498: Conspiracies Part whatever (w/ Anthony Atamaniuk)

Summary

High and Mighty - Episode 498: Conspiracies Part Whatever (w/ Anthony Atamaniuk)
Release Date: January 9, 2025

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Host: Johnny G
Guest: Anthony Atamaniuk

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Overview

In Episode 498 of High and Mighty, host Johnny G welcomes longtime friend and frequent guest Anthony Atamaniuk to delve deep into various conspiracies, political frustrations, and societal observations. The conversation spans a wide array of topics, ranging from personal anecdotes about pets to intricate discussions on political systems, identity politics, and the future of American society. Throughout the episode, both hosts express their skepticism towards mainstream politics, media manipulation, and the influence of corporate power on governance.

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Key Discussions

1. Personal Anecdotes and Introductions ([00:00] - [07:22])

The episode begins with a brief advertising segment promoting Factor Meals, followed by Johnny G's introduction of Anthony Atamaniuk. They discuss the passing of a pet named Arthur, sharing heartfelt and humorous memories that set a personal tone for the episode.

Notable Quote:
Johnny G at [04:41]:

"It was literally the best possible outcome for the worst possible situation."

2. Cannabis Industry and Cultural Shifts ([22:07] - [30:26])

Johnny and Anthony explore the evolution of cannabis culture, noting its corporate takeover and the intertwining with right-wing ideologies. They critique how the industry has shifted from a form of escapism to a politicized commodity, expressing concerns over its societal impacts.

Notable Quote:
Anthony Atamaniuk at [11:02]:

"I find it interesting that weed culture has jumped right."

3. Political Frustrations and the Democratic Party ([06:22] - [33:26])

A substantial portion of the conversation centers on the Democratic Party's perceived failures. Anthony criticizes leaders like Biden and Harris, arguing they lack genuine commitment to progressive policies and are instead influenced by corporate interests. The hosts lament the erosion of traditional left-wing values and the party's inability to effectively represent marginalized communities.

Notable Quotes:
Anthony Atamaniuk at [15:03]:

"So integration and busing were important. I don't think they were."

Johnny G at [24:10]:

"We have people like that, but they are lying in the wrong direction and they are reacting and they're doing the opposite of what we want."

4. Identity Politics and Systemic Issues ([33:26] - [55:00])

Johnny and Anthony dissect the complications of identity politics, suggesting it has become a tool for corporate entities to divide and conquer. They argue that focusing solely on identity without addressing economic and systemic inequalities fails to produce meaningful change.

Notable Quote:
Anthony Atamaniuk at [40:37]:

"The system is bad. It's undeniable though."

5. Media Manipulation and Conspiracies ([55:02] - [79:15])

The duo delves into the role of media in shaping public perception, accusing mainstream outlets like MSNBC of promoting biased narratives and supporting corporate agendas. They discuss the blending of traditional conspiracies with modern-day psy-ops, highlighting how media figures perpetuate distrust and division.

Notable Quote:
Anthony Atamaniuk at [35:20]:

"The conspiracy is right in front of us. The conspiracy is overt."

6. Economic Critiques and Privatization ([79:15] - [106:52])

A critique of privatization dominates this segment, with Johnny and Anthony arguing that private industries prioritize profit over public welfare. They propose solutions like nationalizing airlines and investing in public infrastructure to counteract corporate malfeasance and promote equitable economic growth.

Notable Quote:
Johnny G at [102:21]:

"That's our possible future. And all of it seems to be dismantling huge financial systems."

7. Future Predictions and Solutions ([106:52] - [117:12])

Looking ahead, the hosts express pessimism about the state of American politics and society, predicting increased turmoil and systemic collapse by 2025. However, they remain hopeful about grassroots movements and local governance reforms as potential avenues for meaningful change.

Notable Quote:
Johnny G at [107:25]:

"And all of this seems to be dismantling huge financial systems."

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Insights and Conclusions

• Systemic Corruption: Both hosts emphasize the deep-rooted corruption within political and corporate systems, suggesting that superficial changes are insufficient to address foundational issues.

• Media's Role in Division: The media is portrayed as a significant factor in perpetuating societal divisions and distracting the public from more substantial conspiracies and systemic problems.

• Identity Politics as a Division Tool: Identity politics is criticized for fragmenting societal unity, allowing corporate and powerful entities to maintain control by pitting different groups against each other.

• Need for Grassroots Change: Despite their bleak outlook, Johnny and Anthony advocate for focusing on local governance and community-driven initiatives as effective means to combat systemic issues.

• Future Turbulence: Predictions indicate that 2025 will be a pivotal year marked by increased societal challenges, driven by economic instability, political unrest, and continued media manipulation.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Johnny G at [04:41]:

  "It was literally the best possible outcome for the worst possible situation."

• Anthony Atamaniuk at [11:02]:

  "I find it interesting that weed culture has jumped right."

• Anthony Atamaniuk at [15:03]:

  "So integration and busing were important. I don't think they were."

• Johnny G at [24:10]:

  "We have people like that, but they are lying in the wrong direction and they are reacting and they're doing the opposite of what we want."

• Anthony Atamaniuk at [35:20]:

  "The conspiracy is right in front of us. The conspiracy is overt."

• Johnny G at [102:21]:

  "That's our possible future. And all of it seems to be dismantling huge financial systems."

• Johnny G at [107:25]:

  "And all of this seems to be dismantling huge financial systems."

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Final Thoughts

In this episode, High and Mighty offers a raw and unfiltered exploration of contemporary conspiracies and political disillusionment. Through candid conversation, Johnny G and Anthony Atamaniuk challenge listeners to question established systems, recognize media biases, and consider the power of grassroots movements in effecting real change. While their perspectives are undoubtedly contentious, they provide a thought-provoking narrative on the state of American society and politics as of early 2025.

Transcript

[Johnny G]

We're starting a new year, which means everyone's ready to optimize their nutrition. And luckily for you, Factor has Chef made gourmet meals that make eating easy. Dietitian approved. Ready to heat and eat in two minutes so you can fuel right and feel great. I enjoy a lot of their meals. I supplement my normal regimen with a lot of factor meals. They arrive fresh and fully prepared, perfect for any active, busy lifestyle. They've got keto meals and I know a lot of people have expressed a lot of, you know, keto has worked for a lot of people and I know a friend of mine who wants to remain nameless has been on the keto factor meals for a while and he drops some serious lbs. And with diet and exercise Also, they have 40 options across eight dietary preferences. So if keto doesn't work for you, you got calorie smart, protein plus, et cetera, et cetera. And it's not just for one meal a day. You can get breakfast, smoothies, grab and go snacks and more smoothies. Really good. Luckily, they sent me a bunch earlier this year and I got to. I've already finished them. I enjoy them. So do yourself a favor and help reach your goals with ingredients you can trust and convenience that you can't beat. And get, get in there. I had some chorizo dish recently. I can't place it, but it was, it was so delicious. Get a chance to do it with Eat smart with Factor. Get started@Factor Meals.com Mighty50OFF and use code Mighty50OFF to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping. That's code Mighty50OFF@Factor Meals.com Mighty 50OFF to get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box. F A C T O R M e a l s.comm I g h t y 50 o f f the link is in the show notes. Don't make me try to remember how to spell all of that. This is a headgun pod. What's up, shitheads? Before we start this episode of High and Mighty, I just want to throw a little disclaimer out there. We are neither experts nor extremely knowledgeable on politics, but of course Anthony and I will be going off big time on some conspiracies and stuff like that. So please don't quote us on it. Please don't consider it fact or truth. We are wildly speculating, as the people say. I normally say this at the top of the episode, but this time I wanted to do it for you now. Okay, enjoy the episode. Let it Rip. What's up, shitheads? Welcome back to another episode of High and Mighty. It's me, your boy. The number one fuck boy, Johnny G, from the south shore of Nassau county, long Island, standing 6 foot 2, 310 pounds. The weight is coming off because he's been sick for five days. That's right. 310 is. Has weight, is lowering. Also joining me in the high mighty studio is my nearly silent co host, Arthur Gabris. He's spiritually with us as he's passed on the rainbow bridge and crossed over. He's up in the big podcast studio in the sky, licking the legs of dead podcast guests. Lotion off their legs, Arthur. This episode's for you, brother. Also joining me in the high and mighty studio as a recurring guest and as I'm winding down. High and Mighty, this is episode 498. You know, I gotta bring him back because Holy shit, is 2025 already alive with plenty of conspiracies. It's your favorite fucking freak and my favorite aunt to talk to on the phone. It's Aunt Anthony Antonomina.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Hi, honey.

[Johnny G]

Hello, baby. Hi.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Did you. Did you know that 498 is an angel number?

[Johnny G]

Oh, here we go, right out the gate.

[Anthony Antonomina]

I'm so sorry to hear about Arthur.

[Johnny G]

Oh, yeah, no, it's okay. It's been. It's been a crazy year for everybody and yeah, that's. That's a hard one. That's a real hard one. But as I've said to other people and people in the pod. No, I'll say to you, he lived like full life right up until 15 and then like a steep decline and then died in our. Died in our arms. Like we knew it was good as it can.

[Anthony Antonomina]

I mean, terrible, but it's as good as it can get because I've had a pet also died in the arms. And that's you. At least they see you. It's the last thing they see.

[Johnny G]

Yes, that's how we. That's how we felt. We were literally. The vet was scheduled to come over at three to euthanize him in our home and he passed away at like 1ish with just the two of us in the kitchen. With the three of us together in the kitchen. It was.

[Anthony Antonomina]

And did you call him? And he was like, I'm sorry, but I'm already on my way. Well, it was funny to euthanize somebody.

[Johnny G]

Well, we made the joke. We were like, thank you, Arthur, for finally saving us a few bucks. In the end, it was the fucking. Yeah. Like, in his favorite spot in the kitchen, Tiffany was cooking him salmon to eat as his final meal. And then he died, like, with the scent of salmon in the air. So it was really. It was, like, beautiful. We just sang him a lullaby, and he went and he went out. It was literally the best possible outcome for the worst possible situation. But, like, I can't expect a fucking dog to live past much past 15, you know? Like, that's.

[Anthony Antonomina]

No. Well, I mean, I pray about Lulu, you know, because we share Lulu, too. So there's also, like, the idea of, like, we have her and then we don't have her. And I get very. I get very. Like, I keep, like, always with Flossy. I'm always like, don't. I mean, don't you think your parents, like, don't you think they've had enough of, like, Lulu? Don't you think it's time?

[Johnny G]

It's like musical chairs. You don't want the music to stop when she's else.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Yeah. And I'm also like, she'll live longer if she's with us. Which is like, not true.

[Johnny G]

Yeah.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Right.

[Johnny G]

But that's what you feel.

[Anthony Antonomina]

That's what I feel, and that's what I want to believe. Good.

[Johnny G]

You deserve to feel that. Anthony, I'm so excited to see you, bud.

[Anthony Antonomina]

This has been excited to see you, too.

[Johnny G]

I want to say officially on Mike that, like, you've been a part of this pod for. I mean, you're a part of my comedy career intrinsically, but you're a big part of this podcast. We've always gone deep on dumb conspiracies and dangerous and scary conspiracies as well.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Yeah.

[Johnny G]

And I couldn't imagine wrapping up the show without one last dip into. What the fuck are we in?

[Anthony Antonomina]

What is going on? Well, it went. And we started. Do you know, when we did our first one, it was, like, somewhere around 2012, right?

[Johnny G]

Or it had to.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Or maybe a little later than that.

[Johnny G]

No. Yeah, it's probably. The first one was probably, like, 2015, to be honest, which is still crazy. Long time ago. Like, before.

[Anthony Antonomina]

No, that makes sense because I did it in person.

[Johnny G]

We did it. We did it in person. And then also you. You did it. We did it in south by Southwest at the Head Gum House, too. We did an episode.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Oh, my God. I remember that. Going out to East Austin.

[Johnny G]

Yeah. I only remember it because I just googled Anthony Tamanik, High and Mighty to see how. What episode Number of conspiracies this is. And of course, I've never Numbered them previously. So I have no idea, because I want to be like, number seven or whatever. But this is. We'll just call it number what? But then I was like, oh, my God. Episode 35 was you. This is episode 498. You are also episode 40 35. It's crazy how long you've been around for. I mean, well, you've been a part of my life for 20 years. But.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Well, I was gonna say it's been 20 years. And I was looking back, I actually found a shirt that I'm figuring out what to do with. That is a shirt from, like. Was one of our wardrobe from 30 Rock. It was. It was one that they gave John Murray for a brief period of time. Like, it was sort of like a military, like, Che Guevara type jacket or, like. Military.

[Johnny G]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Anthony Antonomina]

You know, that jacket. And then. And then I guess they shifted it to me because my hair was long and I had the beard, so they thought maybe it worked better with me. And then I kept it, and I just found it. And I'm, like, starting to lose weight because I, too, got sick.

[Johnny G]

Oh, shit. I think everyone. This. We're recording this, and actually, this will come out this week, but it's early Jan, and everyone I know is a little sick. And it's not Covid, which is something.

[Anthony Antonomina]

What is it? It's like, I got my. I got sick for, like, two fucking weeks in February, Missed. I mean, November, missed Thanksgiving. But I also gave an op. It gave me an opportunity, which I hit these resets. And I haven't had a reset since pre Trump, where I'm like, you know, I should, like, work out. I get fit pretty quickly when I work out, and maybe I should cut the shit and, like, meditate and not smoke, even though that's high and mighty.

[Johnny G]

Well, my throat. I spent New Year's Eve weekend in a cabin with Tiff, and we. New Year's Eve, three days. I guess it wasn't around a weekend. And it was at altitude. We smoked a ton. We drank a bunch more than I normally do anymore. And then when I came back, I got sick. I drove home from Lake Arrowhead and got sick one hour later, and I felt like dog shit. So this is now going on five days. Have not smoked weed in five days, which is the longest I've gone in like, a couple of years.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Yeah.

[Johnny G]

And I'm like, oh. And it's giving me, like, the clarity. And because of the sickness, it doesn't make me not want to smoke.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Yeah.

[Johnny G]

Now I'M like, have some clarity to like, think. And I'm like, how much is this really helping me with what I'm doing and stuff. And specifically, like, not to be too real, but like between me and Tiffany too, where like, we aren't sober around each other a bunch. And that's probably not good for like the longevity of a relationship or a marriage to be like, we're never fully ourselves, you know, so it's been, it's been this, like, it's so funny that I feel the same way. I'm like, it happened on January 1st. If you're like trying to make a change in your life and you get sick. Jan1 and so I've made all the. It feels, it feels too poignant not to like, not to be like the signs experiment. Yeah. Yeah.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Well, I'll say my, my experience too, as someone who's gone in and out of this a lot. But, like, this is the longest I haven't smoked. And honestly, because I used to like, say I didn't smoke and then I like, would smoke. So like, this the longest I haven't smoked in like, again, probably a decade. Like. And I realized one thing for me with pot just really quick is that pot became a good job. And when I get high and I enjoy it, that's great. But when I'm doing it, like it's a job, like it's 4:00, time to go walk around the block and get high and then panic for two hours. I sort of am like, what am I doing? Like, this is, this is no longer functioning for me as the thing I wanted it to be, which is an escape or a break or a way to calm down. So anyway, it is interesting, all the things that have changed, but I actually have a conspiracy link to this, which is that I find it interesting that weed culture has jumped. Right?

[Johnny G]

Yeah, that's weird.

[Anthony Antonomina]

And I'm not into it. I'm like, almost like, I'm almost like, you know, I don't want to be a part now of a culture that is so accepting of right wing theory thinking and let's say not just right word. Because I wanted to talk about how even the classical notions of right and left have been blown apart in this election. How institutional, how institutionalism has been destroyed, how there's a lot of achievements of the Reagan presidency that have finally come to fruition, that Jimmy Carter's death does mark the end of the last righteous Democrat, the last actual Democrat, who you could say had a moral. And mind you, because I know there's people listening right now are gonna be.

[Johnny G]

Like, well he did do this. Yeah, of course.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Yeah, he got us in Afghanistan. He lied about, you know, he lied his way into the governorship by saying he was pro segregation basically and then said segregation needs to end. Like we need a duplicitous fuck like that. We need someone who, we're all. Who's going to be like, guys, I'm going to lie a whole bunch and then get into office and I'm going to do the opposite. Like we need someone like that.

[Johnny G]

We have people like that, but they are lying in the wrong direction and they are reacting and they're doing the opposite of what we want. They're like, don't worry, Trump is the.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Anti Carter in a way.

[Johnny G]

Yeah, well, even Biden in now with hindsight didn't do any of the shit he said he was going to do.

[Anthony Antonomina]

No, I will say with Biden, here's. I have a special place in my heart for Biden in this way in three ways. I do think that Biden was the most influenced by Bernie that any president could be. So in terms of the possibility of Bernie policies even making their way through to Congress, Biden was the best path for that. They actually did have a real relationship that was.

[Johnny G]

Yeah, Statler and Waldorf.

[Anthony Antonomina]

They are, yeah, they're Statler. Well also, so Biden is a pre Clinton Democrat and that's why Obama and Pelosi took two knives and fucking stabbed him in the back and the chest at once. When mind you, yes, he should have walked away. But we can go through all the machinations of why you can't announce immediately that you are not going to seek a second term because it will kill your presidency immediately. No one will pass your legislation because everyone's jockeying. Um, so then maybe the timing was to do it after the midterms. That probably was the smartest time. But then Biden, I think legitimately, I think it's part ego. I also think he saw the writing on the wall with Democrats. Because the one thing I'll say about Biden is as fucking shitty as he is in with the credit card companies, in with all that stuff, right. In with Dupont. He's. He is not a clean fella. I. This is not a Biden defense statement. But in the spectrum of shitty people, he was one who saw the deeper, more intrinsic problems that existed in the party. And I think he misguidedly thought the best thing to do was to stay there like a thorn in the work, in the, in the sort of Paw of the, the more dangerous lion. But his old school dedication to Israel and the idea of Israel as a nation state and the how, how gross Zionists have been at prostituting the deaths of my fellow Jews who died in Europe, including family members of mine, prostituting that to justify murdering children and women in Gaza. And I had a conversation with a family member about this where they're like, well, that's Hamas's fault. And I said, listen to me. I said, when you see people burned by the Hiroshima bomb at the anniversary recently, where you saw those Japanese who came from citizens from Hiroshima and from Nagasaki, no one's sitting there seeing these people who were burned and fucked up and survived a nuclear blast, which no one has, except for these fuckers. Ok?

[Johnny G]

No one's used a nuke except for.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Us, except us fuckers. No one looks at them and goes, well, yeah, but you know, we had to do it because of the war and you know, Japan wasn't going to surrender. So I mean, you know, what are you going to do? No one hears that argument. Everyone just goes, these poor people, these poor people who were victimized by this nuke. So even if you agreed, like, even if you were like, I'm a crazy Zionist lunatic and that is not religious, that's a political. And it's a political philosophy. Is not a religious philosophy. If you are a political right wing Zionist, which again is not Jewish, you could be Jewish to be a Zionist. You can be an evangelical and be a Zionist.

[Johnny G]

Yeah, okay, even scarier.

[Anthony Antonomina]

So don't give me this whole, you know, oh, well, you're anti Semitic because you're anti Zionist. That's like, please, that's it. Like only a dum dum falls for like that. But that, that Biden was so duped by that and duped and, and felt like his political capital would have been ruined, that would have been the time to walk away. Because if he had walked away and said, okay, I am going to resign and someone, well, let's primary me, let's primary. He could have taken a stand against Netanyahu and that could have cut off the avenue because the big conspiracy was the Saudi Israel conspiracy to elect Trump. The Saudi Israeli access to elect Trump, which started in Las Vegas with the mass shooting of people at a fucking festival.

[Johnny G]

Okay, now, now we're in fucking. We're getting in. We're getting.

[Anthony Antonomina]

I told you I was gonna take you there, baby.

[Johnny G]

Okay? We're starting a new year, which means everyone's ready to optimize their nutrition and luckily for you Factor has chef made gourmet meals that make eating easy. Dietitian approved. Ready to heat and eat in two minutes so you can fuel right and feel great. I enjoy a lot of their meals. I supplement my normal regimen with a lot of factor meals. They arrive fresh and fully prepared, perfect for any active, busy lifestyle. They've got keto meals and I know a lot of people have expressed a lot of you know, keto has worked for a lot of people and I know a friend of mine who wants to remain nameless has been on the keto factor meals for a while and he dropped some serious lbs. And with diet and exercise also they have 40 options across eight dietary preferences. So if keto doesn't work for you, you got calorie smart, protein plus et cetera, et cetera. And it's not just for one meal a day. You can get breakfast, smoothies, grab and go snacks and more smoothies are really good. Luckily they sent me a bunch earlier this year and I got to I've already finished them. I enjoy them. So do yourself a favor and help reach your goals with ingredients you can trust and convenience that you can't beat. And get get in there. I had some chorizo dish recently. I can't place it but it was, it was so delicious. Get a chance to do it with Eat Smart with Factor. Get [e-mail] mighty50off and use code mighty50OFF to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping. That's code mighty50OFF at Factor Meals.com mighty50OFF to get 50% OFF plus free shipping on your first box. F A C T O R M e a l s.comm I g h t y 50 o f f the link is in the show notes. Don't make me try to remember how to spell all of that. Get higher with Via. Just kidding. They do not want me making up slogans for them. Via is a wonderful hemp based company. It's the only lifestyle hemp brand I I really enjoy their Sleepy time gummies. They've been helping me go to sleep at night and get a good night's rest without all feeling groggy in the morning. I love that it's all natural and some of them have like additional supplements added to it which makes you feel even more relaxed and feels good. You know, it feels like you're taking like a vitamin. They have zero THC products so if the THC isn't for you, you can still take advantage of the CBD line. I'm looking forward to getting started on the CBD Focus Gummies I got see if that actually helps me finish a project for once in 2025. Via I'm challenging you. Let's see how that works. Their products range from 0 to 100 milligrams of THC. They've got gummies, vapes, flowers, soothing topicals and calming drops all crafted with the highest quality hemp sourced from trusted independently owned American farms and via legally ships to nearly all the states in the US because it's hemp directly to your door with a worry free guarantee. No medical card required. So if you're 21 plus treat yourself to 15% off and if you're new to via, get a free gift of your choice with our exclusive code [e-mail] that's V I I A H E M P.com use code HAM if you're 21/, head to viahemp.com and use the code HAM. Receive 15% off and if you're new, you get a whole new gift of your choice this year. Enhance your every day with Viya. Do us a favor and support our show and tell them we sent you Enjoy your via NordVPN what a way to safely access your favorite streams and other content from home no matter where you go. Just switch your virtual location. Now here's something I didn't even think about with using a VPN specifically Nord. You can find out like while shopping to see if the same product is cheaper in another region, access foreign E stores, apps and online auctions for a wider selection of Items. That's nuts. NordVPN account protects up to 10 devices so there's no need for separate ones. 7100 plus servers in 118 countries. It's super fast. NordVPN is one of the fastest VPNs out there and it's easy to use. Connect with one click or enable Auto Connect for the classic zero click protection. Now that is pretty exciting. And you know what other reasons do you need a VPN for? You can access your favorite streams and other content from home no matter where you go. Access apps and websites from other countries, access to social media and stuff not available due to censorship depending where you are. So get your tushy on NordVPN so go to NordVPN.com mighty that's n o r d v p n dot com m I g h t y NordVPN.com mighty let's before we go too deep down this, let's Jump to, jump back to what you said about pot. I just want to talk about the cannabis industry.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Yes.

[Johnny G]

It got so corporate that it can't not be. And I would also say hippie culture has gone right, like maga.

[Anthony Antonomina]

It's gone maga.

[Johnny G]

There's too, there's too much cross. Like not a lot makes sense anymore. People have the craziest. And then this whole thing about quote unquote, centrism too, of like, well, I take some ideas from the right and some ideas from the left and this is where I end up. Okay. And it's like, that's, you can't have that. You can't be halfway between pro life and pro choice. There's not like, there's, there's, there's no halfway in between.

[Anthony Antonomina]

To be halfway pro life and pro choice would be to be pro choice. Exactly.

[Johnny G]

Well, that's the, that's the secret power of saying you're a centrist is that you're really saying I'm a, I'm a right wing person. But fine.

[Anthony Antonomina]

I would say that centrist, though, I would say that they've stepped out of their. They're saying they're out of the system because centrist is connected to neolib, neoconservative. It's Cheney. It's, it's, it's, that's what, you know, it's Clinton. That's what people think of when they think of centrists. I mean, this was the brilliance of Trump. Trump, because the Democrats self owned by linking up with Cheney in the last few months. And I get it, I get the. I'm a boomer and I'm 70 and I'm 60 or I'm a Gen Xer. And I remember when GI Joe and Cobra teamed up to fucking take out Serpentor.

[Johnny G]

There is an out, there is an element I can see from a bad perspective that it's like, look, some of the bad guys even agree with us.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Yes.

[Johnny G]

But that to me, if I look across and a war criminal's like, we're actually pretty similar. But I'd go, oh, come on. Like, you would distance yourself from that. Like the. And that happens so frequently where you're like, if you're an edgy comic or, you know, you host an action movie podcast, all of a sudden someone's like.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Yeah, we should bomb.

[Johnny G]

And you're like, no, no, we're not the same. We are not similar. We have this one thing in common. Disliking Trump and not wanting him to be elected does not make Cheney a good person.

[Anthony Antonomina]

He got to run against. He got to run against essentially the first two decades of the 21st century. He got to run against Cheney, he got to run against Bush, he got to run against Clinton, he got to run against Obama and Biden. He got to put that all into Kamala Harris, who. Because Kamala Harris has two major problems. One is the position she's put in because she was. Listen, I'm not going to say this, but on background, I will say that the Biden campaign, I know, I know from like firsthand sources, they did not want her as vp. They did not want her as the veep. And they had huge resentments with her going into that first, the first term. I think that Biden used Harris. I think he put her forward. And I'm not saying Harris is a victim in the sense that I'm not like she has agency, but I think that there was a jujitsu move to go. We're not going to primary. I'm going to continue my legacy. And if we're going to sink this ship, we're sinking it the way I want to sink it. Right. And I, and, and here's the thing. I don't. I still believe a Harris Walls administration. I have no. I, I kind of have no idea what that would have been. It might have been amazing. It might have been amazing.

[Johnny G]

It might have been more of the same.

[Anthony Antonomina]

More of the same. I, but truly don't know. I do know that Walls comes from Minnesota and that's where United Health Care is based. And seven to one donations. UnitedHealthcare donated to Democrats versus Republicans.

[Johnny G]

Yeah.

[Anthony Antonomina]

So I do know that. And I know that, Luigi, you know you're out there, buddy. And I know you're pretty and that the reason people like you is for all the wrong reasons, but still symbolically the rich person, the. The rich child of the healthcare industry killing someone from the healthcare industry was the symbolic move that. Let's just say we're all sort of getting the, the benefit of the off gas of that just because, just because it was, you know, not a good thing to kill someone. I am a pacifist, and so therefore I'm a pacifist in all areas except self defense. And I'm going to get into the self defense argument in a second. Oh, but I'll get there. Well, I'm going to. Yeah, go.

[Johnny G]

Yeah.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Sorry I'm talking so much.

[Johnny G]

No, no, please. That's why you're here.

[Anthony Antonomina]

I always have this moment where I realize I'm just talking.

[Johnny G]

No, that's Fine. We. This is every fucking phone call we have. We each just take turns monologuing. And then I get back. But you're saying, you're saying something. You're bringing up Luigi makes me think of something. I think this last four years is the most. I've always been sort of like class is the class, warfare is the real warfare. And I've always been. See, I've seen that. My eyes have been open to that for a while. But I think in the last few years was the real. You know, you used to be like, well, there's good billionaires and there's bad billionaires like Buffett and Buffett and Gates aren't awful. And then you're like. And then you're. Everyone. It's all. Billionaires are bad. I believe now, like the idea of them, the concept of them existing is bad. I think my personal policy is that once you have $999 million, every other dollar you make, you have to donate and you have to donate and. Or spend like Brewster's Million style. And I think this last round is when we first saw that, like, politicians are on the billionaire side. They could pretend to be like, yes, they're pro gay marriage, but. And the other side isn't or whatever. But otherwise they are all just in protection of capital. Right. And that. And that is. That is haunting. That is a kind of terrifying future. And they've got a bunch of us poor people. I mean, I wouldn't call myself poor, but a bunch of non rich people.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Yes.

[Johnny G]

Looking at each other as each other's problems.

[Anthony Antonomina]

You are poor, by the way. I'm gonna say something. Everybody is getting poor.

[Johnny G]

Yeah.

[Anthony Antonomina]

And I. And here's a big thing.

[Johnny G]

I don't own a home. I'm 42 and I make. I make a lot of money. Add a lot to society. I pay a lot of taxes and I cannot get a fucking house.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Yeah. I can't afford a home. I'm 50 years old and I have run my own television show into the ground, mind you. But like the. And here's the thing, I'm not saying, oh, I'm poor poor now I do okay. But. But I think that one. There's sort of these dividing things and we'll. Let's get into all the different buckets real quick, which is that. So the, the big one, just to finish with the Biden Harris thing was just remember that Jimmy Carter left office and went and built homes for poor people for the rest of his life and spoke up against injustices in the most in very moral ways. And here's the thing. There's right, there's wrong and then there's moral.

[Johnny G]

Right.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Moral is just simply when you look at it, you go, I don't know, I don't care what side someone falls on this. Like if you, let's say we take all the specifics out. If you said you were gassing children with chemicals, you'd go, yeah, that's, that's horrible. That's the, that's the lowest thing you could do. And you go, oh well, Assad did that to his citizens, you know, oh yeah, that's okay, that's horrible. And then if you had people go, well yeah, there are people who say that that didn't happen because they're in the pocket of Assad and they're doing right, okay, there we go. Now if I go, hey, you know, bombing and snipering kids in the skull, right? And you go, oh, that's horrible. Did Assad do that? And you go, no, no, the Israel, Israeli military did that. Right? So in other words, the morality is wrong regardless. It doesn't matter the specifics of who did it. So this is what I said.

[Johnny G]

This shouldn't be, shouldn't be, it shouldn't be a left and right issue. No, it's anti killing someone. Like, it's crazy that being like, hey, I, I'm anti death penalty, I'm anti, anti assassinating CEOs, I'm anti.

[Anthony Antonomina]

And I'm pro life. I don't believe a woman has a right to choose what she does with her body.

[Johnny G]

Right. It's just, it's just so, it's so crazy to imagine that too.

[Anthony Antonomina]

That's very important.

[Johnny G]

It's just so crazy that like that has become politicized of like, I don't think we should be drone striking anyone. Like, let's just be like, let's just not be at war. And if it's. Everyone's like, well what?

[Anthony Antonomina]

Ha. Well what?

[Johnny G]

And I'm like, ok, so we're not actually doing it, but maybe we shouldn't even support any of it either. And that shouldn't be a political stance either. To be like, let's not give money weapons, let's not make so many weapons.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Or let's be transparent. Here's my other thing. So Obama left office and went on vacation with Richard Branson. Okay, I just. And, and, and he did that after doing one good thing, which was ensuring that making sure that insurers could not deny you based on pre existing conditions, which you would think would be Something that would already be a given, by the way, in an industry that's invented, that doesn't need to exist, that, that Obama, like it or not, this guy enshrined the insurance and the insurance industry.

[Johnny G]

Enshrined insurance industry. Enshrined insurance industry.

[Anthony Antonomina]

God bless the United States of America. That like, that he enshrined it. And even though Kennedy and all those other like, old white senators who were having like, strokes at his inauguration, remember when Obama got inaugurated, his inauguration day, like his like party day, like Bird, Senator Bird was like, like a dinner. And then like Kennedy's brain, like, swelled up and like spilled liquid.

[Johnny G]

And those, those are guys, those are low, low key. Those are guys who made a deal with the devil when they said, over my dead body would a black man ever be elected. And then when they get elected, they're like, I guess I'm out, bro. I gotta die now. I'm so racist, my brain is gonna shut down from this.

[Anthony Antonomina]

All the white people who are getting sick just the day of his inauguration. But the thing I will say is I think Kenny was one who's really pushing for the public option. So if you look at where we're at, I know that I get it. I get that it feels good. And I don't think Barack Obama's probably a very nice guy. I don't know. I don't like the fact he's like into AI and Netflix and all that shit. Like, I, I mean, that's the thing is like, I don't think. Here's the thing, what they said, the banality of evil. I don't think people have to be evil and nefarious like Steve Bannon evil. You know, really, Bannon's like, giddy about chaos. Right? Right. You can be banker evil, you can be health care manager evil.

[Johnny G]

You can participating in an evil system.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Yeah.

[Johnny G]

But from a non evil standpoint and still be part of the evil machine. And the idea systemic anything is lost on, like the individual in, I feel like so frequently where like. But it's this. You're part of the system. You're part of the.

[Anthony Antonomina]

You're part of the system. So identity politics. And here's the problem is we have, we need the triangle as opposed to a line with two points. So the line with two points says, well, either you believe in equality and you love, you know, every, every background of every ethnic, cultural background of somebody and you love everyone's sexual choice and you love everyone's presentation of gender and blah, blah, blah, or you're a Hateful bigot. You're an awful person. And you fucking, you know, you, you don't want to let people use the same bathroom. And you aware of clan hood you if you have only those two, right? Identity politics works and becomes a cover for sinister corporate entities. The reason why I bring this up is the conspiracy model doesn't work anymore because the conspiracy model, much as predicted in Umberto echoes Foucault's pendulum, has become a red herring machine. It has become a printing press of red herring stories. So the idea of the Masons and the Rosicrucians, the Illuminati, that's the, that's the fucking fodder of the Rogans of the world and the, the Bannons and the Stephen Millers. That is the fodder of the QAnon movement. That was John, that was General Flynn's greatest achievement as a multi decade psy ops operator. To step outside of the United States government, join with the people who formed Q. Q was a perfect fomenting system to rein in and bring together all these different threads of conspiracy. Yes.

[Johnny G]

Oh, are you, are you a Crazy like they're, they're teaching kids the devil in nursery school. Are you a? They're going to make my like pick 8 to 15 different things that are fear mongering in these conspiracies, loop it all into Q and then all of a sudden they're on the same team.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Exactly. And this is, I've always said about the defiling of Art Bell and then.

[Johnny G]

Weaponized or activated against, you know, like it's fucking crazy.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Look at the end of Art Bell in the beginning of Alex Jones. Just look at the fact that Art Bell and I know that there's accusations about our Bell and I, I don't think that they were true. I'm not really sure if they were. I don't think they were. I think they were disproven. But Art Bell, you know, he was the late night voice of conspiracy for many years. And conspiracy and challenging authority was considered a left wing idea. It was considered something when I was growing up. You were anti establishment and you were left wing in the sense that you believed in destroying systems that tried to control us and tell us what to do. But your core philosophy was that that was towards the betterment of other people also. Now what happened with the Alex Jones was the removal of the moral compass of the, the desire to challenge systems and why they're established and, and why it's so important to do that is because what we see that were mon. Were empirical systems. And by empirical, I mean empires became theological systems that were then joined with monarchical systems. And those monarchical systems became industrial systems which became corporate systems, which are now the overpowering systems that control everything. Corporate industry power controls everything. It controls what you drink, it controls what you eat. It determines the system that represents and benefits the people. Which, by the way, was at its best maybe like for a 30 year period post war to basically when Reagan became president. Okay, right, that, that. Think about the window of time in humanity. You're talking 30 fucking years. 30 years where maybe people. And during that time, black people were getting hosed in the fucking streets during that period where we actually had some sense of, of, of moving towards equality. At the beginning of it, we were still only thinking about it for men, white men. Ok? Only by the end do we start to get to the idea of the Watts concert that was done by the Stax record group, right? No one ever hears about that. But everyone hears about fucking Woodstock, right? No one hears about all the Black Panther cultural centers that were opened up in California and then fucking shut down by the CIA. No one talks about why Bill Clinton became president because he looked the other way while Air America brought cocaine and crack into this country to basically defile the black community and prevent it from flourishing. I have a special place for me and I am not some, I'm not black Studies major. I don't know a lot of stuff. I'm not speaking like I know that stuff. I don't have to know much to know that the original, other original citizens who took over let's, you know, I mean, I don't think we can say that black folks were African Americans, were part of the conquest. But yeah, if we take, if we take away indigenous folks for a moment, which we already did, but let's say we take away indigenous folks would say the OG Americans are essentially Europeans and Africans, right? And Africans have been robbed. Robbed of being the same shitty American that a white American gets to be like. Black Americans got robbed of just that basic, that basic thing, right? And so to me, think about all of what's driving most of this still has to do with the subjugation of every group. Women, black folks, black men, black women. We get into lgbtqia. But that's a, that's a weird mix for me because there's a lot of lg, LGBTQIA folks who are within these power systems. Some of them are out, some of them are not. And they are. So like, now this is where you get out of identity. And this is why this long walk here, you have to have this third position in the third position that makes this triangle is to say, yes, of course identity is important. Of course there are systems that have worked to subjugate people in this country in a variety of ways. And we see them, our policing, our laws, our rent laws are how we represent each other, where we can get access to government help, where we cannot, so on.

[Johnny G]

I mean, there's the stats are there.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Like the stats are there, right? But when you have. And it's the Democrats fault, the Democrats fault. When you want to use identity only as a shield, when you want to exploit identity just to get a vote, but you don't want to do the hard work of stepping up and backing shit up or actually representing when it matters. You know, most people would go, well, the Democrats fucked up with trans issues. And, you know, they were running those ads at the super bowl. And so, you know, Democrats were, you know, they were trying to bite off more than they could chew. No, no, it's the opposite. The opposite is true. The Democrats never showed up for the people that they wanted the vote from. And when the Republicans started shitting all over them and ads in the Super Bowl, Democrats were silent about it.

[Johnny G]

Yeah, ok, this is my big, this is my big complaint.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Give me a break.

[Johnny G]

Because they're like, we're the, they want to be the pro trans side, they want to be the pro minority side, they want to be the pro LGBTQ community side. But then they don't back it up. They just, it seems to only come up when election season's around. Like, you know what it would be like for you if Trump gets elected. Right? And then it's like, I don't think it'll be that much different for these people, unfortunately. I, I, I hope that it's not, I hope it's not much worse. And I know I'm speaking from a point of privilege as a white straight.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Male, you're hoping it won't be. It's going to be horrible.

[Johnny G]

It's exactly, it's going to be horrible. But, like, the, the liberals didn't do anything for them either. You know, it wasn't like, under Biden, the protections were put in place. This is what I don't understand about politics. Abortion has been hung over our heads for every election. It's like Roe versus Wade is on. And it's like, so then, then you get elected and don't do anything to, like, affirm it or consolidate or strengthen its position or do Anything like that? No, because you need it again in four years to go like that.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Yeah. You want to run on it. You want to. And the other. More important, the other point is, where's your using? Where's your leveraging of power? And this is the problem that most people have. And this is why identity doesn't work. And this is why saying he was the next Hitler and he's a white supremacist. I've been saying this for years, that this thing about white supremacy. Yes, it was born. His language was born out of white supremacy in 2016, I would argue, hands down, and his language still is of white supremacist nature. But what people don't get about the white power movement in the United States is that the white power movement is very good at enticing people other than white people to join it.

[Johnny G]

Yes.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Because the idea is that white power, as I have heard in my youth being around that world, that white power is not the new version of it, was to say, hey, it's not about us just wiping you out or whatever. Yeah, it is, really. But don't worry. That's how it's about. What it's about is that, you know, Europeans came here and founded this country. We're the ones in charge. You should be in your corner. We'll be in our corner. Everyone gets equal stuff. We'll leave out the part that there's no plan for this supposed equal stuff like this. This idea that, like, you know, and you see it like in busing arguments, right? There's plenty of arguments to go. Integration and busing didn't work. Right. So we could go through. Why did integration not work? Why did school integration not work in this area? Or why did Boston busing. Why did it not work in this area? Right. And then you can go into, well, was there purposeful design to that? Did we just take kids from different neighborhoods without any forethought into where people were in their commute relationship? What kinds of communities would they form? Did we ever consider that maybe we're putting a cart before the horse and that what we need to do is look at housing availability and why is it that we have these white communities and black communities? Right.

[Johnny G]

Yeah.

[Anthony Antonomina]

So we ignore that. Why? Because what they do is you do the bare minimum in order to then make the. Have that counter argument? Well, it didn't really work. It didn't really work, Right?

[Johnny G]

Yeah. Because not doing anything of a big enough sweeping change and just doing these small things that are like, we, We. We're at the Point where we need, like, big fucking. I mean, we've been at this point for a while, but we need, like, big fucking swing ideas.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Yes.

[Johnny G]

We need to, like, get rid of Citizens United, make it illegal, tax the fuck out of your third home, but.

[Anthony Antonomina]

We'Re gonna get it in the other direction now.

[Johnny G]

And. Wait.

[Anthony Antonomina]

I just. And I just want to say one thing. I do think integration and busing were important. I don't think they were. I think that probably there were a lot of ineffective acts that happened because of it. Ineffectual, ineffective things happen because of it. And I think it probably led to some huge problems that weren't necessary, but that was the policy making. But I just don't want to make sure I'm not on the record.

[Johnny G]

Yeah, you're pro integration.

[Anthony Antonomina]

I don't think that bus. But the point is, is that. Let's say you even followed the white supremacist narrative down to the funding part of it. So what we're saying is that we're going to have, like, black zones and Latin zones and gay zones and women zones and white zones, and they're all going to be equally funded. How's that going to happen? So you're calling for socialism, and then you're calling for ghettos, these, like, socialized ghettos where people then live. So my. My point is, is that, like, what you said is that identity politics ultimately fail when you don't actually work for the identity of people and how their identity is in relationship to their income and how they live. And that identity is really culture. It's not surface. Like, in other words, there's different types of cultures within the gay community, there's different cultures. Right, right. Within. Within the black community, there's different cultures within Italian backgrounds, there's different cultures within Italian. We all know this. We all know the, like, law enforcement Italians versus the, like, you know, criminal Italians.

[Johnny G]

I won't tell you which one my family is, but look through my entire. Look through my entire family tree and see if you see one cop.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Yeah, exactly.

[Johnny G]

See a row. Yeah.

[Anthony Antonomina]

And so, like, the point.

[Johnny G]

A bunch of union electricians, though, huh?

[Anthony Antonomina]

But that's.

[Johnny G]

Bunch of Teamsters, electricians and elevator operators.

[Anthony Antonomina]

In my family, I have a bunch of paint companies, paint painters and contractors.

[Johnny G]

And I hear you paint.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Literally. And so, like, the. I think that the problem is, is that why people jumped on Trump. Because this is the interesting thing about the election. Nine million or 10 million people did not show up. People who voted for Biden, they didn't go and switch and vote for Trump. They just did not come out to vote.

[Johnny G]

Yeah.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Okay.

[Johnny G]

So I could wrap my head around that. That can, too, because I. I, like, understand that perspective where you feel like no one is free. You.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Yes. And then Harris gets this awful Malachi crunch, basically of being a Malachi crunch. Please.

[Johnny G]

Star Trek term.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Well, no, it's in cop. It's where you hit the car from the back in the front to stop.

[Johnny G]

Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

[Anthony Antonomina]

And so, like, she gets. Because one, I watched the front line on her. She's not a great candidate to begin with because she got really. A few times early on in her career where she spoke out and the police union really screwed her and almost cost her. And she showed early on that she was willing to abandon conviction in order to get further up the ladder. Not a good sign for a change candidate.

[Johnny G]

Yeah. And she. And she bombed her primary when she went for it.

[Anthony Antonomina]

She bombed her primary when she went for it. And so here's the thing.

[Johnny G]

Whether it's her fault or not, she's clearly not super popular. She gets in at the vp. I think they put her behind loose sight for four years. We never see her do anything. She's not cutting fucking ribbons anywhere. Even. Even, you know, like, she's not. She's not out there going like, Kamala is speaking at blank or whatever. You know, she's not doing any of that shit. Then she gets jammed into the. The candidacy for president, but without a primary. So that kind of fucks the people over. They give it not enough leeway, not enough Runway for her to, like, take off in any way. So they almost. She almost seems set up to fail. And then we kind of all have to, like. And it does also feel a little bit of like, this is who you got to support now.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Well, I firmly believe it. I believe the. But I. I still. I think she was set up to fail. I think that she got punished by the Biden camp. And I think that. I think that this whole thing where they were having all these celebrities and Beyonce and all that, which I think was all this Obama camp fucking bullshit where they're like, hey, you know, have it. Just have these people. It's like, guys, what world are you fucking living in that you think other millionaires and billionaires speaking at these rallies and, yeah, people are going because they want to see Beyonce. They don't care. Don't you? Has. Here's the thing I don't get. How can you be this far along in life and not understand that why people show up to a political rally is not why they show up at the ballot box. Why people show up to see a candidate is not why they vote for that candidate. And that people ultimately said, let's blow it up. You're telling me Trump's that dangerous? Let's see. And you know, and the truth is, is we're gonna find out. We're gonna, we're about to find out in, you know, less than what, 16 days, we're gonna see exactly what is this, is this a nightmare or whatever. But I'll say this you cannot say, I mean, personally, listen, my personal belief is I think that he's a nightmare. I think they're a nightmare. I think their ideology is toxic. And I think they're going to bring about the end of the United States. And I think 2025 is going to be, I've said this decade's the worst. And this year will be the worst of this decade. 2025 will be the worst year of the decade because it's, we're, we'll be coming out, but we're about to hit the worst, the roughest patch of turbulence yet. And that's, that's. Fuck Covid. That'll be nothing compared to what's coming this year.

[Johnny G]

Well, yeah, the systems have been stripped already and we're seeing the repercussions from what Trump did four years ago. And what, just ignoring important, you know, all that off what you're saying too here, a little bit, it does feel a little bit like the Biden getting elected. After Trump's first term, I think the Democrats saw like resistance. We made so much money, we raised so much money, we had so much juice. And then they were like, because everyone who's making these powerful policy decisions are 80 year old millionaires in Congress and in the Senate. So they go like, fuck it, four more years of Trump. Imagine the fucking fundraising we do. Imagine the people we get into office. And so. But who suffers the most? Everyone. Every citizen of the United States. Even a majority, even a majority of people who voted for Trump will suffer in the next.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Just look at the Democratic Party's lack of design or desire to fund small candidates to put any money into local election. That is how, you know, see the Republicans like them or lump them. They wanted a certain agenda to get across and they, I mean, it's amazing. People talked about the school board things and they're like, there are people showing up to the school board meetings and they are. And it's like, that's democr. Guys, guess what? I hate to break it to you, that's democracy in action. And there's one party that's doing it.

[Johnny G]

And you could be doing it in bad faith and poorly and dangerous.

[Anthony Antonomina]

They're doing it bad faith. They're doing it terribly, but they're doing it. And this other party is sitting there just praying that they can like hold out long enough for the sort of AI quantum verse. Apparently this, this bullshit. And also Democrats have been buying bullshit for ever. I will remind everybody. You want to talk about conspiracy. MSNBC was the platform for Elon Musk. He was genius. Elon Musk, genius inventor. He's not a genius. He's. He's not an inventor, he's not an inventor. He doesn't even have a master's degree. He has a bachelor's degree in fucking physics. Like an asshole. Okay? He is failed upwards in every business he's been in. And all he's really savvy at is sort of like Sam from Australia Traders Season 2, which is just being a worm and basically icing everyone else out. Okay? J.D. vance, he was on Maddow, he was on Joy Ann Reed, he was his book. I remember msnbc. Finally someone who is going to teach us how to speak to those who might not. As if he was like Jane Goodall for the.

[Johnny G]

To talk to Ozark. Yes, the Ozark community.

[Anthony Antonomina]

And like the truth of the matter is, is this is a systemic problem and it is a conspiracy of. We still live in a feudal system and the. All you need to do is see what happened. Listen, I. Again, I don't know Brian Thompson, she got shot or whatever. But here's what I do know. Brian Thompson was being sued for fucking doing insider trading for $115 million in stocks. He was the one of the principal architects of AI denial of care to people in the insurance industry, which to me is a tantamite physical threat. It is an imminent threat to people's lives. So you can argue self defense, which I would if I was Luigi's lawyers.

[Johnny G]

Yes. UHC is of the. All the healthcare companies, the Highest rejection.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Rate, 34%, 35% rejection rate.

[Johnny G]

That's fucking crazy.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Yeah, let's.

[Johnny G]

Let's just jump back to a couple of things you touched on there. J.D.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Vance, darling of MSNBC, darling of MSNBC.

[Johnny G]

Wrote a book that let wealthy people understand poor white people. Meryl Streep is in the fucking movie. This is all like, you know, washing him and then this weird. And he's, he's, he's married to a non white person. He then becomes an adult converted Catholic, which I think is one of the scariest things you can be. As someone who was raised Catholic and did everything in their power to get out of that system. Everyone I know who was raised Catholic is non practicing now. And anyone who's converted to Catholicism. Adulthood is terrifying to me because it's like they're the guys who are into the crazy shit. It's like, well, Pope Pontius VII is the actual believer, you know? And you're like, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, man. I just know to say body of Christ when they give me the bread. Okay? So that. That makes him so scary in a different way. And that should be. But it also makes him this weird. And not to mention he's fucking Peter Thiel groomed, which is like this technocracy shit. All of this stuff is like big, big thing that's bothered me in this last election cycle versus previous election cycles. In the back, it would be like in. Back in the day, it would be like, naacp, the. The teachers union supports this person. The. But now it's like, Beyonce, how come Taylor Swift doesn't come out to say who she's voting for? Yes, we are under. We are in the wrong. This is the wrong game. And it's unfortunate because we got into this celebrity worship, this billionaire worship world where it's get your bag. And this is something everyone on this podcast has heard me talk about a bunch. But I think it's affecting politics too, where it's get your bag. A society now. It used to be no selling out when we were that. We're of the age where growing up selling out was tacky. If you sold out. If you sold out, it ruined you. But now people. And now I think it's because the economy is so bad and everything is so expensive that anyone understands selling out because they would sell out in a fucking heartbeat. Because money is the only way to not die in this.

[Anthony Antonomina]

The whole thing is a sellout. The whole thing's a sellout. Are.

[Johnny G]

Are. You're.

[Anthony Antonomina]

You're. The whole existence for people is a sellout. You. You see people every day of every age group, people who are stunned. People who do a daily Instagram video and then suddenly they have 80,000 followers and they're stunned. They're like, oh, my God. I. I can't believe this. This is amazing. I guess I'll monetize this. Selling out is part of it.

[Johnny G]

Selling out is everyone's end goal.

[Anthony Antonomina]

It's everyone's end goal. And it's also like, this is the weird passive economy. Which by the way, I guess it's like this is what happens when you privatize systems is that they become narveled, they gnarled their cancers, their tumors, they're, they're, they're completely distorted and deformed. Because what we should have. There's a guy running for mayor in New York, I love it because he's like, you know, we're going to have some city grocery stores, like city owned grocery stores. Will we just cap the price? And it's like, yeah, if you had just done that, we would have no private insurance anymore. You want to know why? If we had had one option of a single payer, one government option and the reason why they didn't do it. And this goes back to, I'm going to tie it back to Obama. The, the bailing out on that was basically saying the government shouldn't be in this market. And it's like, I'm sorry, isn't the argument by the right that the government is a business and it should be run like a business, but yet the government should not be involved in business? How the fuck does that make any sense? One, the government should is not a business. The government is a limitless power system that is producing money, weapons, energy and people and force. It is a system of force of will. When the Masons talk about the idea of the collective popular force of will, this is what's meant in Freemasonry by the perfect ashlar, the perfect cube, the honed system, as opposed to the rough ashlar. The idea is that a state with unified will of people creates an unlimited force. And that force of will can determine whatever it wants. That's how we achieved going to the moon. That's. There's no. If you were to calculate the cost of going to the moon, right? We didn't think about that. We just went, we're going to the moon and we just did it. Right? So the difference now is there's also.

[Johnny G]

An element of like our best and brightest used to want to do that. Now the best and brightest are just like, I want to work at this company and make $600,000 a year my start, starting salary. And I want to get.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Because we created. No, because the government got out of the competition, right?

[Johnny G]

And I'm not like crazy get the government involved in everything kind of guy. But like we need, we need some regulation, we need some help for people. We need some like, if you're, if you're a company that Makes billions of dollars. You should have to. You used to have to like build a fucking park around if you built a crazy fucking factory. Used to. Have to. If you became a billionaire, you used to put a wing in a museum. You used to. Like, you used to. Now none of that is done anymore because you could just go. Cuz no one, no one cares. Because that used. That the fucking Sacklers had to build wings of museums to not be fucking lynched in the streets.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Right?

[Johnny G]

And now, and. And now like, Elon Musk doesn't have to do anything because he's just like, we're going to Mars.

[Anthony Antonomina]

But imagine if you had a world where the Sacklers were. Went to jail. Like, imagine if you had a world where. Where we had such oversight and regulation. I mean, here's where like, RFK Jr. Is such a weird mixed bag, right?

[Johnny G]

Because sometimes he says when he's like, we got to get the poisons out of food.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Yeah.

[Johnny G]

And people are like, it's hard to argue against that.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Or I mean, argue the FDA and the cdc. Here's the problem again. And this is where it's going to be such a complex year because it's so.

[Johnny G]

The left and right lines are blurring. And like the left and right lines.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Are blurring, but also because it's like, right message, wrong messenger. Yes, right. Which is like, yeah, you're right. Like, the cdc, part of the reason we had such a problem with COVID had nothing to do with Trump. It had to do with the WHO and the CDC being primarily controlled by older men who did not listen to these two women who were experts on how things aerosol. And because the weight of COVID was beyond the point at which it would be considered an aerosol in disease, they were like, we're not even listening to you. Meanwhile, these women were like, it doesn't matter. We're telling you that this thing is outside of. It's the normal aerosol disease. And for some reason it is hanging in the air more. And they were basically completely ignored for months and months. And it wasn't until year one, like a year of COVID had gone by that they started to understand and listened to these two women and they made some policy changes about how masking was done. Right? So the problem is, is that one, when you have such corruption, and that's just a very. That's actually a benign example of. Think of all the drugs that are processed and approved. I recently was prescribed a fucking antibiotic when I was sick. Then I was like, I think I might have A sinus infection. I was like, maybe I get a Z pack. But then my doctor for whatever reason gave me this other one. And this thing is black box fda. You can't even get it in Canada. You need to be like poison with anthrax in the UK to get it. Ok. But in America you could get it in two seconds and it had the possibility of taking it more than at one time. Your tendons could snap, your aorta could sever from your fucking heart. You could go insane. And this is like 12% of people who took it. Not like 0.1%, like 12%. So the problem is is that, yeah, the FDA board's completely corrupt the revolving door of people who leave industries, go into government, then leave again in order to case it for regulations. You have heists going on everywhere, you have heists going on in Congress, heists going on the financial industry. And this is the big point I want to make after all these times of being on the show. The conspiracy is right in front of us. The conspiracy is overt. It is not done with cloaks. There are no secret handshakes. There is no grand world shaking reality shaking secret world that we are robbed from that shadowy figures who worship ball are keeping from us. It is right in front of us, which is the conspiracy is that we believe we're helpless and told we're helpless. We're given a number of distractions, just enough to keep us distracted and, and, and diluted, believing it's impossible. And we allow a growing class and group of multimillionaire and billionaires and soon to be trillionaires to not only control the world, but to control access to information and science. And their goal is horrifying, which is for them to live permanently without death. And if they can achieve living permanently without death, that's the end game for everyone. Yeah, it's society, because that'll be it. Society's over.

[Johnny G]

And money is already such a fucking.

[Anthony Antonomina]

How about that, baby?

[Johnny G]

Money is already such an awful motivating factor. And then if it's, if money is the antithetical to death, imagine what that means. Which means if money becomes antithetical to death, being poor equals death. And it already sort of does, by the way.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Already does.

[Johnny G]

Yeah, it's disgusting and it's, it's terrifying. And there this shit talk about being distracted. Weirdly enough, these billionaires who are trying to live forever and are in the pockets and vice versa of all these government officials create social media platforms that exacerbate all of the left versus right fighting and this versus this fighting the TikTok, the one that's from. Not in this country, that people that has a little less. They don't have full rule, full control over the algorithm. They want to shut down and say it's shut down. Yeah, yeah, but they want to say it's Chinese spying material. It's like if the Chinese want to spy on us, we have. Every single one of us has tons of their technology in our house, tons of their assets.

[Anthony Antonomina]

What's the Chinese spying on, by the way? I'll tell you what you've heard. I know I've said this one on the show before. This is the great Periscope conspiracy. Twitter bought Periscope, right? And then they fucking ran Periscope into the ground. Why? Why did they do that? Because despite all of the live streaming, despite all the capacity we have, I don't know of any major platform where I can go and watch someone just casually live stream from Tehran, from Kabul, from Moscow, I don't know anywhere. And, And Periscope, I used to be able to go watch somebody walk through the park and you would learn that Tehran was a completely normal city with people playing guitar and they're. And not to say riding bikes and. Yeah, riding bikes. And plenty of women who were uncovered who are walking around and listen, this is not to say that two, two things. One, the hijab and sort of covering yourself. Many cultures, including Christian and Jewish, have that. But also, in addition, there's a woman's right to choose how she wants to wear. And it's a cultural identity thing that's different than the laws that men make about covering people up. And we always hope things like that, I think are eradicated around the world in terms of controlling how people wear clothing versus what they choose to wear. But the point being that why do you have to get rid of Periscope? Because if you saw that Gaza was. Here's the thing, everyone now thinks that Gaza is that pile of rubble that you see now. And that in there, what that has happened is people will backlog that in their mind. So they go, they go, well, I mean, these people are living in fucking this. I mean, rubble, right?

[Johnny G]

How did it become rubble?

[Anthony Antonomina]

And, oh, don't ignore that, Ignore that message. And by the way, you want to talk about a worse, A worse recruitment for anti Semitism. This is the thing I don't get is that like, I don't want to be associated with any of that shit. I don't want to be associated with any of that shit. You want to know why? Because I don't want someone coming after me because they think I'm linked ideologically to a political view and military strategy. A corrupt leader's decision making. Not a religious, not a cultural connection. And that disgusting display, which has nothing to do with my grandmother in her Jewishness, it has nothing to do with my growing up in my Jewishness, which was very vague, by the way. But like, the point being is that it's disgust, it's disgusting. And to link it back to the billionaires, is that what we're watching is what's Gaza? Yes. Gaza is, you know, about gas pipelines, it's about creating more beachfront property. It's about Israel expanding. It's about all those things. It's also one of what will be in decades to come. We'll look back and go, that was one of the first test massacres of the climate wars, because that's what's coming next is masses of people coming from the equator and from the south in areas that are becoming uninhabitable. And there. And this was a test. And I know people are going to be like, he's being so cruel. I'm not trying to be cruel right now. I'm just saying this was a test. A test to see the capacity of a distracted, culturally and economically elevated group of people in Northern hemisphere. What are they willing to ignore? Because we're going to have to wholesale kill billions of people over the next couple of centuries or else we're going to be fucked because we can't house everybody in the north.

[Johnny G]

Yeah, well, this is also. This is.

[Anthony Antonomina]

What do you think is going to happen? Guys, I have a question. Does anybody listening to this? What do you think is going to happen as it gets hotter and hotter and hotter and there are poorer people of color coming across the border? Do you think that they're going to be welcome with open arms or are they going to be painted as terrorists and people carrying disease and people who are coming to rape our daughters?

[Johnny G]

We're all. We're already seeing that. You're even seeing it on a minor scale. Like all these Special Forces guys are on podcasts now going, we got to stop the cartels. Yeah, they're sending terrorists over the border. We're going to get our own October 7th here. People are saying like the craziest shit on in this week alone. And there is enough stuff that's going on that's crazy. New Orleans, Las Vegas. Like these things that are happening that are stochastic terrorism, you know, getting us like Scared of things that could be possible and then however they can fucking spin it. No matter what it is. No matter.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Two military guys. Two military guys.

[Johnny G]

Anthony, I'm so glad you said this because this is what I actually I'm glad we talked about all the stuff we want to talk about, but this is the main stuff I wanted to talk about is that no one speaks to the ex military. Terror like that is more.

[Anthony Antonomina]

More MK Ultra, baby.

[Johnny G]

More in America more than Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. We have homegrown military train. Honor our troops. Let them sit and let them sit in first class. Let em board first. And I understand a few bad apples spoil a bunch. And I understand a lot of people. I also will get into my anti military views of like it is, you know, keeping people poor, puts them in the military, lets them be. Lets the undereducated, underfunded people with no.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Have a drone stop.

[Johnny G]

You want.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Stop creating this thing where the way to go to college is you, you're poor so you serve in the military.

[Johnny G]

Yeah. Because you want to go to college, you want to get a house, go to join the military. Join the military.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Yep.

[Johnny G]

Join the military and get brainwashed. Brainwashed. Radicalized. Yeah.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Radicalized. Yeah.

[Johnny G]

Sent overseas, broken down.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Real health care.

[Johnny G]

No. Mental health care. No. The suicide rate, the, the homeless rate. All this stuff for veterans who of course, both sides, loud on all sides, loud on any given opportunity. Like support the troops. Support the troops. But then these poor fucking guys, they're committing crazy ass shit. The Las Vegas Guys manifesto that has maybe been proven to be actually an email from him. He's talking about Chinese gravity propulsion drones and shit like that. It's like that dude is. Unfortunately, that's a mental health issue. And like he ended up blowing up a cybertruck outside a Trump Hotel.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Yes. Or it's mk or these people are part of a long term psychological operation that's been deployed. Here's what I never understand. We know this was done in the 60s. We know that Ted Kaczynski was a victim of MK Ultra. We know it. We know it. We know hands down Ted Kaczynski spent two years getting dosed with acid and shown parallax. View level fucking like image fucking slideshows that were fucking with his mind.

[Johnny G]

Like the Ludovico treatment from fucking Clockwork Orange. Yeah. Yes.

[Anthony Antonomina]

So like come on with it. You think that they just did it in the 70s because it was a cool aesthetic. Like they're still doing it and it's far more advanced they had in the 90s they thought they could blow up goats with people's minds. What are you talking about? Why do people think that we just stopped doing that. And I'll tell you why. Because the one, and this is where I can't stand the Trump folks, because again, right message, wrong messenger. The deep state from 2000 to 2008, you watched them all. Once the, once the war in 2003 was proven to be complete bullshit. And we all just went, okay, they lied about the war, they lied about Iraq and we're fine with it. You know, we'll just fight this war and we'll just fight it for decades and we'll do nothing to help these people. We'll bomb the shit out of them, destroy their infrastructure, fucking murder them wholesale. And we won't shit paint them as.

[Johnny G]

Villains when they start to hate us for it. Yeah, they're like, well, they're very anti American over there. It's like, how do you think they ended up anti American?

[Anthony Antonomina]

Like, I mean people think about Pakistan, it's like, here's the crazy thing about Pakistan. Pakistan has been our ally through like the whole fucking thing. And we like drone strike their weddings to like we were Obama's drone striking weddings like every other week, okay? And still the ISI was like, okay, okay, where your friend, like, just think of what they take that, what the pummeling they take on the chin, right? And obviously it's not. I don't believe there's any good actors in the world. I just think like, I don't think there's like innocent people. There's not like innocent countries. I think they're all participants. Some of them are small players, some of them are big players. It's like the use. It's like the ucb, right? It's just like the ucb, which is you have your big players and you have your small players and your small players are trying to be in the orbit of big players. So maybe they're more benign. But then you learn that, oh, that ticket booth guy, he also like takes under skirt shots of like girls that like student class shows. Like, it isn't just the guy who's the hot cock of the walk teacher who's like fucking everybody and being weird with people on herald teams. It turns out that the weird guy in the booth and the intern is stealing through people's wallets and yeah, so like wink, wink. So like that's neither of us by the way. We're just thinking about somebody else. But so, so the point is that like I, I don't think that it's like there's innocent people, but the, the deep state came out, they came out of the closet in 2004, 5 and suddenly they became commentary on CNN and MSNBC. In other words, there was this purge over the course of 2000, 2008, there was a intelligence purge. And a bunch of people who had been underground were just suddenly above ground. And suddenly they were all doing military analysis and explaining why we needed to stay in this war and stay in this global thing. And no one has yet ever been able to explain to me how we can spend decades telling the American people how we need to spend money everywhere else except here. And that spending it here is akin to Nazism, but spending it over there is like the most noble fucking thing in the world. But the worst part of it is in this triangle, in the peak of this triangle of identity politics and it being like, how dare you? You can't. You know, they're white supremacists. Even though Latinos and black folks and all kinds of people voted for Trump and women and I mean, Roe versus Wade, bodily autonomy was on the ticket and people didn't. They didn't vote for it. So like, what, what's that motivating? What's that animating factor? Right? But yet the message is going to be, yeah, we shouldn't spend it over there, but guess what, we still shouldn't spend it over here. And, and the problem with these military acts and why I personally believe that this stuff. If I was going to float a conspiracy theory, it would be that there is building momentum with the Luigi Mangione thing where people go, you know what, why the fuck are we allowing these insurance companies to kill our family members? Why are we allowing these unions to work our family? I mean, are these companies to work our families to the bone and they can't form unions? Why are the cops protecting the big corporation and capital and not people? Why is this happening? And this guy made me think about that, Made me think about the power that we have as people. You know what we better do, because we labeled him a terrorist, the media labeled him a terrorist, right? Against we better have a couple of fucking attacks because now it will be a triptych of attacks. Now it's Luigi, this guy in New Orleans and Las Vegas, now they're all terrorists. And now we've watered down Luigi's actions, we've watered down the message, kind of.

[Johnny G]

Remove the motive or the.

[Anthony Antonomina]

If I was to put a conspiracy forward, that's the conspiracy which was to kill the momentum and they're not going to be able to do it because the one good thing about these, they.

[Johnny G]

Can lump him in with the, with the truck guy.

[Anthony Antonomina]

That's what they're going to do.

[Johnny G]

Yeah. They could be like, this is what's wrong with the country.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Not.

[Johnny G]

Not what's wrong with the country is the series of systems in place that put Luigi in. Yes.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Where he felt there was no other.

[Johnny G]

Choice but what to do but this. Yeah.

[Anthony Antonomina]

By the way, look at the linkage. You have anti cap, anti capitalist or anti insurance agency. Then you have the guy, he had the ISIS flag even though he had it upside down. Okay.

[Johnny G]

And he was U.S. military.

[Anthony Antonomina]

He used U.S. military, but he had the ISIS flag, U.S. military. And then you had the rabid liberal, you know, who in Las Vegas. So you have a really nice coordination of messages going into Trump, who again, now you think about, well, okay, what was said right before he was elected, worse than Hitler. Fascism is going to come. The whole country's going to come apart. Ok, I, I personally believe that that's very possible. I also believe it is very possible. You could just see grotesque incompetence for like four years and then it just all comes apart. I think it's more likely because I think a lot of these folks are like, Steve Bannon are sort of cosplaying, sort of like tabletop game losers who like, they think they get it, but like, you know, it's like the people who talk a big game and then you get them in like an audition and they like fucking suck shit because they're actually not good. You know what I mean? Like, I think of all the people who I've met in my lifetime and I'm going to blow up myself for a second or blow you up for a second, which is. It's one thing to talk a big game about being in a high pressure situation. It's another thing to be in a high pressure situation over and over and over again and deliver every fucking time. And I know a lot of people who talk a bunch of shit, but they can't do it. I know you. I know I can say, I know I can deliver every fucking time. There's no question I can deliver every time. I might deliver in my standard of what I like, maybe a little worse one time, a little better another time. But you won't know. You'll just think, my God, that guy fucking delivered. Right? So the point being is that I think that that level of skill is not what's coming in. I think you have a lot of people who sit around in their armchairs in the UCB lounge going, I could fucking do ruru. And then you get them up there and they're just a fucking huge loser. The thing this off the tip of so old.

[Johnny G]

Off the tip of what you're saying about like everyone saying the fascism is coming. He's a dictator. He's the next Hitler. I don't disagree with that.

[Anthony Antonomina]

No, I don't disagree.

[Johnny G]

No, I think it's. I think it's very likely, but it is crazy how quickly everyone's like, well, we got to learn to work.

[Anthony Antonomina]

It's like, wait, what?

[Johnny G]

You can't speak out of both sides. The second he wins, it's like, well, here we go. It's time to. It's like Adam Schiff's like, I'm ready to work with Trump. Everyone's like, he's gonna be in fucking photo ops with Democrats. You know what I mean? Like, it's.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Yeah, it.

[Johnny G]

There's a lot of shit. It's. It's really crazy.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Realize it's all bullshit, dude.

[Johnny G]

That's when you realize it's us and them. It's not. It's us and literally them. The politicians. Yes. Our politicians versus their politicians.

[Anthony Antonomina]

It's a whole system. It's the politicians, it's the insurance industry, it's the food industry, it's the banking.

[Johnny G]

Industry, and they all crazily enough feed into each other. The food industry poisons us. The. And then the healthcare industry has to antidote us. Not nipping the poison in the bud, but giving us the antidote so we can have more poison. And then we're paying for the poison and we're paying for the antidote. The prices are going up on both because the banking company, the, the, the money people are benefiting from both of those situations. So then there and then all of a sudden, all of them get their claws in every single politician. Politicians who I believe should not. No one should be allowed to have stocks. What they should be allowed to have is index fund or whatever. You know, the kind. You should only be able to invest in the thing that if mutual funds.

[Anthony Antonomina]

IRA or something like you should be able to have some sort of congressional IRA or pension that you can buy into. I mean, listen. I mean, we could get really radical or we could just stay under the toe. Under sort of in reason. In reason. There's no reason for government not to if you want to. So we. I'll say three things. One, the. The whole fashion. It's. It was such a farce. Because it was like, you guys don't have the stones to do what it takes. My stepfather, you know, called me earlier today. He goes, well, he goes, on Monday, you know, Biden's going to go to the steps of the Capitol. He's going to tell his supporters to storm the Capitol and not let the. Not, you know, not let the.

[Johnny G]

Monday being January 6th.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Yeah, Monday being January 6th. And I was laughing. I said, yeah. I go, the Democrats are. They'll never do that. And that's the truth. The truth of the matter is, is 1 January 6th did have a bunch of grotesque behavior by idiots who are mostly upper middle class. It also because I was going, I have all the video of that day I have from my live stream. So I literally have all the video of that day on like multiple windows. I have it saved and I was just lucky that I saved it eight hours. There's plenty of people who, if we had been there, let's say. Just say. Let's say we had been there and it had been a Democrat who had done that and it was Trump. Let's say Trump had won and we were like, he cheated. And you know, let's just say. Because by the way, totally possible. It's a total possible reality. Probably should have happened under Bush. Okay. To be quite frank.

[Johnny G]

After the Brooks Brothers riots.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Yeah.

[Johnny G]

And went back against him. Yeah.

[Anthony Antonomina]

So we should have gone. If we had. I could imagine myself as. I saw people who were just. They were smoking a joint in the rotunda. They weren't doing anything. They weren't like smashing anything. In other words, there were plenty of people. Talk about hippies, talk about people, you can't categorize. People who just thought, fuck it, I'll go in the Capitol and fucking walk around, get high. We all know we can be that person. So let's also acknowledge that. Let's acknowledge the fact that a lot of us could have been people who entered the Capitol on January6. And not for any political reason. Just because we'd be like, wow, someone left the door open. I guess I'll go in and smoke a. J. And you're not aware of the violence that's happening on the other side of the building. And the reason I say that is just to say we need to stop otherizing. We need to start understanding that actually a lot of us are coming from the same position. We just see it different ways. And a lot of people want the system. Smash. I heard from my right wing cousin about how the Democrats, Rob Bernie twice, and the fact is, is that that means that there is, despite our issues in terms of governing, there is an opening, an aperture opening for people to go, wait a minute, so this thing's all fucked. Maybe we won't have the answers, but we're at least all going, wait, you're right, this is fucked. And that is the thing they want to stop. They want to stop that. And I'm going to go flip 180 degrees for a second right now and say this. I love this Trump. Like him or not, one of the reasons I was able to do him well is I get him in this sense. I also came from the Queens of Boston. And then I went to a school, North Shore of Boston, where when I became the president of the school, the school board tried to strip me of my presidency because I was from Chelsea, because I should not have been the president of a WASPy school like Hamilton Wendham. Okay? And the point is, is that when you don't fit in, you could be there, you could be in the community, you can join the choir, you can be the president, you could be the homecomin coming king. You can befriend every person you're supposed to friend and know every fucking blue blood family you're supposed to know. You will never be one of them. Trump is one of those people. He will never be one of them. And that, I think was the core thing that people connected to, and it is the one thing that I am not looking forward to, but I am interested by, is that this time there's no governor on him, there is no institutional barrier. And so I think it's going to be a mess, but it is going to be interesting because it's the first time probably since JFK that we are having someone maybe like, maybe Lyndon Johnson, but Johnson was sort of part of the system, that we're having someone come in and sort of smash open the system in a way that we just don't know what's going to happen him. And they're scared. They're all very scared. And the institutional folks, the WASPs, the money, the real power, you want to talk about the Illuminati, the real power. How long will it take, John? Until I think the things that happen to sort things out happen because this. Because let me tell you, things will get sorted out, if you know what I mean. Because there's no way. Because there's no way they're going to let this. This is thousands of years of power.

[Johnny G]

Yeah.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Thousands of years of control. They're not going to let us, not.

[Johnny G]

Going to let fucking Golden Toilet Man. Fucking bring the whole thing.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Exactly. So that's the. That's the real conspiracy.

[Johnny G]

Now let's do the classic how we end all of our episodes. And since this is the one of the last episodes of High and Mighty, what. What can we look forward to? Like, what you're describing about what Trump is doing, but with bad intentions. Wouldn't it be great if someone came in and smashed the whole system with the idea of, like, equality or, you know, infrastructure or environmentalism, which is maybe going to be the biggest. Like, yeah, we need to be doing. Like, this is like, so corny. And I know other people said it, but this is like where my heart is at right now when it was Rosie the Riveter and like, shut your lights off at night and save the meat for the troops. We need that on a national scale, for Mother Earth. We need it on a global scale, but we need to lead this.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Do you remember Jimmy Carter and the Cardigan address?

[Johnny G]

No, which one was that?

[Anthony Antonomina]

So Jimmy Carter, obviously, I've been going back through, because he was. Even though I was born under Nixon and lived under, you know, until I was 2, under Ford, Carter was the first president I was conscious of. And one of the things he did was at one point he gave a fireside address in a cardigan where he talked about how we need to, like, turn our thermostats down and we need.

[Johnny G]

To be less reliant on oil almost.

[Anthony Antonomina]

And he was roundly mocked, roundly mocked by the press, by the media, who has. Was high on their own supply since Nixon. Here's what I want to say, is that you want to talk about positivity. So in other words, when's that going to happen? I think we are reaching actually that point. And I think that Trump is the. Is the necessary vessel. In other words, we had two shots with Bernie. We had two shots with that system, and that system is too strong. It held. It held and it kept Hillary in there. And, and I understand the people who like Hillary Clinton. I understand the idea of a woman being president, all that, but again, identity, identity. Why are we doing it? Are we doing it just to get a woman as president, or are we doing it because this is the person who can actually achieve, achieve goals that we want, not militaristic goals that enshrine and protect more corporate money, which I don't care what you think. And she might just a quick Apollo, not apologize, but sort of thing for Hillary Clinton. I don't think that necessarily Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or even Nancy Pelosi or whatever. Do I think those people think they're evil? No, I don't think they think they're evil or wrong. Do I think that they can rationalize the same way I used to rationalize taking, you know, like down charging a beer? Like if someone ordered four beers, I would charge for three beers and then keep the extra five for myself because I was like, fuck this business. Like, fuck, right? If you're an employee of anything, including the United States of America, therefore the people, you're stealing a little bit out of the till. So like, I don't think that Nancy Pelosi is a villain. I think Nancy Pelosi got very comfortable rationalizing what she did. And I can also look at Nancy Pelosi as an example and go, this person knew how to within this system. She knew how to work this system better than anybody.

[Johnny G]

And the system is bad.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Yeah, the system is bad. It's undeniable though. Nancy Pelosi's skill set is unfucking deniable. Right? So, but you know, Dr. Mengele was a great doctor, a lot of great inventions, but that doesn't mean he was a great guy. And I'd say that she's Dr. Menglu, but so Hillary Clinton, same thing. Survivor, right? Survivor went from a unpopular first lady to a two term senator, like for New York, like secretary or one term senator, Secretary of state. Like, in other words, you can all, you can compliment all these people in these power systems and it's the same thing like I was just saying about being a funny comedian. I can sit here and talk all I want. I don't even know if I could get elected dog catcher.

[Johnny G]

Right, right.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Okay. So the skill set it takes in this system to get that popular and that well known and the fact that humanity's fucked up and that everyone has their own selfish designs and these things have made it even worse. Ok?

[Johnny G]

He's holding up his iPhone and it's.

[Anthony Antonomina]

A picture of my beautiful wife.

[Johnny G]

These things are making it even worse.

[Anthony Antonomina]

So like the point. So the, so what I think though is that what's more important than the individuals? Because what we do is we focus on the individuals. Right? Hillary's bad. She's evil. Jimmy, I saw some fucking a hole on Instagram is like, you know, Jimmy Carter is the least evil president in my lifetime. It's like, oh, fuck off. You're like 20. Suck a dick. Shut up. Like, I don't want to hear from you anymore. If you're like 20 to 29 and you're weighing in with Your hot take about how everybody's shit except how you view the world. Fuck off and shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up. Nobody cares. Guess What? I was 20. And you know what I thought when I was 20? I thought I was. That I was right about everything and I was the first person to see the world correctly. And I read Plato and went, well, I think the same way as that. Oh, I read. I read Kierkegaard. Oh my God.

[Johnny G]

I. I must be Kierkegaard.

[Anthony Antonomina]

You're not, dummy. You're in your 20s. You're in your 20s.

[Johnny G]

I don't even want to talk about my 20s. I don't think I even voted in the presidential election till the second Obama term, which is 2012, which by the way, for the record, is my 30s. I was so unpolitical for so long, I just ignored it. Which I guess is a case.

[Anthony Antonomina]

I'm just so tired of hot takes by people who have like, also who clearly have passive income or have enough money. Like people who have enough money that they could spend all their time posting and they're in the 20s.

[Johnny G]

I'm tired of hot takes from people who make money from hot takes too.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Yes, exactly. It's like so annoying. And listen, I'm not. I, I love the youth. I love. Listen, I. My point is we need the youth. Yeah, it's not most young people, in other words, most young people are not like this. They're giving young people a bad name. Ok? They're giving.

[Johnny G]

Lie.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Yeah, exactly. It's all part of a fucking larger bullshit algorithm conspiracy. But anyway, the point is, is that the press, they got high on their own supply after Nixon, who, for the record, father of the epa, father of a lot of things that we take for granted as liberal ideas, were actually created by Nixon, who was a corrupt, terrible bigot, awful president, but he believed in detente and wanted to dismantle, much like Kennedy wanted to dismantle the military industrial complex. And one of the ways he thought he could do it is through Dayton, allowing Russia, China and the United States to share in the wealth of the world and not dismantling the Soviet Union, which was a very far hard right goal that was working underneath his presidency in two men who ended up working for Ford, Rumsfeld and Cheney. Part of Team B, whose desire, of course, was to collapse the Soviet Union as opposed to work with it. So what they learned was you don't have to blow up a president's head like a fucking Campbell soup cam in Dallas, Texas. What you could do instead is Just lure them into a botched, purposefully botched break in by the same, very same guys who just happened to be in Cuba during the Bay of Pigs and also just happened to be around all that leafleting before Oswald got flipped from pro Cuba to anti Cuba. It just happens that those guys just also happened to break into the Democratic National Committee headquarters undoing Richard Nixon and at the same time undoing the policy of detente and elevating Woodward and Bernstein and all these other figures to top tier status, where the press suddenly felt this incredible swell of power that then lasted my entire lifetime, up till my 50th year, when on election night when Donald Trump won, I watched Rachel Maddows sit there and beg viewers to stay tuned in because they're the resistance. And you could just feel people walking out of their living rooms from the TV or throwing eggs at the television. Because this System died on 2024, November 5th. It died. The system that, that took out fucking Carter, that elevated Reagan, that perpetuated this bullshit and sold us a false resistance the entire time, electing more and more right wing Democrats and more and more militaristic Republicans died. And yes, it's unfortunate that Trump is the person who drove the stake into it, but I'll take it. Because now the optimistic new system is the growth of reporters and information brokers who are honest, who have built, who are going to build a reputation based on their recent reporting that institutional press is dead, the institutional systems are dead, and that young people hate tech. And that our goal and hope is that we can elect and understand that the next 20 years is about building effective governing of cities, effective city councils and showing the results of socialist anti capitalist policies. How to, how you get cities running properly. Where New York should ban Uber, they should ban Uber and Lyft, they should create their own yellow cab system. That is a bet as good an app as Uber or Lyft and get rid of them. Just ban Uber and Lyft from the city and just let it be yellow cabs and bike paths and then. And, and, and just, and one of.

[Johnny G]

The best public transit systems in America.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Exactly. And so my point is, is what's to look forward to? What's to look forward to? We can watch this fucking group of overpaid, under educated hacks, morons, people who know as little as you or me, but got paid millions of dollars a year to sit and do what we're doing right now, which is bullshit, for fucking 24 hours on cable news to no effect, to no avail with no value. What value came from cnn? What value came. Can you remember one fucking thing Rachel Maddow said?

[Johnny G]

I'll show you. I'll show you the value. I'll show you the value. Let me pull out the fucking nasdaq. That's the problem is that it's all fucking because they're. That's companies. They're working for corporations. It's. They are not work. They're not working for the people anymore. It's working for corporations. So I think you're right. And this is where my future lies to because friend of the podcast, frequent guest and very funny guy, Hayes Davenport, he always, like he said, after the election went the way it went, you felt like you had no power. You know, where you do have power, the smaller you shrink your goals.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Yes.

[Johnny G]

And if you make your neighborhood better, if you make your town better, if you make your city better, your county better, if you push for that, that expands what Also it affects you faster. It's something that can actually, the wheels can be moved a little. But then when all of a sudden 10 cities in America are flourishing because we push towards public transit, towards equality, towards building affordable housing, towards walkable cities, towards these things that remove our reliance from cars and corporations and the city owned grocery stores. Ideas I love or you know, farmer co ops, like whatever the fucking answers are, when we show that those are possible, that would be eye opening for the nation on a grand scale. In a way. It's fucking wild. It's fucking. And like that's our only hope is to just start small and build out from there. Because it feels like the presidential election is just something that is. And the other thing that drives me crazy is that now like how many millions, hundreds of millions of dollars did both candidates raise just to run billions just to run for president. That's. Imagine we just took that billions and just invested it here. And you weren't allowed to advertise. You had to have like a limited budget for this. We got to eliminate fucking Citizens United. We got. You can only private capital needs to come out of real estate. Like there's just so much shit that is going on that if we tweak on small scales, I think that is our possible future. And all of it seems to be dismantling huge financial systems. And I'm not even talking about like, I don't understand this stuff. So I'm not going full Occupy Wall street or whatever, but we got to stop saying like, well, the stock market's doing good. It's like, I see unhoused That's a lot of people. Yeah, yeah. It doesn't matter. The stock market being good, what is it, like, 15% of Americans even own stock?

[Anthony Antonomina]

It's also imaginary money. It's imaginary money. We've created a backwards market place where what we've done is we've privatized the dismantling of other private companies while the government bails out the people who short the businesses. Red Lobster is a prime example of getting dismantled. Getting dismantled by people who bought it and then dismantled it and in the meanwhile, made money off of dismantling it. We have. We are in a. We are in a necropolis right now.

[Johnny G]

Oh, great word. Yeah. That is what it feels like. I argue, I scream about this shit all the time, but it's like, raise the price of flights, make them worse. Lower the standards, raise the price. Like, that's happening in every sector of business, where you're getting the food is worse and it's more expensive.

[Anthony Antonomina]

So what was the argument was that privatization was supposed to lead to better results because of competition. But what's happened is one. It's actually not true privatization. What you have is you just created private entities that then get contracts with the government. Then the government protects their shorts, their losses, Right? The government insurance bails them out and bails them out. So the question is, is this is like insurance. What's crazy is that this notion, this. It's a casino notion, right? It's this idea that for some reason, we got to run our money through this casino. It would be as if I got a bank account. And they were like, hey, listen, it's all your own money, so you'll ultimately get it all back. But do you want to, like, gamble with your own money, with the bank? And then you'll. But don't worry, you'll get it back. And you're like, why? They're like, because it's more fun. You know, we take a little percentage, though, every time. And you're like, I guess so. Okay. Yeah. That does. All these games do sound fun. It's like you've created this middleman with the bank. Whereas instead, I could just keep the money myself and not do any of that. And at minimum, it. It is like at a blackjack table, when you do magic pairs, you never bet the sucker bets. There's no need to bet the sucker bets. You don't need to bet magic pairs because just one time you get sevens and the dealer gets seven. So you get 20 to one. For that 20 to one win. There's 10 times where you bet five bucks, 10 bucks where you lost it, so that 20 to one just paid you back what you lost. It's a pointless endeavor. Here's a pointless endeavor. Nationalize the fucking airlines. Just nationalize the airlines. Just serve, just. Why do we have private airlines? Why? We've bought them over and over. We've literally bought out the airlines so many times, and for what? For what service? They don't provide anything. And here's the other thing. If you nationalize the airlines, you could use the profits to build a national rail system. But you see, this would make things good. And things that are good drive down frivolous consumption. And we have convinced ourselves that frivolous consumption is the name of the game. Whereas the idea that what we would do is extricate ourselves from this hamster wheel, which we don't need anymore. We technically, between AI and automation, we should all be earning passive incomes. We should all just be getting universal basic income. And then we'd go, well, why do we even have the money? Why don't we just have a store and you just have credits and they go, okay, well, you don't need fucking. You know, so someone goes, well, someone might go in and buy 10 chickens. What if they take 10 chickens? So what? What if they do? By the way, you know what? I guarantee you there's someone taking 30 chickens right now and fucking you, and you've got to pay for your chicken. So why don't we just let someone steal 10 chickens and not fucking worry about it and the rest of us. Because most people are normal and not psychopaths, you know, And I mean, I'm crazy. I mean, I feel like we should.

[Johnny G]

I don't think you have. I don't think you have to say this at that point.

[Anthony Antonomina]

We should test. We should test at birth and, you know, kill psychopaths before they're like six. Unless we can Dexter them and use them to our advantage.

[Johnny G]

Yeah, but put them all in special forces. This, this is so real. Like, I agree with all of this. Like, imagine high speed rail where you don't need to go through these insane processes to fly and stuff like that. And we could do it.

[Anthony Antonomina]

We could do it. We could afford to do it right now. That's the craziest part. And you know what?

[Johnny G]

And with light and with. Sorry, with high speed rail, you don't have to live right in the city to work. You can. It'll expand where people can live. It'll expand. It'll open up for more housing availability for people you can live in, you can live 90 minutes, a 90 minute drive from the city, but if high speed rail gets you there in 40 minutes, you could fucking, you can live in Pennsylvania and work in Manhattan. You can live in, you can live in whatever. And it's.

[Anthony Antonomina]

And then all the small businesses that grow, because this is where people don't understand that people hear socialism or things like that and they think, well, that means that there's going to just be one store with like gray products and everyone buys like a gray outfit and wears it like it's Star Trek. And it's like, no. The point is that large monthly multinationals go the way of the dodo. The federal government can supplant that. The federal government can be target. Like the government can be target. You need to go get a cheap shirt, you need to go get some socks or some bullshit. There can be one of those stores. But the point is, is that if you expand, like you said, with high speed rail, that means that the number of people who make clothes or buy from consignment from other places, or people who make pottery or make dishes or do whatever or grow their own food locally now because more people live in some Podunk fucking town in Pennsylvania that no one wants to go to because no one can get there now they're living there and they're taking their money from the city and they're coming back to that town. And now there can be a theater there and there could be a community center and people could sell knitwear and sell plates and sell local farm food and shit.

[Johnny G]

And I guess if people worked in all of those new businesses, that would be jobs.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Yeah, yeah.

[Johnny G]

And people would work on the rails and that would be jobs. And building all this stuff would be jobs.

[Anthony Antonomina]

And you over employ, the point is you over employ, what you do is, yes, you have a 30 hour work week or you have a 25 hour work week. So you over employ your store. Because the idea would be we would have an abundance. And whatever was not. And whatever was not taken care of. The, the, that is where the abundance would be taken care of. By the thing I was mentioning earlier about force, which Stephanie Kelton talks about too, which is the idea that our money inflation is caused by private greed. It is not caused by the devaluation of a dollar. The value of a dollar is determined by the power of the country, the power of its military, the power of its reach of its electrical grid, of its population, of the strength of its, of its, of its institutions. That's what makes money Valuable. So if we're still living in the world of money in exchange for goods and services, which we are, where we still need to have a symbolic thing that against the thing that we get. If that's true, then we don't need to also pretend because we, the rich pretend all the time. The rich go, oh, I've got this much in stock. We go back to your stock argument. People are pretending all the time about how much money they have. They're pretending in the private world all the time about it. Only in the government can you not pretend. Well, they're printing more money. And so therefore now inflation happened. No, inflation happened because. Because businesses saw, multinationals, saw an opportunity to make money hand over fist in the pandemic, then get paid back by the fucking government and then go, we're going to jack up prices because they just printed money and we know they did that. So now we're going to jack prices. And because we're such cowards, we won't even do price caps. That's why. So the Democrats again, to go back to the whole thing, it things will hopefully get great. And like you said, there's all these opportunities for things to be great that it's sad, but it's great. The Democrats were shown to be the fucking useless fucking cowards that they've been for decades. And it was finally shown. They threw black people, poor people, women, they threw everybody under the band and.

[Johnny G]

Trans people, everything abandoned trans people.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Obama wouldn't even fucking say he supported gay marriage until who, who, until who pushed him into the corner? Joe? Fucking blow me, Biden, that's who. So the point is, is that I'm not saying Joe Biden's some great shakes, but man, he was way better than most. And the point, and the truth is that they've been selling us a bag of shit and saying it was roses for a while.

[Johnny G]

I think the short simplistic answer that is is that the Democrats aren't the answer. No, that's what. And they showed themselves to be not the answer to our problems. Anthony, this has been, this has been a wild way to start my Sunday morning over here in Los Angeles. Anthony's currently wiping his own saliva off of his monitor after screaming.

[Anthony Antonomina]

This brand new monitor.

[Johnny G]

It looks fucking great. Your camera's crisp as fuck, Anthony. Thank you so much for coming on high and mighty and ranting along with me as always. Ranthony rant ran to me. Ratamanic is a great fucking nickname. I can't believe I've never said that. Where can People find you or I know you're doing. Are you still doing Coffee with Tony? Are there. Is there stuff that people could come.

[Anthony Antonomina]

This is a wild ride, guys. And I just want to say, Gabrius, thank you so much for having me on so many times, and it's been so much fun every time, and I love it, but I love this show, and I also love that we've been friends for so many years. We've had so many conversations like this. Yeah. Like, to record.

[Johnny G]

Sometimes it's on a car. It's a car trip from New York City to bar. Sometimes it's in a bar. Sometimes it's while smoking weed after a show, and then sometimes it's recorded for all of you guys to listen to.

[Anthony Antonomina]

And I know I'm crazy. I mean, I speak out of my ass. So anyone who got offended, just relax.

[Johnny G]

I'm actually. I'm actually going to put a disclaimer on the top that we are speaking X to X. You know, whatever. I'm gonna put a little disclaimer that says, like, yeah, we are diving deep and making big assumptions and all that. So no one.

[Anthony Antonomina]

You know, plenty of things I don't know. And. And I. I am open to you not weighing in on social media and telling me, but the. My name is the real Tony on Blue Sky. The real actual Tony on Instagram. You know, Coffee with Tony. I don't know what's going on with that right now, but I'm probably gonna bring it back. But if. When it comes back, it's 1pm Weekdays at Twitch TV, coffee with Tony. It'll probably be back in the next few weeks with some animated elements to it. And I will be at south by Southwest in March. I will be.

[Johnny G]

I might be, too.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Oh, I hope so, because we can improvise. And then I'll be going to bed at 11:30, and. And in general, that's what, you know, you can fall. Oh, and watch the last season of what we do in the Shadows.

[Johnny G]

Oh, fuck, yeah. I can't believe I didn't. I didn't kick off with that. You got to watch Tony, and. I mean, you got to watch the show in general. No offense to my friend Anthony, but the show is really good. He is a good part of a very good show.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Like, I'm incredible in it.

[Johnny G]

I mean, you're incredible in it, but so is the show is just firing on all cylinders, including their casting?

[Anthony Antonomina]

No, no, not really. I. But I'm great at it.

[Johnny G]

Yeah. Matt Berry, not proven to be extremely talented and appreciated Harvey Guillen. Nobody.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Yeah. Everyone else said no. I mean, they all. Until they met me, they didn't know what they were doing.

[Johnny G]

The show didn't really sizzle until you had Anthony. Anthony. Thank you so much, brother. As for me, you know, I got the Action Boys podcast and you can please buy my Gino Lombardo. I made a cassette tape that is.

[Anthony Antonomina]

I saw. It's cool.

[Johnny G]

It's dope. It's all 30 episodes of the Gino Lombardo show, which is a full blown series arc and three individual season arcs that I think people would get a gist. And it's super funny and I have crazy guests and I'll even tip it here because this is a political episode. I got Anthony Scaramucci on the podcast. One of the most nefarious Long islanders.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Serious?

[Johnny G]

Yeah. And I. We went toe to toe and I kind of like fought with him about policy and stuff like that. It was fun. I think you would dig that element. Yes. That'[e-mail] and thank you for everything, shitheads. Bye, shitheads.

[Anthony Antonomina]

That was a hit gun podcast in a part of the world where there are no rules.

[Johnny G]

Holy, Holy. Guys, I'm so.

[Anthony Antonomina]

I definitely have not watched this since I rented it on VHS in 92. Strangers united by the threat of death. We got all the major players.

[Johnny G]

Seagal.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Vladimir Putin is a good man. Arnold, you're calm. Give it to me. I need you to cream pie me now.

[Johnny G]

Stal.

[Anthony Antonomina]

People are loving this movie. It's got a lot of immensely irregular now. Somewhere, somehow, someone's gonna pay. I would love for my wife to like see me rip a guy's throat out. But they didn't count on one thing.

[Johnny G]

This movie's insane. That's how you know it's a good movie. You have to do almost all the work yourself to figure it out.

[Anthony Antonomina]

There's a fantasy component. There's some sword fighting.

[Johnny G]

There's some lightning. There's a new game in town.

[Anthony Antonomina]

You wake up after a few years and then you don't even know who you are anymore. We're going to be making Terminators. We're going to make a really great deal with the xenomorphs. What?

[Johnny G]

I don't hate him, but I p in a roommate.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Yes, I understand.

[Johnny G]

This is now the 20th ending of the movie.

[Anthony Antonomina]

I dark.

[Johnny G]

I'm your dad. Action Boys. Boys will be boys.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Subscribe here for bonus content and more free stuff from behind the paywall. To get new episodes, become a patron at Action Boys Biz. Do it. Do it.

[Johnny G]

Come on.

[Anthony Antonomina]

Do it now.