July 7, 2021 • 59 mins
Today we discuss Exxon-Mobil’s secrets we already knew about, The Kingmaker Joe Manchin, and, Surprisingly, Matthew McConaughey
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Worst Year Ever, a production of I Heart
Radio Welcome Together, Everything So Down Down. Happy Birthday, America. Yes, indeed,
(00:25):
as we celebrate our independence today, as we celebrate our
birth as a nation, to day that kick started a
revolution to gain our sovereignty, let's admit that this last
year's trip around the sun was also another head scratcher. Um.
Let's also remember that we are babies, you know, as
a country, we're basically going through puberty in comparison to
(00:48):
other countries timeline. Um, and we're gonna go through growing pains.
We are going through growing pains. This is not an
excuse to say, this is just a reality, and this
is good because we gotta keep learning, we gotta keep maturing,
we gotta keep striving, we gotta keep climbing, we gotta
keep building, and we gotta make sure we maintain hope
along the way as we continue to evolve. Why because
(01:10):
it's who we are. Why because the alternative sucks. I
believe that America and you and I I believe we're
in aspiration, all right. We're constantly in motion. We're on
the way trying to get wiser, trying to get braver,
trying to dream more, trying to do more, trying to
to be more fair, take the right kind of responsibilities
(01:31):
to gain the right kind of freedoms, And we gotta
keep realizing that we're a place where our individual pursuits
and desires need to be appreciative and supportive of our
collective responsibilities as Americans, hence the United States of America. Sure,
we're each unique, we're each independent, we each have innate
(01:54):
abilities that others don't have as people in the States.
But at the same time, we are all in this together.
And if you don't purchase that, move on somewhere else.
So as we celebrate the red, white, and Blue this weekend,
let's take a little bit, a little bit of inventory
and where we've come from, where we are um and
(02:15):
how and where we want to go from here on
the way to be in the best we can be. Now,
what if that was a song that each of us
what just said I can't sing? We sing the song
so we can sing it a little bit better. How
does it go to be the best we can be?
(02:35):
Let's make that a song we can't not sing. We're
on the way to be the best that we can be.
To make that a song that we just have to
sing rock America Happy. But I mean, let's rock America
the best country ever, Rock America all right together? Probably
not because we've got so many guns. Guns. This brings
(03:03):
up a lot of different things. Matthew McConaughey seems to
be doing the thing that a lot of people love
to do, which is transpose advice that's broadly good for
individual human beings to a nation where it's like, yeah,
people sure go through growing pains. You know, the younger
you are, the more dumb and even cruel things you're
going to do. And that doesn't necessarily make you a
(03:24):
bad person, because life is a growing experience. That's less
that's less meaningful when you're not talking about like just
like a person, and you're talking about a country with
the power to end all of life on earth with
the press of a button and the power to make
the plan an uninhabitable for the human species over the
course of decades via an economic system that it largely
(03:46):
drives on a global scale. Um, yeah, it's not. It's not.
It's not. It's naive. Also, Matthew, you don't want to
be governor. You want to be a ted talker, you know,
you want to make big philosophically, you don't know anything
about how to achieve what you're just talking about, because
(04:09):
I know, for example, or leave, he says, or where
would we leave? Where would you go? Talking about? Well, right,
that's also like, that's not going on here. If you
don't like your like what's going on in your country
and what I say about your country, you should get
(04:30):
out of here. It's not like a winning uh statement,
I guess from a politician. He seems like this is
clearly he's a desired politician now, uh, and what if
I disagree with him and I don't want to leave?
But also like it's it's it's fascinating to me because
it is a whole lot of words that say nothing, um,
(04:52):
what he's talking about. And like I I broadly I'm like,
he's right that we are like a puberty country. It's
a lot of countries we're we're we're older than Germany, um,
currently a broadly more reasonable place than this. But also
if we're talking about growing pains, they had some pretty
(05:16):
bad growing pains. Yeah, kind of effectively the entire household
style growing pains. I guess you could say slavery was
our grow. I don't know, a lot of his people
aren't countries. I just think he's really relying on his
oscar uh in this speech, like he could see him
pulling out his actor tricks, like I'm gonna he's a
(05:39):
he's a very good actor. He's an inherently charismatic guy.
It's hard not to like him when he does pretty
much anything, because he's Matthew McConaughey. It's a job to
be like you guys. Visually though, the like zoomed in
camera angle that talking with its great, Like the only thing,
the only thing would make it better is if he
was eating fast food in his car. Yeah, aren't get bourbon. Yeah,
(06:03):
So my main issue is that what did he say,
which is nothing? Um fine, it's well, yeah, like what
he's but what he's doing, and it is he's very
skilled politician, already very good because he's saying like, you know,
oh yeah, what what a wild year it was, you know,
really real head scratcher. You know, we're going through gowing pains,
(06:24):
We're going through this, we're going through that. We've got
to come together. He never said what those growing pains were,
what he thinks about them, what he thinks are the
problem with them? What he wants to do about it,
or what the collective action is. Uh, it's just these
sort of like lofty like I like the idea of
America is this okay, what happened last year? What was
(06:46):
the problem with it? What are the pains going on?
What are the fights about? What is your opinion on them? Um,
he's just sort of playing to the we got a
unite but but like better know it's perfect, but like
but like better than Greg Abbott. Well it's interesting because
he's doing this. He's walking the line right now, which
(07:09):
is because he's saying like, uh, you know, we're all individuals.
We've got these you know, it's an individual nation, but
also we have collective responsibility. And that's gonna like make
a lot of like conservative heads explode. Like everyone's very
excited about Matthew McConaughey running. Uh, They're like, yeah, like
finally we got like a guy. Um. But once he
says we have a collective responsibility, that that's Marxism to them,
(07:34):
that's uh, that's comy ship um. And but although again
he he didn't say rep um. I didn't look at
the response because I was just Sophie just shared this
video and I was like, that's fun. Uh So, I
don't know the response, but I know that that's the
response when anyone talks about any sort of collective responsibility
(07:55):
or action. That's comy stuff. America is about the individual
and freedom in the marketplace of individuality and freedom. Uh so,
uh it's you know, we'll see how how well he
tells that line. We'll see what he means when he
actually says anything about Matthew McConaughey getting into politics, which yeah,
(08:15):
it looks like he's going for. Is that like the
American flag in the background, Come on, Its completely meaningless?
Is everything in that video was? He would be objectively
the best governor we've had. I don't know since like
a Richards like politics such a fucking disaster, and our
last handful of governors have been such unrepentant, violent sociopaths
(08:38):
that like, yeah, fuck Matthew McConaughey, have him talk about
freedom and opportunity. You know, what he probably won't do
is encouraged Texans to kill people they disagree with. I
don't think he'll do that, And that's something enthusiastically urge
murder um so um. In terms of old business. I
(09:05):
have something to bring up as well that I think
had a couple of things. One thing is I found
the Wicki feet page for Ava brown Um and like, yeah,
they found it exists, and of course you look for it.
It's incredible because the photos they've picked are like they're
(09:28):
from videos. I think they're they're colorized videos. I don't
think they're originally shot in color, but like vacation videos
that she took a beach and stuff, and they're so
normal they look like they I mean, other than the
fact that the resolutions a little off, they could have
been filmed by like any woman, any white lady in
her twenties today, like every like everyone, Yeah this some
(09:58):
clear shots of her feet. Sick fucks all of you
sick fus Are you just fucking masturba she spent the
early forties, fucking man who is responsible for seventy something
million deaths, who voted ugly on three stars. I would
(10:22):
masturbate to her feet, but not a lot. Everybody listening
to this in your cars, pull over google her Wicky feet.
It's incredible. This is an audio media, but I think
that this transcends once again Katie is ranked higher on
wiki feeds. So yes, Katie, Katie has higher higher ranking
(10:43):
on Wiki feet than the lady who literally fucked Hitler.
This is an honor. You've turned my day right around.
We're not. I do want to read out because there's
eighties seven total votes from incredible human beings who decided
Eva Brown is a Wiki feet page and I must
vote upon it. Twenty two said beautiful, twelve said nice,
(11:06):
said okay, six said bad, and three said ugly. And
I have to say, I think those people are voting
her feet ugly just because she fucked Hitler. Because her
feet are fine. Yeah, the median one is very reasonable,
especially given the bluriness of the photos. But I think
people are being unfair to her feet just because she
had sex with the man who orchestrated the Holocaust. I
(11:28):
think people are unfair to her feet. Feet are ugly
in general. Yes, there's a lot of things wrong with
this Judge, judge, judge, or by her rotten soul, not
by her bunny. And yeah, don't don't blame her soul
on her souls. Yeah, oh, rend it man. We're twelve
(11:52):
minutes into this episode and easily our best episode. Ever,
I have one last piece of business to break. I
have one addendum to this just please company. And now
I'm reading the user comments. One person, really honest just
says hard to rate. That person is the Walter Cronkite
(12:13):
of our era, delving into the Eva brown Wicki Feet
controversy and saying it's a tough one. Guys, It's real.
It's a real hard one. Head scratch, nice color shot
of her toes. Wonder if a h was into showing
them some TLC. I don't wonder that, but you know,
it takes all kinds us. It's just the most psychopathic thing.
(12:39):
That's Texas Governor level of psychopath Um. I follow up
maybe that all caps omg. EVA has a page here.
Uh cupid heart, Cupid heartcupid heart, No, no, no, no, amazing.
My favorite is it's just hard to rate, really, matter
of fact, just to rate is extremely funny. Thank you
(13:01):
for that, adendam, honorable Robert. What was your other The
more of a theory about a way that we could
improve society. So I think we should be talking about
these things too. So I was having a conversation with
my partner recently. We were talking about bathrooms, particularly the
fact that some men's rooms and like shitty bars in particular,
have like a trough instead of a single urinal right,
(13:22):
And she was like, why don't we just have a
trough around the outside of a of a bar so
that everyone can be while they're drinking and not waste
time what that could be spent drinking And this evolved
into a discussion of a way to reform society so
that everyone is always wearing a hose system around their
groin and there's just a series of holes built into
(13:43):
the world around us that you plug the hose into
and it sucks all of the urin out, and that
could be we could rebuild society around that, and people
could have just like a big industrial like a six
inch wide gauge hose, like a telescope tube hose. Yeah,
public um dump spots, much like like built into banks,
(14:06):
and like our electric charging stations. Yeah, like an electric
charging station. I will say that part of the joy
of a bathroom experience for me when I go out
um is to escape the people I'm with for a
couple of minutes. Yes, but you could you could just
say I'm gonna go find a hole to plug the tub.
(14:28):
I gotta go. I gotta go find a tube hole.
It sounds smelling. You don't have a lot of faith
in our ability. Can we somehow, you know, build solid
infrastructure around the country that's clean and efficient? Can we
cutter fact Cody? Yes, I think my only addition to
(14:50):
this proposal would be to add a feature to your car.
Oh absolutely, like um, an emergency fuel system. Somehow we
could make your filled cars. We could make I mean,
theoretically hydro electric power is there's a lot of potential
that's untapped. Couldn't we power our cities with urine? Why not? Yeah?
(15:15):
I mean I think we could. Katie, I think I
think you can run. Yeah. Um, but you just have
an idea. You don't really know. I'm this up because
we're talking about climate change, and I think this could
be one of the solutions. Is and and also there's
so many new fashion implications. If everyone always has a
giant hose wrapped around their legs for that, they can
like unplug you know, it's it's yeah, it's it's I mean,
(15:39):
it's good. Look, I could get messy. I'm not sure
it's the chicest choice. But can I just say that
people don't wash their hands enough already. Yeah, but you
wouldn't have to wash your hands if you're just plugging
a hose into a Yes, but that's sterile. So you
wash your hands after you get dressed every morning because
you have to deal what you're dealing with the tubes
and stuff. You never attempt to take off. You can
(16:01):
never take the thing or is it just like it's
such a comfortable garment. It's so comfortable you wouldn't you
wouldn't want to take it off? Why why would you?
Why would you start having pants with a third tiny
leg for a tiny leg for the hose? Um, we
almost have to take an ad BRAINK. We haven't talked
(16:21):
about we are going to you know, we talked about
climate change a lot last week. Um, and you know what,
I have a feeling that we're going to start talking
about climate change a lot of weeks. And I'm fine
with that. If this becomes a climate change focus podcast,
I'll be fine with that because it's very important. Yeah,
(16:42):
and what we can fix all of our problems with
with p tubes? Yes, all right, speaking of large amounts
of urine, Joe Biden's popularity is that lower than it's
high water Mark, but maybe not. It's a gonna talk
about Poland right now. No, No, it actually yeah, no,
(17:04):
it's it's most it's pretty partisan, that said most sources.
It's not really changed much since he took office. There's
been so um we wanted to kind of analyze. You know,
we have our own our own bubble here and the
three of us disagree on things, but we're all pretty
much in accordance that Joe Biden. Yeah, it's useful to
(17:29):
kind of like, okay, but how to like how to
like regular people like hows like the like just folks. Yeah,
what is in general? How is he doing in the
eyes of people? Um? And it seems like broadly speaking, fine. Um.
I found some analyzes of like the most recent dozen
or so presidents and he's kind of in the middle
(17:51):
of the pack. Um, he's doing better than like four
recent presidents were, uh, and worse than eight or nine
recent presidents were. Um, which is like yeah again and
again when I say recent, we're still talking about guys
like thirty four years ago. So obviously like it was
easy because to get higher highs um. Yeah, at the
(18:13):
hundred and sixty six day point in their presidencies, he's
beating Donald Trump, Gerald Ford, Bill Clinton, and by a
narrow margin George W. Bush, which is meaningful because two
of those were one term presidents and two of those
were two term presidents. The other nine polling era presidents
are all beating him. Um, but what's how would they
have done if they've been around with Twitter? Yeah? Because
(18:36):
the and this is this, this particular analysis I found
was on Bloomberg. Other people have reported on the same
basic idea. But um, every previous president besides Trump either
started their presidency above six approval or had spiked to
that point to that level at some point by now. Um,
and they all had a much larger range of variants
in the polls than we've seen. Like Ronald Reagan by
(18:58):
this point in his presidency had experienced a seventeen percent
jump in popularity and a ten percent drop, and Biden
hasn't experienced anything close to either of those. Um, when
we talk about this, it's I think it's important. I mean,
just the nature of the world is so different in
our country, and I increasingly don't see how we break
(19:20):
out of this pretty pretty consistent divide Stacistically. Yeah, this
head scratcher of a year Um, it's just we're so entrenched.
We're so entrenched in our Yeah. I mean, that's one
of the big lessons. There was this you talk about.
(19:42):
Democrats would talk a lot about like if before the election,
like if Biden gets in, you know, we're gonna have
this big blue wave and it's going to lead to
this era of good feelings where Americans because Trump was
so bad, everyone's so gonna be so grateful to have
an adult back in office, and we're gonna we're gonna
it's gonna be like this wing in nineties again or whatever.
I don't know it's going to be in or the
(20:03):
fifty whatever, it's gonna be like Americans are all going
to get back on the same page. And obviously that
was never had any chance of happening. Um. But I
think part of why I don't think we'll never see
a sea shift in politics. I don't think we're stuck
at this kind of like fifty two forty six or
whatever kind of divide um. What's actually more like fifty
(20:23):
one fifty two to like two like that. That that's
kind of where Um has the aggregate of all the
polls right now Biden uh support against which is hasn't
has changed, has narrowed somewhat against Biden's favor since he
took office, but also has narrowed by a small enough
(20:43):
margin that it could be within the margin of air,
like it's possible his his Literally, there's been no change,
and it's just like pulling funk nous um. But you
know what has changed a lot in a positive way.
Raytheon's internal documents on critical race theory Raytheon Raytheon has
(21:03):
spent a lot of time thinking about critical race theory, Katie,
Because here's the thing about Raytheon. They care. They care
about making sure their employees feel valued, and they care
about making sure that they get the maximum blast radius
out of a two point four kilogram hexagen charge when
it detonates in the middle of a yet many school bus.
Ray Beyond just cares, and that's what makes them so exceptional.
(21:27):
So that they can help defund the police. Ray what
defund the police because every money that goes towards a
cop isn't going to one of our new oxygen powered
hell fire missiles. Defund the police, increase the military. That's
their stance. Um, we'll be right back together everything. We're
(22:00):
back when I finished talking about polling before we move on,
because I'm just yeah, uh, trying to get trying to
get a handle on things. So um, one of the
things that's kind of interesting about or like, broadly speaking,
a significant majority of Americans think he's done a pretty
(22:22):
good job on the coronavirus, like looks like to be
around like in the sixty percent range, and even um,
a sizeable chunk like a third of Republicans agree with that.
One of the things that's interesting about that to me
is that his actual support among Republicans is much lower.
It's about eight percent, which does say that like about
a third of Republicans are And when I say this,
(22:43):
I'm not saying that Biden has actually done a particularly
good job on the coronavirus, not saying like that's not
the point of making It does suggest that a decent
chunk of Republicans are willing to be uh like, aren't
haven't drank the whole Democrats are literally communists trying to
murder us kool aid um, which I found optimistic but
(23:04):
is also pessimistic because it shows that I don't know,
a lot more Republicans maybe came it's something, but it's
not good. It's not good. It's complex because there are
I don't know how many of the Republicans who don't
support his coronavirus handling the actually have reasonable cases. Again,
because there's very reasonable criticisms of his handling of coronavirus,
including opening schools too early, like lack of caution about variants,
(23:27):
like there's a bunch of things you can you can
go after him on. Um. So, I don't know how
many Republicans are like, well, I don't approve of his
handling of the coronavirus because of these very real flaws
with it as opposed to have any I don't approve
of his handle of the coronavirus because he's trying to
put chips in my children because yeahband it with China
(23:48):
to get Bauchi a bunch of money or something. So
that does that does kind of make it difficult to
take more of a lesson out of that. Um. Yes, No,
I don't have much to add. I was debating whether
they're adding that it is problematic this divide right now
in terms of our vaccinations, you know, we're not fully
(24:09):
vaccinating about half of the country's is not a percentage
of that plans to at some point, um, but a
large junk of that are not going to. And uh,
we don't don't talk about the delta variant, but it
about the lambda variant. Yeah, any variant. But it's it's hard,
(24:30):
it's it's this weird mix of trying that to like
fearmonger about the variants, because by god, at this point,
freaking out about them isn't gonna help anybody. But also
like I don't know what nobody really does, like because
viruses can mutate in a variety of ways so well,
and it is scary that they're continuing to mutate and
that we won't get a handle on it. That because
(24:50):
people won't get vaccinated. You know, I think that the
majority of our listeners are fully vaccinated at this point.
I think you don't have to be afraid or your
own life. Um. There are lots of cases of people
getting it even though they're vaccinated, but they get it mildly. Um,
not lots, but I've heard any currently of several from friends, UM,
(25:13):
but they don't get it hard. But but the thing
that the missing pieces is you're probably not um spreading
it widely if you are vaccinated and you get it
and you don't know, but it's potential. And the people
that are most affected, of course, are those that are unvaccinated.
But also let's think about our hospitals, especially in regions
(25:33):
where there's such a high percentage of people that are unvaccinated.
This is a continuing nightmare that then goes on to
affect everybody else's access to healthcare. So small tangent um
for me to say, as everybody's weighing their own personal
decisions in your own communities about whether to wear masks, okay, sorry,
yep um, And it's like you know, um, I don't
(25:57):
know what to say about like the like so much
of our polarization problem. Is this the ship we were
talking about last time, right, It's it's in a lot
of ways our most fundamental failure of infrastructure, the the
the worst infrastructure problem we have isn't bridges, that isn't power,
It isn't um electricity. It's failures of of mental infrastructure.
It's failures to adequately educate people to make good decisions
(26:21):
to avoid being influenced by fucking conmon and grifters, and
its failures too um prepare people to make the kind
of decisions that citizens in a democratic society need to
be able to make with with a reasonable amount of competence.
If we're going to continue to have a democratic society
that doesn't slide into authoritarianism and UM, the vaccine issue
(26:43):
should be the least controversial thing, like in a in
a healthy, unhealthy democracy, we would all be on the
same page about vaccines, would be screaming at each other
about the gold standard of Benghazi or whatever. UM. But
but we're we're not even We're not even as health
as we were during two thousand twelve when we were
screaming at each other over Benghazi and whether or not
(27:05):
Barack Obama had a valid birth certificate UM, which doesn't
bode well. But I don't know. I don't want to
I don't want to lay in on that too much.
In terms of other things that there's that were polar
that we're not polarized about. UM. Vast majority of Americans
about is strong majorities approve of biden Is handling of
the coronavirus, disapprove of his handling of the border, and
(27:28):
that does seem to be for very split reasons right
across the board. The border is bad for Biden Okay,
got there, water bad, Biden better can't grow across the border.
A lot of desperate people anyways. Yeah, same. I don't
(27:54):
know if you're gonna get to this. There's a poll
about the views of Americans views on crime. Yeah, the
quote rise of crime. I feel like we're we'll talk
about this more in depth in the future. But one
I found it interesting is that Americans seeing crime as
a very serious problem in America is in an all
(28:15):
time uh so, like twenty year high. Um. That's not
to say that crime is at a twenty year high,
sure not, It's sure not. But the perception, the view
is that we're it's the concern is there, and maybe
the media has something to do with that, and they're
they're reporting over the past even just the past few weeks,
fueling it. Who knows. But uh, I found this interesting
(28:38):
because along with the poll was this little bit of information.
Seventy say that violent crime would be reduced by increasing
funding to build economic opportunities and poor communities. Now see
that's good news because it would be yeah, um, it's
uh and even say the same about using social workers
(29:00):
to help police. A few situations with people having emotional
problems um, again, we get to this. This is kind
of a similar issue with guns, where if you actually
look at a lot of the policies that would help,
people don't disagree about, but when it comes to the
way the issue is framed, yes, they do. Because when
it comes the way this issue is framed, it's not
(29:21):
crime has risen. People are very concerned about it, and
they support economic remedies and more social workers and communities.
It's crime has risen, let's give the cops more guns,
like because the people who are framing it that way
in the media are the people who have got everyone scared.
Even though while there's things to be concerned about. Anytime
you see violent crime rises the way it has in
(29:41):
a lot of of course, it's reasonable for people to
be concerned, not as concerned as they are because the
rise is not as bad as people think it is.
Because media has overhyped this to be some sort of
gigantic seventies style crime wave when it's not. It's just
not the viral video of the target. They want people
(30:02):
stealing from targets. People people want the easy thing of
treating the symptom, not the disease. It's not easy. You're
not treating the symptom by giving money to the police.
But they think it even indoctrinated to think that that's
the solution, and you're not thinking about the fact that
that doesn't solve shit and that the problems are getting
worse because we're not doing anything about the problems. Of
(30:26):
wants that to be once cops to be the solution
because they're the extent of their research on it is
oh crime is ers and let's go on to write
along with a cop and film it because that will
make that will make good for the reason they just
print any police statement as like fact more or less
straphers for the police. Um. I we talk a lot
(30:47):
about how much a problem it is that like there's
no shared concept of reality. But like I most people
absolutely should hate the press. Um because nationwide they're not
good at their job. Um yeah, no, possibly failed, and
nationwide they're not on our side. It's great there are this,
I mean the reason this uh even this uh pole
(31:09):
got my radars because uh if you see it. Ted
Ted craz uh quote tweeted the post from ABC News
and his his little comment was, oh, but sure, we
gotta defund the police because the first tweet is just
in the number of Americans seeing crime is an extremely
serious problem the United States more than twenty year high.
(31:29):
Joe Biden is underwater and trust to handle it according
to new poll. That's the tweet. Uh, there's no context
about like, by the way, it's not like the crime
isn't twenty year high or anything like that. It's just
the people. Um that's the first tweet. The follow up
tweet was about how se think that uh we should
actually like just like increase funding in communities, in poor communities,
(31:51):
uh and have social workers, uh deal with a lot
of these problems. Um So the framing of this by
the media allows weasels like Ted Cruz to quote tweet
this thing and say, see, but the Democrats want to
defund the police, even though the follow up tweet literally
has those measures as being extremely popular. Um So, I guess, yeah,
(32:15):
I'm just I guess I'm just like frustratingly agreeing with you.
They suck. They're awful. Yeah, they're terrible at this, and
you know what it is on purpose, Like they've always
been terrible. And this is like the complexity when we
talk about like the issue of the death of truth.
We're not when I said, talk about the death of truth.
I'm talking about the death of objective truth that has
remained unchanged. I' talking about the death of a widely
(32:37):
agreed upon standard of truth. Which doesn't mean people still
didn't buy into bullshit. It's just more people bought into
the same bullshit. Because you can read a lot about,
for example, the ways in which the CIA would manufacture
consent for US interventions in Latin America. Um, the ways
that like during all the press who were trying to
cover the invasion of Panama and just went with the military,
(32:59):
and the military didn't let them into the country and
made up reasons for their to be delays, so they
got in there late and they didn't get to see
any of the war crimes, and almost nobody realized what
had gone on. And you know, like or how you
know we would when we overthrew the government of Guatemala.
They were just you know, they had the CIA operat
guys like Dullus, had their pet journalists who they reached
out to to write the stories that made it look like, no,
(33:20):
this is a victory and the cause of liberty, and
most Americans are like, yeah, sure, whatever, Um, that's still
a problem. Was a problem that like people bought into
lies than into an extent, the fracturing of the concept
of truth is because more people have in realistic understanding
of what is actually happening. But it's still a problem
that are under the nationwider conception of reality is so divergent.
(33:42):
And that's kind of a lot to hold in your head, right,
both that it's a problem that truth is fractured and
that when truth was more unified, it made it very
easy for our government to get people on board with
horrific things. Both of those things are true at once.
And I don't have like a simple solution to how
to what. Yeah, like it's not a it's not a
simple issue. It's it's not as easy as if we
just had another Walter Cronkite, because Walter Cronkite was the
(34:04):
engine of a fair amount of disinformation himself. Yeah, we've
never done it good. No, it's never been good. Like
it's the same thing about like when we talk about
good governance, that's not a thing that's existed. Um, you
have had some countries and you still have some countries
in Europe who were very successful at extracting enough wealth
(34:25):
out of the rest of the world and continue to
be successful enough at that that they provide well to
the people who live within their borders. Like Canada um
reasonably good at that compared to the United States. But
you don't have good governance because I would argue good
governments governance means not exploiting huge numbers of people. But
I would accept that argument anyway. That people and let's roll. Yeah, yeah, goodness,
(34:53):
you're doing great. That checks out. Yeah. I I don't
know how we moved through this period of time. Maybe
it's with Matthew McConaughey platitudes, but I doubt it. It
would be funny if you just fixed everything, if that
was what did it just takes his shirt off and
(35:14):
starts talking about like carbon capture, just fucking his way
into like regenerating UH forests in order to trap more carbons.
Change the whole fucking system. Like every month, there's some
way that everybody that we vote on major legislation and
then our senators or I don't know, I don't know.
(35:35):
I want to have the opportunity to vote for Medicare
for all. It would be an infrastructure I want. I
want to say on that you know, you know, there's
elements of that system that I think would be better.
There's elements of that system that I think would be
worse because it's it's also the level of disinformation is
frightening when you consider what if you could freak out
enough Americans to like ban a vaccine because that week
(35:58):
the media cycle, Like, there's a lot of really uh
the way. That's why I I tend to like when
I talk about being an anarchist for me, because there's
a bunch of things That means. It doesn't mean I
have like a system that I want people to adopt,
or I have a suggestion for the way it all
could work. It means that when I look at problems
in society, the solutions I tend to angle towards are
(36:19):
ones that devolve structures of power and hierarchy. Um because
I think much more often than not that tends to
make problems like better. And when you reduce the power
of organizations, the ability of organizations to exert power over individuals,
when you reduce the power the power of groups of
people to exert power, when you reduce the hierarchies that exist,
(36:42):
you reduce the places that like for example, sociopaths can
hide and exert damage. You can reduce the damage that
a group group of angry people can be convinced to
do by a media mogul. So that that tends to
be where I land in terms of like what is
going to get out of this? Get us out of this?
It's it's devolved power relations because I I'm willing to
(37:03):
admit that, like, yeah, maybe the solution will be there's
so there's there's a book Garrison I've been going through
for through for a new series we're talking about that
kind of goes over the broadly speaking, what are the
possible systems that could have developed that would that would
lead to action on climate change? And there's like kind
of they're not positive or negative, they're just different systems.
(37:26):
Depending on your attitude, they'd be better. One of them
is climate Leviathan is the term they use, which is
a massive kind of like a much more effective UN
style international organization based around kind of liberal attitudes towards
how do you fix this stuff gas taxes and like
restrictions on what people can do and like a very
top down we have to deal with these problems attitude.
(37:49):
There's kind of a more fascist style thing which is,
which is basically like, fuck fixing the problem, Let's hoard
resources for our block of people and screw everyone else.
Over there's a more. And yeah, there's a more. I
mean both both the Climate Leviathan and that our capitalist
but I like the name Climate Leviathan. Yeah, and and
(38:09):
it's it's the kind of thing where like some I'm
sure there's people listening to say, yeah, that's what we need.
I can't say that wouldn't work because nothing, no one
knows what's going to work. That one scares me, doesn't
scare me as much as kind of the more fascist thing.
And then there's like the one that what they call
climate MAU, which is this idea of like more based
around particularly like Asian style socialist mass movement kind of
(38:31):
responses to the problem of climate change that are are
extremely centralized, um but in a much less you know,
it's just kind of a different, different take on sort
of the Climate Leviathan style. And then you have I
can tell you right now, Climate MAO isn't going to
go over for most of the world. Well no, I mean,
but it it it's like this isn't what people would
(38:52):
call it. These are they're kind of trying to quit
category cheeky Robert Climate Leviathan is basically the idea of like, okay,
if if the response is largely organized by the United
States and Western kind of block nations, this is the
kind of thing they would probably try to do, based
on the current based on the way NATO works, based
on with the EU works climate MAO is kind of
assuming okay, if China is successful in getting a large
(39:14):
block of countries together, these are the ways in which,
based on the ways they're already approaching the problem of
climate change, this is the way they would probably try
to go for it. And then you know, there's the
option I think they call it Option X, which is
much more decentralized, um and much less and much more
based on kind of fundamentally changing the way we we
order our our society so that you can't have some
(39:37):
of these massive, overarching international structures that make the kind
of damage that we're doing to our climate possible. UM.
I don't know. I don't want to get into this
too much because I'm still trying to wrap my head
around it. But a whole new show on this, Yeah,
I don't know, there's who knows what's gonna fucking work
or what's going to get tried? But anyway, but I
(39:59):
know what's going to happened right now. It's another add
a break together everything. We're back. We are back. News
(40:20):
just dropped that North America has lost three billion birds
in fifty years. No, it's probably fine, perfect transition to
talking about some more of the climate change disasters we're
seeing bad bad news. Um yeah. Any who, the oceans
on fire at times in the last few days. Yeah yeah.
(40:46):
This one's in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. The fire began I
guess in an underwater pipeline that connects to um A
platform UH p x is KHU malub zapp oil development UM.
Apparently the fire was due to a gas pipeline rupture
(41:10):
um UH and was brought under control using water pumps
and hoses for about five hours. UM. This is fun.
Angel Carrizalez, who is the executive director of Mexico's Oil
Safety Regulatory Agency, said that the incident UH did not
generate any spill, but experts are saying, I don't know
(41:33):
about that. Well, they're saying, we're pretty sure there wasn't
a spill because it was all on so much fire
like they're saying that the best case scenarios that the
fire contains the oil from going too far. But like
the fact that the ocean is on fire means that
their ship in the ocean causing it to be on
(41:56):
fire that shouldn't be in the ocean. I mean, like
a flaming mo cocktail or whatever. But you've got to
give a shout out to the pr person who was like, wait, wait, wait,
it's not a spill because it all burned up up
its self. Closing loop. Yeah, this is from the CNN.
(42:20):
I'm not sure. Um. Simon George a professor of organic
geochemistry at McQuary University and sounds made up tell seen
it that for such a dramatic and sustained flame to
persist on the ocean, a continuous stream of natural gas
must have been making its way to the surface from
the leak. Um. So yeah, that's what's going on there.
(42:43):
I could have guessed that, I was the professor of
organic geochemistry, I could have guessed that too, Um. And
then there was I think, looking at the ocean fire,
you go, it probably got a lot of ship in
the ocean, didn't they. Yeah, that was my guess. All
I saw was the seemingly c g I video of
(43:04):
the portal. The hell like two things that don't belong together.
You know, Um, I'm I'm watching my hero academian fire
and you have fire and you've got water, and I think,
you know, we need to think about the collective nature
of of nature itself. Fires in water, Yeah, I mean,
(43:29):
it's it is interesting. Some people have noted this that
like in the what it was, it was like the
sixties and seventies thing. It might start in the fifties,
but like the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland lit on fire
like so many times, Like that fucking river kept catching
on fire. It was like sometimes the fires would be
like the flames would be like five stories tall. Like
the river was very flammable. And it was a big
(43:51):
reason why the e p A was created because Americans
at that point, again talking about like a shared concept
of reality, We're all like, oh, it's pretty bad if
a river keeps catching on I we should probably do
something about this. We should look into this. But there's
also arguments that because of how effective the EPA was
cleaning at cleaning up kind of the cosmetic issues of
(44:11):
of of like littering and stuff. How they were able
to pretty things up and reduce the amount of obvious
like faccory. It actually contributed to us not notice or
to people being able to ignore climate change because there
was less flaming rivers. That's interesting and true. Yeah, Uh,
that river caught fire last year. Oh oh, Cleveland's back
(44:35):
just like America. Joe Biden's doing it all right, burning
back better, burn bad. Someone needs to do like a
Cleveland Chamber of conversation, but speaking about oil gas and
(44:55):
our previous conversations about infrastructure, regular aation, et cetera. This
X on Mobile story, did you guys read about this?
This is fun? Just in case you guys don't know. Um,
Greenpeace Uh pretended uh to be interviewing lobbyists, I guess,
(45:18):
and got Keith McCoy, who is a senior X on
Mobile lobbyists unaffiliated with mobile. They got him on a
zoom interview meeting and recorded it, recorded him saying all
the quiet parts out loud about X on Mobile and
(45:39):
what they've been doing with climate change. Um and uh,
then they released it to Channel four News and I
just before we talk about it. It's just that was
so fucking easy and so fucking dumb. You got duped
so easily pieces done in a while that I thought
was pretty fucking based. The thing is. The thing is, though,
(46:02):
like it's wild and like I can't believe you said
all that stuff, and they got it so easy. They
kind of know that there are no consequences for their actions.
I mean, there are long term consequences on the planet
in their future generations, but like in terms of them,
like it doesn't matter to them. There's no political will
to make any of them pay the price that they
(46:23):
are pay for this because specifically of what they say,
he says speaking, he lays it out, Okay, I mean
he specifically talks about you know how he they lobby Um,
you know, have lobbied, lobbied against the change climate change
measures in Biden's infrastructure bill. Um you know how early
(46:47):
on they pushed back against climate change by using third parties. Um,
you know, and and and how they you know, keep
senators in their pocket. This this right here, um? Is
it in a nutshell? Mr McCoy said, when you have
an opportunity to talk to a member of Cross of Congress,
I liken it to fishing. Right, you know, you have
bait you throw that bait out and they say, oh,
(47:08):
you want to talk about infrastructure. Yeah, and then you
start to reel them in and you start to have
those conversations about federal leasing programs, you start to have
those conversations about carbon tax. You know, it's all these
opportunities that you use and to use the phishinging allergy again,
you kind of reel them in. I make sure I
get them the right information and they need so they
look good and then they help me out there a
captive audience. They know they need you and I need them. There.
(47:31):
It is there, it is. That's why nothing matters, That's
why I want change. Yeah, and it's it's it's awesome.
There's another great point in that. Uh, and I'm just
gonna keep reading the quote. Mr McCoy appears to suggest
that Exon Mobiles book support for a carbon tax is
underpinned by the conviction then it will never happen, allowing
the company to support it in order to appear green.
He said, I will tell you that there is not
(47:52):
an appetite for a carbon tax. It is a nonstarter.
Nobody is going to propose attacks on all Americans, and
the cynical side of me says, yeah, we kind of
know that, but it gives us a talking point. We
can say, well, what is x on mobile for? Well,
we're for a carbon tax. Yeah, it's a green its
screen x on commercials BP diversity, like all the should
they do so that they don't have to address things,
(48:13):
And it's just wild to hear it's rad. I kept
thinking reading this article about I went on a little
bit of a a little bit of like a rabbit
hole this weekend reading about Tolken's views on Jared Tolkien,
like the Lord of the Rings case views on politics,
because he was like he identified as it self identified
as an aner Kyle token. Sorry, no, not not, I
(48:35):
don't even is that a real person? Okay, thank you.
But he talked a bit about there was there was
a line where he was in a letter he wrote
to his son where he was talking about like the
wonderful trend of people bombing factories and power stations and
saying like, I hope it continues, but I also hope
that it's seen by a majority of people as patriotic,
because if most people don't think it's rad, then it's
(48:58):
not going to work. Right. Most people have to agree,
like Yeah, it's fucking cool to blow up factories and
oil pipelines, and they don't right now, And it would
be rad if most people looked at somebody damaging oil
company infrastructure and went based. But instead they'll go no,
that person should get a thirty five year terrorism enhancement
on their sentence and die in a cell because they
(49:19):
attempted to stop the environment from dying. Can I ask
a question, Yeah, what does based mean? It means like cool,
but in a sense of like it's ideologically sound as well.
It's used on all sides, but it means like not
just like not just like rad, but like rad in
a way that is good politics, I guess would be
(49:40):
like my my best way of describing it correct, it's no, Um,
it's honestly like it's it's like you're just so silly.
It's like an update. It's like it's kind of like
woke was years ago. Yes, Like it's just like oh
that where the way this was kind of stolen from fascists, Katie,
(50:05):
that's different place it started, but it first gained like
real currency online among like the alt right and stuff.
But it's just a fun thing to say. So everybody
says based. Now it's like pilled. Yeah, yeah, I'll start
I'll start trying to use it. Yeah, I'm going to
work it in very effortlessly. Clearly, that's the based choice.
(50:28):
That's the base choice. It's based to use, always based
to use basse because a lot of anyway, whatever, that's
let's move on. So it's like it's like Melania says,
be based. Uh yeah, this is uh so frustrating and
like it's the kind of thing like you know, their
documents from Exxon decades ago, they knew about it, they
(50:53):
denied it. They did their own quote science, um to
disprove it. There's a quote another quote from this fucking guy. Um.
Did we aggressively fight against some of the science, Yes?
Did we hide our science absolutely not. Did we join
some of these shadow groups to work against some of
the early efforts, Yes, that's true. But there's nothing there's
(51:15):
nothing illegal about it, he says. It's a lot during
the during the meeting. There's not illegal. There's nothing illegal
about it. Which maybe if you keep having to say that,
maybe that indicates that you're like morally like questionable, like
maybe like you feel like you're you're ethically doing something bad.
But you're justifying it because it's not illegal. Um and uh,
(51:37):
I just find it so interesting that not interesting. Just
like obvious, we all know that there's no political will
to do these things. We all know that. Uh, they
do too, and they use it to their advantage a
big part of the reason. There's a big um. I
would like to give a shout out to our our boy,
Joe Mansion for making the list, making the top of
(52:00):
the list of of folks in Congress that Mr McCoy
cited as being very very helpful to x on mobile
uh and their anti climate cinema cause along with cinema
of course. Um, but I believe was it. Yeah, cinema
your states on fire? Yeah, fuck you, Mr McCoy, funck
(52:25):
them all. I wanted to mention Mansion because McCoy described
him as the kingmaker speaks to his office on a
weekly basis. I bet Joe Mansion masturbated when he heard that. Yeah, yeah,
that's what it sounds like, right. Yeah. He wishes he
had one of those tube things so he could just
(52:46):
plug it into the Capitol Hill and it would suck
his go go to the go to the Tesla charging
point and just drop off your comb his come, which
is the consistency of you know that kind of like
spongey Ethiopian bread, really tasty stuff if you were to
joke that in buttermilk and then leave it out in
like park it in a black car in the sun
(53:07):
during a heat wave and give it about eight hours
like yeasty, yeah, yeasty, but like yeah, yeah, very yeasty
and modeled and and but also like thick, like turgid,
like a turgid mass of come. That's Joe Man. I
can't believe the person I've become in the year and
a half of recording this show with you guys that
(53:28):
I don't even flinch at this. What I thought was
funny is when you said become Cody laughed and I
saw it. You can't do that, I can explain. Is
that in for us today? Is that the note we need.
Let's let's end on a happy note and talk about
(53:50):
Patriot Front showing up in Philly because every now and
then we get to get a nice story to write,
which is honey. So the is it is you are
eat income when you put honey in your in your tea,
and if you're a cop and you're getting your tea
from a restaurant. There's actual coming they put in there,
(54:12):
but also a come in your copy is the least
of your concerns. All right, Fascists embarrassed themselves. They just
can't stop. They love they love being won't stop. So
there's this group Patriot Front, which is like their Nazis.
There's they will The thing that they've started doing is
(54:33):
because Charlotte's feel some of these like especially some of
their like organizational folks were at seventeen unit rate in
Charlotte'sville and that didn't end well in the long run
for them. Um, but they want to keep doing stuff.
So they like they put the stickers all over the
place that are like not not stolen, conquered about like
you know, indigenous lands and stuff. And though you know,
they try like try to try to pill Americans with
(54:55):
stuff that's very fashy but not not Nazi explicitly, like
that's kind of their thing. They're not gonna where's way
of swastika, but they're they're they're doing the same thing.
It's like like fashy like Western chauvinism kind of obfusiating,
like they're what they're saying harder in the fascism than
the Proud Boys, which is why they're not as as big.
But one of the things they've been doing lately is
they've been organizing these things that kind of seem like
(55:16):
flash administrations but aren't where the bus everyone that they
can get into a city and do like a march,
that they won't there won't be any pr ahead of time.
So suddenly just like a hundred of these dudes with
shields and banners and masks, all dressed the same, we'll
be marching through and sometimes they'll throw off smoke bombs
to make it look eerie, will like march through DC
or something. They decided to do that in Philly, and
(55:39):
none of them were from Philly as best as we
could tell. No Ladelphia famously, you know we're about Philadelphia.
When the Eagles won the Super Bowl, because it was
a chance that the Eagles would win. Prior to the
game concluding, the police put lube on all of the
light traffic lights and and like street lights and stuff
(56:01):
in a huge chunk of the city. Because something that
Philadelphians do whenever a good or a bad thing happens
is just spontaneously take to the streets to tear down
all of the light bulbs. That's just how Philly likes
to play. It's in the bylaws. They got it, like
what we are. All of that was useless because within
(56:22):
like an hour of the game ending, the cops had retreated.
They just left where the crowd was because like, there's
no controlling these people. There's nothing we can do to
handle this crowd, and people sure enough found a way
through sheer massive people to tear down a bunch of
light bulbs. Like that's what Philly does on a good
day when they're happy. I mean, that's a story of resilience.
(56:44):
A Philly got angry and like, but when I say Philly,
like four or five dudes, because this was a flash thing, right,
there was no time, right, It's not like yeah, like
the city didn't descend on them. It was like five Philly.
It was just like four or five guys who happened
to be hanging out on July three and realized, like,
those guys are fucking Nazis and just started bumbling and
(57:10):
they broke and ran and ran back to the fucking
writer truck that they were all driving in, and they
got caught by the cops because they were all illegally
writing in the back of a box truck, had to
like sit down on the ground and get photographed while
the cops like sited them. It was extremely funny, um,
(57:31):
very very funny. Nobody was arrested because no crimes were committed.
They were just like even the cops were like, it
kind of seems like you should have been in Philly.
Huh oh, that's a heartwarming tail God. I love Philly
great great, Probably will never go there again, but I
(57:53):
I appreciate their their hutzpah. All right, guys, I hope
you enjoyed that light note and to this episode. I
hope you enjoyed the whole dang thing. You know, that's
what we're here for, especially talking about Joe Manion. You
know what, if you're an artist, you're a graphic designer,
(58:14):
right if you're if you're I don't know if Darian
Aronofski is listening film Joe Mansions Come, you know you
can make your own. We gave you the recipe. Yeah, yeah,
just make it make it happen people. It's like a
like a sour dough star like, Yeah, Cronenberg would be
(58:35):
the right guy to direct Joe Mansions Come. A ninety
minute movie, Russell back to Yeah, because he's the right
guy to confront such a monster. If there's one thing
I know about Kurt Will, he'd be willing to dive
into it and explode it from the inside. Yeah, Yeah,
he would. He's the only hero. He can save us
(58:56):
from that losing me alright, well, bye bye, so dumb everything,
So dumb man, It's not again. I tried. Daniel. Worst
Year Ever is a production of I Heart Radio. For
(59:17):
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Welcome to Worst Year Ever, a production of I Heart
Radio Welcome Together, Everything So Down Down. Happy Birthday, America. Yes, indeed,
(00:25):
as we celebrate our independence today, as we celebrate our
birth as a nation, to day that kick started a
revolution to gain our sovereignty, let's admit that this last
year's trip around the sun was also another head scratcher. Um.
Let's also remember that we are babies, you know, as
a country, we're basically going through puberty in comparison to
(00:48):
other countries timeline. Um, and we're gonna go through growing pains.
We are going through growing pains. This is not an
excuse to say, this is just a reality, and this
is good because we gotta keep learning, we gotta keep maturing,
we gotta keep striving, we gotta keep climbing, we gotta
keep building, and we gotta make sure we maintain hope
along the way as we continue to evolve. Why because
(01:10):
it's who we are. Why because the alternative sucks. I
believe that America and you and I I believe we're
in aspiration, all right. We're constantly in motion. We're on
the way trying to get wiser, trying to get braver,
trying to dream more, trying to do more, trying to
to be more fair, take the right kind of responsibilities
(01:31):
to gain the right kind of freedoms, And we gotta
keep realizing that we're a place where our individual pursuits
and desires need to be appreciative and supportive of our
collective responsibilities as Americans, hence the United States of America. Sure,
we're each unique, we're each independent, we each have innate
(01:54):
abilities that others don't have as people in the States.
But at the same time, we are all in this together.
And if you don't purchase that, move on somewhere else.
So as we celebrate the red, white, and Blue this weekend,
let's take a little bit, a little bit of inventory
and where we've come from, where we are um and
(02:15):
how and where we want to go from here on
the way to be in the best we can be. Now,
what if that was a song that each of us
what just said I can't sing? We sing the song
so we can sing it a little bit better. How
does it go to be the best we can be?
(02:35):
Let's make that a song we can't not sing. We're
on the way to be the best that we can be.
To make that a song that we just have to
sing rock America Happy. But I mean, let's rock America
the best country ever, Rock America all right together? Probably
not because we've got so many guns. Guns. This brings
(03:03):
up a lot of different things. Matthew McConaughey seems to
be doing the thing that a lot of people love
to do, which is transpose advice that's broadly good for
individual human beings to a nation where it's like, yeah,
people sure go through growing pains. You know, the younger
you are, the more dumb and even cruel things you're
going to do. And that doesn't necessarily make you a
(03:24):
bad person, because life is a growing experience. That's less
that's less meaningful when you're not talking about like just
like a person, and you're talking about a country with
the power to end all of life on earth with
the press of a button and the power to make
the plan an uninhabitable for the human species over the
course of decades via an economic system that it largely
(03:46):
drives on a global scale. Um, yeah, it's not. It's not.
It's not. It's naive. Also, Matthew, you don't want to
be governor. You want to be a ted talker, you know,
you want to make big philosophically, you don't know anything
about how to achieve what you're just talking about, because
(04:09):
I know, for example, or leave, he says, or where
would we leave? Where would you go? Talking about? Well, right,
that's also like, that's not going on here. If you
don't like your like what's going on in your country
and what I say about your country, you should get
(04:30):
out of here. It's not like a winning uh statement,
I guess from a politician. He seems like this is
clearly he's a desired politician now, uh, and what if
I disagree with him and I don't want to leave?
But also like it's it's it's fascinating to me because
it is a whole lot of words that say nothing, um,
(04:52):
what he's talking about. And like I I broadly I'm like,
he's right that we are like a puberty country. It's
a lot of countries we're we're we're older than Germany, um,
currently a broadly more reasonable place than this. But also
if we're talking about growing pains, they had some pretty
(05:16):
bad growing pains. Yeah, kind of effectively the entire household
style growing pains. I guess you could say slavery was
our grow. I don't know, a lot of his people
aren't countries. I just think he's really relying on his
oscar uh in this speech, like he could see him
pulling out his actor tricks, like I'm gonna he's a
(05:39):
he's a very good actor. He's an inherently charismatic guy.
It's hard not to like him when he does pretty
much anything, because he's Matthew McConaughey. It's a job to
be like you guys. Visually though, the like zoomed in
camera angle that talking with its great, Like the only thing,
the only thing would make it better is if he
was eating fast food in his car. Yeah, aren't get bourbon. Yeah,
(06:03):
So my main issue is that what did he say,
which is nothing? Um fine, it's well, yeah, like what
he's but what he's doing, and it is he's very
skilled politician, already very good because he's saying like, you know,
oh yeah, what what a wild year it was, you know,
really real head scratcher. You know, we're going through gowing pains,
(06:24):
We're going through this, we're going through that. We've got
to come together. He never said what those growing pains were,
what he thinks about them, what he thinks are the
problem with them? What he wants to do about it,
or what the collective action is. Uh, it's just these
sort of like lofty like I like the idea of
America is this okay, what happened last year? What was
(06:46):
the problem with it? What are the pains going on?
What are the fights about? What is your opinion on them? Um,
he's just sort of playing to the we got a
unite but but like better know it's perfect, but like
but like better than Greg Abbott. Well it's interesting because
he's doing this. He's walking the line right now, which
(07:09):
is because he's saying like, uh, you know, we're all individuals.
We've got these you know, it's an individual nation, but
also we have collective responsibility. And that's gonna like make
a lot of like conservative heads explode. Like everyone's very
excited about Matthew McConaughey running. Uh, They're like, yeah, like
finally we got like a guy. Um. But once he
says we have a collective responsibility, that that's Marxism to them,
(07:34):
that's uh, that's comy ship um. And but although again
he he didn't say rep um. I didn't look at
the response because I was just Sophie just shared this
video and I was like, that's fun. Uh So, I
don't know the response, but I know that that's the
response when anyone talks about any sort of collective responsibility
(07:55):
or action. That's comy stuff. America is about the individual
and freedom in the marketplace of individuality and freedom. Uh so,
uh it's you know, we'll see how how well he
tells that line. We'll see what he means when he
actually says anything about Matthew McConaughey getting into politics, which yeah,
(08:15):
it looks like he's going for. Is that like the
American flag in the background, Come on, Its completely meaningless?
Is everything in that video was? He would be objectively
the best governor we've had. I don't know since like
a Richards like politics such a fucking disaster, and our
last handful of governors have been such unrepentant, violent sociopaths
(08:38):
that like, yeah, fuck Matthew McConaughey, have him talk about
freedom and opportunity. You know, what he probably won't do
is encouraged Texans to kill people they disagree with. I
don't think he'll do that, And that's something enthusiastically urge
murder um so um. In terms of old business. I
(09:05):
have something to bring up as well that I think
had a couple of things. One thing is I found
the Wicki feet page for Ava brown Um and like, yeah,
they found it exists, and of course you look for it.
It's incredible because the photos they've picked are like they're
(09:28):
from videos. I think they're they're colorized videos. I don't
think they're originally shot in color, but like vacation videos
that she took a beach and stuff, and they're so
normal they look like they I mean, other than the
fact that the resolutions a little off, they could have
been filmed by like any woman, any white lady in
her twenties today, like every like everyone, Yeah this some
(09:58):
clear shots of her feet. Sick fucks all of you
sick fus Are you just fucking masturba she spent the
early forties, fucking man who is responsible for seventy something
million deaths, who voted ugly on three stars. I would
(10:22):
masturbate to her feet, but not a lot. Everybody listening
to this in your cars, pull over google her Wicky feet.
It's incredible. This is an audio media, but I think
that this transcends once again Katie is ranked higher on
wiki feeds. So yes, Katie, Katie has higher higher ranking
(10:43):
on Wiki feet than the lady who literally fucked Hitler.
This is an honor. You've turned my day right around.
We're not. I do want to read out because there's
eighties seven total votes from incredible human beings who decided
Eva Brown is a Wiki feet page and I must
vote upon it. Twenty two said beautiful, twelve said nice,
(11:06):
said okay, six said bad, and three said ugly. And
I have to say, I think those people are voting
her feet ugly just because she fucked Hitler. Because her
feet are fine. Yeah, the median one is very reasonable,
especially given the bluriness of the photos. But I think
people are being unfair to her feet just because she
had sex with the man who orchestrated the Holocaust. I
(11:28):
think people are unfair to her feet. Feet are ugly
in general. Yes, there's a lot of things wrong with
this Judge, judge, judge, or by her rotten soul, not
by her bunny. And yeah, don't don't blame her soul
on her souls. Yeah, oh, rend it man. We're twelve
(11:52):
minutes into this episode and easily our best episode. Ever,
I have one last piece of business to break. I
have one addendum to this just please company. And now
I'm reading the user comments. One person, really honest just
says hard to rate. That person is the Walter Cronkite
(12:13):
of our era, delving into the Eva brown Wicki Feet
controversy and saying it's a tough one. Guys, It's real.
It's a real hard one. Head scratch, nice color shot
of her toes. Wonder if a h was into showing
them some TLC. I don't wonder that, but you know,
it takes all kinds us. It's just the most psychopathic thing.
(12:39):
That's Texas Governor level of psychopath Um. I follow up
maybe that all caps omg. EVA has a page here.
Uh cupid heart, Cupid heartcupid heart, No, no, no, no, amazing.
My favorite is it's just hard to rate, really, matter
of fact, just to rate is extremely funny. Thank you
(13:01):
for that, adendam, honorable Robert. What was your other The
more of a theory about a way that we could
improve society. So I think we should be talking about
these things too. So I was having a conversation with
my partner recently. We were talking about bathrooms, particularly the
fact that some men's rooms and like shitty bars in particular,
have like a trough instead of a single urinal right,
(13:22):
And she was like, why don't we just have a
trough around the outside of a of a bar so
that everyone can be while they're drinking and not waste
time what that could be spent drinking And this evolved
into a discussion of a way to reform society so
that everyone is always wearing a hose system around their
groin and there's just a series of holes built into
(13:43):
the world around us that you plug the hose into
and it sucks all of the urin out, and that
could be we could rebuild society around that, and people
could have just like a big industrial like a six
inch wide gauge hose, like a telescope tube hose. Yeah,
public um dump spots, much like like built into banks,
(14:06):
and like our electric charging stations. Yeah, like an electric
charging station. I will say that part of the joy
of a bathroom experience for me when I go out
um is to escape the people I'm with for a
couple of minutes. Yes, but you could you could just
say I'm gonna go find a hole to plug the tub.
(14:28):
I gotta go. I gotta go find a tube hole.
It sounds smelling. You don't have a lot of faith
in our ability. Can we somehow, you know, build solid
infrastructure around the country that's clean and efficient? Can we
cutter fact Cody? Yes, I think my only addition to
(14:50):
this proposal would be to add a feature to your car.
Oh absolutely, like um, an emergency fuel system. Somehow we
could make your filled cars. We could make I mean,
theoretically hydro electric power is there's a lot of potential
that's untapped. Couldn't we power our cities with urine? Why not? Yeah?
(15:15):
I mean I think we could. Katie, I think I
think you can run. Yeah. Um, but you just have
an idea. You don't really know. I'm this up because
we're talking about climate change, and I think this could
be one of the solutions. Is and and also there's
so many new fashion implications. If everyone always has a
giant hose wrapped around their legs for that, they can
like unplug you know, it's it's yeah, it's it's I mean,
(15:39):
it's good. Look, I could get messy. I'm not sure
it's the chicest choice. But can I just say that
people don't wash their hands enough already. Yeah, but you
wouldn't have to wash your hands if you're just plugging
a hose into a Yes, but that's sterile. So you
wash your hands after you get dressed every morning because
you have to deal what you're dealing with the tubes
and stuff. You never attempt to take off. You can
(16:01):
never take the thing or is it just like it's
such a comfortable garment. It's so comfortable you wouldn't you
wouldn't want to take it off? Why why would you?
Why would you start having pants with a third tiny
leg for a tiny leg for the hose? Um, we
almost have to take an ad BRAINK. We haven't talked
(16:21):
about we are going to you know, we talked about
climate change a lot last week. Um, and you know what,
I have a feeling that we're going to start talking
about climate change a lot of weeks. And I'm fine
with that. If this becomes a climate change focus podcast,
I'll be fine with that because it's very important. Yeah,
(16:42):
and what we can fix all of our problems with
with p tubes? Yes, all right, speaking of large amounts
of urine, Joe Biden's popularity is that lower than it's
high water Mark, but maybe not. It's a gonna talk
about Poland right now. No, No, it actually yeah, no,
(17:04):
it's it's most it's pretty partisan, that said most sources.
It's not really changed much since he took office. There's
been so um we wanted to kind of analyze. You know,
we have our own our own bubble here and the
three of us disagree on things, but we're all pretty
much in accordance that Joe Biden. Yeah, it's useful to
(17:29):
kind of like, okay, but how to like how to
like regular people like hows like the like just folks. Yeah,
what is in general? How is he doing in the
eyes of people? Um? And it seems like broadly speaking, fine. Um.
I found some analyzes of like the most recent dozen
or so presidents and he's kind of in the middle
(17:51):
of the pack. Um, he's doing better than like four
recent presidents were, uh, and worse than eight or nine
recent presidents were. Um, which is like yeah again and
again when I say recent, we're still talking about guys
like thirty four years ago. So obviously like it was
easy because to get higher highs um. Yeah, at the
(18:13):
hundred and sixty six day point in their presidencies, he's
beating Donald Trump, Gerald Ford, Bill Clinton, and by a
narrow margin George W. Bush, which is meaningful because two
of those were one term presidents and two of those
were two term presidents. The other nine polling era presidents
are all beating him. Um, but what's how would they
have done if they've been around with Twitter? Yeah? Because
(18:36):
the and this is this, this particular analysis I found
was on Bloomberg. Other people have reported on the same
basic idea. But um, every previous president besides Trump either
started their presidency above six approval or had spiked to
that point to that level at some point by now. Um,
and they all had a much larger range of variants
in the polls than we've seen. Like Ronald Reagan by
(18:58):
this point in his presidency had experienced a seventeen percent
jump in popularity and a ten percent drop, and Biden
hasn't experienced anything close to either of those. Um, when
we talk about this, it's I think it's important. I mean,
just the nature of the world is so different in
our country, and I increasingly don't see how we break
(19:20):
out of this pretty pretty consistent divide Stacistically. Yeah, this
head scratcher of a year Um, it's just we're so entrenched.
We're so entrenched in our Yeah. I mean, that's one
of the big lessons. There was this you talk about.
(19:42):
Democrats would talk a lot about like if before the election,
like if Biden gets in, you know, we're gonna have
this big blue wave and it's going to lead to
this era of good feelings where Americans because Trump was
so bad, everyone's so gonna be so grateful to have
an adult back in office, and we're gonna we're gonna
it's gonna be like this wing in nineties again or whatever.
I don't know it's going to be in or the
(20:03):
fifty whatever, it's gonna be like Americans are all going
to get back on the same page. And obviously that
was never had any chance of happening. Um. But I
think part of why I don't think we'll never see
a sea shift in politics. I don't think we're stuck
at this kind of like fifty two forty six or
whatever kind of divide um. What's actually more like fifty
(20:23):
one fifty two to like two like that. That that's
kind of where Um has the aggregate of all the
polls right now Biden uh support against which is hasn't
has changed, has narrowed somewhat against Biden's favor since he
took office, but also has narrowed by a small enough
(20:43):
margin that it could be within the margin of air,
like it's possible his his Literally, there's been no change,
and it's just like pulling funk nous um. But you
know what has changed a lot in a positive way.
Raytheon's internal documents on critical race theory Raytheon Raytheon has
(21:03):
spent a lot of time thinking about critical race theory, Katie,
Because here's the thing about Raytheon. They care. They care
about making sure their employees feel valued, and they care
about making sure that they get the maximum blast radius
out of a two point four kilogram hexagen charge when
it detonates in the middle of a yet many school bus.
Ray Beyond just cares, and that's what makes them so exceptional.
(21:27):
So that they can help defund the police. Ray what
defund the police because every money that goes towards a
cop isn't going to one of our new oxygen powered
hell fire missiles. Defund the police, increase the military. That's
their stance. Um, we'll be right back together everything. We're
(22:00):
back when I finished talking about polling before we move on,
because I'm just yeah, uh, trying to get trying to
get a handle on things. So um, one of the
things that's kind of interesting about or like, broadly speaking,
a significant majority of Americans think he's done a pretty
(22:22):
good job on the coronavirus, like looks like to be
around like in the sixty percent range, and even um,
a sizeable chunk like a third of Republicans agree with that.
One of the things that's interesting about that to me
is that his actual support among Republicans is much lower.
It's about eight percent, which does say that like about
a third of Republicans are And when I say this,
(22:43):
I'm not saying that Biden has actually done a particularly
good job on the coronavirus, not saying like that's not
the point of making It does suggest that a decent
chunk of Republicans are willing to be uh like, aren't
haven't drank the whole Democrats are literally communists trying to
murder us kool aid um, which I found optimistic but
(23:04):
is also pessimistic because it shows that I don't know,
a lot more Republicans maybe came it's something, but it's
not good. It's not good. It's complex because there are
I don't know how many of the Republicans who don't
support his coronavirus handling the actually have reasonable cases. Again,
because there's very reasonable criticisms of his handling of coronavirus,
including opening schools too early, like lack of caution about variants,
(23:27):
like there's a bunch of things you can you can
go after him on. Um. So, I don't know how
many Republicans are like, well, I don't approve of his
handling of the coronavirus because of these very real flaws
with it as opposed to have any I don't approve
of his handle of the coronavirus because he's trying to
put chips in my children because yeahband it with China
(23:48):
to get Bauchi a bunch of money or something. So
that does that does kind of make it difficult to
take more of a lesson out of that. Um. Yes, No,
I don't have much to add. I was debating whether
they're adding that it is problematic this divide right now
in terms of our vaccinations, you know, we're not fully
(24:09):
vaccinating about half of the country's is not a percentage
of that plans to at some point, um, but a
large junk of that are not going to. And uh,
we don't don't talk about the delta variant, but it
about the lambda variant. Yeah, any variant. But it's it's hard,
(24:30):
it's it's this weird mix of trying that to like
fearmonger about the variants, because by god, at this point,
freaking out about them isn't gonna help anybody. But also
like I don't know what nobody really does, like because
viruses can mutate in a variety of ways so well,
and it is scary that they're continuing to mutate and
that we won't get a handle on it. That because
(24:50):
people won't get vaccinated. You know, I think that the
majority of our listeners are fully vaccinated at this point.
I think you don't have to be afraid or your
own life. Um. There are lots of cases of people
getting it even though they're vaccinated, but they get it mildly. Um,
not lots, but I've heard any currently of several from friends, UM,
(25:13):
but they don't get it hard. But but the thing
that the missing pieces is you're probably not um spreading
it widely if you are vaccinated and you get it
and you don't know, but it's potential. And the people
that are most affected, of course, are those that are unvaccinated.
But also let's think about our hospitals, especially in regions
(25:33):
where there's such a high percentage of people that are unvaccinated.
This is a continuing nightmare that then goes on to
affect everybody else's access to healthcare. So small tangent um
for me to say, as everybody's weighing their own personal
decisions in your own communities about whether to wear masks, okay, sorry,
yep um, And it's like you know, um, I don't
(25:57):
know what to say about like the like so much
of our polarization problem. Is this the ship we were
talking about last time, right, It's it's in a lot
of ways our most fundamental failure of infrastructure, the the
the worst infrastructure problem we have isn't bridges, that isn't power,
It isn't um electricity. It's failures of of mental infrastructure.
It's failures to adequately educate people to make good decisions
(26:21):
to avoid being influenced by fucking conmon and grifters, and
its failures too um prepare people to make the kind
of decisions that citizens in a democratic society need to
be able to make with with a reasonable amount of competence.
If we're going to continue to have a democratic society
that doesn't slide into authoritarianism and UM, the vaccine issue
(26:43):
should be the least controversial thing, like in a in
a healthy, unhealthy democracy, we would all be on the
same page about vaccines, would be screaming at each other
about the gold standard of Benghazi or whatever. UM. But
but we're we're not even We're not even as health
as we were during two thousand twelve when we were
screaming at each other over Benghazi and whether or not
(27:05):
Barack Obama had a valid birth certificate UM, which doesn't
bode well. But I don't know. I don't want to
I don't want to lay in on that too much.
In terms of other things that there's that were polar
that we're not polarized about. UM. Vast majority of Americans
about is strong majorities approve of biden Is handling of
the coronavirus, disapprove of his handling of the border, and
(27:28):
that does seem to be for very split reasons right
across the board. The border is bad for Biden Okay,
got there, water bad, Biden better can't grow across the border.
A lot of desperate people anyways. Yeah, same. I don't
(27:54):
know if you're gonna get to this. There's a poll
about the views of Americans views on crime. Yeah, the
quote rise of crime. I feel like we're we'll talk
about this more in depth in the future. But one
I found it interesting is that Americans seeing crime as
a very serious problem in America is in an all
(28:15):
time uh so, like twenty year high. Um. That's not
to say that crime is at a twenty year high,
sure not, It's sure not. But the perception, the view
is that we're it's the concern is there, and maybe
the media has something to do with that, and they're
they're reporting over the past even just the past few weeks,
fueling it. Who knows. But uh, I found this interesting
(28:38):
because along with the poll was this little bit of information.
Seventy say that violent crime would be reduced by increasing
funding to build economic opportunities and poor communities. Now see
that's good news because it would be yeah, um, it's
uh and even say the same about using social workers
(29:00):
to help police. A few situations with people having emotional
problems um, again, we get to this. This is kind
of a similar issue with guns, where if you actually
look at a lot of the policies that would help,
people don't disagree about, but when it comes to the
way the issue is framed, yes, they do. Because when
it comes the way this issue is framed, it's not
(29:21):
crime has risen. People are very concerned about it, and
they support economic remedies and more social workers and communities.
It's crime has risen, let's give the cops more guns,
like because the people who are framing it that way
in the media are the people who have got everyone scared.
Even though while there's things to be concerned about. Anytime
you see violent crime rises the way it has in
(29:41):
a lot of of course, it's reasonable for people to
be concerned, not as concerned as they are because the
rise is not as bad as people think it is.
Because media has overhyped this to be some sort of
gigantic seventies style crime wave when it's not. It's just
not the viral video of the target. They want people
(30:02):
stealing from targets. People people want the easy thing of
treating the symptom, not the disease. It's not easy. You're
not treating the symptom by giving money to the police.
But they think it even indoctrinated to think that that's
the solution, and you're not thinking about the fact that
that doesn't solve shit and that the problems are getting
worse because we're not doing anything about the problems. Of
(30:26):
wants that to be once cops to be the solution
because they're the extent of their research on it is
oh crime is ers and let's go on to write
along with a cop and film it because that will
make that will make good for the reason they just
print any police statement as like fact more or less
straphers for the police. Um. I we talk a lot
(30:47):
about how much a problem it is that like there's
no shared concept of reality. But like I most people
absolutely should hate the press. Um because nationwide they're not
good at their job. Um yeah, no, possibly failed, and
nationwide they're not on our side. It's great there are this,
I mean the reason this uh even this uh pole
(31:09):
got my radars because uh if you see it. Ted
Ted craz uh quote tweeted the post from ABC News
and his his little comment was, oh, but sure, we
gotta defund the police because the first tweet is just
in the number of Americans seeing crime is an extremely
serious problem the United States more than twenty year high.
(31:29):
Joe Biden is underwater and trust to handle it according
to new poll. That's the tweet. Uh, there's no context
about like, by the way, it's not like the crime
isn't twenty year high or anything like that. It's just
the people. Um that's the first tweet. The follow up
tweet was about how se think that uh we should
actually like just like increase funding in communities, in poor communities,
(31:51):
uh and have social workers, uh deal with a lot
of these problems. Um So the framing of this by
the media allows weasels like Ted Cruz to quote tweet
this thing and say, see, but the Democrats want to
defund the police, even though the follow up tweet literally
has those measures as being extremely popular. Um So, I guess, yeah,
(32:15):
I'm just I guess I'm just like frustratingly agreeing with you.
They suck. They're awful. Yeah, they're terrible at this, and
you know what it is on purpose, Like they've always
been terrible. And this is like the complexity when we
talk about like the issue of the death of truth.
We're not when I said, talk about the death of truth.
I'm talking about the death of objective truth that has
remained unchanged. I' talking about the death of a widely
(32:37):
agreed upon standard of truth. Which doesn't mean people still
didn't buy into bullshit. It's just more people bought into
the same bullshit. Because you can read a lot about,
for example, the ways in which the CIA would manufacture
consent for US interventions in Latin America. Um, the ways
that like during all the press who were trying to
cover the invasion of Panama and just went with the military,
(32:59):
and the military didn't let them into the country and
made up reasons for their to be delays, so they
got in there late and they didn't get to see
any of the war crimes, and almost nobody realized what
had gone on. And you know, like or how you
know we would when we overthrew the government of Guatemala.
They were just you know, they had the CIA operat
guys like Dullus, had their pet journalists who they reached
out to to write the stories that made it look like, no,
(33:20):
this is a victory and the cause of liberty, and
most Americans are like, yeah, sure, whatever, Um, that's still
a problem. Was a problem that like people bought into
lies than into an extent, the fracturing of the concept
of truth is because more people have in realistic understanding
of what is actually happening. But it's still a problem
that are under the nationwider conception of reality is so divergent.
(33:42):
And that's kind of a lot to hold in your head, right,
both that it's a problem that truth is fractured and
that when truth was more unified, it made it very
easy for our government to get people on board with
horrific things. Both of those things are true at once.
And I don't have like a simple solution to how
to what. Yeah, like it's not a it's not a
simple issue. It's it's not as easy as if we
just had another Walter Cronkite, because Walter Cronkite was the
(34:04):
engine of a fair amount of disinformation himself. Yeah, we've
never done it good. No, it's never been good. Like
it's the same thing about like when we talk about
good governance, that's not a thing that's existed. Um, you
have had some countries and you still have some countries
in Europe who were very successful at extracting enough wealth
(34:25):
out of the rest of the world and continue to
be successful enough at that that they provide well to
the people who live within their borders. Like Canada um
reasonably good at that compared to the United States. But
you don't have good governance because I would argue good
governments governance means not exploiting huge numbers of people. But
I would accept that argument anyway. That people and let's roll. Yeah, yeah, goodness,
(34:53):
you're doing great. That checks out. Yeah. I I don't
know how we moved through this period of time. Maybe
it's with Matthew McConaughey platitudes, but I doubt it. It
would be funny if you just fixed everything, if that
was what did it just takes his shirt off and
(35:14):
starts talking about like carbon capture, just fucking his way
into like regenerating UH forests in order to trap more carbons.
Change the whole fucking system. Like every month, there's some
way that everybody that we vote on major legislation and
then our senators or I don't know, I don't know.
(35:35):
I want to have the opportunity to vote for Medicare
for all. It would be an infrastructure I want. I
want to say on that you know, you know, there's
elements of that system that I think would be better.
There's elements of that system that I think would be
worse because it's it's also the level of disinformation is
frightening when you consider what if you could freak out
enough Americans to like ban a vaccine because that week
(35:58):
the media cycle, Like, there's a lot of really uh
the way. That's why I I tend to like when
I talk about being an anarchist for me, because there's
a bunch of things That means. It doesn't mean I
have like a system that I want people to adopt,
or I have a suggestion for the way it all
could work. It means that when I look at problems
in society, the solutions I tend to angle towards are
(36:19):
ones that devolve structures of power and hierarchy. Um because
I think much more often than not that tends to
make problems like better. And when you reduce the power
of organizations, the ability of organizations to exert power over individuals,
when you reduce the power the power of groups of
people to exert power, when you reduce the hierarchies that exist,
(36:42):
you reduce the places that like for example, sociopaths can
hide and exert damage. You can reduce the damage that
a group group of angry people can be convinced to
do by a media mogul. So that that tends to
be where I land in terms of like what is
going to get out of this? Get us out of this?
It's it's devolved power relations because I I'm willing to
(37:03):
admit that, like, yeah, maybe the solution will be there's
so there's there's a book Garrison I've been going through
for through for a new series we're talking about that
kind of goes over the broadly speaking, what are the
possible systems that could have developed that would that would
lead to action on climate change? And there's like kind
of they're not positive or negative, they're just different systems.
(37:26):
Depending on your attitude, they'd be better. One of them
is climate Leviathan is the term they use, which is
a massive kind of like a much more effective UN
style international organization based around kind of liberal attitudes towards
how do you fix this stuff gas taxes and like
restrictions on what people can do and like a very
top down we have to deal with these problems attitude.
(37:49):
There's kind of a more fascist style thing which is,
which is basically like, fuck fixing the problem, Let's hoard
resources for our block of people and screw everyone else.
Over there's a more. And yeah, there's a more. I
mean both both the Climate Leviathan and that our capitalist
but I like the name Climate Leviathan. Yeah, and and
(38:09):
it's it's the kind of thing where like some I'm
sure there's people listening to say, yeah, that's what we need.
I can't say that wouldn't work because nothing, no one
knows what's going to work. That one scares me, doesn't
scare me as much as kind of the more fascist thing.
And then there's like the one that what they call
climate MAU, which is this idea of like more based
around particularly like Asian style socialist mass movement kind of
(38:31):
responses to the problem of climate change that are are
extremely centralized, um but in a much less you know,
it's just kind of a different, different take on sort
of the Climate Leviathan style. And then you have I
can tell you right now, Climate MAO isn't going to
go over for most of the world. Well no, I mean,
but it it it's like this isn't what people would
(38:52):
call it. These are they're kind of trying to quit
category cheeky Robert Climate Leviathan is basically the idea of like, okay,
if if the response is largely organized by the United
States and Western kind of block nations, this is the
kind of thing they would probably try to do, based
on the current based on the way NATO works, based
on with the EU works climate MAO is kind of
assuming okay, if China is successful in getting a large
(39:14):
block of countries together, these are the ways in which,
based on the ways they're already approaching the problem of
climate change, this is the way they would probably try
to go for it. And then you know, there's the
option I think they call it Option X, which is
much more decentralized, um and much less and much more
based on kind of fundamentally changing the way we we
order our our society so that you can't have some
(39:37):
of these massive, overarching international structures that make the kind
of damage that we're doing to our climate possible. UM.
I don't know. I don't want to get into this
too much because I'm still trying to wrap my head
around it. But a whole new show on this, Yeah,
I don't know, there's who knows what's gonna fucking work
or what's going to get tried? But anyway, but I
(39:59):
know what's going to happened right now. It's another add
a break together everything. We're back. We are back. News
(40:20):
just dropped that North America has lost three billion birds
in fifty years. No, it's probably fine, perfect transition to
talking about some more of the climate change disasters we're
seeing bad bad news. Um yeah. Any who, the oceans
on fire at times in the last few days. Yeah yeah.
(40:46):
This one's in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. The fire began I
guess in an underwater pipeline that connects to um A
platform UH p x is KHU malub zapp oil development UM.
Apparently the fire was due to a gas pipeline rupture
(41:10):
um UH and was brought under control using water pumps
and hoses for about five hours. UM. This is fun.
Angel Carrizalez, who is the executive director of Mexico's Oil
Safety Regulatory Agency, said that the incident UH did not
generate any spill, but experts are saying, I don't know
(41:33):
about that. Well, they're saying, we're pretty sure there wasn't
a spill because it was all on so much fire
like they're saying that the best case scenarios that the
fire contains the oil from going too far. But like
the fact that the ocean is on fire means that
their ship in the ocean causing it to be on
(41:56):
fire that shouldn't be in the ocean. I mean, like
a flaming mo cocktail or whatever. But you've got to
give a shout out to the pr person who was like, wait, wait, wait,
it's not a spill because it all burned up up
its self. Closing loop. Yeah, this is from the CNN.
(42:20):
I'm not sure. Um. Simon George a professor of organic
geochemistry at McQuary University and sounds made up tell seen
it that for such a dramatic and sustained flame to
persist on the ocean, a continuous stream of natural gas
must have been making its way to the surface from
the leak. Um. So yeah, that's what's going on there.
(42:43):
I could have guessed that, I was the professor of
organic geochemistry, I could have guessed that too, Um. And
then there was I think, looking at the ocean fire,
you go, it probably got a lot of ship in
the ocean, didn't they. Yeah, that was my guess. All
I saw was the seemingly c g I video of
(43:04):
the portal. The hell like two things that don't belong together.
You know, Um, I'm I'm watching my hero academian fire
and you have fire and you've got water, and I think,
you know, we need to think about the collective nature
of of nature itself. Fires in water, Yeah, I mean,
(43:29):
it's it is interesting. Some people have noted this that
like in the what it was, it was like the
sixties and seventies thing. It might start in the fifties,
but like the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland lit on fire
like so many times, Like that fucking river kept catching
on fire. It was like sometimes the fires would be
like the flames would be like five stories tall. Like
the river was very flammable. And it was a big
(43:51):
reason why the e p A was created because Americans
at that point, again talking about like a shared concept
of reality, We're all like, oh, it's pretty bad if
a river keeps catching on I we should probably do
something about this. We should look into this. But there's
also arguments that because of how effective the EPA was
cleaning at cleaning up kind of the cosmetic issues of
(44:11):
of of like littering and stuff. How they were able
to pretty things up and reduce the amount of obvious
like faccory. It actually contributed to us not notice or
to people being able to ignore climate change because there
was less flaming rivers. That's interesting and true. Yeah, Uh,
that river caught fire last year. Oh oh, Cleveland's back
(44:35):
just like America. Joe Biden's doing it all right, burning
back better, burn bad. Someone needs to do like a
Cleveland Chamber of conversation, but speaking about oil gas and
(44:55):
our previous conversations about infrastructure, regular aation, et cetera. This
X on Mobile story, did you guys read about this?
This is fun? Just in case you guys don't know. Um,
Greenpeace Uh pretended uh to be interviewing lobbyists, I guess,
(45:18):
and got Keith McCoy, who is a senior X on
Mobile lobbyists unaffiliated with mobile. They got him on a
zoom interview meeting and recorded it, recorded him saying all
the quiet parts out loud about X on Mobile and
(45:39):
what they've been doing with climate change. Um and uh,
then they released it to Channel four News and I
just before we talk about it. It's just that was
so fucking easy and so fucking dumb. You got duped
so easily pieces done in a while that I thought
was pretty fucking based. The thing is. The thing is, though,
(46:02):
like it's wild and like I can't believe you said
all that stuff, and they got it so easy. They
kind of know that there are no consequences for their actions.
I mean, there are long term consequences on the planet
in their future generations, but like in terms of them,
like it doesn't matter to them. There's no political will
to make any of them pay the price that they
(46:23):
are pay for this because specifically of what they say,
he says speaking, he lays it out, Okay, I mean
he specifically talks about you know how he they lobby Um,
you know, have lobbied, lobbied against the change climate change
measures in Biden's infrastructure bill. Um you know how early
(46:47):
on they pushed back against climate change by using third parties. Um,
you know, and and and how they you know, keep
senators in their pocket. This this right here, um? Is
it in a nutshell? Mr McCoy said, when you have
an opportunity to talk to a member of Cross of Congress,
I liken it to fishing. Right, you know, you have
bait you throw that bait out and they say, oh,
(47:08):
you want to talk about infrastructure. Yeah, and then you
start to reel them in and you start to have
those conversations about federal leasing programs, you start to have
those conversations about carbon tax. You know, it's all these
opportunities that you use and to use the phishinging allergy again,
you kind of reel them in. I make sure I
get them the right information and they need so they
look good and then they help me out there a
captive audience. They know they need you and I need them. There.
(47:31):
It is there, it is. That's why nothing matters, That's
why I want change. Yeah, and it's it's it's awesome.
There's another great point in that. Uh, and I'm just
gonna keep reading the quote. Mr McCoy appears to suggest
that Exon Mobiles book support for a carbon tax is
underpinned by the conviction then it will never happen, allowing
the company to support it in order to appear green.
He said, I will tell you that there is not
(47:52):
an appetite for a carbon tax. It is a nonstarter.
Nobody is going to propose attacks on all Americans, and
the cynical side of me says, yeah, we kind of
know that, but it gives us a talking point. We
can say, well, what is x on mobile for? Well,
we're for a carbon tax. Yeah, it's a green its
screen x on commercials BP diversity, like all the should
they do so that they don't have to address things,
(48:13):
And it's just wild to hear it's rad. I kept
thinking reading this article about I went on a little
bit of a a little bit of like a rabbit
hole this weekend reading about Tolken's views on Jared Tolkien,
like the Lord of the Rings case views on politics,
because he was like he identified as it self identified
as an aner Kyle token. Sorry, no, not not, I
(48:35):
don't even is that a real person? Okay, thank you.
But he talked a bit about there was there was
a line where he was in a letter he wrote
to his son where he was talking about like the
wonderful trend of people bombing factories and power stations and
saying like, I hope it continues, but I also hope
that it's seen by a majority of people as patriotic,
because if most people don't think it's rad, then it's
(48:58):
not going to work. Right. Most people have to agree,
like Yeah, it's fucking cool to blow up factories and
oil pipelines, and they don't right now, And it would
be rad if most people looked at somebody damaging oil
company infrastructure and went based. But instead they'll go no,
that person should get a thirty five year terrorism enhancement
on their sentence and die in a cell because they
(49:19):
attempted to stop the environment from dying. Can I ask
a question, Yeah, what does based mean? It means like cool,
but in a sense of like it's ideologically sound as well.
It's used on all sides, but it means like not
just like not just like rad, but like rad in
a way that is good politics, I guess would be
(49:40):
like my my best way of describing it correct, it's no, Um,
it's honestly like it's it's like you're just so silly.
It's like an update. It's like it's kind of like
woke was years ago. Yes, Like it's just like oh
that where the way this was kind of stolen from fascists, Katie,
(50:05):
that's different place it started, but it first gained like
real currency online among like the alt right and stuff.
But it's just a fun thing to say. So everybody
says based. Now it's like pilled. Yeah, yeah, I'll start
I'll start trying to use it. Yeah, I'm going to
work it in very effortlessly. Clearly, that's the based choice.
(50:28):
That's the base choice. It's based to use, always based
to use basse because a lot of anyway, whatever, that's
let's move on. So it's like it's like Melania says,
be based. Uh yeah, this is uh so frustrating and
like it's the kind of thing like you know, their
documents from Exxon decades ago, they knew about it, they
(50:53):
denied it. They did their own quote science, um to
disprove it. There's a quote another quote from this fucking guy. Um.
Did we aggressively fight against some of the science, Yes?
Did we hide our science absolutely not. Did we join
some of these shadow groups to work against some of
the early efforts, Yes, that's true. But there's nothing there's
(51:15):
nothing illegal about it, he says. It's a lot during
the during the meeting. There's not illegal. There's nothing illegal
about it. Which maybe if you keep having to say that,
maybe that indicates that you're like morally like questionable, like
maybe like you feel like you're you're ethically doing something bad.
But you're justifying it because it's not illegal. Um and uh,
(51:37):
I just find it so interesting that not interesting. Just
like obvious, we all know that there's no political will
to do these things. We all know that. Uh, they
do too, and they use it to their advantage a
big part of the reason. There's a big um. I
would like to give a shout out to our our boy,
Joe Mansion for making the list, making the top of
(52:00):
the list of of folks in Congress that Mr McCoy
cited as being very very helpful to x on mobile
uh and their anti climate cinema cause along with cinema
of course. Um, but I believe was it. Yeah, cinema
your states on fire? Yeah, fuck you, Mr McCoy, funck
(52:25):
them all. I wanted to mention Mansion because McCoy described
him as the kingmaker speaks to his office on a
weekly basis. I bet Joe Mansion masturbated when he heard that. Yeah, yeah,
that's what it sounds like, right. Yeah. He wishes he
had one of those tube things so he could just
(52:46):
plug it into the Capitol Hill and it would suck
his go go to the go to the Tesla charging
point and just drop off your comb his come, which
is the consistency of you know that kind of like
spongey Ethiopian bread, really tasty stuff if you were to
joke that in buttermilk and then leave it out in
like park it in a black car in the sun
(53:07):
during a heat wave and give it about eight hours
like yeasty, yeah, yeasty, but like yeah, yeah, very yeasty
and modeled and and but also like thick, like turgid,
like a turgid mass of come. That's Joe Man. I
can't believe the person I've become in the year and
a half of recording this show with you guys that
(53:28):
I don't even flinch at this. What I thought was
funny is when you said become Cody laughed and I
saw it. You can't do that, I can explain. Is
that in for us today? Is that the note we need.
Let's let's end on a happy note and talk about
(53:50):
Patriot Front showing up in Philly because every now and
then we get to get a nice story to write,
which is honey. So the is it is you are
eat income when you put honey in your in your tea,
and if you're a cop and you're getting your tea
from a restaurant. There's actual coming they put in there,
(54:12):
but also a come in your copy is the least
of your concerns. All right, Fascists embarrassed themselves. They just
can't stop. They love they love being won't stop. So
there's this group Patriot Front, which is like their Nazis.
There's they will The thing that they've started doing is
(54:33):
because Charlotte's feel some of these like especially some of
their like organizational folks were at seventeen unit rate in
Charlotte'sville and that didn't end well in the long run
for them. Um, but they want to keep doing stuff.
So they like they put the stickers all over the
place that are like not not stolen, conquered about like
you know, indigenous lands and stuff. And though you know,
they try like try to try to pill Americans with
(54:55):
stuff that's very fashy but not not Nazi explicitly, like
that's kind of their thing. They're not gonna where's way
of swastika, but they're they're they're doing the same thing.
It's like like fashy like Western chauvinism kind of obfusiating,
like they're what they're saying harder in the fascism than
the Proud Boys, which is why they're not as as big.
But one of the things they've been doing lately is
they've been organizing these things that kind of seem like
(55:16):
flash administrations but aren't where the bus everyone that they
can get into a city and do like a march,
that they won't there won't be any pr ahead of time.
So suddenly just like a hundred of these dudes with
shields and banners and masks, all dressed the same, we'll
be marching through and sometimes they'll throw off smoke bombs
to make it look eerie, will like march through DC
or something. They decided to do that in Philly, and
(55:39):
none of them were from Philly as best as we
could tell. No Ladelphia famously, you know we're about Philadelphia.
When the Eagles won the Super Bowl, because it was
a chance that the Eagles would win. Prior to the
game concluding, the police put lube on all of the
light traffic lights and and like street lights and stuff
(56:01):
in a huge chunk of the city. Because something that
Philadelphians do whenever a good or a bad thing happens
is just spontaneously take to the streets to tear down
all of the light bulbs. That's just how Philly likes
to play. It's in the bylaws. They got it, like
what we are. All of that was useless because within
(56:22):
like an hour of the game ending, the cops had retreated.
They just left where the crowd was because like, there's
no controlling these people. There's nothing we can do to
handle this crowd, and people sure enough found a way
through sheer massive people to tear down a bunch of
light bulbs. Like that's what Philly does on a good
day when they're happy. I mean, that's a story of resilience.
(56:44):
A Philly got angry and like, but when I say Philly,
like four or five dudes, because this was a flash thing, right,
there was no time, right, It's not like yeah, like
the city didn't descend on them. It was like five Philly.
It was just like four or five guys who happened
to be hanging out on July three and realized, like,
those guys are fucking Nazis and just started bumbling and
(57:10):
they broke and ran and ran back to the fucking
writer truck that they were all driving in, and they
got caught by the cops because they were all illegally
writing in the back of a box truck, had to
like sit down on the ground and get photographed while
the cops like sited them. It was extremely funny, um,
(57:31):
very very funny. Nobody was arrested because no crimes were committed.
They were just like even the cops were like, it
kind of seems like you should have been in Philly.
Huh oh, that's a heartwarming tail God. I love Philly
great great, Probably will never go there again, but I
(57:53):
I appreciate their their hutzpah. All right, guys, I hope
you enjoyed that light note and to this episode. I
hope you enjoyed the whole dang thing. You know, that's
what we're here for, especially talking about Joe Manion. You
know what, if you're an artist, you're a graphic designer,
(58:14):
right if you're if you're I don't know if Darian
Aronofski is listening film Joe Mansions Come, you know you
can make your own. We gave you the recipe. Yeah, yeah,
just make it make it happen people. It's like a
like a sour dough star like, Yeah, Cronenberg would be
(58:35):
the right guy to direct Joe Mansions Come. A ninety
minute movie, Russell back to Yeah, because he's the right
guy to confront such a monster. If there's one thing
I know about Kurt Will, he'd be willing to dive
into it and explode it from the inside. Yeah, Yeah,
he would. He's the only hero. He can save us
(58:56):
from that losing me alright, well, bye bye, so dumb everything,
So dumb man, It's not again. I tried. Daniel. Worst
Year Ever is a production of I Heart Radio. For
(59:17):
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
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