Our Relationship with Communism Ft Pale

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Yo, what's up, weirdos. Hey, yo, me. Shit. I got me a little song rode the lights alone. We're about to chop it up with Abigail on the Manic Pixie weirdo podcast, a safe space for weirdos of all shapes, sizes, colors and creeds to relax and speak their piece. So grab a glass of wine and grass the chief as I get off the mic, so the main word Oh can speak. Peace, peace. Got it?

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What is up weirdos, you're listening to the Manic Pixie weirdo. I'm Abigail, your host. And this is the podcast where we talk about all the different kinds of relationships that we have in our lives. But first, let's break for Ned. What is it for you guys, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about our sponsor for this episode newsleave. It's an audio app for iOS and Android where they basically take articles from all over the world, and all the trending topics that are on the web at any given moment. And it reads them to you and like a natural voice like a human being would it's basically the first time of in the history of the internet where the entire web becomes listenable. It's really cool. You guys, they have all different kinds of articles from all different kinds of topics that you can like stop scrolling, and start listening, which I really love. You can follow all that you know, any topic, all the topics, whatever topic you want to talk about, or listen about from sports science, Bitcoin, you know, even the Kardashians, like everybody, they have all the latest articles, and it reads them to you. So it's super easy. They also have podcasts, which is why I'm talking to you guys about it, because our podcast, along with podcasts from over 50 Other countries are on the app. So that's really, really cool. You can start listening there as well, it can download and use newsleave for free right now at www dot newsleave dot N E or you can do you can use this link in the description. And when you use the promo code P 1x. One E P zero, d c a s t that will give you a free month of premium subscription to newsletters. So go check it out you guys. And thank you so much to newsleave for sponsoring this episode. And we're back. And this week, we are joined by pale horse who I found through Twitter and I were talking about our relationship with communism. But first go ahead and say hi, tell everybody a little bit about yourself and where they can find you. Hello, all the wonderful people listening. My name is pale, pale horse. You can find me on Twitter at the underscore pale underscore horse with a zero instead of a no.

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I am a 35 year old and machinist,

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hardworking dad,

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partner and

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just your everyday normal American except that I am a communist.

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A little bit of a pariah in the political sense in the United States. But I I stand by my convictions. That's awesome. That's really good. That's why I want to talk to you. Because but first I kind of like to go ahead and there is I think, I don't know if confusion is the right word. But it does seem like there's a lot of confusion to me around what communism actually is. So could you kind of explain that and like what like what it truly is at its core? What like what are its values, its beliefs, what is what is it? So communism, in the mainstream sense at this point in history, is attributed mostly to the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. So dating back to the mid to late 1800s into the early 1900s. It's a worker and marginalized community centered form of governance that is designed to put the power of basically where the capital holders are today, your business, your big business owners, your your moguls, your corporations, taking that power and bringing it back down to the people who do all the actual labor. So that is, in essence, what it what it really truly honestly is, but it is also in its more broad sense, a return of society to a system that has been in place for centuries.

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The name, community isn't the word communism, it's about. It's more about establishing community and letting communities do the work. Instead of having it be

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an individualistic drive, putting the weight of the world on an individual shoulders instead we spread it out amongst the community for everybody to work together to achieve and accomplish goals.

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Oh, okay. So

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what is that? Like? Ideally? What does that look like? In like in in a, I guess, like in a controlled environment? What would that look like?

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sake. So if we want to talk about a perfect world, which we all know, we don't live in a perfect world, but in a perfect world, what that would look like would be a direct democracy. What we have in the United States right now is something called a representational democracy. By by the paper, we are a constitutional republic, that is run in a democratic way. So we use democracy, our votes as individuals, to pick representatives that make the legislation and put the legislation into the books for all of us to follow. So that that's our system of government as we have it now. What, what communism would do would be to eliminate that middleman. So instead of having this representational democracy, where we have individuals who are imperfect and corrupt, it can be corrupted and can be problematic, instead of having that it's putting us directly into that position of power. So we, you know, smaller sections of community can get together to make decisions as to what is and is not allowed, or how we allocate funds that we have together as a community.

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In essence, the goal, the end goal of all of it, is to wither away the proverbial state that we have now and institute a classless so having no divide between classes of individuals, everybody's kind of on the same sphere of existence. And egalitarian society. So egalitarian ism is

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blank, and

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it's okay.

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It's Saturday night. Yeah.

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So well, that actually sounds like I mean,

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okay. I don't know how to say it. But like, it sounds really good.

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Like on paper, kind of a thing? Yes, it does. And that's like, it's really beautiful. Like, it really is. And it sounds like really great on paper, I guess, I get, like, one of the big criticisms of it from where I am sitting, I guess is, how do you take that great idea off of paper and put it into like something like reality.

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It's a very difficult task, and we see it having been tried, in many countries throughout the world,

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the overall prevailing problem that we run into is that capitalism, which is the main economic system that is used in the largest countries are on our planet at this point, is extremely prejudiced towards something like communism, because communism is not only a political system, it is also an economic system, it is a means for us to eliminate the need for a monetary system. So instead of so instead of like, the United States is a fiat currency, right? It is our currency, the government prints it, they create it, they are, they have the sole ability to basically tell where it's going to go.

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And then once it goes out into the general public, then it's up to the people as to where it goes. But under a communist society, we're trying to eliminate that, in general, where the resources that we have are what dictate value, and the labor that one puts out, is also a value. And human life in general is also a value. So your existence in general, just by being alive, you have value.

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Right? Yeah. So in essence, you know what, as a communist, my personal belief is that if you are a live, if you are a human being, you deserve to have food on the table, you deserve to have a roof over your head. You deserve to have the right as a human being to live and make choices as you see fit. If you're not hurting anybody else. There's no reason for us to come after you. Well, yeah.

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I like I like what was said before it sounds perfect on paper.

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It sounds utopian. And that's something that gets thrown at us a lot as communists.

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You know, from being inside the Twitter spaces, it's the small gatherings that happen on Twitter app. It's public speaking forums, often often were called utopian, that we are grasping at giving everybody ponies and this is something that's totally incomprehensible and undoable, but it's not undoable.

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It's a it's a choice. But you know, we we live in a world with endless possibilities. And by calling something utopian, what you are doing is automatically shooting down the possibility of it. Any possibility is out there. It's a choice of society itself. Yeah.

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Oh, sorry. Go ahead. No. And that's where we're at. Right now we're in a struggle as a society, where we're seeing

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the large capital holders, the business owners, the moguls, they are at this point in time, especially during this pandemic, we've seen them their value and their monetary stash or hoard increased by trillions of dollars, while the people down below, such as working class and poor and disabled and marginalized communities, like the black community, the immigrant community that Puerto Ricans and Mexicans, and we're all of our value is being funneled from us to this upper class. And we see it every day, especially with inflation going on. It's it's getting progressively worse and exponentially harder for working and normal people just to get through and survive.

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Right.

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And I think that, okay, so the one thing that humans can all agree on, is that we hate change. Like, we hate it, we don't like it, we're not good at it, we suck at change.

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We're trash like, it can't, we're not good. We can't do change, we don't do change. Well.

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It's the one thing that every human being alive could agree upon. And

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well, that beautiful, well, that and don't play your music loud on the subway kind of thing.

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But

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it feels like we are at a tipping point in the United States, where something's gotta give kind of a thing. And I'm wondering if it's a devil, you know, versus the devil, the devil you don't know, kind of a situation for people, where it's like, there is a certain amount of like comfortability that people have gotten used to within this certain system that we currently have, which would be capitalism.

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And because I think communism has been shamed so much over the years, and to be quite frank, like terrorized over the years.

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It, it seems like it's, I don't know, it just seems like it's a devil, you know, versus the devil, you don't know, situation. And that choice. I think, for a lot of people is really scary. And it's a change, and it's a really big change in a big direction. Do you? Would you agree with that? And how would you, like say that, we can help sort of bridge that gap? I would definitely have to say that I do agree. We we as a society have a big struggle ahead of us. And change is something that we are all afraid of.

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From my own personal experience, I was a right winger, and one boy, you know, right wing Republican, watch Glenn Beck, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And all of that rhetoric. I you know, strong defense how to have a great military greatest in the world. The United States is the number one country in the world, all of that.

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But here's the key.

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The key is that all of it is a lie.

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Every last thing that you've been told about the exceptionalism of the United States is a blatant outright total and complete lie. There is no greatness of the United States. We are

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45th or 52nd. In infant mortality

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work, our literacy rate is worse than another like 20 to 25 countries. Our numeracy rate which is mathematics is ridiculously low.

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We have the highest health care costs of the entire world but some of the worst outcomes of health care. We are failing country we've been a failing country for a long time but you don't see that through media or through any

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what I consider it at this point is just propaganda.

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You have media outlets that love to you know play the during like Fourth of July is coming up

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in a few months.

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This is the biggest play. And the biggest lie that we're being told that we have all of this freedom, that we have democracy, those are the two biggest lies that we have. And that face us on a daily basis, we have to understand that democracy in the United States, and I'm gonna say this, and this is very controversial. And I get a lot of backlash for this. But when, if you want to discuss it with me, please feel free to make a Twitter account, come on to Twitter, and we'll have this conversation face to face, I will argue this with anybody. The United States is not a democracy. It has not been a democracy for a very, very, very long time.

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And we also do not have freedom.

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There is no freedom in a police state. And we are living in a police state. We have the highest incarceration rate of any country on the entire planet, with jail more people than any other country.

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I don't understand how we can call ourselves a free country, and that we have freedom and democracy. When our politicians are bought. All of our legislation is written by special interest groups and lobbyists for think tanks. Well, 97% of legislation that passes through Congress and the Senate is not oriented towards anything the American people want, or need in this moment.

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And don't cry medic at this point. Exactly. We're, we're throwing band aids on gaping wounds. Yeah, you look what? Look what happened after, you know, 2020 with the George Floyd protests and Black Lives Matter movement. There were millions of people in the streets of all across the United States, everybody's saying defund the police, defund the police refund the communities, stop giving military equipment to police, and giving them qualified immunity to stop them from being prosecuted for murdering people in the streets.

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And what we got in return was a government that said, Well, we're going to give

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18 billion more dollars to police in the country. And we're never going to default more.

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We're going to openly arm the more, we're going to give them more money. And we're gonna continue to protect them.

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Yeah, and I mean, just so everybody knows. And like, just so it's clear.

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The police are not there to protect and serve. By the way.

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I don't know if anybody has read about this read up on this case. But Gonzalez versus Castlerock, it was a very pivotal case. And the Supreme Court ruled on it, it made it to the Supreme Court, I believe it was 2008 Correct me if I'm wrong.

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But I believe it was 2008 when it or maybe it was 2007 when it finally got passed, but basically, from what my understanding thing, and from having read it. What it said is, is that the police aren't under no obligation under any circumstances to have to help you. They don't have to protect human life in general. Right.

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Yeah, their obligation is towards property and value. And that's yes, yes. So the police are not there to protect and serve you as like a member of the community. And that's, I mean, so says the Supreme Court of the United States,

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which kind of brings me to this quote, that I really love from Abbie Hoffman, you measure democracy by the freedom, it gives its descendants not the freedom it gives. It's a simulated conformance.

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I'm sorry. It's really close to home.

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I mean, but it's true, is it not like I love I love him. But ya

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know, it's very true. And we are

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communists, although we have seen a very large and I mean, exponential increase in the amount of people who have done their reading and done their their research and really looked into the truth about communism, and looked through the propaganda of the American state and capitalism in general. We have seen so many new people come to the table and I'm, you know, I'm one of them. I don't ever claim to be a

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specialist or an all knowing entity about all of this. I am still, I'm learning every day. And that's we all have to admit that that you're nobody's ever going to be an expert at anything we have. We are all learning entities. Nobody is an authority on any given subject.

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Do you think that the way that

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Do you think authority is bad in general? Or do you think that the way that we distributed as human beings, especially in the United States, because like here, authority and power is distributed based on directly, you know, based on the number of zeros you have in your bank? Correct. There's actually a great piece of literature to read on that exact topic. It's called on authority. It's about 10. paragraphs long, it was written by Friedrich Engels, it is the quintessential go to when somebody complains about authoritarianism in any sense. And basically, the main argument is that authoritarianism is something that will always exist in society. It's not something that we can ever get rid of. It's just how

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it's how we operate. authority can be taken in any context. Even democracy itself is authority to somebody who is a dissident. If the general public if 51% of the general public says they want to do something, the other 49% that exist, are going to be in that. This isn't right. I don't like this. This is authoritarianism. And that argument will continue until the end of time. But it is,

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when we talk about communism, we get a lot of talk about dictatorships, and things like Joseph Stalin, and Pol Pot and that kind of stuff. It's there. There are so many nuanced characteristics to it, and a lot of Western.

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They say to the victor goes history.

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You know, the victor is always the hero in the story. And when capitalism crushes another system, or starves that out, in the case of most of those situations, what happens is capitalism paints them as monsters. But they don't ever tell you how they got to that situation. Look at Venezuela right now. Then his way Allah

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had some issues. They were implementing socialist policies. The United States didn't like that. They went after the Venezuelan government, because there were some protests where people were hurt or killed. Now, you think back to the United States in 2020, and how many people were injured and killed in those protests, but nobody, no other country was, you know, filing sanctions against us or creating a trade embargo, because police were bashing people's heads in and running them over on live television. That didn't happen. But Venezuela, on the other hand, has

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a trade embargo. And because they have a trade embargo, with with the United States that one of the largest trading economies on the planet, any country who chooses to trade with Venezuela is no longer able to trade with the United States or any of its allies. So if you choose to help Venezuela as a country, your your economy is doomed.

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Because we are we are a country that imports almost all of our goods. We don't use any of our own resources. And we barely have any manufacturing in the United States. That everything we everything we use is made in another country, often other countries later, I can't even think of one thing that we'll do we make anything what is it that we make?

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Ah, I make hydraulic seals at my job.

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Okay, but I make that with plastics that we import from Austria. So Right. Yeah. Right there. It's really Austrian plastics, I'm just molding them into the right shape. We don't make the plastics we don't. We don't really do a lot of stuff we have we barely had any manufacturing in the United States. It's all been shipped overseas, because it was cheaper.

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Yes, and more. And completely more atrocious. I mean, oh my gosh.

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But the reason why it's so much cheaper, like in a country like China, where a lot of manufacturing does go on, is because their government prioritizes for their people. So their housing is cheaper, food is cheaper, everything is cheaper, and a lot of it's already covered. So you're almost guaranteed housing in China. So even if you have a job where you only make $1 a day, you're still gonna have a roof over your head. You're not ever going to see that in the United States ever, until we have massive change or some kind of revolutionary change. So what's the difference between like communism and socialism because I think that there again, there's some confusion there. And I think that a lot of people believe that they're kind of like cousins or brothers

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with each other, but I'm not entirely sure if that's true. So socialism, and communism are they're borderline synonymous Well,

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socialism is more geared towards a more humanitarian approach to a capitalistic government. So, at the beginning stages, I like to, I like to picture this, like, if you look at a line, if you draw a line in front of you, and directly center in front of you, is the political center.

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Everything in the United States lies to the right hand side on that line, there is nothing that exists on the left beyond center in the United States, in our current governing bodies, there is nothing that exists on that left or inspecting that left spectrum. Not even Bernie Sanders,

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not even Elizabeth Warren, not not even your favorite, populist type politicians, they don't exist on that leftward spectrum, they are still on the right side of the spectrum.

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But to get to that left side of the spectrum, it's it's a march, it's a pathway.

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And people like to pull horseshoe theory out, which is the idea that once you go far enough left, you actually wind up on the right. And that's totally untrue, they are the antithesis of each other. So on the farthest left, that you can go, you have anarcho, communism anarcho, communism is after the dissolution of the state, there is no state, it is just people living in small communities who all interchange goods and services based off of the need as human beings. So if I need a no, okay, so that sounds pretty good. I'm down with that, okay. It makes sense. We grow enough food to feed ourselves and the people around us. I'm cool with that produce, we produce what we need. And if there are people who love to do a certain thing, they do it and they produce new things. It's it's drawing on people's passions and an actual life itself and allowing people to live life to its fullest extent without the excess need for somebody to exploit value from us. Yeah, see, that sounds super nice. Let's do that one. Yeah, look, that's my end goal, too. But I identify as a communist, because I know, at one point in my life, I was, you know, like I said, I was on the right, the far right side of the spectrum, not not quite the far, far right. You know, I'm not in that Nazi territory. Don't ever fucking punch Nazis, turn them into fertilizer. That's my.

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But as I have started to approach the left, he reached that Democratic Socialist territory, where countries like Norway, Sweden, and Finland and the Scandinavian countries, Denmark, where they have a very high tax rate. But housing is pretty well taken care of, you get a lot taken out of your check in taxes, but your wages are extremely high. Everybody seems to be in a union. So your jobs are protected. All the contractual obligations are geared towards the workers, you get plenty of time off, you get vacations, immigration is well under control. There's no real big issues. And the government is desperately trying to go to war every day for new resources. We, we take it

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as the will of the people as needed. So it's putting more power into the people's hands, but still being besieged by capitalism. Right. Okay. And so that's saying, that's like step one.

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And then which, by the way, that doesn't sound bad. That doesn't sound like a bad, you know what I'm saying? Like we like that could be done like, I'm down with that life. That's cool. That's absolutely something that we could do. But we would have to eliminate this idea that we have in the United States of laissez faire capitalism. And that's plenty. Yes, this is run rampant and keeping their taxes low. And, you know, not really keeping a hand on the throat of business. Because what we have to realize is that capitalism's entire goal is to exploit or extract as much value out of any given thing, including you, as it can, without expending any energy by itself.

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So that's what business owners do. They say they take the financial risk, but they really don't a bank takes the financial risks. The individual is just the leeway between the actual business itself and the bank. That's all they are. Right risk is solely on the banking system.

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So when we get to

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when we get to the Democratic Socialist style of government,

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I'll move on to the next step. Yeah, that's all we got.

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socialism. Okay.

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Sorry, I'm skipping a step there. So there's there's democratic socialism and under social democracy. So social democracy would see the implementation of socialism, where there are more government programs that allow for the institution of things like guaranteed housing for all, guaranteed food for all universal health care systems

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are actually at that point, it would be nationalized health care systems, where the government takes total control over health care. And in general, you would start to see a decline in individual capital holding. So individuals owning these large businesses, it would be replaced by worker coops, or, you know, there would be some government planning in the actual economy itself.

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Right. So in that instance, the people kind of have a say, in how these industries are going to run. So instead of making, you know, 9 million laptops, maybe we don't need 9 million laptops.

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Right? Maybe we only we only have 100,000. Right, right. So instead of throwing all that shit away, and we're letting it rot in a warehouse somewhere, we can take that those resources that would have gone to that that are gonna go to waste, and we'll put it somewhere else where it's needed. That's giving people the opportunity to kind of plan and prepare and do things the right way, instead of willy nilly, as I said, willy nilly throwing shit all around and hoping that something sticks,

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which is what we're doing now. Right? In like math, you know, quantities.

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Extremely.

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Oh, yeah, sorry.

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And then and then once you get to that point, that's when you start to do things like nationalize utilities nationalizing utilities like gas, electric water.

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And once you do that, that's really putting all of that stuff back into the people's hands. Because, as you know, as a property owner, a homeowner in the United States, everybody that I pay for my water, my electricity, they're all private companies, right? None of that is actually regulated that well by the government, and there's nobody that's really responsible, should something happen, because that company can always say, well, well, you know, we're not really going to worry about that.

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There's very little control over that, that we have as individuals, once we decide that we're done playing that game. And we nationalize that stuff. That's really when we're starting to look into something like socialism, because at that point,

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what is the point of having a monetary system? That is like a fiat currency, we're going to be dealing more with resources now that we are with, you know, extracting value. So yeah, we're gonna start to move away from that, like, that capitalistic system and fully pushing it off and moving in towards socialism.

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Yeah, Jesus, I just keep thinking that like, that sounds like a really long process.

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It

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can be. And that is, that is one of the problems that we face is that we are at such a large turning point, and inflection point in the United States that we're looking at a drastic turn in either direction. What we're facing right now, and this is I can back this up by works by the dreaded Vladimir Lenin. woul Lenin. People love throwing blood on his statues. In Portland. I love seeing that. That man fought so long and hard for workers rights and peasants rights and the ability of people to self govern, and have control and prosperity in their own lives. It breaks my heart to see them throw blood all over his statues. But

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in the greatest sense, one of his great works is

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a piece called

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the state and revolution.

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And in the state and revolution,

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Lenin outlines or outlines, all of the all of the ship proceeding now. Everything that's happening right now is laid out in that work, imperialism.

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All of the military actions the United States is taking overseas are based off of resources because we have to extract those resources to continue capitalism's exponential growth which needs to exist on a consistent basis, which is why you see corporations buying back their stocks and why you see oil industry not producing more oil

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Driving up oil prices because their profits have to increase year over year in order to continue financing their operations and to continue stockholders interest in those operations. So to continue to fund themselves, they have to grow exponentially every year. And that drives imperialism that drives military to go out and find new resources, or manufacture scarcity and resources, which the United States loves to do that, we're doing that right now with food. We're creating food scarcity on a daily basis to drive up the food costs.

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You see it every day, when places like Dunkin Donuts closed down for the day, and they don't give away the food that they have they throw it away, cover it and bleach, throw it in the dumpster and then lock it.

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Oh, my God. I don't know that that I didn't I mean, I don't know that. But 100 pounds of doughnuts and bagels and muffins and bacon and you name it goes in the trash can that cover it and bleach the time the bag shut, throw it in a dumpster and unlock it, and you can't touch it.

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And then that gets written off and it gets reimbursed by the insurance companies because capital can't lose capital has to grow exponentially.

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Which is insane. By the way, that's an insane, like way of thinking is that like you have to continue, like first of all, the laws of physics say what goes up must come down. So just get over it like.

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And that's, that's what we're doing is we are at, we're at the point where we have lifted this autonomy so high off of the ground, that we're grasping at straws to try and keep it up. And you can see every once in a while, every couple of years. The scaffolding gives out like a 2008 like it did the beginning of the pandemic, everything crashes. And it's like it's going out there saying it's gonna happen again in 2023.

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I can Oh, this is we can have a whole nother conversation about the cyclical nature of time and politics and economics in the United States. I would love to go on that.

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Look up Warren G. Harding. And Joe Biden. Just have fun on that one. Anybody who hears this, look up the similarities between the two of them and everything that's going on right now. Just do that. It's 100 year cycle that we're on.

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We're on 100 year cycle, and I am I am guessing that 2023 is not going to be it but it's going to be closer to 2029. Oh,

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the big collapse because there's going to be more than likely a drought in the United States. That's going to be pretty, pretty intense.

37:45

That makes you look into the crystal ball. Cool. Well, I mean, I it does, it would not surprise me if you are correct, because I like I said every all the literature that I've read I said 2023 is when it's going to happen, but

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I don't know.

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I think that it might it might take longer, like what you're saying it might take a little bit longer. Well, that's because they will continue to try to prop it up like they did in 2008, like it did during, during the pandemic where they dumped trillions of dollars into the economy. But none of it went into our pockets. It went to the top in this idea that it will trickle down into the economy. And that's never worked. Yeah, I thought we are I thought we all collectively decided that didn't work. And that was a bad idea. What happened you to do it? They continue to do it because the people who make the decisions as to the legislation are the capital holders. So of course the only people they're going to give money to are themselves. He saw Well, yeah. Yeah, yeah. With the PPP loans. There were certain

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certain things in place where you could only apply for if you you know, if you knew all the terms and conditions ahead of time. And that was the friends and family and all that shit of all the politicians and bankers and that kind of shit. So it gets really dark with the more you get into stuff. And it sounds conspiratorial, but it's not. Yeah, I mean, like how did like the I was gonna say like, how did you get to a place where you were able to

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sort of process all of it and be able to not be like, I mean, it's tell me if I'm wrong, but

39:28

it sounds I mean, like so for like my own personal journey. It was pretty traumatizing, actually, to sort of begin to like, like that beginning phase of like learning the truth and like figuring out like, oh, actually, I've been sold a bill of goods that turns out to be all wise. That's fun. That's fun.

39:50

I mean, I don't know like it pretty Trump like and I didn't even realize how traumatizing it was until until I started like catching myself going into like real bad depression.

40:00

is about it.

40:02

But like, did you have any of that? Am I crazy? Am I alone in this? Absolutely not. It is. It is completely and totally demoralizing, and soul crushing to realize how badly that you have been lied to, and how much you've been propagandized. Like,

40:23

for instance, learning that the what happened during the New Deal, okay? If you think back to post war, right at like the peak of the Great Depression, the United States is in shambles, the economy is horrific. And the only thing that's gonna save us is, ah,

40:46

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he's gonna show up with this new deal. And everything's gonna get better, we're gonna go into public works, we're going to create some of the greatest infrastructure the United States has ever seen. And it's all thanks to FDR. Or is it?

41:03

Because that's something that capital doesn't want you to know. Capital doesn't want you to know that all of those programs, everything that was in the New Deal, the New Deal was an all of the information you're told about it is a fucking lie. Because the people who pushed for it were revolutionary communists, socialists and trade unionists in the 1920s and 30s, who threatened to overtake the United States government, unless these programs were implemented. And in return for that, in return for the implementation of those programs, they would quell the revolutionary talk amongst their groups, which is where we get the name progressive throw, because they were no longer allowed to call themselves communists, they were no longer allowed to call themselves socialists or trade unionists. They had to, they had to adopt a new moniker. So they adopted the progressive moniker because we want to be progressive, we want progress, we want things to go forward.

42:05

And it became so

42:07

so stigmatized in the United States to be that way. Because capital said that's wrong, not because it is wrong, but because capital said that's wrong. It's the same reason why you turn on a station like Fox News, or Oh, am or Newsmax, or even CNN or MSNBC, anytime something about communism or socialism is brought up, people will immediately either sweep it under the rug or demonize it, because it's, it's a danger to capital, it's always been a danger to capital.

42:40

And the only way that they were able to quell those people who were revolutionary in the 20s, and 30s, was to implement the new deal, which is what saved this country. And once they quelled them, we saw through the 60s in the 70s, and the 80s, especially with Reagan, where they stripped all of the good things that were in the New Deal, they took them right away.

43:04

And that's because capital was allowed to stay in power. So those individuals who gave up all of that fight, and all of that power that they had to save this country and in, in a certain sense to save capitalism itself, gave away all of that, to save capitalism. They did it to save capitalism.

43:28

And capitalism took all of that away from us. It stripped all of the protections for workers, it killed unions in the United States, the union percentage union participation percentage in the United States right now, is 10%. Only 10% of the population is part of a union. Well, and doesn't that have a lot to do with the fact that like, you know, we throughout our history, and like, what we've taught our children and stuff, is has been that unions are bad.

44:00

And that, again, that's capital propaganda. What what is better than having workers dictate how a company runs?

44:10

How many times do you as an individual or even myself, you stand at your job and you say, I can run this ship better than these people? This is ridiculous. Why am I doing this? I'm wasting so much time and energy doing all this excess shit. I know what needs to be done. I'm the worker. I'm here every day. I run this stuff. I know how it works. I should be the one that's helping make the decision as to what we're going to do.

44:37

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I agree with that. I think you should at least have a say, especially since you're the one making it or you're the one doing it or whatever the it is, you know. Yeah. And that's, that is the essence of, of what what people like me are trying to do is we're trying to bring democracy to a level that reaches the workplace.

45:00

We spend eight hours a day minimum as human beings, five days a week at work.

45:09

That's

45:11

yeah. Is there a system of government that doesn't do that? That doesn't make their like their serfs do that? Because I want that. But yes, yes, there is. There happens to be quite a few of them actually. Cuba, Vietnam, China.

45:31

Wills.

45:33

Well, those are the most successful at this point. Oh, whether people whether like people, or whether or not people like to admit it, Cuba's doing great. Rim is doing wonderful. Yeah, I actually saw a PBS I was kind of shocked. I saw a PBS documentary on how like how good they're actually doing recently. Yeah, it's, we love to talk, we'd love to talk about how great freedom how great freedom and democracy are in the United States. You know, what our voter percentage turnout was for the last election? I bet it was abysmal. It's the the most, quote unquote most important election in our history. 62% only six. Okay, well, that was better than I thought. I thought for sure you're gonna be like, 45. Okay. And of that 62% that participated. That was 62% of people who were eligible.

46:26

Oh, because we have eligibility issues for democracy in the United States, right? Yeah. Because if you're a felon, in most states, you can't vote more, you have to petition to get your voting rights back and have your record expunged. And that costs 10s of 1000s of dollars, which most people don't have.

46:45

And then there's a good 1445 to 46% of the population that just doesn't vote at all, has no interest in voting whatsoever. You know, what Cuba's last election or act their vote, the big vote that they had last was for a referendum on their constitution? Because yes, Cuba, even though it is a communist country, has a constitution, just like the United States. It's funny how that works.

47:11

You know, what the voting participation for that was?

47:14

96% Oh, my God, what are they doing what we're not doing?

47:21

What they're doing is that they're, they're shitting isn't corrupt, it's not bought.

47:25

They have individuals who go through the community and make sure that the votes are counted. It is a, it is seen as a

47:33

national pastime to watch the votes occur. And to have the general public watch how things go. People are making the choices are the ones who are who are putting the votes out, and you don't want their constitutional change. The last one, you know, a few months back, there was a big hubbub about how there was dissidents in Cuba and all these huge protests were going on.

47:58

The 96% of the 96% of people who voted in the last constitutional referendum and Cuba, you know, how many voted to keep the Constitution, the new version? How many 90%? Oh, wow.

48:16

Wow. So is it authoritarianism if 90% of your 96% of the population who voted says that they want to they want to do shit that way? Is that authoritarian?

48:30

Ah, no, I don't think so. I think that's whenever the opposite of that would be. Yeah, it's the exact opposite of authoritarianism. And the same thing goes for Vietnam, Vietnam, it's almost compulsory to vote, because they own every single block. There is a vote captain. So it's not like,

48:52

what does that? What does that even mean?

48:56

So the voting captain is basically who goes around and make sure that your vote has been cast? Oh, that your vote is counted? And that it's correct.

49:07

I could do that job. I could do, right. Like, yeah, I could do that. And not like you have somebody who's there on your block, who's willing to come to your home, if you're sick, if you're disabled, if you you just don't feel that well, that day. They will, they will contact you make sure that your vote is counted. And that it's correct. They will verify it with you. They will show it in the local tally. That this this is that vote. That's you

49:36

know, like they're not identified obviously because you know, barely Yeah, or private but, you know, it's it's verified. It's there. You could check it for yourself. Do we know why there's so many people in this country that don't vote that just like it just for whatever reason they don't vote I mean, everybody's got their reasons, like no judgments. I'm just saying like, Do we know why? Like our

50:00

percentages are so low. Some people are disinterested. They don't really care how things go of their lives aren't involved. They don't think that their lives revolve around politics. But every it this is my personal opinion. And you know, opinions are like assholes. Everybody's got one some of the shit.

50:21

But my personal opinion is everybody should be interested in politics. Politics is the very essence of what of how life works. It's how we decide if we want to talk about having freedom and democracy, you have to be interested in politics, because that's how we make those decisions. It's how we decide. Politics is everything. It's every aspect of our lives. It's how we control how we get our water, how we get clean air, how we control our environment, how we decide if a factory is going to move across the street from our kids school, spewing out co2 and dangerous chemicals and all that kind of shit, like, politics matters, we have to be involved in it.

51:04

But in our current system in the United States, we're unable. And that's by design. Because we don't have the we as individuals do not have the capital behind us enough to matter to a politician. Because we're not the job creators. We're not the big the big property owners, we don't have, you know,

51:27

100,000 acres and, you know, a million dollars worth of real estate under our fucking belt. So we don't matter. You know, somebody who owns $150,000 house, which in this market I get is totally unbelievable. But somebody who owns that kind of property, doesn't mean jack shit. Doesn't mean shit to them.

51:51

And it never will. Yeah, right.

51:54

So what, oh, god, somebody like, when somebody like me, is talking about politics, I'm I'm of the disposition, where I've realized that power. And this is a great quote by Frederick Douglas power. And I'm paraphrasing, because I don't have it in front of me right now. But power concedes nothing without a demand.

52:18

And we see it's nothing without demand, okay. And we are ready at this point in time. We have no demands as individuals. We have, we might have demands as individuals, but as a community, we're not speaking together. Everybody has these ideas of how they want shit to work. But there is a way that we can settle that. And that's through democratic means we can get a consensus based off of a majority of individuals. That's the point of democracy. That's what we're supposed to be doing. But that's not what's happening. Which is why we have so much trouble and a congressional approval rating in the low 20 percentage point range.

53:00

That's not even you guys. That's not even.

53:05

I wish the bar is on the floor. The bar is on the floor. It's not even. It's not even like you can't Limbo under this. It's so low.

53:17

Oh, sorry, I'm talking a lot. I think drink. No, you're good. You're good.

53:24

So yeah, it's,

53:26

we're at such a crux. And it's I, I myself, I am a revolutionary, because I know that power will not concede anything without a demand. And even though the demand might be loud enough from the general public, they're still not going to concede it.

53:44

Because power never gives up anything without a fight either. Yeah.

53:50

Because in the United States, we're so indoctrinated by capital, we're so indoctrinated and propagandized by Capitol, there are so many people who are willing to lay their lives on the line, and you can see it.

54:02

You can see it openly at things like proud boy rallies at these far right. Groups where they're burning books, and threatening the lives of transgender kids and like it's the most disgusting acts ever. They're doing this not because they actually believe this. They think it's they're doing it because it feels like it's threatening their normal. Because their normal is this capitalistic ideal of the nuclear family, and the white picket fence 2.5 kids and I'm used to this, I don't ever want it to change.

54:42

But change requires discomfort.

54:45

And these people will not be uncomfortable until we challenge that kind of shit. And we have to challenge it through revolution. And revolution starts everywhere, including small shit like growing your own food.

55:00

throw seeds out the window at random places, if 100 tomato plants pop up in our local park, awesome, maybe some people eat that didn't have a chance to eat. It's just a tomato, but you could save somebody's fucking life. Yeah.

55:15

I mean, just like anything. Really, any sort of small act of kindness can like change somebody's like the course of someone's life. You really, really can't I believe that anyway. That's the absolute truth. You can look at, like what's going on with, with the homeless population out in California.

55:36

The cities didn't like what was going on with the increasing homelessness in the area. So instead of address addressing the outrageous housing prices in California, they just made homelessness illegal.

55:50

Of course, they like, this is the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard in my entire life. We're just going to make being homeless illegal. Why don't you just go home? You guys, we suck. Okay, if these I just want to put this out there. We suck so much. I don't understand how we got to this point, like, how did we let things get so far out of control? What is happening? And before anybody in the world start saying that? Oh, that sounds like a Republican thing? No, it's not. That's a Democratic legislature, and a Democratic governor that allowed that to happen. They allowed it to happen. And that's called ladies and gentlemen, Neo liberalism, where the I dia of good things is great, but actually doing it is illegal.

56:43

It's the same thing you see with with the with the Biden administration right now. They ran on a lot of really great ideas. How many of them have come to fruition? Oh, man, he just didn't he didn't they just announced that he's he pushed student debt to September and that, but that's it like there's not doing anything else after that or something? Yep. It's the same thing they did with the eviction moratorium, they knew that the eviction moratorium was going to be up at a certain time, and that the only way that they could get it extended, was if Congress did something. Congress didn't do anything about it. It got pushed off to the president. The president said no, I'm not doing it, you do it. And then the court looked at it and said, well, the Congress has to do something about it. And then Congress went on vacation.

57:27

And at that point, even though everybody was fully aware that they needed to do something, Congress went on vacation, and instead of actually getting everybody back in there, Congresswoman Cory Bush had a camp out on the Capitol steps, even though she could have written the legislation herself and said, I have the legislation right here in my hand. All I need for you to do is show up. Come back here. We'll vote on this right now. And we'll get it to the President for him to sign and we'll we'll have this eviction moratorium taken care of for another couple months, a year, five years, until the pandemic is over, whatever. They could have done that, but they didn't do it. They didn't do it. Just like they never codified Roe v. Wade. They've had 49 years to codify Roe v. Wade, they haven't done it.

58:12

It's still being juggled in the Supreme Court. Just like voting rights for black people in the United States has been on the docket every couple of years. And we have to continually Okay, the voting rights of black people in the year of our Lord 2022. Yeah, and just this year, they was when they like officially passed a bill that like lynching became federally like a federal crime like it was just this it was in February, actually.

58:46

Isn't that like the most insane thing you've ever heard? Like? Well,

58:52

so yes, the answer to your earlier question of, you know, what, how do I deal with the depression and the chorus, the soul crushing shit? I have to laugh at it. I have to absolutely laugh at the ridiculousness of this ridiculous level of incompetence and planned failure, that these that these people have. You look at the infrastructure bill that went through Congress just this past year, part of the build back better plan that they they split up into two different bills. Senator Joe Manchin, Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat,

59:29

decided that he was not going to back the bill. He didn't like the infrastructure bill. He said it was too much spending. He didn't like it. So they stripped out the bill. Right? They took it from like $2.3 trillion to like $1.8 trillion.

59:45

And they put it up from the boat. They said, Okay, you got what you wanted. We stripped it out. He still said no, he's still voted no.

59:53

Democrat, a Democrat who's supposed to be a part of this party that's supposed to be making all of these fucking changes because they have

1:00:00

The majority in Congress, they have the majority in the House, they have the presidency. They're standing in their own way. And it's planned. It's planned to be that way he is he is the rotating villain of the time, just like Kristen cinemas the rotating villain. In the next bill that comes out, it'll be somebody else. It this is this is a game. It's a charade. It's it's, it's planned, it's to stop any sort of progress from happening.

1:00:30

Yes, ma'am, down the road. So you don't have to do anything. It's just easier to do that. Until but here's the problem with that, is that eventually it's like sweeping stuff. So I've used this analogy before you guys and I'm so sorry, but I'm going to use it again. Because it's like sweeping stuff under the rug. And until you're like, Okay, well, I'll just, you know, until the pile gets so big that you're just like, well, I'll just buy a bigger rug, and then you buy a bigger rug, eventually, you're gonna run like there's, you're gonna run out of room, like, it's gonna get so big, that there's not gonna like no amount of carpet, no amount of like, you know, wood cement, nothing, no amount of anything is going to be able to cover this pile up.

1:01:13

And so then you you'd now you, not you now, it just depends on how big of a pile you want to deal with.

1:01:21

That's exactly what we're looking at. It's the failures of neoliberal governance. Neoliberalism is highlighted by its virtue signaling, you can see it in the way people react to what's going on in Ukraine.

1:01:35

Ukraine and Russia conflict is a huge deal. There are so many people who are flashing around the eyes stand with Ukraine shit. And there are people who are on the side of Russia. And they have no idea, any of the history, the historical consequences, or what led to all of this or what happened, and why it got so bad and why there's an incursion. They have no idea because they don't bother. But they're being told that it's it's Ukraine that we have to back. So they're standing behind Ukraine and the United States government is sending billions of dollars to them. But just this pet like,

1:02:12

sorry.

1:02:14

They just did a budget bill. Okay. In that budget bill.

1:02:20

There was no more money for Coronavirus testing, injections, vaccinations, anything, it was all stripped out. But we managed to send $13 billion to you great. Oh, good.

1:02:34

Yay, that was money that we needed to make sure that people continue to be safe, because we're still dealing with a pandemic, which is only still on, it's over. Remember, it was over it was over? Oh, no. Oh, no, it's still very much ongoing. There are still people dying every day in the United States from this shit. And the only reason it's still here is because capital refused to shut down.

1:02:59

There was no reason why people needed to continue to go to work. There was no reason why we needed to continue constantly having commerce in this country. We could have shut down for three weeks. And this all could have been over. It all could have been over in three weeks time. Because viruses require hosts. And if you starve it of hosts, it goes away. It's miraculous.

1:03:25

I mean, Apple said no. Yeah.

1:03:31

So we're still dealing with it. And we're gonna continue to deal with it for the next couple of decades, if not for the rest of our lives. Yeah. Oh, yes. To dress it.

1:03:41

Oh, definitely.

1:03:43

Well, thank you so much for coming into. I have one more question for you. Absolutely. So sorry. I'm gonna have to get you back on to talk more about this. Because this has been so good. I'm so glad that you came on. That's, that's the problem with politics is that it covers every aspect of our lives. And if you ignore any section of it, you're ignoring the entirety of it. And it's so good. It's so complicated. It covers everything. So us having this discussion, we're covering the tip of the iceberg on everything. So everybody who was listening, please understand, there are bits and pieces that I am missing all over the place. That's why I said I'm not an expert at anything. If I'm wrong about anything, please come on Twitter, correct me. I love to be corrected because I love to be correct. So don't be afraid if I'm wrong, please let me know.

1:04:31

Well, thank you so much. My My last question is what inspires you and what do you hope to inspire in others?

1:04:43

I'll tell you what inspires me.

1:04:46

What inspires me is hope.

1:04:49

What inspires me is that

1:04:53

I'm an atheist. I don't I don't believe in a higher power. But I

1:05:00

I do believe in the idea of heaven.

1:05:03

I do believe that heaven is something that we can achieve. It's a choice that we make every day.

1:05:09

We choose not to live in heaven, we choose not to have hope.

1:05:18

Because we're not allowed.

1:05:20

So it is a conscious choice that we have to make as individuals first to choose that pathway.

1:05:27

And I, I do that every day, I wake up, and I have hope that I'm gonna get to that point at some point. And it can get really hard, but

1:05:38

I still have it. I don't know if there's something wrong with me.

1:05:44

No, call me a perpetual optimist. But

1:05:49

that's, that's my revolutionary drive. I know a better world is possible. And I'll fight for it tooth and nail.

1:05:56

What was the second part of your question? What do you hope to inspire and others?

1:06:02

Oh,

1:06:04

if anything, I hope to inspire people to learn.

1:06:09

We're blessed with a brain that is capable of incredible things. We have the capacity to love and hate and, and care for and accomplish incredible things. And above all things I want to inspire people to use their brain, use it. Don't Don't get stuck in the rut of work, eat, sleep, live, do your thing and then die.

1:06:40

Try to push yourself beyond your comfort levels. Learn and listen. Listening is the number one thing that's what really drugged me from the right side of the of the political spectrum to the left is that I listened to the people that were around me. And I heard their stories and their woes and all of the obstacles that have been in their way. And just just listen.

1:07:05

You have two ears and one mouth. And that's that's that way for a reason.

1:07:12

So use your brain. Listen, please do that.

1:07:17

I like that answer. That's a really good answer. I ask everybody that question. So I, I have to, I have to know.

1:07:26

Sorry. But thank you so much for coming on. I hope you had as good of a time as I did. Absolutely. I would love to come back anytime you want me. I will be there. You just let me know. Okay, great. Thank you so much. As always guys, you can check me out at MP weirdo podcast on Twitter. You can find me on Instagram and Tiktok at the underscore main underscore weirdo one. You can email me Manic Pixie weirdo@protonmail.com. Or you can leave me a voicemail at Manic Pixie weirdo podcast.com. Hello, did you want to drop any last? Like gems or words or anything?

1:08:02

You can find me on Twitter again at at the underscore pale pa le underscore horse with a zero instead of an o

1:08:14

my DMs are always open. If you have questions, comments, you want to yell at me you want to tell me I'm an idiot. You want to you know, tell me you love me. Bring it on. I welcome everybody. I will never turn somebody away. I love a good conversation. I host Twitter spaces Monday through Friday, somewhere between 9am and 2pm. If it's a good conversation and things are going I will usually go a little bit later. But that they're always open. You could follow me on Twitter, you can join those spaces anytime you want to have political conversation, daily life conversation, whatever. It's an open forum for people to come and have discussion about their lives and the things that affect all of us because politics is everything. Yeah, they're really great. They're really great Twitter spaces. That's how we met. Yeah, I love having in there. It's always great.

1:09:02

Oh, good. Yeah. Well, thank you so much once again, and as always guys, be kind and Stay weird. Have a good way. Take care of each other.