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Jan. 11, 2021 - Minion Death Cult
01:27:45
Terrence K Williams - FROM THE FOSTER HOUSE TO THE WHITE HOUSE (pt. 1)

This week we dive into the backstory of an MDC favorite, learning how his humble beginnings informed his far-right ideology. Music: MF DOOM - Kon Queso BUTT FEST 2000 - http://patreon.com/streetfightradio Struggle Sesh - https://www.patreon.com/strugglesession Support the show for $3/month at http://patreon.com/miniondeathcult and get a bonus episode every week

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The liberals are destroying California, and conservative humor gone awry... Conservative humor gone awry is going to fascistphonia today, so stay tuned.
We're going to take a few pictures of the desert and how their policies are actually messing it up.
It's not beautiful when you go across that border.
Stay tuned guys, we'll show you exactly what it looks like when people are going to get you.
Follow their environmental stuff.
Stay tuned.
I'm Alexander Edward.
And I'm Tony Boswell.
And we're Minion Death Cult.
The world is ending.
The Democratic Slave Plantation is responsible.
We're documenting it.
What's up everybody?
Thank you so much for joining the show today.
It is our first main feed free episode in a little while.
If you're unfamiliar, I have somewhat challenging work hours.
During the season of December and even January.
You know, hey, not all of us can just go out on a Wednesday and storm the U.S.
Capitol, you know?
Some of us have jobs to do.
So we were unable to provide free episodes, you know, for the past month, month and a half.
But thank you to everybody who stuck with the show.
Thank you to all the Patreon supporters who have recently subscribed, who have been subscribed for a while.
And yeah, if you want to subscribe there, you can get all the Patreon episodes we released during peak season.
Yeah, some real bangers in there.
Some real, straight up iconic eps.
I'll say.
Worth every penny.
I'll say.
A lot of happy folks listening to those episodes, including the one we did on the Dennis Prager slash, what's that guy?
The lesser Joe Rogan?
What's his name?
Adam Carolla.
Adam Carolla.
The movie they did together, No Safe Spaces, where they're mad at all the college students who don't like them, don't think they're cool.
Yeah.
Demanding that your granddaughter or, you know, grandnephew think that Dennis Prager is cool, actually.
And, you know, we covered pretty in-depth on whether they were successful, I think.
The day after that I was listening to some comedian on some interview somewhere and they were talking about how like yeah I mean once you're like past your late 20s early 30s you shouldn't want to be on a college campus to perform anymore like you know it just doesn't feel right.
It's going into the lion's den for sure.
Yeah and I was like oh yeah tell that tell that to Adam fucking Carolla who still wants to do comedy out of college.
We didn't talk about it, but we mentioned how Tim Allen has a little cameo in the movie, but Tim Allen's explanation for why he was fed up with cancel culture was, he was like, I've been doing material on men and women for years, and all of a sudden it doesn't play anymore, you know?
Yeah.
And he's like upset about it.
He's like, I don't understand.
There are so many differences between men and women.
I should be able to do this for 100 lifetimes.
Not just one.
And they're just scared to laugh.
You can tell they're scared to laugh.
They want to because it's really funny, but they don't want to get canceled.
Um, and it's funny when you think about it because, you know, all that material, you know, uh, the differences between men and women, it's like, it's like cultural stuff, right?
It's like, oh, women, you know, they go to the bathroom with like four, four of their gal pals at the same time or whatever, and yet being a woman is 100% biological, immutable, has nothing to do with culture whatsoever.
Yeah.
Very interesting, like, pretzel these people twist themselves into.
Anyway, yeah, thanks again to all the listeners.
Thank you to the Patreon supporters.
Also, yeah, if you haven't been listening to the Patreon, big news.
Brian Quimby of Street Fight and I are co-hosting a Street Fight Patreon miniseries about butt rock.
It is called ButtFest 2000.
It is available if you support Street Fight Radio on Patreon, where we go decade by decade trying to figure out just what butt rock is and the sort of exemplars of that genre from each decade.
I think this is going to go on to become what is the definition of butt rock.
I think that this is the most, um, like the most in-depth research actual like, you know, blood, sweat and tears went into this research.
And I think this is going to be taught in college one day, like a music course.
Okay.
Don't say that because now people are going to think blood, sweat and tears is a butt rock band, which is wrong.
They're a dad rock band.
Um, We, uh, yeah, we talked, we went decade by decade.
Brian wanted to know all about Butt Rock.
I actually have a pretty extensive background in Butt Rock, uh, demanded I co-host this show.
Brian, uh, agreed to that and we did an intro episode where we ended up talking about the band Lit a lot, which was amazing because Brian is the one who brought up Lit and I was like, oh boy, you're gonna, you're gonna learn about Lit today in this episode, Brian.
Yeah, because you brought it up around the right person.
Yeah, and then we went through the 80s.
Very interesting to discuss butt rock from the 80s.
Both an era that I'm less familiar with in terms of popular music and also not something I would normally associate with butt rock, but I believe we came up with some very interesting examples of it.
Some interesting theses.
Laid the groundwork for, you know, sort of the criteria by which we are judging these butt rock bands.
Moved through the 90s, the 2000s.
Did the 2010s last week with Tony.
Tony was blessed enough to, or Tony blessed us enough to join us on that episode where we talked about what I think is the The death of butt rock and the re-emergence of a new more powerful form of butt rock in the 2010s and then probably this week I think we're going to record the wrap-up episode.
I'm just really excited that we got Theory of a Dead Man to record a new theme song for our show.
I think that's really cool.
It was cool, yeah.
They were in that interview and they were like, hey, you covered Rage Against the Machine, Bullet to the Head.
Who else would you like to cover?
And they said, well, we would like to cover the intro to Minion Death Cult.
Yeah.
And she said, oh, Ennio Morricone?
And he's, no, the remix by Alexander Edward.
That's the one we're going to cover.
And she said, oh, she said, okay, sorry.
Sorry about that.
It's pretty heavy.
Also, we were just on Struggle Session.
We just did an episode of Struggle Session on their Patreon feed.
What is the link?
Struggle.sesh?
I think might be how you sign up for that.
Yeah, Struggle.sesh, which is really tight.
We appreciate them having us on.
It was a lot of fun to talk about the Minion Uprising.
Yeah, it was awesome.
Good boys.
Jack really crushed it with the hot takes and I really appreciated it.
It's always good hearing Jack go off.
That was fun.
It's always nice hearing Jack go off, you know?
Yeah.
So, leading up to this episode, we thought it would be a nice treat for the regular listeners as a sort of welcome back to the show to learn about someone that we've covered for years now.
Somebody that we've been interested in, somebody that has tickled our fancy for years now on this show.
Yeah, I think we've almost developed a relationship.
I hold this person kind of close to my heart in some ways.
Some people say they have a parasocial relationship with me or Tony.
This is who we have a parasocial relationship with.
We are of course talking about Terrence K. Williams.
TKdubs, TKdubs, what's up?
Somebody we've been, you know, just enamored with, like I said, and eager to learn more about.
And, I don't know, we're grateful that he's released an autobiography called From the Foster House to the White House.
The New York Times under fire this week hiring a new member of their editorial board who is an admitted anti-Trumper and also post some extremely racist stuff like this.
You ready?
Are white people genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins?
And this?
Dumb effing white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.
And, I was equating Trump to Hitler before it was cool.
Oh my god.
Here with reaction, comedian and social commentator Terrence K. Williams.
Terrence, I don't even have any words for that.
Take it away.
That is a nasty woman.
So, of course, the nasty New York Times would hire her.
But would they hire Roseanne?
No.
And I would tell people not to read the New York Times, but it's too late.
Nobody reads them anyway.
I mean, I would get my news from Nickelodeon than from New York Times.
But this is crazy.
Well, some people do this.
Nickelodeon gets better ratings than CNN most weeks.
Exactly, and I don't know if this lady is Chinese, Japanese, or crazy-knees.
Something is wrong with this woman, and I can't believe they would hire her.
They're a bunch of hypocrites.
Well, they defended the hiring, and they basically said this.
She was being harassed, they claimed, by racist people on Twitter, and she responded to that harassment by imitating the rhetoric of their harassers.
So they're saying, oh yeah, some people said some racist stuff to her.
So then she said racist stuff back to imitate them.
Does that even make any sense?
Oh my, that don't make no sense.
I don't know.
No, no, no, no.
There's something wrong with them fortune cookies that Ling Ling is eating.
That she's eating.
It's not wrong with her.
Terrence, I think you now got yourself in trouble.
No, no, no, no!
I gotta run.
We'll be right back.
I gotta go to break.
And we are going to read excerpts of it for the listener today.
Should we pause so the listener can go get some Kleenex?
Because it's going to be a tearjerker.
Yeah.
Trigger warning.
This is some heartbreaking stuff.
Trigger warning.
Triumph.
Elaine M. on the, uh, on the Amazon reviews for this book says, heartwarming.
This is an amazing story of survival that nobody should have to go through.
This brave young man is a great voice for what's wrong with the system.
Warning, parentheses, box of tissue, space, period.
He is my hero.
Wow.
Wow.
Yeah.
Um, another review just to give the listener, you know, an idea of what their, uh, What they're in for here, um... Yeah, this is the one I wanted to read.
Uh, is it?
No, it's this one.
JG says, just finished this memoir, space, period, period, period, space.
It was quite painful in places, but as it develops, Terrence's story is wonderful and uplifting.
Charles Dickens could have written it, but his account would have been fiction.
This author's story is all too real.
He's today's Horatio Alger.
He's today's Horatio Alger.
I highly recommend Terrence K. Williams.
FROM THE FOSTER HOUSE TO THE WHITE HOUSE!
Pardon my ignorance, but who's Horatio?
So, Horatio Alger is a late 7th, excuse me, 19th century writer, so late 1800s writer, who is famous for his stories about young boys being virtuous and honest enough to escape poverty and become little millionaires.
So it's like, yeah, that's pretty on his face then.
Say again?
It's pretty on his face then.
It's pretty just like, yeah, that's... Horatio Auger, from what I... I have never read Horatio Auger.
I've heard his name bandied about, and I also understand that he was a famous writer throughout the Gilded Age, leading up to the Great Depression.
where he wrote morality tales about young boys who did virtuous acts.
Therefore, they were rewarded by kindly billionaires and given a middle class job.
Stuff like that.
The ability to not worry about eating anymore.
So I think that's correct.
I think that that's an accurate description of, uh, of what we're about to read.
Um, I don't think Horatio Auger was writing nonfiction stories.
So it's interesting that he sort of, you know, contrasts him to Charles Dickens, but that's neither here nor there.
How about we dive into, uh, from the foster house to the lighthouse, Tony, what do you say?
Man, I really can't wait to hear this story about a person who obviously went on to become the President.
And that's why they went to the White House.
I spent years of my childhood in starvation, yet now I was being invited to sit and eat at the table of the President of the United States of America.
I hadn't been able to eat, and then one day I got an invite from the President, and I could finally eat.
Well, I like that line because it's like, oh, it's not about being invited to the White House.
It's about, like, I'm going to be fed this day.
I'm going to have food this day.
Which we know Terrence gets food.
We see Terrence get food all the time.
It's kind of his thing.
It's kind of his thing.
He probably has that, like, Freudian oral fixation.
He's like, dude, Terrence is like Geezer.
Terrence was malnourished at a young age, starved, and now he's just eating up everything and he doesn't care if you think it's racist.
Can you imagine how insufferable Terrence was at the dinner?
When are the wings coming out, Donald?
When are the wings coming out?
Can you hear that static noise?
That was crazy.
I heard it a little bit, but faint.
Okay.
Sorry.
I don't know what happened.
I farted.
That's a fart noise.
I may have been so excited that I peed myself a little.
Nope.
I definitely didn't do that.
And even if I did, there is no way that I would write it in a book.
To recap, President Donald J. Trump asked me to sit at his table and I didn't pee myself one bit.
And that's, like, genuinely the funniest joke that is in all 145 pages of this book.
Mostly because there aren't any jokes in this book for being a self-styled comedian.
For a guy who laughs a lot publicly, as is his reputation, not very funny.
You gotta soak that one joke in, folks.
It's all you're gonna get for a while.
It's also written in a way where he's saying, like, the joke is that I definitely peed myself.
It's self-deprecating.
It's good.
Yeah, I like it.
It's humbling.
He immediately, like, off the jump admits he's a piss baby and pees his pants when the president speaks to him.
That's just, I mean... That's cool.
It's a good way to start.
I was born into nothing, neglected, starved, abused, and beaten.
I grew up without a table to sit at, let alone food to eat.
Like, that's the greater thing?
Like, you can eat anyway.
Yet here I was, welcome to the table of the most important man in our nation and his family.
Regardless of your politics, this should show you something important.
It's so important how Terrence K. Williams was invited to the White House, don't you think, Tony?
It's remarkably important.
It actually will, it almost like it could define your entire existence.
Almost like you could also define the Trump presidency.
I think he's not wrong.
You're right, Tony.
This is actually very important.
If you read the statistics for children raised in foster care, they are beyond bleak.
Children who have been in the foster care system are less likely to graduate from high school, to graduate from college, or to maintain consistent employment.
They stand a greater chance of suffering from PTSD, struggling with addiction, coping with teen pregnancy, or ending up in prison.
If they have any sort of family structure to rely on, it is usually unpredictable and unstable.
These are not facts that are unknown to children in foster care.
They are continuously bombarded with reminders of how futile their chances of success are.
I could have easily bought the narrative that victimhood presented.
I could have believed that as a black man growing up in the projects without parents, I needed to embrace a life of dependency on the government or the state or even addiction.
This is a narrative that is so often pushed that many people adopt it as their mantra.
However, this is America, and our history as our nation teaches us that we are not victims.
We are overcomers.
The American Dream is real.
In our country, we are not subjugated to a life of victimhood.
We are given the freedom to grow and reach our fullest potential, relying on the skills and abilities that God has given us to empower us, Thriving and striving for more than we can imagine.
And that last sentence has a dotted underline on the Kindle app, meaning that that's a very popularly highlighted sentence for readers of this book.
Yes!
That's a feature on Kindle?
That's so tight!
The American Dream is real.
In our country, we are not subjugated to a life of victimhood.
Et cetera, et cetera.
And then let me just finish this little preface.
The American Dream is an ideal that encourages all of us that we are not victims of circumstances and that our humble beginnings do not restrict or hold us back from grander and greater things.
The American Dream teaches us that paupers can become presidents, and that even a boy who grew up in foster houses can be welcomed into the White Houses.
The American Dream is real, no matter where you come from, no matter how you were brought up.
You have an opportunity.
I am proof of that.
I am living the American Dream.
I'm really worried for Terrence that out there is a child's book with the same message and it is a young kid who's a foster kid whose school goes on a tour of the White House.
And it's the same message.
It's like, even me, a young person who is in the foster system, am allowed inside the White House.
Are you worried for that child to sort of incur the plagiarism lawsuit that Terrence K. Williams is going to levy against him?
Oh yeah that is how it will happen.
I do love how the thing about Terrence that's so fascinating obviously on face value on a superficial level is that he is a young black man who adopted the conservative identity and the extreme version of that being through like being a MAGA chad.
The only thing that's worse than that would be like I'm a foster kid who grew up in the foster system.
The system that's really, I mean, it's pretty fucking bad.
It's pretty bleak at times, a lot of times.
It's really traumatic.
To come through that and end up being like, I'm going to take on a conservative identity.
I'm going to become a MAGA chad.
You have no ability to analyze anything.
Well, it's... it's... I don't know.
The thesis statement is right here.
If you read the statistics for children raised in foster care, they are beyond bleak.
I mean he lists why they're beyond bleak, what statistics actually say, which is children who have been in the foster care system less likely to graduate from high school, graduate from college, maintain consistent employment, greater chance of suffering from PTSD, struggling with addiction, coping with teen pregnancy, or ending up in prison.
He's not like hiding these statistical facts from the audience.
What he's saying is that I am better than these people.
That's his answer.
His answer is you have to be better than the statistical average if you want like a meal to eat or if you don't want to like spend your life in and out of prison or in and out of rehab or you know subsisting on like welfare levels of food and income.
He is simultaneously citing his struggle to escape that situation.
As well as downplaying the actual hardship, as well as downplaying what the situation actually is.
It's this crazy narrative where it is, here's a bunch of statistical evidence about how fucking hard it is to survive when your mother's an addict, or to survive in the foster care system, or to survive in extreme poverty.
Here's some statistical data about what comes out of that.
Now also here's some anecdotal data about how hard it is.
About how fucking hard it is.
How much my life was traumatized.
And then also here's one piece of analytical datum that shows me succeeding by which I mean I got to visit the White House and Trump patted my shoulder.
Therefore, all the anecdotal evidence I cited as well as all the statistical evidence I cited is negligible.
I wonder if the people who stormed the Capitol this last week are going to be able to write a similar book because they also walked through the hallways of the Capitol.
Anybody who I know who grew up in those circumstances, like myself, I grew up in recovery homes and halfway houses and a lot of those types of scenarios.
Some of my good friends who grew up in foster care, most of them I know are either normies or leftists because they took one step further and actually looked at like, wait, why is this happening?
Why is that the statistic?
But for some reason he's just like, I'm different.
I'm built different.
That's all.
I'm just built different.
You know, that's all it is.
It's the only, it's, I mean, we're like jumping way ahead to basically the conclusion of this book, but it's like the only way you can rectify your extreme hardship and the hardship of your eight siblings, the hardship of your own mother, the hardship of, All the people around you, it's the only way you can internalize that stuff with also, like, the idea of America being great.
Like, you have to just be like, well, if I want to say that America is great, and these systems are great, as they currently stand, then I have to just have been the best one.
And everybody just needs to be the best one, or else you're never going to make it out of there.
And that's good.
That's the way it should be.
And I'm proof that the people who fail are just making the wrong choices.
We get into that right here.
This is the next chapter.
My mother had nine different children.
Okay.
I think the children are automatically different.
My mother had nine different children with six different fathers.
He just wants to, like, really hammer home that this is like a broken home.
Like, all the children were different.
They weren't fucking non-tuplets or anything.
My mother had nine different children with six different fathers.
We were born into hardship and poverty.
Fuck.
Got something.
Right in my eye.
Ugh.
Oh no!
We were born into hardship and poverty, but I am thankful that we were born at all.
Given the circumstances that we arrived into, many would argue that our lives should never have taken place.
Even my crack-addicted mother recognized that our lives had value.
I am thankful to her for giving all nine of us the gift of life.
Giving us life gave us opportunity.
Opportunity is what the American Dream is all about.
My sister, Keisha, was only a baby herself when I became her, quote, first baby.
Not yet into double digits herself when I was born, Keisha was practically a baby herself, yet she was tasked with tending to me.
My mom was too strung out to care for anyone, including herself, adequately, so my sister took on most of the mothering.
I was my mother's fifth child, and my grandmother said that my dad tried not to claim me as his.
I don't know if we were all born with drugs in our system, but given my mother's long-standing affair with smoking crack, it seems reasonable.
The 1990s were the height of what was termed the, quote, crack epidemic.
Cocaine was combined with baking soda to produce the more affordable and profitable substance crack.
Crack was snorted or smoked with a pipe, providing a rapid and highly addictive euphoric effect.
Short lasting, it would entice the user to smoke again and again to maintain the intense high.
I don't know how my mom became hooked on this substance.
CIA!
American government!
Excuse me, yeah, yeah.
That's, that's like, that's my, that's, I've been, that's my one like, Hey listen, normies, this is my one weird take that you might think is strange, but I absolutely believe that this is all a byproduct of the CIA.
Crack was definitely put in communities by the government.
Yeah, absolutely.
It absolutely was.
Crack and AIDS were both were both, you know, administrated by by the government.
I believe that with everything.
I mean, AIDS was just like gleefully ignored by the Reagan administration.
Yeah.
I wouldn't be surprised if it were the result of some sort of Tuskegee, a different Tuskegee experiment, which was literally them injecting African-Americans with sexually transmitted diseases to see how they spread within the community.
Anyway, I don't know how my mom got addicted to crack.
It was probably the Chinese.
We called it the China drug.
That's what we called it.
That makes sense, yeah.
I only know that chasing the high of crack clouded the desire to take care of her children.
Keisha was used to caring for her younger siblings, but I was the first baby that she remembers as being, quote, hers.
When I came home from the hospital, she placed me by her mattress in a box that she had made up for me so she could care for me around the clock.
She'd cared for her younger siblings for as long as she could remember, but I was the first newborn that she oversaw from the day I came home from the hospital.
A child herself, Keisha was forced into playing the role of mother too often as my mom struggled with addiction.
Keisha tried her best, but she was always fighting an uphill battle as we outnumbered her and she lacked the necessities for our care.
Since I was the first infant that Keisha had cared for, basically on her own from the day I came home from the hospital.
Obviously, this is a very fucked up story, if true.
I don't know how Terrence knows all of this like the first half of the book which I read today um is is about his life up until like the age four or five It's a lot.
Which like, no one, no one, no one can Rick sit down and recall that on their own accord and write that down.
Those are just, those are all stories you've been told.
I mean, mostly scientifically speaking, like you're, you're not supposed to be able to remember things that happened like before you were three, essentially.
Yeah.
Um, yeah.
I'm assuming he got these stories from family members charitably.
I'm assuming that, um, Keisha, He leaves the picture at a certain point when he gets adopted by a different family.
I don't know.
I'm taking it at face value with the first half of these.
And it doesn't sound too far off.
It sounds awful and very obviously sad and a horrible situation.
It says a lot about him, though, because the whole time I'm hearing about this family, I'm hearing it through the lens of seeing so many tweets about like, like, fuck your family, like your family.
Who cares if your family hates you?
Like, go Trump.
I mean I can't help but juxtapose this with like his overarching you know ethos of conservatism and the government doesn't owe you anything and yeah right here he says Keisha tried her best but she was always fighting an uphill battle and she lacked the necessities for our care.
watch me wander all over the entire so he's talking about how he would go visit his grandma when his mom would like be having a rough time or she would drop them off at grandma's grandma would watch me wander all over the entire surface of the blanket without ever crawling off I would stretch out my tiny baby hand to consider leaving the quilt but as soon as it would touch the grass I would yank it back in fear of the unknown texture
this is what we call in literature we call this foreshadowing my grandmother laughed and laughed as she watched me imprison myself on the blanket just as I imprisoned myself on that blanket my mother was held captive by her addiction she could have chosen differently but she wanted drugs
As I hesitated to explore, seeing the opportunities that were bigger and better than the safety of my blanket, my mother chose the comfort of drugs over the potential that sobriety could have offered.
She repeatedly decided to crawl back to drug use instead of building a better life for herself and her children.
I gotta say this real fast.
As a child, as somebody who was raised by two addicts, you gotta be a special kind of fucked up to grow up around that and to write down and publish the words like, they chose, this was a choice, this is something you decided to do.
That's really fucking sad.
That's really heartbreaking.
It's very weird because throughout this book he acknowledged he acknowledges that about his mom's like uh impairment you know like about her not being in the right state of mind her ability to not be able to make the correct decisions like he has a certain degree
of compassion for his mom, unlike Adam Carolla, who apparently just really hates his mom for being a Chicano Studies major.
Yeah.
Um, he has a... So he does have like a sympathy for his mom?
Yeah, no, he really does.
Like, considering how much his mom fucked up, like, you know, and, you know, she had a disease.
She's an addict, but she fucked up a lot, according to this book.
And he still has a... That's just something that's really, like, pressed in, like, recovery and, like, things like Al-Anon, which is, like, A, Narcotics Anonymous, and A, for the relatives of addicts and people.
something that's really pressed through those programs and any type of recovery at all, that you're going to see if you're in the FOSS programs, is just that message of like, hey, this is a disease.
This is not a choice.
Like your family member is afflicted with a disease.
So like, yeah, it does take a certain type of weird, like a really fucked up conservative point of view of that bootstrap mentality to say like, I watch my mom choose not to take care of us all the time.
When it's like, no, that's your poor mom was like, that's not a choice that she was making.
I don't have, like, any issue with somebody being raised, or, you know, not raised, uh, in a really fucked up environment and being mad at their parents for it.
Like, I think that's fine, but to, like, extrapolate and say that your mom was, like, a taker instead of a maker, or whatever, that's when it gets- That's what I mean, it's the language, it's the language and, like, everything else around it- Yeah, it's the ideology that you're using your mother to push.
Don't get it wrong, your boy's salty.
But like, you know, we grow with that and we learn with that and we deconstruct that.
As an infant, I relied on formula for nourishment.
Keisha knew, and Keisha is again his slightly older sister, she's like 10 or 9 or 10 at this point in the story.
Keisha knew how to prepare bottles, measure formula, and feed me.
Since we had little to no income, our family qualified for food stamps and the Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants, and Children, better known as WIC.
WIC provided nutrition to struggling families like ours, or would have if my mom didn't sell our vouchers for crack.
Vouchers supplied formula, milk, cheese, cereal, and all the healthy basics necessary to feed growing children.
In reality, my mom might redeem some of our WIC vouchers for food, but often she just sold or traded them for crack.
This left my sister desperate to find ways to feed us.
And this is like, this is real, this is like something that actually happens, like that shit is worth money, you know, it's worth goods on the street, specifically because it's a scarce resource.
Exactly.
Like, would it be worth that much if it weren't, you know, something that people desperately needed?
Yeah.
It sucks that it's something that you can barter and has a monetary value because it is something that is so basic necessity.
It is the most basic of nutrients, or at least what we're told are nutrients.
It's sustenance.
Exactly.
It's pure sustenance.
It's the most basic need to survive.
It's just calories.
But you have to, like, it sucks that that is that valuable, that it's not just available, it's that valuable.
You know what, dude?
I would even go to the White House right now to get something to eat if I had to.
I would sit at that table.
I would eat, I would eat, I would eat a Big Mac out of Donald Trump's hands.
So, he's talking about his sister.
Keisha struggled to afford formula to keep the infants from going hungry and tried her best to scour for food for her siblings.
If she couldn't buy us food, she would steal what she could.
Shoplifting little bits here and there to keep us from starvation.
And I just want to say fucking shout out to Keisha.
Holy shit.
Yes.
That was like, even in the even in the reviews, like multiple reviews mentioned Keisha by name because dear Lord, what?
What a hero like what a what an incredible like human being at the age of nine or ten scouring and stealing food for her and like raising her siblings essentially.
Yep.
Yeah.
Shout out Keisha.
I mean, I love Keisha.
Like I said, shout out to Keisha.
But also, stealing is a crime.
from the neighbors spigots to try to bathe us or give us something to drink.
She would scrounge up candles when the power was turned off, stealing what she could from neighbors or the local store.
I mean, I love Keisha.
Like I said, shout out to Keisha, but also stealing is a crime.
I'm sorry.
Sorry, Keisha, baby.
You can go to the children's ward of the prison.
You can go to Kitty Prison, okay?
I know you needed those things, but you didn't have to do a crime.
It's called personal responsibility.
Nobody forced you to steal those things.
You didn't have to, you made the choice to steal them.
It's not my fault that there's no option B. It's your fault that you decided to steal.
What the fuck?
It's interesting you said option B, given Keisha's near future in this story.
If we found food, there was usually a fight for it.
We were all so hungry that it was instinctual to devour what we could before our other siblings found it.
One day I discovered a partial stick of margarine and was so hungry that I shoved it in my mouth, gnawing on the cool yellow buttery substance.
My siblings noticed my discovery and jumped at the chance to take it for themselves.
We were all so hungry that we fought and kicked, scratching and pulling to try and get a bite of it.
We battled to get a taste of anything that would squelch our hunger, satisfying us for even the briefest amount of time.
And I think a compassionate person could look at this story and make the observation that a scarcity of resources leads to an inhumane level of competition, which is not healthy for a household or a society or a nation whatsoever.
It is actually incredibly damaging both to the individual and to the group at large.
Yeah, for a second I thought you were just like reading a passage out of Animal Farm.
Yeah, or Lord of the Flies.
Yeah, exactly.
It's like, this is, it's just a bummer.
It's that whole thing.
It's his whole story.
It's like, damn, what bumped you the wrong direction?
Because everything else should be like leading you towards like, oh man, This is... Capitalism probably sucks.
If we're going by his ideology here, which is you need to pull yourself up by your little booty straps, you know, as a child, and make a name for yourself, make a way for yourself in this world, because no, you're not entitled to anything.
Nobody owes you anything.
You need to make for yourself.
I look at this story and I'm like, okay, this baby, this little baby, Terrence, he found a stick of butter.
In his mind, he's entitled to that stick of butter.
He's the one who found it.
And yet his greedy siblings are trying to steal it from him.
They're trying to mooch it from him.
Those motherfuckers.
Terrence K. Williams, like, whatever success he has in his life, is that stick of butter that he's like scraped together for himself.
And by all rights, like that's his success is that he was able to secure a lifelong stick of butter for himself.
And you know what?
His siblings would do well to follow his lead.
They should be so lucky.
They should take notes.
I'm going to take a pee break real quick.
My friend was telling me some story today about when he was in Italy and he had to get on a train to Rome.
Some stuff was going on.
He couldn't get on, right?
And these guys who spoke English and liked Americans were like, we got you.
Got him onto the train.
And then from wherever they were at, oh, from Naples to Rome, these guys that got him on a train just smoked crack the entire time they were on the train.
And he was like, and he was like, what are you guys smoking?
And they were like, oh, it's cocaine, but it's like hard.
It's really dense.
It's, it's even better.
They're like, no, it's like, don't worry.
It's like just cocaine that you smoke and is in rock form.
Don't worry about it.
I love how the description of the crack cocaine that he gives is a more affordable and profitable substance.
It's almost like it was designed to be available to very poor people.
Almost by design.
So, we just talked about how Keisha was willing to do anything to take care of the kids, how Terrence K. Williams was forced to, like, fight with his siblings over a scarce resource, and how that led him to his individualist mindset that he has today.
And then we get this passage, at 11 years old Keisha got pregnant.
Ramping up the tension between her and my mom.
I am sure that it didn't help that my mom was also pregnant at the time.
Keisha thought she was all grown up at that age.
My mom disagreed, but it wasn't as if she willingly shouldered her responsibilities.
They fought and fought.
Whenever Keisha left following a blow up with my mom, she would disappear for days at a time.
She was torn continuously between fighting with my mom and the feelings of responsibility that she had for us.
She knew that without her we would suffer much more than if she was around.
This kept her coming back.
Keisha ended up getting kicked out of the house because of her pregnancy, but she and my grandma would check on us when they could.
Soon enough, Keisha's baby was born and my mother gave birth to my little brother, Norman Jr.
Keisha would become pregnant twice by the age of 13.
God damn.
And so Terrence in this book doesn't say like, he doesn't say what year he was born.
I'm assuming it was some time around 1990 since he cites the crack epidemic of the 90s.
He looks to be about our age, probably a few years younger than us.
He doesn't say either what age his mom was when she started having kids.
I think he was the fifth kid.
Now, was his mom perhaps Keisha's age when she got pregnant for the first time?
Was she perhaps even older, you know, but still very young?
Does Terrence hold the same scorn for his older sister Keisha who got pregnant at 11?
Does he hold the same like oh well she made her choice?
I mean he describes her as getting pregnant and not as being raped or you know that this is a really fucked up thing to talk about but yeah but I think as a conservative that's not a question you ask.
I think that I think that you only talk about the result because like the thing that we're like you know that that is being kind of not acknowledged throughout this whole thing is is the idea of like
of choice is like hey you know you don't have to have this baby like just just because you got pregnant well it's every choice except that choice exactly it's you have all these choices to do things but you you don't have that choice and when he describes Keisha he says Keisha got pregnant That's not the way I would describe an 11-year-old child coming to be pregnant.
I wouldn't say that she got pregnant.
That's not really how I would describe it.
He's not a great writer, so I would maybe be charitable.
about the way he phrased this but it could be an insight into the underlying ideology of personal choice decision making even for an 11 year old girl who got pregnant i i think so especially at this point it's through the lens of i mean she's 11 that would make him like still very very young like four right so Less than that, two, three, yeah.
It's through a lens that, like, you're now much older writing this and thinking to yourself, like, well, I heard that I had a sister named Keisha who really took care of me, and then she got pregnant and that stopped happening, so obviously that sucks.
And like it's all it's like it's a weird thing to like I don't know it's a weird thing to write about it's a weird thing to like I don't know it's I mean it's also The way we remember and parse trauma is really interesting, so.
There's a lot behind this book.
When we get to Terrence meeting Trump, if I don't remember, try to remind me to bring up Keisha again.
When we get to the modern era.
Okay, I'll try.
I feel good about it.
So, he goes on to talk about a different, like, Norman Sr., who had, you know, fathered Norman Jr., who was his newest baby brother.
More often than not, he only chose to feed his kids while the rest of us went without, our bodies and brains sluggish from malnutrition.
When Keisha found out, she hit the roof, hollering and screaming and fighting with him and my mom.
My mom had her arrested.
Keisha was nine months pregnant at the time, but she was taken to jail.
Eventually, Keisha's life got too complicated and she had to give her own two children to the Department of Human Services, DHS.
So, this passage is fascinating to me.
It's fascinating to me that he can speak about how his sister... I mean, okay, let me keep reading real quick.
I wish that I could say that I dreamed of a life where everything was different, but at that time I didn't know that life could be any different.
The chaos, starvation, violence, abuse, and neglect were all usual to me.
I just wanted to fill my aching stomach and survive the challenges that each day presented.
I hadn't yet learned to stand up and fight for myself, but I had seen Keisha do that consistently for us.
This left a strong impression in my mind.
It taught me that if we see injustice, we need to address it and stand up for what is right.
So... How is that translating to the way you are now?
Well, he sees a bunch of people bullying Donald Trump and he stands up for what's right.
He stands up for the little guy, Donald Trump.
This passage, what we've been reading up to this point is...
Keisha being a pregnant preteen, a child pregnant, twice before the age of 13, nine months pregnant with her second child, so I'm assuming 13 or you know 12, getting arrested Literally getting arrested.
It doesn't say, oh, the cops like, you know, uh, uh, whatever, settled the situation, took Keisha and got her arrested.
Yeah.
She says she was arrested when she was nine months pregnant.
Yeah.
Which like with her second child, which means there were like hours and hours and hours where her other child was not being attended to by their mother.
And it was at the fault of the state and her and her mother.
So wild.
How are you going to be a bootlicker after that experience?
I don't fucking know.
How are you going to worship cops after that experience?
I don't get it, you know?
How are you going to say, she did what was right, she stood up, and she got arrested for it, and that's all cool and good, and everything should stay the same.
You should continue to arrest pregnant children for standing up against child abuse.
I'm surprised he didn't say, like, he didn't say, like, um, had her arrested for assault.
Or, like, qualifying it, you know?
Something like that, because just saying had her arrested for fun times is a really weird thing to say from, I don't know, I'm just surprised he didn't try to justify the arrest more.
No, I mean it doesn't fit the narrative here.
The narrative is that she stood up, she showed him the way to stand up in the face of adversity and it's just ironic that the face of adversity is like a carceral system.
What he got out of it was like, when you're in trouble, just call the cops.
This story is what he learned from his mom, not about what happened to his sister.
And then also, eventually Keisha's life got too complicated, and she had to give her own two children to the Department of Human Services. - Yes. - My 13-year-old sister's life got too complicated, so, oh, she had to give her children to DHS.
You know she was like she was just going through a lot of stuff at that time and it's like What narrative is this?
I do it's it's obviously he's like he loves Keisha obviously he sees her as like a heroic figure in his life but she was also forced to give up her children whether but you know it's vague about this but whether it was like state mandated or whether she like voluntarily gave them up or whatever This other, I mean child, I'll say girl, I was gonna say woman, but it's still a fucking child.
Yeah, yeah.
This girl had to, also was unable to care for her children because she was a girl raised in trauma, raised in like, you know, neglect and drug abuse and all this.
And it's like, why is he giving her a pass?
Well, it's very clear that he has an emotional connection to her.
I wonder if he was like the oldest child of his of his mother if he would have like seen her At the beginning when she when her quote life got complicated if he would have extended the same You know, you know the same what do you call it?
Like niceties to his own mother?
I think what makes it so heartbreaking and what makes him think of it this way is that he knew Keisha to choose to take care of him.
So obviously when it came time for her kids to be taken care of by somebody else, that was not her fault because he knew that she chose him.
Right.
So she chooses to do that.
But his mom chose not to.
When it happened to Keisha, he knows Keisha's better than his mom.
So therefore, it was not a choice.
It was something else that had to happen there.
So I kind of get that qualifying.
It's really interesting.
Well, it's all just still anecdotal experiences.
It's just like, I liked Keisha.
Keisha did good things for me.
So when she was beaten down and totally had nowhere else to go by this system, I accept that.
I accept that reasoning.
I accept that fake.
Exactly.
But my mom, I didn't like her.
I experienced my mom at her worst, at her lowest moment.
Therefore, she was a taker.
She was a welfare queen.
She was just, you know, leeching off the state.
And she's bad.
Yeah, like I said, her mom makes choices to do this.
Keisha's was not a choice.
He goes on talking about children from really rough circumstances.
Children, they need a chance and opportunity to be nurtured and grow.
Thankfully, I was given that chance.
The first foster home that I remember being placed in was the Solomons.
And they were extraordinary.
A married couple in their 60s, they raised their children and then ended up adopting and taking care of some of their grandchildren.
They had a real heart for children and they had a great home for a scared little boy to be placed.
And it's very funny because he talks about how, listen, all you need is an opportunity in this country, right?
Right.
Like that's kind of the conservative ethos, that is the bootstraps ethos.
We don't have freedom of outcome, we have freedom of opportunity.
Equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome.
But when he's talking about a quality of opportunity, he's talking about a stable home with an income, with food, with resources, a lot of stuff that costs money.
Stuff that has like a material foundation.
So you can't talk about like opportunity in the abstract sense of you were given a choice.
Did you take the red pill or the blue pill?
It's like you're talking about opportunity in the sense that you had a bedroom.
and you had a breakfast and a lunch and a dinner and you had education like he talks about this um this family uh i can't remember what the way he phrases it but it said they arranged they were able to arrange for me to have speech therapy because he talks about how he had a stutter growing up And it's like, they weren't quote, able to arrange for you to have speech therapy.
They had enough money to buy you speech therapy.
Yes, exactly.
They had access to something.
That's what you mean when you're talking about opportunity.
When we're talking about opportunity and his like weird delusion about it, it really comes back to Wick, right?
Because like, like, sustenance is not opportunity because sustenance was a voucher at one point in time that was handed to you.
Now your mom decided to sell it for money to go buy crack.
And so therefore, that's not opportunity, that's just what it's supposed to be.
Not realizing that yes, this stuff has a monetary value.
And it costs money.
You had a voucher that is valuable and worth money.
And so it is that disassociation with what opportunity is.
Yeah, money is opportunity and vice versa.
Absolutely, yeah.
Their family gave me the stability that I so desperately needed.
Life on the farm was hard work, but it was fun.
I would tag along behind Papa as he taught me how to work on the farm.
Quote, Clarence, come help me out in the yard, he bellowed, the rich timber of his voice carrying to Mama while she worked in the kitchen.
Quote, it is Terrence, she hollered back at him with a laugh.
John, his name is not Clarence.
It is Terrence.
Papa knew that my name was Terrence, but the name Clarence stayed in his mind for some reason.
It wasn't out of lack of care or out of malicious intent.
He just could never get it right.
It didn't bother me though.
If he called, I came running just as fast as my tiny legs could carry me, excited to follow him around the farm.
Pawpaw was a hard worker himself and didn't allow slacking in others.
However, he didn't just boss other people around.
He worked shoulder-to-shoulder with them to accomplish the tasks for that day.
He had grown up picking cotton and embraced hard work.
Every day we tended the cows, cared for the horses, and kept the barn clean.
I had daily chores that I learned to keep up with and helped in the field.
So it's interesting to me that he's talking about this farm family who's like 60 years old and is adopting a bunch of children out of the goodness of their heart who also work the field and do chores around that.
Yes and don't remember their names but it's okay they don't remember the names because like Papa doesn't have to remember the name because he's a hard worker.
So he doesn't have to.
You know he's of good stock.
I know he knew my name.
But Clarence was just in there and he was like, go clean out the stables.
This is a bunch of speculation on my part.
I don't think there's anything wrong with getting your kids to do chores or getting your kids to help around with the house.
But it really sounds like they were running a business here.
Yeah, no.
Jokes aside, foster children sweatshops are a real thing.
That's a real thing.
And it sounds like Terrence all the time found a good one.
If it was one, it sounds like he found a good one.
So more power to him.
Uh, hey, farm, farm, live into good living.
It gives you good stock, gives you some good character.
I, I, I give a lot of thanks to my time I spent on a farm.
Um, I, I created a lot of that to my, uh, my hearty, my hearty, uh, stock.
They it's, it's funny also like extrapolating from this, he's like, I think you know he doesn't come out and explicitly say it but I think this is like it's like a Facebook meme it's like a generational Facebook meme about how my mom is the welfare queen who just looks at phone and and smokes crack all day and I was
Thankfully fostered by a 60 year old couple who knew what like knew what actual living was about you know who knew what how to enjoy life and how to take care of themselves which is by owning property and a farm and it's it seems to me to be missing the larger point of like you have to reach back to the previous generation in order to find a stable household Yeah, that's that's huge.
That's a that's a real ass thing.
You have to go back that far to be like, oh, this is like we have a place to stay for like without worrying about it.
Well, like an established like an established, you know, security and stability and all that like.
That's not as common as it once was.
And I'm not surprised that they go back to a 60-year-old couple who has a farm and capital and all this to be like, there was something Papa figured out that my mom couldn't.
That all you need is a sprig of integrity and also three acres of land and you can do whatever you want with it.
Yeah, yeah.
The world is your oyster.
Uh, he talks about, um, having to go back to his mom who, uh, got clean.
Uh, the Solomons are gonna move because Mamaw's mom, like, had medical complications so they went to go take care of Mamaw's mom.
He goes back to his own mother, and he's like, again, four or five at this time.
I understand the decision to keep me in Oklahoma.
My mom was still trying to get us back.
She wasn't necessarily working as hard as she could, but that was part of the problem of her addiction to drugs.
Her decision-making skills were affected, and she wasn't in a good position mentally to make wise choices, especially regarding emotional decisions, such as what was best for her children.
So, again, he's acknowledging that his mom has, like, real, actual fucking problems.
She's not just deciding to be bad.
She's not deciding to be a bad person.
She has a literal, like, you know, chemical impairment.
Okay, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, totally.
And yet he doesn't take this into consideration when looking at the larger problem.
Let's move on to a happier time, which is Terrence discovering his gift of gab.
Oh man.
Oh man.
Our monologue master over here.
I've never heard anyone say so much while saying so little.
Terrence, let's talk outside, instructed Mr. M.
I followed him outside, scared that I was about to be suspended.
Tonight is the awards banquet, he informed me.
I was going to present these three awards to you, he said, fanning them out in front of me.
Each award was different.
One was for the most improvement with my grades.
One was for being a good Samaritan and helping other students in the class.
And I think the final one was for Academic Achievement.
I didn't get to glance at them for long before he snatched them away.
He tore each of the awards up in front of me and said, I was going to give you these awards, but you can't even shut up.
Get back to class and be quiet.
Wow, I said.
Well, damn.
He was right.
I was causing disruption in class, but pulling a Pelosi and ripping those papers up It didn't inspire me to be quiet.
The talking probably covered some inner turmoil, but it also gave me a voice to express myself.
That's the second joke in this book.
There's one joke at the beginning where he talks about peeing his pants.
And then there's this one about Nancy Pelosi.
In my childhood, I was shuffled around so much from foster home to foster home that I often felt that my voice didn't matter.
When I was in class or at school and could talk with a captive audience, I knew that my voice mattered and that there were people who were willing to listen to me.
This was important.
It is one thing to talk and never be heard and another thing to entirely make an impact with your words.
I wanted my words to matter.
And so he's talking about disobeying his teachers and causing a stink in class or whatever, but he felt good and it gave him validation.
That's also what black students get arrested for in modern days.
If you disrupt a class enough and your skin is a certain color, you will get the cops called on you.
I remember getting the cops called on me in high school and getting suspended for inciting a riot.
Like Donald Trump.
I got multiple referrals that had the words inciting a riot.
Well you gotta tell this story.
You gotta say how you incited a riot because that's really cool.
I think I was being a smart ass to a substitute.
That was it.
I was being funny and the class laughed.
They turned on the sub because I was funnier than the sub was.
This whole thing about Terrence, I identify with Terrence here.
Like I also would get the most improved award and like the nice kid award because I think that's the award that you give like the kid that talks too much in school because you need someone to pay attention to them because they're not getting a lot of attention paid to at home.
Well see look at how your life could have gone differently if you'd simply made the right choices.
I know, it sucks because I clearly have the superior bone cleaning skills, I think.
I think if you were to analyze my sugar cane bone and his actual chicken bone, my sugar cane bone is way cleaner.
One time, one of my high school teachers called my mom crying.
Uh-huh.
And my mom was like, oh my god, like my son's dead.
Is this like the one teacher that we actually had together?
No, it's a different one.
Okay.
This one liked me.
Oh man.
She called my mom crying, and my mom, and she was like, it's about your son Alex.
My mom was like, oh fuck.
He died!
Oh god, Alex died at school today.
What happened?
And she said like, oh, he's, he's so, he's, he's so smart, but I just don't know what to do with him.
And my mom laughed in her fucking face over the phone, like out of, out of relief, but also like, what?
Your mom's like, bitch, I thought he exploded, like in class.
I thought he was dead now.
What are you doing?
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I identify with this.
I made, I made fucking jokes all day throughout class and I, and I talked back, but also like, I don't know, I wasn't a piece of shit and I didn't like, I don't know, uh, become, become, uh, antagonistic towards the poor.
Right?
Oh my God.
Exactly.
So, he talks, you know, he talks about how his disruptions in class was actually like his saving grace and it like, you know, put him on the path to where we see him today.
But like he said, it's not even his good humor or his jokes, he was like, I would just laugh real loud.
Oh, we haven't gotten to that part.
I soon realized that all the statistics that emphasize the negative aspects about the foster care experience, and the numbers that show us why foster kids shouldn't be successful, do not take into account some specific things.
They add up all the negative experiences and tell foster kids they won't succeed because of this.
They should be teaching them the opposite.
Foster children should know that because of these challenges, they will be stronger.
They have been trained in a gauntlet of bad experiences to do better and face hard things and survive.
They are tested and pushed, often experiencing horrors that most people can't imagine, But yet, when they make it through, they should know that they are strong.
Most people would fold in the face of similar challenges.
Use this knowledge and strength when you encounter new difficulties that you have faced hard things before and will make it through whatever problems are up ahead.
What's incredible here is, like, go ahead and look up Terrence K. Williams on IMDb.
In the same search.
No, look in the same search and look up, like, safe spaces.
And see how he feels about, like, people being, like, helped.
What he's advocating for is, like, hey, we need to, like, talk to people and address what they're going through.
And, like, his whole career is based on not doing that.
Well, he's advocating for, like, two things simultaneously.
He's saying, like, you need to give people with these harsh experiences opportunities.
You need to give them room to grow.
You need to understand where they're coming from, etc, etc.
But also, those people have no excuse for their own future because they should, like, Know that they're stronger because they survived or whatever.
Um, basically what he's advocating for is a sort of like Seleucus, uh, Secundus type prison planet, uh, where everybody is relegated to the harshest treatment possible.
However, they are given the secret knowledge that they are better than average humans and therefore they become the most terrifying fighting force in the Dune universe until...
The discovery of the native inhabitants of Arrakis who have suffered far more than the imperial Sardaukar and therefore pose an even greater threat to the empire.
Goddamn right.
So let's hope that Terrence gets a little racketalized after the latest theatrical release of Dune.
When we get to see that.
It's just, so it's funny, this is like pure dumb guy shit.
This is like pure dumb Facebook guy stuff and I love it.
I soon realized that all the statistics that emphasize the negative aspects about the foster care experience, that sentence right there is nonsense.
The statistics that emphasize the negative aspects about the... No, the statistics just say what it is.
They don't emphasize one way or another.
They just say that it is bad.
It's a strict analysis.
It's nothing else.
It's like...
They say that it's bad and he's like well they say it's bad you know.
They add up all the negative experiences and tell foster kids that they shouldn't succeed because of this.
So he's taking like the factual data and saying that hey this is what is forced down our throats is is we get scientists and statisticians every day coming into the foster care system saying You won't amount to anything!
You are a subhuman piece of filth!
You are not ready for success!
Yeah, it sounds like you're just describing emotional boot camp.
Like, this is a good thing.
You're describing the literal, factual, statistical outcomes of this system, and you are saying that those outcomes are responsible for the conditions of the system.
It makes no sense.
It's completely backwards logic.
It's like meme logic.
It's very funny to me.
You should just tell them- It sucks because- You should tell all of them that they're good, actually, and then they will be good.
But when I say tell them that they're good, I mean- I don't mean don't arrest them.
I don't mean, like, don't, uh, you know, send them to the- to, uh, the principal's office for- for outbursts, or call the sheriff on them.
I just mean say, hey, uh, you could- you could visit the president one day, and then they'll all be good.
Yeah, what really sucks about this too is that this conversation goes a little like, hey Terrence, listen, so things are going to be a little bit harder for you, but this is why.
Here's some stats, this is some research we have.
It's not because of you.
It's not personal.
It's your unfortunate circumstances.
Please know that.
Now try to work within those confines and just know you don't suck.
Everything around you sucks.
It's not you.
And Terrence was still like... You don't... No, don't say that.
You don't say that.
This is not... This is... Fuck a stat.
I'm different.
It's just weird.
It's just weird to look at statistics and be like, those statistics are too pessimistic.
Throw that shit out.
It's Han Solo telling C3, never tell me the odds.
I'm going to make it to the White House whether you like it or not.
Oh man, he did make it to the White House in just a couple parsnips.
He made it to the White House in a couple of parsnips and nobody could stop him.
Uh, I was sitting in one of my middle school classes when a stern-faced teacher called me into the hallway.
Terrence, why are you running around the hallways making all that noise when you were supposed to be in class?
The teacher admonished.
Admonished?
Interesting word.
It wasn't me, I replied, knowing- Thanks, editor.
He would have had to hire his own editor, I think.
Like, I don't think he got a publishing deal or anything like that.
Someone had to come through this thing.
It wasn't me, I replied.
I mean, it's not good, but still.
There's still a few typos in here.
It wasn't me, I replied, knowing full well that it actually was.
Quote, I know that it was you.
We could hear you laughing.
Nope.
Oh my god.
I know that it was you.
We could hear you laughing.
Nobody else has that laugh.
You laugh out loud and it carries all the way down the hall.
You just laugh and it brings light to the universe.
I know it was you.
You are not going to sit here and call me a liar, he replied.
I don't want to call you a liar, but y'all are lying.
It wasn't me, I deadpanned.
But I was the culprit.
I knew it.
And he knew it.
My distinctive laugh had given me away.
It wasn't just chatter that bubbled out of me.
My laughter did too.
If I thought something was funny, then I couldn't keep it inside.
My laughter spilled out loudly and would spread to other people.
If I laughed, they would laugh, and a chain reaction would start that was contagious.
What is the point of this story?
It's to show how he's funny.
But it's just like the whole thing is like... Yeah, so like the teacher caught me, right?
But I like lied to him and told him it wasn't me.
But they like still knew it was me.
But I didn't tell him it was me.
But they knew it was me the whole time.
I still got in trouble.
Me telling him it wasn't me was kind of pointless.
It didn't help me at all.
But I told him it wasn't me.
But it shows him like, it shows him being a foster kid though.
It shows him being like an urban youth that he said to a teacher, nah, y'all, y'all's lying.
Like that's him being like a ne'er-do-well.
That's him like still on the wrong, you know, wrong side of the tracks there for his fucking 60 year old white audience who's, who's buying this book.
You know what I mean?
Totally who it is, yeah.
This is like misbehaving.
He's talking about running through the hallways laughing.
That's his juvenile delinquent story.
Instead of being in class, I was running through the halls and laughing and everybody heard my laugh and they thought it was so funny.
The teachers knew it was my laugh because it made everyone else laugh and they said, only Terrence has a laugh that effective.
I want to hear the teacher tell this story.
I was like hey man like you have this goofy ass laugh we know it's you and also you said it's Terrence and and so like I know it's you so if you could just not do that and then he just kept on telling me it wasn't him and then laughing the exact laugh I told him I just heard and I was like you're you're still in trouble you're still you're doing it right you're still going still going to the detention if you laugh again it's gonna be I'm gonna add days
Although my teachers couldn't get me to stop joking or talking, there was one person who was always listening.
No jokes, just laughs.
No jokes.
Although my teachers couldn't get me to stop joking or talking, there was one person who was always listening.
And that was my Heavenly Father, God.
Who the whole time was like...
Good one, Terrence.
You really got him there.
I can't believe you told him that wasn't you laughing when it was clearly you laughing.
Hilarious, Terrence!
In my darkest moments, I simply lifted my eyes to the sky and I heard...
*Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo* *laughter* *laughter* I love Godfigure doing Arsenio Hallpark.
Like, I love... I want that so bad.
Yeah, that's right!
He said it!
Just fucking Terrence's imaginary, like, audience of God.
Like, he's got an imaginary laugh track.
He's got an imaginary holy laugh track.
Imagine God being like, no he didn't!
No he did not!
It's just God.
It's just God doing, like, like, deaf comedy jam.
It's God all like, oh snap!
God's like slapping his knee and wiping out entire civilizations because of how funny Terrence K. Williams is.
Corona is just a result of a Terrence K. Williams joke actually.
My relationship with him would get me through all the hardships and challenges that I endured.
He was always there and was always ready to hear my endless chatter as I reached out to him in prayer.
I also realized that God made me exactly the way that he did for a purpose.
Yes, I talked a lot, laughed, was curious, questioned things, and goofed around.
These were annoying traits to have as a student in a classroom, but they were also traits that God had given me to use to glorify him.
I couldn't have known then the direction that God had for my life and how he planned to use it, but I was beginning to recognize that those traits or gifts could be positive if used correctly.
And honestly, that's when I have to give big ups to Father God, to Father God Jesus, to Christ King.
Because imagine if he would have given Terrence K. Williams the ability to dunk.
Unstoppable.
We would have never seen this.
He probably would have been unsufferable.
You know, but God decided to make them very small.
I like that he's like, no, God made me this way.
Like, you know, this is just how I am.
This is how God, you know, God, God gave me the ability to laugh and like interrupt class.
And yeah, sure.
God gave my mom the ability to have a severe dependence on crack cocaine.
And that's the way he made her.
And if she just used that God given ability the right way, maybe she could have made it something of herself.
No, honestly, if she would have just put as much energy and effort into an education as she did crack, who knows?
How old was she?
Could she have written the Ten Crack Commandments if she had applied herself?
Man, that song hits a really bizarre nostalgic note for me.
I just went on a whole journey right now.
I saw your eyes become unfocused like you were looking at God.
Yeah, I was like, "Oh shit, yeah." Yeah, it's just, this is what God gets, you know, sometimes God gives you the ability to laugh, sometimes he gives you a debilitating disease, and you know, it's just what you make of it.
Hello, Alex here from the future, by which I mean 1:30 a.m.
Far more drunk than I was during the recording of this episode.
Far closer to my start time tomorrow, which I'm realizing I don't even...
I don't know what time that is.
I'll have to call and annoy them tomorrow morning to find out.
Okay, this was part one of our episode on Terrence K. Williams from the Foster House to the White House episode.
We are going to release the second half in the main feed as well, once again as a thank you to everybody who stuck with the irregular schedule during the holiday season.
We appreciate you folks.
We love you folks.
Just to cement some plugs in here, listen to the ButtFest 2000 miniseries on Street Fight Radio's Patreon feed.
That is patreon.com slash streetfightradio p-a-t-r-e-o-n dot com slash streetfightradio.
Fans of that awful sound will very much enjoy that miniseries.
Listen to our appearance on the Struggle Session Patreon feed.
I believe the link is struggle.sesh, but you can also go to their Twitter feed and discover the correct link or just search them on Patreon.
I'm sure you'll find it out.
And as well, Tony was a guest on the Turnip... Shit, one second.
This is the Turnip Greens Radio Podcast.
It is the most recent episode.
You will hear a more detailed description of that in the latter half of the second half of this episode.
I'm reading here from the SEO.
It is a podcast about farming in capitalism and climate catastrophe.
Tony sounded like he had a lot of fun on that.
I have yet to listen to it, but Tony talks about his cooking, his veganism, and also the co-op he's starting.
So, Turnip Greens Radio.
Turnip like, you know, the vegetable.
And you can of course support Minion Death Cult at Patreon.com slash MinionDeathCult P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash MinionDeathCult where $3 a month will get you a bonus episode every week including every week of December and the first half of January where we were doing Patreon only releases.
Look out for the second half of this episode, which is less depressing, frankly.
Coming pretty soon.
A couple days.
A day or two.
Alright, bye.
Give it a sec for the pain to start.
This wreck right here, it ain't for the faint of heart.
They thought they saw the worst verse from the team of G-Men who seemed like nerds at first.
Once they get to know us, people dig us.
Leaders in the fight for equal rights for niggas.
Inventor of the more demented afloat.
No bout it, doubt it, just go for it.
If you're bout it, bout it, or ride it, ride it.
Whatever's clever, the master phone, whoever you hook or hurt her.
But now, oh no, if we see tomorrow, the next day glasses.
The villain in the back with the x-ray glasses.
Have no fear, the ninja here.
Feel him like the tinge in your ear from drinking ginger beer.
When it's on, loco, head gon' lay low and eat it like beef patty, coco bread, con queso.
If you say so, lace the whole caseload.
They say he wear a metal mask in case his face show.
He told them they flow, spits talk and AOs.
His whole crew walk with pitchfork and halos.
Say ho if you never worked a J.O.
and keep more cash in the stash than a pay show.
Okay, yo, y'all know who to follow.
Tie him up in the crib and leave their place hollow.
Oh shoot, the goose she's loose.
So wild you couldn't chase it down with straight fruit juice.
Proud like the first time you taste goose goose.
Stash the deuce deuce.
Troops asking truce truce.
Today on Intense Wreck Week.
We have the super villain in his own defense to speak.
It's all part of my mental techniques.
Available to freaks and pencil neck geeks.
Train the same brain to an insane train of thought On a campaign trail he came to gain your support Charge cash for an autograph Say some shit to make your daughter laugh And slaughter the ass See him on the big screen like Steve McQueen Do something and never be back once he meet a scene Keep more medicated pads than Stridex Explore his own side record with no known side effects Before you press charges use your noodle So what when he grabbed the mic he crushed your cuticles Keep your mouth shut everything would be beautiful It would be awfully hooty Now get back to your hooty who Damn it it ain't worth the drama can it
From the calm bandit eat rhymers like pomegranate Soon as he stepped in he lit the room Boom reschedule my noon with Britt Hume In love with Mary Jane she's my main thing Pulled her right from that web head what a lame brain Maintain and say it don't spray it You wanna see a girl again you might as well pay it If I had a dime for every rhymers that bust guns I have a cool bill for my sons and trust funds When I was broker than a broke dick dog I always kept a L to smoke and thick fog When it rained and saw through thunderstorm I got more rhymes in the summer than musty underarms
One, two, microphone checkup.
First learn to neck off a home-eck home wrecker.
This was back when he was like Cribbage.
When he hit the stage, it's like a gauge to the ribcage.
Break the mic like a rock star, break a guitar.
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