Celebrity is an amazing thing and celebrities when they get together for podcasts and other types of interviews, these are moments to truly make your point. This last week, Theo Von, The modern Southern comes from white trash comedian turned social commentator had as guests both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. I personally think it was a bit of a shock to have this level of guest on your show but that’s popularity for you.
I will say that I am not particularly a devotee of Theo Von. This isn’t to say that I disrespect his talent or his willingness or his drive or his openness or honesty. I only mean by this that I sometimes get a little weird listening to him struggle with concepts. He’s not a stupid guy but he has a lot of demons inside of him and he does not fully believe in himself as being capable of holding on to great masses of information. He at the end of the day is a simple drug addict who has a comedic wit and a way of talking that connects with people. He is the Bible belt. He is from the south and he is a product of his community.
Here’s the Bernie Sanders interview.
I think Sanders has also been on Joe Rogan if you want to listen to an old man rant about socialism. The problem with listening to Bernie Sanders is that he’s not only right, but there’s an endless sadness to looking at a man know the difference between right and wrong and yet spend a lifetime having the good stuff taken away from him.
Von is aware how people feel about Sanders and his candidacies for president. I was there and I think he probably was the man except that he was sabotaged by the Democratic party in favor of Hillary Clinton. This is a bit of a different thing now but it’s not. The Democratic party has been overly controlling for so long, it’s hard to believe they are a Democratic institution. They play the same popular buttons is everyone else. They’re just not genuinely the drug dealers to quite the extent that the conservatives are. And let’s be honest with each other, the conservatives are absolutely drug dealers and nothing more.
You will hear that or at least a genuine intellectual difference between Sanders and Trump If you listen to Trump go on. For Sanders, it was a class. Poor Theo was absolutely a deer in the headlights for most of the interview. What could he say? Sanders is a reasonable teacher. He likes to give examples. Von only had one recourse. He had to prove he understood what was being said even though sometimes it genuinely was hard for him. But Sanders is also a great teacher and had nothing but praise every time Von put two and two together about the problems his people have been facing his whole life. He is not unaware socially but hanging out with Bernie Sanders is a master class. It’s pretty much intimidating already despite the man’s age. He doesn’t have to prove a vigorous intellect. Just talk to him and you can see with vigorous is.
And here is the Donald Trump interview.
And then we listen to the great pumpkin. I have no idea how we continue to support a bid for the presidency of the United States from this imbecile. If you want to say that he was trying to be empathetic, that’s great. He’s a grandfather now. He’s a great grandfather now. He is a useless old grandfather now and he sits around waiting to solve child problems and female problems because he has nothing left to do otherwise. He may go out and play golf but he has an extremely limited vocabulary and a set way of talking and all he wants to do is feel good. I don’t think I could have possibly said it more than that. All Donald Trump wants from his life is to feel good and it just doesn’t matter what has to happen in order to achieve the goal.
I say this because as an interviewer, Von can be tricky. He isn’t really a country bumpkin but he always begins there as a point of at least respecting the people he talks to. If they are high in some way, he will always choose to be the humble one. But when he has a bullshit guest, sometimes teeth appear. And at about the halfway mark of this interview, they started talking seriously about addiction. There was an epidemic during Trump’s presidency regarding opiates and their distribution. It was one of the great medical scandals of all time which came unfortunately in the greatest blizzard of bullshit information ever to hit the world. We were full on internet indulgence. The news wasn’t enough to change the news of the country anymore. Just not only played into Trump’s hands at the time, he has absolutely no relation to it now. He was however really warm and helpful and interested to know about Theo Von trying to deal with drugs and alcohol. He was very specific in trying to find out a genuine opinion about what sorts of drugs were good and what sorts of drugs were bad. Trump famously has never had a drink. He doesn’t need one. I think he has enough other drugs besides alcohol to keep himself happy.
In any case, there was no anything there. There was no preparation for office. There was no dynamic plan of how to get Congress to agree with him. There was no coalition building like-minded lawmakers to help him get done with needs to get done. And there were no long-term plans to deal with the wars or the diseases or the pandemics and certainly nothing to be said about global warm and trying to do something reasonable to put an end to environmental desecration.
Bernie Sanders is where and perfectly capable of describing why the corruption of Washington and the millionaires and billionaires control things so tightly. He has perfect rhetoric about the suffering of all of the classes under elite status. Anyone who is actually a wage slave is a natural for his sympathy and, though it is as often repeated as anything, he might not be the most exciting show in the world but you feel like something’s happened to you when you sit down and talk with an absolute master.
When you listen to Donald Trump talk, you look at someone who just wants everyone to feel good. He is incapable of nuance, of work or even a legitimate conversation of some level of intelligence. He just likes it soft and easy. He doesn’t have anything hard to say except at the concerts. And then he’s free to do his talent of making people scream and yell. When the people are crazy, this is when things are best for Trump and his people. He’s not really worried about the absolute duties of office. He’s just there to do what he does except that really, he wants you to like him. He really believes there’s a normal order of life and that he somehow has the ability to connect with real people. I am dubious of this proposition.
