The Psychosemantic Podcast EP 128: ‘The Belko Experiment’ and workers rights

Welcome to The Psychosemanticast: Join host Daeron and a revolving door of guests in discussing movies, politics, and political movies. In this installment: Cort Psyops is back. We talk about ‘The Belko Experiment’ and workers rights, Pennsylvania decapitations… and other things.  Twitter: @PoliticalMovies Instagram: Psychosemanticast Facebook Group:facebook.com/groups/Psychosemanticast/ Psychosemantic Pod on iTunes : itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-psychosemantic-podcast/id1191732198?mt=2  Psychosemantic Pod on Legion: https://legionpodcasts.com/podcasts/the-psychosemantic-podcast/ ….and all your other favorite podcast places

Hey. Hey what's up? You guys are insane for smoking at Bellco. They test here, they'll fire you you know. Quit getting so worked up. Did you even happen to read what you signed when you started working for this place? Thiri, where is everybody?

Alright.

All employees, lend me your full attention.

There are currently eighty of you in the building In. two hours we want thirty of you dead.

If thirty of you are not dead, we will end sixty of your lives ourselves.

Ah!

We are not going to entertain the option of killing people.

Where were if your kids could eat me?

The only day people are up for themselves.

They probably don't want to be associated with the woke liberal mafia Antifa squad.

That is us.

We are the reason why crazy people in Pennsylvania are beheading their fathers.

Allegedly.

Okay, so I need to confess something. Uh I've been super busy with the new job. So I haven't been deep deep in the news, but I'm well versed enough in the subject of what we're actually talking about tonight to be able to just do my sort of either Frank Cross moment where I try to unite us all as a people, or my George Carlin moment where I just berate everyone for their stupidity and just can't believe that everybody won't do things the way that I say. One of those two things will happen.

Uh we'll find out.

Are you gonna get the carrot or the stick from court this week? Or this month or this year or whatever How? it's been too long.

It has been a minute. But fuck that, it's a new year. All the clocks have reset. Some well not all of 'em, but you know what I mean.

Yeah, you're b you're back in your fighting weight. You've you've trimmed off the excess of what you needed to and now you're you're healthy and lean and ready to fucking get back in the fight.

There we go. Can do this all day. Nice Captain America pool there.

You so you're b somewhat unaware of the Pennsylvania story, I'm guessing.

Yeah yeah mostly I'm unaware of a lot of current events that has to do with what I call maggots, which is yeah. I just I I have stopped letting them have power over me. Uh of course the violence is something that always will concern me because they're terrible people for doing the things that they do when it comes to the violence, but I mean I'm blissfully unaware except for like the major things like the whole Texas border battle, the where Texas is trying to start a civil war because Abbott thinks that's a political play that

I'll get 'em into the presidency, you're guess The. rond de santis just sent National Guard troops there.

W right, it's I mean they said the south was gonna rise again, but I didn't think they'd be dumb enough to try it. I'm just saying. Nice Hersel Gordon Lewis pull. You are back in fighting weight. No, you sound great, man. You sound like you're doing great. You're you sound so much better than the time that we talked before the last time that we talked. Uh I'm I'm assuming most people skipped that

last little I'm back, you know, sort of episode. Only the true hardcore people listen to those. So yeah, but one of the things I said, dear listener, is that I ju I was f in a dark place. And not that shit isn't still dark, but

Yeah.

You got a bigger flashlight now. You've you've b given yourself the tools to be able to deal with the darkness and help keep it at bay a little better.

And I I would recommend it's probably a little safer if you do look into the Pennsylvania thing. Uh now the video stayed up on YouTube for over five thousand views.

Okay, I have heard about this. That has okay, I okay, I know what you're talking about vaguely, but um not enough to where I'm still not going to need education. So continue.

Okay, so a guy, I think he said he was thirty two, posted a video yesterday talking uh about it was about twelve minutes long, looked like he was reading from a script sitting in a suburban bedroom about how he is activating

the militias across America to fight against the fifth column of immigrants invading the country while the Biden regime has all the soldiers in the Ukraine.

I assume your audience knows that every single f word in that phrase that you just described is like in some way shape or form a nationalistic dog whistle, whether it's Christian or white national or white nationalist Christian.

Or white Christian nationalist or how are the fuck you wanna mix it if it's the Judeans people's front or the people's front of Judea, they're all trying to accomplish the same thing, which is a white ethno-Christian white ethno-Christian state and, that's it. That's all they want.

That seems to be where uh this this fella was was coming from because he talks about how B_L_M_ and Antifa and the L_G_B_T_Q_ plus community are trying to start a race war and then he

it's the replacement theory. They just took the Jews out of it in this case and put in the latest boogeyman. That's all he's doing. It's the great replacement theory that even Tucker was trying to espouse and that fucking Alex Jones loves to try and beat around the bush and say the outer side of the crunch about, but doesn't actually come right out and say the great replacement theory. And it's also the same thing that you will not replace us, Jews will not replace us, that they were all chanting during the uh the white nationalist like uh

all good good people on both sides bullshit that happened in like the first year of Trump. So this is nothing new, it's all the same shit that they just keep reiterating and they just try and keep it packaging up with a Fred Murray Polo or just some other fashion trick or something else to try and make it seem like they're not talking about mass genocide when they're really talking about mass genocide of anyone that's not a white Christian.

Yeah. Um. No. No no no, please. That's I have you here so I'm not talking to myself. I'm talking with a fellow human Um. I. am your sounding board. The problem is is that I'm also an echo chamber. Good. We need more of that. Uh he uh so uh right around that time, speaking

of like Christian nationalists and stuff like that. He pulls out his dad wh what he sa he's like this is my father. It appears to be a severed head wrapped in plastic and covered in blood.

He said that he is now in hell like all traders because he is a federal employee and then he says that he he has ten million dollars and will be getting more money and he's calling out on bounties on the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, anybody that works for the C_I_A_ F_B_I_ or I_R_S_ uh and a whole bunch of other shit.

What's the over-under on this being generated by A_I_ very badly?

It's I mean he's been arrested.

Okay, so it's a thing It. happened. It's it's real. Because there are people that are trying to use A_I_ to stoke shit like this out there and then also get people to pay ransoms for kidnapping and things. Um there will be some bad faith actors trying to use that technology. It will happen.

Totally Yeah. Uh you know the they're going after Taylor Swift with the new the fake nudes because she is the biggest threat to masculinity in the world apparently. Uh there yeah there's there was the Joe Biden phone call telling people not to vote for him in New Hampshire.

That's Taylor Swift's problem right there Just. because she's existing, toxic men are losing their penises everywhere and it's a problem.

Although they shouldn't have seen it because they were gonna stop watching football because of Colin Kaepernick.

Yeah, the kneeling was a big thing, but since he stopped and also because Trump stopped using it as a dog whistle, they stopped caring and they're right back to loving the N_F_L_ despite the fact that they wanna get rid of most of the people that uh play in the N_F_L_.

Yeah. But that's just minor details.

Right. I mean if we're gonna start pointing out the hypocrisy of the right, we're gonna be here all day just pointing out hypocrisy. They know that they're fucking hypocrites. They don't fucking care. They're unabashedly proud of just how much their double standards work in their favour. They fucking love that shit. That's how these fascist ass-hats work because that's all the right is that's left in America right now is just fascism.

Yeah, it's it's not looking good. Um to put it mildly.

On the plus side, I do still know a few conservatives here and there that are the um greedy-fisted why should I have to pay for anybody else type of conservative, what they call themselves fiscal, but what they really mean is I don't wanna have to pay for anybody but myself and even then I shouldn't have to pay. Like that kind of self-absorbed right wing kind of person. And they're like I don't know what to do. I'm ashamed of my party. I should just walk away. I'm like you should have walked away a long time ago, but yes you should just walk away. 'Cause it

Yeah 'cause at this point like you literally are about two to three steps away from either licking boots or goose stepping in them for your party if you stick around because it just continues to get worse with them with their actions.

Yeah. It's it's gonna be an interesting year I, would say. Uh or two.

Yeah, we both have like new jobs since we last spoke. Uh you can't talk about it much about yours.

Yeah well if you wanna hear about how I got shit-canned and and then you know found a new job very quickly and how I feel it's a much higher purpose, that's I've actually discussed it on my most recent show coming out is four four two, sorry little self-promotion here. We start the Al Adamson box set proper, the pirate radio edit was out as of this recording tonight, which is a Thursday, the first of February, so the pirate radio edit's out already of that, and I detail the story of finally talking about how I lost the job, how what I went through and then how I came

and like what I kind of did to mark a celebration of how I was able to get a new job in time and everything like that. That's a whole story time thing hell. But I loved my old job. I really truly did. I wrote support software for firefighters, which was something that I could say. Now everybody that knows me knows that when I say that what I do now is a higher calling. And I'll tell you in private, I just can't talk about it on the air just because I can't put it out there and I can't even post about it on social media. But like

it requires a shit ton of clearance for me to be able to do even more background checks than anything else I've ever done before, including finance. And I personally consider it a higher calling than any other work that I've done previously in my life. So I'm borderline civil service working for the government. Now you put two and two together, you can figure out how I'm working for the government and doing things that actually matter to me that's a higher purpose. And if you still can't figure it out, just fucking message me and I'll tell you. If you were

get the shit. Yeah, I'm an independent contractor from the government. I'm actually like two steps down from government, but it's not it's uh actually yeah, he will kill me because it's global. What I wor what I do is for like the betterment across the world, so. Yeah. Well, he was turned in at well he was found after his mom made a phone call. I would

fuckin' hope so. I mean alright, not for nothing, but like I don't care how much your mother loves you. If she sees you holding what is clearly a severed head claiming that you murdered your own father because he's in government, you better fuckin' rat that shit out 'cause they need help. It's only gonna get worse from here.

And you know, unless people are obliv like this not to this extreme, but this is I've I have had a conversa conversations like this with my wife, like just when fucked up shit happens, like wow, what do we do if like our kid does that?

So it's yeah, people should have that I've just like before he was born we figured out what we would do in a zombie apocalypse. It was just shit you gotta do and get ready.

Well I mean since the threat of nuclear war and mass world war and just like you know basically the population dwindling down to nothing and you know the earth being completely destroyed and us having to fight for survival Mad Max style is back on the table, um I've already started having contingency plans and you know starting to stash fuckin' machetes around the house more and my wife's like really every time she finds one Like. you'd better to have it and not need it.

Yeah, that's what I fucking say, but then the wife's like yeah, but then it always falls and blah blah blah. I don't know. Right, right, you have to have the sort of plot convenience, because the one time that you need this sword, it's gonna fall for you to let you know that you can kill the gremlin in the tree and save your mom, even though she killed way more fucking gremlins than you ever did. Unless you count the theater explosion, that was pretty badass, really pulled that off. Yeah, well he only gets half the credit, because V_B_K_'s helped. Yeah, and she's super fucking hot, so she

gets all the credit in my book. So we got that sorted Uh. we've just found out that you are running the Real Life Belko experiment for your new job. Uh no no no I, said higher calling not, um not pleasurable calling. Uh yeah so we watched the Belko experiment because really what we wanna talk about now that we've we've gotten some of that grim material out of the way of recent

is workers' rights. That's a big thing that I suggested because I've been wanting to talk about that for a while for obvious reasons 'cause I got shit canned unceremoniously for no reason other than I completed all the tasks that they needed and then they downsized my division significantly.

Conveniently for them.

yeah by like about twenty percent and um as I said to my wife after it happened because this is a thing that um you have to deal with whenever you're downsized or whenever you're unsam unceremoniously let go for whatever fucking reason just because of a what they call a corporate restructuring which is essentially just another way of saying downsizing uh i you have to kinda realise if you're the first out the door, while that feels like the worst fucking thing that could happen to you, I've been a part of a company that struggled and tried to stay or float

a mass lay-off like that. Um the first place that I worked as a programmer did that in the tech world. And essentially I came in and learned like five people's jobs and they got rid of those five people. At my my previous tech job. And I didn't mean for that to happen, they just had me starting to take over things and then they went they uh the people that I learned their jobs went and started doing what was supposed to be Greenfield c like development and then they were let go. Um. No, it is they pit the workers

Yeah, that's exactly why the Belko experiment is one hundred percent presenting what management actually does to its employees, what corporate CEO structure is actually all about, and it is literally set up to be a wolf pack of each other devou like you're just devouring each other when y when you're underlings and just trying to step forward to essentially please whoever may be the leader of that pack. But there's still just a bunch of carnivores just waiting to

fucking feast, you know. I mean there's also a lot of interpersonal office politics stuff that do come into play with some of the things that happen here, particularly John C. McGinley's character uh and his completely delusional state that he lives in for like ninety nine percent of this film. Uh but yeah. But yeah.

Yeah, anybody who starts with that in a conversation is a giant red flag and you should get away from them and report them to H_R_ immediately, which will do you no good whenever you're working for an evil corporation that puts a tracking chip in your head and sends you to work in a foreign nation as a American national over there for what fucking reason? And you still don't question that? I mean I'm like I'm I'm not s these people obviously did not deserve what they get,

because jobs are set up in such a way, and this is another thing that the Belco experiment actually represents very very well.

uh the layoffs that I'm talking about and the way that corporates corporations treat people as expendable uh they literally whenever they're letting them go are taking away everything in their livelihood because of the way that America is set up. I mean we have no insurance without a job, we have no l way of making income which is the only way to actually get food unless you happen to be near a food bank or there are people for another support system for you to be able to be fed and they're gonna take as well your financial future to

be able to sustain yourself whenever you're too old to be able to even work. They take those three things from you all at once. And I can tell you for a fact, it feels like your entire life is taken away from you. It's happened to me on several occasions. And being a survivor of something like that, like a mass lay-off, well at first it starts with just the two, like it does in Belko experiment. They demand two people be let go because they need to cut the fat around here and that will help the profits increase for their investors. Then they

they can't get rid of the two, nobody can decide, so unfortunately the fucking higher ups have to go ahead and just make a decision, and they just take out four random people based on whatever criteria that no one really understands, and it feels just like that, and even a small lay-off where just certain people around you are fin are just suddenly gone, you al it's like they're fucking die 'cause you don't ever get to see them again unless you keep contact with them outside of work, and then you know that this thing happened to them and they lost their livelihood, they lost their co

ability of having insurance to keep their health and livelihood going, and they lost their future stability despite whatever savings and everything like that. Now you take that most people live paycheck to paycheck in America because of the income inequality and the disparity between the highest paid C_E_O_ and the lowest paid person in the echelon of the corporation, which is probably the folks that work in the kitchen played by Sean Gunn who were obviously smoking weed 'cause what do they care if they get fired from that place.

you know you you you take all of that into consideration and that hierarchy comes into play and somewhere in the middle there your middle manager becomes the most fireable and the most useless and that's because of the general age that they're at. Well who's the closest to retirement anyway? Get them up against the wall.

Who doesn't have any kids under the age of eighteen or isn't married and single, and we don't necessarily have to worry too much about their livelihood, it won't impact the rest of the world to kill this person because that's what firing does in America. Literally, that's like l not mince words. You can argue with me all day that not having insurance doesn't mean a death sentence, but it pretty much fucking does. And people working still are forced to work without insurance, which is even fucking worse. You know, those people get put up against the wall. And then when you find out that you still haven't

pared down your company enough to maximise your profits by killing off those seven people, like in the Belko experiment. You go wild and just randomly start picking people, and before long they're flailing. This is what companies do, because it's about the profit, it's about increasing that profit margin, and that's all that fucking matters, because then the higher echelon get to survive, they get the bonuses, they get the final uh financial security, they get to get out of the Belko experiment.

Yep. They get the data, they get Everybody. focused on each other rather than the true enemy.

Like that.

Yeah.

yeah. Run with that. Alright, so the true enemy in this case is the people who are actually doing the experimentation, right That's. that's obvious. That's that's what the representation actually is. It's the main corporate structure. It's not the C_E_O_ of this particular division. It's the C_E_O_ of everything of the mass conglomerate corporate entity that owns everything, the madrigal like kind of company that you would see in Breaking Bad or uh Jesus fucking

um, whoever owns like all of the fucking fast food chains like on I don't who I don't even know who it is anymore. It's like Nabisco that owns like everything or Kellogg's that owns fucking everything and all these various products. But they're all the same fucking company made Mega Corporation. Yeah, they're like five companies Pizza. Pizza Hut, Pepsi. All that shit. Yeah, we're we're creeping further and further towards the fast food franchise wars that was in the demo demolition man.

almost there. You know that's, still a movie that needs done on this show. I'm claiming it now. I claim everything. I mean as a man who knows how to use the three shells, I think you automatically. Yeah. I don't understand why he had a problem with the three shells. It was obvious when you look at it how you use the three shells. Uh you know he's, a he's a hammer, not

uh not a precision drilling piece of equipment that's yeah. Right. Okay, so yes, the big corporate structure is the experimentation and then um at the very very end Val Resnick I forget the actor's real name, but I always know him as Val Resnick from Payback. He's basically saying that they have their own higher calling, which is why you reference the Belko experiment at the very end, and he's talking about how this is all

necessary because they need to know about the human experience Well. in corporations they may come up with whatever fucking reason that they want for killing people the way that they kill people by playing a game of roulette with their lives and just mass firings and all the shit that they pull to maximise profits But. at the end of the day they're all committing murder just to commit murder and because it makes them feel good to do it. And it's evident with the guy who ends up surviving at the very end, the only reason that he survives is because he kind of hid and tried to go unnoticed

at the very very end or was just trying to not even participate and took s a few matters into his own hands with some things, but it was the C_O_O_ and him that were all that was left, and it was down to a matter of survival. And when there's no other workers and it's one-on-one, the power is equal, right? When the work force stands up against the management and the numbers on the work force are always better, but even when it's even, the workers will always

because management is fucking useless without the workers. All they can do is manage, and they don't manage anything other than your misery to keep you terrified to lose your benefits, your health insurance, y your fucking four O_ one K_ savings, your livelihood, your next paycheck because you have to live paycheck to paycheck because of the income and expa you know, inequality that's going on and the disparity between the two.

That's all there. That's all existing in the film. We can go step by step and beat by beat by the film even though I've kind of spoiled it, but the overall arching story line here is essentially the experience of being the American worker. Now had they all banded together, sure, their heads probably would have exploded. They probably all would have been killed. But if they would have all realised what was going on and organised and got the fuck out of Bogota or b what what Columbia? Yeah Bogota, Bogota, Columbia. If they

have got the fuck out of there, got out of that situation and been organised workers on their own terms, they could possibly still be alive, right. But they signed away all of their rights. I live in a wor right to work state. What that literally means is the laws of the state say that unions are useless. Ye anybody can quit for any reason, anybody can be fired for any reason. The only reason that they put that anybody can quit for anything any reason in there is so that it looks like the idea is oh, you choose when you work.

it's a you know it's a l right it's a libertarian thing but no it's literally just a law so that these fucking fat cats can fire you for no cause at all and you have no repercussions to do anything about it because the state's laws legally say that. The first thing that workers should do instead of bickering with each other over immigrants taking jobs or A_I_ taking jobs or anything else is get together and fucking realise that is where your

actually lies. You need to get rid of right to work states. If you have the capability of doing it, get it voted on for all of the people. And explain to people what right to work really fucking means. Let's start talking about collective bargaining. Let's talk about the workers, the way the fucking Dropkick Murphy's do it. Let's talk about the fucking workers, the way that fucking Arlo and Willie Guthrie fucking did it. Let's talk about how racism is just a fucking tool that these fucking assholes use to

keep you as a worker from realising that you have way more in common with the same fucking person on the same fucking line that may be a different colour than you, then you will ever fucking have with a boss who just might happen to be the same fucking colour as you.

And it's been going on forever Uh. when when we started talking about actualising our unplanned i like it no it's not scheduled out, it's just more it's a loose idea of our plan, but when we w started talking about doing stuff about labour, I started uh reading a book that uh your last statement made me think of it's, called organised labour and the black worker sixteen,

nineteen to i nineteen eighty one. And I am just on the other side of reconstruction in the book.

And yeah, there were there was a lot of well the I've the third and the thirteenth amendment and all that other shit is like a whole other conversation Uh. but there was a lot of racism used

to prevent black workers from entering the trade unions that they were working in on the you know af at the end of the civil war and everything. And uh there were pockets where workers realised like hey, we're competing against each other and we're getting paid shit, so maybe we should think about this. But then some some of the larger constructs and then you start seeing the things uh the

like capital uh organising to fight back against the harmony of a unionised labour force.

Yeah, but you'll st you'll still see it popping up and it's like an easy joke about teamsters and stuff like that.

Well, d how many times have you been have they tried has a job tried to convince you not to join the union there?

Well, being in a right to work state, there is very little unionization that will ever fucking ever happen in any of these companies. There was one company that I worked at when I first moved to Omaha that had like a unionization thing, and it was a telecom workers union that existed for like ever. And there wasn't so much a pressure not to join it, it was just literally the people were like hey, you can join it if you want to. I mean I'm in it, but it won't do you any good. We're in a right to work state. So why pay the dues, why even bother It. was like kind of like that. It's

giving you a sort of defeatist attitude towards it as how it was approached. And um I mean there's the ever-popular like people are unhappy let's, just fix this with a pizza party band-aid, you know, they're that always fucking happened.

Pizza party yep, Plug. the hole.

Eat their pizza and form a fucking union anyway.

Exactly. Uh right after uh

and a general strike is the most powerful thing that the middle class can actually obtain.

If if uh I mean just like I don't even know all of the various examples, but entire nations were brought to their knees, like doing general strikes. It happened in like Sweden or Switzerland or something along those lines and look at fucking France man, I mean they're just they're unhappy with anybody that's in their fucking government and a bathtub is going through the fucking window of that house, wherever they're staying. Um. Right. I know Iceland, uh there

were some really good general strikes in Iceland. Uh on my shelf, but I haven't started it yet, uh there's a book called like The History of Labour and Ten Strikes or something like that. Uh I've heard good things about it, but I haven't touched it yet, so.

But the reason that the worker has the power that they do and I'm I'm gonna kinda go a little bit far far back, right. Labour in and of itself, work in and of itself was always necessary for us to survive. It got hijacked by the capitalists. So whenever people first came over to America and they quote unquote settled or colonialized, however you want to view it, there are some folk that were pioneers that would keep moving further and further west. They would

do the labour to build their own homes by cutting down the trees, selecting the specific trees they needed to build log cabins, or in some cases dig out parts of earth and build like sod roofs and things like that. The point is they would build their own homes to which they would keep themselves through the winter alive and from freezing to death. They would be growing their own food and storing it, and in some cases they would build other structures to be able to store the food longer, like a crick house or something along those lines that would kind of keep things

for like milk and things on a farm. You'd end up building pens for your livestock to keep them going because that would help feed you. Hard work is ingrained into us with the quote-unquote pioneer frontier spirit because in order for people to be here from Europe, that type of work needed to be done. As people needed less and less because things became more manufactured capable or businesses were able to start actually like sawing boards or things like that and

physical work became less and less and then purchases for these things needed to be done and and that sort of thing commerce, was still kind of going and yes the start of America was still very much commerce, but it wasn't fully capitalist right, That. that didn't really come into play until like the banks really started coming in and the investments and all of that kind of stuff. And now how this works is people find a way to exploit someone else's labour to get all of the benefits.

all they have to do is say oh well this farmer needs this so I'll front them all of the boards to build the barn and then I will f reap all the fruits of their labor after they build it by them having to pay me back in livestock or whatever else it is. So now you don't have someone that's equal value of trading with commerce like a blacksmith shoeing your horse for I don't know a shit ton of eggs or whatever. You don't have that kind of commerce. You have someone who is putting in very little effort but

fronting something that has no intrinsic value for survival other than you now need this because you can't afford it and crediting comes into play and people start to need money and there's other things that capitalists do that's much much worse, but essentially someone who can't do shit other than rip other people off and make them feel like they're less than so that they can build themselves up start to basically realise that other people will do all the work for them and they manipulate them. I mean that's how church is

really got started. I mean, that's the pastor's the first fucking person to reap the reward of everybody else just by working once a week and making sure he told everybody else what to do with their life. That's no different than a corporate fucking structure. But once that became worse and worse, and once they started realising that the more of people's lives that they can control, by making them more and more dependent on a piece of paper that literally means nothing other than I exchange this for value that doesn't exist other than in our heads, once that starts being laid out for

property and more and more people realise how to make this intangible thing be manipulated and the con games keep going and going and going.

This government was set up with the idea that the landowners or the people with the value of owning property are the only ones that are worthwhile. So the easiest way to do that is to own the property and oh damn it we can't own people anymore so well we'll just own the property that they live on and make them work the land for us and they'll get very little money out of us and then we'll just share the crop.

Right and then obviously health care was still somewhat of a thing that everybody had to pay for but in a lot of cases you would have a town doctor in a lot of these communities where everybody in the town paid the doctor to take care of everybody in the town. And more and more that particular thing got corporatised and just everything becomes commoditized and everything becomes just a thing that is just a way to trade for an intangible piece of paper that is

just a green back god of emptiness that needs absolutely nothing to anybody really other than it helps you get all of the things that you think you want and many of the things that you think you need to survive. A simple general strike where the people that create all of the value that have all of the purpose and that do everything making things happen if they just stop making those things happen until their basic needs are met as in free health care for everyone

free housing for everyone or at least subsidize in some way shape or form to make it easier for them to be able to have those things. And then also mm I don't know the inability to fight whenever a job tries to fire you without cause that you need to actually do something wrong before you can be terminated from your job. If you can get those three things so that they have no more power over whether or not they can kill you by removing their job from you there is very little for

them to be able to do to harness any other power for you, and there is really no need for you to work for them, and you will have all of the power. Those three things, which the pioneers always made sure they took care of for them and theirs, bed, housed, and healthy with a doctor as much as possible in the circumstances that they were in, those three things taken care of, they had little time other than those things to focus on to

survive. But once those needs are met, we have proven as if people that we can do such amazing things. If you work solely for the love of working, which I can promise you the job that I'm currently in, if I did not have to worry about money ever again, I would still do the fucking job that I'm currently in. And I would probably do it better, because I wouldn't have to worry about whether or not they'll let me go because I revamped their entire site in a fucking week.

You know what I'm saying? Like I would probably do more for it, because it's something that I actually believe in. Maybe I would just fuck off and be stoned all day and podcast and just live off of whatever it is that I'm sustained by. But yeah, um I'm not talking about minimum wage anymore. I am talking about basic universal income for the b for everyone, and basic housing development for everyone. It doesn't have to be fucking amazing.

just has to be that someone has a roof over their head, you know, like once those things are taken care of and the power is removed from the capitalists,

they have nothing to hold over you anymore. Nothing but your own need for things that don't matter. And that's fine, that's commerce. I don't need the Al Adamson box that I wasted all the money on. I would be perfectly happy without it, I am sure. But I'm enjoying doing the reviews for that for my show, absolutely. It's it's sitting right across from me, that's why I mentioned it. Um but it's there. It's a thing that I didn't even know I needed until I

saw it and it interested me and it intrigued me and I like the fucking cover. That's all that the capitalists will have. And their innovation that they claim to breed was essentially a way to make slavery happen and make you be thankful that you're doing it. Because that's exactly what they're holding over your head, the threat of your fucking death if you don't do what they say.

there, that's a brief history of fucking work. I don't know no, that was that was like if if we hadn't been talking very shortly, that's I mean that's that's a mic drop right there, but we can have multiple ones in in this. Well let's let's actually get into the b the movie proper and talk about the moments of the movie that we really enjoy and and things like that. Like let's do the actual review part because I mean we've definitely hit the hard part that

people don't wanna hear. And if you're still here, there's your reward. How about that?

Yeah. Now you get the movie.

Now we get the movie? Uh okay.

How many red flags are there in the first two to three minutes of the Belco experiment before you're like, oh, these people are all dead. It's no wonder bad shit's about to happen to them. Why would you ever like, you know, like it has to be the money, right? Like it has to be ridiculous salary for like doing absolutely nothing. Right. I mean like like we touched on, it's the the health insur what do they th give her uh a car, an apartment, health insurance, office job.

Promise of security, e even though it comes in the form of an exploding pellet in the back of your head.

Right, because if, you know, kidnapping's bad in Colombia, but in Bogota particularly. And that's the only reason that they're wanting to implant that neural link. I mean that chip that tracks you.

Yeah. SpaceX experiment just see

cause too many problems.

What could possibly go wrong with letting a fucking outing himself white supremacist in charge of putting things into people's brains? What could possibly go wrong?

Yeah, um and uh you know uh what's-her-face Grimes. should have warned him on her way out the door or she she was in cyberpunk twenty seventy seven. She knows.

Oh Jesus Christ. Uh I I find John C. McGinley to be an absolute delight, one of the things I need to say about this film. Everything that he's in, he goes for it, and he is fucking amazing. And the thing is he plays characters that I absolutely love, but he also plays people that I absolutely loathe. But no matter what it is that he's doing, I absolutely love to either loathe or love him when he's on screen. This is a loathe character, like he is this is probably some of the

lowest of the low of people that I have seen him play. He is absolutely one hundred percent cringe toxic male. Through with the uh uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. This this was up there with me uh wa to steal a line from him I. enjoy his entire catalogue. Um this this is this character I feel like kinda rivalled his in Platoon?

For me? Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty bad. I mean Platoon's pretty fucking bad.

Yeah. And and he you know he d his ca I guess borrowed a dash of the was it Kevin Dylan? Or Matt or who was it that we're trying to attack the girl in the the remake of the Millet Massacre or whatever when they were about to rape a girl? I don't think it was John C. McGinley's character.

But it was like three guys It's. been a while since I've seen Platoon. I don't think I've ever actually covered a war movie on this show. I do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah that's, weird Platoon. has come up a lot in my life because we just recently did a Laura Jamsner movie where like it was like Emmanuel Queen of the desert or whatever, which was basically the plot of Platoon, but in a desert. But I think it came out before Platoon we're not a hundred percent sure on that, but it was like

similar to that plot and we talked about it and compared it to Platoon. And I only remembered enough about Platoon because my brain blocked it out. It's one of the only movies that I saw like sub twelve that I absolutely refused to re-watch and remember any more than what I saw when I was sub twelve. Like I just I can't go through that again. I just remember the rape being way too fucking brutal and I just couldn't do it. But I just yeah, I remember John C. McGinley and that and now I'm having flashbacks. I think eventually I'm gonna probably have to do it on my show and face that fucking trauma.

I mean there's s s really good opposing type charac like Willem Dafoe is a great character in that movie. As a stand-up person uh person that yeah, even though th he is a soldier, I believe that he was probably drafted. Um.

Except for maybe the stuff he does with Lars von Thier. I don't think I can really get into Lars von Thier. He's just not for me.

Yeah, it's I you know I.

I have to be in a special mood to wanna suffer while watching.

I gotta suffer from my fucking art at least, you know, give me hour of the wolf you, know.

But uh but yeah, ju the John C. McGinley character in Platoon is kind of like the

the go-along-with-it second behind the bully kind of guy.

Yeah. Gro Grover Gil or whatever the fucker.

He's got the too the too tight work shirt to show off his muscles, make himself feel bigger.

H hangs out with the former uh C_I_A_ uh security guards that also work in there or the special forces trained security guards or whatever you, know the,

He yeah, is he sp he's a former special forces guy Is? that what they were trying to say? Or was the the bodyguard that was hanging out with him was a former sp so I I ha if he's special forces or former special forces, his end fight to survive really wasn't that impressive.

He was not trained very well.

He's former and he he is probably farther away from former than the god, I'm gonna get in trouble, the Aussie or Q_E_ guy that was a they implied that both of them were former special forces, but I imagine that they were in different armies and perhaps got brought in as part of the same mercenary group.

Although they both seemed unaware of the experiment. So the I think the first time I watched it I thought that maybe they were plants because they were mercenaries and this seemed to be uh like whoever owns Belko appeared to be the type that would have their uh

Rolodex filled with different mercenary groups.

Oh yeah, this is I mean Belko is Blackwater, right? This was this should could have been called the Blackwater experiment.

I mean this is basically what it is, right? Like they're colonialising South American countries with corporatized culture and you know putting up yeah and and basically like putting in factories that they don't have to worry about pollutants and things like that because the environmental laws there are significantly more lax, which is why a lot of these places are manufacturing in India because they can poison the populace and not even care because India won't do anything about it. They're just now starting to get through that

corruption and sort of turn around from that. And that's just one of the main places that these fucking evil bastards like Blackwater pull that kind of shit.

Uh and then what, Erik Prince and the Davos and it's all the same old villains. They just won't go away.

Yeah, this this is the Blackwater experiment. Belko is Blackwater appearance ab

I think that's fair to say.

I can't think of a bigger conglomerate that owns everything evil than Blackwater. Like if you invest in Blackwater, I kinda understand, but you should really start thinking about what you're doing with your life.

Like sure, you're gonna make money 'cause you invested, I get it, but like really is it worth it 'cause you might as well just make a do deal with whatever fucking devil that's out there, you know. I mean just go ahead and invest in some fucking apartheid mines while you're at it, you fuckers. 'Cause that's what they're doing.

They they do that. They call it diversification. It's the only kind of diversity that isn't uh from the woke mob.

Oh yeah, diversifying your bank balance while the uh people that are you know apt to want to hate everything about diversity and they will not understand it, that's the one thing that they're gonna be okay with. They're like I hate all diversity except for the people that own everything's bank accounts. They should be diversified.

Diversified.

I'm talking like where I'm from whenever I give that voice because I've heard some various aunts and uncles talk like that and it's terrible. I'm like oh my God, what does that boot leather taste like that you just keep licking?

Uh you know yeah, I chewed on a piece of leather as a child and never never got the taste for it. So. Uh but you know they don't put salt on the boot before they lick it. It's not marinated in teriyaki glaze. Yeah, it's just shit and throat sweat from the last person whose neck they were standing on.

Well that got really grim fast. That went to a very dark place like very fast. That's like a dip in a roller coaster at Universal Studios. Well you know I've got a lot of stuff in the surface therapy and I've got my uh P_T_S_D_ marijuana.

Yeah man, I still can't get medical here. So I'm still doing federally legal as far as I'm willing to admit anyway. You know what, I I was a little loose talking about it. Although before i i it was still like a misdemeanor to have it have up to three ounces without a medical prescription. But I was you know, new year, new me I.

I'm not gonna be afraid to ask the doctor if maybe this would be good for me. And I started telling my life story and they stopped me very early on and said yeah, let's get you a prescription.

There's I forget how many doctors in the state you have to be uh licensed to prescribe it. You can't prescribe it like every other drug that Big Pharma owns.

Well right, because it's not a commodity which they can wrap their head around yet. Once Big Pharma really really pushes marijuana, or even tobacco, I mean that's the illogical place for big tobacco to go is to like just like weeds predicted it would. I mean they should really just throw some fucking money behind fully legalising it and being able to control it because that's the commodity that everybody's gonna want, you know. And but then they're gonna put addictive chemicals and all of that kind of stuff. But as long as it gets illegal legal enough for us to be able to like grow our own and make sure that

Marlboro can't give us their own version of weed that also has nicotine in it for no fucking reason other than they want you hooked on their shit. Yeah. That was one of the key proponents in the thing that we passed in November was that uh and it's one of the reasons why some previous things didn't pass was because they took out the thing where people could grow their own.

So now

uh adults can grow up to six plants unless they live in like a house of multiple adults, and then you can have twelve.

Oh nice, I thought those numbers would dwindle. But yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah. I but but you can't have like a giant farm and be like well there's fifteen of us uh but without the license. Like this is just I think the big clunky form of it was like mar regulate marijuana like alcohol. People can home brew but if they open up a brewery they have to get a sort of license. Uh so as of last well two months ago uh early December that went into effect a

along with our uh abortion and um birth control protections.

we haven't talked since all that. I was been talking about this shit for so long. I we will get back to the bell code and I feel like the corporatization and the controlling the commodities will be our breadcrumb back back into it. Um. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, what's a through line 'cause we're always gonna come back to that, because that's literally the bottom line is their bottom line. That's it. Okay. So when we last spoke, I feel like it was getting ready to happen or

had just happened where uh we got enough signatures to uh bring it up for a vote to change our state constitution to allow abortion access and access to birth control without legislators being able to pass laws against it. I think it's um th yeah so that was its own thing and we also got signatures for a

law, not a constitutional amendment, to legalise recreational marijuana, uh to regulate it like alcohol bill. So they they kept the g g g g

Uh. so everybody was like well fuck you. And then they tried to have uh the they outlawed special elections in August, but once we got the signatures to put it on the ballot they, uh just said okay hey guess what, two months before that we're gonna have an election in August that's just about this We. want you to tell us that you need to have more votes to pass a citizen c

uh amendment to the constitution. They wanted to raise it to like over sixty five percent.

And uh like a certain number from every county instead of just the majority of the state, which is how it is now.

weird how the right continues to move the goalposts in such a way and make it to where they're basically not even doing what the will of the people truly is, they're literally governing by their own particular tastes and or faith. Almost as if they want a state where only white Christian men have any power. What kind of

Supremacy, do you think that brings about? Hmm.

We'll think about that.

I mean I see I can connect the dots right, but like I'm starting to feel like it's leading all back to Pepe Silva every time you hear with these strings. I mean it's uh f seventeen seventy six was literally just a bunch of overbearing land owning white people that also own people of colour trying to make sure that they got to keep all of the money and wealth that they were harvesting off the backs of their exploited slaves. And so whenever those things were taken away from them they just found a way to

make their exploited slaves thank them for it and consider themselves workers by changing the whole idea of what it is that is the nature of work and what they need for the boss man. And they present themselves to be something different than the plantation owner that is raping their workers which are really just their slaves. It hasn't fucking changed. It has not fucking changed. They just repackaged it in a Fred Murray polo for you if you catch my drift.

Yes, we definitely catch that drift.

Um so it was uh there was a lot of nervousness and on edge 'cause to make it harder to make it require over sixty five percent to change the constitution, you only needed fifty percent of the vote or fifty you know fifty one percent of the vote to make that happen.

So people were kinda nervous.

Uh

However, that got crushed in the August election by one of the largest turnouts in the state in a long time. You know it

Even though they got rid of the elections because typically the August election is when nobody shows up.

And then marijuana and abortion passed in November by giant margins. Uh uh yes. Yeah, so as of December seventh twenty twenty three we had protection uh to abortion rights and access to uh contraception because that's also something that's always getting fucked with as a way to control populations and people.

Yeah uh became enshrined in the constitution.

In the state constitution. Now the people that said why don't you make the that bill like the marijuana bill which is a law that can be changed by lawmakers, immediately afterwards the rageful people tried to pass a law that took away the power of the state supreme court to rule on it and give themselves the power to control that law in the state constitution.

But they would have to have the court support that, which isn't gonna happen.

And then they were gonna change the marijuana bill to get rid of the home grow. But they were worried about states with recrea 'cause people are already just going to Michigan for recreational weed forever 'cause they've had it for a year or two at least.

Yeah, but it's you could get to the Ohio Michigan border in I think two hours from where I live in the middle of the state in Columbus. Yeah. Uh it's it's a six and a half hour to Toronto from here. Um but then you've got the border problem. Uh well not problem, then you've got the border situation. Uh which uh and but it's not a Greg Abbott situation or border problem. It's more of a i

inter inter community trafficking problem at that point though. Inter-country trafficking international, trafficking is the word I'm looking for. Suck.

Are starting to say, oh, people are coming in from Canada too. Um it's like okay, chill out there. Uh.

the people that are coming in from Canada just wanna see what it's all a boot and are trying to get warm. Fucking chill. And and from here uh it's uh we've got a really weird sort of right-wing libertarian attorney general. And he's always talking about fentanyl Fentanyl being snuck across the border even though they generally come across in legal ports of entry. But Columbus police have had multiple instances in the past where officers were arrested for smuggling

fentanyl into the state So. uh. Yeah. Exactly. But to claw back the capital f from removing people's power to create their own medicine, which is one of the reasons why marijuana became illegal other than the paper industry.

Well actually the voting that they did there is the power of the people. That's something that I I we wanna focus in on because as a as a group of workers or for collective bargaining where you all get a say in everything that happens, if you organise that even into voting and change the voting laws or ch you know change the laws however that you can and you actually work towards the goal of getting rid of right to work states so that you can fully unionise and the companies can't do anything about it, if we can get that going state by state

reverse all of those and then get it to where it's federally banned for a right to work because that is an equal opportunity employment no-no no, matter what the fucking capitalists say. Uh because they could literally fire you for being handicapped and they don't wanna pay for it just because they don't wanna pay for it. I mean that's literally what it is. It's a definitely an equal opportunity employment issue and that needs to be brought into it for right to work states to be getting gotten rid of as well. Uh but the capital's paying for that. But if we all get

together, we can overthrow capital in any way, because we all are together. We just go together with this. We work together. That's all we have to do.

Find them in the basement by the fuse box.

in little fall-a-house usher time there Uh. uh no, but in seriousness uh the people of Ohio like, you know, round of applause for all of you getting together and just collectively using your voices and electing that in and voting that in for the state um cong a constitution to be changed for your reproductive rights. That's amazing that you've enshrined that in such a way. Um and it makes it even more obvious that the politicians in your state do not give a

about what you want, they're not there to represent you. Because if you made that vote to make that happen to alter your constitution, they are clearly working against you. And while the multitude of your voices are saying one thing, they're trying to push you for the party that eats leopards f like leopards that eat people's faces. That's what they want you to vote for. And they they said people just didn't understand. People were too stupid to understand what they were voting for. Because it doesn't agree with what

want. I myself want to have universal basic income for everyone and housing for everyone and I think anyone who disagrees with me on that is stupid, unless they're a capitalist billionaire and they don't wanna have to help pay for other people to survive, because they want all that resource for themselves. Then you're not dumb, you're just a greedy evil piece of shit and I hate you even more.

Well said.

Seriously, anybody who says I don't want a universal basic income or I don't wanna make sure that all people are housed and taken care of with one side of their mouth and then out the other, proclaims to be Christian in some way shape or form, is a fucking liar.

Yeah, that's that's like the big the big one with uh I I d with the Christianity and uh wondering what they would think of the Bible's Jesus if he was walking around spouting his woke nonsense.

Well, where that all started is uh defense contractors in southern California, in Orange County, in like the late forties or fifties uh somewhere around there like basically we got out of like World War II and that's where like the Federal Society uh the prosperity doctrine for these kinds of mega churches that formed out of there um just the way that everybody that was making so much money hand over fist in all of these various weapons manufacturers that were

there in Orange County and all the where they all lived and everything. Um they basically created all of this stuff that bubbled over and they're the ones that are responsible for essentially getting Regan into office as the figurehead that he was to start the ball rolling on all of this. And Regan is directly to blame for all of that because under their tutelage he's the one that got rid of is the fairness doctrine for um news reporting and uh nightly news and stuff Is. that what it is? Were the were they yeah, that was that was a

under Reagan, right? Well that was directly back to this group of people in Orange County. I don't know exact I can't remember exactly everything about it. There's a terrific Behind the Basterds episode about it that everybody can kinda learn where that kinda came from 'cause that's where I've gotten this education about it. But that's where that kind of started, that's where that all rose to power. So all of the stuff that we're seeing now, this white Christian nationalist group of people that believe in the prosperity doctrine, all goes back to those people in Orange

county that were weapons manufacturer types that were all just out there and were near the bases and things like that just living up the good life and reaping more greed and more greed and more greed and really the corporate structure and the way that that just becomes bigger and bigger business where more is better and better is more and all of it should be mine just really developed and started really taking over the country.

I mean it's it's not just the Industrial Revolution that kind of took away workers' power, it very very much was a conscious effort from these groups. I mean they're not just the Koch family, they're a big part of that as well in trying to basically just restructure America to be their corporatized, money making, earth raping, human trafficking machine that it is.

They didn't even perfect that.

The ones that are the best about it are these conglomerate mega-corporations that are all over the world manipulating and using the lack of environmental controls, the lack of humanitarian rights, and just the general disregard for life on this planet.

It's Hawke just all together, everything.

It's that, which is the end game for that, that's the end stage capitalism. We have been prepared by this with our entertainment for Judge Dredd and other things like that that we've already seen where this is headed.

I mean mega-city one is on the way. Raccoon city is on the way. I can promise you that something terrible like that where entire towns have been wiped off the planet because of some kind of chemical spill Sure. it may not be something as fun as zombies, it just may be everybody's skin melts off and they fucking die. But that's already happened multiple times in India. Fucking human carbide is responsible for the biggest fucking mining death count in all of history and it wasn't even considered a mine, they had people digging a

tunnel that just so happened to have a high silicate level of rock that they ended up harvesting for glass manufacturing and other things. But they just said it was a tunnel even though they had the men clearly mining. And they killed thousands and thousands and thousands of people.

And I forget how many people um from that dark money book that I read before our Distinguished Gentlemen episode, there there's towns in America totally poisoned by mercury poisoning. There's

Oh right, that's still going. I had a professor in college that was writing her master's thesis on it 'cause her boyfriend's family's from around there.

I think the national the religious group that does the national prayer breakfast speaking of Regan and all this other shit was also organized around

m breaking a strike or something like that now that we're talking about it.

Oh, I'm not that shocked at all. The minute that the bosses realized that they could pay scabs, but then the scabs weren't enough because they couldn't get the scabs to be as good as an actual worker, the union buster was the next logical thing. And it used to just be the fucking cops. And it still kinda is the fucking cops. It's just that the cops are only attracting the fucking racists white nationalists that wanna lean on a coloured person's neck.

Their words, not mine, sorry. You know what I mean? Like that's all they want. They want a person of colour to kill. That's all that a fucking cop wants. That's the reason why cops become cops these days. And the reason you don't s well the reason you don't see a lot of shirtless like hunky cop um calendars out there isn't because of all the donuts, it's because they don't wanna expose all of the fucking swastikas that they have. I do know. Yeah, the S_S_ lightning bolts. Yeah, the

kiss logos without the K_ and the I_ yeah, that's on a lot of them. Hodgepodge uh appropriated Nordic symbols. Things stolen from uh manga comics that they think are rune symbols that they have tattooed on them. Yeah. Punisher flags with a thin blue li Punisher skull with a thin bl blue line flag on it, that sorta shit. That sorta shit.

Uh it's just amazing to me, like the more I learn about history, the more the phrase those who don't know a history are doomed to repeat it is absolutely true. Because nobody pays attention to this shit, nobody keeps an eye on this shit, or the people that do are like you and myself who burn the fuck out and just can't fucking deal with it anymore and either give up or find a way to get some hope and then get back up into fighting weight. That's that's the cycle. I mean you can take this all the way back to Roman times with

kind of exploitation really. It just doesn't fucking end.

I'm just talking American workers whenever I talk pioneers and shit because that's everybody always espouses the the pioneer spirit for America like we're supposed to be these hard working individuals we're we're inheritors of these hard working individuals that built this land with their bare hands while destroying the planet and committing max genocide to do it. And if that's the great America that we're supposed to be getting back to, I mean that's just still mass genocide and the rape of the earth, so nothing has really changed, you know. At what point

was America so great that we need to be back to that point?

if you think it's because, you know, people were allowed to own other people, you're definitely fucked and I don't wanna be around you and you don't get a right to talk in this conversation. If you think it was in America when it was okay to outlaw people because of their sexual proclivities, even though it doesn't harm anyone else and they are going with nothing but consenting adults, I'm not talking about rape here, I'm just talking about homosexuality uh or gender identity or anything like that, if you feel like you should be able to legislate the right for those people to exist, that

still a form of genocide, you are still advocating mass murder, and once again, you don't get to be a part of this conversation anymore.

Until you realise every person has a right to live, and you have no right to tell them how to live so long as they're not hurting anyone else, you don't get to be a part of this conversation.

that's not how this works. You're not helping. And I think the thing that a lot of these politicians are pushing towards trans-panic and some roundabout ways of homophobia or just trying to say that uh the indoctrination of children or whatever it is, is they're running out of smaller groups to demonize without it being that they are revealing their ignorance and their bigotry one hundred percent. And so

many of the people of the world now are on the side of no we're all equal, literally we are all equal, we are all humans, we're all just trying to get through this thing called life like Prince once told us until you as a politician or you as a supposed leader of men or you as a manager of people in a company are willing to admit that you don't get the employees, you don't get to have

that power Corporate. structures are going along with that just because guess what if, they don't, the masses will revolt against them and you know why they fear that because, a general strike is more powerful than anything else Look. into organising and fucking do it people, Jesus fucking Christ.

I'm gonna say that on every single one of these episodes.

Good. Uh fuck yeah man, that's why we're doing this. I will say not well th this is my show, I'm gonna make it about me a little bit. That has that has been part of our punishment from corporate for passing uh abortion and weed is they've been going after trans people. They have this fucking there's I think there are six

trans kids playing sports in the state, but they've got this bill outlawing it. And uh none of the hospitals perform gender transition surgery on people under eighteen, but they've got a bill outlawing it. And there's all these other things they work in to that and but you're seeing hopefully I've you know I don't like getting to I'm I'm an optimist at heart.

But the business leaders as they say when they talk about just groups of you know groups of businesses backing legislation, lot of business leaders were supporting the bill to make it harder for us to uh change our constitution. Because you know what if we can't change the constitution we, can't enshrine minimum wage, we can't enshrine any other things like that. So they were backing the the

push on that. And then that failed horribly and now they are I don't know how many of the same people, but now business leaders are backing the move that we have working on this year there is a push to get removing politicians from redist redistricting. And putting that in the constitution that it cannot be elected officials and it would redraw the maps

immediately instead of waiting for ten more years. So seeing business groups backing that and a former Supreme Court justice from the state backing that, it's hard not to get hopeful for it that the same people that turned out for other things will turn out to get this done, but we are getting a lot of backlash from people who have more power than they should.

And it is when people are sticking together that their damage is reduced.

As much as they try to suppress your vote, as much as they try to suppress your voice, as much as they try to control what you can and can't do with your livelihoods insurance, and just general financial stability or just future stability in your world, as much as they try to control those

things, it's because they know that if they keep you individualized, if they keep you focused, instead of trying to do what's better for the group, instead of trying to save uh forty five people by murdering thirty, right? Instead of trying to do that, the eighty five roughly employees still in the building can find a way out and find a way to survive and fight their way free.

right, that's that's the possibility. That's the thing that the Belko experiment demonstrates beautifully more than anything else is the power of them working together. Because they come up with the idea to hang the signs and they have to shoot them under the threat of being murdered individually for trying to hang a sign to try and stop them because of how powerful that truly is. Every action that they take with the threat of death coming at them again is so powerful and so very much disturbs and terrifies the management that that's

the route that they went. That's the thing that they figure out how to do and how to try and stop it. And that's where what you're saying about everything about how the voters of the state are handling things and are finally trying to take away the control that these officials have essentially stolen from the people and take it back. The reason they wanna suppress your vote, the reason they wanna keep you terrified about losing your job and to keep you from unionizing and collectively bargaining and becoming a group of

that wield all of the power and control over their own labour, the reason they wanna stop that is they literally have nothing to keep you in bondage. But that fear. But that bigotry. And the more that that bigotry falls away, and the more that people realise that we are all brothers in this world, and sisters, and sometimes just non-binary friends and family, right? Like all of those things. Once we

that I her I have more in common with the eighteen year old non-binary person that I am sitting next to in a fucking cubicle right across the way. I have way more in common with them than I do my direct manager. For sure. We have the same level of being able to be fired at their whim in this state, for whatever reason.

That non-binary person doesn't exist in my office, that's just an example, but that's the thing that terrifies most people. It's because they lack the capacity to understand an idea that some people don't fit into a box and therefore just want to have different pronouns that allow them to feel just slightly more human than putting them into a specific yes or no box on whether or not they are this specific gender. Just allowing them to be fluid and experience life however they want.

And really what does that fucking matter You? know what I mean? Like if you fuck up when you give th the pronoun for the person, you just apologize and use the pronoun that they want to use. I mean if we can call share share and we can call Madonna Madonna, you can call the person that sits next to you they and them whenever you are talking about them without using their name. It is not hard to do.

And you've probably done it without even thinking about it because they and them have been ways to refer to singular and multiple people for hundreds of years.

I wrote a whole diatribe about how that's based on the and thou that was like super grammar-fucking-nerdy as shit and I'll dig it up if anybody wants to see it and I'll I'll send it to you. It's a giant explanation that totally makes sense, but it goes all the way back to the and thou. And that is the most Christian puritanical phrase word to describe a single person or a group of people that has ever been.

So your puritanical ass realized that you needed non-binary pronouns for a single person and groups of people to be able to be non-descriptive because they didn't fit your mold. And that's really what it is, is people lack the capacity to understand.

And you know what? You don't need to understand. You don't need to get it. All you gotta do is respect someone else's wishes. And if you haven't learned that from Fred Rogers and we're the same age, you're fucking stupid. It's your fucking fault. Or you just didn't get to watch Fred Rogers. And if your parents didn't teach that to you, they didn't raise you right, and you can come at me for that. It's the fucking truth. Right? My parents didn't believe or do not believe some of the same things that I do about how people are equal. But my mother

raised me bragging about the civil rights movement that happened while she was a kid and just really proud that there was able to push towards racial equality and how things are so much better because of that fight and how she took the time to explain to me how bigotry is wrong and how when one of my uncles uses that N_ word it is wrong. She took the time to do that and instilled that in me that everybody should be treated equally regardless.

And then when I apply that to someone that they may have a problem with who just wants to be referred to as they and them, I don't lack the capacity to understand that person that needs to be referred to as they and them. I don't have that lack of understanding. I just know that they would really appreciate it if I would call them they and them. And that's all I need.

And if you can't give someone that basic, if you're the type of person that would call someone ma'am just because you wanna be polite whenever you smile at them in the store and because you know it's ma'am or, sir or, whatever, all you have to do is just smile at a person that you don't even know, say hello, ask them how they're doing, and if you get an indication or they clearly present as one or the other, you can still sir and ma'am them. It's not that hard. If you can't figure it out, don't fucking guess at it. Just fucking be neutral about it. It's not that

And respecting somebody else is not that fucking hard. If you haven't had that ingrained in you, you weren't raised right. And if you haven't learned that, I don't know how you survive in a corporate fucking structure in this world, because it's enforced now, because of equal opportunity laws that were bargained for and argued about for workers to feel safe and stay in a corporate environment, so that corporations could continue to reap to reap all of the benefit and reward and financial gain from

um the servitude of their indentured servants. It does. Well the problem here is I have been smoking profusely and I'm trying to talk about big things that I've been thinking about and trying to get it all out while addled with that. So um I p forgive me everyone, Court stumbles over his words somewhat when he gets extremely high. I think this is one of the more high energy uh

extremely high people, but out there talking about the Belko experiment, I w I would I would wager that this is probably in the top five podcast episodes of people talking about organised real labour organized labour cr Christo-Fascist uh white nationalism uh and the Belko experiment.

Out there.

If there's more than five, it might possibly be number six.

You know there's, room for all of us, that's what we're trying to say.

Yeah, and uh so I have a little bit of a like a pissed off George Carlin rant, but I'm having my Frank cross moments that I wanted to get across as well. Um and I wanna bring it back to at the very very end of Belko, one of the characters played by Sean Gunn has the idea to grab all of the bombs, right? Thinking, well maybe we can use this to get out of here and it can save us, right? Like that was his last plan. And so he collected several bombs. I do handfuls upon handfuls upon handfuls of bombs.

that are in people's heads that are supposed to be these tracking chips. And so our main hero, who is the survivor dude, pockets those bombs without even thinking about it and just kinda keeps them on him, right. It's never even a thing that he really worries about or knows what it is that he's gonna do with them. And right. I never really paid attention to him pocketing them because the movie does it so slyly, right. They show you again that he does it. So it's only upon rewatches that I

really pay attention for that. And because we were doing the review, I was hyper aware of it. I'm like, you better fucking take those fucking now. Like why doesn't watching them do it, you know? And like so the Sean Gunn's character just gets 'em all piled up and they they collect like the last of 'em and stuff, and then those two guys fucking get shot or whatever, right? Or something happens I. think they start exploding heads, don't they?

Yeah, there's exploding heads, there's the the one guy, the final boss shooting people left and right.

And uh

Yeah.

J John C. McGinley's just hacking away at everybody getting out all of his fucking toxic mail aggression on everything.

Yeah, he's he's he's the in-cell uh o office in-cell.

Well we need to have a conversation about mixed signals sir. Well he does collect all of the bombs and it is a little bit of a cheat, but I wanna say oh excuse me I wanna say for this specific time watching it for the review I pay attention to him, much like I did in glass onion right, because there's a lot of sleight of hand tricks that happen in glass onion that are right there on camera that are then gas lit out of your brain to show you how gaslighting actually works. So when I watch glass onion on

watch, I'm keeping my eyes on Miles Braun and what he's doing for that specific reason. And I'll tell you what, everything that they say that he does, he actually does do, and you can see it on camera if you are mindful of it and pay attention, just like Benoit Blanc is. Um so I was trying to do that sort of experiment that I was again stoned. So I I I worry about this sort of thing when I'm watching movies, right? Um when he is being hauled around by the guys and they're not paying attention to him, you can see him not necessarily slipping things in

of the pockets, but he is in such a way where he's blocking their view or basically making them think like they have to drag him and that he's so exhausted when he is turned the tides on them, right? And what I feel that he essentially represents is the union organizer. He's he's the guy that essentially could have gotten them all through it if they would have just listened to him and not management. Because he really did have everybody's best interest in mind and really was trying to help everybody.

But the problem with that is that when there's no one left really to defend, all you really have left is revenge. And that's basically where he was at. And that's why he was planning the bombs on all the soldiers and everybody he came into contact with and found a way to essentially fall on people or whatever whatever he needed to do. The only people he didn't get was the two control guys that he ended up having to shoot. And he also ran out of bombs. But he found a way to put two to three bombs on everybody in different

locations to maximise the damage. And when he starts flicking those switches and the only one left is him at the very end, I'm on my feet fucking cheering this last time. Kind of embarrassed my wife and we're alone in the house watching it. You know what I mean? I'm just like fuck yes, just watching them all explode and then he just goes hog-wild shooting what's left. And then he just walks away. And you know he's he's not better. He's not surviving this. You know he's gonna get to his car, maybe he'll get out, but

they're gonna find him Blackwater's. not leaving him behind. He didn't win anything. You know that because when they zoom out you see that there's a billion other fucking facilities that they did this exact same thing. And what are the last words we hear on screen? Start phase two, something along those lines. This was only phase one.

That's your Blackwater I mean Belko experiment folks.

That's how they get you.

Uh I think if this were a Saul movie, Jigsaw would essentially say, how many killed work how many co-workers would you murder in order to survive, live or die make, your choice. It would be thirty. No, that's my Batman, sorry.

Rachel Dawes. I'll go where it all keep her heads.

Oh man, Christopher Nolan is not what everybody thinks he is. You try to rewatch uh The Dark Knight and have it make actual logical sense when you go all the way through it where causality and effect actually work. Like how did Joker know to hang that one specific wire in just that right location to get that specific helicopter at that specific time?

'Cause he's a mercenary. There's the right Isn't. he uh isn't that why he talks about he's a he's a shell-shot or a P_T_S_D_ mercenary soldier. That's why he talks about how nobody freaks out when you blow up a truck full of soldiers.

Mm. Right. Right. Uh-huh. Uh that whole entire movie is just basically apologizing for essentially the um surveillance state that ended up happening after the Patriot Act. It was just hundred percent an allegory to try and say no no, it's good that we're all being watched. Right? And it's only gonna be used for good and the people who have control over it will leave if it doesn't

stop right now, once its use has been used.

Uh no, that was just a little mini side-loader review there. Sorry, I was just thinking about that. That's just I don't know why that popped into my head, but yeah. Yeah. So the corporatized downsizing that we were seeing for phase one of all of these murders and then all of these survivors are then gonna compete, maybe? I don't know. Or is it just that now that they know that this is how it works, they're going to reduce the entire population? I'm not sure

exactly what Belko's end game is or what the experiment is even all about. But this is a Grindhouse film. Pure and simple. It does have a couple of things that you can glom on and talk about for discussion. Do I think that the workers' rights things that I laid over top of the plot line is a big stretch Oh? absolutely. But I sure made you think I felt that, didn't I? I mean yeah, we definitely got it out of it. It was not put in there by by James Gunn. No, I mean not consciously. He

thinking of lampooning corporate environment and making it about murdering each other for fun. Like I thi this is a supposed to be a fun movie. I don't I do not believe that James Gunn was writing an anti-capitalist, anti-corporate, ork uh uh you know, environment piece. I don't re I really don't think so. I think he was just writing a really entertaining film about people that were trapped in an office in horrible circumstances and forced to murder each other.

Yeah, that's the drama aspect he liked to focus on after this. So he said part horror, part drama, part comedy, and uh part s I think part satire. I think that was what he said.

He's definitely not above putting certain messages like that into a film in some way shape or form.

But he does more overarching general concepts for things that he likes to people to think about. I I I would say more than you know like animal cruelty is bad. That's pretty much what Grand Guardians of the Galaxy three is all about, right. Animal cruelty, unwanted um uncontrolled scientific experimentation in the name of betterment and improvement upon uh the human race and other species on the planet is bad, right. That's the main overarching s story that we're

being told there with Rocket, everything that happened to him, he's not going granular, like it's clearly not a treatise on why he thinks PETA is right. You know, it's nothing quite that bad. But it's definitely there if PETA wanted to start using that movie for a recruitment tool just to show everybody what Rocket and his friends went through and how horrible it is, and then, you know, come after people for a fur coat while they're killing even more animals themselves in their own shelters than the fucking A_S_P_C_A_ does. Uh yeah, if I can

Sorry, sorry, coming after coming after everybody. This is a r r r

to put the word psyop in the name of my podcast to let people know what they were getting themselves into. I mean like it it definitely I'm just flat-out telling you what this show's gonna do to you.

I'm trying to persuade Influence and Change. That's what the whole point of this show was. And uh I thank you for allowing me to be able to do that on your show as well because there are some things that I can't really get that granular on my show because it's supposed to be a distraction from these kinds of thoughts that I have, even though it gets dragged into the show from time to time because otherwise how could I persuade Influence or Change?

totally going back to the beginning the idea from this was hearing friends and you know ev even people I don't know uh stop themselves from saying something I know they wanna say on their own shows.

That's why for the longest time it was only other podcasters coming on here.

'Cause you hear it. You es especially, you know, this is the sort of shit that I've dwell in forever, no matter what it is that I'm doing, whether it's the band stuff or whatever, the activism, it's like I I love to listen, I love to let people that are

And people with something to say, I wanna hear what you gotta say. And I s can sometimes tell when I notice somebody especially, the more I get to know someone when they stop themselves from going that next sentence paragraph hour-long conversation.

Right on my show I talk about how every work week the world gets worse and so does the quality of my show of course you know that's it's in the lyrics for the fucking year nine theme right and it's I do wholeheartedly feel that way you know where I am just going through the motions of a life that I have no idea when it's going to end for whatever fucking reason but this little show brings me joy to make even though uh on the show while we're recording I just wanna get the recording over with because we have very little time to get it done and because Matt works like a fucking

and I'm just trying to get it done for him, you know, and I'm just trying to move quickly for him and and that sort of thing. And yes, when I was unemployed for a while, yeah, I had a very little motivation and I was ready to kind of give up. But knowing that I had that obligation kept me going for just the sake of I have to do this show. And there were dark times when I was fully employed before at the previous job that was all banking software that I absolutely hated where doing the show, that obligation was the thing that kept me going.

And I know what it's like to have things get that dark. I really truly do. I never thought that it was ever bad enough for me to really think about possibly just fully giving up and ending it all. And I've been there before. I have gotten to that point at certain points myself. And I gotta tell you, everybody out there, it is okay to live for something else, other than your own desire to live for a while. Like 'cause you have a cat that you need to make sure it's taken care of, because he's fucking died a

like you have a wife who needs you and would be a hundred percent devastated if you weren't here anymore, and you would completely ruin multiple lives if you weren't here anymore. It's okay to live for not doing harm to others until you find a way to live for yourself. It is okay.

But at some point in time, you have to stop just living for yourself and just stop living for others and realize that the life that you have that you have gifted to yourself is the thing you can use to make sure others don't have to go through what you have just gone through. Live your darkness loud. Live your darkness proud.

If you're listening to this and you have the you're at this point, keep going because you are v gotta be somebody's favourite person.

He did what we all must learn to do You. and you, and you, and you Just. read and cover.

I think yeah, I I shoulda had you plug your show before that, because I f I feel like that's our natural ending. If people don't know cinema Psyops by now, man, I don't know what to fucking give 'em, because that was the that was the Frank Cross moment. It's on Legion podcasts as well. You know how to find it cinema, Psyops, Google it. I've been talking about it the whole way through. We don't have to promote it anymore. Let's just let the people go and you can give them the Frank Cross moment and put this at the end of your music when the show's over.

I'll tell you what Matt doesn't work hard at is answering fucking emails.

No no no no no no no you, don't got me talking politics. I didn't want 'em.

Thank you.

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The Psychosemantic Podcast EP 128: ‘The Belko Experiment’ and workers rights
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