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Abby and Robbie Martin discuss the Oliver Anthony viral marketing hoax and break down the depressing and surreal GOP debates, focusing on the shadiness surrounding Peter Theil plant Vivek Ramaswamy.

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Conman Ramaswamy, Psyop USA, GOP Debates

This week we're talking about once again about y'all etiquette, Boebert, class distinctions, the Appalachian creation myth, and the UAW strike

Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Episode 309: Appalachian Creation Museum

"Hitler was a product of his time," historian Kent Gardner told us in 1975, just thirty years after the end of World War II. "Was Frank Rizzo racist, or just a product of his time?" The Philadelphia Inquirer pondered in 2017 about the city's notoriously racist former police commissioner and mayor just 26 years after his death. "Christopher Columbus, no saint, was product of his time," explained a 2013 commentary in the Staten Island Advance.

We often hear this sentiment in reference to historical atrocities. Slaveowners, colonizers, genocidal tyrants, and right-wing bigots from decades or centuries past didn't know any better. They were simply responding to the time and place in which they lived — a different time, marked by different social mores, moral standards, and laws.

While it's perhaps fair to cite this cliche to explain, rather than justify, awkward song lyrics or offensive language and stereotypes used in movies from decades ago. But it's an entirely different issue with respect to how we venerate and remember the past. Especially since, in the most popular cases, famous people’s bad actions were roundly criticized, at the time.

Long popular as a catch-all to hand-wave away the misdeeds of slaveowners, colonizers and war mongers, Increasingly educational movements on the American right––from Ron DeSantis trying to remake history education to conservative propaganda targeting kids like PragerU — this "product of its time" cliché and its close cousin "don't judge the past by the standards of today" is making a bit of comeback, if it ever went away at all.

The defensive, superficially appealing cliche is a popular go-to for those who think we shouldn't criticize the supposedly sacrosanct secular deities of our past — from George Washington to Ronald Reagan. But the whole concept operates under a glaring double standard: how can we take pride in and venerate the supposedly good things Americans in history did but ignore and dismiss the bad things? How can we pick and choose our moral inheritance at will? How does the need for us to downplay slavery, colonization, and Jim Crow continue to be such a strong political force? And whose interests does this down-playing serve in 2023?

On this episode, we dissect the notion that the reactionary forces of history have just been "products of their time." We'll explore the ways in which this and related concepts are not only inaccurate, but also convenient instruments of right-wing historical revisionism, and how the need to make people feel good about our civic mythology makes for bad history, and even worse politics.

Our guest is historian and museum educator Erin Bartram.

Ep 189: PragerU, the 'Product Of His Time' Defense & the White Guilt Amelioration Industrial Complex

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We close out our series on POW-MIAs by talking Rambo II, the National League, big-eared Ross Perot, more scams and kooks, normalization and Elizabeth Warren.

Episode 323: Dude Where’s My Dad: POW/MIAs (Part Three) [trailer]

In this public News Brief we discuss the recent escalation in violence in "the middle east" and the quickly-forming bipartisan consensus to jam the issue into a simplistic, dehumanizing War on Terror narrative

News Brief: US Media, Washington Rush Head First into 9/11 2.0

In this impromptu Live Show recorded 10/16, we breakdown the latest efforts by Democrats to support Israel's brutal bombing and collective punishment of Gaza while still looking "deeply concerned" about the logical outcomes of this bombing and collective punishment.

Live Show 10/16: Gaza Siege and the Liberal Handwringing Industrial Complex

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We sit down with Dr. Norman Finkelstein to hear his thoughts on Hamas’s attack on Israel and the devastation of Gaza. We listen as he takes a look back at his life’s work, tries to make sense of the world’s cowardice in the face of unspeakable violence, and offers some thoughts on what might come next.

Gaza: An Inquest into its Martyrdom by Norman Finkelstein

Episode 327: It's Not Too Late (preview)

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The second of two episodes on funky white boy and alleged sexual predator Brett Ratner’s rise and fall, including multiple Chris Tucker movies, a cameo from Roman Polanski, and a one way ticket to Israel.

Episode 329: Kiss of the Rat (Part 2) [trailer]

We visited legendary writer William T. Vollmann (Rainbow Stories, Europe Central) in his Sacramento studio for a long talk about lots of things. Part one of two. 

Read his new essay “Four Men” in Harper’s: https://harpers.org/archive/2023/11/four-men/

Episode 330: Grief Is A Witch-Hag (Part 1)

Bill Gates and his "philanthropic" foundation. We've heard the conspiracy theories — but what if the reality was damning enough? Our guest is Tim Schwab, journalist and author of The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire.

Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to ongoing series like Manclan, Trickle Down and The Spectral Voyager: https://www.patreon.com/QAnonAnonymous

QAA x Goosecult Party on Saturday December 16th: https://dice.fm/event/e8pkd-qaa-podcast-x-goosecult-party-w-john-vanderslice-16th-dec-the-goldfish-los-angeles-tickets

The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250291431
Tim Schwab: https://twitter.com/TimothyWSchwab

Music by Nick Sena.

http://qanonanonymous.com

Episode 255: Busy Bill Gates feat Tim Schwab

We bring back Aaron Good and Ben Howard for the 60th anniversary of the JFK shooting. CIA bureaucrats, fakes and falsehoods, the mysteries surrounding Lee Harvey Oswald, and more…

Listen to our previous JFK episodes here: https://www.patreon.com/collection/602?view=expanded

Episode 334: JFK 201 (Part 1)

TrueAnon is a podcast about your enemies made by your friends. Join unlicensed private investigators Liz Franczak, Brace Belden, and Yung Chomsky for a show that will drive you insane. Every other episode is a Patreon exclusive: patreon.com/TrueAnonPod

Episode 327: It's Not Too Late (preview)

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