomed out, and then this happened, and they're just like, well, it's okay, but they didn't get the memo about the Bitcoin jobs not materializing. That's okay, and this all dries out, baby.

We're going to go work in the Bitcoin mines. Mm-hmm. Yeah. that's okay. And this all dries out, baby. We're going to go work in the Bitcoin mines. Yeah. Yeah, dude. It's, uh, that is not great. It's just been a very fascinating experience.

I've reconnected with my community in some ways. I've met a lot of new people who I'd never met before. I've hearded with my community in some ways. I've met a lot of new people who I'd never met before. I've heard a lot of stories. I've also seen a lot of really sad, depressing shit sifted through actual shit. I think I saw leeches. I think I saw a toilet bowl full of leeches the other day it came out of your ass it came out of my ass i pooped just pooped like 40 leeches that like in standby made this whole thing it's just been a really crazy a really crazy experience well we got to keep plugging with the podcast otherwise the terrorists win i you know i didn't i have not kept up with anything like trump being raided

uh what else has happened a lot of juicy bits out there honestly there's juicy bits that we've punted on there's juicy bits we've punted on yeah if you can believe it we don't usually punt on juicy bits but lately out of necessity we've had to we've punted on juicy bits salman rushdie was attacked giving a lecture in new york somebody trying to cash in on the fatwa what if like that hit listen that's kind of an interesting uh eastern kentucky economic development idea if i was in that role i want to say listen there's a lot of government money out there okay but some of the best government money out there is in iran right now and listen you just get like a band of hillbillies together like fucking Iglorious Bastards.

It's like these... Listen, we're going to cash in on the Ayatollah's fatwa. We just have to go murder Salman Rushdie. That's my vision of Kentucky's economic development. If you're in that position, you got to show some imagination and initiative like we're gonna fucking get small business owners here what the fuck are you talking about there's more money

in pursuing the fatwa on salman reshdi's head i know i'm being facetious and also the guy was stabbed in the neck so maybe i should not be so cavalier about that. But the thing too is like, yeah, it's sad that there's a much more lucrative future than just murdering one guy. Anything, any other solution offered to Eastern Kentucky. To Eastern Kentucky. Like you could fund the city of Whitesburg for two years off of Rush D

Fottwell money. Yeah. You probably, I'll tell you something man uh getting bounties on people's heads and stuff as the situation grows more and more dire i mean we're gonna see maybe see you know a boom in that economy contract killing being a viable uh-huh you know yeah job again i mean there's a lot of unscrupulous dishonorable people running around out there that need to get what's coming to them and sooner or later the free market's going to step in and take care of that really and truly yeah so Dude we've been punting on Juicy Bits Like Robert

Like Cussin Robert O'Rourke Beto Lopez Is also gonna He's gonna have some Competitors and those competitors Are gonna be us we're gonna be the punters Of Juicy Bits Terrence and Tom What else

Is going on in the world Boris Johnson is going on in the world? Boris Johnson is appalled at the Rushdie attack. Is he? Yeah, that's news. Here's another good one. Michelle Branch, her of... Did she sing Making My Way Downtown?

No, I think that was Vanessa Carlton. What does Michelle Branch say? She sings Jesus Fring Anyway, she's married to one of the guys from the Black Keys And was arrested after she smacked him After catching him in an affair Wow I guess that means he'll be spitting some black keys out of his mouth,

you know, like the piano, like Bugs Bunny. Yeah. Well, did you see anything else this week, either flood-adjacent or national politics-adjacent that we could cover? Well, I saw the Baffler piece, which I was impressed by. If you want to talk about that a little bit before we close out. Which I guess the broad strokes of we've kind of outlined over the last couple of weeks. But if you haven't checked that out yet, you should go check it out.

I read something for the Baffler about the flood. You should go check it out. Yeah. Yeah. about the flood you should go check it out um yeah yeah it's uh it's you know it's just kind of a sort of synthesis of everything we've been talking about and working towards over the last couple weeks everybody should go should go read it and check it out i mean i mean no one else this is already out of the media you know so yeah yeah okay help us keep it in because we still need a lot of help i mean it's it's a complete free-for-all man you got like scammers fucking all over the place fema not doing anything the lot the national guard's gone by now i mean they're fucking gone dog like I guess maybe I saw

like a couple trucks yesterday but they dipped out they're like alright you guys got this under control like no no we don't at all actually oh man but it's it really and truly is just like well you're on your own so good luck

yeah i mean like people were talking about it like cdc releasing new covid guidelines the sort of message of which seems to be basically good luck but that is literally the same tack that they've taken with this flood and that i would assume they've taken with every national disaster or natural disaster in the last several years like there was a thread going around i think like a week ago about how monkey pox broke out in the mid-2000s and the cdc i think they were able to get it under control pretty quick but uh like those days are just long gone and and people are telling me that this woman i was talking to yesterday um she was like she literally verbalized that she was just like long gone are the days when anybody came around to help you

like no one has been by here no one's been by to help or talk like those days are long gone yeah uh which is astonishing i mean it really is you see like growing up you you hear those and it's a hard line to walk because like the u.s government uh both as an administrative state and as an empire is a force of evil great great satanic evil in the world that needs to be destroyed um but like there's nothing inherently evil about a state in my mind anyways like that that a state is just an instrument a mechanism for for uh administration distribution a framework right exactly it's like there's nothing inherently evil about it um but you just kind of see how how kind of like genocidal that ronald reagan's statement is about like the

scariest words or i'm from the government and i'm here to help you well it's also provided cover for the government to like sort of because the democrats are so feckless for the government to become as the years go by like more and more useless uh-huh right like i don't it's not like i want to build back some sort of, like, democratic socialist state where, like, the government operates like the New Deal or whatever, like Green New Deal and all that. Or Sweden. Yeah, I don't want, I don't want that. But it would at least be nice during times like this. But that's, that's not a reality. It's not going to be a reality ever. And you just kind of have to adjust accordingly. You just kind of have to embrace that. I remember when we had a side hater on,

he said something that kind of stuck with me. The whole point of politics is to make things better. So I'm not counting out the idea of making gains in the current system, but you have to be careful i think of like who you entrust and who you get in bed with and all these different things and like your own personal integrity and stuff but that said i don't i don't hold out any hope that like yeah like we're going to get any help or anybody else for that matter is going to get any help under this current thing we live under you

know well it's weird like we didn't even talk about the biden visit but because it was much to do about nothing it was completely anticlimactic it's like no one knew where he was the media framed it in a way that seemed to suggest he was coming here to roll out the democrats new climate bill like the media was like biden arrives in eastern kentucky after democrats passed monumental new climate bill oh and there was also flooding here yeah well yeah it's great yeah they probably got him here and then like he's like god damn his sundowning is worse today and they're like okay we got colin audible we'll roll it out some, and then he's like, God damn, his sundowning's worse today. And they're like, okay, we gotta call an audible. We'll roll it out some other time when he's more alert.

I mean, I don't know anything about that bill. I don't care to know. I don't give a fuck. I don't care if it goes nine-tenths of the way. You will never, ever fucking convince me that it's good enough. That even its meager reforms and attempts at moving the needle

in a specific direction are useful and good. I mean, I just, I don't, from where I'm sitting right now, in the epicenter of another fucking disaster, it's not good enough unless it goes all the fucking way. And it seems like companies are fine with it.

And if fossil fuel companies are fine with it, then that's an issue. That says enough. I mean, another thing that Assad talked about when we had him on was this idea of political phases. And that phases can come to an end. That they have a come to an end that like there are uh you know that

they have a beginning and an end and trying to revive a dead one in my opinion like a kind of like robust social democratic state is like it's a dead issue already at this point the only way i guess we're going to be able to start moving something forward is with something entirely new, like altogether new. I don't know. I don't know what that looks like or how it's done, but I'm just starting by telling people no longer lying to people about my day job. That's it. That's where I'm going to start. And it's going to end.

With me in a political revolution or you shot twice in the back of the head. Yeah. I don't know, man. Well, the piece is good. I really was impressed by it and I think it's required reading. I mean, not only because I'm trying to shine a light on the situation here, but also, too, because, like, this is coming for all of us.

And I think that's true. I think that, like, the wages of everything we've pulled out of the ground and the way we've emiserated people and just wantonly done whatever we want for generations and generations and generations. It's like it's our chickens coming home to roost. And the shitty thing is that the leadership

situation is dire and there's almost like a I don't know what you would call it. There's almost like a i don't know what you would call it there's almost just like a like i don't know like it's like we all know that we're fucked but we're just like carrying on the best that we we can under the circumstances there's like i don't know there's just like an eerie undertone to all this i've even noticed this with the flood where it's like like we don't want to say like our leaders particularly don't want to say anything about like coal mining's role in this

like yeah it would be easier just to like move on from that and i get that in some ways like in the sense that like we just want to like we don't want to litigate why or how this happened but i think it's important to hold people to account i mean we wouldn't be doing this fucking show if we if we weren't speaking truth to justice man i i think that there is something deeply powerful about history as a tool uh for like liberation i mean however corny that word is or however corny that sounds it's just yeah i mean yeah it is hard to sell that because it is an abstract thing like oh this thing happened 40 years ago you know and the same thing applies to climate change like when people talk about this being a product of climate change like

i had a guy i was talking to one guy and he was like they're saying this is a result of climate change he's like i don't know about that he was like, they're saying this is a result of climate change. He's like, I don't know about that. He was like, but I do know this is a result of strip mining. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, it's really that kind of thing. A lot of people can get on board with that, dude. I mean, yeah.

It's common sense. Here's the thing. Like, when the Friends of Coal Lobby came in, before it was actually formalized as Friends of Coal, there was a sense in the community that people that were strip mining were fucking people out of their jobs. Because people had, I remember being a kid and people talking about fucking strip miners,

like fucking us over again and all this stuff. And then at a certain point, that all merged together and it felt like, you know, like, well, we might as well not single these guys out. They're just trying to feed their families and work and stuff like that but it was the right instinct you know and i don't know where that went but like i'm hoping a little bit of that is still alive you know to i mean not that it matters in a big way anymore but like just the knowledge that there were people that like you know in their estimation out of necessity but

like in the end fucked over so many people and like coal miners and just regular ass people around these sites a lot well you gotta be honest and candid about that it was just it just created an environment of fear and sort of paranoia and scarcity uh i mean people that's another thing people ask you know like i wrote a whole thing about it like the early opioid epidemic and the moral panic around that like a big sort of ingredient in that moral panic probably was fear over not just the decline of jobs but the fact that some of the only jobs left were leveling people's homes and family cemeteries and mountains and filling the streams up and shit. That was a very socially catastrophic thing that happened.

That was like a 20- or 30-year thing. You know what I'm saying? People pitted against neighbors. That was awful. Yeah. Let me ask you a question, having written about both of these things. How much do you think the rise of the opioid crisis and the rhetoric around it was put in place to obscure who the real villains were in these communities? I think that that's a big part of it.

Because nobody says the strip miners, and of course not a few miners ended up falling prey to the opioid thing themselves. But like, you know what i mean like nobody says strip miners are the scum of the earth anymore they say you know it's the dope heads it's the looters it's the you know there's always like some villain some like and it's and i mean usually a straw man you know usually you know what what they call and like sort of classify you know one or two people get caught stealing during the aftermath of the flood and then they saw there's this huge looting problem right it's like no not really no well they had to displace the social harm caused by strip mining specifically but coal mining at large onto some group of people.

And so it became people who use drugs, people living in extreme poverty, living in desperate conditions. I mean, because yeah, there is a fact that, I mean, like what,

what do you hear a lot of those people saying in the 90s and 2000s? It's like, drug dealers are destroying our community. Our communities are being destroyed. Our communities are declining. And that was true. It wasn't because people were using drugs.

It was because the coal industry was in its endgame. And its end game required it to basically destroy as much shit as possible i mean like you're talking about parts of west virginia looking like the fucking moon like strip mines as large as washington dc like this this is this is recent history i mean this is all recent. I saw something one time that you could place the city of D.C., the Sphinx, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, and like several other monuments on one strip mine in Martin County. Is that why that coal miner, is it named Jeff Hoops? Is that his name?

Or that coal mine owner decided to do exactly that to test it out he's like i gotta see if this is i'm gonna see if you can really put yankee stadium fenway park and goddamn lincoln memorial all on this trip i'll be damned you can but i mean that's the thing man like the last 30 or 40 years here have been a catastrophe a social catastrophe like multiple things intersecting and you see the way it all just compounds during a disaster like the flood and the fucking people in power know it they know this they that's really the thing that's so hard and fascinating to watch

simultaneously it's like they know how bad it is and that uh we have created the worst i mean like the kentucky rivers watershed is one of the poorest watersheds in the u.s i mean like it is the pop i mean it is it is astounding i mean we're talking about people living in floodplains in houses that are basically built with paper i mean it's it was a disaster waiting to fucking happen. But layered on top of all that was 20 or 30 years of excessive law enforcement surveillance, targeting of survival strategies in an area that is, again, extremely impoverished. That was, you know, the only remaining infrastructure of which is jails and prisons and police departments. I mean, you know, that's, I don't know, man.

It's just, it was just a disaster waiting to happen. And again, not to mention the war on coal the friends of coal thing the creation of an in-group and an out-group the creation of like a labor hierarchy of like noble work versus ignoble work like masculine work versus feminine work like it was all waiting to implode in something that would create maximum fatalities, maximum social disruption. I mean, it's fucking crazy to watch all these NGOs swoop in and try to piece back together the social fabric in a way that ensures the social hierarchy.

There's this group called CORE. Have you heard about them? It's the same. social hierarchy like there's this group called core have you heard about it's the same yeah it's that that feels like that has to do with the messaging around the joel peck cartoon which you rightly called out as absurd the criticism of that right in the piece like the the to stitch back together the sort of the social fabric with the hierarchy intact says we want the same people sort of leading these things we don't want anything to change fundamentally is what they're saying yeah yeah and the people in power know how fucking absurd

that is like you can't look at any of this destruction and devastation like i don't think that any human can look at any of that like if regardless of how much you try to obfuscate it with ideology and rationalization, if you've been in a place of power for longer than a few years here, I don't see how you look at any of that and say, yeah, well, maybe things have to fundamentally change here. I mean, I don't see how you can look at it and rationalize that away. It's like we were saying last week it is almost like a revolution we've already had the fucking hard part we've done the hard part already where there's been mass fucking devastation

and loss of life so why can't we just fucking all come to terms with that and try to move forward in a way but again it's not going to happen. And it's totally out of my hands and anybody else's hands because I go to these long-term recovery meetings.

I went to one of them anyways. And obviously, they're still in the phase of like trying to reduce as much harm as possible, mitigate as much damage as possible. But you will start to see in the coming weeks how this will start to see in the coming weeks how this will start to be stitched back together in a way that ensures all those old hierarchies because again they're not going to they're not going to fuck with the property relation for one they're not going to

start building free and efficient housing like they can't do that that dude that is where people draw a line it's strange like the whole crux of marxism revolves around the property relation and everybody from you know like bureaucrat swooping in to the ngo sphere coming in to uh some dude on twitter getting pissy because i made a joke about defacing property people start acting funny when like you the question comes up to their prop to property the property relation yeah yeah i mean because that's the thing i mean it all turns on sort of yeah yeah it's why the cops immediately scramble into high gear with the looting stuff because you have to you have to return back to that basic fact yeah like disaster that that is one of the sort of contradictions that this phase of capitalism

will start to put into motion which is that natural disaster by its very sort of physical force can destroy property lines and property distinctions it can turn all property into communal property and that creates a huge fucking problem for the elite um and that means they're gonna have to resolve that through the police at the same time that means that me and you and every other person on the other side of that line sees that happening and every other swinging dick and every other swinging dick like we see that happening and have to forge a kind of new identity and sort of practice out of it and that's why like i felt really bad talking about the actions of the police and elected officials after this occurred but what else are you supposed to do it puts you i know

it puts you at such a weird position because you know how like in some ways these people are still venerated but how do you do it in such a way that you don't alienate people in the community but at the same time you're honest about what they do and what they're about and what their function is. Yeah. The cops, that is. Yeah, oh yeah.

It's such a fucking rope to walk, man. Well, you have to call it out because otherwise, where are people gonna get their answers? I mean, it's like I pointed out in the article. Like, the couple that came in and was like, they're saying this happened because of the election. And you,

I mean, I'm listening. I'm not ready to pun on the weather gun. Uh, blue, uh, how do you call it? The,

yeah, the, was it like weather engineer or yeah, I'm not ready to pun on the weather engineering theory just yet. Just let you know where i'm setting that with i mean but yeah people are looking for a kind of an answer even if it is a kind of rebuke of those kind of answers like a rebuke of a certain set of political answers is a political act and the fact that people get to that point and say like well this didn't happen because the election are you fucking serious like who would

say that who would be heartless enough to say that you know that just it just goes to show you that people are looking for an explanation yeah so i guess you do have to call out the actions of the police and elected officials after something like this occurs because it perfectly demonstrates how this all works. last episode too which is that like private property our our current conception of it isn't this immortal thing unchanging thing like platonic form gifted to us from on high it is socially created it's like something that we can change it doesn't have to exist it hasn't existed at other points in history i don't know i think that's I just think that that is A Something that you have to be someone has to be

Pointing out and Again so I'm not lying about the podcast Anymore What the fuck's the point what's the point about Lying about it anymore like it's This is all I feel like we're we are also in An endgame of sorts like it's all Fucked we feel like we're we are also in an end game of sorts.

Like it's all fucked. We're like we're all going to die. Like it's it's heading towards that oblivion or, you know, I mean, a event horizon. Like who fucking cares now? Yeah. Like go for broke and try to make you just. I mean, yeah. If fucking people are out here saying that this happened because people here voted for Mitch McConnell, that's way more fucked up and genocidal than me saying maybe this happened because people here voted for mitch mcconnell that's way more

fucked up and genocidal than me saying maybe this happened because we destroyed the earth for the rock inside of it for maximum profit and we prosecuted drug users and you know went after them when we should have been taking care of you know what i mean like all because of the the industry was so greedy to pull that stuff out they left everybody broken penniless so they have to turn to something to sort of manage the exactly shittiness of their existence like all these things are connected exactly and that may and that makes way more sense than just saying that oh some people are rogues and druggies and this and that, and I don't know why this keeps happening. Yeah.

Well, that's the thing. It's like we pointed out, I think, either last week or the week before that. It's like the liberals, all they're going to do is condescend to the working class. They always have, even when they were helping them out the war on poverty was one big scolding like condescension yeah um gotta do better gas yeah and then the reactionaries abuse the working class and there are some people in the working class who will gladly take that abuse and heap it on to other people in the working class yeah and then the left says no to both of those and says that the only way through this is if the working class

is running society running the show people that create the value are running society making decisions about it exactly and even more than that have abolished private property and have like returned property to a communal state that we don't have to there's no you know i mean there's no scarcity no i mean i guess all this probably sounds really idealistic and it and it is it is but fucking christianity is idealistic what the fuck do you want? Yeah, that's true. I don't know. I don't know, man. I don't know, man.

Anyways, you could go read the Baffler article. I'm sure that it's not the last thing that I or... you've not seen the last of me yeah there will be more surely I mean because again like now watching the kind of like NGO people swoop in and try to like that group core like there I think that stands for like I saw the shirts and I was like damn congress of racial equality like the most boomer thing ever uh no it stands for like what is it core apple core app al core no no this is core community organized relief effort core is providing critical support to communities devastated by the floods in kentucky core responds immediately to support under support underserved communities across the globe through

and beyond crisis um and and like at some point part on their website it says like we identify leaders in the community and connect them with the people in need it's just like okay uh i did that the other day when i called the county fiscal court to come pick up some woman's trash because she didn't have enough space on her property for all the molding decomposing shit and i needed someone to come pick it up and they were like, yeah, we don't do that. Well, that's the other thing, man. It's like, well, those outfits just need to stay the fuck out of the way and if they want to help,

give some money out of their coffers to the people that are helping because that shit is useless. Yeah, when a crisis strikes, we respond immediately to fill gaps, mobilize resources, and establish trust and collaboration from within communities.

That means nothing. To empower them to break perennial cycles of poverty and vulnerability. Yeah, and we're the ideologues. Truly, yeah. To empower them to break perennial cycles of poverty and vulnerability. Hey, have you thought about this? Have you thought about the ways you might be kind of sabotaging things for you?

Right. Have you thought about how being locked in this- Like it's a genetic condition. Core focuses on equity by bringing relief directly to those who need it most. Equity. I love it. Our efforts are driven by a focus on equity, locally hired staff, and an investment that starts from within the community

and adapts to its dynamic needs. Jesus. Oh, man. Well, I have some dynamic needs. Oh, shit, dude. I think this is Sean Penn's organization. Is it? Sean Penn founded CORE.

Is this what he founded after Katrina when he was on the boats going through there? He founded it in January 2010. In a matter of 35 seconds, 250,000 Haitian lives were lost and the nation was changed. Within hours of this unprecedented disaster, core founder Sean Penn had mobilized a powerful network of doctors, emergency workers, and government officials to take action. I'm going to shoot myself on camera today.

I'm going to shoot Sean Penn. This is fucking ridiculous. Oh, man. Oh, man. What, you think we'll get to meet Sean Penn in HR? Or does he just not show up to these things? I guess not. Jennifer Garner showed up.

Did you meet Jennifer Garner? I didn't meet her. Aw. She, like Biden, they had her swooped in and out this photo of sean penn dude his fucking arm this is disgusting his arm is so veiny like in a bad way dude do you think he was juicing i could have been is that known i've never seen sean penn to get b2j maybe he's just uh doing those vascularity boosters you know wow all these groups i've seen a lot of these signs in the last week or so

here are a few organizations we are proudly partnered with. Airbnb, Amazon, Home Depot, World Central Kitchen. Just like the fucking- The CIA. Didn't like Sean Penn like dry snitch on El Chapo after he granted him an interview? I think so. Like led to his capture or something? Just like watching all these organizations show up, like Duracell and Tide, loads of hope duracell and tide loads of hope i've

been loving loads of hope like please drop loads of hope all over my face i'd love some more loads of hope but listen when you all pull out drop loads of hope on my on my ass. World Central Kitchen. I've seen that thing. I got some pretty decent food from them the other day. So I guess it's not all bad. Live Nation. Kind Bars.

Oh my God. A veritable who's who of... I love it. Just like when you stare at like a fucking mountain of colgate toothpaste and toothbrushes it's just like dude every time there's a natural disaster like they're they're eating good my money's real good right now money real good right now for yeah procter and gamble we were laughing down at the office We've received so many motherfucking toothbrushes and toothpaste. They're like, what do people in Eastern Kentucky have need of? Number one, we need them motherfuckers to brush their teeth. They saw the Diane Sawyer thing.

They were like, oh, the Dew Tooth. The Dew Tooth, yeah. We got to make sure they don't have Mountain Dew, and we have to make sure they have toothbrushes oh man this shit sucks it all sucks so fucking bad because like there's the initial bad thing which is this the thing the flood in this case and then there's like the inundation of the non-profit like ngo disaster relief workers and people bringing too many supplies that's a thing like distribution centers getting oversupplied it's just waves man it's just fucking waves oh boy anyways why don't we call this one we've been at it for a while um thanks uh yeah i don't know any party thoughts

on all that man i let me know where the overstocks are i'll come be like a hoarder and just get all the excess of the surplus colgate sit on that for a rainy day yeah you'll never buy toothpaste again uh yeah okay so anyways go check out the article at the Baffler, uh, you can continue to support us with mutual aid, let me find that link, where's my phone, let me find that link, there's a link that you can give to, I think EKY Mutual Aid is having a hard time getting money right now. Where in God's name did my phone go? I think the chair. I'll put a link to it in the description.

Okay, I found it. I found it. I found it. I still got to find that. Flippin', flippin', flippin'. You can donate to at Kentucky Daria. It's just like it sounds. K-E-N-T-U-C-K-Y-D-A-R-I-A.

That's the person running our mutual aid group. When you give to that, i usually go to the bank get money literally right out of it and just give it out to people so that's our strategy here i think that's honestly probably your best option because otherwise you might have to fill out some paper i mean they're gonna there's like groups that have there's groups to have to fill out some paperwork I mean there's like groups that have There's groups that have people fill out paperwork And shit but I mean

Who wants to do paperwork for money That sucks If you got a grandmother with a social security check Looking for some satisfaction Have her call Terrence too That's right Um Alright well also go to patreon if you're listening to this it's on patreon uh a day early but uh you can go to support us on patreon we're probably going to

get back to a regular recording schedule in the next few weeks yeah so um we'll we'll get that all figured out it's just that my day-to-day i wake up and i literally don't exactly know how that day is gonna go so uh you know it's just a ever-evolving situation it's an evolving situation there you go you ever heard of one of those there you go. All right. Anyways, go tell others to sign up for Patreon. And thanks for listening to us, folks. Thanks for supporting us. Thanks for helping us out.

Also, if you have like a trash pump and live in the greater Lexington area, you know what that is? Man, I put the call out in West Virginia and Kentucky and all over the place. I haven't heard anything back. We need a, yeah, a sump truck. Well, what I need now, I don't need necessarily one of those big fucking trucks that gets the port-a-potties out. I need, like, a trash pump.

It looks kind of like a generator. You can hook a hose up to it, and it just sucks the shit right out of it. Right out of, like, a space and spits it out the other side. So that would be... And you need this for the flood cleanup out of it. Right out of a space and spits it out the other side. So that would be... And you need this for the flood cleanup, you say. I need this for the flood... Not for personal use. Not for personal... Sick fuck.

Not for personal use. Just... This is the most powerful vacuum ever. I just need my shit sucked right out sucks the shit out of your ass through your dick send us a sucker basically oh shit all right thanks for listening we'll tune in next time uh we'll talk to you later bye bye