This week A.M. Gittlitz, author of I Want to Believe: Posadism, UFOs, and Apocalypse Communism, aka Andy from the Antifada podcast joins us to talk about the underrated movie xXx We also chat about posadism and leftist bookstore in Chicago under fire for ejecting a gay, latina cop from their shop. Finally, the US Marines make a Pride Month post, so you know what that means: civil war time. Support the show for only $3.11/mo at http://patreon.com/miniondeathcult and get a bonus episode every week as well as instant access to hundreds of hours of bonus content. Buy stickers at http://miniondeathcult.com Music: Rammstein - Pussy Ovlov - Baby Shea Midwife - Send the Pain Below
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.
All there in Bartholstein.
Stay tuned.
All right, I'm Alexander Edward.
And I'm Tony Boswell.
And this is the XanderZone!
The podcast formerly known as Minion Death Cult.
You're entering the XanderZone.
It's spelled with an X and then a Z for some reason.
The zone isn't also an X, which I think is a mistake.
If you listen hard, you are saying XanderZone.
Joining us today to rock this radical episode is Andy from Antifada.
How are you doing, Andy?
Hey, guys.
Excited to talk about XXX today.
I haven't seen it, but I'm excited to talk about it.
I don't know anything about it, but can't wait to chat about it.
Yeah, it's pronounced triple X. First things first.
You've never seen it.
You didn't know that.
And also, we don't have you on because you've seen the movie, but because you've lived the lifestyle of Xander.
You know like World Traveler, Avid Base Jumper, Extreme Dirt Bike Knack Knacker.
I've seen you do some sick whips on a couple dirt bikes.
Did you ever land that Superman Seagrab Barrel Roll?
No, I didn't but also I never did go on a dirt bike ever.
So I didn't get that move down or also any moves.
You're smart.
This isn't the Patreon episode, so we gotta keep you still a little anonymous.
Okay, alright.
You're not extreme, Andy.
That's not why you're here.
A disappointing start to this episode.
Yeah, sure, we're gonna talk about all the stuff we normally talk about on this show, if there's time.
But first, I wanted to just...
Extol the virtues of, yeah, a movie that I watched over the weekend, a little movie called Triple X, which I really believe, you know, I mean, I feel like it maybe had some staying power in the public mind, but just, I mean, it deserves to be front and center in my mind.
It really does.
It's like a historical document.
It really does synthesize that moment in pop culture, especially when it comes to just, you know, just being sick.
Yeah, I believe that the movie really is the story, fictional though, but a story about the first Marxist-Leninist CIA agent who is recruited to take down anarchities in the Czech Republic.
We have, it opens, I mean, this movie opens with a fucking Rammenstein concert.
I remember seeing this in theaters, and it was at the point where I was like, oh, that's not just a random band that got to be in a movie.
It's not a character.
I'm like, that's actually Rammstein.
I wasn't even a huge Rammstein fan, but I'm like, they got the real rockers in this.
This is actually them.
Pretty cool.
Have you ever seen videos of Rammstein playing live, Andy?
Do you know what their set is like?
I like listened to them and I saw that clip in the Zizek movie where he talks about how Rammstein is like the most anti-fascist band by being fascist.
I haven't seen that.
I would be willing to hear that out.
I believe they're the most anti-fascist band because the singer wears a prosthetic penis and sprays fake cum into the front row of the crowd.
That seems pretty anti-fascist to me.
How funny is it that my first thought was like, man, biters.
They're biters.
They just are fake-ass guar.
But I do remember the porno video, the porno music video.
Right.
Okay, elaborate, please.
There's a Rammstein music video where they're all actually fucking, I guess?
I think so, yeah.
They're made like a porno?
Yeah.
Yeah, so that's going on at the compound of the bad guys.
The bad guys are having a really cool rockin' party, goth party, at the same time they're trying to kill an NSA agent.
And it's just a wonderful, wonderful beginning to the movie because yeah, the guy gets, the NSA agent gets sniped in the back of the head as he attempts to escape his pursuers while climbing onto the Rammenstein stage.
While the, yeah, the guitarist is like, has like a flamethrower attached to his face and mouth.
The guy, the secret agent gets shot in the back, falls back into the crowd who then body surfs his corpse.
Yeah the corpse crouches for so long at one point they're just like they're like bouncing him up and down to where he's like leaving their hands and they're like catching him again and it's it's a corpse it's a great moment.
Yeah, it's really good.
Yeah, and then of course we're introduced to Xander Cage by way of a stuffed shirt, white, rich senator who has like this, this nice, you know, brand new 2002 Corvette with a skateboarding is a crime sticker on the bumper, which is, I don't think a sticker that was ever actually made.
Yeah, I mean, it looks like it was very much made for the movie.
I would respect that if like some, some, some like, you know, the, uh, what are, what are they called?
You know, the snob, like if the, if there, there was like a coterie of snobs that actually had that sticker printed, that would be actually kind of cool.
Like illegalist skateboarders, like, you know.
People who think that it's good that they're committing a crime by skateboarding.
Yeah, totally.
Oh no, it's just Steve Berra, who is a Scientologist, and is like, no, actually skateboarding is a crime, so now I have to do all my skateboarding on a soundstage.
Yeah, skateboarding is and should be a crime, otherwise it's going to get taken over by venture capitalists.
Yeah.
So yeah, Xander Cage, played by Vin Diesel, if you're unaware, who has amazing tattoos in this movie.
Incredible tattoos.
I put this movie on because I was like, okay, I'm in the mood for a Transporter-like movie, but I did already watch Transporter last month.
So I gotta watch something else.
What's in the vein of that?
Oh, some like American film that like vaguely interprets the Eastern Bloc, you know, misinterprets it and just puts Rammenstein as the face of it and anarchy as the face of it.
Sounds great.
And this guy also drives really fast cars and disrespects women.
So love it.
But his tattoo, he's got, so are we familiar with Sully Erna's?
The singer of Godsmack's belly tattoo.
Oh, yeah.
We all know it, right?
He's got the tribal sun around his belly button.
The traditional witch belly button sun.
Yeah, he's a Wiccan.
He's a practicing Wiccan, so that's kind of cool.
It's a little subversive for a man to have that tattoo.
Too bad, Xander Cage has the sun around his nipple.
Around his nipple.
Sorry, Sully.
The whole movie is kind of horny, and it's funny because I watch it because you watch it, and I realized I had time to watch it.
So I was like, oh, maybe I can watch it easily.
Let me go ahead, and I did the thing that you think you wouldn't do that would still work.
I looked up XXX Watchful, and I got nothing but porno feeds.
And then I looked up XXX Movie Watchful, and I got nothing but porno feeds.
And then I looked up Vin Diesel XXX Watch Movie, And I still got Vin Diesel pornos.
And so I actually had to go through every app and search it in every app.
I finally found it.
It's on HBO Max.
Were you stylizing it?
Were you stylizing it correctly?
Little X, Big X, Little X. Oh, that's where I blew it.
That's where I blew it.
Damn.
I couldn't believe it actually happened.
I thought for sure, like, that it would have some SEO still, but nope.
Do you even use triple X for porn anymore?
That's a good question.
That's sad that that went away.
Yeah, how do we know?
Because honestly, I was more of a 2X kind of person.
I'm not a pervert.
Well, it went away because it was too confusing.
I used to get it mixed up when I was going to purchase my jugs of moonshine.
Yeah.
Do you think that there was a- It's going to get junk or horny.
Was there a XXX porn parody that's like, this isn't XXX?
Yeah.
Yeah.
You kind of backed yourself into a corner with just like even touching that one.
That was like a thing that people were doing in the late 90s, right?
Weren't they like skydiving and fucking at the same time?
Wasn't that like a thing I remember seeing on Real Sex?
Well, maybe.
Yeah, I remember seeing just a still photo of a topless woman skydiving and being like, I don't think this is giving the effect that I want, at least.
That was the end of Gen X culture.
It was like the last thing that they could do, and they realized that they'd gone too far.
Yeah, people don't fucking skydive anymore.
Yeah, but Vin Diesel does.
And not only does he skydive, he does base jumping off of the stolen convertible, off of the senator's stolen convertible.
And this is all recorded for his web show, or his web series, whatever they're billing it as in 2002.
It would have been like an extreme video mixtape.
It would have been like CKY2K.
It would have been like uh... But it's distributed online.
It's online because Eve, the fucking rapper, is his manager and He has the after party after he totals the Senator's convertible.
And there's somebody, there's like this hot babe there who's representing one of the, uh, like Activision.
She's, she's representing like a sports video game company who wants to make the, uh, Xander Cage extreme sports video game.
And Eve is like, don't waste your time, honey.
He doesn't sell out.
A guy like you needs a video game is what she says.
I thought that was cool that he stuck to his roots and did make a video game, unlike Tony Hawk, who was in the movie.
I mean, I say, OK, so in the first like in the first.
So this is for all my this is for all my extreme sports people.
So as he's like hucking the stolen Corvette off of the bridge and base jumping out of it to make a statement against about how skateboarding is good and rap music is good.
Oh yeah, because the Senator wanted to criminalize rap music.
And video games.
And video games!
And he goes, he goes, they want to get rid of video games because it makes us stupid?
That's the only education I got.
Preach.
And um, so anyways, Mike Valleli is like recording him.
And then a Cadillac, when he lands, a Cadillac pulls up that is being driven by Tony Hawk and Rick Thorne and Corey Nastasio are in the backseat.
Nasty Nastasio.
Corey, Nasty, Nostalgia are in the back seat.
They pull up to the party and they're like greeted by Matt Hoffman.
And Matt Hoffman is the one who's like, Matt Hoffman is like the gnarliest, like BMX-er ever, ever in history, ever.
And he's like, do you ever land that, do you ever land that barrel roll, that Superman Seagrab barrel roll?
And like, I know it killed him to say that out loud.
There's like no way.
Like, picture that trick in your head.
That doesn't even look cool.
I did that all the time, but it wasn't through Matt Hoffman's BMX, it was Dave Mirra's BMX.
Oh, actually, I did Matt Hoffman's BMX.
Did he have a video game?
That was the Tony Hawk series.
The Tony Hawk equivalent was Matt Hoffman's.
It's so funny to be like... But the Dave Mirra one was a different one.
To have a plot point in your movie where you're like, no, I'm not a sellout.
I don't, I'm not going to make a video game.
And you like made two extreme sports athletes with video games appear in your movie.
Yeah.
And like that, that was, I was pretty stoked on that.
And then also like later on, he'll be on a dirt bike and his, his stunt double is, is clearly Brian Deegan.
Like that's, that's the only... I don't know who it was, but it's definitely like a white guy with a bicked head.
It's Brian Deegan, the head of the Metal Militia.
Are you even from the IE Alex?
One more thing.
When Matt Hoffman came on screen, Ani was like, I don't know how he was able to string those words together with, like, the 12 concussions he's had.
Yep.
Yeah.
Yeah.
She was, like, pleasantly surprised.
Oh, because at that point, I think he only had nine concussions.
Because he went on to ride his bike.
He's still riding his bike.
Uh, so he's recruited.
He's taken down by Samuel Jackson's NSA.
Uh, and the reason they're recruiting Vin Diesel is because they're, uh, no one would ever expect a criminal to be part of the NSA, to be an NSA asset.
Look at this guy.
He's got tattoos and he curses.
He'll blend in easily.
Nobody will ever expect that he's actually working for the US government.
As if half the NSA and CIA assets aren't pedophile warlords and drug runners and human traffickers.
No, they're all woke now.
They don't want that toxic masculinity in the NSA.
We've tried everything.
We've tried Harvard graduates, Yalies, even Brown.
We've gone that far.
Stanford.
None of them are working.
Yeah, he's asked to take on the group Anarchy 99.
Anarchy 99.
Yeah, and he's like, no, I don't, I don't fuck with cops.
You know, I don't, I don't, uh, I'm not going to fuck with this.
And then Samuel Jackson's like, Oh yeah, well, uh, you're going to go to jail if you don't.
And he's like, all right, I guess I'll do it.
Did you see that?
Um, the, the van that the van that follows Vin Diesel and the Corvette chase has like an anarchy logo on the side.
And it's like, Oh, what's the one with like all the arrows?
Oh, the three arrows.
The iron front, or whatever?
No, yeah, it's like they have some other symbol that's like a vague rip-off of an anarchy symbol, and they did a good job with it, actually.
It looks like something, and you're like, oh, that's not, that's gotta be something, but it's not something.
But yeah, just, I mean, we'll move on.
But just the stunts in this movie are fucking amazing.
Amazing.
There's a scene where Vin Diesel is trying to get out of a restaurant, but it's being covered by snipers.
So he grabs a silver platter and then angles the reflection of the sunlight to where the sniper is, blinds him, and then runs out and then grinds the silver platter down two different handrails.
Hell yeah!
That's parkour!
The other stunt that I really liked was when he was on a dirt bike and he did a tabletop between two different strings of razor wire.
That's nuts.
His whole nimbleness...
Demonstrates throughout is so funny because like when you think Vin Diesel you might think he might be like do some like sick jumps but you don't think of him as being like agile or like elegant.
Well that's those are his two main skills are agility and the ability to spot a ramp almost anywhere.
There's one point where he bunny hops a dirt bike over a fence and like whips it between two things of barbed wire.
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
No, there was a ramp.
There was a ramp that you just didn't spot there, Tony, because you don't have that sort of mind.
But you do see him kind of like ready for it.
And then he's like lifts the bike up and whips between the two things.
It's amazing.
The whole movie is amazing.
Somebody really rides a motorcycle down the roof of a building that is exploded.
That's Brian Deegan doing it.
It's so good.
But the whole thing is, as an adult, I'm meeting these bad guys, right?
And I'm like, no, these bad guys are actually sick.
These are like sick-ass bad guys.
Okay, I only watched about half the movie.
Oh, yeah.
And right now, I'm like, these bad guys are fucking sick.
Are they actually capitalist sellouts, or are they actually down?
Is that the problem?
Um, what happens is, Tony, just to disillusion you a little bit, uh, they, uh, he indiscriminately massacres the team of scientists that help him develop the super weapon that he's going to unleash on U.S.
cap- or, uh, world capitals.
Uh, and I don't like, I don't like that part, you know?
Cause like, there's, there's scientists, man.
Like, you know, they're just, it's pursuit, pursuit of knowledge.
Like what's more, uh, endearing and admirable than that.
I don't appreciate that.
And if they were doing something super evil, like trying to take out all the capitalists in the world, they'd probably have a position somewhere in the United States government.
We could have probably found some job for them.
Yeah, Operation Rammenstein.
Bring him over here.
And then finally, probably my favorite scene is when he's skydiving slash snowboarding through the air, set to Hatebreed.
That's another thing, do people even do like the sky surf anymore?
Cause like, I haven't seen a sky surfboard in like a long time.
A sky snow surfboard.
It's the supply chain.
Thanks Biden.
I thought for sure.
I mean, I'm 35 now.
I thought for sure I would have done like a couple like, um, like dive bomb helicopter thingies, like in the X games to get the points and me and you would have like rotated around each other.
You know, I thought that would have happened at some point in my life and I would have been able to land on a snowy hill and continue to surf or snowboard.
Did you ever do any extreme sports, Andy?
Did you ever do skydiving, snowboarding?
No, I've never even gone skiing or skateboarding or anything.
I just play baseball and read.
Oh shit, okay.
Hey, that's pretty extreme if you ask me.
Reading is the most extreme sport there is.
It really is.
It really is.
Because you can do anything.
I read books about extreme sports, and it takes me till I'm there.
Yeah, totally.
You know who was really extreme?
Leon Trotsky.
Let me tell you a little bit about a book called The Permanent Revolution.
Here we go.
In 1905, there was a... You want to hear something sick?
Let me tell you...
You like Batman, huh?
Well, let me tell you about Vladimir Lenin.
He was like the Batman of his day, in a way.
I love that, I love that.
Whenever I see somebody with a Batman shirt, I'm gonna open with that.
You like Batman?
What do you know about Vladimir Lenin?
Let me tell you about the parallels.
I did do one Extreme sport from this movie as a kid.
I don't know if it was inspired by XXX.
It might as well have been.
But it was surfing on a tray behind like a 1985 F-250 going down the highway.
And then I fell and took a chunk out of my arm.
A chunk.
That would be a chunk, yes.
But it was still pretty cool.
That'd be really cool.
Did you, uh, before you got on the tray, did you say welcome to Jackass and then do it?
It might have been more of a jackass thing than a Xander Cage thing.
Mercedes-Benz und Autobahn alleine in das Ausland fahren.
Reise, Reise, Fahrvergnügen.
Ich will nur Spaß, mich nicht verlieben.
Just a little bit.
Just a little bit.
You got a pussy.
I have a dicker.
So what's the problem?
Let's do it quick.
Andy, the reason we brought you on this show today, I mean, you're a friend of the show.
Have you been on here before?
You have.
I don't think so.
Well, no, I don't think so.
I think you've been on our show, but not the other way.
Yeah, I talked to you on Antifada.
That's right.
Yeah.
OK, so you are a friend of the show, though, even if we've been unable to virtue signal that to everybody.
An IRL friend of the show.
That's right.
IRL friends, yes.
Uh, you just did a book tour, uh, for your book, I Want to Believe, Posadism, UFOs, and Apocalypse Communism, which, uh, really is a very fascinating book.
Uh, you're, uh, you know, just to grease you up a little here, uh, you're really good speaker.
I really enjoyed your, uh, your talk that you gave about your book at, uh, one of our local bookstores up here in Seattle.
Um, the book, I haven't had time to read it yet.
The book sounds very fascinating.
I am definitely going to read it.
Enjoyed very much what I heard from the event.
Thank you.
If you do read it, there's a part not too far after halfway where Posadas gets a blowjob.
So that's a little treat for you.
Okay.
All right.
Does he get a blowjob while he's trying to hack into the NSA website?
Nah, he's just in bed.
Just in bed at night, enjoying it.
Like a normal guy.
So when this book was described as one of the most comprehensive studies of Posadism and Jay Posadas, is that what they're talking about?
Had the blowjob been published before?
It's like kind of an Easter egg in the book that I like to use as a barometer to see if people have read it or not, or to keep, keep people moving forward.
Um, the blow job scene.
Okay.
Um, it's, it's such a, it's such an evocative title.
Can you give us just like a, a brief summary for people who aren't familiar with, with Jay Posadas or Posadism?
You've probably seen the memes.
You've probably seen, uh, the memes about, you know, Dolphins and aliens saving us from capitalism, nuclear annihilation somehow being a desirable outcome, and all of this relating somehow to something called Posadism, which, yeah, before your talk, I only understood it as like a niche sub-genre of communism.
Didn't really know much about it.
Posadism was a real historical tendency of Latin American Trotskyism that was mostly important between the 50s and early 60s.
And Jay Posadist is an Argentinian guy who was the leader of Trotskyism in South America and led the South American tendency of the Trotskyist International.
And then in the early 60s, he split from the Trotskyist International over a leadership dispute.
And created his own Posadist Fourth International.
And, you know, they had a section in Cuba, like the only Trotskyist section in Cuba.
They were leading a guerrilla war in Guatemala.
And they were important in like the workers movement in South America as well in the early 60s.
But everything kind of fell apart throughout the 60s and it just became a weird cult.
And that's where the essay about UFOs comes in, where he's talking about how, you know, UFOs are aliens and they could give us communism if we contacted them.
And then he talks about having these like comradely relations with dolphins later in life.
But the nuclear war stuff is just normal Trotskyism.
That's what the Trotskyists believed in the 50s, that we needed a nuclear war and it should come sooner rather than later.
Yeah, because somehow communism would be easier to build out of the ashes of a nuclear holocaust than out of capitalism.
Right.
Like because World War One, you know, results in the Bolshevik Revolution.
And Trotsky says on the eve of World War Two that there's going to be so much more immense destruction that World War Two is going to be a much bigger revolution and that, you know, Stalin's going to be defeated and people are going to look for leadership and they're going to look for the to the Fourth International.
But that doesn't happen.
So after the war, the Trotskyists are Basically saying, well, either the war is still going on, or the war is about to happen again, and it's going to be a nuclear war, and people are still going to look to us after it.
So it's just total cope.
Because Trotsky's dead, there's not very many Trotskyists.
But Posadas believes in it 100%, and he believes in it much longer than the other Trotskyists.
Well, he sounds like a fascinating guy.
I would highly recommend people check out this book, look into it.
It attracted a lot of fun discussion while we were there.
Part of your book tour, after you were up here in Seattle, you went straight to Chicago, is that right?
I stopped in Minneapolis on the way and saw George Floyd Square and the Third Precinct.
That was a nice detour.
And then I went to Chicago.
And then I went to Dallas.
Oh, cool.
Wow, you hit all the hot spots.
Hey, just real quick.
I do want to say that you also went to LA before you went to Seattle.
And I got to see you in LA.
And that was an awesome discussion.
I walked in late, which is awesome, because it was like, When they were ready to ask the really ridiculous questions, they were really, like, a little more heady.
Yeah.
A little more heady questions.
My friend asked me a question about telepathy, which I did not understand about Jacques Camas.
Yeah, it was interesting.
It was awesome, though.
I think I did all right.
You did great.
You did great.
You were amazing.
Thank you.
The one in Chicago, though.
Your appearance in Chicago is kind of the one I want to talk about because... Right, right.
Yeah, you appeared at a bookstore.
Do you remember the name of the bookstore specifically?
Pilsen Community Books.
Pilsen Community Books.
Which is a based bookstore.
If you're in Chicago, definitely go there.
Because a lot of the left-wing bookstores these days, they're fine, but they're a little bit bespoke.
They're more like the social justice-oriented thing.
Not a lot of radical vibes or revolutionary vibes.
But this store has it all.
This store, is it worker-owned?
I believe I read that somewhere.
Yeah, I think so.
I think so.
Well, the reason we're talking about them today is because they made news for kicking a cop out of the bookstore.
A cop who was just there to buy a Bible, guys.
Right.
She just wanted to buy a big Bible and she got kicked out of the store.
And, you know, you could read this on Newsweek.
You could read about this in the Chicago Block Club website.
I'm not quite sure what that website is all about yet.
But I'm going to read here straight from the cop's Facebook page.
Her personal Facebook profile.
Her name is JoRivBridges.
Just real quickly, you're legally allowed to just steal a Bible.
That's a thing you're allowed to do.
It can't be a picture Bible, though.
It has to be a regular Bible, but you're allowed to steal that.
But the Bible itself says you can't, so that's kind of a paradox.
No, no, because you're doing it because it's worth it.
It's bigger than law.
It's saving you.
It's your grace that you're doing it for.
So it's OK.
It's fine.
I've never heard about radical grace, but it's a really scary thing that people are preaching now.
The original title of it is Steal This Book.
Yeah.
I was going to say, I think you just ask the Bible for forgiveness after you do it.
That's all you have to do.
And kiss the Bible.
So this is Joe Rivbridges on May 17th posted this on Facebook.
Today I passed my beloved Pilsen and stopped at a bookstore to buy a Bible for my home.
I recently bought one and it's small so figured I'd get something bigger.
Yeah.
She just wants to like hollow it out so she can keep the fucking gold-plated 45 that she uses to shoot stray dogs with inside of it.
That's so American.
My Bible's not big enough.
I need a bigger Bible.
Uh, yeah.
Do we have a coffee table Bible in stock?
Uh, when I walked in in uniform, meaning in her police uniform, I was told I couldn't be in there because of my equipment.
I told her I was on duty and could carry.
So she's dancing around the word gun right now, basically.
Uh, from my understanding, the, uh, bookseller said, Hey, uh, you can't bring your gun in here.
We don't want you.
We don't want you with your service weapon and your gun in here.
You can't have that walkie-talkie in here, ma'am.
Yeah, yeah.
I told her I was on duty and could carry.
And she's like, oh, shit, my bad.
I didn't know it was allowed for cops to have guns.
Oh, my mistake.
Sorry.
She went on to say, quote, this is not a cop-friendly space.
Sick.
Hell yeah.
Hell yeah.
As a gay Mexican-American woman who's served her country and continues to serve her community, I'm shocked and heartbroken.
Like, why are you gonna say out loud that you're, um, that you're like a self-hating person?
Why are you saying that out loud so hard?
No, this is how we get good cops.
If you just have a cop in there that's, you know, got a similar background to you or someone you might know, then they're a good cop.
Yeah, exactly.
Uh, my beloved Pilsen, my home, my barrio where I lived for seven years and still own a home there.
Dot, dot, dot.
Yeah.
What does, what does that mean?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just for the weekends to visit.
Still, yeah.
Still own a home there.
Yeah, for sure.
I love that.
Today I passed by my beloved Pilsen.
So my beloved town that I was just passing through... You've moved out now, because you police it now.
Still own a home.
You can't live there.
I wonder if she was picking up something from her old home, like the rent.
Imagine finding out that you're landlord's a cop.
You have to move.
Yeah.
You have to, for your safety.
I'm embarrassed and heartbroken for the way she treated me.
I promise you, I didn't get mad as I walked out, but my voice did crack when I told her how, as a woman, a Mexican, a member of the community, I couldn't believe what she was doing.
Thanks, Pilsen Community Books.
Promise to never go there again.
Yeah, I'm thinking she was crying.
Yeah.
I'm picturing the scene in King of the Hill where Peggy Hill hears the rest of her book club talking shit about her and calling her a windbag.
And so she runs out, but before she runs out, she's like, as Gertrude said, when the barn burned behind her, I am an onion.
And then runs out.
So yeah, as King James wrote, I cometh unto the Lord, Also, for myself personally, for Tony Boswell, who I am, there's no better person for me to laugh at than a cop who's like, but I'm a Mexican woman.
I'm like, get out of my face.
Get out of my face.
I am laughing at you so hard.
You're a cop.
A gay Mexican woman.
You're a gay Mexican woman cop.
Gay Mexican woman housing provider.
It's funny how that one word makes this sick-ass word combo awful.
It just makes it the worst.
It makes this really great word combo just the worst word combo.
The cop part really sullies the whole thing.
There's a couple interesting things about this.
One is, I think it's actually a pretty effective propaganda move because Pilsen is a Mexican-American neighborhood, you know, it used to be a very radical neighborhood and now it's super hip and gentrified.
But a lot of it is kind of own and still I think the most people there are still Mexican-American.
So she's playing into this discourse of like, well, this is a Mexican neighborhood, but hipsters are here as a way of targeting this radical bookstore that has like an ACAB tote bag that says always carry a book.
Very nice tote bag.
I love that.
Get it on their website if you're a tote bag.
What's the bookstore called again?
Pilsen Community Books.
Cool.
Always carry a book tote bag.
That sounds sick.
And it appears to be owned by two white people or, you know, those are the people I met who seem to be in charge there.
So there is a little bit they're able to do a little like kind of culture war thing that's like these white people are gentrifying this neighborhood and they have these politics that have more to do with gentrification than like the old school immigrant politics of the neighborhoods.
So I think it's kind of effective in that way.
But it's also extremely funny.
Right.
We'll get to the comments.
There's a lot of people who are trying to use a woke discourse to defend cops.
Very funny.
You know, I just imagine like this, you know, gay woman, Mexican cop being like, Listen, like I get enough shit from criminals every day.
I get enough shit from male cops every day.
I get enough shit from straight cops every day.
I get enough shit from the people who actually do like cops, but hate women cops because they don't think we're strong enough to kill when the moment strikes.
And now I got to get it from booksellers too?
Yeah.
Some of the most marginalized people I can imagine are these cops.
This is very much like the COD mentality.
It speaks volumes about what them being weaponized, what them having a gun does to them.
I'll be honest, early in learning how to organize, I was a little bit more pussy and I did tell them that if you guys take your guns off, you can walk with us.
But you have to take your guns off.
Of course, very quickly, that became like, fuck off.
Stay away from me.
I hate you.
Don't come near me.
Don't talk to me.
And they were like, no.
And I was like, but you can just leave them in your cars.
And they're like, no, we can't.
I'm like, you don't have a lockbox in your car to leave your gun for when you go to dinner?
And they're like, no, we need it on us all the time.
Take every opportunity to carry that shit around.
It's such a part of their being that they cannot do it.
They cannot bring themselves down to your level.
It's impossible for them.
Well, you know what else?
Other moments that they can't take off their gun is when there's a man drowning right in front of them that they refuse to help.
Did you guys see this news that just came out?
No!
Yeah, this is from Arizona.
Oh God, that's so disgusting!
Arizona, three police officers have been placed on administrative leave after they reportedly watched as a man drowned in Tempe Town Lake.
Transcripts revealed.
Quote, I'm not going to help you, is what they were saying.
They were mocking a guy who was drowning.
The body cam shows him aiming, looks like aiming a gun at the body from a bridge.
What?
Why?
I don't know why.
It's just what it fucking looks like.
What the fuck?
Jumping to get away from them, maybe?
No, they were unhoused.
They were an unhoused couple who were apparently cooperating with authority, cooperating with the police.
They threatened to arrest the woman for trying to go in there and help the guy.
They said, we're not going to help the guy.
And yeah, I saw...
I saw responses defending the police that were like, well, they, cops have to wear, like, carry all this heavy gear on them.
Yeah.
They've gotten all this military grade hardware over the last, you know, decade or so.
They, you know, they can't jump into the water wearing that stuff.
Think, think about it, guys.
It's funny, because at first I thought maybe it was one cop, right?
And his mentality was like, well, I can't jump in because I have to leave my gun in.
Because if I jump in with my gun, I might damage my gun.
So I can't leave my gun unattended.
And it was one.
And then I hear three.
And not that it was ever reasonable, but it just gets worse and worse.
I would simply risk damaging my service weapon.
I mean, yeah, duh.
You just clean it after that.
No, duh.
Absolutely.
But that was the argument I thought was going to be made.
But it's like, no, there was three of you.
That's disgusting.
That's so disgusting.
Back to the bookstore, though.
The fallout was already happening against this bookstore before your appearance there.
Is that correct, Andy?
Yeah, so there was this kind of outcry on Twitter, and I don't know if it made it to any other websites, but our menchies were filled with People who wanted to counter-protest us and shame us and cancel us.
Did they materialize at your event?
No, they didn't.
I mean, it was totally full in there, so maybe they came to heckle but couldn't get in because it was just simply too many Andy stans there.
You know what I'm fucking talking about?
All the fandies in the house.
But yeah, we were really hoping that they would take a little initiative and Google... Because it was all... The last tweet of Pilsen Community Books was talking about our event.
So that's the one that they were all massing on.
And I was hoping that they would Google me and Jared, who both have very shady pasts.
Pasts that they would really be mad if they found out. - They'd be bummed, yeah. - Not only the venue we were speaking at, but the kinds of people who were speaking at this store and what we think about police and our various associations, but they didn't, and we were kind of poking them.
Not so much that like Pills and Community Books was going to get like attacked in some way.
We didn't want to go too far, but we did want to make it a little bit more about us.
And they just, they were just too focused on being good allies to their queer Latinx police officer comrade.
Well, well.
I, you know, I really wish they would have tried to counter-protest or, like, gone inside, you know, to, you know, seated people throughout the crowd to disrupt or whatever.
But then, like, once they started hearing, like, really interesting and meaningful politics about, like, communing with dolphins and, like, being open to, you know, preparing humanity with radical love and openness towards an invading alien species, that, you know, maybe they would have learned something.
That was my dream, yeah.
I wanted to win them over.
With my heart.
I like to imagine the discussion outside.
They're like, we gotta keep these commies out of here.
And then someone's like, no, Posadists.
No, no, these commies are ruining America.
No, no, they're Posadists.
And they look up Posadists, and they just see dolphin memes.
And they're just like, this is what we're mad about?
So I was doxxed once by a pretty serious Nazi group.
And I don't know why they did it, but they wrote the docs exactly if I had written it as a satire of what I would want the Nazis to write.
It was just taking the Posadist thing totally seriously.
Like, no, this guy is actually a Posadist.
And he actually does hallucinogenic drugs and communes with dolphins in Coney Island.
And he's actually actively working to destroy the world with nuclear weapons.
Yeah.
I just want to email him and be like, it seems like you're in on the joke, and I'm kind of here for it.
Thank you.
I'm surprised I'm not reading that blurb right under Kim Stanley Robinson's recommendation.
Z Kyle, I guess, guys?
We have communications between him and aliens on nuclear weapon plans.
And in the Andy No book, they talk about me and Antifata and he basically says like, I'm this tough guy who can like beat up anybody.
It's true.
You're looking pretty fit.
I mean, we got the webcam on.
You're looking pretty good.
I'll be real.
Every time I've been around you, I've been a little cocky.
I've been like, I could fuck with anybody.
Cause I mean, I got, I got Andy here with me.
We're not losing any fights.
So I've, yeah, I've, I've, I've been part of that.
I have like a smattering of responses to this from from Twitter and from Facebook, from Google reviews.
It's very funny.
There's a theme here.
Let's see if you can, you know, I already hinted at it, but.
Somebody responded to the complaint about her getting kicked out of the bookstore, and somebody on Twitter says, maybe she shouldn't be shopping for a new Bible while on duty and in uniform.
Hey, keep God and country separated, you feel me?
Skid Row Wilson, which I don't know what kind of politics this guy has after reading this comment, says, you're going to tell a woman how to dress?
Yeah, I am.
She was asking for it.
I'm sorry.
She was asking for it.
I love when they become SJWs and feminists.
And it works.
It totally works on me.
That was so good.
You tell a woman how to dress?
Ridiculous.
Google reviews, they were inundated with like one-star reviews over the last, you know, the bookstore was inundated with one-star reviews for the last several weeks, but I think they still have like a four-star rating, which is kind of impressive.
This person pretended to be the cop.
That's a, hey, I think that's a felony.
TJ says, I was making a conscious effort to support small businesses when I visited this store.
For a small bookstore, I was met with a really cold response.
Not sure if they suspected stealing, but I clearly didn't come in to commit a crime.
I never felt welcome whatsoever as a female minority who largely kept to myself.
I'm disappointed and won't be back.
I mean, like, if you're being the cop, you can't say that you kept to yourself because you're a cop.
You've never kept to yourself in your whole life.
I, so this person, maybe not, they weren't pretending to be a cop.
They're pretending to be a female minority.
Yes.
And their display name is TJ.
So it's not DJ, which I could buy if it said DJ, but it clearly says TJ.
I am a female minority.
That's definitely how most female minorities refer to themselves.
That's how I describe myself.
I'm never like, I'm a black man.
I'm like, I am a minority.
I'm a male minority.
Tony, you're not just a male minority to me.
You are a model minority.
Well, thank you!
Thank you.
I have been working on my angles.
I mean, ironically, this is kind of like a model minority figure, huh?
The cop?
Oh, absolutely, yeah.
The Latina gay cop.
Yeah, she's like a social justice modern model minority.
Yeah, not all cops.
Some are gay Latina women.
An interesting spin on the story is they actually did have a big Bible for sale.
They had one of those reference Bibles that you know, secular religious study scholars read in the academy.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
As a result of the publicity, somebody bought the big Bible.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
I feel like that probably wasn't even cheap.
No, I think it's like 30, 40 bucks.
Yeah.
Hell yeah.
Hell yeah.
Making sales.
A lot of these reviews are just extremely vague, but in the like woke language way, like Thomas Martin here says, how horrible to pass judgment on a person based upon their appearance is wrong.
It's not, you're not, you're not like looking at, you're looking at somebody in a jumpsuit and a orange vest that says like, that says like garbage man and saying that's a garbage man.
You're not like looking at somebody being being vague.
You're like looking at like a uniform.
It's like not, you're not making assumptions.
You know for sure what's happening.
It's a uniform and it's a gun.
Yeah, well, I mean, it's like she could have been wearing something totally different and just also had a gun on her hip and a big name tag that said, I am a cop, and I think she probably would have been treated the same.
Yeah, and she could have gone outside and put her gun in the car and locked the car.
It's also possible that she was one of those stripper cops, and they were totally wrong in assuming that she was a real cop.
Yeah.
You never know if a cop's going to be a stripper cop.
That's true.
It would be wrong for them to assume she was a stripper cop, too, because, like, what?
A woman can't be a cop.
I think it would be wrong for worse to assume that she was a cop just because she is in a cop uniform.
I think she could be given the benefit of the doubt and just assume somebody's a...
You should assume the best of somebody is what I'm saying.
Assume that they're at least a stripper or, you know, maybe it's Halloween and you forgot.
I mean, Halloween, no, Halloween is not cool.
Stripper's okay.
You can't be a cop for Halloween.
What about a sexy cop?
It's the same thing as being a stripper.
It's different.
Because the thing is, the thing is like, you know, for me personally, if you give me a cop stripper, I'm a little scared for a moment.
I'm like a little, I'm a little like, they walk in, you know, and I'm like, well, get the fuck out.
But I'm also like, get the fuck out.
And then he's probably going to be like, well, I guess it's nobody's birthday.
And I'm like, wait, it's my birthday.
I was so scared.
And then you're going to take your clothes off.
This works for me.
But if you're just doing it for candy, nah.
But that's problematic because, you know, you think that- People have sex on Halloween too, man.
Yeah, we think that Halloween is in October, but Mexican Halloween is in another month.
So just because you see a Latinx cop doesn't mean it's not Halloween.
These white radicals think that they know this neighborhood, and they don't even know that Latinx Halloween is in March or May.
Don't even forget about gay Halloween.
It could have been gay Halloween, too.
Well, that's now.
That's now.
That's June.
Yeah, but a lot of these comments just didn't actually want, or a lot of these reviews on Google, didn't actually want people to know that it was a cop she was discriminating against.
It's like, why don't you put that part front and center?
Why don't you say, oh, they didn't like law enforcement, so they kicked law enforcement out?
It's just a lot of these, oh, they are racist to minorities, or they're disrespectful, or they judge a book by its cover.
And it's like, oh, how ironic.
You work at a bookstore.
You should know better.
And it's like, well, actually, booksellers have a pretty good eye for cover art and know what constitutes a quality book.
It's because they know that people are going to, if they said, I'm not going to shop at this bookstore because they discriminate against cops, more people would want to shop there.
That's very true.
Yeah.
So they have to hide it.
I love the idea that she was looking for a big Bible.
It seems like a fake story, man.
It does.
Like she probably knew.
But it's true.
Right?
But maybe this cop is crafty.
Maybe she knows, since it's her community, right?
Maybe, yeah, the people she rents to for $1,200 a month Or whatever, uh, told her about the ACAB bookstore around the corner, and she was like, you know what?
I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go try something, see what happens, and then make a Facebook post about it and wind up in Newsweek.
No, but, but the thing is, she probably was, like, just, just saw a bookstore and was, like, looking for, like, a Candace Owens book, but, like, knew that you can't say that, so you're like, what's the thing that no one can get mad at me for buying?
I'll say a Bible.
If she was smart, she would have said, like, a Quran.
So yeah, when you're wondering, like, oh, why aren't these people that were poorly reviewing the store?
Why are they neglecting to mention, like, why she was actually kicked out?
You know, it's, oh, is it based on her appearance or based on her race or her sexuality?
In the Newsweek article, I'm not going to read the whole thing, but at the Newsweek article about this, they, for some reason, I'm so glad they did, they include this at the very end of the article.
Newsweek has contacted PCB and Bridges for comment.
According to the Pew Research Center, in November 2020, 26% of respondents to a survey said they had a great deal of confidence in the police.
26%.
26%.
That's rough.
It added that 4 in 10 Republicans and Republican-leaning people had a great deal of confidence in the police, contrasting greatly with 13% of Democrats and Independents who felt the same.
Wow, that's actually, that's better than I thought.
That's better, those are better rates than I thought.
That's actually pretty good.
I think, I think they meant this to like be an own on Democrats or be an own on the left or something.
Yeah, I think so, yeah.
But it does, the math is there.
Even like Republicans, 4 in 10 Republicans.
But to contrast that with the 13, the 13, little, little, 13% of Democrats and Independents also.
Yeah, I think the hard part about talking about police is that people don't really like them or respect them.
There's that Blue Lives Matter thing, and obviously after 9-11 they were heroes for a minute, but most people know how the police are, but the idea of getting rid of them tomorrow can be kind of scary because they do perform so many things that are just necessary in society.
If you get into a car accident or something, you gotta file an accident report, gotta save a kitten from the tree or whatever, and then there's more like law and order stuff that people have real concerns about.
So, it's not like when people vote to not, or like people don't like the idea of defund the police or abolish the police, it doesn't mean that they're like Blue Lives Matter people.
They just don't think that's like a realistic policy proposal.
But it also doesn't mean they like the police and they don't like when their precincts get burned down or something like that.
We used to have a pretty healthy disrespect for the police in this country and I think we need to bring that back.
Um yeah and it's just so much of like the the state has been hollowed out and all that's left is to just pump more money into cops to keep uh everything else from you know lapping at the shores of the people who are in control essentially and so yeah it's like uh we we do quote need the police uh because everything else has been gutted Like, it sucks.
Like, we could do something as easy as just, like, I don't know, create a division of Caltrans that responds to accidents and, like, just takes down, like, insurance claims and makes sure people are healthy, you know, going home, you know?
But, like, cops show up and they're like, who's on drugs?
Who's drinking?
Whose documents aren't up to date?
You know, who can we punish here?
In one of my Facebook groups, it's like a leftist trucker and driver Facebook group, somebody's a school bus driver and they're like, you know, they put out the red flashing stop sign when the kids are getting out of the bus, which is a big deal.
You know, you don't want anybody to blow that stop sign, you know, hit a kid or several kids.
And if somebody does, the bus driver is supposed to take down the license plate, take down the make and model, and then send it in.
And then that person gets a ticket, right?
And so they were posting, they were posting about this, like, ethical dilemma.
Like, I don't want to create a police encounter for somebody, even though they did fuck up supremely by running this stop sign, which is, yeah, a thing you can't do.
A thing you should not do and should have some sort of ramifications in society if you do it.
Um, and to my mind, it's like, okay, well, probably they're not going to encounter the police, right?
It's just going to be a ticket mailed to them.
But if they're a person who's like, already owes a lot of money or doesn't have a lot of money or whatever, and they, or they don't have a house or whatever, and they, they can't pay the fine.
Well, now it's going to escalate.
Now it could wind up with them.
Yeah.
Getting a police visit or whatever.
And so it does suck that there's not some other state apparatus or city apparatus that can perform these functions that won't result in somebody getting killed or having, like, their life ruined.
But, you know, I said, well, just beat their ass.
Just try to catch up to them and beat their ass.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Instead.
We should put cow catchers on the front of buses is what we should do.
But like, the whole thing is like, you're right, it should end there.
It should be like, it should be like, OK, cool.
I mean, I'm not advocating for this because it sucks, but it's a real thing.
It's like, OK, give the person a ticket.
No police ever have to like be involved.
They can pay it off in six months or you can like fucking garnish their wages.
Don't ever bring the cops into this.
Like that never happened, but it does happen.
So the quandary is there.
So like, it should be, it should be like, you know, way more simple than that.
Like, but they just have to make, they have to, you know, they, they want to like squeeze everything out of it because they can't hold each other accountable where the real money is.
So they got to really pinch everyone else down, you know?
Last thing I wanted to read.
This is a Facebook comment on the police officer's Facebook post.
This is from Heather.
Heather says, hold your head high.
My accomplished and brilliant woman, friend, mentor, representative of what is right, good, and exceptional in law enforcement and the world.
For owners of a bookstore, I'm appalled at their closed minds, prejudice, and ignorance.
If you skim through their Facebook page, which is luckily not followed by many, they're in favor of sending money to a, quote, in-jail support group in the area.
What does that tell you?
What?
Yeah, I mean, huge red flag.
When I see somebody, like, sending books to prisoners, or an in-jail support, it's like, you know those are the bad guys, right?
What does that mean?
Even, like, my really shitty grandma, who's like a shitty person, like, writes letters to a prisoner.
Don't worry, she'll explain what she means, okay?
What does that tell you?
Someone in their family has made a bad decision in life, been arrested, and there is no accountability.
It must be the police are bad.
So she thinks that like people who do prisoner justice activism are, it's just, oh, it's because my dad's in jail.
So I'm like, I'm like getting a group of people together to send a care package to my dad every, every month.
Yeah.
That's what it has to be.
Yeah.
That's true of politicians.
Like when, like the blue moon, when like a politician goes to jail, they come out like, you know, being abolitionists.
Yeah.
Right.
Like Jared Kushner.
Or like that guy in Illinois, was it Pritzker?
J.B.
Pritzker, yeah.
The governor of Illinois who went to prison.
And now he's very against prison, but also a Trump supporter.
So what you're saying is, in order to get less people in prison, we have to throw more politicians in prison.
Yes.
Okay, that's easy math for me.
I'm okay with that.
As an abolitionist, I'm okay with that math.
Pilsen Community Books, you should be ashamed of yourselves.
How disgraceful for a woman to treat another woman this way.
I love that.
Come on, women, rise together!
It's women on women violence, you hate to see it.
In this society, when we should all feel safe in the profession we choose, especially when you completely judged a quote, book by its cover!
Oh!
Very good.
Snap!
If she took one moment to learn anything about your life, your struggles, and your success, she would be proud to be your friend.
Stand tall, friend.
You, we, the bigger human being today, the better human being, and karma and kindness will prevail.
Blue heart, gold star, blue heart, gold star, blue heart, gold star, blue heart, gold star, blue heart.
Wow.
I mean, at least you know they really mean it with all the blue stars and gold hearts.
I love the idea of getting so upset, like you're crying because you got kicked out of a bookstore.
Grow up.
We've all been kicked out of bookstores.
I've been kicked out of a dozen bookstores in my time.
It happens to everyone, sooner or later.
If you haven't stolen a moleskin from Barnes & Noble, then I don't really fuck with you.
Okay, well, that's it for the tale of the Bible buy-in cop, or, you know, not so much buy-in.
What is it about, like, libs and people who, like, people, some people even, like, oh, I don't really fuck with cops, but they want to have the cop friend that's the exception.
They want to be the, they want to have the friend that's the exception.
There's a local ex-cop here that everyone buddies up with and I hate his guts because I'm like, you're still a cop.
His kid makes goth punk music and I'm like, your dad's a cop.
Shut up.
Everyone wants the exception of the rule.
Well, I mean, he's probably following in Matt Skiba's shadow.
I mean, Matt Skiba, goth punk superstar, also loves the cops.
It's cringy.
It's like Hot Topic, Mall Goth.
It's cringy.
Oh, so not like Blink-182.
It's not sick like Blink-182.
But yeah, everyone wants to have that.
People, they're just creaming over the idea of like, no, no, I have a cop friend, but she's a Latinx lesbian who's a cop.
I think it's the other way around, Tony.
And a Christian.
It's the other way around.
It's people who do like cops but can't, like, outwardly say they like cops, so they just pretend to not like cops except for their friend who is a good cop.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
But if you get, like, the points, you know, like, if you get, like, the tally of otherness that you have that's not a cop, it's one you can claim harder.
So, like, they want to champion this person because maybe they could be actual friends with her.
I know some people who are friends with cops because like they work out with them at the gym or their neighbors or something and they'll talk and they'll you know hope they can have like open conversations like isn't discussing what happened in Novalde or like look at this video or something and the cops will usually be like yeah we're really fucked up like you don't yeah like you've heard some bad stories about us and you know like Almost nothing about how bad we are.
We're worse than that.
It's not like you will be friends with cops and realize they're actually good-hearted people who do a good job.
You see that they are a gang if you are friends with them.
Yeah, well, I mean, Tony's told stories about his cousin on this show.
Yeah.
The stuff that his cousin says to him.
So people have heard that side of it, too.
Who, like, at this point, has, like, completely cut me off.
Like, completely.
And, like, he's quitting being a cop, but still, like, hates me.
And it's just so funny.
Well, he hates you for being right, Tony.
Yeah.
It's just so funny, because I'm waiting for that phone call where he's like, you're right, I couldn't be a good cop.
I'm like, I know.
And I'm going to tell him it's because he's too short.
I'm gonna tell him it is because he was short.
You know, it's easy to forgive somebody for being wrong.
It's harder to forgive somebody for being right.
But even here, I have like the local cops, like there's a couple of cops who I'll see in public and they'll like try to like...
Say hello to me and I will always be like no like they'll like they like they they want to be like regular people but um you know but you just you don't have to be friends with them ever they kind of like it when you're not friends with them they kind of like respect you're not friends with them I just realized she was she was a gay Latina cop buying a Bible.
Like, pick a side.
I'm sorry.
You know what I mean?
Well, she's never read it.
She doesn't know that you're not supposed to do that.
She'll go on to tell you that she has only had sex with a man and that she's looking forward to marrying a woman so that she can have sex with the Holy Spirit involved and that will no longer be a sin because the Holy Spirit's involved now.
So like, don't worry about that.
Yeah, she should read it.
Don't worry about that.
Actually, yeah, maybe we should give it to her.
She's not Catholic.
Okay.
Final thing I wanted to talk about, you know, We're talking about gay issues.
It's the month of June.
A little slice of pride to take us out on.
We've seen a lot of pretty good corporations and institutions.
Giving out perfunctory pro-gay messages like the Pinkertons, the Pinkerton Agency, putting a rainbow on their Twitter avatar and saying things like, hey, we'll fuck any worker, no matter your gender.
Yeah, we got you.
The best one I think I've seen is the U.S.
Marine Corps.
Amazing.
Tweeted out a tweeted posted an image that is pretty much the cover Right?
Yeah.
It's the cover of full metal jacket with the helmet, except it's modern camo.
So it's modern digital camo.
And instead of bullets, it's bullets with rainbow colored tips on them.
So like, it looks like a box of crayons, but they're bullets, you know, pretty appropriate for the Marines who are, you know, for those familiar known as crayon eaters.
And then instead of born to kill, written on the side of the helmet, it says, proud to serve.
Amazing.
Like, they did the joke.
I mean, that is the joke, right?
They did the meme.
This is the meme.
They did it themselves.
And they paid someone to do it.
I can't see how this isn't a joke.
I can't see how this isn't a joke.
It's I mean, it's so well done.
There's like a reflection on the top of the helmet.
Like this was like effort was put into this.
This is a good looking graphic.
I mean, it's corny, but it's a good looking like this.
This is a joke, but they went all out on it.
It's amazing.
It's just this continual tragedy of not only, obviously, a lot of people who participate in Pride protest the involvement of police and the corporate aspects of it.
So that's always going to be a tragedy that's become this huge festival of capitalism in the state.
Everyone gets a piece of it.
But Full Metal Jacket is like this extremely anti-war movie just about the abuse of being trained.
And then you go to war and commit these atrocities.
And that's the nature of the movie.
But it became this huge recruitment thing for the military.
Like a lot of people who go through basic, you know, have this, they want to be abused the way that Pyle is abused in the beginning of it.
And it's just how, you know, no matter like anything that becomes like successful on the mat, this mass scale is going to be recuperated one way or another, no matter how blatant it is.
Yeah, oh, the Scarface movie.
The Facebook page for the Scarface movie has changed their avatar to a rainbow.
Now, it's Tony Montana sitting behind the boardroom table, but he's got a rainbow over him.
And it says, first you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the catgirls.
Then you get the catgirls.
Because being a gay man is not about doing cocaine.
I don't know why they would think that.
No, no.
Like, I mean, everyone knows, like, I'm attracted to men, but I'm like, I'm not, don't call me gay, though, because I don't do that much cocaine.
Right.
But those things, like you said, they always kind of like work against themselves, right?
Because it should be an effective piece of propaganda, but it's not.
And it's like people, something about Vietnam, people really misremember this.
It's a really weird thing.
Like, I just saw a tweet recently that it said, like, Do married people and Gen X people ever feel like they were in the last helicopter out of Vietnam when it comes to dating?
And I'm like, that means that you got married during the occupation and you like didn't get to be around after you left.
Where they can go back to like peace.
But people misremember Vietnam and all that stuff so wrong because all we remember is like the sick-ass explosions with the cold music over it.
Yeah, I mean American Empire failing at least in that one pursuit probably isn't a great metaphor for succeeding in a monogamous marriage.
Yeah, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, we're so apolitical in this country.
We're so detached from actual politics.
I think a lot of people see these movies about the Vietnam era and stuff and just be like, man, isn't it so sad?
It's that meme about how we make a movie about how we went and invaded another country and now we're sad about it.
And that's the prevailing message.
Isn't it fucked up what our soldiers went through?
Yeah, even if it's supposed to be indicting our country and our treatment of soldiers and our, you know, the uses to which we put our soldiers, it still just gets sublimated, I think, back into, you know, the general ethos of, well, they were, you know, they were doing something, they were trying to do something good.
And then that still only results in only like quote like respecting vets, but then actually like treating them real bad when it comes to their actual like livelihood and the people who actually need the help because of the damage that they did suffer through for you.
And so like only it's only like the quote respect that that is a result of that.
It's not any type of actual benefit for them.
And it's like really wild.
But if you asked any, if you asked like any random person on the street and they were like, should veterans have like a solid gold healthcare?
Every single one of them would say, yeah, but in this country we don't have any power to actually do that.
Yeah.
So it's like politicians who are giving like the lip service respect or the lip service platitudes about soldiers.
Whereas I do think like a random person selected from the population would be like, yeah, give, give.
Absolutely.
Like they really, people really believe that, you know, troops are the heroes or whatever.
However, if you're a gay troop, uh, got some, got some sad news for you because a lot of, a lot of pretty negative responses, uh, from the, from the right, uh, against this like insane joke of a pride, uh, post, uh, with, yeah, rainbow tipped bullets.
Bravo24076 says, this is a shot to the gut of all Marines currently serving and have served.
You know, also the fact that it says proud to serve on there is ironic too, because it originally said born to kill.
I mean, the message that they're writing on the band is not, it's like a commentary on the absurdity of the Of being in the military, so proud to serve is still, you know, the, I mean, ah, just, it just hurts so much to recognize the irony and the message of it, and it's just all perverted on so many levels.
Well, right here, Hop Along Time says, since straight white males are not included in the quote rainbow, we know who the bullets are for.
Oh!
Oh!
They're going to war against the cis armies of Russia.
Yeah, so I think you've hit the nail on the head with your interpretation, but not with your overall understanding of what they're trying to do, because they are trying to evoke the message, yeah, born to kill, but it's born to kill cisheteronormative white males.
Actually, that's part of the service now.
That's part of serving in the Marines.
This is chemical warfare, though.
These aren't actually like death bullets.
These are going to make you gay bullets.
Like every color tells you what you're going to end up as.
Pink phosphorus.
Yeah, if you get shot with the right one, you know, you're going to, you're going to, you know, you're going to, you're going to wake up, uh, bye.
And then no one's even going to see you anymore.
And your family's going to forget about you.
No, these are the bullets from Triple X. Like one of these is a fake bullet that just splatters red paint on your chest to make you think, uh, to make other people think you were killed.
Uh, the green one is just a knockout dart.
Uh, he only, he only really shot two different colors, huh?
Even though he got like a bunch of different colors.
He, he suffers like, like six concussions in the first 20 minutes.
Like he gets, you can't just knock somebody out and make him go into a coma that many times.
But I mean, it just makes you think about like what he could have been without that brain damage.
Yeah, but so Bravo said this is a shot shot to the gut to all Marines currently serving and who have served.
They're gonna fucking bleed out and die, but it's gonna take, yeah, two days for it to happen.
Thanks to this ad for the Marines.
Walbert Jenkinson replies, time for the grunts to carry out the long-awaited coup.
And if your Minions Law sense is tingling a little bit, just hold on, because Temple Builder Fitness says, The Great 03XX Uprising, baby!
Baby!
The Great XXX Uprising, as the movie foretold?
I would join that one, in a heartbeat.
See, the thing is, what's scary about this is like, if you're, if you're, you know, if you're a devil dog, you know, if you're a Marine, you're always a Marine.
And if the Marines are now embracing like that gay shit, that means that that stuff you did with your bros is now gay shit.
Like before it was just, we, we were just, we were in the, we were in the desert and like, you know, a mouth to mouth, but now it is that gay shit.
And now I got to like deal with that.
I'm not ready to go to hell.
I mean, why do you have to put a name on it?
That's really what I hate about Pride the most is like, why do you have to like label what I do with my body?
It's kind of like an experiment.
Like everything I do is kind of a grand experiment.
I'm trying to.
I'm trying to like blur these lines here and you guys are trying to slot me into a specific bullet on the full metal jacket helmet.
No, thank you.
Do you know how hard it is?
Do you know how hard it is to like import protein shakes?
And like, you know what a good resource for protein is?
Is your bros.
It's your bros.
Like, and like, I gotta, I gotta get jacked over here.
I'm trying to say jack for the ladies, for the ladies.
Yeah.
So like yeah and like but now now that there's like rainbow bullets that means it was actually that gay shit that's scary.
I do like this sort of cope that conservatives are doing it like it's uh Christian Walker is the one who's really uh pushing it it's like look I have sex with men and I like uh I am attracted to them but I'm not a gay I don't have the rainbow flag.
That's the liberal thing.
I don't think Christian Walker has ever said out loud that he's had sex with men.
I think he only says that he's attracted to men.
Oh, interesting.
Well, because he's Christian, so he can't admit to having premarital sex.
I watched him on Hasan, and he pretty heavily implies it.
I don't know if he said it that right.
Oh, he totally implies it.
But I can't wait for his Grindr account to leak.
I'm thinking about reactivating just to find him.
No, I think he admitted he was on Grindr.
He admitted he was on Grindr?
I think so.
I want to see that account leak.
But he's Hasan, so it's like five hours long.
Yeah, it's probably like full like kayfabe though.
It's probably full-on, you know.
I want to see the alt.
I want to see the alt right now.
That's what I want to see.
It is really weird for people like, yeah, like Christian Walker, who we talked about on the bonus episode last week, to try and position themselves as like You know, a token gay Republican, right?
But then also denounce the idea of being gay.
It's like, you can't really have it both ways.
You know, it doesn't really work.
Like, it might work in making you a spectacle, like a political shiny object that attracts eyeballs, which is probably really all you're looking for anyway.
You know, it's probably all you want out of this is some sort of book deal or a YouTube show or some shit.
But like, I don't know if Christian Walker doesn't go to gay bars, but Christian Walker definitely does cocaine, right?
Yeah, it seems like it.
I would hope so.
If not, like, hey, bang my line, bro.
Like, it's cool.
We can hang out.
Like, we can, you know, we can hang out.
With all these, like, you know, corporations literally virtue signaling with, you know, changing their logo for the month of June, for putting out, you know, statements about equality and whatever, you know, the right does call these out as virtue signaling.
Yeah.
And it's like, yeah, that's true.
So why are you getting mad about it?
Yeah.
Like they're not, they're not actually changing anything.
They're not actually doing anything of substance.
You should be happy that like, they're trying to fleece the LGBTQ community out of their money for a meaningless, for, for, you know, clicking a filter in Photoshop on, on their logo.
But then you realize, well, no, that is like real politics to these people.
That is like the most fundamental politics you can do is change your advertising slightly.
Except for real heads should know, as a military historian, as myself, as a real strategist, I play war.
I play all those games.
I play Risk.
I'm a real military buff.
I understand strategy.
I understand the distractions.
Tactics.
Tactics.
3D chess.
So I'm not upset about it.
Yeah, I think that when they see the Pride stuff, I'm sorry.
I had a good comment.
I just forgot it.
It is like a recognition of culture, you know, which is what they care about.
It's, it's like appealing to a culture that they dislike, that they're, that they're not part of.
And that's like the ultimate loss for them.
Yeah.
Okay.
So this is what I want to say is like with these like horrific legislation against trans people that are coming down and against gay people and now overturned Roe versus Wade tomorrow, it seems like, or, you know, whenever this airs, probably no more Roe versus Wade when this airs.
The question is like, is there some material driver of this?
Is this like the rural petty bourgeoisie losing their traditional agency or something like that?
And obviously, I think there's, you know, there's always something material going on there.
But like what they're pushing is just so much more extreme than what like the anti-abortion movement has always pushed.
And like in a in a weird way, like their homophobia and their transphobia is so much more tempered than what it used to be.
But the bills are so much more extreme.
It just seems like they're pushing these extreme bills to own the libs, and it's not really, like, in their heart, they don't care about, especially, you know, conservative men, like, they don't They want to be able to get abortions, you know?
They're not against contraception.
They don't want to get that shit banned.
But the idea of that stuff passing and showing how the Democrats are weak is a huge W for them, even if it's personally an L for them.
For the base, sure.
For the base, it's like laughing at somebody else's misfortune and then, you know, you're Your daughter or your neighbor says, Oh yeah, I had to have an abortion because the fetus wasn't going to fucking make it to term.
And like, this is going to impact me.
And then they'll be like, Oh, that's really sad for you.
You know, I'll try to like hold both thoughts in my head at the same time.
But for the people enacting these laws, I think they're true believers.
I think they're actually, you know, they're like evangelicals.
They are far-right patriarchal psychos.
I mean, they definitely want that control.
It's a coalition of the evangelical true believers and of people who are just politically expedient, and they just get off on it.
And I think that the Republican politicians specifically are pushing it because they know this is what gets votes now, is pushing something totally crazy and extreme.
Yeah, I guess.
I mean, they could have gotten votes just with, like, You know, the new age satanic panic, you know, about school teachers teaching LGBTQ stuff that's not really happening.
Like, they're getting a lot of...
Yeah, they're getting a lot of traction with that.
They get a lot of traction with shit like this, the woke corporations.
That brings people out.
Disneyland, that brings people out for sure.
They don't actually have to pass anti-gay or anti-abortion legislation to get people riled up.
But the Alito leaked decision, it kind of says pretty explicitly, this is a reaction to the years when the court was basically pushing progressive legislation.
So it's not, you know, I don't think Alito is like a super pro-choice, anti-choice guy.
I think that he just sees Roe versus Wade as being part of the legacy of like woke progressivism and is fighting back against it.
Yeah, I haven't read his opinion too closely.
It is a bit of a flex too, because it's something that the Democrats have leaned on for so long.
The Democrats have said, listen, if you want to maintain your access, you have to support us.
And we did.
Well, not we.
America did.
And they are in power.
I think there is a bunch of people who do believe in it, but are also doing it behind closed doors.
But it is mostly saying, hey, this thing that you've been leaning on, we're taking this away from you.
And we're going to flex.
This is a huge flex.
Because what's happening right now is these conservatives are sitting here saying, No no no like we are speaking for the majority because if you look at these protests look at these counter protests there are more people who are out there like being aggressive about being um anti-choice uh on a random Wednesday because they're like on, they're these weird Instagram, like culture people who like take tours around States.
So like they get to like lean on that and say like, look at us, we're representing the proletariat, but they're like, they're not, it's just fake weird, you know, image that is being, you know, paid for.
And like, we don't get to do that.
So we just get to take the L that's all.
That's all that's happening is like, is like anybody who is not them is just, is just getting cooked right now.
Like anyone who is not a conservative is just losing right now.
And that's a huge flex.
That's basically what I mean.
I think last, Last response to the woke Marine post that I wanted to read is from Gabe Frey, who says, RIP our military.
See you in heaven, dot, dot, dot.
Maybe.
I don't know.
Because I don't actually think God lets the gays in.
And yeah, I'll say that, listener, thanks for being here.
Thanks for checking us out.
See you in heaven.
Maybe.
Maybe.
Buy the green book.
Yeah, Andy, why don't you go ahead and tell people how they should get your book, man.
The book is called I Want to Believe, Posadism, UFOs, and Apocalypse Communism by A.M.
Gitlitz.
Well, I think you can get it at, I mean, anywhere online where you buy books, including the Pluto Books website.
I think you might be able to order it from Pills and Community Books, which might be a way to support them and, you know, buy a Bible, big or small, while you're in the cart.
It's also on Red Emma's, you know, which is an anarchist bookstore in Baltimore.
So yeah, buy the book from whatever anarchist anti-cop establishment.
Yeah, very cool book.
Very interesting.
Highly recommended.
And thanks for coming on the show, man.
Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
I'm a big fan.
Love you guys.
Yeah, yeah.
Love you too.
Also, listen to The Antifada if you're doing so.
Oh, I almost forgot about, yeah, The Antifada.
Yeah, yeah.
Very excited to listen to new episodes and see what's coming down the pipeline with you all.
I'm very excited to see what you and Sean are cooking.
We got some plans.
We're cooking up something special.
Good, good, good.
Cool.
All right.
Well, hey, thanks to everybody who signed up for our Patreon last week.
The tallies are still coming in.
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That's just through the Patreon.
That's not counting the sticker sales for the Choose life, stay out of my uterus stickers that we've been raising money for abortion with.
Those are still on sale.
That wasn't just a last month thing.
Those are still on sale and all the money from those will still continue to go to abortion access networks as long as we have them in stock.
So yeah, you can check those out at MinionDeathCult.com where we have a bunch of other cool stickers for you to check out.
Yeah, thanks for supporting the Patreon.
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Yeah, yeah.
And just real quick, just on a personal note, the Patreon stuff is so huge.
Thank you so much to everyone who does it, because the other stuff I do, like the Everybody Eats and stuff I've been doing lately, I can do that because of Patreon.
If it wasn't for Patreon, I wouldn't be able to do that stuff.
That allows me to use my time to do those other cool things.
And it wouldn't be possible without that.
So thank you so much.
It's so huge.
It's bigger than you'll ever know.
So I really appreciate it.
And honestly, fuck all that cool stuff.
It's really good content.
It's really good stuff.
We got some really amazing guests on this, some really amazing stuff, and some other cool stuff coming down the pipeline.
