#701 While I think TDS is a legitimate thing. I think most of these ppl would use it to receive disability from things like SS
FIRST: We celebrate pretending to play sports, from the ghost baseball of Field of Dreams to a golf influencer who uses an imaginary golf ball to Make A Point THEN: A clever Minnesota GOP culture warrior files a cheeky bill trolling Trump haters before immediately getting arrested for soliciting a minor. Maybe the Trump Derangement people actually are psychic? ALSO: Trump eliminates collective bargaining rights for thousands of federal workers, and Alex tries to talk some sense into private sector union workers refusing to stand with their public sector siblings. Get a bonus episode every week by signing up at http://patreon.com/miniondeathcult for only $5/month Music: City of Caterpillar - When was the Last Time We Painted Over the Blood on the Walls? Jean-Luc Ponty - Enigmatic Ocean Part II
I was watching this movie and I was kind of inspired.
It was like this guy, he was like losing his mind, talking to ghosts and shit.
And he said, he said, if you build it, they will come.
Oh, right.
Yeah. So did that.
But that guy never got the help he needed, did he?
I think.
Didn't he just kind of like walk into a cornfield and shoot himself in the head?
I think it's insinuated that he either shot himself in the head or bludgeoned himself in the head with a baseball baseball bat.
And which is weird because that takes more than one swing.
For sure.
Right. And then I think there was like a big bet taken out about whether he would kill himself right before he did it.
And so it seems like somebody who had like a history of gambling might have been involved.
Well, what's messed up is that the ghost played by James Earl Jones, he like encouraged him.
He gave him the strength for that last swing.
Turns out he had a lot of money, had a lot of money on him dying.
So it's kind of, it's kind of, we're not sure, we're not sure if he's going to get into the Ghost Hall of Fame now.
See, I don't, I, maybe I'm misremembering the movie.
I think James Earl Jones was just, uh, black and wise.
I don't think he was necessarily a ghost, um, just because that's like usually what he played.
Like, I don't think he was like a voice from the clouds in that movie.
Wait, was he one of the people that was actually alive?
I think there's like, uh, there's like two versions of them.
You know, I really got to watch that again, because I kind of forgot that the whole thing is like for some reason they're like almost there's like a there's like.
A large number of black players in that movie, right?
Or is it just him?
I don't remember.
Yeah, he's one of them, but he's playing an adult version of himself who's alive, but I think maybe there's like a past ghost that they're also like interacting with or something.
Yeah, I haven't seen that movie in a long time.
It's just, it's too emotionally draining and it's too exciting, you know, watching those guys just enjoy the all-American pastime of baseball.
Yeah, yeah.
I just get jealous, really.
Jealous that Kevin Costner's not your dad?
Or not your son?
I'm mad that Kevin Costner's not my son.
I'm also mad that I don't have a cornfield that I can just build a baseball field in.
Right. Because I feel like that would be pretty cool.
Anytime I see one of America's farmers not turning their crops into a dusty baseball field, I'm like, what are you fucking doing?
Yeah, that's honestly that that's that's exactly why that's what happened to America.
That's where the fabric of America began to tear was when they stopped building baseball fields in the middle of their cornfields.
I think there's like a scene.
I don't, like, only they can see the ghosts, right?
Like, nobody else can see the ghosts, but people are still coming as, like, a roadside attraction to watch the ghosts.
It's like a flea circus, but with human beings, you know.
It's exactly what it is.
Yeah. Because, yeah, they're just sitting there watching an empty field and, like, applauding.
Yeah. And then there's, like, concession stands.
There's, like, people selling hot dogs and shit.
And I think one of the little girls, like Kevin Costner's daughter, is like, I can see them playing baseball.
And there's, like, an older guy, there's, like, an adult man who gets You need to give up on your infantile sense of whimsy right now!
there's this guy right now there is no magic left in the world it's dead along with god there's this guy right now and he's like um he he's like some positive affirmation guy who uses the golf space for that and he plays golf without a ball Mmm. He just swings and then goes to where he thinks it would have landed.
Oh no.
And then swings again.
And the thing is, he doesn't always- I would fucking kill myself.
He doesn't always have good games, which is the part that's insane to me.
The thing is, is like, some of us actually grew up where you didn't have the thing, or you didn't have access to the real thing, and you did have to use your imagination, and it fucking sucked.
Yeah. It wasn't good.
If you have access to a golf course, what the fuck are you doing?
No, no, he's on a golf course.
Goddamn. He's on an actual golf course, no ball.
And I gotta respect him, because if it was me, I'd be like, Well, hole-in-one.
Weird, another hole-in-one.
Man, that's three holes-in-one in a row.
I am so good at this game of imaginary ball golf.
I mean, I guess if I had access to a golf course, it would be easier to imagine myself having fun and enjoying myself rather than on like a blacktop, you know, school basketball court, like the only thing available to me at the time.
Yeah, I think he's paying to play on these courses, too.
The whole thing is nuts, dude.
And people are like, yeah, I just really like his attitude.
I just think it's really cool.
You know, it's a way to...
because, you know, golf is mental.
And yeah, he's like, yeah, just no ball.
Just vibes.
See, what would be sick, though, you tweak this a little bit and you actually do have a crazy good idea for a channel, for an Instagram or YouTube channel.
You do...
Freakin' golfing.
You do free golfing, where you only golf in free, like, you never pay for golf.
You sneak in, you jump the fence at these country clubs, you find a ball from the lake, you know, you're using clubs that you, like, found.
You're lost and found at different courses.
Yeah. And you just, you, it's like, that's like the coolest way.
That's like the only cool way to play golf, I think.
Can I golf for free?
Just imagine missing a putt and there was no ball and you still missed the putt.
Well, I'm taking a bowl again on that one.
We're going to run that back.
I didn't see the break.
I didn't see the break.
I'd be a stickler.
Nope. We all saw what happened.
Leaving it just short and there's no real ball.
Ah, shit.
Should have hit it harder.
Wait, this isn't my ball.
Whose ball is this?
Whose imaginary ball is this?
I got way closer to the hole.
Because, like, finding balls is one of the great joys because it saves me some money, you know?
I'm like, yes, ball.
He finds balls all the time.
He's like, oh, there's another one right here.
That's so crazy.
He's like finding actual balls and he's like, what?
What is this?
What is this?
This is like alien technology.
How did they get so round?
Did AI do this?
This must be AI.
Is this 3D printed?
Uh, alright, you ready?
Yeah. 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 the people go to the desert.
Follow their rebarred and post them.
I'm Alexander Edward.
And I'm Tony Boswell.
And we are Minion Death Cult.
The world is ending.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is responsible.
And we're documenting it.
What's up folks?
Welcome to Minion Death Cult.
Thanks for tuning in.
If it's your first time listening, we are an entirely listener-funded Independent podcast Tony and I are both working individuals with real jobs and we choose to do with that What we choose to do with that is not run ads on this podcast We just you know,
we like to talk about what we want to talk about and we don't want to have to show for fake ads Psychological health companies or whatever and so we get by just by your support Over at patreon.com slash minion death cults where in addition to supporting us You'll also get a bonus episode every week,
and we've had some bangers lately last week we had on Aaron Thorpe from the Trillbillies to talk about sci-fi artwork nostalgia Black pessimism within the left movement, the sort of like racial, some interesting racial perspectives and commentaries that I know I haven't heard discussed a lot on other podcasts.
And so, you know, we appreciate him coming on to do that with us.
And so, yeah, five bucks a month helps us do the show, supports us, and you get a bonus episode every week.
So please consider doing that if you haven't done it already.
Not only do you get a bonus episode, but that makes it so that we will never tell you what to do with your pubic hair just to make a couple dollars.
Right. Yeah, that's none of our business.
We're not really in the pubic hair business.
We're not.
Yeah, it's none of our business.
We don't want to make money off of shaming people for having, you know, thick, thick, luscious bush.
You know, I'm not going to tell people to shave their nuts in the shower.
That's not that's not our place.
We just we just want to bring you raw, raw I actually think that shaving or trimming or managing your pubic hair at all is a sign of latent pedophilia.
Like not just preferring, you know, like smooth skin or whatever, like even like, you know, trimmed, like, whoa, you want, oh, you want pubic hair to look like you just got it a couple of years ago from you?
Interesting. So that's kind of one reason we're also against the trimmers.
Today, an amazing story that I've been wanting to talk about.
We are talking about the Minnesota GOP representative who cleverly, in a delicious troll, decided to introduce a bill to his state legislature to define Trump derangement syndrome as mental illness.
It's mental illness.
Wow. I know I was triggered by this and you could tell how triggered I was because Elon Musk posted a screenshot of the CBS News article and said, it's so real.
Twisted crying laughing emoji.
Twisted crying laughing emoji.
And yeah, the bill to do this was real.
Also, what was real was That legislator immediately getting arrested for solicitation of a minor.
Jesus. He like left the building going, me thinks I have doth trolled expeditiously and then had handcuffs placed on him.
Immediately. Immediately.
Yeah, it's a good rule of thumb that if you're gonna do one, don't do the other.
If you're gonna be soliciting minors, maybe don't try to like Own people with a jokey joke and put your name out there in the headlines and bring attention to yourself.
Do you think maybe he was like, oh, if I do the most bullshit piece of legislation ever, maybe that will help cover up the CEO of me being a pedophile?
What if he's like, no, one of the symptoms of Trump derangement syndrome is these witch hunts for these pedophiles.
Yeah, absolutely.
Have people considered that maybe he was trying to save the girl?
Look, just because they found evidence doesn't make it not a witch hunt.
Yeah, do you think he was trying to save the girl Tony?
I think maybe that could be why he was reaching out to a to a minor actually an FBI agent posing as a minor You know, I I don't know like as as a Trump fan He's got to be hyper aware of all the evil like sexual Exploitation of children that Trump has dressed himself in and used to his advantage as a politician So maybe he was trying to help Trump by finding as many underage girls in a situation Uh, that would, where they would have sex with him.
So he would know how bad things are, you know?
Listen, woke is a pandemic.
And the only way I can guarantee that these, these girls grow up, I read somewhere that this guy was like, Actively against sex education legislation in public schools and said that hey That's something that are that our children don't need to know about they do not need to know about what it looks like when an adult Man tries to prey on them.
It sucks because he was like we don't need it in schools.
I got this I'll do it myself Listen I think it's I think it's my job as a parent to talk to everybody else's kids about sex.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly Okay, so from the Newsweek article, the legislation claims symptoms include, quote, Trump-induced general hysteria where a person struggles to distinguish between,
quote, legitimate policy and, quote, psychic pathology, which is expressed with verbal hostility or acts of aggression, which Trump and aggression against Trump and his MAGA supporters So this is so funny because it's obviously such a bullshit, like pathetic piece of like culture war nonsense.
But it boils down to people are mean to me.
I think it's I think it's actually a mental illness to find me personally repulsive.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
That's the only way it makes sense.
It must be something in your brain chemistry.
This because not liking me, you know, me, a white guy who's a who's, you know, in government and a pedophile, not liking me.
The only reason why is because something's wrong with your brain.
This is called the it's illegal for me to not have friends bill.
We absolutely need to be reinvesting more into this country to ensure that everybody likes me.
Yeah, yeah.
I love a person you are failing to distinguish between concrete legitimate policy and psychic pathology.
This is like the Ben Shapiro bill essentially.
This is like Facts don't care about your fee fees.
So we're bringing back asylums, but it's just for rad lips.
We're going to lock up everybody who runs a Facebook account called Trump's Tiny Hands.
Does this mean that we can get some sort of insurance coverage or help with our Trump arrangement syndrome?
Oh, absolutely not.
But you'll have to wait for the comments for details about that.
But we'll get there.
Yeah, we're going to get rid of Medicare and Social Security, but we're bringing back the Count of Monte Cristo for anybody who voted for Kamala Harris.
Yeah. You know, this is it's this is just it's so it's like, of course, fucking Elon Musk thought this was the funniest thing in the world because it's the lamest joke possible.
Actually, all my enemies are insane.
Clearly. And I like the phrase psychic pathology.
If you don't like Trump, you're failing to distinguish between legitimate policy and psychic pathology.
I think that's redundant, right?
Is psychic the word they wanted to use?
I don't know.
I think they were just trying to get as many syllables as possible.
That's really what was happening here.
What are they even claiming?
Are they saying like, no, these aren't These aren't like real bills being passed or real, you know, things happening.
It's just they're putting messages in your brain.
Either. I mean, the most charitable, I guess, interpretation of this is we are doing psychic pathology on Trump by claiming Trump is bad because of his mannerisms.
You know how like there's like the armchair diagnoses of, you know, oh, he's a narcissist or, oh, you know, Whatever.
Elon has autism, that's why he's a Nazi.
Yeah. Like all these sort of pseudo-scientific, pseudo-psychological explanations for his behavior when you don't need any of those.
There's no clinical diagnosis of being a bad person.
That's all up to opinion anyway.
That's up to how you deal with the people you actually interact with or whatever.
But I mean, if that's what they're saying about Trump's critics, they are doing it to the extreme by actually trying to label their critics' revulsion or criticisms of Trump as a pathology.
And they're not actually, yeah, they're never going to do this because why?
What would be the point?
What would they benefit from actually having, like, can Legislatures even rule on what is the definition of sanity?
It's all just a joke and a distraction and a waste of time.
But yeah, I think they used psychic pathology because it sounds cooler.
I think they probably meant mental pathology in the redundant way, but psychic sounded cooler.
Because it does.
It does sound cool.
It sounds like a cool space death metal band name or song.
Psychic Pathology.
Yeah, yeah.
Psychic Pathology would be the track after Celestial Cyst and before Enigmatic Monolith.
How many solos on each song?
Yeah, like half of the songs or half the song.
Yeah. Or each like kind of instrumental passages, um, either like spacey and, and slow or absolutely fucking ripping.
Yeah. Uh, but I, I do like psychic pathology, like accusing Trump detractors, critics of the MAGA movement being like, well, you're engaging in psychic pathology.
For your enemies or whatever, and it's like, yeah, sorry, you're radiating abusiveness out of your chakras right now.
Yeah, yeah.
Like, I can see you like an Alex Gray painting from a Tool album projecting your future arrest for child sexual exploitation material into the fourth dimension.
You're like a tesseract of harm Turning in on itself with like multiple abuse it.
You know what I mean?
Let's do it.
It's just like Yeah, yeah, like I am judging you because I know you're about to be arrested for soliciting a minor, bro I don't like everybody can tell you can file all the legislative, you know What do you call legislation you want about how you're actually cool and good and then you when you get arrested for this shit it kind of kind of This is all just him seeding the path so that when he does go to trial for being a pedophile,
he gets to claim mental illness.
Because I mean, if Trump's arrangement is mental illness, then being a pedophile is also for sure mental illness.
So he's just trying to take that route.
The best place this joke goes is going and arresting people who still have Kamala stickers on their cars.
Like putting them in a psych ward.
Yeah. Yeah, maybe.
What if he's like, after this arrest, he's like, I don't understand why the LGBTQIA plus P haven't helped me.
I was told that they supported pedophiles.
I thought I was cool because I was reading too many right wing memes that said it was acceptable for me to do what I'm doing now.
Um, no.
But yeah, let me read more from this.
The bill is unlikely to be approved with Democrat-aligned parties having a one-seat advantage in the state Senate.
Well, thank God.
That's why.
That's why it's not going to get approved.
Not because it's a dumb joke.
Ike Horn, 40, is married and a father to four children.
Wow, that's great.
Police found two iPhones, an unopened Trojan condom, and $129 in cash upon his arrest, according to The Guardian.
Uh, see, yeah, and he was probably just gonna give her the second iPhone and the $129 in cash so she could contact her parents without her democrap pimp knowing about it.
Yeah, yeah, that's smart.
She, every, listen, all, I was trying to give her a burner, that's all.
I just needed to have a burner.
While the quote derangement syndrome as a political phrase has been made popular in recent years to mock critics of Trump, the term was actually coined in 2003 by the late political commentator Charles Krauthammer, that droopy dog looking motherfucker, face looks like a pussy, but in a bad way.
Negative, yeah.
To describe critics of then-president George W. Bush.
So it was Bush Derangement Syndrome as the OG?
I didn't know this.
The Minnesota proposal features the same phrasing Krauthammer used to describe Bush Derangement Syndrome, which was defined as quote, the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency, nay, the very existence of George W. Bush.
That's amazing.
You can just hear the bow tie on this legislation.
As epic and based as these people think they are, they are repeating Krauthammer, Shapiro, all of these dork-ass political commentators and personalities who sell mugs that say liberal tears on them.
This was coined in response to people being upset about the Patriot Act.
And the Iraq war.
Yeah, they're like, whoa, like, you know, surveillance has gotten out of hand.
You know, this is this is great.
And he's like, you guys are just you guys are just crazy.
It's so perfect.
It's so perfect that, of course, in order to defend Trump, you have to hearken back to the defense of neoconservatism itself, because that is what Trump is.
It's just neoconservatism.
On steroids.
Like, any thought of isolationism as we continue to fund the genocide of Gaza, or as we continue to decide which countries we want to invade and own, and, you know, these penalizing tariffs and these, like, aggressive actions towards others, like, none of that is isolation.
I mean, I guess it's isolationism in the sense that you are Refusing to have allies you're refusing to like work with any anyone else, but you're at like it's you're still trying to like impress your Your will on the rest of the world.
You are not negotiating with the rest of the world in terms of like We're gonna do what makes the most sense for Everybody for both both sides or whatever.
You were just like specifically serving a narrow set of oligarchs With these ideas.
Yeah, very funny.
You know, there's so much of modern conservatism that is still just neoconservatism.
Like that image, that photo that JD Vance posted on the White House account.
Did you see that?
Of him shooting the gun?
Yeah. And it was like...
That super bass photo?
Super base photo of Vice President JD Vance spreading some freedom seeds downrange God And it's like the you're it's just again first first as history then as a farce like you're doing Team America Yeah, sincerely like you're doing Team America thinking that you're in on the joke also just calling Calling them freedom seeds.
Jesus fucking Christ, man.
Yeah. Wow, that's such a cool pew pew, Mr. President.
Epic amazeballs.
That's like that's the the epic base version of, you know, watering the tree with with blood.
It's freedom seeds spreading freedom seeds.
I like that picture.
I thought it was sweet.
I thought I think it's nice to see like a man being embraced by another man.
Because he did have a supporter with him.
That's the thing, is that we've created a culture where men have to go shoot guns just to hold each other.
Totally. That's why we need to normalize Plutonic male intimacy, so that we don't have to go buy a gun and then have my bro hold me while I shoot it.
Because honestly, it's scary.
It's scary to shoot a gun, and I need that kind of support.
Men would rather take disgruntled vets to a firing range and then get shot in the head by them than go to therapy.
Yep. Yeah, they tried to bury us.
They didn't know we were freedom seeds.
Pew pew!
God. It's so awful.
It's just like, what if fascistic, racist, oligarchical, imperialism, but Reddit?
Also, the idea that, like, shooting a gun at a gun range, that's, like, perpetuating freedom.
Like, that's all it takes.
It is all just an act.
You just have to go through the motion.
Now, see, if it was me, like, I want to be able to do that in my backyard.
That's freedom seats.
Right, oh, Freedom Seeds, yeah, but they won't let me hang up my target that's a silhouette of a police officer, an NYPD-specific police officer that I have his name and badge number on the target.
So much for freedom.
Oh, oh, Freedom Seeds, but I had to go buy this gun?
I couldn't 3D print it?
That's not very free to me.
Yeah, let me get into some pictures.
Can we talk about what he looks like real quick?
Yeah, go for it.
This, this, this man is, you know, it's, I know it's a tired joke where it's like, he's so white.
He looks clear.
This man does lack pigment.
He has, he, he looks, he just looks so pacey in his eyes.
They're like this blue, but it's not a charming blue.
It's like a haunting blue because of the shade of his skin and the shade of his hair.
He, he just, he looks like he's, He's not quite done ripening he's like not ripe yet Yeah, he almost like he kind of looks like powder from that movie pattern Do we do we like powder from when we powder exactly did he actually did he would did he ever like encounter?
director Victor Salva and had some had some Shenanigans go on and that's like the reason he is the way he is now not not to like excuse the behavior, you know Uh, but abuse begets more abuse.
Like, was he in Jeepers Creepers, the first one?
Do we know?
He probably was.
We just missed him because he's, like, kind of hard to look at and also very, like, um, the most, like, the most bland face you've ever seen in your entire life.
Dude, speaking of Hollywood pedophiles, I got to say it real quick.
So we have been watching House, uh, and Brett Ratner, uh, let's just say Notorious B.I.G.
Hollywood producer, uh, who has had, uh, multiple alleged, you know, instances of abuse against young boys.
Uh, it's so wild to go through this series because you see like X-Men actors in bit parts throughout like cycle, like the new, not Cyclops, who's the one who like throws the, no, throws the gyroscopic, He's like Cyclops's brother or something.
He throws like a force energy.
That guy is in it.
One of the guys who plays...
I thought you meant like X-Men actors, like men who used to be actors, but you mean actors from X-Men.
Yeah, I do mean actors from X-Men.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
OK, now I'm on the same page as you.
Are you trying to say trans women?
Why are you avoiding any points?
They, honestly, they should embrace X-Men.
I think that's such a sick phrase.
But there's also been, like, at least two storylines involving child sexual assault, and both of them, the children were in the wrong.
In the show?
In the show.
Both of them, the children were at fault.
One of them, the daughter, like, black, got her dad drunk and blackmailed him into Having sex with her as a minor so that she could get whatever she wanted.
She could get purses and a car.
And then the one we just watched the other night was a boy who lied about being abused by his Catholic, by his priest, whose life was in shambles because he had been shuffled around to church, you know, different parish after different parish.
And he was like, Suffering from, you know, some, you know, obscure malady.
And one of the doctors, like, confronted the kid and was like, we need to get you tested because he's suffering.
And the kid was like, Oh, actually, I'm a big liar.
And there's no such thing as abuse in the church.
Well, that's that's the whole thing is that House House is all about like anomalies.
And like, things are pretty, like, pretty wild and very rare.
You know, that almost never happened in the disease sense.
But that kind of goes on.
You know, so it's also, he takes the extremely rare thing that almost never happens where kids fabricate these things.
So that just goes, that's the universe they live in.
It's where the most outrageous thing is always what's going to happen.
Right. I just wanted to say, wow, wouldn't it be a cool twist if this episode were actually like 100,000 videos on Pornhub?
That would be so, so freaking freak the audience out, you know?
Uh, I can imagine that scene too with like, with like the daughter house is like, you know, you know, she probably did this to a black woman.
You know, I can tell because she's kind of sexy.
Yeah, he like saw her lip twitch and he was a classic sign of a narcissistic sociopath who would seduce her own daughter.
I read her own father.
I read about this in the Bible.
Yeah, that is where you would read about it.
Anyway, yeah, this guy, I hope he goes down.
Justin Eichhorn.
Fuck off, bro.
At the bottom of this Newsweek article, they did that Newsweek fairness meter that we talked about on the last episode, and guess what?
This article, unfair, left-leaning.
The meter is all the way to the left.
It's off the dial.
You are beyond empty.
What? The thing is, this is your whole, your whole thing is pedophiles.
Like you're everyone.
So you're supposed to be like, Hey, we got one.
It shouldn't matter who it is.
Hey, we got, but because this guy is like, you know, a Republican legislator, they're like, this is, this is liberal bullshit.
Right? Yeah.
Well, and I think it's also kind of fucked up that Newsweek would press this when it is like libs of Tik Toks area to cover.
True. You know, it is kind of their beat and it's pretty fucked up for Newsweek to try and sweep in and like just because, oh, libs of TikTok has made hating pedophiles so popular now.
Now Newsweek all of a sudden has to get in on it.
And it's like now there's nothing for libs of TikTok to even report.
Like, why would they bother, you know, if this is already out there?
So, yeah, it's fucked up.
They're like, yeah, they're just covering this pedophile for clout.
That's not cool.
It's clear.
Brandon2024 says while I think TDS is a legitimate thing, I'm thinking that most of these people would use it to receive disability from things like social security and give more than an excuse to not work and go around protesting.
It is pretty wild how these people literally can not think for themselves or have an actual logic thought.
I've noticed a severe lack of actual logic thoughts in many of my contemporaries, especially Tony.
That's true.
I will just say that.
How is not going to work and like going doing something else?
How is that not thinking for yourself?
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know if that's related to that or just in general Trump derangement syndrome as a sign of not being able to think for yourself or whatever.
Are they saying it's contagious?
Are they saying it's contagious then?
Yeah, it's called mass hysteria.
It's a viral contagion.
Yeah, it's like a social contagion.
That is what they think.
That is what they think about gender non-conformity or sexuality.
And even just noticing that Israel is a genocidal state like that's how they treat the they treat these as like tick tock phenomenons or social contagions or whatever because it's obviously a very easy way to dismiss people again being concerned about real problems like coupling the anti TDS legislation you would they probably did pass Not a lot like legislation that outlaws the criticism of Israel because criticizing Israel makes you an anti-Semite.
We might not be able to prove that hating Trump makes you insane, but we did prove with the help of the ADL and this associate professor from Columbia that you are actually an anti-Semite if you don't like carpet bombing and open-air prison.
Yep. Yep.
Yeah, that's the symptoms.
Real easy.
This person, oh, you know, I just wish they could invent like a mask for the mind.
You know, like they made us all wear a mask for that for that fake disease.
That is a real disease going out there.
We need like a mind mask.
Yeah, you just block the people in your social media feeds who like try to reason with you and try to explain things to you like that is that is how they they worm their ways into your brain.
I'm going to I'm going to develop like a A monthly subscription plugin for your browsers that helps block WOKE.
And it's gonna be like WOKE Mask.
Yeah. Fuck yeah.
But you have to pay for it.
Like a lot of money.
To keep your kids safe from the WOKE.
To give them a mind mask on the internet.
Yeah, it's weird because WOKE Mask says that it will inoculate, protect me from this garbage out there.
But I can still smell it.
I can still smell it through the mask.
How is it working?
I don't believe it's working.
I just, before we move on from this comment, I just, I love, I love the idea of being like, yeah, I would call them crazy, but they might get benefits.
Might actually help them.
And it's like, well, no, it won't.
Have you ever been to this country?
We don't give, we don't give benefits to people.
We don't give a fuck.
Well, they might get social security, what, $400 a month or something?
Yeah. If you're struggling, you're definitely not getting any type of help.
Even if you're struggling from TDS, you know?
I'm just worried we might help too many people.
The point of this is I'm trying to hurt them, you know?
And I'm worried it might actually help them.
Don't you want people to get help from this thing that you're worried about?
No! If there was a way to inoculate somebody and make it be like, oh, Trump, this does make sense.
We are being pretty harsh to him.
I was being dramatic.
We could just Somehow have a thing do that.
I also love that all this is happening and being praised by the the guy who wants efficiency in the government He's like, yeah, let's let's waste your time with this with this joke another let's add another layer of bureaucratic Classification.
Well, it's okay.
We'll get AI to classify who's Trump deranged and who's not?
Yeah, you know, it's just so it's so fucking absurd Philip 6991 says someone quote someone disagreeing with Trump or even spinning what could be seen as excess as an excessive time Discussing Trump is not a mental illness.
So he's like responding to somebody else Who said that it wasn't a mental illness very true Sophie However, when that excessive time turn or maybe it was he's responding to the author of the article.
He's probably like quoting part of the article where she says This is actually not a mental illness.
Like even the New York Post article had to say there is no medical evidence that Trump derangement syndrome is a real thing and not just like an obvious half-assed joke that a bunch of people are choosing to believe in, like willingly believing in the most fake thing imaginable.
He says, very true, Sophie.
However, when that excessive time turns to when that excessive time turns to obsessive time, it becomes an illnesses.
have mentioned that comma having a quote focus on crime stories comma and a grasp of the criminal mindset.
What? *sad music* They're criminally insane.
Judging by...
Look at these memes they're posting and tell me this isn't a crime.
It went from 0 to 100 real fast.
Like focus on crime stories and grasp of criminal mindset that yeah, that is what it is posting posting is criminal Yeah, I mean and just you know The same the same mind that is susceptible to Trump derangement syndrome is predisposed to committing crimes is predisposed to being a criminal And I think that's just common sense Yeah, here we go.
Our casa says they should be required to wear a blue mask so people can avoid them So just doing the Juden's mark, you know, not to get overly dramatic, but just like, we should mark them permanently in society or whatever.
It's just like, hmm.
I don't know if I've ever heard that having a negative outcome.
But also like, so now we can wear masks?
Exactly. Like, okay, yeah, I have Trump derangement syndrome.
Can I wear a mask in this hospital, please?
Or is Kathy Hochul going to arrest me?
Yeah, so now I can wear the mask, and you're not going to accost me for wearing a mask?
You're going to avoid me?
Because that actually would rule.
If we knew that was going to be the take, I think we would see an uptick in mask wearing if that would make it so that people with this mindset, this combative mindset, will avoid you.
Okay, what if we let people wear a mask, but it has to be A mask that we have printed out that has a QRC code on the mouth that leads to your home address.
You know what I mean?
So if we ever need to actually identify you, and by we I mean the surveillance state, the fucking corporate police state, then we can.
Just to be safe.
I'm just trying to be safe here.
Last comment from this banana Rama says people should be allowed to criticize their president without the stigma of quote mental illness being on their record.
So this is like.
Thank you, I guess.
Thank you for engaging with this in good faith at all.
Like bless you for taking the time for, I don't know, somebody who's maybe on the fence about Trump derangement syndrome being an official disease or or medical condition.
I think you're maybe like.
Giving them a little too much credit even responding this way, but they go on dot dot dot dot His presidency is going to be one long list of indicative settling of scores and lining his pockets with untold wealth I'm almost sorry for the maggots who voted for him because they actually believe he's capable of doing something for them and You believe that?
replied Would splody head syndrome be a better fit for you?
Oopsie! Shouldn't have used the word fit around the hair triggered.
What? And BananaRamble responds, dude, what are you on?
And you believe that?
Responded, reality.
You should try it.
That's right.
That's right.
I'm high on life, brother.
That's why I seem so fulfilled and happy.
What you believe that is not telling you is that they are being serious.
You believe that, actually, there are several things they're supposed to be taking regularly, but they're raw-doggin' it, and they're on reality right now.
So they're actually on nothing, when they really should be on a couple things.
Uh, I just- Would splody head syndrome be a- Again, the redification of fascism, bro.
Splody head syndrome.
Am I missing something there?
Stop talking like that.
Shut the fuck up.
Grow up, for the love of God.
What does that mean?
Does that mean something besides...
Is he saying that their heads should blow up?
Or their heads...
Is there something I don't get here?
Am I missing?
I'm not on Reddit like that.
It just means you're triggered.
Your head exploded.
Lib's head exploded.
3-2-1.
Ben Shapiro owned a 16-year-old girl trying to get fucking healthcare for her grandma.
Oh, okay.
That's exactly what it is.
Okay. That's all it is.
Shouldn't have used the word fit.
Shouldn't have used the word fit.
So this is a Brit, right?
Because, you know, fit means like hot.
In Britain, I think.
Yeah, is that what's happening?
Or are they saying that like, that like, libs are not physically fit?
No, I think, I think he's saying that libs would take it as an insult.
So yeah, maybe fit, like physically fit would be the trigger word or something.
Yeah. I'm on reality.
You should try it.
Dude, you are one of the more insane people that we've covered on the show.
Yeah, absolutely.
You're just like, I don't know, having this cartoonish back and forth with somebody who's like trying to actually engage with you as like you're a serious adult and you're just like, no.
What's funny is they're out here sharing the same screen grab, but they're saying, owned him, got him.
Got him.
What's funny is I said splody head and their heads splodied.
Uh, yeah, let's move on.
All right, for our second topic today, sorry, folks, we got more of Alex's union shit.
I don't know, you know, maybe some people are tired about hearing about labor rights and worker struggles and all that.
And like, I get it.
You know, I have a very particular window into the labor movement by virtue of my job and by virtue of me being a teamster for 19 years.
So I guess these conversations are More maybe more fascinating or interesting to me on a personal level But I will say I think Trump signing an executive order to end collective bargaining that will Eliminate collective bargaining for like hundreds of thousands of workers wild definitely The biggest attack on workers in my lifetime and possibly like in modern history I think I
think this is worth talking about And honestly, as it concerns the public sector, and we're talking about public services and the existence of the federal government, the very existence of this country, really, I think this is a conversation that we want to be having as the left.
I think we're going to get into The sort of particulars here about public versus private union, we've talked about this before, but it boils down to the existence of the federal government, the existence of government as a force in American life,
and some would argue, I would argue, as a mediating force in public life, as perhaps our only way Of pushing back against corporate ownership of this country part now It's not the only way but it's a it's an already organized way to do it So obviously it is going to be more effective.
If not, yeah easier mechanism To use in order to shape society in the ways that we democratically think it should be shaped now, of course It hasn't been enough and it won't Be enough there actually needs to be a credible threat From workers from the masses That will stop the capitalist class from doing these things and it remains to be seen whether we can put that together
and that's why I don't know that's why this is such a fascinating conversation and the idea there's such an urgency to this and me being a member of A union, I feel like I have an opportunity to try and influence my fellow union members because we're going to need we're going to need them.
We're going to need everybody.
You know what I mean?
And there's always going to be people we can't reach.
But I think exploring these arguments and and exploring these contradictions is a great way to start trying to deprogram A lot of the working class because we need we need class consciousness To do to do anything we need for people to know What the battle lines actually are because right now people are playing with toy soldiers on a fake risk game board over the culture
war Shit while the actual war is happening around them And and you know not to sound dramatic or whatever, but we you know we do need to like help people Become aware of this and help people wake up to this war.
So, you know, that's the I guess that's my justification for continuing to cover this stuff.
But I hope other people do find it interesting as I do.
Well, I mean, it is important to talk about because it is the one it's the one thread that really does run through like every single American is like, you know, working class, working class people.
Your work is your livelihood.
Your work directly impacts the rest of your life because Your work and what you're getting in return for your work and the time you're getting, you know, away from work is your life.
That is that is what, you know, is your livelihood.
That's what directly impacts your quality of life.
Everything else is actually, you know, is pretty peripheral, you know, like just just because, you know, you are a demographic who might be under attack is not a guarantee it's going to happen.
But what you make it work and the way you're treated at work is a guarantee to impact your life.
And so it is important for everyone to have these conversations and keep it going and to be aware of it.
And to, you know, you can't hold it accountable if you're not aware of it, you know?
Right. And not only is it is it important and does it affect every member of the working class and even people who aren't able to work?
It's also, as far as I can tell, The only mechanism that we actually have to exert our will, it's labor unions and I don't know, the shared interests of working people is the only force big enough, is the only organization large enough to counterbalance the power of the capitalist class.
And with withholding our labor, Is how we actually grind this thing to a halt.
You can march in the street, and if you get enough people out there, maybe you'll scare these guys into doing something rational.
Maybe you'll scare them into reacting, but there's no guarantee.
We saw massive protests of people going into the streets for the Iraq war, you know, against the Iraq war, against police brutality.
And we haven't seen change happen.
You know, maybe here and there people have seen progress due to organizational work, and that's great.
But withholding our labor is the strongest mechanism we have to directly put pressure on this class of people who would rather see all of us just go away.
Yeah. And as they're pushing AI, we'll talk about this more in the next episode, As they're pushing AI, you know, they could pretend it's going to increase the quality of life, yada, yada, yada.
It's going to make people smarter, this, that, and the other.
You know, we'll get into all of that.
What it's really going to do is it's going to make it so you as a worker don't have leverage over the owner anymore.
Yeah. Because now they don't need you.
They don't need to pay you.
They can do an AI.
Is the AI going to be as good as you?
Absolutely not.
But that doesn't matter.
They've never shied away from giving subpar services to customers before.
They're certainly not going to worry about it in order to save a buck.
So I guess it seems like to me, I don't know how close they are to automating away the majority of jobs.
I would say they're not very close.
That doesn't mean we don't need to hurry up And take advantage of our position in society in this socio-economic system while we still have it, you know?
And with workers' rights, with labor rights, with getting what we deserve in return, that will allow more people to have the time and space in their lives to organize for other things.
If we want more people to be advocating, you know, for abolition, advocating, you know, for, for, uh, you know, for any type of, you know, for queer rights and things of that sort, if you get more people to be able to have time to do that, we need people to have time to think outside of, Oh my God, I can't afford my rent.
What am I going to eat?
Yeah. So, so it, it, it is, it is, you know, that we do need to handle that so we can be more effective in other realms and other, in other spaces.
Yeah, absolutely.
So let me read from this article.
This is from a post by Teamster Dad in one of my Teamsters News Facebook groups.
President Donald Trump moved Thursday to end collective bargaining with federal labor unions.
Trump signs executive order to end collective bargaining at agencies involved with national security.
Okay, so this is K-O-A-T.
It's like a local, uh, local news channel.
I couldn't tell what, like, whether they were ABC or whatever, CBS or whatever.
They were in ACTION news.
They were like ACTION 7 news.
Uh, and that is the way they are framing this.
Trump signs executive order to end collective bargaining at agencies involved in national security.
Oh, it's for national security.
That's why you don't get workers' rights, guys.
It's not in the nation's interest to make sure you have a good job, frankly.
I'll just say that.
What's terrifying about this particular thing in my mind, one of the things terrifying about it is that he's saying National security, people who are involved in national security will not be able to organize and withhold their labor.
And maybe there might be a reason that they're going to push back soon.
If they're going to have a reason to push back and withhold themselves, is there going to be something they're going to say, hey, listen, no, we either don't want to do that, so we're not going to do that.
Because if they were to protest, that's really impactful.
If there's something they're protesting against, that's pretty wild, right?
Right. That's kind of a scary thought.
Totally. Okay, I'm reading here.
President Donald Trump moved Thursday to end collective bargaining with federal labor unions and agencies with national security missions across the federal government, citing authority granted him under a 1978 law.
The order, signed without public fanfare announced late Thursday, appears to touch most of the federal government.
Affected agencies include the Departments of State, Defense, Veterans Affairs, Energy, Health and Human Services, Treasury, Justice and Commerce, and the part of Homeland Security responsible for border security.
So there you go, Tony.
As we increasingly level up our hatred and brutalization of migrants as they continue to Flee northward as climate change will, you know, is ravaging and will continue to ravage the southern hemisphere.
I imagine that is going to put a lot of pressure on ICE agents and Homeland Security and the people at the border.
And they're going to be like the fucking IDF agents, right, that we, that right now are complaining about PTSD because I had to shoot so many children.
You know, oh, we were told to strap You know, a migrant to the front of our tank and drive them through a crowd or whatever.
I feel so bad.
I wish there was something we could do.
No, you're not even going to get to do anything.
You're not even going to get to complain about it.
Do you realize the mental grappling I had to do after I put that lingerie on that I found inside of the home I just bombed?
Do you realize the things I had to confront in my mind and how traumatic that was after I realized how nice it felt to wear silk dripped upon my body?
Yeah, except over here would be like actually I got I got cut by one of the razor wire installations I put up on the floating buoy in the river and now I have tetanus and they're like you're fired.
As water scarcity becomes an issue I think about all the gallons of water that I dumped in the desert because I didn't want people to find it and I'm like wow that's water I could have had now.
You're fired.
Sorry fired by and like that's that's like that's that's that's pretty huge steps towards dictatorship.
It's just it's just crazy because I like I thought I was going to be the one brutalizing people.
But now what it's coming home.
It's coming back on me.
This is wild.
What the hell you're.
The announcement builds on previous moves by the Trump administration to erode collective bargaining rights in the government.
A White House fact sheet on Thursday's announcement says that, quote, certain federal unions have declared war on President Trump's agenda, and that Trump, quote, refuses to let union obstruction interfere with his efforts to protect Americans and our national interests.
"President Trump supports constructive partnerships with unions who work with him.
He will not tolerate mass obstruction that jeopardizes his ability to manage agencies Yeah, the Department of Health and Human Services definitely falls under the Patriot Act.
It's so cool how we're just Patriot acting every part of the government now.
Oh, Social Security Administration?
Yeah, that's actually, that actually, the CIA is in control of that now.
Yeah, we're gonna let them handle that.
Yeah, maybe if a union's obstructing something, maybe it shouldn't be happening.
Yeah, uh, it's so, it's so funny to be like, I'm happy to work with unions who don't ever tell me no.
You don't ever disagree with me on anything.
And it's like, well, what's the point of the union if they're not allowed to advocate for themselves or even their own existence?
It seems like the point is just to get rid of them altogether.
Yeah. The whole point of the union is that anybody can disagree with or be upset about their workplace or like that, but you just can't do anything about it unless you have a union.
Exactly. Yeah, okay, so I we got a lot for this segment So I'm gonna maybe go through it a little a little quickly, but I there was like there was an overwhelming Response to this claim that Trump is ending collective bargaining for public sector unions,
and we'll get into that After this I just wanted to highlight the few like actual differ different arguments in favor of this and Okay, so this is a comment from the Facebook group from Tim and God bless him.
Tim is trying.
Tim is trying to figure out what is happening.
As a Trump supporter and a teamster, what is happening?
Why is the president dismantling unions in the public sector?
Tim says, There's a method to his madness.
He's playing chess right now, and there's four moves ahead.
Yes, it seems bleak and seems like a WTF moment, but have faith in our president.
He knows what he's doing.
The end justifies the means.
Think about this, for instance, why do you think He renamed Washington, D.C. the District of America instead of the District of Columbia.
Here's a slight news flash for you.
By being named the District of America, now the corrupt politicians in Washington can be prosecuted for their crimes under the new name.
While under the name of District of Columbia, that was an impossibility.
just like renaming the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America.
It opens up more possibilities that are covered by the constitution that were not covered while it was still called the Gulf of Mexico.
I'm just going to stop you right here.
Actually, we have a fake constitution now where changing the names of things doesn't affect it anymore.
I'm sorry.
You have to get rid of the fake constitution before changing the names will have any effect on it.
Yeah, you got to bring back the real constitution and then you can go in and change the names right now.
Yeah, this is just, yeah, this is just like a sleight of hand magic.
This is nothing's happening here.
you.
See, you couldn't actually stop terrorism in the Gulf of Mexico because of the name.
But now that we named it America, well, that changes things.
Does this guy actually think that, like, because it's called the District of Columbia, like, for some reason, Columbia has some sort of influence there?
Yeah, that's why it's not actually, like, a state.
It's not actually...
It's because it belongs to Columbia.
Yeah, because Columbia, yeah, Columbia has jurisdiction over that one.
Fuck. This is like, it's like depressing, but it's like slightly less depressing than a guy who is like, I hate federal workers.
Fuck them.
Yeah. This is like depressing in a different way where it's just like, oh man, this was your avenue to getting into Trump.
You like, you like believe that, yeah, again, there's a secret constitution or you believe that A name is a powerful thing and changing the name actually changes the whole vibe, the vibes of the whole thing, frankly.
Yeah, yeah.
And speaking as a card-carrying, book-carrying member of the Teamsters Union, yes, it is a bit concerning with this recent development, but you have to look at the bigger picture and what he's trying to set up.
Trust me people, the man has our best interest at heart.
It's going to seem completely freaking insane at the surface, but give him and his cabinet a chance to drain the swamp and see what the results are because it's going to benefit all of us more than it ever has, even though it's hard to see right at this moment, have a little faith in the man.
So this is like, you know, the term is overused, but this is cult shit.
This is like actually like like I'm sorry.
It's so bad.
Things are so bad.
It looks awful I know how insane I look you just have to believe me that actually the insane thing is the same thing Yeah, yeah, no no when I drink when I drink this this potion It's going to free me like not not kill me, but I'm going to be free you got to have faith in it If we all take out of this punch bowl, we will wake up on a comet That is filled with lithium.
And then we get to mine the lithium for Elon Musk, saving the world, frankly.
I don't know.
Are you not excited about this?
Because I am.
I'm getting I'm getting so stoked.
Don't you understand that we can't really achieve enlightenment under this current this current system, under this current capitalist setup?
We have to actually destroy it.
It needs to implode for us to really be enlightened.
OK, I believe that.
Yeah. Okay, so like this is getting posted everywhere this this Trump Eliminating bargaining rights for public sector you this is a big fucking deal This is a big deal and it's like actual news and there's an executive order that is actually Like laying this out that this is you know, there's not a lot of wiggle room Trump supporters will still say Oh CBS, huh?
Yeah, I'll believe that when I see it.
It's like they they they printed the executive order You can read the executive order in there right here.
There's so many like I saw one guy say I don't trust mainstream media anymore now all the truth is on podcasts I Mean, that's real and while that is real.
I wonder if he knows that Podcasters just read from websites like CBS or CNN or even Wikipedia sometimes.
Again, they're citing the actual thing.
They're citing the actual bill.
Sometimes. No, I'm saying in this article, there's actual...
So that does not become negated just because it was published by this news agency.
Yeah. It's still...
It's a crazy way...
Yeah. It's crazy to have such And I don't know, you know, again, this is like, I don't know if they really believe this.
I think they're just saying it because it's the, it's the like programmed response they have.
It's the defense mechanism that they have about why they won't like act, like pay attention to what's happening or what, what reality is or whatever.
But it's, uh, it's such a bizarre way.
It's a bizarre, like lazy and self-serving way to interact with media.
Cause if you give me a news article, From anywhere, I'm going to be able to look at it and be like, okay, this part is opinion from the newspaper.
Yeah. This part's a direct quote attributed to this person, so they probably did say this thing, unless this is a crazy, like, quote, satire website or whatever, which you also have to look for.
So it is like, it can be challenging, I suppose, But most of it is just like, even if you go to fucking Breitbart or the Daily Wire or whatever, there'll be opinion all over it, but the facts of it are usually based on something, you know?
Yeah. And just, you know, but it's like people's defense mechanism to just like throw the whole thing out so you don't have to deal with it intellectually, because it is hard to deal with this stuff if you're a union member supporting Donald Trump and these other fucking corporate plutocrats.
Yeah, they don't have the ability to separate Right, and I think it demonstrates like an insecurity.
It demonstrates an insecurity that you are worried They might be right in their framing of this or in their concern for this.
They might have a fucking point and you can't deal with that because your politics are either surface level and so they're all based on memes or cultural signifiers or whatever or you've been so radicalized against your own self-interest that it doesn't matter how illogical It is.
You're willing to throw your whole fucking job away because you read a Facebook post about litter boxes in high school bathrooms, you know?
Yep. So, the number one response to this is, was, this is public sector.
We are private sector.
Learn the difference.
Learn the difference.
This isn't about us.
This is not even about us.
This doesn't affect us, so we shouldn't care.
This is like literally what people...
I'm reading here from Brett.
Research the difference between public and private unions and get back to us.
Yeah, dude.
Come on.
Okay, let me do some research on the difference between public and private unions.
Going over to my dictionary to open up to the peas to find out what the word public means.
Oh, it means governmental.
Oh, that's interesting.
Wow. I didn't know that.
It's like, this is, it's, I don't know, it's indicative of the level that you, Brett, have thought about this, that you think it can be summed up by knowing what a single word means.
And it's like, no, I know what public unions are and I think they're good.
You have to tell me that they're not.
Yeah, exactly.
I know what public versus private means.
There's no research involved in that.
I just know what the words mean.
And I don't care!
I don't care about the difference!
It's your job now to, like, justify how they're different or how it matters, you know?
Jonathan here says the same thing.
If you understand the difference between public and private sector unions, you would understand your ideological standpoint is ten-ply.
And this...
What is that?
What does ten-ply mean?
Okay, so this was a bit confusing to me, too.
I think he's saying it's toilet paper.
Yeah. But 10-ply toilet paper would be pretty good toilet paper.
That would be pretty thick and substantial toilet paper.
I don't know.
I think what he's...
because the phrase is like 2-ply or 1-ply or whatever, but he thinks it's even worse than that.
Your argument is 10 times as bad as 1-ply.
Toilet paper, therefore it's 10-ply toilet paper.
I'm kind of stuck on 10-ply toilet paper because I'm thinking about it like when I'm using toilet paper, I'm usually taking a 2-ply toilet paper and double tripling it up.
Trying to kind of make like a 10-ply toilet paper.
Yeah. If I can get like a 10-ply square.
Wow. Sign me up.
Yeah. Sign me up.
I think it's called just like a washcloth.
So he's also saying like your argument is really well designed for cleaning up shit.
It's a, it's just a bad insult.
Yeah, but it's just, this is like their pseudo, like intellectual response to this.
Actually, there is a difference between public and private.
And it's like, so?
Okay. Yeah.
So my response to this, so I've seen this so often and I was like interacting over the last couple of days, I was interacting with so many of these people in this comment section where that's the only argument they have to offer is, oh, those are public sector workers.
And it's like.
Yeah, you have more in common with them than you will ever have with the billionaire, with like the Wall Street and corporate forces trying to eliminate them, trying to get rid of their jobs.
And yeah, it's that whole thing where people don't have like, they don't have the mentality because if they don't, they're not seeing, oh, they're coming for them, they're going to come for us next.
They're not thinking that at all.
They're just like, well, this isn't about me.
I don't give a fuck.
They're working for the government, so fuck them.
Right, because one of the defining features of the right wing is radical and illogical hatred of government.
Yeah. I'm not saying the government never does anything bad.
What I am saying, and my entire political platform, I think, can be summed up pretty nicely, is that the government should be in the control of the people.
It should be democratically directed, organized, and, you know, whatever.
Its whole existence should be at the will of the public.
Yeah, and for the public.
And so we can have disagreements about What the government should do and we settle those disagreements by voting or by?
You know or organizing or by having public debate or something like that We don't settle the argument by destroying the only way that any of us Have any control over the services in this country?
Because I don't know something that I think that I've said on this show before is like These people are like, I hate government.
I don't have any control over government.
And it's like the guy you voted for is making the most drastic changes to our government that have happened in the last 20 years.
You are happy with what he's doing to the government by destroying the government Like, altogether, you're removing democratic control over any of this.
When, like, you're worried about fraud and waste and yada yada yada, okay, so we get rid of the federal government and that role is taken up by corporate America, where does the accountability come in?
How do we put accountability on the private sector?
Guess what?
You don't.
You have, oh, I'm going to vote with my dollar over how clean my water should be.
You fucking idiot!
What are you talking about?
Yeah, yeah.
You're shooting yourself.
We're shooting ourselves.
It's national suicide to do this.
And I don't know.
This is why I think it's a valuable conversation to have because I do think it's an extremely radical position, even though it's age old.
This is a project that they've been trying for since FDR to dismantle a federal government, you know, and a lot of working people have been sucked into this because they don't like paying taxes.
Yeah, that's that's a lot that's a lot of what it is is they think oh my taxes, you know They're taking my wealth by taking my taxes and I guess two responses to that would be I don't like when my taxes go towards things.
I don't approve of either Now we don't have a system in place that actually has Democratic control over the spending of our government that the spending and functioning of our government is Already left up to the private sector It's private sector nepotism cases people who are independently wealthy who've made a fortune off exploiting other workers and selling products and and You know glad-handing and having their wealth create more money for themselves.
Those are the people who are already in government So removing the middleman of the symbolic vote that we all cast isn't gonna make that better That's not gonna weaken these sick oligarchs.
And I don't remember what my larger point on that specific sentence was.
Yeah, I think we were talking about how silly it is that they think that punishing the public sector is somehow benefiting us.
How silly that is.
I think this public versus...
As a leftist, as frankly a communist, I think this public versus private sector is a good discussion to have.
And let me go to some more responses from Jonathan Yeah, I said like explain it to me.
Okay, because this is This is what I this is my new argument, this is my latest volley in the Facebook word art war that I am waging in my Facebook groups and I actually this is my post I actually had to Make it Yeah,
in pages because it wouldn't do the word art for me on Facebook because words slightly too many words So it wouldn't put it in the word art So I had to do like a back background on a pages document and do bold white letters and then screenshot it Again, I think this is the communication of the masses.
I think this is the language of the proletariat.
And so I'm embracing it And my argument is I think it's bizarre to see fellow teamsters say Private unions are good But public unions are bad because taxpayers are the employers.
So this is like the argument that you'll get eventually if you just, if you press it them enough to explain what they mean when they say that there's a difference between public and private unions.
They mean that those unions, those workers, we're paying for them.
The taxpayer is paying for them.
And that, therefore, it's insulting that they would want to unionize against me.
It's insulting that they would want to try and leverage their labor to make me, the taxpayer, which means I should be like a king or something, do like anything I don't want to do, such as giving them a dollar raise to keep up with inflation.
Yeah. Or something like that, right?
Exactly. And as a union member, I have to ask you, why do you deserve a union?
But when someone is a federal worker and therefore your employee, why don't they deserve a union?
Just because you're the boss means they don't get a union?
That sounds like every anti-union talking point I've ever heard.
Oh, unions are fine for all those other companies, but me, I run a good company.
I don't need A union and actually I'm going to fight tooth and nail against my employees organizing because I just don't think it would be great for anybody.
You know what I mean?
Yep. I don't know.
I think this is like a valid argument because I'm willing to like if you want to compare the country to a corporation like we talked about on the last like one of those previous episodes if we're going to do that and I'm the boss because I'm the taxpayer and the federal employees are my employees I want them to get it have a good quality of life.
I want my quote employees To have a good living to be able to have workplace safety Unions aren't just for well, you know, everybody just wants a union so they don't have to do any work and they get $500 an hour No unions do a lot of things such as protect workers from workplace harassment Protect workers from safety concerns.
They allow workers to have oversight over their own leadership.
They allow workers to help direct the direction of an organization or the company or whatever.
These are all things that are beneficial to an organization at large.
When you're going back and forth With some sort of bureaucracy trying to get something done.
Don't you want to be able to tell that person on the other end of the line who's been like, you know, running you around in circles?
Don't you want to tell them, hey, listen, like, you have a good job.
You're paid well.
You're not overworked.
What are you complaining about?
You're fairly compensated.
Can you, can you just do it for me?
But you can't, we can't do that right now.
Yeah. We don't have, we don't have that, that way to, but don't you want to be able to say that?
Cause I know you're not stoked on the way and a lot of these people that, Their mentality, too, is like, well, why should we pay him more?
Why should we treat him better?
I don't like how the job's being done anyways.
Yeah. It's the opposite, actually.
Maybe it's not being done well because they're not being taken care of.
I don't know.
I would argue that these people who are involved in government bureaucracies, while the overall mission of that bureaucracy Might be against my, you know, what I, my opinion or whatever.
I don't think that the individual workers are inept.
I don't think that they don't know what to do or how to do it.
Like these are very specialized work, skilled workers and, you know, oftentimes, and I would much rather, again, have that be subject to a democratic public process rather than Simply the profit motive, because that's what happens.
If you get rid of the public oversight and the public control over this, you leave it up to profit, the pursuit of profit.
So you're going to get like Wells Fargo is already talking about the plans to privatize the USPS.
I should have fucking screenshotted my own comment because like two weeks ago somebody was like, What would happen if the USPS were privatized?
I would love to see like, you know, people's people's ideas about how UPS can capitalize on this.
And you know, just talking about it again, like in a sort of like pseudo intellectual way.
And I said, what will happen is they'll break the union, they'll lower wages, they'll cut services and they'll raise prices.
Yeah. That is absolutely what will happen.
And in that memo that was leaked about Wells Fargo's plans, that is exactly what they said they would be doing because they don't even have to hide it.
That's the whole point.
That is the point of privatizing this is so that they can make money so that they can take more of our money.
Yeah, sure.
Like the USPS is already taking some money to cover its onerous pension obligations that Congress deliberately foisted on them.
Um, they're going to take more of your money.
If, you know, they're going to take more of your money and you're going to get a worse service for it once it's privatized.
Um, okay, but back to, back to the comment section, you know, I said, well, explain it to me because you know, right now it just sounds like standard anti-union sentiment.
And then Brett comments again, do period some period research!
Exclamation point.
And that's, that's it.
That's it.
That's all they have to say to this.
Look man, I'm not going to do that labor for you.
I'm not going to do that emotional lifting for you.
That's on you, brother.
You got to figure out.
You got to figure out.
You got to do some research on why I'm wrong.
I was like, use your words.
Say what you mean.
Say what is in your mind.
I know you have thoughts in there.
Please just share them with us.
Please, for the love of God.
Uh, and so he says two different people keep saying to look into the differences between public and private and your answer is quote tell me.
That phone in your hand is smarter than you or I, but only if you know how to use it.
Research and come back.
Then you'll see why we keep saying it.
Maybe you'll understand.
He literally did Google is free.
Not just like Google is free, but also this like psychotic bootlicking idea that the AI developed by Elon Musk is somehow smarter than you or me.
Brother Grok is right there.
Why are you asking me?
It's just it's just so fun.
Like like I'm identifying with billionaires so much that I think they created something that is even smarter than they are.
Yeah. Yeah.
They're God to me.
Yeah. I bow to it.
Jonathan comes back after pressing him.
I'm for limited government.
Okay. So there we go.
There you go.
I actually just don't like the government.
This is something you have to like press on these people when they say, Oh, there's a difference between public and private unions or whatever.
You have to press them into just saying, I don't like government.
I don't like, because then there's a conversation that we can have about it.
Right. Plus, public sector unions have no bargaining power, never have, they can't strike, bargain for pay, or anything.
And I was like, okay, so your argument is that public sector unions are bad because they don't do anything.
So you want them to do things then, right?
It's wild the knots that these people have to turn themselves into.
And he goes, let me ask you, when Clinton during his time as president terminated thousands of federal jobs, were you upset?
And I said no, because I was 10 years old.
So I was not as well versed with class solidarity as I am right now.
But no, yes, that was bad.
When Clinton did right-wing shit in order to triangulate and win over Republicans, That was bad.
In fact, it helped set the stage for the two corporate party system we have now.
Of course, we've had this system for a while, but the Democrats making a strategic choice to further align themselves with business interests is why we're in this situation.
So thank you.
Thank you for bringing up Clinton.
That's why I'm not really afraid to have these conversations with people.
I might not know Each individual trivia fact they bring out or you know, I might have to look something up to see what they actually mean or whatever.
But overall, I'm very comfortable with the general discussion about yes, when Bill Clinton did welfare reform, that was bad.
Yes, when Obama deported millions of Undocumented immigrants.
That was bad.
I did like, yes, please.
When Obama did right-wing shit, it was bad.
When he adopted a Republican healthcare policy, that was bad.
Like, these are conversations that I think can be fruitful, even if you don't convince this person.
It's like, Maybe makes more people realize, holy shit, a lot of the architects of our current situation were people moving to the right.
Were Democrats and other people buying this argument that only the private sector is good.
Also, Jonathan, according to your logic, that was actually good.
That was good that he got rid of so many jobs because it's literally less government.
He can't even have an opinion.
He probably does think it was good, but like he's not even bothering to have an opinion on it because he wants to get me in a gotcha or whatever.
He's trying to gotcha, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, okay, so more on this idea that federal workers don't have any power.
Jonathan says no you say Trump is taking away bargaining power away Which they don't have anyway, I want reduced government, which means getting rid of public sector jobs I believe if you want to be in a union then work in the private sector My union dues I pay on my own as do you and all teamsters our taxes pay the public sector dues so For the record, I didn't say that public sector workers don't have any bargaining power.
They're certainly weaker than private sector unions because they are not allowed to strike.
And I think their union leadership is mostly aligned with the right-wing forces in this country, deliberately weakening them.
But this is something I see in these arguments, is that our taxes Pay public sector workers union dues.
And this is something that I'd seen thrown out there a lot, and I was like, is this true?
And I looked it up, and from what I've read, union workers, public sector workers pay union dues out of their checks.
No, no, no.
But where do they get their money from?
Right. Okay, so this...
Hard taxes.
Right. That's what they mean.
They mean that we pay their wages Therefore we pay their union dues, too.
So stupid.
And I just I does this mean that UPS pays your union dues fellow Teamster?
Would you say that?
No, you would say that I that's my fucking money because I worked for it.
Yeah, I can do what I want with it, you know So I don't it's not like I don't think an argument that a lot of people would accept But he goes on to say They don't have bargaining power.
Trump has nothing to do with that.
Dot dot.
This is like, wow.
OK, that's our last comment.
So let me do this one first.
Eddie, who's a cool guy that I see in these teamsters groups, shout out to Eddie, is responding to Brett.
OK, so give them the ability to strike for better conditions, because Brett was also saying they can't even strike.
And that's the big difference.
Instead of removing more protections, cops do it.
Are they not public workers?
Yep. And Brett responds, are you seriously trying to compare cops and their jobs to a bunch of clerks?
That's as bad as when teachers try to pull the quote cops, firemen, and teachers bullshit.
When was the last time being an office worker was considered an quote ultra hazardous profession, as is police and firefighters?
F-O-H, fuck out of here with your false equivalency.
So this is like 100% brain poisoning from the culture war.
Yep. Hates teachers.
You know how we all hate teachers?
Everyone hates teachers.
Just like, no man, no.
Take a step back.
Please, like, take a breath.
Take a step back.
Listen to yourself.
Listen to how insane you sound, frankly.
They were like, yeah, my teachers never let me talk in class.
I was always getting in trouble.
They always made me do homework.
And my tax dollars?
Paid someone to make me do homework?
Yeah. I hate him.
I told my teacher that she worked for my dad, and he actually wanted to be able to dictate what she wore to school every day, and they sent me to the office.
Fucking bullshit.
I love the quotes around ultra-hazardous profession.
Is that an industry term?
Yeah. If I look up on OSHA, are police and firefighters under the ultra-hazardous profession tab?
No, they're not, because it's actually, I mean, firefighters maybe.
But being a cop, not one of the world's dangerous jobs, being a roofer or a delivery driver, like you, Brett, if you're a teamster, you might be one, your job is actually more dangerous than a cop's job.
Yeah, quite quite literally.
And then more on cops here.
And this is our last comment.
This is from Jonathan.
They don't have bargaining power.
Trump has nothing to do with that.
Dot, dot, dot, dot.
When was the last time you've seen police go on a labor strike?
Us on the private side can strike to enforce bargaining.
This is like such a surface level.
Understanding of unions and what this what the where the strength is derived from and what unions do Public sector union and he's acting like he's teaching me this stuff and I'm just like, uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
Go ahead Public sector unions affect us as taxpayers and we get no say in any of it No, you don't your guy isn't currently firing all of them Uh, we foot the bill on anything, at least we can vote on how our union affect us.
Starbucks union, no matter what they do or enforce, do not affect me or you.
I will give you anecdotal evidence.
Look at how many sex-offending teachers get shipped off to other schools because of union deals.
You don't hear much of that in the private sector.
Well, uh, wow.
I don't.
Wow. Did you have a stroke and confuse priests for teachers?
Yeah. What is it?
Teachers being like, yeah, sure.
Teachers get accused and convicted of sexual assault and they get fired.
They don't get moved around to a different school.
Brother, I don't know what you're fucking like.
I get just like knee deep in this culture war stuff that's just like and what I can tell not based on anything in reality.
You don't hear much about abuse in the private sector, Tony.
Did you notice that?
Yeah, I did notice that.
You don't hear much about that at all.
That's not a thing that happens.
Like, yeah, like, like, you know, sexual assault and things like that in the workplace, that doesn't, you don't hear about that ever.
I loved this so much because I got to respond to him with, oh, you ever hear of a place called Hollywood?
Got your ass.
What about Adrenochrome, huh?
Isn't that the private sector?
That's private sector.
I only know it's private sector because my insurance wouldn't cover it.
I was going to say Jeffrey Epstein, but he was Mossad.
So that's that's public.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha The idea, the very idea that abuse doesn't happen in the private sector, like you have to have your head on backwards, especially as a union member, to believe or say any of this stuff, you know?
And as many, as unfortunately as many people who are in unions are like neck deep in this stuff, I think There are plenty of people who don't pay attention and don't know that much that we can educate,
and there might even be people who did believe this stuff at one point, but through careful education and trying to talk to them like a union sibling, like a brother or a sister, maybe there's a way to get through.
Maybe there's a way to pierce this insecure, knee-jerk reaction because you've Placed yourself in a specific camp, in a specific position.
I also love the idea that cops aren't allowed to strike.
And it's like, you could not have picked a worse example.
You picked the strongest union in the country, let alone public sector union.
The strongest unions in the country are the public sector, are specifically the police.
Because they don't have to strike.
Like, when was the last time they even had to strike?
Guess what?
Exactly. They just call in sick en masse, or they just don't respond to 911 phone calls, or they just send your mayor a candid photo of your daughter out in public.
They do all sorts of things where they don't have to actually strike.
Yeah, their strike is so powerful that the threat of strike Or like a half working strike is very effective.
And that's why they make so much money.
And that's why we pay them so much money is because you guys are all convinced that we do need them so much that the threat of them not showing up is so massive that they get anything they want.
Yeah. I wonder why these people who carry around weapons and have a literal license to kill don't have to strike to get what they want.
It's very strange.
Very interesting.
Yeah, I mean, even if public sector unions can't strike, just organizing and being able to negotiate an employment contract for a group of people that large is its own leverage.
The idea of being able to pool resources and hire lawyers to look up this shit and to make Sensible changes or increase in weight, what the government can afford or what the parameters or what the contours of our contract can be, that's also in the purview of unions.
Being able to get paid time off from work and stuff like that, all of that is by the grace of having an organized workplace.
Yeah, so I just think you know if you if you hear people say like Public unions aren't good and you ask why because you're their boss and you don't want them to have a union like I think making people Interrogate this sort of like knee-jerk anti-government Sentiment is the only way I don't know is one of our only way forward ways forward because I you know We have to have some sort of organized front Either
along just class lines that's outside of government that can force government to do what it wants do what we want or as the government itself direct political control over our Democratic political control over our government.
Those are the only two ways we can possibly match The level of influence that the most wealthy in this country have and those are our two options and they're essentially the same option in my opinion and we have to like We have to convince people again that we are on the same side that we That there is a war going on against us Already whether you join it or not,
you know, and we have to show people that Yeah, because we're never gonna convince Jonathan that necessarily trans rights are good, but we can convince Jonathan that by way of being in a union, in the same union that they do deserve the same wages and benefits, that they do deserve that.
Not that everyone deserves that, he deserves that.
We can fight for that part.
So we gotta at least work on that part.
We gotta at least work on the part of like, hey, we should get paid well.
I mean, we should get taken care of and so should everybody.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I mean, part of being in a union is protections for sexual and gender minority like that.
We have those in the teamsters contract.
We have protect, we already have protections for, uh, you know, gender nonconforming people and for, you know, trans people and, and, and, uh, you know, gay and queer people.
Uh, and that's good, you know?
And, um, A lot of these people, I think, would be convinced that it's none of my business what's in somebody else's pants or what somebody is doing in the privacy of their own home.
I don't think that's a huge barrier to organizing at all.
But anyway, yeah, I think we should end it here.
Thanks to everybody for listening.
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