We've demonized law enforcement to the point where there are far fewer rewards for being a hero
This week Aaron Thorpe of Trillbillies and Everybody Loves Communism helps us tackle the recent mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde Texas, the incredible response from police, and the right wing's attempt to digest the complete failure of their worldview. Support the show for $3.11/month at http://patreon.com/miniondeathcult to get a bonus episode every week, access to hundreds of hours of bonus content, and to help us support abortion rights networks in red states, where half the money we earn on Patreon for the month of May will be going. Stickers available at http://miniondeathcult.com Music: Ishmael Ensemble - Feather Horse Jumper of Love - Ugly Brunette
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, and we'll show you exactly what it looks like when people go to school and get yourself.
Oh, they're in Bartholstein.
Stay tuned.
All right, I'm Alexander Edward.
And I'm Tony Boswell.
And we are Minion Death Cult.
The world is ending.
Defunding the police, I'm assuming, is responsible.
We're documenting it.
What's up, everybody?
Thank you so much for tuning in.
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It's great content.
We're really proud of the stuff we did there, like the episode we did with LowCultureBoy last week where we covered a guy Who had strong opinions about women riding horses.
And why men should not allow them to do that.
A lot of strong feelings about horses in general that he gets into in sort of granular detail about the physiology of a horse.
Very interesting.
And then just his whole manifesto about men and masculinity and what you're doing wrong as a man, losing your masculinity.
One of the key things you're doing wrong as a man is smiling.
Uh, laughing, laughing at other people's jokes, things like that.
Yeah, I've been meaning to say, uh, we've been posting some pretty major L's, uh, with some, some, some, like, grinning and just, like, I caught some videos that you posted with straight up joy in them.
And that's obviously how we got to where we're at today as America.
So thanks for that.
Very good content on the Patreon.
Patreon.com slash MinionDeathCult.
One of our favorite episodes from the Patreon, from behind the paywall, was with our guest today, Aaron Thorpe from Trillbillies and Everybody Loves Communism.
How you doing, Aaron?
I'm good, man.
Thanks for having me back on.
It's always a pleasure to be with y'all.
Really appreciate it.
You're welcome.
I'm sure the listeners who aren't subscribed to the Patreon yet will be pleased to hear you.
The episode we did with you a couple months ago was about the... I think it was a city councilwoman spreading the rumor on Facebook that a school had put litter boxes in the bathroom for furries to use.
Yes.
And you know what, thinking about it now, man, where we are, just a couple months later, because it wasn't that long ago, I'm sort of seeing from a kind of like, like, telescopic, like aerial view, sort of the makings of this culture war shit, you know, because like, we were laughing about I mean, not to say that, like, it wasn't going on in a similar manner as is now.
But we were laughing at the fact that these motherfuckers thought that kids were shitting in litter boxes.
And now, People are getting fired from their jobs and getting harassed and yeah, it's a yeah Yeah, yeah, all that stuff is just is a very clear attack on teachers and public school teachers in particular Which is ironic, you know giving given what we kind of have to talk about today Really messed up stuff obviously the shooting in in Yvalde, is that how you pronounce it?
I haven't watched any actual news footage about it.
Yeah, I've heard it said a couple different ways, but that sounds right to me.
You've all done it.
The 19 children that were killed and the two teachers that were also killed in a mass shooting at a school by an 18-year-old who had just freshly purchased some firearms, clearly had extreme problems, had exhibited warning signs before this.
Apparently, Multiple women had tried to report him for harassment and for threats.
Those were, you know, not surprisingly ignored.
Just unspeakable stuff that was only, I think, underscored by the police response to this shooting or, you know, lack of response.
It's been reported that police Waited outside for about anywhere from 40 to... An hour maybe?
A little over an hour.
I'm hearing reports of like...
of like 70 minutes outside waiting for something.
Reports say that the cops thought the shooter was already done with what he was going to do so there wasn't any urgency to enter the school if you know what I mean.
Also stopping parents from trying to get in.
I mean, I think one lady had to jump.
She escaped.
She got away from them and jumped over a fence and went in and got her kids, I think.
But yeah, the cops just literally telling people to wait while children are being slaughtered inside.
Yeah, that's wild because I know I'd be dead that day.
I'm doing a suicide by cop that day.
It keeps compounding and getting worse.
We're seeing every moment something overturns.
It's getting worse and worse.
It's a more bleak situation than we fathomed even when it first happened.
Every corner we turn, and we know when Ballistas comes back, we're going to find out some stuff about cops too.
Yeah.
So all that stuff, all that stuff, but it's just getting worse.
You know, it's just as bad as it could be.
Let me read some reporting here about the cops' reaction to this.
This is from the AP.
This is one of the, you know, first pieces of reporting that came out.
Cops stood outside the school while the killer rampaged inside.
Onlookers yelled at them to go in.
They didn't.
One parent urged bystanders, quote, let's just rush in because the cops aren't doing anything like they are supposed to.
Mm hmm.
There's video of cops threatening parents on one.
I would I would assume parents back handcuffing them, wrestling them to the ground, parents on the ground.
Yeah.
The cops are have their back to the school and are facing the parents who are Who want to actually do something, obviously.
Here's more reporting.
I think it's from the Wall Street Journal.
Quote, the police were doing nothing, said Anjali, or Anjali Rose Gomez, who, after learning about the shooting, drove 40 miles to Robb Elementary School, where her children are in second and third grade.
They were just standing outside the fence.
They weren't going in there or running anywhere.
Ms.
Gomez, a farm supervisor, said that she was one of the numerous parents who began encouraging, first politely and then with more urgency, police and other law enforcement to enter the school.
Can I just say, I just want to say and highlight for a minute that imagine that your child is possibly being murdered and you have to beg the police to do their fucking job.
Like I just want to underscore that how insane, to ask politely for the police to do their fucking job.
I mean, sorry, sorry Alexander, go ahead.
You gotta ask politely or else you'll get tased.
Like they were trying to do something to parents.
Like they were trying to do to parents.
Um, more from here.
So this is, uh, doo-doo-doo.
After a few minutes, she said federal marshals approached her and put her in handcuffs, telling her she was being arrested for intervening in an active investigation.
Oh my god.
It's, at this point, investigation?
See, this is, this is the thing, right, is that There's either two things, right?
One is that you take it at face value that they didn't have an understanding of what was going on inside, and they thought that the shooter had already done what he had done, right?
Which, I mean, even if you want to take that at face value, that's fucking insane, right?
But more importantly, and probably what it really is, is that they're fucking cowardly.
You know?
Is that they're scared.
They didn't want to go inside because despite all of the rhetoric around police, around law enforcement, despite all the resources that we give them, despite the fact that, like literally we have a National Police Week, which just fucking ended right before the shooting, right?
Yeah, it also corresponded with the anniversary of George Floyd's death is what National Police Week is.
How about that?
How about that awesomeness?
What the fuck, man?
I mean, dude.
I mean, I, yeah.
I mean, I don't know, man.
Just the police response.
I said something earlier when we were talking, is that usually when these mass shootings happen, it's fucked up that I'm even saying usually, right?
Like, this is normal.
But when they happen, right, it's like, you know, as far as I know, I've never known of an instance where the police were literally almost there as it was happening on site.
Usually they show up during or after.
And like, just the fact that They were there in time to possibly do something and still didn't fucking do anything.
So even if you wanted to make the case and all these other shootings that had happened, what if the police had been there punctually on time, right?
What if they had intervened?
This time they were fucking there and still didn't fucking do anything.
What I've read from the most current reporting, there seems to be confirmation that some police, whether it was the school resource officer or whether it was the local police, did engage the shooter like four minutes after he entered the school or after he was on the scene and then Went away.
And then retreated.
We should not, if that didn't work, that means we should not have heard his opinion on that.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, if that confrontation doesn't work, that means you should be dead.
You should be dead, because you, like the parents, who were ready, like the one woman mother who was ready to run towards bullets, right?
Yeah.
You would think that that's what the fucking cops would do.
And I mean, these are the motherfuckers, man, who are driving around in tanks.
Basically, they have this body armor.
They have like, I'm sure they have like fucking armor piercing rounds and shit.
Meanwhile, this guy didn't even have fucking a body armor on apparently.
No, he didn't.
You have all that equipment, man.
He had an empty plate carrier from everything I've read.
Jesus fucking Christ, man.
This was like their time to shine.
This was their time to go ahead and Batman this shit, and make us look silly.
And prove that they're not pussies, right?
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
They could've been like, nah man, we saved everybody.
Yeah, I would've taken the L. I would've taken the L. Yeah, I would've been like, damn.
I'd be like, still fuck the police, but these motherfuckers saved them kids.
OK.
But like we've talked about so many times, the rankings, they all just are so whipped.
they listen to each other so hard, they don't think for themselves.
Somebody up the chain did the value assessment.
Someone calculated the value of these children's lives and it wasn't worth it.
Like that, you know what I'm saying?
That's really it.
It's that simple.
Like they really were like, oh no, no, that's, like there is an actual monetary value to each one of these kids.
Well, I wouldn't even say, I mean, I would say not saving these kids is priceless to them.
It doesn't even have a monetary value because the value is their own lives.
And that's what they value over their actual, quote, duty.
Because as we know, they don't actually have a duty to intervene.
They do not, legally speaking, They do not have a duty to put their lives on the line, despite what you may think the job of the police department is, despite what, you know, the meme, the, I use that in a broad term, the cultural American idea of what a cop is.
That's not what they have to do.
That's not what they want to do.
They want you to think that's what they do because they get more money that way.
That's not what they actually do.
They have no actual requirement to put their life in danger whatsoever.
And in fact, If you've watched any of the police training that they do, every single training stems from them protecting their own life at all costs.
That's why they shoot people holding cell phones.
That's why they shoot people running away.
That's why they shoot at a fucking dog.
That's why they break into people's fucking homes and fucking shoot them in their sleep where they're fucking sleeping.
Yeah.
It's the way when, when, you know, you talk about police in the way of the warrior or whatever, uh, That even is a bit of police propaganda in and of itself because you think, oh, warrior, that's shorthand for someone who's valorous and somebody who like is selfless and will put their own lives on the line.
No, what the way of the warrior means is I am going to stop any threat that I think might be a threat to me personally so that I can go home and sleep soundly at night.
That's part of the training is teaching cops to be able to emotionally deal with the fact that they end life indiscriminately.
Absolutely.
And so this is, sorry, real quick, just to wrap it up, when we talk about training, when we talk about, oh, the cops need better training, better, they had the, this is what the training is.
The training is to protect themselves.
I remember this, remember a pretty early episode we were talking about the targets that cops use to desensitize themselves.
They have targets with their own children's names on them.
Oh my god, I remember that.
Do you remember that?
Their own children's names.
You know there's one department, I think it was in Florida, I don't know where exactly in Florida.
I saw that.
But the targets that they were shooting at now, right?
Yo bruh, they were like fucking, they were line up photos and shit of black men.
Right.
Actual, actual, actual, actual black man.
Right.
I mean, like, and this is the thing, man, is that after every shooting like this, like we saw the same thing in Buffalo.
Right.
Right.
There's always this push to give the cops more money.
Right.
Yeah.
Which we already know that the cops only not only can't prevent these things from happening, they can't even intervene.
Because of everything you just said, Alexander, the way of the warrior is to protect me and protect their gang, because that's what the cops are.
They're a fucking gang, right?
And the troubling thing about this, man, is that ... I mean, we can get into it.
I don't want to jump the gun, but it's important that not only do we not give these motherfuckers money, which when I say we, there's nothing that we can fucking do about this, right?
They're going to get more money.
I'm pretty sure that domestic terrorism thing the Democrats pushed through, I'm pretty sure that passed after Buffalo, right?
Yeah, voting blue, voting blue, even at a local level, is almost a guarantee that your cops will get more money.
Yeah.
Bro, you know what's actually, you just, you just made me think of something.
Scratch that last point, because you just made me think of something.
To highlight it, the same day that shooting happened, I walked into the polls and voted, man.
And the sort of like, cognitive dissonance that I like, I was aware, it wasn't even dissonance really, but the sort of, it was just, I mean, the fact that I went in there, I voted, right?
And then this happens hours later.
And then they're going to tell us, not only are we going to give them more money, but in order to stop this from happening, you need to get these Republicans out of office.
But you know what?
And I'm going to put it, I'm going to put, I'm just put a cap on after this.
Yo, I swear to God, like I don't mean to get in some conspiracy theory shit, man, but I swear to God, like the neglect And allowing these things to happen through neglect facilitates this like increasingly authoritarian like like just funding the policemen because what they want to do is they want to fucking crack down they want to use this shit excuse and when I say they I'm not saying it's some conspiracy with their twiddling their thumbs but how does it just work out that
After this shit happens, they give more money to the cops, there's more surveillance, the shootings don't stop, and the people that are most affected are people of color or left-wing activists, right?
Every time.
Every fucking time, yo.
Well, it's this, I mean, not to be glib or to be reductive or anything, but I would argue, you know, these mass shootings, Are one of the many symptoms of a fucking decaying, crumbling society with just no soul, no fucking cohesion whatsoever.
And so, yeah, the only thing you can do if you're not willing to upend the system, if you're not willing to fight for an entirely different system that doesn't dehumanize all of us, that doesn't sever these ties among all of us, If you're not willing to do that, the only answer is to just police the people that are left over.
Police the remaining population, and especially the people with less to lose.
Those people need even more policing.
The people with stuff, that have stuff to lose, you know, if you have a house or you have, maybe you're one of the few people with a job with a pension or whatever, maybe you don't need so much policing.
You're less likely to be... Yeah, you don't need as much.
You know?
Yeah, I think you were going to say something, Tony, before I shift gears just slightly.
No, no, I'm saying the same thing.
It's like, uh, uh, you know, with the whole, what are, what are we doing about it?
You know?
Uh, and it's funny how with the police and the money thing works is they're the only people who, when they're like, when they fuck up, we're like, okay, clearly we didn't support you enough.
But when we fuck up, that's just all on us, bro.
When it's like, we definitely need to be supported more.
Like they're, they're, they're, A lot of these things, very simply, you can take your red string and very easily Take these things and connect it to trying to meet, you know, trying to survive within capitalism, you know?
You can draw all these things together very, very fast.
But like, we don't get that support.
What if we were just like, hey, yeah, I fucked up, but you know what?
Hey, you know what?
I'm sorry.
We're going to give you an extra like 500.
Clearly you fucking blew it.
Can we not blow it this time?
I would love that, but they're the only people that get that privilege.
Yeah, totally.
This is almost like a perfect case because we have all this instant data.
40% of this community's money was tied up in the police.
They just got all these new resources.
Look at this marketing photo we have of our SWAT team.
Yeah, they were posting all big on Facebook about all the grants they got and all the gear they got, all the kits they got, and they got wiped out on Facebook.
They had to fucking turn commenting off on all their shit because of how badly people reacted to this, rightfully so.
Let me finish this, just this little blurb about Ms.
Gomez, who was arrested For trying to get to her children, Ms.
Gomez convinced local Uvalde police officers, whom she knew, to persuade the federal marshals to set her free.
Around her, the scene was frantic.
She said she saw a father tackled and thrown to the ground by police, and a third was pepper sprayed.
Once freed from her cuffs, Ms.
Gomez made her distance from the crowd, jumped the school fence, ran inside to grab her own two children.
She sprinted out of the school with them.
Poor thing.
Hero, you know what I mean?
Heroic shit that regular everyday people are more than willing to do in the face of this inaction.
And if you're noticing a similarity, Uh, between yeah, her or not a similarity, but if you're noticing a trend, uh, in the names that are coming out of the deceased, it is because this is a predominantly Hispanic community.
This is a community within 50 miles of the border, which grants them, uh, as under the jurisdiction of ICE.
Right.
And it's a border patrol, uh, was, They're on the scene, and I believe they're the ones that actually went into the school and confronted and killed the shooter.
Someone said he wasn't documented, so they decided it's time to go for it.
Yeah, they were like, OK, we got to get him now.
Oh, that's a step too far.
That's a step too far.
Oh, shit.
He's got these jugs of water in the back of his car.
He's planning to leave out in the desert.
Apparently he has a bag full of everyone's jobs.
He has everyone's jobs.
So I can't help but wonder, If a Hispanic community that is like apparently routinely harassed by both local police and border patrol about their immigration status, I can't help but wonder if that helped informed the response by the police.
Like you said, Tony, that calculus that they were doing, you know, okay, well, you know, it's my life for a bunch of people I don't know.
Oh, they're also Hispanics.
They're also people that might be undocumented.
Even less, even less of a worry for me.
Yeah, absolutely.
And the thing, too, is that, like, you know, I think there was an article that I read or something I saw on Twitter about how, you know, possibly some of these parents, like, I mean, victims who lost their kids, that their their immigration status is questionable.
Right.
So they could they're under threat of deportation, which is like imagine that The cops wouldn't let you go inside, right, to save your kid, or they wouldn't go inside to save your kid, wouldn't even let you go inside, your kid's dead, and now they're gonna deport you.
I mean, like, it's such a really good point, man, because I thought about it in a dark way when you were talking, Alexander, I was like, If it was a school, the fact that I even have to pose this is fucked up, but if it was a school full of white children, right, where they have ran in, and you know what, man?
I'll be honest with you.
I do think that race obviously played a fucking factor here, but you know what?
They're so fucking cowardly, man.
To this point, I don't fucking think they would, right?
I don't know if the outrage maybe would have been different.
I mean, the outrage, people are outraged, but you could imagine if it was a bunch of white parents.
Outraged now, and it's funny because, yeah, the response from the right wing is like, it isn't even in, like, acknowledging the race of the children or the location, like, they're just like, how could you let kids die?
And I mean, it's sad that it's a fucking tragedy that takes people to realize that it doesn't matter what fucking the immigration status of the children, their lives are precious, you know?
Yeah, go ahead.
One thing I think is really, I'm, you know, I'm kind of optimistic about is, When they mentioned that she knew some of the state troopers, right?
This is still a community, these people still know people.
The local police, yeah.
She knew some of the locals, right?
So, this is, I mean, hopefully, going to cause a rift now.
Because she can't trust those people, and even though they let her, they kind of helped her out a little bit, let her go, she can't trust them anymore.
No.
They cannot be.
Fuck that forever.
Furthermore, this has to be acknowledged too, a lot of this police force was Latinx.
A lot of them were.
But, as I've talked about so many times, white supremacy is so insidious.
It's so insidious that you're still going to go ahead and cape.
You're still going to go ahead and cape for the white man in that moment.
And I hope that that is something that, you know, because it's beyond as simple as just basic racism.
It's beyond that.
It's much more insidious than that.
This is a wanting to assimilate This is a wanting to be accepted.
This is a wanting to hope that if I do my job right, you'll run in for my kids.
Exactly.
Because you'll know that my kids are the good ones.
Well and it's the system the economic system is so tied up with like institutional white supremacy you know they're they're one in the same I mean it's not pure white supremacy white people aren't automatically not working class anymore or whatever but uh it's all wrapped up together and so it's like if you have benefited from this economic system say because you are a cop because you did get 40% of the city budget
To fill your pension, to put a new car in your fucking driveway, the house that you own, you got stuff to lose.
And it doesn't matter, you know, what your background, it might not matter what your background is because now you got something to lose.
You're like invested in the system.
So you're all intertwined with that shit.
Yeah.
I mean, have you thought about it?
Like, you know, I don't need to have, I don't need to have sympathy for like another brown person without documents because if you really, if you really wanted, you would just join the military.
Mmm, if you really wanted it and you were really down you would just do that, but you're not so I don't really I'm clearly down because I'm wearing this badge so, you know, I Mean about a thing about a two-man is just like, you know, and I mean, I know this might be trite but You know, whenever we talk about mass shootings, right, whatever's talked about on the news or these so-called experts and shit like that, like, it's very curious that, and I know this country, right, people like the Dems love to talk about institutional problems or systemic issues, but they never point to the system, right?
Yo, you never hear about the fact that this country was literally founded, you know what I'm saying, on the exploitation, right, the genocide of one race, right, and the slavery of another, you know what I'm saying?
Like, the fact that, like, In my Twitter comments, I had people like at a thread and I had some people fucking saying like, what do you mean white supremacy was a cause of it?
Did you know that the fucking guy was a Mexican too?
I was like, dude, like, why?
This happens nowhere else in the fucking world, right?
And I'm not saying that you America is uniquely evil, right?
But what makes it uniquely evil is just the fact that You had this fucking, what is it, the second amendment, so that they could fucking capture freed slaves, like escaped slaves, right?
And kill indigenous people, right?
That is literally the only fucking reason.
Do you think that the second amendment equally applies to everybody?
You think it applied to the Black Panthers?
When they fucking went into the fucking what the sense I was that I think was the San Francisco courthouse or some shit like that marching up with their guns.
That's why Ronald Reagan, who was the fucking governor at the time, implemented some of the toughest, strictest gun laws in the fucking country at the time.
Right.
That's why it's really hard for me to buy a gun in California right now, because the local law offices have to approve of my personal gun purchasing.
Yeah.
They, and me, and like they know me.
And so it's, uh, they make, they can make it quite difficult if they want to.
Thanks.
Thanks a lot.
Thanks a lot.
And of course that, that is, if people don't believe that, you know, uh, it is not, you know, evenly spread out.
Yeah.
They're going to make it harder.
If, if you, if, if, if your Instagram is popping, it's gonna, it might be hard for you to buy a gun if you're not saying the right things on there.
Yo, dude, I, I, I mean, That's a whole other thing, man, but it's also just what happens after shit like this is the cops get more money and they use it, right, in part to surveil the people that aren't even fucking... I mean, because as far as I know, I know this is the Buffalo shooting, but I would be surprised
I wouldn't be surprised if they knew about this ahead of time, but in the Buffalo shooting, there was a fucking ex-cop who was in these white supremacist group chats where the fucking shooter, 30 minutes before he did the shooting, told them about his fucking plan, and this fucking ex-cop didn't say shit, right?
So I wouldn't be surprised, right, as we learn more, if they, I mean, as far as I know, they knew about, as you were saying, Alexander, before that women at least had said that he had harassed them or threatened them, right?
There were problems.
And I mean, I want to be careful here because what do you do?
Do you swoop in and institutionalize somebody when they're fucking 16 or something like that, right?
But I mean, one thing I do know is that in terms of gun laws, yo, he bought the gun.
One thing they at least could have done, he bought the gun when he, as soon as he turned 18.
If he couldn't buy that gun until he was at least 21, right?
Yeah.
A couple years, maybe, right?
He would have went to therapy.
Well, maybe not because of this fucking country and especially in the neighborhood that he lived in, but you would have fucking hoped that that would have been a buffer of time.
Now, I'm going to push back on that only because I had to live on my own at 17.
I had to move out by myself at 17.
Um, and like when I was like 18 to like 21, I was probably doing my most like, I was probably living my most loose, I'll say, but, but, but, but just, just, just to make, just to make that money.
And so I definitely, that was something that I, that I needed at the time.
So, so like there, I think, I think everything's very circumstantial.
I think more importantly, I don't know, I don't know anything.
I mean, I know that's the, the very peripheral details of, of the shooter, but I think one thing I do know, and it's kind of the same now I'm hitting at, Is that this country has a habit of allowing kids to slip through the cracks.
Mm-hmm.
You know?
Like, you can't, like, you know, schools can, like, have counselors, like, follow up with you all the time.
You can do that.
They can schedule with a weekly meeting that you're gonna have to go to because you're in class.
Like, you know, they can they can do that.
That didn't happen.
No way.
No, no, no, no, no, no one.
No one told this guy.
Hey, Doug, so apparently you're like harassing people.
You're doing like bad things.
I'm saying like, what's going on?
No one did that ever.
And I'm not saying you know that.
But I'm saying that we have a the one thing I know for sure is that we have a habit of letting people slip through the cracks, slip through the cracks.
I mean, it's endemic.
You might like teachers or guidance counselors might have the authority to schedule a weekly meeting with with a kid who might be in trouble or whatever, not doing well.
I don't think we have the staffing.
I don't think any teacher has like the bandwidth or the time or the energy.
To do stuff like that, and so it's... I mean, we're gonna see a mass exodus of teachers because of everything that's been fucking happening in this country.
And rightfully so.
And rightfully so.
Well, it's just the obvious result of this.
I want to talk just again about the police response to this, because I cannot think of, like, a better metaphor for what cops actually do.
Uh, they have in, in these videos, in this reporting, they have their backs turned to an obvious ongoing crisis.
Uh, they have their backs turned to that crisis so that they can face and intimidate and prevent all of us from doing something about it.
Yeah.
That is to me, one of the clearest examples of what the police actually do in this country.
They're not, don't prevent crime.
They don't, They don't solve crimes.
What are like 10% of crimes solved?
Something like that.
They don't prevent these things.
They're there to make sure that we don't like take matters into our own hands.
You know, they're there to make sure that we can actually fundamentally Do good in this country, essentially.
And that sounds like a like a like a grand proclamation, a broad proclamation.
But it's like this is what we have been saying.
I mean, we know what the roots of all of these problems are.
They tend to be inequality, institutional racism, fundamental lack of health care, like we're talking about mental health care, physical health care.
Just the entire country is being gutted from the inside out, you know, and that is causing all of these problems.
And there's one force that they will ensure, or at least try to ensure, you know, that we can't do anything about it.
So, more reporting on the police in case you weren't mad enough about it.
CBS reported, officials say several law enforcement entities from across the state have been called in by Uvalde police to not only assist in supplementing their police force, but to also provide extra protection to officers and the mayor following heavy criticism and threats.
So they know when they actually have to, you know, defend stuff.
They know when they actually have lives, important lives on the line.
Yeah, bro.
I mean, man, it's just this thing that's happens just like, I mean, I know that we've all become desensitized, right?
Well, I'm speaking for myself here, right?
Not that I don't care, but I mean, this happens so fucking often, right?
And we're just expected to move on with our lives.
But I think the system necessitates it.
Man, yes, this system depends on us dehumanizing ourselves and killing these little parts of ourselves that have to actually grapple with these tragedies that are that are actual tragedies.
Even if you didn't know, you know, these kids, it's still it's incredibly fucking sad, you know, and it's You have to because you're not going to get a day off work because you oh you're sad oh okay sorry we still got you know boxes to deliver or whatever you it it relies on this system relies on you not Not taking the time to really contemplate how awful it is.
Because when you think about all the exploitation that's involved in this consumer society that we live in, yeah, it's enough to drive somebody mad.
And you have to just ignore it if you want to keep living inside of a house or apartment.
Well, just take it a step further, and specifically for Aaron, for you and I, and for Black America, The thing is, is like, it's always sad.
It's always tragic.
It always hurts.
But the thing is, is that we've, we've experienced multiple classrooms.
We've experienced multiple offices at the hands of the police.
Yep.
Family members, family members, right?
Friends.
I got a DM from the homie yesterday saying cop killed their cousin last week.
I haven't seen nothing on the news.
I haven't seen nothing about it.
I haven't seen nothing about it.
It's, it's regular.
It's regular.
So, you know, don't, you're not, you're not, you're not, I just want to say, I don't think you're desensitized.
I think that, um, unfortunately this, this level of anxiety that, that America has been lifted to right now is, it's been our baseline.
That's been our baseline.
That's the thing.
There's never been a chill week since like this country, you know what I'm saying?
Since the founding of this country, bro, there's never been like a chill moment.
And I mean, like, I do want to say, I think what makes this one, I mean, I don't even want to say unique, or even more angering, because they're all angry.
What makes this one particularly crazy, as we've been talking about, is the response from the policemen, because you would think, I mean, anybody would think, and I'm curious, right?
I'm curious to see what the temperature, what the mood will be across the country, because I know after George Floyd, right?
And I know a different case, but similar sort of like outrage, right?
But outrage directed at- No, I haven't seen, sorry, go ahead.
No, no, no, no, go ahead, Alexander, go ahead.
I just, I haven't seen this much outrage collectively at police from across the spectrum since George Floyd.
Exactly, right?
This hit a few more notes.
It hit a few more notes, right?
And I would keep hoping that, like with George Floyd, with that and the protests, that people are able to kind of peer through the cracks through the system and see the contradictions for what they are.
But the problem is that Yo, I mean, whether it's, I mean, I don't have the answers, obviously, but obviously lack of organization or political will in terms of the people who have the power to actually implement this thing is that I don't see anything happening or changing, man.
Like I've heard talks, kind of, or seen talks of teachers and students walking out, right, to protest, right?
I know that, you know, similar things have probably been done before, but I mean, we've reached like this point where You would think after Sandy Hook, man, like, was it fucking 20-something kids?
I mean, like, where, like, literally, like, people's minds, like, fucking broke about that, at least for, like, a fucking week or 24 hours, right?
No, I don't even think it was that short.
I think people were really broken about that.
Yeah.
But you would have thought something would have happened.
And then, like, then this, and it's just like, nothing, man.
Well, it's the minoritarian rule that you mentioned, because, I mean, the number one liberal response to mass shootings is gun bans, right?
Banning assault weapons, you know, reviving the assault weapons ban, putting stricter regulations on gun ownership.
I personally, you know, I'm in favor of Sensible regulations, owning guns.
I think raising the age to 21 to buy a gun might be a good idea.
A gun ban?
Never gonna happen.
It's never gonna happen.
It's never gonna happen for the same reason that you're not going to get a federal abortion protections bill.
Or why they wouldn't stop?
Go ahead.
Sorry.
I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
Well, it's just it's because the Senate is like a fundamentally undemocratic institution.
Yes.
You know, these these things.
And and it's like, once again, this is why we come back to the the the nature and the the job of the police.
They're there for when more and more people start to realize that there is no electoral solution to these problems.
There's no voting your way out of climate change.
There's no voting your way out of indiscriminate killings of brown and black people.
Yeah.
It was funny.
I was, you know, that conversation happens all the time because people, you know, when we say abolish and we mean it, people say, well, do you mean it?
Do you mean it?
You know?
And it's like, well, yeah, yeah, motherfucker.
Because then you explain to them like, hey, the only thing like, but they're like, but what about like evil people?
I'm like, the only thing between keeping the only thing keeping you from keeping evil in check yourself Is the fact that it might be a crime when you do it.
Exactly.
If you try to defend yourself, you know what I'm saying?
You can't do that.
And they're like, go get the guns back.
I'm like, cool.
Go get the guns back.
You go do it.
You go to those compounds, you go to those ranches and say, please, I need all four of your gun safes.
Give me those.
Go for it.
Have fun.
Yeah, we know what buildings the cops will be going to to do gun seizures if that's ever passed into law.
It's not going to be the ranches.
It's not going to be the Mormon compounds.
They're going to borrow their... Exactly.
They're going to borrow their homies' guns because they're cooler to go get the guns from the brown and black people.
That's what's going to happen.
It's just such a silly notion.
It's like, let me tell you a little something called Minion's Law.
Have you been on Facebook?
Have you ever been on Facebook?
Do you know what you're talking about?
Here in Atlanta and I can already I mean we can we all here can see kind of what's gonna happen but like in Atlanta like a concrete sort of example or omen is that there's a they've they're gonna clear I forget how many acres of it but there's this a There's a forest that's kind of close to a prison farm, what used to be called the Old Atlanta Prison Farm.
And it's surrounded by a forest, a huge forest.
I mean, this forest is just integral to trapping in CO2 and not making the city as hot.
I mean, it's important, right?
And they're going to raise that land to build a cop academy in a mock city called Cop City, which also is going to include a center for social justice.
Right.
Anyway, this mock city.
I mean, our city mayor also Eric Adams.
Yeah.
Literal cop city.
Right.
But like, dude, I already know what's going to have fucking happen.
They're training to be able to to to be able to engage in urban settings.
Once people start protesting more, once people start going down the streets more, they're training as if they were training an invading army, right?
That's already going to fucking happen.
And it's like, what do you think, like you were saying, Alexander, and I've thought about it, what do you think is going to happen when people not only are protesting in the streets, but when unions start getting more militant?
Man, it's going to be the fucking cops.
You're not going to need a higher route.
I mean, you probably will.
But you're not going to need like a Pinkerton like 2.0 or probably this time at this point, like 10.0.
You just use the fucking cops, man.
I mean, they always have.
But literally, that is what the cops are going to be for.
You know, they've always been for that, man.
The Atlanta cops are going to build an exact duplicate of the Tyler Perry compound for when his staff decides to revolt and get better pay and stuff.
He's going to have the cops know it's already mapped out.
Or the other thing that's going to happen is the cops aren't going to build it, they're just going to seize the compound.
They're gonna have a Madea, somebody playing Madea, they're gonna have like a Madea thing come out and like as a target or some shit like that.
Yeah, yeah.
Cop City.
Man, fuck Tyler Perry.
No, for real, fuck Tyler Perry, though.
But yeah, Cop City, man.
That's... Cop City.
Raising a fucking CO2 trapping forest for Cop City.
And it sucks because- Two birds with one stone.
Exactly, exactly.
It's a good point.
Like, currently it's a really cool eco project, right?
Like, it's a really cool eco project at the moment, right?
Like, that rules.
Just to do the exact opposite, I fucking hate it with everything in me.
Our priorities are so fucked.
I mean, it's everything, Alexander, like you were saying, man.
It's like, you know, it's like when people say that the system doesn't work, I've stopped saying that myself, right?
The system actually works.
It works fine, right?
It's working perfectly, dude.
Like, this is not some aberration that the cops didn't do their fucking job.
And it's sad, not to make us sound like we're not ivory towers and we're enlightened, right?
Because, like, we're fucking on the left.
No, right?
But we know, we know what the cops do, right?
I mean, even though I couldn't have predicted that they would have been that fucking cowardly, but I'm hoping again, like this is for the first, second time maybe in the past two years, that the masses of people start to realize, but then like I said, even if people realize, what does that mean they're going to do, bro?
Even Gabby Giffords, Gabby Giffords got shot and they didn't do shit.
Fucking what's his name?
What's the dude's name?
Steve Scalise, a Republican.
You know what I'm saying?
Got his dick blown off, and they didn't even do anything!
So it's like, what is it gonna take, man?
What is it going to take for you people to actually fucking do something, man?
Thank you.
Well, I think that's a good segue.
Let's get into, yeah, some some right wing responses, because as much as this awful event sort of, you know, broke something or just like really fucked us up in general, it it definitely broke the brains of a lot of people on the right wing when they saw their their favorite paragon of authority and justice and masculinity standing outside.
Well, yeah.
What we've already talked about happened.
Wrestling moms.
Wrestling moms and dads to the ground.
Jim here says, I call BS.
No cop would wait outside, much less multiple cops.
Never.
And then of course, you know, he's wrong.
Wrong about that, obviously.
Did you think that the cops were crisis actors?
I think he didn't, this was early on, and he didn't see the video that circulated, like, the next day.
Okay, he didn't actually see them standing outside.
He just heard, hearsay, he was like, that's bullshit, because they would never do that.
No way, no way.
Yeah, well, it was reporting, it was reporting from the Epoch Times, reporting that cops waited 40 minutes to actually enter the building.
He's like, oh, no, I think my favorite propaganda site is actually doing anti-cop propaganda here for the first time.
Those headlines must have been rough to get out for these publications.
I know!
Like the Breitbart one?
Wow.
Yeah, like all that stuff.
Yeah.
Well, Breitbart was publishing stories about the cops receiving death threats and then published like a really long, woe is me statement from a cop.
Our officers had their own children in the building, one of whom was killed.
Yeah, we know because you guys rushed in there to get your own kids instead of helping everybody.
We wanted to end this as badly as anyone else.
To think that we would stand around and let children die by choice is unconscionable for our officers right now.
Have you ever read that book, Harry Potter?
Have you ever heard of the Leg Locker Curse?
We were all suffering under a visible spell.
We all got immobilized suddenly.
It's so funny because the funny thing about Like toxic masculinity, right?
So I, I like really, I really kind of, I joke about with my, I tell my kid that I am not only, I am the strongest and I am the smartest and I am like the most able person you will ever know in your entire life.
As long as I can pick you up over my head with one hand, You just know that there's no one... So these cops who had kids in there had a chance to be the illest dads and moms.
They had a chance to be the dopest ones.
But the thing is, it doesn't matter if you're pussy, though.
Like it doesn't, you still, you still, it's not, now like, you know, it's just so funny how it illustrates itself sometimes or, or, or doesn't.
Dude, I mean, go ahead.
Did you see Jack Posobiec's tweet?
Oh no, what does this motherfucker say?
Yeah, right wing podcaster, you know, YouTube guy.
I never thought I would see armed Texans standing around while a gunman was killing children in a schoolhouse.
And then, uh, I think it was, uh, what's his name?
Uh, why am I blanking on his name?
He's, he's like, uh, a sub stack guy.
Michael Tracy.
Michael Tracy.
Michael Tracy was like, listen, if the, if the reporting is true and I don't believe it, but if the reporting is true, that cops waited outside, uh, it seems like defund the police for right all along.
Bruh, bruh.
Yo, man, man, man.
There's gotta be something else going on.
Those people couldn't have been right about the efficacy of police.
The blue hair can't be right about the blue.
There's no way.
The thing with these people, man, is this whole masculinity and this whole what it means to be a man and the cops being that kind of symbol.
And I'm not saying that I'm the toughest guy in the world, but Jack, whatever the fuck his name is, and fucking Michael Tracy.
Jack Pussyback.
These guys are fucking pussies, bro.
Michael Tracy was at a Black Lives Matter protest and got his phone taken away from him and was forced to chant Black Lives Matter to get it back.
And these are the motherfuckers, and I dunked him on Twitter about that too, racial disaster.
But these are the motherfuckers, man, that are just as cowardly as the fucking police.
You know what I'm saying?
You would think that real recognized real, and it'd be like, yo, I know a pussy, so I know damn well these cops are pussies.
But no, dawg!
They're still sucking these guys dicks, man.
It's insane.
I mean, Michael Tracy got his shit pushed in by Maxine Waters.
He did!
He got beat up by an old black lady, bro.
Like, come on.
It's half his size, bro.
Come on.
Alex, I didn't tell you this, but these people, I didn't tell you about this, but that picture I posted with the, um, the, uh, don't tread on me with the fetus.
The guy holding the sign, so the guy holding the sign, there's another guy holding that flag, and I went over, I was like, I need a picture of that flag, I need you to hold that up for me.
And the guy took it, I said, no, you're too short, give it to him.
And then I gave it to that guy, and that guy was like...
That guy was like, hey, if you're gonna talk to me, take a good picture.
I'm like, dawg, you look like everybody.
And he goes, you know what he said?
He said, yeah, I'm kind of an NPC, huh?
I was like, yeah.
He goes, every brewery comes with one of me.
But he called himself an NPC.
It's like, that's actually who these people are.
These people are not like, like you can just go make fun of them, um, in a way, but as long, as long as you just don't, just don't use like their trigger words.
Cause then they're going to start using your trigger words.
Like just, just, you know, go, you can make fun of them pretty easy.
But when he called himself an NPC, I, I died inside.
It was amazing.
Yeah go ahead and Aaron.
No I'm just saying I think there's like I mean I think it's the same thing with the cops and you know I think there's like yo it's like fake it till you make it right like I don't know if y'all had seen um I guess this is included in the right wing response but I don't know if y'all had seen the video Of these cops and man, what was it?
Was it in fucking Florida?
Yeah, the cops that it was to the it was set to the to a journey song.
I don't know the name of the song, but they released like a TikTok or some shit like that.
It was like, oh, if you try to shoot up a school, we are going to kill you.
And like me, me, I paused it, bro.
I paused it.
I was like, hold up, computer enhance.
And I looked at the background.
All these motherfuckers look scared as shit, bro.
They're fucking scared, dude.
They don't want to do.
A scared cop.
You're right.
Kills people all the time.
Right.
They're not going to shoot.
That thing earlier we talked about, that law that says they actually are not obligated to help us out.
What that law did is it gave them the ultimate, like, get out of jail free card, quite literally, where as long as you say that you were scared and your blood pressure rose, you get to shoot somebody or you get to not shoot somebody.
And so it's the ultimate, like...
That bill went up and it went through.
They said, OK, bet like we need to give them more leeway.
They already have like all kinds of laws that protect them from being, you know, punished.
But like, yeah, they made it that easy.
They're like, no, listen, as long as it's literally if I think if you say something like if your heart rate went up because now it's scientific, now it's data, like you're pretty good to go.
Well, yeah, you have a union lawyer.
So, like, me being union, me being a Teamster, I get a union lawyer to, you know, whatever, to help me out, whatever I need.
They have a union lawyer who knows, front to back, exactly what a cop needs to say to get out of a murder charge.
And it is just, yeah, I feared for my life, or I acted in, you know, I acted in a manner that I considered was appropriate at the time.
And yeah, no fucking jury's gonna convict you, no judge is gonna convict you as long as you say the right things.
No, because they're scared of the fucking cops too.
Yeah, so Jason Whitlock, who I think is a, like a podcast, another podcaster guy.
We know that name.
A right-wing personality.
We've said it here before.
Yeah, he looks like an older black dude.
He might have been a former actor or something like that.
He's got a nice head shot.
Tony, we gonna have to do something about these people, bro.
We gonna have to do something about these motherfuckers.
They make me want to cry so bad.
Him, TK Dubs, Candice.
I hate them so much.
to do so about these motherfuckers.
They make me want to cry so bad.
Like him, TK Dubs, Candace, I hate him so much.
And I'm looking at this motherfucker right here too.
You know this motherfucker croons, like literally croons for white people.
Yeah, he does like, he does like, he does like the, the, the, the Shaka Java dance and shit like that.
Yes, bro.
He does.
He's like, and you know, you know what I say?
Make America great again!
And like he sucks at it.
He sucks at it, but he like does it for the white people.
You did it pretty good.
Yeah.
Fuck yeah.
That's a look at that.
Look at that.
It's it's MAGA with some soul.
Yeah.
I mean, that's why they hate him.
That's why they put the blacks for Trump people.
Like whatever Trump does rallies, they got to deal with the black for Trump shirts, like standing like right up front because the Republican Party could be like, hey, we're not racist.
Like, you know, we got one of the good ones, you know?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Well, there it's two.
They're blacks and Jews.
I mean, yeah, exactly.
And I'll let my mixed ass say it, they really pushed that one drop rule with those shirts.
They was pushing it.
Did you say you didn't have to pass the paper bag test to wear the shirt?
Uh, Jason Whitlock, what he said though, when he quote tweeted Jack Posobiec about, I never thought Texans would, wow, stand around.
Wow.
I thought Texans were big and brave and scary and, and gosh, gosh, what happened?
You know, uh, Jason Whitlock quotes, we sat with, uh, I'm not defending the actions of the officers, but.
We've demonized law enforcement to the point that there are far fewer rewards for being a hero for taking risks.
When your culture makes George Floyd the hero, really good to invoke him at this moment.
Wow.
Real heroes stand down.
Pussy.
Hate him.
I hate him.
I hate him.
I'm gonna fight him for real.
Bro, did you just say to me, did you just say to me, did you just say that this motherfucker said that because the police cannot take the heat for the, for the, just the simple fact that they, I literally do not do their fucking jobs and they're fucking sociopaths who kill people because they can't take the heat.
That means that they're not obligated to save children.
What's the reward for doing so?
What's the reward for saving a life?
What's so funny about this is like fucking sociopaths, man.
It's like, Jason, say, use that exact logic.
Now apply it to your melanin.
Like, we've demonized blackness so much that you can't operate within society in a reasonable way.
That's actually the same logic that you need to be thinking about.
But you're giving it to them because you're like, oh, these cops didn't go in because they didn't want to get cancelled.
Like, fuck you.
I hate you so much.
Bro, why are they making cops another thing that they've been doing for the past couple of years?
And I mean, this is all a part of the ramping up of like, And I don't want to say what is to come like it's gonna be one thing right but the just this authoritarian wherever the fuck it's gonna be man is this like this culture and like revering these fucking cops and shit man and like I don't know dude one thing about it is like Like, we've, with the laws that we've, some laws that we pass, where it's basically like, yeah, the cops have no duty at all to, like, protect you.
It's almost like we're speaking, like, and I say we, I mean, like, it's the people in power, the cops, like, speaking the quiet part out loud, like, we are not here to help you.
We don't have to help you.
And actually, we will use every single fucking, like, rhetorical, like, mental gymnastic, whatever the fuck it is, to justify why we don't have to do what you expect of us, right?
Yeah, we might also use force to protect you from helping yourself.
Yeah.
Yes!
It's like, oh, you're punching yourself?
Stop punching yourself.
Stop hitting yourself.
It's like, what do you mean, bro?
So when one of Jason's family members inevitably gets gunned down by a police officer, Does he get to pull up to the wedding?
I'm sorry, to the funeral?
I don't know why I said wedding.
But does he get to pull up to the funeral?
Does he get to do that?
I don't think he gets to do that.
I think he's going to be doing the same thing on Twitter, to be honest.
Ugh.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly.
I think it's great when you're like... He probably has that.
I mean, statistically, he has that.
I think it's great when you're argument for, you know, trying to make sense of this senseless, awful thing.
You're like, oh, OK, well, people didn't like the police.
People didn't respect the police.
So their solution was to let 19 10 year olds die.
Yeah.
Like now.
Yeah.
Don't you like the police?
Think about it.
Now, don't you want to respect the police, huh?
Yeah, I don't I think that's a good argument.
You should keep making that argument that the police deliberately allowed children to die because they didn't get enough respect.
Because they're petty.
Yeah, dude.
I mean, it's the country is like held hostage.
The society is held hostage by the police.
I even think about When when de Blasio in New York when he was mayor and during the protests when his daughter I think she had gotten doxxed or like nearly doxxed by the cops and they were making threats.
Yeah, they posted a photo of her.
Yeah, dude, and they were making fucking like death threats and like, you know fucking like talking about like fucking raping her and shit like that and like yo, he went he trotted back out like in a week after and and was thanking the fucking cops and i'm like dude like literally i mean if you were in the alien race and you came to like america specifically and you said hold up you pay these guys to beat the shit out of you and terrify you you know you know what i'm saying that makes no sense
cops are also a lesson in like the the efficacy of unionization of like a strong militant I mean, obviously cops are a special circumstance because they're on the side of capital.
They're like working for capital.
They're not working class, working for capital.
Exactly.
Well, I mean, I don't know about you guys, but to me, the only unions I don't acknowledge are the police union and the restaurant union.
It's because there's not going to be any restaurants on the commune.
There's not going to be any more restaurants.
Don't even, don't even give me... There's not going to be any drugs.
I want to get ahead of it.
There's no bedtimes, no homework, none of that shit.
I want to get ahead of it real quick.
I did take the money that I made from the supper I just had, the dinner I just had, and what I did is I bought a hydraulic press and I'm going to take all of my kitchen equipment and I'm going to destroy it.
I want to get ahead of it.
I just want to let you guys know that I will no longer be serving food for anybody.
Food's not good.
Go make your own fucking food.
You should film that in a high frame rate and monetize it.
Oh, the highest frame rate?
Oh yeah, I'm going to make so much money off of it.
Yeah, a lot of people were just making this same argument and being really lazy about it.
Like Tim Pool said, defund the police and this is what you get.
Incompetent officers.
And you don't even have to try and figure out a way to make sense of this for your right-wing base.
You just lie.
You just say, oh, they defunded the police.
They made the Uvalde Police Department woke now.
They were actually studying genders instead of studying school shootings.
And that's why this happened.
And just everyone who wants to believe it is going to believe it.
Because the alternative is, yeah, flipping your whole, uh, flipping your whole idea of police upside down and strangely aligning with a lot of what us on the left, what we on the left have been saying.
Yeah.
Um, there's more like specific.
Yeah.
There's cause we were, we're getting toward the end here.
I just want to get to a couple of very specific responses, uh, that were, Very good.
Yeah.
K.T.
Hunson, defending the police, says, uh, you know, why did somebody ask, like, why didn't they just fucking rush in?
And he says, because rushing in was not ordered by their commanding officer or for some other valid reason.
Or for some other valid reason, I assume.
Also, police are not required to put themselves in danger or their fellow cops either, in an uncoordinated effort.
So this is like, you know, when you're making fun of Elon Musk for Tesla cars exploding, and his fanboys are like, you know he actually doesn't have anything to do with making the car, right?
Yeah, yeah, he's no obligation at all.
It's very similar to that.
Actually, cops don't have to do that if they don't want to, you know.
They follow their training.
Parents are very upset right now, but I hope someday they will realize police don't have a magic wand, and this isn't the movies where there are hero cops.
Dog, dog.
I'm not, I'm not gonna call nobody out.
Just as a side, I'm not gonna call nobody out, but like, uh, uh, I did see a tweet from, um, one of these supposedly left, ostensibly left accounts.
Um, this motherfucker said, yo, all these people, ostensibly left, right?
This motherfucker, and it quickly deleted the tweet because it was like, yo, what the fuck you talking about?
He's like, oh, all these people talking about they'd go Rambo.
Like, you wouldn't do it.
You wouldn't do it.
I wouldn't do it.
And it's like, no, because you're a fucking pussy.
And I could have gleaned that from you that you wouldn't fucking do it.
But just the fact that, Like, that, from the right, as you're saying, Alexander, from the right especially, but to hear it from the left is insane, but from the right is like, oh, like, we, they don't have an obligation to do so, right?
Or even this idea that like, yeah, what do you want them to do, go in there Rambo?
It's like, well, y'all motherfuckers got the Punisher.
You love the Punisher, man.
You love, like, making it sound like you're a fucking soldier.
You don't want to be a soldier and save lives and be a fucking hero?
I guess not.
What the fuck are you training for?
What are you training for?
What's the point?
The purest, I think somebody else mentioned it, just a golden opportunity to prove all of us wrong.
The purest use of force you could possibly imagine.
This is like a dream that a cop had after the first wave of George Floyd protests.
Where he cried himself to sleep, and he imagined a scenario where a crazy gunman was holding 19 little babies hostage, and he burst in there, and then, oh, the leftists were forced to admit that, oh, actually, you know, you guys were right the whole time, except even in his own dream, he was like, no, I'm not going in there.
In his own dream!
Yeah, yeah.
Like, what's funny is, like, now, I mean, this is the whole thing, you know, we've always said ACAB, right?
We've always said all, all cops, and what's funny is, yes, Statistically, you would think that one of them would have just, like, gone rogue.
Yeah, he would have been like, yo, this is crazy.
One of them would have just gone rogue.
It would have been like mad people there.
There were mad people there.
There were as many cops as kids that died, dude.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like, you would think that one of them would have gone rogue.
But the thing is, It is all of them.
It is every single one.
There is not one good one.
It's fucking impossible.
Let me ask you a question.
When people love to use the phrase, right, and this shit blows my mind, people will say, oh, well, it's just a bad apple.
And I'm like, yo, motherfucker, what's the rest of the phrase, bro?
Why is it that people never say the gold phrase when it goes to the police?
It's because this country is so fucked up.
It's the same thing with the bootstraps thing.
The bootstraps metaphor was originally a metaphor to illustrate how insane the idea of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps is.
But we don't change anything in this country.
We just internalize and, like, uh, mutate the phrase into something that, uh, is okay.
It fits.
It's palatable.
Exactly.
It works with the mythology of this country.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Also, like, the apple, the apple's not a Honeycrisp anyways.
It's a fucking, like, shitty crab apple.
Like, you don't want it.
It's like a gritty apple that's not even, like, sour.
It's just a waste.
It's just a fucking waste.
It's like, it's one of those, those trees that is like, it like, it like inbred itself.
So it made like bad fruit.
That's the apple.
That's, that's the only, that's the best the apple can get.
That's a good way of describing it.
I just love the free, I love this explanation so much.
Uh, this isn't the movies where cops prevent crimes.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yes.
It's literally from that episode of King of the Hill, where they think somebody broke into the house and trashed all their stuff.
And Bobby says to the cops, like, are you going to find who did this?
And the cops like, sorry, son, this isn't the movies.
It's, it's exactly that.
It's like the only, you know, you've been telling everybody how heroic and brave and it cops are.
And it's like the minute it's proven incorrect.
It's like, well, yeah, obviously they're not, they're just human.
Like you or me, you know?
And it's like, obviously you, I think a lot of it is just total projection.
Oh, I, I love the cops as like an avatar for my masculine, uh, just, Righteous self, you know, and it's and and that's where a lot of like the Punisher skull shit comes from Yeah, it's like, you know, why the fuck why why are we all ever jumping over couches as kids?
Why are you ever like tucking and rolling as kids like is I fucking hate y'all y'all are such a waste Waste a couple more of these responses.
Um, I Okay, this one was amazing.
Don't really know what to make of it, to be honest.
Richard Potter says, and you can bet that the school teachers ordered the kids to stay put like setting ducks.
And you guys think the rules are not in place for a reason?
That doesn't make sense.
The rules are all about protecting authorities from liability instead of victims.
I taught my kids, when they're emergency, No matter where you are, do the opposite of what you're told from authorities.
Oh my God, this guy's gonna get his fucking kids killed.
Jesus fucking Christ.
These stupid rules have infiltrated all business and industry.
I will give you a couple examples.
Amazing.
Amazing.
If you're in a refinery and there is an emergency, like fire or explosion, they lock the gates and won't let you out.
Second, if you're on a cruise and the ship is sinking, they order you to stay in the room and go down with the ship.
I could go out own forever.
Isn't this what happened?
The idea.
Sorry.
Isn't this what just fucking, isn't this literally what fucking happened with the cops, bro?
Well, he's talking about the teachers as the authority and like the lockdown drills is what got the kids killed.
No, my kid was like... It's an insane thing to say.
Do whatever, you know, I'm not, I'm not a big on authority figures, but if I'm in an unfamiliar place and there's somebody in charge during a crisis, I'm probably going to like, you know, try to work with them.
Especially if you're a fucking child.
You know what I mean?
You know, you know what my, you know, my, uh, my rule for my kid is, is if I'm like, I'm like, Hey, if, uh, I was like, if for some reason you're ever not with me, for some reason you ever find yourself not with me, and you have no clue what to do, find the closest woman.
Find the closest woman.
Do not go to a cop.
For real though.
Just find the closest femme.
That's all.
Do that.
Do that.
Remember your phone number.
That's it.
And like, that's the rule.
And like, it's exactly because, you know, this guy's like, no, my kid was like, my kid told the teacher, Ma'am, ma'am, I got your six.
And then she told my kid to shut up.
Put him in timeout.
Put the kid in timeout.
And my kid can't get their six from timeout.
Oh my God, dude.
I'm going to run toward the fire.
What direction did you tell me to go?
I'm going the other way.
I'm going to take the elevator.
I'm going to wait here for the elevator.
Man, and also, too, I just also think that, like, authority in that comment is kind of misplaced, because I'm not saying the teachers are the authority in the classroom, but once it becomes, like, an active, like, shooting situation, like, that authority, in terms of that situation, like, should go to the fucking police.
So, you should actually, I mean, I guess, in his, like, analogy, I guess, yeah, if you're, uh, the police did exactly, uh, what you're complaining about.
Uh, they prevented anything from fucking happening.
Yeah.
It's, it's hard.
It's, it's hard because yeah, a lot of people were like, Oh, I guess you want the police to do something now, don't you?
And it's like, because all other avenues for us are like illegal.
They're all blocked off by the police themselves.
You know what I mean?
And it's like, they have put themselves in this role of like ultimate authority and then are either reneging It's awful.
you know, on that role or they're doing the exact opposite of it, you know?
And so it's like, no, I don't want the cops to do their job.
I want there to be another job beside cop that actually does something good.
It's a shitty story.
It's a shitty thing that fucking happened.
It's awful.
I would say, don't let, don't let the system, uh, dehumanize you, Don't let the system churn out another news cycle and keep going.
Take some time, if you can, to really process these feelings.
Talk to people.
I had to talk to people about this.
Don't lose your humanity because the system wants you to.
If there's a silver lining here, let this radicalize you.
Reveal the true nature of the relationships of different institutions in this country.
Talk to your neighbors about it, you know, don't, maybe don't give them the ACAB speech immediately, but they're going to be pissed.
They're pissed off about this stuff too.
And you can help point them in a, uh, any more fruitful direction.
You can help them understand like the material forces.
At work here.
Remember the heroism of the mom who jumped the fence to go get her own kids.
The multiple other people who did that.
Remember the heroism of the teachers who laid down their lives in these classrooms to protect the kids.
Their names were Irma Garcia and Eva Moreles.
And the right wing in this country would have you believe That teachers are groomers, that they're somehow predators, that they're indoctrinators, despite these teachers having more difficult, more important, and more heroic jobs than police on a good day.
On a good day, their job is more difficult.
On a good day, their job is more important.
And then They also had to do the police's job for them, probably for about half the wage.
I think this is another inflection point in the public's perception of police.
I think, at the very least, we can say that.
Any closing thoughts, Aaron?
No, you know, I just want to say everything that you guys said, too.
Everyone listening is already like ACAB, but you know, Like, I know I'm going to talk to my mom about this.
And I mean, my mom knows, you know, I think, I mean, she's a black mom, so she knows about the cops.
But I think to echo what you were saying, Alexander, like, yeah, man, like this is a this is an opportunity to radicalize your friends and family members who, you know, I'm not necessarily talking about sure.
It doesn't matter whether liberals or conservatives.
But, you know, especially if, you know, you have your more conservative family members, you know what I'm saying?
Because liberals are performing nominally on with defund the police.
But when you talk to your conservative family members, just ask them what they expect out of police, their role to be, and what happened in this situation.
You don't even have to bring up news articles, and this is what happened, this is what happened.
Just ask them, what do you expect police to do, and what do they actually do?
And I think that, like you were saying Alexander, this is an inflection point where...
Hopefully people can peer through those cracks, man, and see like what this system is and what the police are really for.
And I can only hope that, I mean, I don't know.
I can only hope that like, I mean, the next time this happens that, I mean, I don't know, man.
I don't even know what to say because I don't want to say the next time it happens, but it's going to fucking keep happening.
But I mean, the only thing I guess we can do is just keep being fucking angry and applying pressure, man.
You know, whatever avenues that we can, because You know, the cops aren't gonna do it, man.
The people in power aren't gonna do it, so.
Yeah, I think the way, you know, what I was talking about when it comes to having to cope with, and I mean that unironically, having to cope with all of the bad shit that's going on in this world, having to cope with that and still try to function, try to keep this machine running, you know, and not even try.
You don't have a choice in doing it, you know?
That leads to these outcomes.
People having to suppress their humanity, and people having to internalize all the horrors in this world, I think does contribute to mental illness.
It does contribute to feelings of alienation.
And there's no one cause to any of these things, but I believe that that's a big one.
So we can't lose our Our humanity.
We can't suppress this shit because that's, it's even worse.
It's even worse and it's perpetuating the problem.
Exactly.
You know, and last thing, like you said, Alexander, they want you to be, they want you to forget about this, you know, by tomorrow or next week, whenever the next news story pops up.
But, um, I mean, like we can't, like we can't, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
Anything else, Tony?
Um, I just kind of want to leave on like an optimistic note.
Um, So yeah, this stuff continues to happen.
It's been happening our whole lives now, as long as we've existed.
And it's brutal, and like you said, we can't forget, but on that same note, the world is still turning.
We still have to, don't let it deter you.
Continue to work on harm reduction.
Continue to work on your mutual aid.
Continue to call your friends.
Continue to do the good things.
continue to do the good things.
Don't let them don't let them beat this out of us because we still got this like it's really it's It's phenomenal.
The things have been brutal, right?
But we've been so lucky that us here... I did this cool little food thing.
I'm able to feed a bunch of people this week.
That's so cool.
Just because of the generosity of people, right?
That's positive.
We have to still do those things.
Yeah.
Well, that's the answer.
We have to still be out there.
We still have to continue to help each other out.
We have to continue to make the alternatives happen.
For instance, for schools, there are school alternatives.
We can build community together.
We can do that.
We have to.
We have to.
And that's what I mean when I say you can't let this stuff cause you to shut down.
These things suck, but also, There's some great things happening too.
There could be opportunities.
And we need to remember those things and hold those things tight and like hold each other tight.
Yeah.
That's the only way we're going to get through this is with each other.
Absolutely.
Thank you, Aaron, for coming on and talking with us.
This was, you know, it's shitty subject matter, but I was grateful to have a couple of very thoughtful people to talk about it with.
Aaron Thorpe, of course, of the Trillbillies and of Everybody Loves Communism.
Why don't you tell people where they can find you, where they can find your shows?
Hell yeah.
Just want to say first, man, thank you so much again for having me on, y'all.
I haven't talked really to anybody but close friends about it.
You know, I've been watching Star Trek and smoking a lot of weed to distract myself.
But I'm just happy I could have came on and talked about it with you guys, like, nonetheless.
So people can find me at BorgPosting, B-O-R-G.
I feel like the last two times I came here, each time I came on here, I had a different handle.
You got to follow pretty quick.
Absolutely.
Yeah, yeah.
So I'm at Borg posting B-O-R-G.
That's the Star Trek reference.
People can find me there tweeting and shit.
And like you said, Alexander, people can check out the Trillbillies.
Also, Everybody Loves Communism.
And also, sometimes I'm a co-host or correspondent for Struggle Session.
Hell yeah.
That's Leslie Lee III's podcast where I talk about comics.
And I'm trying to write a little bit more, too, so people could check out the link to my substack and my bio on Twitter.
Again, yo, thanks so much for having me on, y'all.
I think this conversation definitely... I'm kind of making a joke, but prevented me from doing some things that I shouldn't be doing.
I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
But definitely at least made me not... Perspective, you know?
Perspective, I guess, is what I needed.
Prevented you from going out to eat at a restaurant.
Exactly.
Prevented me from going out to eat at a restaurant.
I'm going to stay my ass... Listen, I'm going to stay my ass home.
I'm not going to smoke any weed either.
I'm not going to do drugs.
I'm not going to go out and eat.
I'm not gonna go to bed on a proper time.
Don't smile either.
Don't smile and don't let your shorty ride a horse.
Be a good leftist, man.
That's what it is.
Well, thanks again to Aaron.
And if you want to hear more of Aaron on Minion Death Cult, yeah, go over to Patreon.com slash MinionDeathCult, P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com slash MinionDeathCult.
$3.11 a month.
Gets you a bonus episode every single week.
Best bargain in the biz, I think.
Gets you also instant access to hundreds of hours of previous bonus episodes.
And like I said, half of the Patreon earnings we make from this month will be going to those Abortion Network funds.
So get in there before the deadline, before the end of the month, and you'll be helping to contribute to that.
We also have stickers for sale at MinionDeathCult.com.
The Choose Life Stay Out of My Uterus bumper sticker is $5, and all the proceeds from that go to those same abortions.
So hard.
It's so sick.
People seem to like that one.
Got a few others up there for sale now.
And we also have something else in the works for next month that I'm very excited about.
I don't think I told Tony about it.
Oh, I like that.
I like that a lot.
Got some good news for the month of June as well.
Cool.
Yeah, so thanks everybody for listening, and we'll talk to you soon.
