#726 Without millionaires, we wouldn't have capitalism
TODAY: A shocking revelation from the MDC boys that could change the trajectory of our nation PLUS: We celebrate the REAL No KINGS Day with some incomprehensible posts honoring the country of AMERICAN AND: One republican poster questions why millionaires and billionaires make out better under Trump's tax bill, and the Let's Go Brandon facebook group calls him a Nazi ALSO: Teamsters? Celebrate Pride month? Despite me not being gay? We cover my union's support for gay and queer rights and shock reactionary members by informing them their contract already protects gay and trans people. However, one ingenious member suggests reducing our paid vacations in the next contract so no one thinks we're using that time to go on gay cruises. Listen to That Awful Sound via this RSS feed: https://feeds.libsyn.com/80996/rss Sign up at http://patreon.com/miniondeathcult for only $5 for access to our entire back catalogue Music: Wettex (Cashmere Cat Remix) - Feadz and Kito Paris - Moon Helms Alee - Dangling Modifiers
The liberals are destroying California and conservative humor gone away.
Conservative humor gone awry is going to fascist Fornia 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 you're showing exactly what it looks like when you're exploring the deserts.
All their environmental stuff.
Stay tuned.
All right.
I'm Alexander Edward.
And I'm Tony Boswell.
And we are Minion Death Cult.
The world is ending.
People not understanding that billionaires are job creators, folks, is responsible and we're documenting it.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to your episode of Minion Death Cult for the week.
Stay tuned at the end of this episode for an important announcement.
But in the meantime, happy 4th of July.
Happy Independence Day, Tony.
Aren't you so glad to be independent from a different country that's not yours?
Aren't you glad that there's not another country that gets sort of overwhelming say in what our country does?
Yeah, honestly, I'm like, I did celebrate not having to like answer to the queen or the king.
You know, that was cool.
That was cool.
I like that.
You know, that was, you know, celebrating all the freedoms we have, you know, all of them, all the ones we got.
There's too many to list.
Right, it would be redundant.
There's just so many freedoms.
I already know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that's cool.
Even though you can't even smoke inside anymore.
I mean, other than that.
I watched an episode of Nathan for you that has an interesting idea about how to get around anti-smoking laws.
So maybe I believe that's like season three or something.
Go ahead and look at that one.
Yeah, I don't know.
You know, just happy 4th of July, everybody, you know, looking around and looking at this country.
Like what better way to celebrate your country than defunding and dismantling a large part of it?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
You know what gives you the most freedom?
Unemployment.
So true.
I've been saying independence from England.
We need to celebrate independence from the capitalist class, by which I mean we all get replaced with AI and slowly starve to death.
Please.
Yeah, what better way to celebrate Independence Day than by dismantling your country's various education and welfare systems on behalf of a genocidal ethno-state halfway across the world, but it's not England.
Exactly.
It's not England.
It's much better.
Honestly, I don't think there's any references in any holy books about England.
So, you know, I'll take this one.
Yeah.
I mean, Canada looks like huge losers right now.
Giant losers.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Before we get into, I don't know, commentary about the big, beautiful bill and other sort of 4th of July ephemera from the right wing.
I just, you know, thought maybe I would express some genuine thoughts about 4th of July as sort of triggered here by our friend LL Cooljay.
Hell yeah.
Who says that he will not perform at Wawa Welcome America in Philadelphia July 4th?
We're recording this the day after, but he refused to perform at this Philadelphia concert because of the union strike, because of the garbage union strike.
And he's quoted as saying, there's absolutely no way I can perform across a picket line.
This is from NBC Philadelphia.
He's also said things like, how can I celebrate when other people are struggling?
And how can I contribute to that struggling?
And that's my thoughts about patriotism.
That kind of sums up my thoughts about nationalism, loyalty to a country.
I have none of those things.
The closest thing I have to a patriotism is a loyalty to the people in this country.
Not over that of other people in other parts of the world.
In fact, pretty much to the same degree, I value human life and animal life and ecology in general.
Those are that's who I have loyalty to.
That's who I think it's worth supporting.
And that's how I guess I would choose to express my pride or my allegiance.
My allegiance is to other people, the overwhelming majority of which are workers who are exploited by the system in which we live.
So I think this, I don't know, I'd like, you know, there were other artists too who boycotted this concert because of the Philadelphia sanitation workers strike.
And, you know, shout out to them.
And, you know, this is the way forward.
This is how we're going to get anything done is by solidarity and by leveraging the power that we currently do have in the form of withholding our labor like the sanitation workers did and like Mr. Cool J did here as well.
Yeah, it's awesome to see.
I mean, some people don't really understand what kind of what a big deal this is because Ella Cool J could have played the show and no one would have said a thing.
No.
No one said he didn't have to do this at all.
No one would have said a thing.
People won't really understand what a big deal Ello Cool J is and was at one point in time.
Like how important he is like in the culture and stuff like that.
And I don't know if I told you this, but when I was a kid, I thought he was even cooler than he was because I thought he was not only the guy who was saying mama say knock you out.
I thought not only was he an actor, But when he was in a sitcom, when he was an actor, he was playing a guy that used to play for the Raiders.
So I thought he also played for the Raiders.
I thought he was just, but what's cool, though, is seeing him do this and speak so plainly and directly about it.
He is as cool as I thought he was.
Ella Cool J is hard as hell.
And it's just really, it's good to see.
We need more of this from people like this.
Standing up for your neighbor, even, you know, because they're still your neighbor, even though they're not millionaires like you, they're working people and you know what that is because you were one at one point in time.
And like, yeah, standing solid, you know, and taking it, taking a hit to the pocket for it, do that.
You know, it's like, it's, it's really nice to see.
I'm going to hope that people follow the example, not just now, but kind of continue this energy.
Yeah.
And, you know, sanitation workers are like, I don't know, I don't know if I'd call them an easy target, but there's been so much propaganda, you know, against them and not even like anti-labor propaganda necessarily, but just like cultural propaganda about the idea of what a sanitation worker is like.
And, you know, that coupled with the idea that the anti-union sentiment in this country and the anti-worker sentiment in this country and like anti-manual labor, anti-nast dirty labor, you know, it's, you know, it's, it's still dignified work, even if it's fucked up labor, even more so.
And yeah, like plenty of people have pointed out, like sanitation is a fucking, that's a pillar of society.
That's like one of the most important jobs your society can offer.
And when I learned that they think they're only making like 40,000 or they, or they were making less than 40,000 and all they were asking for was a raise up to 40,000, something like that.
It's just like, it's like a no, no-brainer.
You know, I don't, I don't know.
And, you know, they actually have based on their job description, based on what labor they perform, they have a lot of leverage.
And so our, you know, shout out to them.
Support for the uncritical support to them.
And I hope that they get everything they're asking for and more.
The sanitation should take an approach, like the American sanitation system should be kind of like the IDF, where like you have to do it for a year.
That's incidentally how Israel also views the IDF, unfortunately, as a sanitation system.
But yeah, no, this would be a good sanitation system.
Yeah, you have to do it for a year so you understand and you also do see because it's something that people definitely take for granted.
You know, like when you complain about your, when you complain about dirty cities or dirty areas, you're ignoring the parts that are clean and it has nothing to do with you.
You're not cleaning it up.
You're not the one, you know, make, you know, maintaining it.
So it's very, it doesn't get the credit it deserves.
Like you said, it definitely maintains society in a lot of ways.
That's why you have to remind them every once in a while.
Yeah.
So again, shout out to those workers.
Shout out to LO Cool J. I wanted to share this 4th of July post from Alex in the Minion Death Commandos Facebook group.
Now, this isn't me.
This is a different Alex.
Although I'm sure that's what I would say if I wanted you to not know.
For all you know, there might not even be a Facebook group.
Right.
Like I could like, if you've never joined the Facebook group, you like it could all just be an elaborate scheme for me to filter my own choices through the lens of popular support or democratic participation or anything like that.
So I guess the only way to tell is to join the Minion Death Commandos Facebook group if you can find it.
I think we're still being shadow banned.
But a direct link, I believe, is facebook.com slash groups slash minion death cult.
That might get you there.
If not, ask a punk.
They'll direct you to the right Facebook group.
And honestly, if the Facebook group isn't shadow banned, why even be there?
You know, that's how you know it's good.
Yeah, I wouldn't want to be part of any group that wouldn't shadow ban me.
This is a post from Dan Chase.
Yeah, so thank you, Alex.
Thank you, other Alex.
Dan Chase did word art that says, welcome to the real No Kings Day.
Happy birthday, American.
I didn't even realize it.
Yep.
Happy birthday, American.
Happy birthday, American.
So he's telling you, Tony, who we confirmed, maybe that made it on the show, maybe not, but we did confirm Tony is an American.
So this is addressed at you, Tony.
How do you respond?
I, you know, I do feel bad.
I just, I do know some Americans whose birthday it was yesterday.
Shout out Brock, one of my favorite Americans.
Wow.
And so I kind of feel like I'm stealing value here, but I'm going to take it.
And thank you.
Thank you.
I'm going to had a happy birthday.
Yeah.
Thank you for that.
Happy birthday, American.
Maybe he means like happy birthday American style.
American style.
Is it like I, which means I blow off my thumb?
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
I blow off my thumb.
And maybe, maybe he's from spanking.
Is it an American tradition?
I think it's pretty American.
My Italian grandmother is the only one who spanks me for my birthday with her wooden cooking spoon.
You know, actually, now I think about it, I might just think it's American because it was Italian grandmas doing it to me as well.
Yeah.
So I might be convoluting that.
And that's why we got to get them out of here.
They're starting to think that these Italian traditions are American.
That's not it.
I'm just glad she used a wooden spoon because think of how many microplastics would be in my butt if she had been using a petroleum-based spoon all these years.
That's a lot of spanks over a lot of years.
Yeah, I'll take a splinter over some microplastics any day.
And that's the problem is we're no longer willing to take splinters in this country.
Just want everything Infused directly into our skin without us being able to tell.
Do kids even get splinters anymore?
Welcome to the real No Kings Day.
I can't believe this isn't.
This is a meme that Dan Chase made.
Like, I haven't seen this meme elsewhere.
But yeah, because he's, of course, referencing the No Kings Democratic protests against Trump.
July 4th, that's the real day that we were liberated from Kings or whatever.
And it's like, well, yeah, I mean, that's kind of what the liberals are saying too.
Like, you guys are pretty much talking about the same thing.
But yeah, I don't know.
Like, looking at descriptions of Independence Day and things like that, I'm just like, in what world is the American citizen less beholden to a powerful figure now than they were back then?
Yeah.
Because it was like, okay, we had a king back then, but that just meant the tax dollars we already paid went to a different address.
Yeah, exactly.
And like, and like they put, they put taxes on stuff without us being able to, you know, reject them or whatever.
And it's like, okay, so you, so you had to pay for stuff.
It wasn't necessarily like the king was coming in and telling you like how you had to act or how you had to behave or anything like that.
And it's like, my, my boss can tell me how to do that shit.
But they were taxing me without me being represented.
Right.
We need to make one of those, we need to make one of those infographs that like lacks historical context for them and be like, you know, America only gave, I mean, if you from the time that we were getting taxed by England, we probably only gave them, you know, like $800 million.
Right.
And then we like, but today we give, we, you know, we give Israel a billion dollars, but we don't talk about how like it's a different value of money at the time.
We just put the infograph up there.
Yeah, totally.
And, you know, and be like, you know, hopefully that will sway some of these people to realize what, uh, what's really, there are still kings.
It's just not the one you're thinking of.
No, I like that idea.
No, but really, like, not to get, I guess, pedantic or into in the weeds about this, I just, I was just thinking about like, you know, the system that we live under and the control that it has over our lives, like it really seems like we might be under more direct control by the ruling class now.
Yes, sure, we have refrigerators now.
I will acknowledge that we have refrigerators and I have cell phone now.
But the idea that like the king wasn't fucking monitoring what you were saying to your, to your wife or whatever, like the king, the king wasn't going to like dock your pay because you got to work a minute late or whatever.
Like, you know, the, the, the insane, like overbearing surveillance state and capitalist state and police state we have now.
It sounds, I don't know, cordy to say, but it's like, it seems like so much more overbearing than any than any like, you know, English rule would have been.
And I think even back then, like you could say, well, what was actually policing people's behavior and people's ideologies and beliefs?
And it was like the church.
Yeah.
It was like Protestant mindset, which we still feel the effects of to this day, even if like people are identifying less as religious or whatever, those values are, those like ideologies are still infused throughout the system we have.
So it's just even like the idea, even like the supposedly neutral political idea that like, well, liberals and Republicans and progressives and communists, everybody can agree that, yeah, fuck England and fuck the, fuck the queen and fuck the king and all that.
And like, I get that to a certain degree.
Like I believe even like, you know, Marxists view the American Revolution as like a productive in terms of pushing like history in the right direction or whatever, a productive for, but it's just like, it's nothing, I don't think, like what they want us to see it as, you know?
Yeah.
Aside from the whole like, oh, it was a slave owner revolution and all that, like aside from all that stuff that we already talked about, but just in general for like the average, I guess, white person or whatever, it's like, it's like the, it's like the feudalism thing, like the, you know, the laborer back in the feudal era, like had more days off, had more time off, had more like leisure time.
And, you know, I feel like it's this, it's the same when it comes to just American society and the idea that we're, we were governed by a king more tightly than we're governed by tech and capital now.
You know, it is funny.
I have not really thought about the fact that if, you know, we didn't gain independence from England, slavery would have ended a lot sooner.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So not progressive in that, in that respect.
Yeah.
But yeah.
King Charles has never suspended my account for expressing Palestinian solidarity.
So it's just funny.
Like there's a cartoon.
I don't think I included it in my in my slideshow here, but there is a cartoon that was like, wow, I never thought Independence Day would look like this.
And it's the founding fathers looking out onto the national mall where people are holding Palestinian flags and Mexican flags and, I don't know, Ukraine flags or whatever.
And it's like, what do you think independence means?
What do you think the literal word independence means?
You guys supposedly built a nation around the idea of the individual and you're getting mad when people are like identifying themselves as something specific that's, you know, maybe different than you or whatever.
Yeah.
Well, it's just that whole thing where it's like, oh man, why they like they have culture?
Like they have something to actually identify with beyond like, you know, beyond like a flag.
You know, that's something keeping tight, you know, keeping them tied to like their actual roots.
Why would they do that?
They're here now.
Yeah, or like we targeted these people, and for some reason, we targeted these people's identity.
And for some reason, they're now proudly displaying that identity.
What the fuck?
What the hell?
Why did that happen?
Like, any argument I hear about, well, if you love America so much, why are you waving the Mexican flag?
It's like, because they fucking have to.
Because if they did, if they like didn't show that amount of backbone, there would be pogroms against them.
And that was always my liberal defense of America when I was younger.
It's like, no, I'm allowed to do this here.
That's the thing is I'm allowed to do this here.
And they don't even remember that part.
It's like, yeah, you're allowed to wave whatever flag you want.
That's supposed to be part of the whole thing.
You're allowed to do it until they get the power to stop you from doing it and to like physically harm you if you do it, you know?
But yeah, no, I loved this post from Dan Chase.
Welcome to the Real No Kings Day.
Happy birthday, American.
And I was like, okay, is this a spoof account?
You know, there's like fake boomers out there on Facebook.
And I was like, I need to double check before I put this guy on the show.
And so I went to his page and the first post I saw on his page from Dan Chase says, if it's illegal for me to buy land in our country, dot, dot, dot, why should you be allowed to buy in mine?
What?
I was like, okay, I guess there's two ways to understand this.
One is he did a typo to where it's illegal for him to buy land in your country is what he meant to say instead of our country.
Or for some reason, Dan Chase has been denied ownership of land in this country and he can't understand why it's okay for the Chinese to own land when he's not allowed to live within 100 feet of a public school.
Yeah, why is that allowed?
I'm just trying to move to China and you're not going to let me.
Well, no, it's still confusing.
It's still very confusing.
I thought I was onto something there, but I was wrong.
Yeah.
No, it's if I can't buy land next to a public park, how come the Chinese can buy farmland?
Huh?
And then this other post from Dan, more and more men are leaving the U.S., comma, to find a good woman, period.
Ladies, comma, why?
Why?
I love demanding that women answer this quest.
You're not going to like it, brother.
Hey, women, why are men doing so much sex tourism and trafficking?
Yeah, you guys have a lot to answer for.
What's going on, women?
You know, we wouldn't have to go find somebody.
I wouldn't have to import a wife if you would just learn how to cook.
This is your fault.
Yeah.
Women made me be a sex trafficker is the new Obama made me be racist.
I don't want to go to Thailand.
I have to go to Thailand.
Thank you.
Women, explain yourselves.
Why am I fucking a ladyboy every month?
You think I enjoy my annual trip out there?
It pains me.
I would love that I have to go out there.
I would love to have me a nice ladyboy right here in America.
Yeah.
But ladies, where are you at?
Yeah.
And don't try to sell me on this cat boy shit.
It's not the same thing.
It's not the same.
There's no historical context for catboys.
Okay.
It's a rich culture.
Okay.
It's a totally different thing.
I love this.
I love it so much, too, that it's like in every other context about leaving the U.S., it's a laugh line that, oh, Rosie O'Donnell said she would leave the U.S. when Trump got elected.
Oh, Oprah says she, and it's all fake anyway.
You know, Kathy Griffin says she'll leave the U.S. or whatever.
It's them demanding that unpatriotic people leave the U.S., yada, yada, yada.
Like leave the, if you don't like it so much, leave.
And this is them taking their own advice.
Rather than complaining about American pussy, they're just going to go out and get some from Vietnam or whatever, you know, and you got to respect it.
Hey, listen, I don't want to leave the Ukraine out of this, all right?
I'd also go on to the Ukraine.
Well, with the Ukraine, you can get him to come to you.
Well, I guess Trump did reverse that.
Maybe he put in a carve out for brides.
I'm not sure.
There's for sure a bride clause somewhere in there.
He's like, who am I to stop love?
But I love it's like anybody anywhere wanting to leave the U.S. because they feel in danger or because they feel, you know, their kids might be in danger or their family or they, you know, can't survive here or whatever, it's a joke.
But the second a man needs to leave the country to go do some sex tourism, the onus is on women to explain why they made him do that.
That's fucking phenomenal.
This has laugh reacts.
I'm picturing, this is like a Jiminy Glick interview question.
Yeah.
Why are men are leaving the U.S. to find a good woman?
Why is ladies?
Why is that?
Why is that?
What's going on, ladies?
Why are these men doing that?
Blake Masters said, never heard of this in my life.
Really?
Really?
You never in your whole life?
How dare you accuse men of doing something?
It was probably a woman who did it.
I've heard it's been women doing it the whole time.
We've all seen Mama Mia.
Listen, he's actually amazed.
He's like, I've been trying to go to Thailand and my wife will not let me.
So what's this about?
How did you manage that?
I've never heard of my life.
Can you give me some tips?
I've never heard of like what half rock and roll songs are about.
Yeah.
Jamie Ibara says, Daniel, way to stir the pot.
Five exclamation points, crying or like squinting, laughing emoji.
Real quick, Weird move to Daniel Dan.
His display name is Dan.
You're going to Daniel him?
He probably.
You mean like proper about this?
He might know him from before he made his big like Facebook makeover to Dan.
Okay, valid.
Might be an older friend.
This is a term of endearment.
Daniel, way to stir the pot.
And it's funny to view this as stirring the pot and not like outing yourself as a pervert, as a weird, like racist pervert.
Yeah, exactly.
You're just, wow, you're touching the third rail.
Oh, boy, you're going to get hit with a freaking rolling pin for this one.
And Dan replies, not stirring, dot, dot, dot, just a legit question.
I mean, yeah.
Just asking questions here.
He's like, I actually tagged several ladies in the post to get their answers.
I would like, I mean, I'm actually asking very specifically, and there's no ladies giving me answers in this comment section.
But I'm still going to, I'm still going to stir the, I'm still going to ask the legit questions.
This is not pot stirring at all.
I'm just looking for an answer to the woman question.
You're not even allowed to ask the woman question anymore.
You'll get censored.
Like YouTube is probably going to take this down because I even said the phrase.
But I'm just asking questions.
Hey, you know, they call me a noticer because I noticed that all American women seem to hate my fucking guts.
Isn't that weird?
So what's going on there?
You said you hadn't heard from a woman.
I'm not sure if this is a woman, but they might be saying something Dan doesn't want to hear.
Sasan says, sadly, those men are looking for people they can control, period, which is sad, period.
I do feel bad for the men because, you know, it's just like, is it sure, like a slave will always like greet you when you come home and have a meal ready for you or anything, but is it fulfilling?
You know?
Yeah.
It's basically like jerking off.
Is there a spark?
I don't know if there's, we need to, you need a spark.
I just feel bad for you and your concubine.
Not for you, not for your concubine.
I feel bad for you that you have a concubine because a wife is so much better than a, than a piece of trash plaything.
Dan says, no, that's not it.
That's not it.
Sassan says, yes, it is.
Period.
Dan says, no.
And then Dan again says, lol.
Dot, dot, dot.
No.
No.
I just wanted to reiterate no, but also it's so funny that you would even suggest it, lol.
LOL.
Jason replies to Sasan also.
Oh, okay.
Hardly.
So Sasan says the men are looking for people they can control.
Jason says, hardly.
We are looking for team players, good mothers with conservative values.
I found mine, and she's the boss.
Women here are married to their Instagram acts.
Enjoy three exclamation points.
Oh, so he did.
He did.
He went and found one.
Because at first I thought maybe he meant he like he did find like an American woman, but no, I think he went and found a nice team player with conservative values elsewhere.
Women here are married.
I thought this first, when I grabbed this screenshot, I thought it said women here are married to their Instagram facts.
Yeah, no.
Instagram acts.
So like their social media personalities, they're like married to their own social media personalities.
Well, yeah, don't you see you see it when you see like a nice like conservative woman and like their their bot their bio says wife?
Right.
They make sure to put that in their wife to their Instagram account.
Yeah, wife first, Jesus second, family third.
Oh, yeah, actually, I was going to say I noticed that Ani hasn't put wife in her bio yet.
Oh, boy.
So I don't know what's going on there, but I don't want, you know, I don't want to air you out on the show or anything like that.
But I mean, like, I mean, people are going to know she's got to put wife in there.
That's part of her personality now.
I think she does have pair bonded with me, with my Instagram account in her Instagram.
But that, you're right, Tony.
That's not quite specific enough.
No.
I'll make sure she updates it with the correct legal language.
Women here are married to their Instagram acts.
You're just like, you just like tried to hit on 100 Instagram models and they all said no.
And so you flew immediately to Cambodia.
They don't even respond on Instagram.
Like, what's that about?
Like, oh, just because you have 20,000 followers and I just cold DM'd you?
Yeah.
It's not about how many followers you have.
How are you going to get to know the heart of the man that I am without responding?
Jesus only had 12 or 13 followers, something like that.
You know?
And women here are married to their Instagram acts.
Enjoy.
You seem happy.
Yeah, this is one of the last posts from Dan Chase.
I just, I was fascinated by Dan.
He had a lot of good posts when I was scrolling through.
So I just, I had to, I had to share them.
Dan says, I identify as, quote, the, end quote, most attractive lesbian, quote, on, end quote, earth.
And quote, I am, end quote, always correct.
If you don't accept my identity, you are a, quote, begot.
End quote.
Do you get it?
Do you get it?
He identifies as a lesbian now.
That's, that's, you have to, you have to respect that.
I don't, how does, why is he lesbian, though?
I don't get it.
Well, you know, because like pussy, dude.
Hmm.
You know, you know, you know, pussy.
Oh, oh, because you're saying he likes pussy.
I get it now, like a lesbian would.
That's pretty gender essentialist of you, Tony.
I don't know that I would, me or Dan would subscribe to like a, you know, a specific genitalial definition of sexuality.
You know, that's kind of a separate.
I got to do better.
That was, that was, you're right.
You're right.
Dan, Dan.
I think you should apologize to Dan.
Dan, Dan is always telling, always telling straight women that, you know, lots of women say that I have like lesbian sex.
Like I, I know I'm having, I know we're having, you know, P and V sex, but I, I like the, a lot of people say I have queer sex.
That's how, that's how intimate I get.
Yeah, Dan and Dan seems like the type of guy to be like, I'm a lesbian because I like pussy or whatever, to have that post and then also a post about how the vagina is a terrifying Lovecraftian monster that he is like forced to interact with because God tells him to.
I mean, if you're going to look me in the eyes and tell me that vaginas don't look they were designed by Conenberg, then I mean they're good and cool.
You know, awesome.
I mean, I wish I could fucking pull a gun out of there.
I'd be in there even more.
We're working on it.
We're working on exactly that.
And then this last post from Dan.
Two things a woman won't understand.
Period.
A man cold.
Period.
A man's broken heart.
Exclamation point.
It's true.
It's true.
You're like not supposed to say this, Dan.
Because that is like the joke that, you know, men are babies when they're sick.
Oh, he's like, oh, I see.
I was wondering if a man cold was a, was a thing.
I didn't know this was a cultural artifact.
What is a man cold?
Can you elaborate, Tony?
It's just men become like a lot of, you know, men become babies when they're sick and like, cause, and they go, they revert to like a child and they need like mommy to take care of them, you know?
Is that something that like men acknowledge?
No.
Yeah.
So what is he talking about when he says a man cold?
I don't.
I think he's saying, yeah, I'm acting like you don't get it.
It's different for men.
Colds are different for men.
You don't understand.
Yeah.
You don't understand.
You don't understand like what it's like to be congested as a man.
Right.
Because it's like having blue balls for your whole body.
You don't even have to get, you get, you get boogers in your mustache.
You know, you don't even know what it's like to get boogers in your mustache.
A man cold, a man cold, period.
A man's broken heart.
So I don't know.
Did the cold contribute to the broken heart?
I don't know.
I think if a woman didn't understand how much pain and congestion I was in, it might also break my heart.
So I don't know.
I'm willing to give Dan the benefit of the doubt here.
Dan's going through.
I feel bad for it.
I'm honestly imagine like, you know, getting your heart broken and then having cold at the same time.
It's a tough week.
It's a tough week.
Just to make you feel
I wanted to move on to some like perception of Trump's big, beautiful bill, which passed in the House and Senate the other day and definitely just like further erodes any semblance of a welfare state in this country and again helps funnel wealth upwards and just continues the steady decline of this country to the benefit of the wealthy corporatists who control
it.
But I saw this post in Let's Go Brandon Facebook group from Franz.
I was kind of shocked to see it.
Franz says, I am just curious, but I was reading that in the BBB that millionaires will be getting roughly 3% more money back from tax breaks, but that an average American like me would be getting only roughly 2% back.
I don't really get that.
I was like, okay, this has to be a troll post.
This has to be like someone like me in this group trying to start a discussion, to start a conversation without tipping off, tipping their hand that they're a progressive or a leftist or whatever.
Just the, I don't really get that.
Hey, it seems like in this tax bill, billionaires kind of get off better than the rest of us.
Is that true?
Is that real?
I don't know.
Why?
Why did that happen?
Like, I don't, I, it, it, I didn't at first occur to me that there could be somebody that, I guess, let's say naive.
Uh, no, this guy's real.
This guy's a real Republican.
And this post was overwhelmingly laughed at and has 154 comments in it.
Um, and I got way too many comments here because it's just, again, like fascinating to watch people grapple with this concept of somehow billionaires doing better than an average working person under Trump, who is, of course, like, as we know, the working class president.
He's basically working class himself, right, Tony, from what I've seen in the memes and everything.
I mean, even beyond that, you know, he's just not a politician.
You know, he's a, he's a, I expect this from politicians, but like, he's not a politician, you know, he's an outsider.
And outsiders are like us, we're outsiders.
So therefore, you think he would have our, you know, the good of us in it, you know, in mind.
But that's why I'm confused.
Right.
We don't see this coming.
We hear a lot about like the working class and the ruling class, the capitalist class or whatever.
Marx failed to recognize the renegade class, the Maverick class, the Sigma class that I thought we were in there with Donald Trump.
And I just assumed he would follow his class interest of, you know, having Riz, of dabbing up the homies, of keeping it real.
And apparently he's a class trader in that respect.
This is a shame.
This is the thing that's finally going to throw me off of him.
I was down, but now that I'm seeing he's doing this, I'm like, maybe, maybe now it's time to step away from him.
Josh Hopkins replies, how many people do you employ?
What?
What?
Jocelyn Marie says, because the wealthy pay a crap ton more taxes than the average Joe, plus if they get some tax breaks, it makes it more affordable for them to open more businesses, create more jobs, etc.
And I'll just save like half of my screenshots.
Overwhelmingly, the response was not, oh, you have it wrong.
Billionaires don't actually benefit more than regular people in this.
There were a bunch of people who did say, you get your crap news from CNN and that's fake and you're fucking live.
Like, I think I'll go to one comment that has some interesting way of saying that.
But no, like overwhelmingly, like I would say 75% of the responses had just immediately flipped the switch back to Mitt Romney job creator mode.
Mitt Romney, top down, billionaires are people, corporations are people, and it's only by their good grace that we all continue to exist.
Any sort of populist veneer that these people, I don't know, were trying to perpetuate throughout the Trump presidency and the MAGA era vanishes the second they actually get what they want, which is more power for the wealthy and more exploitation of workers.
It was just kind of startling to see because there has been what Trump campaigned on was explicitly, quote, populist, was explicitly like, we're going to upset the system.
We're going to change things for the little guy.
You know, every politician says things like this to some degree, but he was definitely willing to actually touch a few third rails and go after some sacred cows of the modern right.
And just the ease with which they all just revert back to the same old standard.
Well, no, they're better than you.
The wealthy are better than you.
Sorry if you thought we actually cared about working people or viewed them as human.
We don't.
They can be trusted with financial gains.
We can't.
Like people, everybody wants to complain about yachts and stuff like that.
People forget that yachts have to be staffed.
You know, those are jobs.
Yeah.
You know, you can't work as a cook on a luxury yacht unless a luxury yacht exists.
Stacy, I liked this comment.
Stacy said, personally, I think it's a good question to ask.
And there's a lot of answers that I didn't even think of.
So thanks for asking.
I like posts where I gain a little more knowledge.
Did you gain more knowledge?
It sounds like you have more questions.
No, I think Stacy was like maybe one of the people too stupid even for American capitalist propaganda.
And so she was happy that somebody asked this question so that she could get like a fucking full dosage of it straight into the face, like a concentrated, you know, like when Homer grinds up the spaghetti into one 10 pound, you know, snack bar or whatever and then has to go to the hospital.
Like I think that's what just happened to her.
But I love, I love the like, oh, I think it's okay to ask questions.
And like everybody else is calling this guy a fucking socialist, yada, yada, yada.
And she's just like, no, it's okay to ask questions as long as you come to the same conclusion that everybody else is screaming at me for.
You know?
Linda says, the wealthy are responsible for job creation.
And Drew replies, bullshit, space space.
The average American can pay about $100 for a LLC to start their own business, be it construction or counseling or whatever your skill set involves.
And I love, I've never seen this.
I've never seen this rebuttal.
I think this person might be a Republican too or whatever, but I've never seen this rebuttal to, well, start your own business or whatever.
And it's like, yeah, anybody can start their own business.
You're not special for starting your own business.
Okay.
Any moron who can fill out a form can start a business.
That doesn't mean that you should get, you know, 10, 10,000, you know, percent tax rebate compared to me.
Yeah, they're not special.
Anyone can do that.
You can just start LLC tomorrow and create jobs.
I'm creating jobs because I think that is, that does kind of speak to the shallowness that that phrase is.
Like they create, you know, job creation.
It's like, just because you create a business does not mean you create a job that supplies a livable wage.
Right.
Yeah.
And it's, well, the number one material argument for the existence of the capitalist class is that, well, they have the capital.
And it's like, okay, yeah, maybe we can just, maybe we can just stop that part of it.
Maybe we just prevent that first part.
But you're right.
They do have the capital.
Okay.
I'll give you that.
And their argument is, and they're willing to risk it.
It's like, okay, give me fucking $10 million and I'll be willing to risk 500,000 of it to start a business okay i'll take that risk on for every american every time i see like another shitty restaurant open or like another good restaurant get purchased by somebody and make it shitty i'm like man the wrong people have money like that's all i think about every time i think see that it's like must be nice to just be able to make an investment in something you're not actually even you don't even really care
like these motherfuckers, these motherfuckers come in, they, they, it's like coffee shops.
They don't care about coffee.
They don't actually like coffee.
Like people seem to like coffee.
I'm going to sell some of this.
And it's like, and then because they have the, you know, the means to do it, they can do their cool, you know, exposed wood, you know, interior decorating and have a turntable on the, on the, you know, the counter and outlast the, the, the, the coffee shop down the street that was started by people who actually do care that are barely staying afloat.
And it's like, yeah, the wrong people have money.
Um, this one is great.
Kathy says, well, I do believe they are paying a much higher tax rate than the middle class and the low income.
She's talking about billionaires.
Um, and it's like, we got to just say, yes, they're in a higher tax bracket, but they have access to all these loopholes.
They have access to all these tax cuts.
Again, that's what we're talking about right now is more adding more tax cut opportunities for these people to avoid paying the quote high taxes that you guys are, are, you know, giving them credit for like the whole point is them not paying that supposedly higher tax rate.
Um, okay.
The millionaires are what keep people working.
You are paying less than them, even with their 3% tax break.
That's not, that's not what that means necessarily, but, um, their rate is very high.
It's like, yeah.
So 3% to them is more money than I will ever see in my entire life.
Not just more than the 1% of my tax cut that, that my tax cut is going to be like, that's, that's the funny thing is they're like, well, they have more money, so they should get more money.
And I disagree with that fundamentally.
I just, I just don't agree with that.
And there's a lot of people who will just say, well, it's not fair.
It's not fair because the numbers are different because they, they have more just because they have more money.
The percentage should be the same.
We should do a flat tax or whatever.
And my, I guess, rebuttal to that is we shouldn't organize a society based on what's fair to billionaires.
Absolutely.
I don't care about being fair towards billionaires.
In fact, I think we should eliminate that category of person altogether and that we don't have to worry about being fair to them.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Once you, once you, uh, once you like reach a certain amount of income, you're just doing it for the love of the game.
You don't get to make any more money.
Um, but it does, it does speak to the ignorance of how like, they just have no idea how this actually works.
Like, like you said, the, these people that you have to, you have to, you know, spend money to make money.
And so they are using their wealth to make more money, you know, in the market, in the, in, you know, in the, within the capitalist structure, they don't need help from tax breaks.
They don't need help from that.
And like a good, a good example of that, that people don't know about a lot of times when you see, um, specifically a Mercedes G wagon, you know, the Mercedes SUV, the bulky one, the one that's like the square, the squared off one, super expensive.
When people, when people buy those, they weigh a certain amount.
So they consider a different class of vehicle.
So you can write that entire vehicle off as a, as a, as a industrial vehicle for your company.
And you basically get all your money back.
So it's, it's that whole thing where it's like, you look at that and you think, oh man, they worked so hard to get that.
And it's like, no, they worked hard enough to get to the point where they can actually get that for almost free.
And you can't do that because you're just a regular person.
Yeah.
It's like, they have enough tools to, to, to finesse it and to have, they have enough cheat codes.
They have enough assistance.
They don't need help here.
We need help here.
We need them to actually help us here.
Right.
That we live under a system that expressly gives more power and more agency to people with more money.
Like that's how the system works.
and we see it every day, the way they use their money to make sure that they can get more money with their money.
You know, it's just, it's a, it's a upward spiral of wealth is, is what it is.
Um, yeah, this is great though.
Also, if they're not a corporation, they can't get unemployment.
And with all that they pay into social security because they pay such a higher tax rate, they're capped out.
They're millionaire.
Billionaires don't matter.
They're only going to get a certain percentage per month when they retire.
So if they have not invested wisely, they might wind up getting what the average American middle-class American gets.
Oh my God.
Did you think of it?
They have to keep more money because otherwise they might wind up like me.
I forgot about retirement.
I forget about when they go into retirement, they're going to need the help on their retirement.
Oh my God.
Just having no idea.
Retirement from what?
Retirement.
From what?
Yeah.
Also, they pay the same amount of money into social security that we pay.
I don't know what you think is happening.
There's actually a cap on social security, uh, deductions.
They, they, it only goes up to a certain amount of money of income and then they don't have to pay shit on top of that.
Uh, so, so you've got that initial part wrong altogether, but also the idea I'm worried about million, the billionaires retirement, you know, what, how are they going to spend their golden years in a fucking second rate assisted living facility?
Awful.
I love how they think somehow they think that these like millionaire billionaires are not, I mean, I don't even know if the word savings works.
The word savings doesn't really apply to this.
It's like, bro, do you know, do you like, they don't know what money is.
They don't like what how money works like brother like they have more money than you have in your lifetime i promise you they're going to be able to live the last like you know 30 35 years on earth without you know in quote retirement.
They're going to be fine.
They'll probably be better off because they won't have to constantly be bribing Congress and local police departments about all the women they've killed in their prime years.
They'll be too old to be committing those sorts of crimes with impunity now.
I hope this information has helped.
You understand a little better.
I'm speaking from experience.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you, Kathy, for that.
Yeah, Corey here says, I don't worry about what my neighbor receives.
I only worry about me.
I suggest you do the same.
And it's very true.
I feel like most right-wing people do not worry about their neighbor, don't want to know anything about their neighbor.
Please don't tell me.
Why are you burdening me with the information that there exists other people in this world?
Fuck you.
To use neighbor here is amazing too, because you're also like, you're somehow like ignoring your actual neighbors and not caring about the actual people that you think that you should be caring about while somehow thinking that the millionaire being there are your neighbors.
It's the same thing, Tony.
You probably don't even live in the same area code.
You know, it's like, fuck, you're, it's just, I don't know.
I wish, I wish I was this stupid.
I don't worry about what my neighbor receives because the last time I tried to knock on their door, there was a 50-foot tall gate and an armed guard between me and their house.
Yeah.
It's kind of hard for me to worry about it.
And I just needed a cup of sugar and they would not buzz me in.
Yeah, but Pat Mulville here says, don't post leftist propaganda on here.
There are plenty of Nazi sites to share lies on.
And that's a twofer because he got you because the Nazis were socialists.
Did you know that?
So real.
And then Franz, this is like where I was trying to see if Franz was real or a shit.
Wait, hold on.
Just for the, this is a response to Franz, the Franz, the one who was like, wait, why are the billionaires getting a higher tax break than we are?
Yeah, that's Nazi parentheses, socialist propaganda.
France says, so dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, asking a question of people who may know more information is a liberal trait.
Got it.
Grow the fuck up.
Asking a question doesn't make me a liberal.
And that's got five likes in here.
And then Dan, a different guy, Dan, replies, if you're not a liberal, why did you buy tampons for your son?
Damn.
Seven question marks, zero likes.
Zero likes on this one.
Sorry.
Sorry, bud.
And just like, actually, thank you for, well, because I have to, but thank you for properly gendering my son.
I do appreciate that.
Good job.
Rod, yeah, this is maybe like one of the last ones I want to talk about.
Wow, I got a lot of screenshots for this one.
But yeah, Rod says they also pay a way higher percentage tax rate to begin with than average American.
Look at the tax brackets.
Look at the tax brackets.
That's the number they pay is in that bracket.
You dumb, you dumb-dumb?
And Franz says, my guy, I am a disabled veteran with a small pension from teaching.
I am not going to be crying rivers for millionaires and billionaires.
This has three likes.
Mosquito says, how much per month is your, quote, small teacher's pension?
And I love the idea that he's actually hiding his billion-dollar teacher's pension.
The average teacher's pension is between like $20,000 and $50,000.
And I don't think that's going to be for somebody who's like a young, disabled vet who probably had to retire from teaching after, I don't know, 10, 15, maybe 20 years maximum.
But he goes on to say, I have been a Republican, Franz says, I have been a Republican since I gained the right to vote 16 years ago.
So he's young, I'm assuming, or maybe he, I don't know, maybe he's an immigrant.
No, you can't, you can vote as an immigrant if you get, yeah, if you become a citizen or whatever.
I was an enthusiastic supporter right up until Iran, parentheses.
I support Israel and don't want Iran getting the bomb, period.
I have my own beliefs as to why it was a bad idea.
I am happy with Trump overall, but recently I am just like, meh.
So still like excusing himself for daring to ask about why this administration is continuing income inequality, continuing the upward transfer of wealth.
He's like, no, don't get me wrong.
I still love Trump.
I just, I don't, I don't think we should have bombed Iran, but I also love Israel.
Like, you know, I also, I don't want Iran to have the bomb.
I just, I don't think we should have bombed it for personal reasons.
And it's like, what are those personal reasons, dude?
Do you mean because you don't want us involved in a war in the Middle East?
Because that's not a personal reason.
That's actually a very good political reason that you should feel comfortable saying in any sort of conversation.
So you don't like the fact that they're continuing wealth inequality and you don't like the fact that it seems like we're going to war with every other fucking country in the world on behalf of either Israel or these same billionaires that you say you don't spend a lot of time crying over.
Why are you a Republican?
Like, are you just literally just like a cultural Republican?
It's just because you fucking wear carharts?
It's just because you got groomed in the military into being a psychopath.
So you feel like you have to vote for Trump?
Yeah, it definitely seems like he's like really trying to hang on to it.
It's funny too, because when he posted, you know, his background, I was curious how they're going to receive him because they love vets, but they hate teachers.
Right.
And yeah, right away immediately went to the, okay, you rich teacher.
You know how teachers are just, they're just rolling in it.
This is the last reply to him I'll read from Anna.
Because Franz says, millionaires don't need help, bud.
The millionaire doesn't worry about paying daycare costs or putting their kid through college.
Anna replies, without millionaires, we wouldn't have capitalism.
So you did, you honed in on the solution.
You did.
You do know the solution.
Okay.
I love this.
You said it, not me.
This is maybe one of my favorite phrases we've had recently.
This is a definite, this is a contender for episode title.
Without millionaires, we wouldn't have capitalism.
Okay.
We are a rich country because of millionaires.
What?
No, again, like the country is not rich.
In fact, the country is actively like cutting resources to people, cutting services to people.
Individual millionaires and billionaires are rich.
Don't delude yourself into thinking that somehow does osmosis into your bank account.
It doesn't.
They took the money from you.
That's your money in their fucking pockets, Anna.
We are a rich country because of millionaires, and they practically pay for all social programs.
They contribute to hospitals, schools, you name it.
Be glad we have richness in our country.
And no, they profit off of those things.
They don't contribute to those things.
They actively seek to dismantle those things so they can profit even more than they already do.
They profit off of healthcare.
They profit off of schooling.
They profit off of holes in our public education system put there by guess what?
Themselves and their friends.
It's absurd.
But I just, yeah, I love the phrase without millionaires, we wouldn't even have cats.
So think about that.
The next time you try to denigrate a millionaire, without them, we wouldn't even have this great system we love.
These are the people who actually are in a hospital and see that they're in like, you know, the Wesley Charleston III wing.
And they're like, thank you.
Thank you for that.
We wouldn't even have this wing in the hospital if they didn't do this.
I know the donation was a huge tax write-off.
And I also know that this donation allowed their kid to actually cut in line for a, you know, for a donated liver.
And that's, but thank you for this wing now.
Now we have it.
And we wouldn't have it if it wasn't for them.
I know also this donation happened in 1908, the last time a millionaire contributed anything to fucking society whatsoever.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
So yeah, I'd like everybody, you know, on this, on this 4th of July, you know, it's a couple days after, but it's still, you know, in our hearts.
You carry it with you wherever you go, especially when you think about how without millionaires, we wouldn't have capitalism.
real
Okay, so speaking of, you know, pride and patriotism and all that, I thought maybe we should talk about another timely topic, Pride Month from last month.
No, you know, we talked about a couple pride issues, I think, during, or pride-related news items or content jumping off points last month during June.
But this is one that I really wanted to make sure we got around to, and it kind of kept getting bumped back.
But I did want to talk about pride outreach, gay pride support from my union, the Teamsters.
You know, I, of course, for people who listen to the show, have a somewhat complex relationship with the Teamsters International.
I have my issue, large issues with our current Teamsters president, but I have been a Teamster for 20 years and I do believe in unions and I do believe that solidarity is the way forward.
And I mean that in like every sense of the word, solidarity across class position, obviously.
But solidarity, like, you know, among disparate elements of the working class, including gay people, including queer people, like just from a cynical, practical, material standpoint, like gay people exist.
And if you ever wanted to have a strong movement, you have to be cool with queer people.
It's just a fact.
I'm sorry.
You're going to have to grow up.
And this is maybe a message for fellow Teamsters or fellow union members who have an issue with gay pride or queer pride or whatever.
Suck it up, buttercup.
It's no skin off your back.
These are people's lives and they are our union brothers and sisters and they're just our fellow human beings in general.
And if we ever wanted to have a chance of changing this country and this world, like these, these are the people that we're going to do it with.
These are our community members.
These are our brothers and sisters and siblings.
And it's absurd, as always, I've said this many times recently.
It's just so absurd to think you can have any political movement that is deliberately exclusionary.
Yeah.
It's not the move.
You want all the numbers you can get.
And, you know, if that, if it does not affect the way you do your job and it does not, then who the fuck cares?
Why it doesn't matter?
Like socialists and the left are willing to work with class traders, are willing to work with capitalists who will work for the left.
If you're willing to work with a capitalist, but not a gay person, like what is wrong with you?
Like what is so I just did, I did, you know, the complex, like the things that have been going on in the Teamsters international at the national level with Sean O'Brien and his weird capitulation and his weird adhering to talking points that have been approved by the Trump administration and really focusing on a narrow idea of what it means to be a radical union member or what it means to speak
truth to power.
It's very clear he only means very specific bosses, namely the bosses of the workers whose union he represents or whose, you know, who he represents when we should be going after bosses of all kinds,
all the, all the bosses as a class of people instead of cozying up with one side because it thinks we think it'll make it us like have more credibility within the working class movement because we're doing a macho right wing thing or a macho podcasting thing, for instance.
But that's redundant.
You don't got to say that.
You can just say podcasting.
We all know what's macho.
Yeah.
But I have been very pleased to see that Teamsters as an organization, you know, I'm a Teamster.
I'm part of the organization.
But I mean, administratively, Teamsters have not seemed to throw gay and trans people under the bus the way a lot of organizations and political movements in this country have done in the face of a Trump administration.
They have not been willing to take the inclusivity out of their mission statement or refrain from acknowledging the existence of gay and trans people.
In fact, I saw throughout June, I saw like a post every other day from the official Teamsters Facebook page, from the official AFL-CIO page as well.
I saw gay rights and pride posts from these organizations.
And that's heartening to see that at least we still have the strength to uphold those values, even in the face of like a moderating or triangulating leadership.
He's not, if those are his sentiments or if those would be inclinations from the leadership, the rest of us are still strong enough to not put up with that sort of capitulation, to not put up with that sort of culture war bullshit that actually weakens us as a union.
That's heartening to see.
I just have one post here from the Teamsters on Facebook.
This month, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters honors and celebrates our LGBTQ plus members.
They did even the plus, bro, in recognition of June as Pride Month.
The diversity of rank-and-file Teamsters across the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico makes our union the strongest in North America.
Through the work of the Teamsters Human Rights and Diversity Commission and LGBTQ Plus Caucus, our union will continue to protect and empower LGBTQ plus Teamsters and their families and fight for fairness at work for all our members.
And also, every one of these posts had positive reactions, had overwhelmingly, like this one I'm looking at, 4.1,000 likes and loves.
And you can't even see, if there's laugh reacts or angry reacts, you can't even see them because the ratio is so bad for those that they don't even bother registering them on the little preview.
I don't know if people can understand what I'm saying here about the way that the UI for Facebook, but you have to actually click on the likes to see the actual breakdown of how many people reacted what, and it'll display up to three different emojis if those emojis, like numerically, are evenly dispersed.
If it's like close.
Or even close or whatever.
And this just has the like and love.
Like the angeries, the laughs, it didn't even register.
Eat shit, losers.
And I left a comment here.
I love being a 20-year Teamster because I can throw my weight around with shit like that.
I just wave it in everybody's fucking face.
I'm like, shut the fuck up.
Let them know.
Big flex.
20-year Teamster here.
We are only strong if we are united.
Stop letting them divide us.
I stand with my LGBTQ union siblings.
And I forgot the plus too, but I meant the plus as well.
Everybody, you know?
Well, it's just the plus does include that one that you don't care for, but we won't get into that.
The one I'm trying to erase.
You know, the one.
There's the one.
You know which one it is.
We won't do that, but there's one of them that, you know.
They know what they did.
They know what they did.
Or, you know, nobody wants to wake up like that.
Yeah, I don't know.
It's like it's such so clearly a divisionary tactic to me that it's just I had, but you have to like phrase these things in a way that makes them undeniable and in a way that evokes the common sense in uniting across these supposed divides, you know?
And Harold replied to me, appears you don't know God.
Man, that God sucks.
Whatever God you're evidenting, this post literally like, hey, you know what?
Like, let's, let's, you know, stand with our fellow coworkers, you know, our brother, you know, our family in the union, you know, let's stand together.
And this guy is like, you don't, you don't know God.
Yeah.
Hell, brother.
God is actually, yeah, that's, that's when I hear God is when I'm fully alone.
When I, you know, you know what?
God sounds pretty cool and you don't got some gay bitch yapping in your ear.
You're not even saying you are queer.
You're just saying that you, that, you're just saying that you, you know, you stand in solidarity.
Like you, you know, that they are part of the union.
That's all you're really saying.
It's they are part of my union and I like that.
No, God would want you to hate them.
God would want you to like not let them be in your club.
Yeah.
Some responses to this.
Again, overwhelmingly positive, but I do want to like, again, go Through the supposed arguments against a union celebrating like queer pride, acknowledging its queer members, standing behind its queer members, because these are going to be conversations that we're going to have to have for fucking years.
These are going to be conversations and arguments and quote debates or whatever that if you are in a union, you're going to have to talk about.
Unfortunately, you're going to have to push back against this shit.
It is up to you to do it.
And so I don't know.
It's helpful to see what people are saying.
The few people that are against this stuff.
Ellen says, actually, June is now Veterans Month.
American flag emoji.
And I love, I love, actually, actually, it's men's month.
Now, did you know that June is actually Homeless Veterans Month?
Yeah, that's what it is because I care a lot about those people, not because I just checked, like grasped randomly at one of the filler words that my brain is made up of to deny gay people rights and their own existence.
I do want to point out, I do want to let anyone know I did take note of everybody who did wish me happy pride, but did not check on me on Sad Boy Month.
And you were noted and I just, your bigotry astounds me.
Yeah.
And it sickens me.
And next year, you better check in on the Sad Boys, okay?
Think about the Spotify playlist you could have gotten if you had reached out to Tony.
Exactly.
But not for much long because I think I'm finally switching.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Spotify fucking sucks, dude.
That guy's doing AI warfare with Spotify money.
Just like you.
Yeah.
It's so bad.
This country's so evil.
It turns people so evil.
Like, can you imagine?
I know this guy probably isn't the guy who created Spotify.
He's probably just like some investor who bought Spotify at some point.
But it's like you have a company that's a music company.
They have all the music in the world and you're, quote, responsible for that.
You had a hand in giving music from this continent to people of this continent and music from bands that have only played one live show to millions of people if they want to look at it.
Like you're like you're participating in this magical, fulfilling thing that I guess is charitably, you know, I'm charitably kind of describing that as owning a company, but you get to see yourself as that because you're in charge of all of it.
And yet you're like, hmm, what else should I, this doesn't fulfill my soul enough.
I need to do AI targeted drone warfare with this money.
Yeah, that was definitely my last straw was reading.
I was like, okay, all right.
I don't care how many playlists I have.
I got to get rid of it.
I got it.
I got to move on.
Yeah, I just, I don't know like what, I don't know that Apple's any better.
You know, like Bandcamp is cool, but they don't have everything, you know.
Exactly.
Yeah.
I mean, I've always been of the mind you just buy music directly from the artists and then you can stream it or steal it or do whatever digitally you want to do with it as long as you're like giving money to the artists in the form of buying a t-shirt or seeing them live or buying their music.
You know, CDs aren't that expensive.
You know, I couldn't buy every LP I'd want to buy, but you know, CDs, I can get close.
And if you can't afford like a new CD or whatever, at the very least, like go buy a used CD.
You know, go buy a used CD from a from a record store.
You're supporting them.
You're supporting that proliferation of music.
But yeah, just there's like a sickness in America where it's like, it's never enough.
Like it's, you're already like exploiting all these bands, you know, taking money from all of these bands and making money off of it.
And it's just like, what type of demon do you have to be to where you're like, okay, what's next?
Oh yeah, war profiteering.
I haven't actually, I know I might have like taken life indirectly by not supporting these struggling people, but I haven't actually like just snuffed something out in the blink of an eye remotely.
Oh man, I just, it's, it's phenomenal.
It's like, why do we allow this?
Why is that legal?
That guy shouldn't, that guy should be illegal.
That guy, he shouldn't be able to do that shit.
But in the, it's the, you know, it's free.
It's free.
You know, I was talking to like somebody in like the Joe Rogan Facebook group or something about this.
And it was about like taxes or it was about, you know, having more being empowered or whatever by supposed smaller government.
And I, and I was just like, no, they like those people that have power, they don't want you to have power.
And they know that like government is the only semblance of a opposition to their own power.
So they're getting rid of it.
Like you're, like, you're going to have even less power when there's no like supposedly democratic or whatever or like even representational democracy.
Like you're, you're, you're getting rid of that whole, you're trying to get rid of that whole system and it's going to be even worse.
And it's, it's just like more freedom.
Yeah, more freedom.
It's just like what the money's not flowing upward fast enough for you.
Yeah.
The fucking streets aren't falling apart quickly enough.
It's astounding for me, for people to like look at this and be like, yeah, I think the wealthy need more money, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's like, I don't give a, I don't give a fuck what they want or what they need or what's fair.
I care about what's best for the country and them having less money is better for the country.
Yeah.
And them creating all these AI jobs are not creating jobs.
So get that argument out of my face.
But I love, yeah, actually June is now Veterans Month.
That's, I just, I said it and it's true.
And I had to look this up.
I was like, make, cause every month is like five different months, you know, and so I had to look this up.
And it's actually supposedly November is Veterans Month, which is bullshit because that was my month.
That's my birthday month.
And so, well, that's that opens up a whole nother issue for me.
I think that just makes you a veteran.
I'm not willing to share.
It should just be me.
It shouldn't, it shouldn't be anyone else.
I always look forward to your post like next month's my birthday month.
You always do that.
You always make a huge dink about your birthday.
Yeah, who's taking me out tonight?
Did you see this during this June?
Did you see everybody saying June is mental health awareness, men's mental health awareness month, actually?
Every June I hear that.
That's what I was saying.
Sad boy month.
Like, that's they got, you got to check in on your sad boys during men's mental health awareness month.
I really saw it this year.
I don't know.
I might have seen it in previous years and forgot about it.
I really saw it this year that anytime a pride post would like break through and be well received or whatever, the few like naysayers would say that June is actually men's mental health awareness month.
Or like in some of the pride posts I saw in like my Teamsters Facebook groups, you know, we're talking about the page here, their official page, but in the groups, people would post happy pride and other people would respond with actually happy men's mental health month.
And it's like, what you're doing does not seem very healthy, brother.
Yeah.
You should get some mental health.
I don't think your therapist would tell you to spend your time online policing other people's sexuality.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, that's what I'm saying.
Every time you see a post like that, it really does scream the importance of Men's Mental Health Awareness Month and how much we do need it.
Now, I wish they would do more than just post about it.
And like you said, maybe go get some help, maybe talk to some friends, maybe, you know, be proactive about their mental health instead of posting online about this.
And it's like, yeah, it's so stupid.
Yeah, it's just, it's like you reacted this way to seeing something that wasn't about you.
Like you reacted this negative way because we live under a system that contains profitable incentives to make you mad, to get you upset, and you don't have enough mental health to deal with it.
You don't have enough mental health to be like, well, that doesn't seem like that big of a deal.
Yeah, that's what sucks about it.
It's like it is a thing that is important and does need to be like talked about, you know, but it's not, that's not what's happening.
It's being weaponized to like against queer people for some reason.
It's like, well, that's not the way it's supposed to be.
That's the opposite.
A healthy man is cool with it being Pride Month.
Like you have to unironically make your brain strong against this sort of propaganda and against this sort of like divisive propaganda, which made me think of like, I don't know, instead of selling supplements like brain fuel or whatever, we should sell the idea of having somebody you can talk to for free.
Like every community should have.
Like, I don't know, Medicare for all, for existence.
Like we all chip in to pay that person you get to talk to a good wage.
And they might even have like credentials that give them the sort of knowledge and tools to help you, you know?
Like, have you ever heard of insurance?
What if we do that exact same thing of pooling resources together, but without the profit motive and make it answerable, make the system answerable to the public?
And like, yeah, I was trying to think of ways we could like just market Medicare for all as like brain force tonic.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think that's the way.
You know, like, you know, you know what really helps me lock in?
Having health coverage, knowing that if I get sick, it will not ruin my life.
That really helps me lock in.
Yeah.
Take control of your own country.
A bunch of unelected CEOs are trying to tell the U.S. how the economy should work.
I know how it works and I know who it works for.
It works for them.
We need to reimagine this country as a pyramid scheme, but flat.
You know, like a flat pyramid theory.
Take back your country from global capitalists and put your money back into your children and your children's future.
And then you can do like the 14 words, but it's a future for children's mental health.
Yeah.
You can also start like doing it for like teeth health and fluoride.
You could just like rename fluoride to strike fluid or something like that.
You know, I think there's an opening.
Your mouth is full of terrorists.
Your mouth is full of little terrorists that actually get in your bloodstream.
And that same plaque is the same plaque that blocks up your heart, just like Al-Qaeda.
Corporations are rolling out the welcome mat for these invaders into your mouth, putting the solution behind a paywall.
That's not right.
Free toothpaste for all, brother.
That's right.
Sometimes you got to break out the big guns.
You know, how about free cleanings?
How about we actually have access to free cleanings?
And get those rotten teeth out of there.
Those rotten teeth are really mucking.
Those rotten teeth are not assimilating.
They got to go.
More responses on the Teamsters Facebook post.
Don Trump says, I show my pride with a 10-foot by 15-foot American flag.
American flag emoji.
Again, so just my personality is the flag.
My personality is Donald Trump that I've changed my Facebook name to Don Trump.
My personality is a big flag, by the way.
I don't know if you notice how big my flag is.
It's not just the average flag.
It's a big one.
Fair enough.
Ron says to this Teamster's Pride month post, Ron says, I would not be a proud Teamster.
Yeah, man, you would hate to make like 10, 20% more than anybody else in your field because they did a rainbow Facebook post one time.
I'm sure, I'm sure you would just, you would renounce your membership immediately.
You would quit your Teamster's job.
I mean, how can I be proud of something that there's security in?
You know, I'm proud of the fact that I survive my job every day.
That's what brings me pride.
I don't want these like these handouts.
Joseph, and I included this one, even though it's a little different.
Joseph says, I have had friends that said they were guy.
And right before I started telling them how wrong their lifestyle was, I took one second to like at mine space period.
So let me go back.
I have had friends that said they were guy.
And right before, so I think what he means is they were coming out as a guy.
They were coming out as trans masculine, possibly.
And right, and he was like, well, maybe, you know what?
I'm a guy too.
Yeah.
Maybe look at maybe take a look at myself.
I mean, am I really a guy?
Am I as committed as my new guy friend?
And one thing I've learned too from doing this show and the internet in general is there's all kinds of guys.
You know, there's a really good podcast about that you can listen to.
There's, it's a rainbow of guys and if, and I choose to embrace that rather than stick my head in the sand about it.
Yeah, very proud guys.
No, I think Joseph meant to say gay.
Gay.
I've had friends that said they were gay.
And right before I started telling them how wrong their lifestyle was, I took one second to like it mine.
He's like, well, he's like, well, I fucked a lot of guys in the ass too.
Yeah, exactly.
I know where the prostate is, brother.
I get you.
Yeah.
Really, you know, what is it?
Pot calling the kettle black here.
We will all be judged for our choices we have made in this life.
And he said, we will be judged according to how we judged others.
In a union, the stronger the unity, the better the contract.
Stand strong, flexing bicep emoji.
Thank you so much, Joseph.
Hey, Joseph.
Hell yeah.
I don't know if you're an actual Teamster, but solidarity, brother.
You're a brother of mine.
You're a guy of mine.
Dick says about the Teamster's pride.
Maybe they can hold hands and tiptoe through the tulips together.
I mean, cool.
What are you and the fellas doing after work?
We're actually going to go ahead and frolic through the tulips, bro.
We're going to hold hands.
Because, you know, because we're gay, so we're going to do that.
You know that you would be killed in Gaza if you tried to tiptoe through the tulips with a guy, with one of your guys.
And you would be killed in Gaza, but not by Gazans, but you would for sure be killed in Gaza.
But you'll be killed over here by Gazans.
They'll send a rocket over here if they see you tiptoeing through the tulips on Instagram with a guy.
This is so funny.
Like, okay, maybe they can hold hands and tiptoe through the tulips.
Like, it's just like, that is the only opposition to this is it's fun.
It's, it's like, I don't get it.
I, you know, like, well, that's weird.
Like, that's the only opposition is it's like, you can't imagine somebody wanting to be in a relationship with somebody that you might not personally find attractive or you might not personally be interested in.
I mean, it seems like that's a fairly easy leap to make.
Yeah.
And also, yeah, you're right.
Like they, they can go tiptoe through the tulips together and hold hands and not get fired for it.
That's right, bitch.
They can do it and they still have job security.
Like, yeah, that's the whole point of the, like, that's the whole point of this whole thing is, yeah, they're allowed to.
Dale tags his friend Joe in this comment section and says, I'll always have your back, brother.
Fist emoji, fist emoji, fist emoji.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Did they just out their friend what they just did?
Or are they being funny?
Are they being, are they?
I decided.
Yes, I decided that either way is good.
Yeah, both are great.
Yeah, this is either a joke that you are gay, Joe, I'll always have your back, or this is like a genuine sentiment, Joe, I love you.
No matter what letter of the alphabet you're fucking, I love you, brother.
And either way, I'm fine with it because even if it is a joke, it's still a positive joke.
It's still, you're gay, and that's okay.
I still love you.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
Thank you, Dale.
And Dale has like a monster truck in his profile pic.
So yeah.
Hell yeah.
Representation.
Eric says, my local is still waiting for a contract, but I guess this is more important.
I guess putting food on the table for our families is not as important.
A social media manager posted.
You think your fucking locals BA posted this?
You think the negotiating team for your specific local or region were too busy doing social media promotion to work on your contract?
Also, are you like going around, you know, going around the workplace being like super homophobic and maybe like not making your fellow Teamsters or fellow union people like feel welcome to participate in this contract being made?
Is that part of the problem?
Mike says, where is June my month?
Enough with this.
I mean, June's still here, dude.
You can still make it your month, buddy.
You can make this the month for you.
You can go ahead and do that.
No one's going to like, it's fine.
Yeah, I love, yeah, where is June my month?
I love it either as an argument for, well, if gay people get a month, I should get a month.
You know, unfortunately, I think that Mike means corgi owners.
Where's where's Mike?
Where's the corgi owner's month?
Yeah, what, what month is that?
Yeah.
Now we know, we all know they have a day, but need at least a month, I think.
I Need a whole month.
I mean, you know, the blacks and the women and the gays, they all get a month.
Where's Corgi Owner's Month?
But I also like phrasing it as in, where is June, my month?
Like, it's not a month for me.
It's just a month that I've come to love and, you know, I've grown attached to.
My month, June, where is she?
Where is she gone?
June was actually like, it was actually the anniversary of his now estranged ex-wife.
And he really enjoyed June and it's gone now.
And it's so stupid.
What's more heterosexual than getting divorced?
Yeah.
It should be for him.
I agree.
Max says, if we don't get two weeks to rub wieners added to the next contract, we should strike.
We don't need a fair contract, just more playing with swords time.
Two exclamation points.
But what?
Again, like these people's inability to think about gay people or queer people without vividly imagining the type of sex they're having or their genitalia in general.
But I just like the overarching sentiment is like, well, I'm anti-gay, everybody.
Wouldn't having more vacation be super gay, right, guys?
Exactly.
And I just want you to continue with this argument.
If you're an anti-gay person, if you're against the idea of recognizing and upholding gay and trans and gender rights, you should continue to say that having vacation just means you want to rub wieners on another guy's wiener.
Yeah, exactly.
It's been a minute since I've been able to rub wieners.
I'm going to need a break.
I'm going to need some time off so I can go rub wiener.
If that's going to give you more time off, yeah, run it.
Go for it.
I'm of the mind that should be covered under FMLA.
I shouldn't even have to take vacation time for that.
Excuse me, where's the bottoming room?
I need a room.
I'm a prolific bottom and I need time and space for that.
Is that in the contract?
Yeah, this is so cool.
Yeah.
Instead of a fair contract, why don't we just get more vacation time to be gay?
Cool.
What?
Who said you had to use the vacations for gay stuff, bro?
No one's making you.
Max would still show up during those two weeks, like show up to work.
Like, no, I don't want you to think I'm doing gay stuff on the gay, the gay break.
Josh, okay, this is one of like the one of the more lucid arguments that's still very bad.
But this is like one of these guys who had a visceral reaction to a Pride Month post trying to sound reasonable in his knee-jerk opposition to this.
Josh says, as a proud Teamster member, I find it out of touch to push this celebration in June when it doesn't represent what I or the majority of members stand for.
With most of our union made up of hardworking men, our focus should be on men's mental health, ding, ding, ding, not political agendas.
We need to be focused on mental health, not politics.
Yeah, not politics.
Come on.
Let's prioritize the real issues affecting our brothers.
And again, like, what does prioritize mean?
Prioritize means never posting about anything else that offends you.
Yep.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Also, it's worth saying, I should have maybe said this at the top.
We have protections for sexuality and gender identity in our contract already.
Okay.
Everybody who's freaking out about this Facebook post, you're going to lose your mind when you see what's in our actual labor contract.
You're going to fucking flip out when you see what benefits you have.
Yes, you have weeks in which to be gay.
And yes, there's language in the contract that explicitly prohibits your employer from punishing you for rubbing wieners on your vacation.
Yeah, that's totally odd.
And also, Josh, if you need some help going over your benefits package to see how you can actually gain access to like therapy or anything like that, we can do that.
Those resources also exist.
Those resources come to you in a union newsletter.
There's like an app that I have that tells me all the benefits I'm entitled to from my healthcare.
It's a very stupid system that I have to have the healthcare and then I have to have a second thing that tells me what healthcare I have.
That's stupid, but it's for people like you who might, you know, not know how to find a covered provider for mental health.
And yes, men's mental health is important.
Again, it's more important than just using it as a little snide comment once a year.
It's way more important than that.
And the way that it's being treated betrays your lack of, you know, your lack of consideration for it.
Yeah.
And guess what, Josh?
You have access to those things year-round, not just June.
Kevin says, agreed, we should not show favoritism to one group or get politically involved in movements.
We should align ourselves with ourself with getting a paid livable wage, shorter work weeks, and good benefits in the fight for the working men and women.
That's it.
Okay, well, you had me until you said women.
See, the thing is, the majority of our union is not women.
Okay.
Women might make up as little as like 40 or 45% of our union or something like that.
And it's just astounding to me that you would rather focus on this minority of genders instead of the majority of men who are what's actually important.
You know, we're the ones who make up slightly more than half of this workforce.
Like everything should be for us.
Now, Alex, I got to say, I got to call you out.
It's kind of bullshit that you did not point out the favoritism that was shown to the LGBTQ plus community in this.
I didn't realize that they were the ones who were actually granted a living wage, shorter work weeks, and good benefits.
That is pretty fucked up.
Yeah, right.
No, it would be fucked up if they were granted rights that we didn't have access to.
That would be extremely fucked up.
And I would be like, wow, where's the straight caucus?
You know what I'm saying?
But not like in a sexual way.
I know that sounded kind of.
It's not.
Not.
Caucus is like a political term.
Yeah.
We should align ourselves with getting paid a livable wage, shorter work weeks and good.
Yeah.
All you got to do is hate gay people and try to ignore the attacks on gay people enough.
And then the bosses will for sure give you a livable wage and for sure give you a shorter work week.
And all those people that identify as something other than cishetero or whatever, they're actually dead weight.
We don't need them.
Once we get rid of them, like then we'll be cooking.
Yeah, exactly.
It's so, it's so silly.
Favoritism is just a post.
That's what favoritism is.
Yeah.
Where's my, where's the Kevin post?
Somebody, you know, AFL-CIO did a, I believe it was them, did a Pride Month post and somebody commented, you know, a bunch of people commented about favoritism this, favoritism that.
And they did another post that was like, it's funny to see people complaining about favoritism when we post during Pride Month, but when we post during Irish American Heritage Month, nobody has an issue with that.
Interesting.
Yeah, interesting.
And yeah, it's like, yeah, they do all that stuff.
You complain like they, Teamsters, yes, the Teamsters Facebook group posts about veterans.
Yes, the Teamsters Facebook group posts about working class issues all the time.
Yeah.
It's just you getting triggered by a specific type of thing that you've been radicalized against that elicits this hypocritical and nonsensical response.
And the reason why I let those posts go is because I am aware of the long history of Irish and black American solidarity going all the way back to Frederick Douglass.
That's why I let those posts slide.
But the other ones I get pretty upset about.
I'm like, that is favoritism.
Josh here responds to somebody who's like, hey, gay people are under attack.
They need our support.
Josh says, who exactly is trying to humiliate or destroy gay people?
Thinking emoji.
Don't twist my words.
I never spoke out against anyone for their sexuality.
Disagreeing with how something is represented, cowardly stuff.
Disagreeing with how something is represented doesn't mean I'm attacking the people involved.
Let me be clear.
I don't care what someone's sexual preference is.
That's their prerogative, not mine to judge.
And just because you may, just because you may not agree that I represent the majority doesn't mean that I'm wrong.
A difference of opinion doesn't equal hate.
It just means we see things differently.
Simple as that, brother.
And again, what you're seeing differently is the idea that gay people should be able to exist in public as gay people, as trans people, as members of the community who don't have to like conceal who they are for your comfort because you've been radicalized against them and you've been convinced that their way of living is somehow wrong or false.
Second of all, when you ask who exactly is trying to humiliate or destroy gay people, I would say the 60% of people in the Republican Party who don't even believe in gay marriage at this point.
The right wing is reverting when it comes to gay rights, when it comes to queer rights.
The right wing is taking a huge reactionary step backwards.
And it's never been more obvious why we have to speak out on behalf of gay and queer and trans people.
And you saying that you don't see it is suspicious.
You saying that you don't see it just makes me think you're lying.
Makes me think you don't see it because you're participating in it.
Exactly.
And the argument to this backlash is like, why do Republicans now not support gay marriage?
Their argument is, oh, gay people made me hate gay marriage.
The argument is, oh, it was a slippery slope.
We went too far.
And now I see why I was wrong to support gay marriage or whatever.
And it's like, well, no, it's still like generational.
Like you're just of a different generation that didn't have the same experience going through this political evolution.
You were just raised on anti-gay shit in like the manosphere and in reactionary culture and reactionary media that's been there, that's been there since gay marriage existed.
Been there since before gay marriage existed, obviously.
But it is the same argument as like Obama made me be racist.
Yeah.
And it's just, it's like such an embarrassing argument to me.
It's a very like, I don't know, like you see those memes and like comics that they make about like why they're so fucked why they're such fucked up sociopaths now.
Like it'll be a guy in a panel who's like, you know who turned me into a Nazi?
And then he like sneaks up on his tippy toes like a Jim Carrey Grinch figure and he whispers into the other guy's ears.
You did.
You did it.
You made me this fuck, fucking weird.
But yeah, if gay, I don't know, just like if gay people made you be anti-gay or black people made you be racist, that's a lot, just a long way of saying you're anti-gay and racist.
I mean, you don't understand.
Like I, I was at, you know, my kid's T-ball game and I was like, I fucking hate this other kid on the other team because he did slide into my kid.
So I was going to go fight his dad.
And it turns out I had to fight two dads.
That's not fair.
I'm supposed to, the social contract is one day.
I got to fight one dad at my kid's T-ball game, but now I had to fight two dads.
And you know what?
They whooped my ass.
And that's not fair.
That's not cool.
This is the last thing I'll read.
It's from Terry.
It's a comment on this same post.
Terry says, I would like to personally thank Local 63.
That's my old local, by the way.
That's Teamsters in Southern California.
Go.
Let's go.
And Local 848.
I did not face discrimination from my employer.
A few of my union brothers had their hands slapped by the business agent telling them to stop the hate or the union would be sued and they would be reprimanded.
That helped me so much to know that the unions were backing the Constitution of the United States and our union bylaws.
You never go after a union brother.
You have a problem with somebody, you go to your shop steward or your business agent for guidance.
That is why they are there to protect us all.
I could write a book about brokeback trucker teams that are lovers and union proud.
Happy pride, brothers.
Thank you for all the great friends I made working on a union job.
Awesome.
I don't know.
I'm sure there's thousands of stories like this of somebody gay.
You know, somebody, I've heard the stories of women who've been harassed in the workplace.
And guess who fucking came to their defense?
It was the union.
The union doesn't put up with this shit.
Any successful union wouldn't.
Of course, there's bad unions, there's weak unions, there's discriminatory unions.
This is what a good union does.
A good union will say, I don't care if there's more of you guys than him.
If you do this shit, it's corrosive to the overall organization.
We could wind up in legal trouble.
But more importantly, you're fucking up the system here.
You're fucking up the game here.
Fuck off.
This shit is not welcome.
And I don't know.
It's heartening to see all the pushback against this reactionary stuff.
And it's heartening to see the Teamsters as an organization come out in support of Pride Month and in support of LGBTQ folks.
So thank you for at least doing that.
Thank you to the Teamsters Administration for that.
I appreciate it.
And I think it's the only sensible thing to do.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Love to see it.
All right.
I think we're going to get out of here.
And I mentioned at the top of the show that we had an announcement.
Minion Death Cult is ending and we're documenting it.
It happened.
The world has officially outlasted Minion Death Cult.
I didn't expect it to happen.
And it could be the case that the world lives on thanks to this show.
Perhaps.
Maybe.
Yes, it does seem to be in much worse condition than how it was when we found it.
But when you scan the world with my new AI app, you'll see that what appears to be breakdowns, decay, and the destruction of society are actually errors in your flawed human perception.
The world is actually much better now.
And in fact, you owe us money for making it that way.
Yeah.
Thank you.
You're welcome for that, actually.
Yeah.
Think about how much worse it would be if you didn't know about all the things we've exposed you to.
Knowledge is power and we've given you a lot of power.
Your brain is so much stronger now to go forward even without us.
The listener, you may know that I'm now a married man and I just, I can't, I can't be podcasting anymore.
Podcasting is a swinging bachelor thing.
It's a party animal thing.
And I have to settle down and fly straight now.
Yeah, you got to get out of that basement.
You got to spend time with your lovely wife now.
Yeah.
So, but it's sad to see it go, but it was a rip in time while it was happening.
I want to clarify that we're not stopping the show because it's getting like too hard mentally to do it.
You know, I can see some people thinking like, yeah, the burden, the burdens those two men must bear for covering these awful people for the last 10 years or so.
That's not it.
I'm just tired of working two jobs.
I just, I'll be honest, I need a break.
I'm not giving up on politics or burnt out politically or anything like that.
Au contraire, I've seen too many positive developments in the world in the face of these seismic problems to give up hope.
And I know that we can help each other find a way out and through.
And that's, you know, one of the reasons that I, you know, one of the things I want to do is become more active in my union, become more active in real life politics.
I also want to go to jazz night school.
I also, I want to get looser.
I need to stay loose for my wife.
Again, I'm married now and I need to be loose in order to keep my family safe.
It's more important now than ever that you survive a car crash.
And I'm happy you're able to focus on that training and do that.
Yeah.
And, you know, also, just I, you know, got to say on the record, I got to thank you for doing it for so long, for so much longer than I think we'd even anticipated.
And, you know, allowing me to go through my times and my emotions and get to a place where now I'm, you know, got a decent job, feeling good, feeling stable, and really, you know, being there and doing this with me for so long and making it to this point where,
you know, we can now survive and we can continue to do what we were always doing, which is, you know, still participating in our communities, still out there, you know, doing touching grass and being with people and doing the real thing.
So that's never ending.
And, but it's, you know, this has been the best thing ever.
And I'm so happy I got to do it with you and with everybody listening.
It's the coolest thing ever.
Someone DM me this morning saying they were at the park with their kids and they saw another parent wearing a Minion Death Cult shirt.
Oh, that's cool.
And it's like, cool.
That's all I ever needed.
It was just that's that's all that's all I need to know is that, you know, we did that.
And it's cool to see the community that's been fostered through this, all the, you know, the people who have met each other through this show, the, the stuff that we've been able to accomplish with the show, with the help of our listeners.
It's, it's awesome.
And it's, um, it's incredible that we were able to do everything we have been able to do.
It's just forever grateful and it's been the coolest thing ever.
Yeah.
I mean, thank you to you, Tony, for doing this with me.
For so I could, I literally couldn't have done it without you.
And I think we've got to have, we've, we've had a lot of the conversations that I've wanted to have.
We've covered a lot of the freaks that I've wanted to cover.
We've, I've been able to develop my politics better and sharper, I think, because of this show and because of the, let's just say, yeah, strength training I've had to do for my own brain and my own ideology in addressing all of this nonsense.
And, you know, I want to say thank you to every listener.
Thanks to Antifada.
Thanks to guys.
Thanks to Street Fight.
Thanks to YKS, Go Off Kings, Radio Free Tote Bag.
Thank you to Audrey for doing our editing these past few months.
Car people, listen to Cars and Comrades.
We never got to have those guys on, but it's a good car show.
Subscribe to Means TV if you haven't already.
Thank you to them.
Listen to Helm Zali, as always.
Thank you to everyone who had us on their show or came on to our show.
I wish we could have had even more guests.
Thank you to everybody who's been listening since that awful sound.
I know there's like a lot of longtime listeners out there, and I really appreciate you guys.
And I, you know, I see you.
And maybe we'll come back in some form someday.
There's other things that I want to do with like through the minion death cult view that I think could be a lot of fun.
But I need to, again, take a take a pretty long break from this.
However, I believe there's an arrangement that will enable us to keep the Patreon up without charging everybody every month.
Supposedly there's a way that I can pause billing on Patreon on a month-to-month basis that will still allow Patreon supporters, if you've signed up at any time, to listen to the hundreds of shows we still have available on Patreon.
You know, I know there's people who are just like signed up this month, and so I don't want you to feel like slighted or whatever, but think of it as you pay for one month and then hopefully you get access to the rest of the catalog.
Now, the wording on Patreon is a little weird.
It seems like I might have to ask permission to continue pausing the show month to month.
And if that's the case, if they don't give me permission to continue pausing billing, I'm just going to take the account down on Patreon, unfortunately.
And nobody will have access, I think, to the Patreon episodes.
But I don't want to be charging people if we're not giving them new content.
However, if this pausing thing works, it will mean that you can just sign up for the Patreon and you pay one month, which is five bucks, and then you'll have access to all the episodes going forward and not get charged again.
I would just like to be able to keep that available for people.
And so hopefully that will work.
If not, I'll just pull the whole page down so nobody gets charged.
But if we keep that page paused and people stay signed up, then you'll be notified if we ever do something in the future.
And it just seems like a good way to kind of handle the history of this show and the legacy of this show such that it is.
So there will be one more premium episode this week that will be the last episode for the foreseeable future.
And then I will be putting Patreon billing on pause.
So if you want to hear that episode, sign up.
It's going to be a fun one.
Patreon.com slash Minion Death Cult.
And again, thank you so much to everybody for participating in this.
The Facebook group will still be going.
Tony and I will probably still be online.
Maybe me in like a less serious capacity or something.
But Minion Death Commando is on the Facebook group.
I'm at Fleildy on Twitter.
Tony is at Word is Bond on Twitter, at Tony Boswell on Instagram.
You can connect with us there.
And yeah, we appreciate everybody.
Again, solidarity.
That's the way forward.
And let's do it.
Let's make it happen.
Yeah.
Hell yeah.
I do want to thank two specific people for kind of they've been really crucial in these last few years.
Huge shout out to Jake Flores and huge shout out to Brian Quinby.
These are two people that have become like really good friends of mine.
And like, I'm so grateful for them and they've really helped me through this whole thing.
And I'm not married, so I will be doing something in the near future.
Follow me on all the places.
Board is Bond TV on Instagram or Tony Balls on Instagram and Board of Spawn on Twitter.
I will be doing some stuff that should be fun and cool and hopefully you'll want to partake in that.
But yeah, thanks for joining on this crazy journey that's been the past eight years, nine years?
Yeah, I've been like seven or eight.
I've been podcasted for 10 years, I guess.
And I'll put the RSS feed for that awful sound in this episode description.
Because I don't think iTunes wants you to hear that anymore.
But I'll put it there for people to listen to.
And you can also listen to close other tabs.
I have three episodes of that with Ani.
Maybe we'll do an episode of that in the future.
So if you subscribe there, you'll hear any future episodes.
Sorry, I kind of interrupted your thing, Tony.
No, no, you're good.
It was on point.
Cool.
Appreciate it.
All right.
Well, we'll see you again, folks, some point in time.