True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 76: The Mask
Aired: 2020-06-18
Duration: 01:03:29


=== Mini Trains of North Korea (02:05) ===

[00:00:00]  Remember when they said Kim Jong-un was like dead a few weeks ago?
[00:00:05]  Yeah, and then like two days later, they're like, nope, swoops, I guess he's not dead.
[00:00:10]  They were basing it off.
[00:00:11]  So the way like news from Korea works is that like some insane South Korean tabloid, like fucking mad magazine shit, like not real, will just be like, oh yeah, Kim Jong-un fed 800 orphans to a single dog.
[00:00:29]  But the dog grew so strong from eating the children that he was able to operate a, well, to be fair, antiquated Soviet anti-aircraft gun, which he used to annihilate a squadron of women who had all refused to have sex with Kim Jong-un, who, by the way, is gay and has AIDS.
[00:00:49]  Which he tried to do on his private roller coaster, of which he's built thousands.
[00:00:53]  Yes, absolutely.
[00:00:54]  Yeah.
[00:00:55]  Well, that's a lot of people don't understand.
[00:00:57]  I read this in the South Korean press, is that is people are like, oh, North Korea, like, they don't have cars.
[00:01:02]  They only have trains.
[00:01:03]  They're not exactly trains.
[00:01:05]  It's actually, they're like mini, like, it's all cabooses, first of all, but it's like those little like trains you go around on the theme parks.
[00:01:14]  And so, you know, you could still fit 30 or 40 people on those bad boys, but you got to have a lot of guys hanging off the sides.
[00:01:22]  And in fact, it's grown so, it's so common there that basically the whole country is crisscrossed by train tracks.
[00:01:28]  There's drive-by shootings on these mini trains.
[00:01:30]  There's train jackings.
[00:01:32]  It's, it's, it's, I'll tell you what, it's like the Wild West.
[00:01:36]  But North.
[00:01:38]  That was their failed solution to the trolley problem.
[00:01:48]  All cabooses.

=== Gadfly And Moose (05:11) ===

[00:02:05]  Uh-huh.
[00:02:06]  I love a good caboose.
[00:02:08]  That word is so funny.
[00:02:09]  Caboose.
[00:02:10]  There's some words that are just, I love to say caboose.
[00:02:16]  Moose.
[00:02:17]  Gadfly.
[00:02:18]  Gadfly?
[00:02:19]  Oh, gadfly is a classic.
[00:02:21]  Yeah.
[00:02:22]  I like saying sausage a lot.
[00:02:25]  I think that's a good word.
[00:02:26]  What about saucy song?
[00:02:28]  Okay, I've never said that, nor am I going to.
[00:02:30]  So it's sort of a moot point there.
[00:02:33]  Saucy.
[00:02:34]  Moose point.
[00:02:35]  Moose point.
[00:02:36]  There we go.
[00:02:37]  Moose point.
[00:02:38]  We should change it to be moose point.
[00:02:40]  Moose point.
[00:02:40]  This is.
[00:02:41]  Because it's stupid because it's a point that a moose makes.
[00:02:45]  This is famous girl humor I keep hearing about.
[00:02:52]  So what's in the tarot cards?
[00:02:54]  Who are we talking to?
[00:02:56]  Of all, we're talking to our audience because welcome everyone to Truan.
[00:03:04]  You like that one been working on that.
[00:03:07]  Call him the Goblin.
[00:03:09]  I'm Liz uh, my name is Brace, aka the uh, Dark Cowboy, aka the Goblin, aka Mr Ogre.
[00:03:18]  Uh, we are joined, of course, by young Chomsky.
[00:03:22]  Uh, and that way yeah, and and and, as my, as my um assistant said earlier, we are Truan.
[00:03:32]  You like that?
[00:03:33]  I'm the general manager of the podcast.
[00:03:36]  Why are you being mean?
[00:03:37]  I'm sorry.
[00:03:39]  I actually am sorry.
[00:03:41]  I love you.
[00:03:45]  Let's get this show on the road.
[00:03:47]  What do you think?
[00:03:48]  We actually do have stuff to talk about.
[00:03:50]  This show has just devolved into, this is like college radio.
[00:03:55]  We're just going.
[00:03:55]  Put your shirt down.
[00:03:56]  I have my shirt up.
[00:03:58]  Yeah, I'm feeling good now.
[00:03:59]  I was feeling, I was, my, my spit was thick earlier.
[00:04:02]  Dear listeners, Brace on our video chat just lifted up his Bush did 9-11 t-shirt to reveal his chest.
[00:04:12]  That's a chest.
[00:04:13]  Now he's fake pump and iron.
[00:04:15]  So we are ready to go.
[00:04:17]  You can't see what's in my hands.
[00:04:19]  I could have real iron.
[00:04:20]  I don't, but I could.
[00:04:21]  And I'd like a little faith.
[00:04:23]  We are ready.
[00:04:23]  So Liz and I have been deep in the lab splitting the atom, fucking looking through microscopes.
[00:04:30]  Liz wearing a white lab coat.
[00:04:32]  I am wearing full-on, like, you remember when those videos came out of China with like the cops wearing the full-on like hazmat gear with like submachine guns they were carrying because they didn't have holsters for them?
[00:04:43]  I'm doing that.
[00:04:45]  Young Chomsky is nude because I told him we were going to spray him down for chemicals, but lied.
[00:04:52]  And we're talking, what are we talking?
[00:04:53]  We're talking a lot of things today.
[00:04:56]  We are.
[00:04:57]  We are.
[00:04:58]  I mean, I don't know if people have heard, but COVID is back in the news.
[00:05:04]  COVID ain't going away, baby.
[00:05:06]  Uh-uh.
[00:05:07]  No, Corona, I don't have a joke there, but it's back.
[00:05:12]  Turns out it never went away.
[00:05:14]  Yeah, it is funny.
[00:05:16]  It disappeared for a second, but now that the protests have dying down, people remember that it exists.
[00:05:21]  And from what I gather, it's coming back.
[00:05:25]  Corona's coming back.
[00:05:27]  Cases are increasing, like in Texas.
[00:05:30]  I know in California, not San Francisco, but other parts of California.
[00:05:35]  It's on the rise.
[00:05:37]  Yeah, we're seeing a substantial, substantial increase in cases and death rates in Texas and Florida.
[00:05:45]  And a lot of people are attributing that to the kind of, I guess, the lifting of the lockdowns, what they call reopening that happened over Memorial Day weekend in those states to the point where now bars and restaurants in Florida that just literally a week ago quote unquote reopened are now closing again because of how intense the rates of infection are.
[00:06:13]  It's funny.
[00:06:13]  Actually, in San Francisco, there's like a sort of soft opening.
[00:06:16]  I think they're calling it phase two, which trademark bitch, fuck off.
[00:06:23]  It's like, I don't know if they're, I don't know if we're at phase two yet.
[00:06:26]  I know phase two is like a, it's like a, it's like a slight reopening.
[00:06:29]  In San Francisco, they're doing this thing where bars are open, but only like five people can be inside.
[00:06:36]  Literally something like, I think it's, I can't remember the exact number, but I think it's under 10, possibly, maybe 12 at the highest, people can be inside any given bar, but they can still serve people outside.
[00:06:47]  And so now the sidewalks are just filled with people drinking without wearing masks, which is like.
[00:06:55]  It's just their way to like manufacture exclusivity.
[00:06:58]  They're all trying to make every new spot the hotspot.
[00:07:00]  Everything's a club.
[00:07:02]  It is like, it is sort of astounding because many of the people drinking outside Sun's mask are the kind of people who were big, what do you call it?
[00:07:12]  The S-word scolders until very recently.

=== Pandemic Narrative Schizophrenia (14:44) ===

[00:07:16]  But I think that like, I mean, we'll talk about this more later, but obviously something changed very recently and people are loosening up.
[00:07:26]  People are lifting their own restrictions.
[00:07:28]  Yeah, the whole thing has been really disorienting for me.
[00:07:33]  And I don't know, I don't think I'm in the minority here.
[00:07:38]  You know, if you kind of, you know, we kind of talked about this last week more generally, but if you look at the response from the government, but also like the media narrative since, let's say, late January on the pandemic, they have basically been all over the place.
[00:07:59]  I think we can call it schizophrenic.
[00:08:02]  Yeah.
[00:08:03]  And it's been, you know, completely contradictory information, completely contradictory stances, just like jumping from pole to pole of reaction of this is bad, this is good, this is what this is, this is what this is not, to the point of everything, like, I don't know what's what and what is what.
[00:08:27]  Yeah.
[00:08:27]  I mean, it's like, I make, it's crazy making.
[00:08:31]  I mean, it's, it's, it's, I, you know, I, I obviously, you know, due to the fucking podcast, but just also in general, like pay a lot of attention to the news, the fake news media, the lying news media.
[00:08:43]  And like, and also politicians who I uniformly dislike.
[00:08:48]  But, you know, a lot of people don't pay that close attention.
[00:08:53]  And to the people who don't, and I think that's most people, which all full respect, that's wonderful.
[00:09:02]  The information that they're getting has been so sort of topsy.
[00:09:06]  What's this word?
[00:09:06]  I like to say this, herky jerky.
[00:09:10]  The information has been so herky jerky and so all over the place that I think a lot of people, I mean, certainly I don't know what to think half the time.
[00:09:18]  Well, that's not true.
[00:09:19]  I always know what to think, but I feel like I don't know what to think half the time.
[00:09:23]  And, you know, you start to think like, oh, am I just fucking stupid and I don't get what's going on?
[00:09:30]  But then you sort of look at it and you spell it out for yourself and you realize, no, I am being fed narratives that are oftentimes completely contradictory and make next to zero sense with absolutely no like reflection or acknowledgement of that or anything like that.
[00:09:50]  And that creates like a subconscious, we'll get to this more later, but that creates sort of like a subconscious, I don't know what to call it, but like effect on you, certainly on me, that erodes a certain level of trust.
[00:10:05]  But again, we'll get to that later.
[00:10:08]  Yeah, I mean, I think it was really interesting.
[00:10:11]  You or Mehmet.
[00:10:13]  Mehmet.
[00:10:14]  Mehmet, my friend, the guy I pay, but he's also a friend, Mehmet.
[00:10:18]  He bruises hard on social media.
[00:10:20]  Yeah, he posted something on Twitter on the Truanon account.
[00:10:25]  I don't know when it was, last week, maybe?
[00:10:27]  A couple weeks ago?
[00:10:29]  Basically saying what we're saying here, which is, you know, wait a second, the government told me or the media told me that we're in a pandemic and everyone needs to stay inside and now everyone needs to go outside.
[00:10:41]  It's completely contradictory.
[00:10:43]  And boy, oh boy, were people in the Twitter mentions not happy with Truanon at Truanon pod for those tweets?
[00:10:53]  Yeah, people got angry about that.
[00:10:55]  And I noticed that people got really defensive.
[00:10:58]  And, you know, people were like, well, what?
[00:11:00]  You don't believe coronavirus is real or you don't, you know, you don't think people should go protest.
[00:11:04]  And no, that's not what I'm saying.
[00:11:07]  Like, you know, I hope we'll lay it out fairly clearly here today, but what I'm saying is that the totally contradictory barrage of information that people are assaulted with by the just low-life scumbags in the media and in the political world has an effect.
[00:11:26]  And to say it doesn't have an effect is denying reality, basically.
[00:11:32]  Yeah, I mean, I think that actually in the very controversial recent Substack piece by Matt Taiubi, He actually put this really well.
[00:11:45]  And actually, this is, I think, probably the least controversial part of the entire piece he wrote.
[00:11:50]  But he wrote, The media in the last four years has devolved into a succession of moral manias.
[00:11:55]  We are told the most important thing ever is happening days or weeks at a time until subjects are abruptly dropped and forgotten.
[00:12:01]  But the tone of warlike emergency remains.
[00:12:04]  From James Comey's firing to the deification of Robert Mueller to the Brett Kavanaugh nomination to the democracy imperiling threat to intelligence quote whistleblowers, all those interminable months of Ukraine gate hearings while COVID-19 advanced to fury at the death wish of lockdown violators to the sudden reversal on that same issue, etc.
[00:12:27]  It's been learned in these episodes we may freely misreport reality so long as the political goal is righteous.
[00:12:35]  And I think that like we can add the way that the pandemic has been reported to that list.
[00:12:42]  Absolutely.
[00:12:42]  Right.
[00:12:43]  You know, one of the clearest examples of this with the pandemic is the way a lot of the guidelines were rolled out from the very beginning, right?
[00:12:53]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:12:55]  Specifically, like these, the issue of the masks.
[00:12:59]  Everyone loves talking about the masks.
[00:13:02]  Should you wear a mask?
[00:13:03]  I don't wear a mask.
[00:13:04]  Wearing a mask is for pussies.
[00:13:05]  Look, I have a mask.
[00:13:07]  I will admit, you know, I, Brace Belden, have sold a Supreme branded face mask for $8,000 to a guy in Koreatown in Los Angeles.
[00:13:16]  I admit, I have profited off of this, but I made that mask because I work for Supreme, so it's okay.
[00:13:21]  So what we have is like, you know, we're talking about the issue of this wearing a mask help prevent the spread of coronavirus.
[00:13:33]  And something I noticed really early on is that the media was, let's say, rather unclear about this.
[00:13:43]  And when it comes to the mask, that's really only going to be to prevent you from spreading the disease, not necessarily from preventing you from catching it, if that made any sense.
[00:13:51]  That's interesting.
[00:13:52]  So people were wearing masks thinking that it's going to protect them from getting it.
[00:13:56]  It won't.
[00:13:57]  Why?
[00:13:57]  Because if there's droplets in the air or droplets that land on them, it could go in their eyes.
[00:14:03]  Well, not only could it go in their eyes, but the droplets themselves that contain the virus could be a lot smaller than what the masks are going to protect against.
[00:14:12]  And on top of that, if you're wearing a mask, but you're not practicing any other precautions like washing your hands, you're putting yourself at risk.
[00:14:18]  So again, the masks are really only for people who are already sick to prevent them from spreading the droplets.
[00:14:25]  So that right there was from March 2nd.
[00:14:27]  A black t-shirt clad Anderson Cooper, who, by the way, is, well, let's just say there could definitely be an episode on that guy's family at one point at some point on this show.
[00:14:41]  Is asking a doctor about wearing masks, and the doctor basically hedges and says, Well, wearing a mask won't really protect you because the droplets might be so small that they could get through the masks.
[00:14:54]  Plus, if you aren't taking any other precautions like washing your hands, it won't help.
[00:15:00]  And he says essentially that unless you're sick, you shouldn't wear a mask.
[00:15:06]  Now, there's something I find a little odd about that because, Liz, isn't this a disease or excuse me, a virus known for people being asymptomatic and having it?
[00:15:16]  Yeah, I mean, it's very, a very odd, um, I mean, just very odd advice.
[00:15:24]  I think now it's what's so weird probably hearing this back, at least this is how I'm feeling.
[00:15:30]  So, perhaps our listeners are feeling the same way, is like it's like, no shit, a mask is effective.
[00:15:36]  Like, it's almost like accepted common knowledge now.
[00:15:39]  And I think, you know, three months ago, it also should have been.
[00:15:42]  Like, you put the mask on, so it puts a barrier there, just one more barrier, regardless of if it's imperfect, correct?
[00:15:51]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:15:52]  And one big thing that happened is that the surgeon general of the United States went on Fox News and told people that masks aren't effective here.
[00:16:04]  Wait, this was the same day, right?
[00:16:06]  Yes, absolutely.
[00:16:08]  Doctor, you're saying stop using masks because unless you've got the coronavirus, you shouldn't be wearing it, right?
[00:16:16]  Absolutely.
[00:16:17]  I just want to start off by saying my heart goes out to the families of the individuals who died of coronavirus this weekend.
[00:16:24]  We're certainly seeing more spread in communities, but it's important for folks to know that right now, their risk as American citizens remains low.
[00:16:31]  There are things that people can do to stay safe.
[00:16:34]  There are things they shouldn't be doing.
[00:16:35]  And one of the things they shouldn't be doing, the general public, is going out and buying masks.
[00:16:40]  It actually does not help.
[00:16:41]  It's not been proven to be effective in preventing the spread of coronavirus amongst the general public.
[00:16:46]  And actually, people who tend to buy masks and don't know how to wear them properly.
[00:16:50]  As a healthcare provider, I have to get fit tested.
[00:16:53]  Folks who don't know how to wear them properly tend to touch their faces a lot and actually can increase the spread of coronavirus.
[00:16:59]  You can increase your risk of getting it by wearing a mask if you are not a healthcare provider.
[00:17:04]  So we hear something, we hear that, we hear this guy and, by the way, is this guy even a general?
[00:17:10]  I wasn't aware.
[00:17:11]  I'm sorry, you know I'm not a big stolen valor guy, though I am a veteran is this?
[00:17:16]  I wasn't aware that the surgeons was its own branch of the military.
[00:17:20]  But whatever he's saying, something that that we hear repeated in article after article after article, and and news story after news story, that wearing a masks can actually in increase the spread of coronavirus due to people either.
[00:17:37]  One thing they say a lot is, a having a false sense of safety and b not knowing how to wear the mask properly.
[00:17:43]  Liz, have you worn one of these masks before?
[00:17:47]  Yeah, like before before Corona?
[00:17:52]  Yeah yeah, we wore them during the like fires.
[00:17:57]  I mean, you just put it on.
[00:17:59]  Yeah, you don't have to fiddle with it.
[00:18:01]  I don't.
[00:18:02]  I don't think it's that difficult it's.
[00:18:03]  It's pretty straightforward.
[00:18:05]  I think most listeners probably know what we're talking about.
[00:18:07]  You just you got the little metal thing.
[00:18:08]  You make it go across your nose like a blackhead strip and then you make sure that your giant beard that you grew due to listening to podcasts is is is tucked within it.
[00:18:19]  Um, and and and that.
[00:18:21]  That.
[00:18:21]  That's something that really bothered me is when they said it increased the spread of coronavirus, because they also said constantly, this was it.
[00:18:30]  This was a big refrain back then that there's no data showing that masks prevent the spread of coronavirus.
[00:18:38]  Now, if there's no data showing that, which citation fucking needed?
[00:18:43]  Um well, I guess that's what they're saying too.
[00:18:46]  There's also no data showing that they increase the spread of coronavirus.
[00:18:51]  So it's sort of like, but also it's such a that's such a weird thing, because also I want to say okay hey hey genius, smarty pants yes, how are you going to test for that?
[00:19:00]  Yeah yeah sorry, how are you going to test for that?
[00:19:03]  It's so stupid.
[00:19:05]  Just use common sense.
[00:19:06]  What happened to common sense?
[00:19:08]  But no, we can't do that because everything has to be politicized, and that's exactly what's happening here with the masks.
[00:19:15]  Yeah, absolutely so.
[00:19:16]  This is from the Washington POST, january 24th, so this is pretty fucking early.
[00:19:20]  I think this is after we reported on the damn uh Wuhan Ultravirus.
[00:19:25]  Uh, it's called Coronavirus uh, that it's titled Coronavirus spurs are run on face masks, but do they work?
[00:19:33]  For now, public officials say there's no need to wear face masks in the United States, but they do recommend them in China, especially for people who think they may be sick.
[00:19:42]  So why would you just like, okay, you don't have to wear them in the U.S., but you do have to wear them in China?
[00:19:49]  Because that doesn't make a ton of sense.
[00:19:52]  I mean, not all of China was affected by coronavirus that bad at that point.
[00:19:57]  And if it's spreading to the U.S., you'd think that you would also have to wear it here, right?
[00:20:02]  Well, what's even stranger about that is just two days later, this is from the Hill.
[00:20:10]  Government health agency official.
[00:20:13]  Wonder who they could be talking about there.
[00:20:15]  Coronavirus, quote, isn't something the American public need to worry about.
[00:20:19]  Anthony Fauci, we're going to talk a little bit more about me.
[00:20:26]  Said, Sunday, the American public shouldn't worry about the coronavirus outbreak in China.
[00:20:30]  It's a very, very low risk to the United States.
[00:20:34]  It's fucking stupid because it's like, it's, it's, you know, even back then, like a lot of people were wondering, well, like, okay, this is obviously going to spread from China.
[00:20:45]  Why aren't we really taking any measures to prevent it?
[00:20:48]  And the government said they were, but they really weren't.
[00:20:51]  I mean, they didn't even start stockpiling equipment until like several weeks later.
[00:20:57]  And at the same time, and this is what really gets me, at the same time, there were all these fucking articles appearing.
[00:21:03]  I took one down, but I don't even need to, I'll read it, I'll read it.
[00:21:06]  I'll read from a part of it, but this drove me insane, is that all these newspapers, including, once again, our friends at the Washington Post, owned by Jeff fucking Bezos, were calling, and if you look up the words China, draconian lockdown, you will get a lot of hits like I did.
[00:21:24]  But the article, this is from January 26th, China's coronavirus lockdown, brought to you by authoritarianism.
[00:21:31]  But as Chinese officials scrambled to control the spread of the virus, they also moved ahead with a controversial travel ban, effectively locking down tens of millions of people to try to contain the outbreak.
[00:21:41]  The move came at the peak of a busy season in China when hundreds of millions of people typically travel for annual spring festival celebrations.
[00:21:49]  Only the Chinese government could implement draconian measures to such a large scale, said Yan Zung Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.

=== China's Coronavirus Lockdown (15:24) ===

[00:22:01]  Yeah, typical.
[00:22:03]  By the way, that's, of course, an Epstein-linked pedophile organization, allegedly.
[00:22:09]  Wait, I like the second part of his quote.
[00:22:11]  It might be an example of resilience of the authoritarian state, especially in a crisis setting, but there is no strong evidence that the approach will be effective.
[00:22:22]  Now, what's so maddening about this is that not neri, a month later, I don't know, month and a half, we've got op-eds screaming, why didn't Trump, like screaming, praising the Chinese government for their response.
[00:22:40]  Yep.
[00:22:40]  And, you know, crying out that the United States isn't responding in similar fashion.
[00:22:48]  That's what drove me so crazy.
[00:22:49]  And one thing was happening in China too is public health officials were getting up and saying in press conferences that a big reason that the virus didn't spread that much in, for instance, Hong Kong is because of A, lockdown measures and B, wearing masks.
[00:23:05]  That's what they said explicitly, wearing masks.
[00:23:07]  And the mask thing to me is so crazy because at this point, you know, we're getting into February here.
[00:23:13]  It's like, okay, this is spreading.
[00:23:15]  This is a corona.
[00:23:18]  This is a coronavirus, right?
[00:23:20]  Like this is a respiratory virus.
[00:23:22]  That means this is a virus that you slurp down like a damn mountain dew, right?
[00:23:27]  Like you get it from it coming in your mouth.
[00:23:30]  Pause.
[00:23:32]  And it's and and so like, you know, I was sitting there in my abode thinking like reading all these fucking news articles about a fucking virus that spread through through people spitting in your face or whatever, talking, coughing, whatever.
[00:23:54]  And I'm being told by these fucking quacks and their lackeys in the media that for some reason, the thing that covers my mouth will not only not prevent me from getting it, which, okay, I don't know if it'll prevent me from getting it, but it won't even help me not get it, that it actually will increase my chances of getting it.
[00:24:15]  That is fucking insane.
[00:24:17]  This thing is trans, I had to look this shit up so you all have to fucking listen to it.
[00:24:21]  This shit is transmitted through respiratory droplets.
[00:24:25]  That happens when obviously you can fucking understand what that means.
[00:24:28]  That means when your mouth makes a little bit of liquid and you know, when you talk or spit or do karaoke, for instance, you take out, you bust out with some fucking fluid.
[00:24:40]  That's why, by the way, we're supposed to be six feet away from each other because they're like, oh, fuck, gravity is going to take care of that mostly.
[00:24:48]  You know, I'm yelling, I love your caboose at a beautiful woman, a puck perhaps, and I'm spitting, you know, going crazy.
[00:24:58]  She's six feet, well, probably 30 or 40 feet away.
[00:25:01]  Those droplets drop because they're heavy.
[00:25:03]  And now they're saying, you know, there's some evidence that it's also spread through aerosols, which are smaller fucking particles that linger in the air like little bats in the night.
[00:25:16]  And, you know, that was, you know, a big thing.
[00:25:19]  They're like, oh, is it airborne?
[00:25:21]  You know, there was that choir.
[00:25:21]  In Seattle, they fucking all got it.
[00:25:25]  That is, it turns out not to be as big a risk.
[00:25:27]  But, anyways, a fucking mask would help you not get that shit in your goddamn fucking mouth.
[00:25:35]  Yeah, I mean, so in we've got, I mean, there's so much, there's so many more articles we could pull up that go back and forth.
[00:25:41]  I mean, Vox was one of the most like egregious publications, you know, like Splainer, why you don't need a mask, Splaner, why coronavirus isn't a real thing, and also why you should support, you know, Yimbyism.
[00:25:55]  They always gotta tie that into every article they write.
[00:25:59]  We need to build more housing for pedophiles.
[00:26:04]  But like, again, the Surgeon General, February 29th, tweets, seriously, people stop buying masks.
[00:26:12]  They are not capital, capital is all capitals, lots of capitals, effective in preventing the general public from catching hashtag coronavirus.
[00:26:21]  Always hashtag.
[00:26:22]  He's right.
[00:26:23]  But if healthcare providers can't get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk.
[00:26:29]  Exclamation point plus a bit.ly link.
[00:26:33]  Oh, by the way, that bit.ly fucking link that he links now says that you have to wear a mask.
[00:26:41]  And here's the thing: is that like, you know, people are not as dumb as the Lion News media thinks they are.
[00:26:51]  Agreed.
[00:26:51]  And they kind of caught on pretty quickly, huh?
[00:26:54]  Maybe we should buy up some masks.
[00:26:56]  So there was actually a run on masks.
[00:26:59]  Yeah.
[00:27:00]  But what the media and, you know, the Surgeon General and everyone using this, like basically trying to scare people to not buy masks was basically just to cover up for the fact that there was a, that we didn't have enough masks to go around for everyone right yeah, and like, let me be clear with people, this was a deliberate lie that they basically admitted by their actions.
[00:27:24]  I mean, anybody who thinks about this for more than two seconds will kind of understand.
[00:27:29]  Okay, you don't need a mask.
[00:27:31]  However, healthcare workers desperately need them.
[00:27:34]  Why do healthcare workers desperately need them which, by the way, they did, i'm not denying that but they desperately needed them because masks help prevent the spread of coronavirus.
[00:27:44]  And so what you have here is are all these institutions you have the CDC, you have the surgeon general, who I love because you know he's anti-smoking psych fuck you uh, FDA all these motherfuckers saying, even the who who, by the way, we'll get to them in a little bit all of these, all these institutions and people are saying in in in, Mr Fauci, that you don't need a mask, and they are deliberately lying.
[00:28:13]  Now they're lying for for a, you know, noble purpose.
[00:28:18]  I guess it's so that that healthcare workers can get masks or so that the government can hoard them and not send them out to healthcare workers.
[00:28:25]  But uh, people kind of caught on to this right, even if they don't consciously.
[00:28:30]  I feel like people sort of understood this intuitively, because you're constantly seeing these images uh, particularly from Asia uh, or particularly from East Asia, of everybody wearing a mask.
[00:28:43]  Right, and the media just said in a lot of cases that oh uh, people in Asia wear masks because they're superstitious, like also playing on racist tropes obviously, of course yeah yeah, it's like, and it's like oh, they're stupid.
[00:29:02]  They actually don't know how coronavirus spreads, the the guy, the guy who does hashtag coronavirus uh, actually does.
[00:29:10]  Meanwhile, at the same time, our dog shit government is stealing masks from other countries, literally on the runway, on the runway, and there are news stories about it.
[00:29:21]  So we're like okay, the government is desperate for this item, but they're saying that you absolutely don't need it and in fact, it is harmful.
[00:29:29]  What does that do to the psyche?
[00:29:30]  And this is the thing that really pisses me off, because all of this is covering up essentially what is a political economy issue, which is the fact that we didn't have the capacity to manufacture masks.
[00:29:47]  We didn't have the ability to organize a government response or the government, like the people in the government, to organize a response to produce these masks at the mass scale needed to get.
[00:30:01]  them to the public, to prevent, by the way, tens of thousands of deaths, because that's what has happened.
[00:30:08]  The idea that I mean look like how many of the 115 000 people who have died, how many of those deaths could have been prevented by our government having an actual, coordinated response to this.
[00:30:24]  And instead, instead of people asking that, instead we are thrown into these insane media cycles of masks are bad.
[00:30:34]  Here's a narrative, oh Trump says masks are good.
[00:30:37]  Oop, Trump is bad, masks are bad.
[00:30:39]  Oh Trump says he doesn't wear a mask.
[00:30:41]  Masks are good.
[00:30:42]  And it's just this constant schizophrenic, you know like uh, back and forth, back and forth, like you say Herky Jerky, of highly polarized takes of people just trying to own each other, which all, all it does is completely cover up the fact that this is a scale of like or this is a failure on a national scale,
[00:31:10]  that I mean it's revealing a total hollowing out of our like government's capability to run a fucking economy.
[00:31:17]  Well, you said, you said that you know.
[00:31:19]  You asked how many of those deaths could have been prevented.
[00:31:22]  And I can tell you one.
[00:31:24]  There's a bus driver in Detroit who made a a, a video that got, that got, you know, blew up a little bit where he was pissed and he was like there's people coming on my fucking bus that aren't wearing fucking masks right, and there are people coughing everywhere and sneezing and he is not being provided equipment by uh, by the Transit Agency.
[00:31:44]  Nobody is wearing, or nobody's wearing, a mask.
[00:31:46]  You know, nobody has these things because well, first of all, people were told not to wear them.
[00:31:51]  Second of all, there aren't any um.
[00:31:54]  And guess what, few days after he makes that video, he gets sick.
[00:31:58]  Two weeks later he died younger guy I think, his 40s, maybe 50s younger on the scale of covid deaths.
[00:32:05]  At that same time, at that same time, the U.s government was still telling people this is in april was still telling people that they didn't have to wear masks.
[00:32:15]  In fact, the WHO was still telling people that they tweeted, uh, this is from who organization, Western Pacific uh, which you know, they'll give a blue check mark to anybody.
[00:32:26]  These days, if you do not have any respiratory symptoms such as fever, cough or runny nose, you do not need to wear a medical, Medical mask.
[00:32:34]  When used alone, masks can give you a false feeling of protection and can even be a source of infection when not used correctly.
[00:32:44]  What the fuck does that mean?
[00:32:48]  It's okay.
[00:32:49]  Maybe two out of 10 people don't wear the mask correctly.
[00:32:53]  Eight out of those 10 are wearing the mask correctly.
[00:32:55]  You know, I do see people with their mask around their nose, but I also see a lot of people wearing their masks correctly.
[00:33:01]  And it's, it's insane.
[00:33:03]  It's like, oh, well, the entire population of the entire fucking world are stupid morons.
[00:33:08]  And so they don't, they couldn't figure out how to wear it.
[00:33:11]  It's a mask.
[00:33:14]  If you can tie your shoes, you can do this.
[00:33:16]  Just put out a PSA.
[00:33:18]  No, I mean, it's totally ridiculous.
[00:33:20]  Finally, on April 3rd, Dr. Fauci, that wretched little gnome, says, oh, yeah, you should wear masks.
[00:33:29]  Oh, yeah, that's, yeah, if you, if you, you know, wear them if you got them.
[00:33:34]  And then the next day, April 4th, finally recommends that people should, well, to be honest, they don't even really fully recommend it.
[00:33:44]  They say, we must preserve medical surgical respirator masks for our frontline workers.
[00:33:49]  But the idea of using respiratory coverings or mouth coverings to prevent coughing or sneezing, projecting disease into the environment towards others, that in itself is not a bad idea.
[00:33:59]  Dr. Mike Ryan, the WHO's top emergencies expert, told a news conference.
[00:34:06]  As far as I can tell, the WHO on June 5th finally actually firmly recommended that everybody wear a mask or a cloth covering or whatever when they go out.
[00:34:20]  That seems like a couple weeks ago.
[00:34:22]  11 days ago.
[00:34:24]  Yeah.
[00:34:25]  So, you know, the you said Fauci finally started recommending masks around April 3rd.
[00:34:34]  Now, in early April is when we started to see a lot of the anti-lockdown protests.
[00:34:40]  Yes.
[00:34:41]  And thus, a new media narrative, a new cycle was born, right?
[00:34:46]  Yes.
[00:34:47]  Yes.
[00:34:48]  And we had what was basically, again, and what we had was this entire narrative about, and we had an episode on those protests, which, you know, I'm pretty heavily astroturfed, by the way.
[00:35:02]  Where now everyone had a common enemy.
[00:35:06]  Oh, the people that don't want to be inside, these are our enemy.
[00:35:09]  And how could they not be wearing the masks?
[00:35:12]  This is the worst thing I've ever seen.
[00:35:13]  Get inside.
[00:35:14]  We need authoritarian Chinese government.
[00:35:16]  Trump is bad.
[00:35:18]  Everyone is crazy, right?
[00:35:19]  So this is like a whole other schizophrenic polarized media cycle.
[00:35:25]  Yeah, This was really wild to see because a lot of these outlets had been saying, had said originally for like a month or two months in some cases that there was nothing to worry about.
[00:35:37]  And until pretty recently, we're repeating unquittably the Trump fucking regime's calls to not wear a mask.
[00:35:48]  And it's like, like in a lot of these articles that I read and reread very recently for this episode about like how the government says you don't have to wear masks, whatever.
[00:35:59]  WHO says this, they aren't like accompanied by the news, by the article like editorializing, or I don't even know if this is editorializing, fact-checking them and saying, actually, you do have to wear a mask.
[00:36:11]  Because I think that there's like, I don't know what it is, but it's like people think they can't go against the CDC, the fucking Surgeon General, fucking Fauci.
[00:36:20]  It's like, yes, you can, because they're obviously wrong.
[00:36:24]  And it's like, you saw even in the response to the lockdown people, but also in the response to Trump when Trump wasn't wearing a mask, which Trump's, Trump's similarities to Bolsonaro have become very clear since this pandemic started.
[00:36:39]  Both of them, I would say Trump is slightly less cavalier and sort of funnier about it.
[00:36:46]  Although also totally bungling it.
[00:36:51]  You know, like Trump's not wearing a mask, but it's like, well, a lot of people weren't wearing a mask for a pretty long time because you told them not to.
[00:36:59]  Yeah.
[00:37:00]  You know?
[00:37:01]  But it also, again, like all these insane news cycles do to serve all it does is paper over the fact that, you know, our government, not, you know, Republicans, not Democrats, like the fucking government, the entire state did not have the capacity to manage a fucking public health crisis and it didn't want to.

=== Fits Starts Like Boogaloo (15:34) ===

[00:37:26]  I think the thing that also gets me, because I mentioned the way the media, like, you know, it jumps from one story to the next.
[00:37:34]  Like how Taiyube put it so brilliantly in his piece, that it's this sort of like mania, but always done with the same fervor.
[00:37:42]  So it's like, you know, then it jumps to these anti-lockdown protests, right?
[00:37:46]  And we have this insane and, you know, and it's again, highly polarized.
[00:37:50]  It's the people who stay inside versus the people who don't want to stay inside.
[00:37:53]  And it's, you know, you mentioned the scolding and the masks and, you know, vice versa.
[00:37:58]  And that becomes the story.
[00:38:00]  Again, this is a total distraction from the fact that the state has made a decision to literally not manage a public health crisis at any level.
[00:38:10]  Yep.
[00:38:10]  And just into the wind.
[00:38:12]  And that there are very, very real supply chain issues and economic problems that prevent the government from providing any kind of services, including masks to any of its people, right?
[00:38:30]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:38:31]  Like, like, I think people gotta understand, like, this was a total abandonment of you and everybody you love by the government on almost every single level.
[00:38:42]  Yeah.
[00:38:44]  So then, you know, you get this, this whole new news cycle that's like everyone's, you know, freaking out.
[00:38:49]  And again, it's the same, that same mania, that same fervor.
[00:38:53]  And then boom, we've got a whole nother one.
[00:38:55]  And it's the complete opposite because now it's, you know, no one is critically reporting on the, I mean, look, I'm, again, like we said at the beginning, like, I'm not critical of people going outside and participating in the protests and everyone's wearing masks and okay.
[00:39:12]  But it shouldn't be, like, it shouldn't make, it shouldn't be wrong to point out the fact that this is the complete opposite attitude that the lamestream media was taking with response to other people wanting, you know, with other people gathering outside during a pandemic.
[00:39:30]  That's, that's what I think like really the point of what we're saying is, is that like, it's not about my opinion on the protests, which I participated in.
[00:39:39]  I support the same.
[00:39:41]  Like, it's, it's, it's, it's, or about my opinion on any of this shit.
[00:39:46]  It's the fact that these complete 180s, that's, I think, the right direction.
[00:39:51]  180s done by the media and the government will have an effect on people.
[00:39:57]  They are being barraged with completely contradictory information on an almost daily, sometimes hourly level.
[00:40:05]  And that, that breaks you down.
[00:40:08]  That fucks your psyche up.
[00:40:10]  And to like, to say, like, you know, people love to give excuses for this stuff.
[00:40:13]  They're like, well, they changed their opinion, blah, It's like, okay, they changed their opinion, but like, well, obviously they did.
[00:40:23]  But like, the fact that this just happens with no explanation that like, okay, well, you know, these people going outside in Memorial Day are, you know, selfish or whatever.
[00:40:32]  These people going out to protest are not selfish.
[00:40:35]  Okay, I get that.
[00:40:36]  But like, it's, it's to the average person watching this, they're like, well, okay, you know, people can go out and protest whatever.
[00:40:44]  And these politicians will support them, blah, blah, blah.
[00:40:47]  But like, I can't go to work.
[00:40:49]  And like, that has a fucking effect on people.
[00:40:51]  I'm not being like a guy by pointing that out.
[00:40:56]  And like, you know, multiply this by a million by every event that happens in our society.
[00:41:02]  And you get a population that is confused, that is angry, and that is, that is, as totally unable to trust anything that comes out of anybody's mouth.
[00:41:11]  And so they believe whatever.
[00:41:13]  I mean, there's a reason your fucking grandma believes what she sees on fucking Facebook.
[00:41:17]  Yeah, or why so many of your friends believe Russia gate nonsense.
[00:41:22]  Yes, exactly.
[00:41:23]  Exactly, exactly, exactly.
[00:41:25]  And I think that's what you said.
[00:41:27]  And I think that what you said was about, you know, oh, people changed their minds.
[00:41:31]  It's like, okay, people change their minds.
[00:41:33]  But then how come no one's asking why?
[00:41:35]  Yeah.
[00:41:36]  Okay, you change your mind.
[00:41:38]  Why?
[00:41:38]  Yeah.
[00:41:40]  There's no follow-up.
[00:41:41]  It's just, it's like we, you know, I hate to say, you know, we all eat from the trash can of ideology, right?
[00:41:47]  We're all in this fucking mess.
[00:41:49]  But like at a certain point, you have to step back and say, you know, wait a second, stop going along with these like, you know, with these, you know, mania highs and lows in the lamestream media and these like the new moral panics of every day.
[00:42:05]  Take a step back and say, okay, what the fuck is going on and try to regain a sense of reality?
[00:42:12]  That's, that's like what all this, that's the effect that all this has on us.
[00:42:16]  And again, like, I'm not just talking about this specific instance.
[00:42:19]  I'm talking about this like sort of writ large is that, is that it annihilates any sense of reality that people have and makes them basically like totally, it's, a, it is, it is itself a fucking virus.
[00:42:34]  Like it infects you and it makes you fucking, it makes you crazy.
[00:42:37]  Whether you realize it or not, it's doing it to me, you know?
[00:42:41]  And like I understand that the news media, all of the news media, not news media that like is liberal or conservative, all of it is my enemy.
[00:42:49]  It is my enemy.
[00:42:50]  It is, it is, it is bad and against me.
[00:42:55]  But a lot of people don't realize that.
[00:42:57]  Most people don't realize that.
[00:42:58]  And so like, you know, being, being, being again, like, just just hammered with this contradictory information or information that you know is false, right?
[00:43:09]  Like, like, like when they say that you don't have to wear a mask because, you know, it actually is, is bad for you to do it.
[00:43:15]  You know, that's not true.
[00:43:17]  Something in you knows that not true.
[00:43:18]  No, that's not true.
[00:43:19]  And then to have the CDC and these supposedly neutral organizations tell you a lie is going to have an effect on you.
[00:43:29]  Absolutely.
[00:43:30]  And I want to like pull back for a second because this isn't just about like the masks.
[00:43:35]  Like, you know, and that's why we like started off with that quote from Taiyube because this is, again, just one example of, you know, the like ecosystem of the state and, you know,
[00:43:50]  the news media and like the way that it, you know, delivers this contradictory information, this, you know, how we move from one panic to the next and with complete like goldfish memory, right?
[00:44:08]  Don't they say that goldfish have like 30 second memory?
[00:44:11]  I mean, that's what it feels like sometimes.
[00:44:13]  They always remember your beautiful face.
[00:44:17]  You know, I'm in the middle of a thing.
[00:44:19]  Oh, sorry.
[00:44:22]  No, but it's like, you know, it's like we move on from one thing to the next to the next with no, like, with just a collective, like, it's like we all like silently agreed we're just going to forget what came before and move on with no one having any fucking accountability, right?
[00:44:41]  I mean, that's the key part.
[00:44:42]  It's like, how in the hell is Vox able to, with a straight face, say, yeah, well, we wrote like 10 explainers, spliners on why actually thinking coronavirus is real means you're racist, which by the way, was the first take that we didn't even talk about.
[00:45:04]  Holy shit.
[00:45:06]  Yeah.
[00:45:06]  Now it's funny because it became thinking coronavirus is fake means you're racist.
[00:45:12]  Yeah.
[00:45:12]  Of course.
[00:45:13]  None of this means anything, right?
[00:45:14]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:45:15]  This is the take.
[00:45:16]  This is the take economy.
[00:45:18]  It's just a take and then everyone goes, you know, this is part of what I'm talking about.
[00:45:22]  But it's like, you know, how the hell are these people able to still be a part or even taken, be taken seriously?
[00:45:31]  You know?
[00:45:31]  Well, I think a lot of that has to do with like, we basically have no choice, right?
[00:45:35]  Like, like, it's, it's, it's, the media is their world, right?
[00:45:39]  Like, we got our little podcast.
[00:45:41]  You know, there's a couple other podcasts or whatever, but it's like they, Vox, NBC, Fox, all that shit is their world.
[00:45:50]  And so, like, nothing, there can't really be accountability for them.
[00:45:55]  Maybe if they report on the CIA and cocaine, they'll eventually end up killing themselves.
[00:46:00]  But there just will never, there will never, ever, ever, ever be accountability.
[00:46:04]  And that's what fucking drives me crazy about all this shit that we talk about.
[00:46:08]  Because people, there are so many motherfuckers out there who do wrong after wrong and harm people and they never get punished.
[00:46:16]  But here's the thing that I might softly suggest is that like this is not just about the media as a like separate entity.
[00:46:26]  Yeah.
[00:46:26]  And it's very much more a like bigger phenomenon.
[00:46:33]  Or I don't even know exactly how to characterize it, but like, you know, it's not just the media that is fueling this or like it's like that it's like putting down on us from down high.
[00:46:46]  Like there is like, you know, we are all sort of creating these like hypermanic or I don't know if that's the right word, but like these like manias, like Taibbi says.
[00:46:57]  Again, whether it's, you know, all these news cycles, I mean, fuck, like before we started recording, Briece and I were just, you know, we were talking and we were like, dang, remember, like, Scaramucci?
[00:47:09]  Dang, remember Greta?
[00:47:12]  Mm-hmm.
[00:47:13]  Dang, remember the Covington kids?
[00:47:16]  Mm-hmm.
[00:47:17]  Like, remember these outrage sits?
[00:47:19]  It's like, this is all in a long lineage, right?
[00:47:23]  And these fits and starts and these panics that are fueled by people and then also into the media and the apparatus and the state and it becomes a whole thing.
[00:47:36]  You know, these are all, I guess what I'm trying to say is these are all features, not bugs.
[00:47:42]  Yeah.
[00:47:43]  This is very much an ecosystem and a, you know, that we're living in.
[00:47:48]  And I don't know what to do about it.
[00:47:50]  Well, to me, what gets me is just like, like you're saying, perfectly, these fits and starts.
[00:47:54]  It's like we are presented with an incredible problem.
[00:47:58]  The president was Russian.
[00:48:04]  Or, you know, the Russia gay shit.
[00:48:06]  I, I, you know, all that side.
[00:48:08]  I know you didn't follow it.
[00:48:09]  So I was just like too confused with too many names.
[00:48:13]  Are there girls involved?
[00:48:14]  I can't tell.
[00:48:15]  Did his son fuck someone?
[00:48:17]  I, again, no idea.
[00:48:18]  Ukraine gate was much easier because they had that little fat guy.
[00:48:22]  Well, the little buddy, the no neck.
[00:48:25]  Yeah, he was so funny.
[00:48:27]  Fantastic.
[00:48:29]  But like, you know, all the, I mean, fuck, for Christ's sake, they fucking impeached the president like four months ago.
[00:48:35]  Oh my God.
[00:48:36]  I totally forgot.
[00:48:37]  Do you remember that?
[00:48:39]  And that's the thing is like, it's like we are, and again, you're right.
[00:48:42]  Like the media is part of a larger ecosystem.
[00:48:44]  And the media is basically, I mean, it's an arm of the state, right?
[00:48:47]  So when we say media, we're talking essentially about part of the system, you know?
[00:48:52]  And I say system in all caps there.
[00:48:57]  You know, it's like we are presented with this incredible crisis, this problem.
[00:49:02]  And then nothing happens.
[00:49:06]  And then we move on to the next problem.
[00:49:08]  And it's like, it's this constant, like, I mean, again, we are, we are not the first people to talk about this.
[00:49:13]  This problem has been going on for a long time, but it's like, it's part, it's basically, as far as I can tell, you know, really accelerated with the era of 24-hour cable news.
[00:49:21]  And now with the internet, it's like you can't escape it.
[00:49:24]  And I don't think that, I don't, I mean, I, I can't even see a fucking fix for this, right?
[00:49:30]  Because it's like, it's, it's, it's like we are in enemy territory 100% of the time.
[00:49:38]  And we are, we, we are, we are unarmed.
[00:49:40]  We can't attack them.
[00:49:42]  And we are just like, it's, it's assaulted and assaulted and assaulted.
[00:49:46]  And it makes me fucking sick.
[00:49:47]  And I think it makes a lot of people sick.
[00:49:49]  And I think it contributes to a certain degree of psychotic nihilism that you see amongst a lot of people.
[00:49:56]  This boogaloo shit that's popping up.
[00:49:58]  I get it.
[00:49:59]  You know, like, I don't get it like I want to hang out with them or do it, but like, you know, it makes sense that it's happening.
[00:50:06]  It makes sense.
[00:50:08]  Well, that's it.
[00:50:09]  I think that's kind of what I was getting at because it's like, you know, again, these are all features or expressions of the world that we're all living in, which means that we are all subject to it, that we are not outside of it, right?
[00:50:23]  It's a condition that we are living in.
[00:50:25]  And therefore, you see its expression even on the left, I think.
[00:50:31]  You know, these kind of fits and starts and unable to figure out what to do and where to go and hopping from one thing to the next.
[00:50:39]  And I just want to like, you know, when I was reading that Taibbi piece, you know, I'm going to, I want to read that again because it just really, or just, you know, it really reminded me of an old essay that I, that I kind of want to talk about for a second.
[00:50:54]  But he says, again, Taibi says, the media in the last four years has devolved into a succession of moral manias.
[00:51:00]  We are told the most important thing ever is happening for days or weeks at a time until subjects are abruptly dropped and forgotten.
[00:51:07]  But the tone of warlike emergency remains.
[00:51:10]  Right?
[00:51:11]  And I, you know, I was reminded of this essay in Harper's from 2014, which I fucking, you know, I remember reading this in print.
[00:51:20]  Like I can physically, I can remember this, you know, in my memory of reading it in print.
[00:51:24]  And it's like, fuck, this was written in 2014.
[00:51:27]  And yet it still holds.
[00:51:29]  And, you know, this is Adolph Reed.
[00:51:31]  He says, the left, and I mean, this sounds exactly what Taibi is talking about.
[00:51:37]  No, Adolph Reed.
[00:51:39]  The left has no particular place it wants to go.
[00:51:42]  And to rehash an old quip, if you have no destination, any direction can seem as good as any other.
[00:51:48]  The left careens from this oppressed group or crisis moment to that one, from one magical and morally pristine constituency or source of political agency to another.
[00:51:59]  It lacks focus and stability.
[00:52:01]  Its métier is bearing witness, demonstrating solidarity and to the event or the gesture.
[00:52:07]  Its reflex is to quote, send messages to those in power to make statements or to stand with or for the oppressed.
[00:52:14]  This dilettante politics is partly the heritage of a generation of defeat and marginalization, of decades without any possibility of challenging power or influencing policy.
[00:52:26]  So the left operates with no learning curve and is therefore always vulnerable to the new enthusiasm.
[00:52:32]  It long ago lost the ability to move forward under its own steam.
[00:52:37]  Far from being avant-garde, the self-styled left in the United States seems content to draw its inspiration, hopefulness, and confidence from outside its own ranks and lives only on the outer fringes of American politics as congress of individuals in the interstices of more mainstream institutions.

=== Why The Left Lacks Vision (06:56) ===

[00:53:00]  So I think, look, I'm saying that, you know, I was really struck by the similarity here.
[00:53:06]  And I think to some degree, Taibbi and Reed are talking about, you know, that these phenomenons, you know, it's more that they're more than just related is what I'm saying.
[00:53:18]  That this is a like a much larger issue or larger phenomenon characteristic of the world that we're living in.
[00:53:34]  Well, yeah, I think it's notable that like both the media and like the quote-unquote left essentially follow the same trajectory of latching onto something, you know, doing something around it, you know, a great flurry of attention for a little bit and then moving on to the next thing.
[00:53:54]  And the fact that both of these things are doing it in parallel, one, which is essentially an arm of the state, the media, and two, the left, which is supposed to be, of course, against the state and trying to contest its power, are basically following the same trajectory is absolutely true.
[00:54:13]  And there's a word for that.
[00:54:14]  There's a very important word for that.
[00:54:16]  It's called opportunism.
[00:54:19]  Opportunism.
[00:54:20]  And for some people, for some people, that's not only not a bad word, that's the golden fucking rule, baby.
[00:54:27]  And I'll tell you what, if you do that, if you are an opportunist, you will fail.
[00:54:32]  Well, I don't think it's just opportunism.
[00:54:34]  I think that this is, to a large degree operating on the subconscious, right?
[00:54:42]  Yes.
[00:54:42]  Yeah.
[00:54:42]  And I think that what you see, I mean, I think, yeah, you know, I do think that there's incentives that, or there's a lot of incentives at play that, you know, people should work on trying to identify.
[00:54:56]  Like what incentivizes this kind of mania?
[00:55:00]  That's one of the big, that's one of the big whys to ask.
[00:55:04]  We talked about why no one's asking why the media is able to go from one story to the next with no accountability and no one asking, hey, wait a second, how come?
[00:55:15]  Or that you get yelled at if you even suggest, hey, wait a second, isn't it kind of weird how you said in March this, but then you said in April that?
[00:55:24]  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
[00:55:27]  These are all whys to start asking.
[00:55:29]  And, you know, taking a step back and having a little bit of humility, I think, would do some people some good, you know?
[00:55:41]  Yeah.
[00:55:41]  Although I'll be honest with you, certainly I don't think that many journalists can be helped.
[00:55:47]  I would like to help them, many of them, into wheelchairs or help them, how do I phrase this?
[00:55:54]  Help them get to the physical state where their mobility is impossible without the use of a wheelchair.
[00:56:00]  Does that make sense?
[00:56:02]  I would like to do that.
[00:56:03]  But like, yeah, agreed.
[00:56:07]  Agreed.
[00:56:07]  I think that one thing that people don't, they don't, I feel like they don't take seriously is to study history and apply the lessons.
[00:56:16]  Apply the lessons.
[00:56:17]  That is a very important part of being a fully realized human being and a man or a woman or whatever.
[00:56:27]  That's what you got to do.
[00:56:28]  And a lot of people don't do that because they're afraid.
[00:56:31]  They're afraid.
[00:56:32]  They're afraid to look in the mirror because they know they won't like what they see.
[00:56:55]  So one thing that I want a lot of people to remember is that it has not even been a year since Jeffrey Epstein was arrested.
[00:57:04]  Not even a year.
[00:57:06]  And so much, like, I will say, I will admit this, is that so much just absolutely batshit insane stuff has happened in the past year that it's no wonder that people are kind of losing their grip.
[00:57:22]  And one thing that I want to make clear is that like, it's not a foregone conclusion that you'll, that you will succumb to this sort of social insanity.
[00:57:31]  And I mean, if you're listening to this, you're on the right track, baby.
[00:57:36]  But like, it's, it's, it's, it's, I don't know.
[00:57:40]  I, I, I, I want to be clear that it's just been an insane fucking year.
[00:57:44]  And if that has driven you a little bit insane, it's time to, you know, put the brakes on that, take a deep breath, step back, collect yourself and re-emerge.
[00:57:55]  I think too, like, I want to just reiterate, like, the fact that so much happens all the time.
[00:58:02]  Yeah.
[00:58:03]  And yet nothing changes, those are two related.
[00:58:08]  There's a relationship there, right?
[00:58:11]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:58:12]  And I think it would, you know, I think it's important to, like you say, take a step back, like maybe take a step back and start thinking through why, what is that relationship?
[00:58:23]  How can so much happen?
[00:58:25]  And how can things be so insane all the time and yet nothing change?
[00:58:33]  Yeah.
[00:58:34]  And maybe that's another why that we should all be sitting with and thinking through as we kind of, you know, start to dive into some of these questions.
[00:58:43]  So I know this has been an all over the place episode.
[00:58:47]  You know, I believe, I would say we went off the rails, but there weren't very firm rails to begin with.
[00:58:53]  Well, no, there were, but, you know, it's a.
[00:58:55]  Well, we were also going to talk about another thing, but now we'll just talk about it on stream.
[00:58:59]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a good idea.
[00:59:02]  But like, it's, it's, it's like, don't let this shit, I guess, depress you or, or, or really, like, you know, push you down or whatever.
[00:59:11]  Self-reflection is not like a bad thing to do.
[00:59:13]  It's not a punishment.
[00:59:15]  And reflecting on like these, these, these strange relationships and your own subconscious and regular consciousness is, is also, it's not a punishment or anything.
[00:59:24]  You know, it's something that you have to do.
[00:59:27]  And if you do it, it makes you, it makes you stronger, more powerful, and more able to engage and fight and achieve some sort of, well, hopefully final victory.
[00:59:43]  I don't know.
[00:59:44]  I just, I sort of struggle to explain what I mean here, but, you know, I'm not trying to get nobody down in the dumps is what I'm saying.
[00:59:52]  I don't think, I mean, I'm never trying to do that.

=== Anti-Nihilistic Pro-Uncertainty (02:22) ===

[00:59:56]  I try to do that sometimes.
[00:59:58]  There's nothing nihilistic about ruthless critique.
[01:00:02]  It's actually a requirement.
[01:00:04]  That's what I'm trying to say is that we are anti-nihilistic, anti-nihilistic, pro-whatever the opposite of nihilism is.
[01:00:13]  And so I want that to people to take that from this.
[01:00:18]  I think they will.
[01:00:19]  Or people get mad at us.
[01:00:21]  Yeah, whichever.
[01:00:23]  People get mad at us all the time.
[01:00:25]  I know.
[01:00:25]  Listen, guys, I'm just a humble podcaster.
[01:00:28]  I hope you guys know that I podcast from an actual hole in the ground.
[01:00:33]  Every three days I dig a hole in Golden Gate Park, hop in it.
[01:00:37]  It's seven foot hole because I'm 6'5 and it's, you know, I gotta get, I sit in my chair, et cetera.
[01:00:43]  I put the microphone on the edge of the hole and I record.
[01:00:47]  You know, every episode we actually record seven or eight hours material.
[01:00:51]  No, Chomsky cuts it down to however long it is, an hour, two hours.
[01:00:54]  I don't know.
[01:00:56]  Sometimes I do 40 or 50 hours.
[01:00:58]  Sometimes I just pop the old record button on.
[01:01:01]  I just go about my day.
[01:01:02]  All right, I'm going to cut you off because there's one more thing I want to add is that if you are in the Bay Area Friday, Juneteenth, please come out to the Oakland ports and support the ILWU shutdown of the Oakland Port.
[01:01:21]  Yeah, let me get exactly what time that is.
[01:01:24]  I am 10.
[01:01:27]  It is at 10 a.m. at SSA Terminal.
[01:01:31]  Yeah, and then and then it's moving to Jack London, right?
[01:01:36]  Yeah, Oscar Grant Plaza.
[01:01:37]  Yeah.
[01:01:38]  One.
[01:01:38]  I don't know if that's like the I know Oscar Grant Plaza is the name from.
[01:01:42]  I don't know Oakland that well.
[01:01:43]  I don't know.
[01:01:43]  Maybe it's a it's a it's a plaza there.
[01:01:45]  You know where it is.
[01:01:45]  It's downtown.
[01:01:48]  Yeah, we will we will be there.
[01:01:51]  I'm actually going to plan on lighting myself on fire.
[01:01:54]  No, don't do it.
[01:01:55]  You're not doing that.
[01:01:56]  Okay, to get attention.
[01:01:59]  I'll be there.
[01:02:02]  Cool.
[01:02:02]  Well, right on.
[01:02:04]  Thank you, Party PP.
[01:02:08]  Thanks for grooving with us.
[01:02:09]  Thanks for just getting stoned.
[01:02:11]  I'm just, you know, sometimes you put the wrong pot in the jewel, if you know what I mean.
[01:02:16]  I don't think you could do that with Jewel.
[01:02:18]  Oh, yeah.

=== Yoga Procedures for Attention (01:10) ===

[01:02:19]  Yeah.
[01:02:19]  You got to get him on the astral plane, though.
[01:02:21]  That's, you got to, there's a, there's a series of yoga procedures you got to do.
[01:02:25]  And then procedures?
[01:02:28]  Yoga procedures?
[01:02:29]  Yep, That's what you do.
[01:02:31]  Yoga procedures.
[01:02:35]  You know, my last piece of advice is that if you get a really good like surefire flashlight or something and you get the little pad on it, you can really, you don't even have to, you don't even have to pull the trigger.
[01:02:45]  You can just fucking blind somebody for good.
[01:02:48]  Okay, shut it down.
[01:02:49]  I'm Liz.
[01:02:50]  My name is Brace.
[01:02:52]  We are joined by producer, musician, and guy who's looking at me with sod, soft eyes.
[01:02:58]  Sod, saft eyes?
[01:03:00]  Saft, sod eyes.
[01:03:02]  Well, there we go on that.
[01:03:03]  We're joined by fucking Jan Chomsky, and that is true enough.
[01:03:08]  We'll see you next time.
[01:03:09]  Bye.
[01:03:26]  Jeff Jack, Jeffrey Lexter.
[01:03:29]  Come out.