217 – Trash! – Transcript

Hey folks, welcome to the SRSLY Wrong podcast I am your co-host Shawn.

My name is Aaron

We got a very special episode this week and we want to just keep it moving. One last thing before we go though, we got a Patreon, ya get access to bonus episodes, all the whole archive, Discord. We've got a book club where we're reading every week together, different books, having chats on the discord. Everyone's welcome for that. Yeah, hop on to the Patreon. It allows us to heat our beans and produce the show. Without our patrons, we couldn't keep doing it.

Throw a couple apples in our apple cart because we're hungry for apples. That's what I always say. you want to pop in the tape?🔉 sound of squeaky wheeled projector cart rolling in—

Let's just pop, in, this, tape!🔉 tape player slot opening sound—

And play.🔉 tape player play button press sound—

Trash Puppet, the radical leftist, is filmed in front of a live studio audience.🔉 audience cheers and applause—🔉 metal trashcan clanking around—

And welcome to Trash Puppet, the daytime talk show, Ellen style, which is a part of the show where I do my dance, they cheer. This is my stage, my trash can. That's sort of like my chair. Thank you. Hey, everyone, how is your coronavirus isolation going? Personally, I'm just completely surrounded by my own filth, my own trash is just piling up.🔉 audience laughter—

It's happening to a lot of people in isolation as they're not keeping their house clean. They're just getting completely surrounded by trash. I'm I'm one of them, but I mean, to be fair, I literally live in a trash can.🔉 audience laughter—

What's your excuse?🔉 audience clapping—

So our first guest for today is a precocious child. Let's give precocious child a warm welcome everyone.🔉 audience applause—

Hey. Hey, everybody. Thank you. You're too kind.🔉 audience laughter—

Stop when people say the the radical left isn't welcoming. Look at that.

It's great to be here. Trash puppet. Thank you for having me on. So I guess my first question for you is, is it really true that men are trash?

Very good question. I think the short answer to that question is yes, we could parse out some of the fine details there. I think the reason that men are trash became a meme is because it's a way to bond amongst people. A cathartic bonding over shared experiences of misogyny and harassment in a very, very literal sense. There are many men who aren't trash.

OK. Well, what about investment bankers?

Yeah, trash for sure. I mean, I can't think of any really useful role for the majority of finance capitalism. It's sort of a... the metaphor I draw with the banking structure and the stock market and stuff is that banking is a utility. It's like running water. It's like electricity. But somehow one of our utilities, banking has become this sort of like parasitic growth on society that takes control of other things. So the banking sector, even though it's just a utility, has somehow become a driving political force in the economy in a way that other utilities haven't. I mean, finance capitalism seems functionally worthless except for to create avenues for the rich to build their wealth. So the role 100%. On a personal note I don't know a lot of these guys, but the few that I do, are dipshits... So yes.

What about policemen, are policemen trash?

Well here I am in my trash can. Radical leftist. What? I'm gonna look you in the eye and tell you no? Of course they are. The systemic role that police play in societies, the arbiters of truth within these life-or-death situations. They have the power to define narratives. They have the power to kill people at will, kill people by accident, or kill people on purpose. Police departments are racist. They disproportionately affect black communities, communities of color. They kill young black men who are innocent all the time, over and over and over again. And the cops that speak out against that sort of thing get fired. The FBI warned in 2006 that white supremacists in America were attempting to infiltrate, and successfully infiltrating law enforcement. Some statistics show that 40% of police officers are domestic abusers. That's way above the regular rate of the population, and it makes sense when you think of the type of job they're in. And there are thousands and thousands of cases of police officers abusing their position to sexually assault women and girls every year. There are 1,000,000 reasons why cops are trash. Policing should be abolished. It might be true that there are some good apples, so to speak, in these police departments, but you can't just be a police officer who doesn't do these things. You need to go further. You need to work to actively oppose them and others, not just in your department, but everywhere.

Wow. OK, well, I guess a trash puppet just once again, I wanna thank you for having me on the show. I have one final question for you. You say that men are trash. You're saying police are trash. Investment bankers are trash. But don't you literally live in a trash can right now?🔉 audience laughing—

You're living in a trash can, and you're just calling other people trash. You're reifying the idea that there's such a thing as trash.🔉 audience applause sounds—

And that you can just throw things out, throw people out.

I want I no, but I, I, now listen. I'm um.🔉 audience cheers and whistling—

Trash puppet is trash, Trash puppet is trash, Trash puppet is trash.

I knew in that moment that I had been badly, publicly owned, and I was embarrassed, but I had no idea how far that clip was going to be spread.🔉 keyboard typing sounds—

🔉 twitter tweet sound effect— Wow, I'm never watching the daytime talk show. Trash puppet again. Did you hear the way he invokes disposability culture by calling people trash when he literally lives in a trash can?

🔉 twitter tweet sound effect— Hashtag trash puppet is over party. Am I the only one who saw this coming a mile away and isn't surprised? Trash Puppet is and always will be trash. worthless and without redeeming qualities.

🔉 twitter tweet sound effect— Wow, trash puppet, mask off today on the show. Literally defending trash like police men and investment bankers, offering quote-un-quote "nuanced takes" on whether or not they're trash?! What a trash fire. Throw the whole puppet out.

🔉 twitter tweet sound effect— As if it couldn't get any better, notorious woke-scold and leftoid Trash Puppet falls by his own sword as other lefties brutally turn on him for calling things trash. Sweetie, we have known he was trash for a long time. LOL. 😂.🔉 keyboard typing sounds end—

Is trash puppet going to remain canceled forever? Will he make a public apology that satisfies all the different criticisms people have of him? And is it OK to call someone trash just because they live in the literal trash can? The answer to these questions and more at the end of the episode.

So, Aaron, I'm just dying to ask. You, can human beings be trash or garbage?

Literally trash? Like can we put them into a trash can and have the man come take them away.

Yeah, I guess we could split that up into two sub questions. I'll ask you both: can they be literally trash as in like put in the garbage and taken away, and can they be metaphorically trash and I don't really sure what that would imply but.

Yeah. Well, the first one is obviously it doesn't make any sense. (laugh). No self respecting garbage man would take away a human being.

I think that might be a crime to try.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, maybe if it was a dead human being and they were getting paid, but still it would be a crime. So just generally, I'd say no, they're not literally trash. And then metaphorically, it's really going to depend. What are you implying with that? Because it really seems like the implication would be, if not that the garbage man can come and take this person away. That someone should take them away, or somehow they should stop existing because they're useless and disgusting. The two main things I think trash are useless and disgusting.

That's true. That is my association with like inside the garbage stuff, more on the way to the oblivion of the mind. I'm aware of the fact that the plastic bags that I've been issued at various stores over the many years I've been on this planet and those steps, many of them probably still exist in some sort of large pile unsorted, like I get that in a sense, but then in another completely different sense that's also very real. I'm content knowing that it's all disappeared and it was never real.

Yeah. In terms of your day-to-day experience, it did. Like I put it in the trash and it disappeared and it's gone. It's not part of my ecosystem anymore because I don't see it. But yeah, I guess like that's the hitch with trash, right? Is that even if you throw it away, it's still there.

Yeah, I mentioned this idea on our Discord server recently, and Ursula said something I thought was so spot on about this, which is that it's a stage of baby's development to develop object permanence. The realization that even when the hands are closed on peekaboo, the face is still there, like that realization is a major step in baby's development into childhood. But then what capitalism does with non reusable packaging, waste packaging, manufactured obsolescence, is reintroduces a baby-like lack of object permanence into the consumer's brain, where, where we're sort of pacified, babyfied, a part of our consciousness of the material world as it relates to our purchasing habits and the garbage bins in our homes is babyfied into a non object permanence worldview where "well these headphones are broken, so now I can put them down the emergency shoot to oblivion and they no longer exist."

Yeah. So if you're asking me, can people be trash and what we're now discovering what trash is, is things that we don't want to deal with right now, so we pretend that they can just go away and that will solve the problem, then I think yes, people can be trash. People can be things that we don't want to deal with and we want to pretend that they would just go away and pretend that that would solve the problem. If that's what we're saying when we say people are trash...(both laugh)

...

It's totally true. ...like hyper Self aware version.

Yeah. And it's... OK, so well. If. Let's think about this trash for a second, this so-called trash, these piles out there in the world, these huge piles. Sometimes these piles of garbage, garbage that you created, that you the person listening—and I'm not trying to shame you because it's me too. It's all of us. Garbage that was commissioned by the machinery of our society to package goods temporarily in service of you, where you were delivered a bag, or you were delivered some packaging, and you had no choice in the matter. I'm not blaming you, but just wrapping my head around this. The garbage that you made, some of it was shipped to the developing world and put in piles near the global poor because their government sold dump space to your government.

Isn't that a weird thought? Maybe even some stuff that you put in the recycling is there?

Sorry I don't mean to be black pilled.

Yeah, you didn't necessarily create this problem of extra packaging or of people behaving badly like you would never would have. But the idea that when something like this is bad or shitty or inconvenient or harmful in a real way, that we can just throw it out, and that's a solution, is the part that we are actually responsible for, like we're not creating the packaging, you didn't make all men trash but like.

The act of trashing flying is something that we do. So when we're thinking about.

Yeah, calling it trash implies a solution which is just get rid of it.

you didn't make the plastic bag yourself, but it was commissioned to be distributed to consumers in a context where it was distributed to you. And therefore it was commissioned for you in a sense, but it was commissioned with the institutional logic behind it that it was going to be eventually trash. That's the part that is not our fault. And I'm not saying that we should be, like, collecting all the trash that we produce in big piles or something like that. I don't actually know what, like, the full ethical, best case scenario is with the real life trash situation. But my point was to build towards the idea that there's piles of trash out there in the world that exit, and the question of what we do with those piles of trash, in the material world, could carry some insight into how we should treat the things that we consider trash elsewhere. For example, not just people, not just someone who's been canceled or whatever, but a movie that's considered trash, or a book that's trash, or an outfit that's trash, or like... What's our relationship to the trash of the world in that metaphorical sense, the things that we wish weren't there that we could just get rid of, and it would be easier and simpler.

Trash Facts🔉 twinkle sound effect—

every year the world generates over 2.6 trillion pounds of garbage—the weight of 7000 Empire State buildings—and between 3/4 and 90% of it either ends up in landfills or dumps every year. A lot of people think that when you throw out trash, it just, goes away, but they don't think that they think it. It's far as we could tell. there's no one in the world who knows how much trash is already out there. But according to estimates, I was able to make based on public information on the increasing rate of trash production, we're talking in the territory of 100 trillion pounds of trash covering our Earth, integrating itself into our ecosystems. That's trash.🔉 twinkle sound effect—

Trash fact Globally, there is 1.3 billion tons of food waste created every year, and that's 1/3 of all the food that's produced for human consumption. And according to UNICEF, approximately 3.1 million children die of under nutrition every single year, compared to zero children dying, which will be the right thing that everybody wants to happen. So that's trash.🔉 twinkle sound effect—

Trash fact Around the world each year there are over 50 million tons of toxic e-waste created by scrap computers, phones and other electronics. This is waste that when it's dumped, leaks toxic chemicals into the soil, the food and water supplies, and only about 20% of it is recycled. The life cycle of consumer electronics in our society is heading downward over time, because there's a profit motive for manufactured obsolescence, basically making computers breakdown faster is profitable. It's putting us on a trajectory to create over 150 million tons of e-waste per year. According to the UN environmental program, there's more gold in a ton of e-waste than there is in a ton of gold ore, and up to 7% of all gold on Earth might already be contained in existing e-waste. Because e-waste is toxic, It's illegal to dump in a lot of places. Up until 2017, 70% of it was dumped in China, but because it's illegal to dump, there's a vibrant black Market, where organized crime illegally ships toxic e-waste around the world to cheaply illegally dump for profit.

In 2015, the UN Environmental Program reported that between 60 and 90% of Toxic e-waste worldwide is being illegally traded or dumped, and the places which get the most toxic e-waste in the end with the least protection for the people that live there are often coincidentally, the exact same places like West Africa and South Asia, where the rates of child malnutrition are coincidentally the highest. What's up with that? That's trash.🔉 twinkle sound effect—

Trash fact. It is estimated that between 1 and 2 and a half million tons of plastic enter the ocean every year from rivers and more than half of this plastic is less dense than the water, meaning that it will not sink when it enters the ocean. The Great Pacific garbage patch is the largest of five major offshore plastic accumulation zones in the world's oceans and covers an estimated surface area of 1.6 million square meters—twice the size of Texas, and three times the size of France. Weighing a total of approximately 80,000 tons, this deadly soup is 180 times more plastic than marine life, by weight. Sea turtles caught by fisheries operating within the patch can have up to 74% of their diets composed of ocean plastics, and albatross chicks can have up to 45% of their wet mass composed of plastic, like their body mass. When you weigh, 45% of it is just plastic. And 84% of the plastic found in the patch was found to have at least one persistent bioaccumulative toxic chemical in it. Once consumed by marine life, they bioaccumulate inside the bodies of these, fish and marine animals, and then the animals that eat them and the animals that eat them, even if they're humans and it kind of... these bioaccumulative toxins spread throughout the biosphere throughout the planet and our bodies and everyone's bodies and biology accumulating away. So that's trash.🔉 twinkle sound effect—

And all these trash facts, friends, are downstream from the mythic idea of trash that is foundational to the way that our economy and society functions.

The ideology of trash says that you can throw things out, but there is no out. There's just the ocean. There's just illegal dumps by organized crime in less well off countries. There's no out to throw anything, and that's the lie of the ideology of trash: That production can happen in a line extraction to creation to you, to gone to the dump to out. But it's not a line, it's a circle, and the outputs of our economy, the waste outputs of the things that we do, our actions on the Earth, have to be useful inputs back into the ecosystem again.

There's no place outside of nature where you can store this stuff. There are trillions and trillions of tons around the world piled up, and so if we want to solve the problem of waste and trash, we have to confront the ideology that trash just goes away it doesn't.

A good utopian society needs tubes and it needs sorting. And trash is no exception. We need to create the means to go around the world, to the trillions and trillions of pounds of trash on every corner of this planet and find ways to sort the materials out from one another. Recycle the materials that we've already pulled from the Earth, that we've already created to reuse them in the future.

In the 1960s, Murray Bookchin said that we have enough material in the landfills of the world to create a fully automated luxury society. And I think he's right.

Yeah, all that stuff that we thought we threw out. It's just raw materials, baby. It's a new, useful input. We just have to start thinking about it that way and using it that way.

If we don't, our world will be trash.

Yeah, literally true. That's trash.

So I went on Twitter to see what people were calling trash and I found a lot of people call a lot of like, random stuff that's not really that trashy trash like, you know, someone's outfit, or someone said love triangles or trash. Someone said crab cakes from outside Virginia are trash. That's like, sort of one level of trashness in the social realm here. Like they're saying it's not good. But I sort of want to talk about the true trash, like the really capital T Trash, the trashiest, the worst trash. Like who are the worst people who are trash that you could say...

Yeah, like if someone was to say ohh nobody's trash. All human beings are good on the inside. We're really, you know, everyone's trying their best and just trying to do the best they can and...(laugh)

We're all pink, beautiful babies on the inside. Anyway. What? Who are the people who challenge that worldview the most?

Philosophically, who can we bring front and center to challenge the assertion that people aren't trash? Like who's the example of the trash person? The obvious thing that comes to mind is murderers, rapists, pedophiles. There's a good starting point.

Yeah. Are you saying pedophiles aren't trash? You're defending pedophiles on the show?

You're saying a man shouldn't come and take pedophiles away? That's interesting.

Someone should come take pedophiles away, but where are they taking them to, and it doesn't have to be a man. And come on, that's what I'd say and return to that. But you could look at Hitler. Or you could look at like Jeffrey Epstein. Big, powerful monster trash people.

Yeah. And like, I think we should talk about these things in terms of the worst people to get some clarity. But I think in a lot of cases that the social use of calling people trash, like individuals trash isn't necessarily based on objective standards of, like, accountability and making sure that the right people are always proportionately attacked, like people get called trash over writing an article that has a different opinion than the person who's criticizing them, and I don't mean to like cover for the most brutally different opinions that exist.

I just mean that in most cases when this is actually being deployed in real life, it's at least sometimes being deployed for rather benign reasons. But let's talk about the real reasons, like the real trashiest trash. Let's go with Jeffrey Epstein.

Is Jeffrey Epstein trash. And so for people who don't know Jeffrey Epstein, he is a billionaire pedophile. He had a plane called Lolita Express that Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and others pointedly flew on to his private island, where there are many credible accusations that he took underage women there, as masseuses and sexually assaulted them and raped them. Some of the most horrifying stuff imaginable and connected to the highest tiers of power. So this isn't just a fucking creep, this is a creep who has the power to really go balls to the wall creepy. If there is ever any sort of example of a person being trash, This is it. So is Jeffrey Epstein's trash.

Like it's an incomprehensible question. The point to me, is that, like, can we treat Jeffrey Epstein like trash? Maybe that's a question that makes more sense. Can we throw him out? And will that make the problem go away? I guess then it depends what you mean by throw him out.

Because I mean he did kind of go away and get thrown out.

And how did that work?

Well, I mean, he's gone now, right?

So yeah, this is it's an interesting thing, OK, because I think it's calling people and things trash is cathartic. And hating people who are evil is healthy! (a laugh from Aaron) to, to a certain degree. I don't use the word evil lightly, but what Jeffrey Epstein did was up there, man. Some of the worst shit I've ever heard. And the way that the Trump administration has appointed people to positions of power that are connected to this Cost of Labor secretary, responsible for the plea deal in 2006 that gave Epstein's unnamed co-conspirators immunity from further prosecution, meaning that unnamed people who helped facilitate Jeffrey Epstein's pedophilic child trafficking were let off the hook by a guy who was hired by Trump later to run the Justice Department. And Bill Barr, the Attorney General of the United States, is in charge of the Epstein investigation following his death, including the investigations into his the stuff that happened in his life. But Bill Barr Is actually a family friend of the Epstein's. His dad, Donald Barr wrote a book in the 1970s which was a science fiction book that features child rape, and he also hired Jeffrey Epstein at Jeffrey Epstein's first job. His son Bill Barr, now in charge of investigating Epstein and Epstein's unnamed co-conspirators, there's mentions in the media of tapes that feature public-figure-name plus young so-and-so clearly blackmail tapes. The guy was notorious for wiring people's his own house and other places with cameras. Likely blackmail operation. We don't really know some of the details on it, but these are the trashiest trash, the worst trash, the worst human beings in the world. But I think the fact that Epstein dying allegedly...(laugh)

The fact that Epstein is dead... It's actually been a bad thing because a sincere attempt to investigate what happened, which interrogated Epstein in the correct ways, could be massively beneficial to achieving justice here. And the metaphorical sending of Jeffrey to the trash is something that seems to have benefited the powerful, not the people who are victimized by this. So it's an interesting, fringe, horrifying test-case that Epstein is compostable metaphorically speaking. his continued existence could serve the world for the better.

Yeah, that makes sense. And like, for most people who are called trash or like, most times, we're talking about whether or not someone is trash, they're not Jeffrey Epstein. Should the way that we're treating people who do bad things, like anyone from let's say Jeffrey Epstein to someone who's big in your local comedy scene who doesn't apologize for making too many sexist jokes or something like that. I don't know. A lower tier trash than Jeffrey Epstein, but still relatively trash. We live in an ecosystem. We live on a planet with each other. We live in cities with each other, communities with each other, countries with each other. There's nowhere else for these people to go. Like you can't throw them out. You can put them in jail like I guess, and the ultimate throwing them out is killing them, but those have negative effects too, not least of which being like you're creating a society where you would have to kill everyone who did something wrong. I'm maybe getting a bit off here, but there's nowhere to put it. That's rid of it.

It's all one planet. It's all one ecosystem. It's all one community. like you can kick someone out of your little community and like, that's probably a good thing to do if they're exhibiting behavior that's really dangerous and it's sad that we live in a society that, say abusive or harmful people, there aren't better ways to deal with it other than just telling all your friends, "hey, don't talk to this person", or "this person did this to me" and like trying to socially hold them accountable or whatever. But just cutting off contact with someone doesn't help with the problem. It helps you not have to deal with the problem anymore, and like sometimes that can be really, really valid because it's not your problem and you shouldn't have to deal with it. But as a society, we need better ways to do that.

Across the spectrum, I think we should really try to favor restorative justice over punitive justice. Like we've got an episode on some very very deep and insurmountable issues with the prison system. I mean the prison system also sort of has that garbage logic where it's like these people need to be thrown in a spot and it's like this is the dump of people. And regardless of what they did and how it compares to each other and all this sort of stuff, just like this commingling of all these very, very different people in different situations because it's just like the place to put the bad guys to put the disgusting people, you know, the people who are like garbage, according to the ideology of the society.

Yeah. By saying these people aren't trash or, you know, men aren't trash, or we shouldn't talk about people as trash. Like, I'm not saying these people aren't disgusting. I'm not saying I love Jeffrey Epstein. I'm not saying men are perfect and like, stop complaining about them or anything like that. It's that as people on the left who are like, you know, pretty aware of language sometimes and like what the different implications of the things we say are. I think it's actually important to think about what's being implied with this metaphor of calling people trash. And if, like, we want our metaphors to be more ecologically sound—which is something like we talked about on the show sometimes—the metaphor of trashing people is a non ecologically sound metaphor.

Yeah, because trash isn't real. Like, not in the way that capitalism treats trash. Not in the way that our society treats trash. Trash isn't what it seems to be. Trash is reusable materials waiting to be sorted someday. It's not just a pile that ceases to exist, and it's gonna break down by itself. It's a pile that we're going to return to. We're going to have to return to and I think that's just the material reality that we've inherited when it comes to the trash of the real world, the actual material trash and in that sense, to put that understanding of trash, which comes from consumer society and then bring that metaphor into our liberatory metaphor set, I think is a mistake when we already have a perfectly great metaphor to use, which is compost.

Yeah, but can you call people compost? Epstein is such a compost.

Yeah, it sort of implies that you're killing them.

Ehh, It's not bad. I guess it doesn't have to imply killing. It can imply like rebirth, like Phoenix, like from the ashes of your past self, you're becoming a better person and... I don't know something like that maybe. we can work on it. Doesn't have to be compost. We'll think of something.

We now go to an old man having his life explained to him on his deathbed.🔉 sound of beeping heartrate monitor & other medical technology—

Now Bert. You lived a long life. You were a good brother, good husband, a good father and a good teacher always helps the people around you in need and never asked for anything that you didn't deserve. Truly, if there's any man I know in my life who will end up in heaven, it's you. Just bon voyage, you old bastard you.🔉 thumping heartbeat sound effect—🔉 flurry of medical equiptment in alert mode—

A life. well. lived.🔉 flatline sound—(a soft groan)

Oh my God, he's dead.

(whispering) He's dead.

RIP to a real king.

There's nothing more we can do here. Let the family of some privacy.

Move towards the light for towards move towards the light please.

Where am I? What?

Just tell me what's going on here, which, before I move to any damn lights.

You're holding it up for everybody. They there's only one direction you can move. You can't go back. Please, just.

Making me move towards a damn light.

Why, why does everyone fight me on this move towards the light?

You should tell people what's going on. Why do you make us do this. I'm here. I'm coming. I'm just...

Isn't it obvious what's going on?

No, no. This is a disorienting experience. I'm I'm. I'm. I'm coming.

And there you go. See? You made it, buddy. You got through the light. Good job.

Is this the old heaven sketch?

Ohh no no no. Take a sniff. Take a sniff.🔉 sniffing sound—

See whatcha smell. This is the old purgatory search.

Ohh what is that rank smell? I hate the feeling of disgust. Why have you brought this feeling out of me in heaven?

You were always the good man in your life, and there's only one thing you need to answer for. Piles and piles of trash. Do you see trash? As far as the eye can see?

Ohh God, that's what is that 10, 15 tons? I, I don't think I've ever seen so much fresh trash in one place. Why do you show this to me, spectre?

See that? That's the ruler you had in second grade that you threw out rather than keep using.

But it had an imperfection on it. No, this isn't. This isn't my. No, I.

Thanksgiving dinners, 1992. It's right there.

Didn't I made a lot less trash than that? No, no, no. I had... I made a lot less trash than this. This isn't my trash. This isn't my trash!

This is your purgatory. You must go through each and every piece of trash here. Fresh as the day you threw it out and you must find a use for it.

No, no. No, I can't. I, I hate stinky things. I hate garbage. I, I don't deserve this. I, I've been a good human being. I've always paid my dues. No.

(demandingly) You *will* sort through the trash.

(in despair) no, noooooooooooooooooooooooo.

Burt. A family man and a hard worker, so pure of heart Indeed. He'd give the last shirt off his back to the most evil man in the world. Many people had a hard time believing his incredible acts of generosity and kindness left to grapple with the consequences of everything he swept aside and pretended didn't exist. Before Bert can get his eternal redemption in the hands of God, he must make an unexpected stop in The Material-Consequences-Of-Your-Actions Zone.

I don't want to make these arguments about Epstein. I want to make these arguments a lot more about first time violent offenders, people who get caught up in gang stuff in communities and stuff. like there's a lot of people that that society treats as trash or that people would argue or trash like, say, someone who, like, cheats on their partner or makes music that you don't like. You know, there's so many different parts of society that people have a tendency to sort of to call trash that carry within it this potential. And I think the potential is multifaceted, dependent on the context. But like even if you say it's something that you don't like or a person that you don't like or a person making even harmful arguments as the basis of calling them trash... There's ways that we can understand them as part of a holistic whole, that carry benefits, and so that doesn't mean we don't want to convince people who are wrong to believe better things. For example, when I see people very upset about such and such public figure is holding this position which is so wrong, I feel like in many cases there's a benefit to having people around who carry a diversity of opinions—including ones that rub me the wrong way—who are able to articulate them and carry the discussion forward in public. So we can all learn. In a lot of cases, someone who is a public figure putting out a hot take that is a bad take, gets a bunch of other people to create a flourishing, a response of all these different possible alternatives, all these corrections, all these ideas that are better than the thing that they're being criticized, or at least hope to be that create a diversity of counter narratives and then among them, among those counter narratives among that wellspring of reaction to the original point, that flourishing is ultimately good for everyone, and having that space where ideas are played against each other, where mutual criticism happens not of *people* as being trash or not, but is their *ideas* as being useful or useless, or bad in this way good in this way, etcetera.

So yeah I think part of what bugs me about the "are trash" discourse is when it's applied to individuals, you have this sort of like unperson thing of the individual that's being criticized. That they are being reduced to something that can be thrown away rather than someone who can change over time, or that is contributing in like the way that I just spoke about, or like there's all these different ways that we can have a certain degree of respect for each other's humanity in these, like political environments, and I think part of it is like letting people stay people, even when they're wrong.

Yeah, I agree with you. I think what you're getting at here is what is actually the interpersonal danger of not just like the idea that trash itself doesn't make sense and it's all in an ecosystem, but the transference of trash from useless objects to useless person has the additional negative effect of objectifying them, and treating them like a non human, or someone not worthy of consideration or moral consideration. They've revealed themselves to be secretly evil, have this deep dark core, or whatever. and they are, like trash, irredeemable.

I guess, just like with everything on the Internet, the people say these kinds of things with different levels of self awareness. And I think like calling a TV show, trash feels less bad to me than calling a person trash. But calling a person trash in itself doesn't necessarily get me very excited if I feel like it's within the context of someone who understands that human beings have worth, and this is just, It's just expressive, and it's not reflective of a deeper, misanthropic cynicism about those who disagree with you or have, like, bad or harmful, legitimately harmful ideas.

Yeah, I think for the vast majority of people who use the term freely, it's a relatively harmless way to express disdain and disgust for people in a culturally comfortable context. It's a way that you can insult people without having to resort to insulting their intelligence or their appearance, not to mention things like race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, etcetera. But garbage is something that is it transcends all of these very narrow... And I think specifically comes from the tension around, I should say, intelligence and appearance being things that are sort of iffy to criticize. Like the, I think us on the left. We're very aware of how, if you criticize someone you dislike's appearance, you're criticizing anyone who looks like them, even if they're a good person. Or like if you call Trump fat, you're saying fat people are bad at the same time that you're saying Trump is bad. Maybe you're trying to make Trump upset, but you're also saying, like, not just Trump should be upset, but all fat people should be upset because they're they're fat and it's bad to be fat. And that's why I'm criticizing Trump, which is weird to focus on when Trump flew on Epstein's plane.

(laughs) OK (laughs)

Yeah, he did. He did. He did. And he said nice things about Epstein. He likes the girls young.

Yeah. In a 2000 interview, he said Epstein, he said to enjoy women even more than I do, many of them on the younger side, something like that. So it's a normal thing for a president to say about a billionaire pedophile.

yeah, exactly. So, like, that's why I've wanted to like, offer olive branches and compassion to people, I think I've probably used this word, I don't remember. I'm sure I've said it online and stuff and like I'm a bit of aware about how you and I are becoming the finger-waggin' SJW's coming in here to rule out a whole another avenue of attack on people and creating more things that people aren't allowed to say, which I don't necessarily want to do, but.

I you know, and I'll say, out of all the things in the world, I don't think this is going to be something we treat as like an excommunicable offense in our circles, you know it's using the word trash. We don't raise this as a severe and harsh critique that you might critique someone who's...

It's literally the same as the N word Sean. the F slur for gay people, that's what it is.

Yeah, we don't use the T word, and if I have to warn you again, we will be kicking you out. No, T slurs.

Yeah, neither of the two.

(sad) Break up texts.

Oh my God. Jesse. you ruined brunch this morning. Why did you have to say that about my sister-in-law? insulting her at the brunch table!? Are you serious? OK. What she did was awful, but, like, criticize her behavior. You can't just, like, make these pronouncements about people like insulting them in their core like, it's not right. It's not right to talk that way about people about anyone.🔉 message send whoosh sound—

Woah, have you not chilled out about this yet? The reason I called your brother's wife a trash gremlin is because number one, she looks sort of like a gremlin facially, but two, she was saying horrible, horrible things about immigrants. I can't just have a breakfast with that. I need, you have to criticize the people who do this, sort of thing.🔉 message send whoosh sound—

I can't believe you're making this argument right now. We've had this conversation so many times. You know, that I think that if you want to call someone out for saying shit, that's racist, then call them out for saying it's racist. But you *do not* say that they *are* something, like a trash gremlin... I'm can't believe I'm even typing that. You know what? I'm never gonna have to type anything like that again, because you and I are dunzo. Consider this four year relationship over about this.🔉 message send whoosh sound—

Wow. Incredible. I knew that you were checked out, but I had no idea you'd close the door over something this petty. If I only padded my wording Right. "Ohh, excuse me, Brunch Madam, I've noticed that the behavior you're doing—that you're not defined by—is odiously racist. Good ma'am, how do you respond to these fair minded and even keeled charges brought forward, respectfully, sincerely, me." Good Sir. That's your ideal person that you're looking for. That's what you're saying.🔉 message send whoosh sound—

Wow. And you can do it too. You just worded a perfectly valid criticism and like instead you went with trash gremlin? when that was inside you the whole time!? It's like, you know, we all have good and evil inside of us and you're just like telling me flat out I have the choice, I could say one or the other and I'm choosing evil on purpose. So yeah, I don't think that's minor. I think that's relationship extinction level event.🔉 message send whoosh sound—

well, allow me to say then good Sir, I find your cowardly behavior of breaking up with someone by text *the action* in brackets [You're not defined by it] end brackets to be disgraceful and cowardly. Good riddance.🔉 message send whoosh sound—

Sorry, I don't have time to read any more of your texts. I'm meeting up with some of my friends to celebrate the end of this trash fire of a relationship that we shared together.🔉 message send whoosh sound—

Excuse me, could you please criticize our relationships actions rather than its essence? Thank you.🔉 message send whoosh sound—

And so these two former lovers continue to argue deep into the night, both insisting that they were out with their friends having wonderful times, but both of them at home at their respective apartments, crying, and eating ice cream. They never did come to understand each other's positions, and so they were never able to grow because of what transpired here. A tragic fate for all. And these, were the break up texts.🔉 people weeping—

So, Sean, what do you think we should do with all these trash people? How do we decipher between the Epstein's and the Jimmy Fallon's and everybody else in the world? Just like, what do we do when people are being like shitheads or whatever?

I feel like I have the answer to this question way way more down when it comes to material inanimate objects than I do to people. I mean, when it comes to inanimate objects, we have a few options. The most extreme thing that we can do is something like nuclear waste that might be necessary is like safe containment. There are certain materials we can find no use for. There's an obvious parallel there within people that if someones imminently harmful to others, there's a good reason to try to safely contain them. Another distinction that I think is really important is analyzing differences of power like we use the example of Jeffrey Epstein because he's the most cartoonishly disgusting, evil, and worthless person that one can imagine. But he was able to do that to such an extreme degree because of his power and position in society. And his power and position in society elevates him to a point where I want to say that the word trash is too kind a word for him. He's a monster. but it's interesting. It's interesting how when something gets even worse you could go from inanimate back to animate again, but I feel like trash is just thrown around so much in so many different ways that sort of like, yeah, yeah, you know, that person's kind of trash, but I also like their song like this or whatever, you know, like where, whereas like when you're talking about someone like Epstein, he's a monster. He's premeditated destruction of other human beings potential and and their right to live normal lives. He's taking that from them. He took that from them. And the people he worked with, they took that from people. And it's on a different level than just like, I don't know, writing a bad tweet or whatever, the types of things that people are sometimes called trash for. And I think a big part of that is the power of it like the power relationships of it. And you notice that too, sort of on Twitter I guess the way people respond to these public figures, I think there's an intuitive power analysis that when people have a lot of Twitter followers, they're way more likely to suddenly become trash than someone with very few Twitter followers. If you have very few Twitter followers, I mean the chances of you being called trash are pretty low, but if you become very famous and big and important, then people have that magnifying glass out there. Like are you trash? And then they find out immediately because you're a human being, with a wide enough definition of trash, Yes, they are. I don't know. I feel like I've painted myself into a corner here with the language of just like using the word trash for both of these, like a racist cop is a very, very different type of trash than someone who posts something thoughtless on the Internet one time. And part of the ideology of trash in the social realm is based on sort of defining people by these moments where they appear at their worst. I think the metaphor sort of breaks down here when we start mapping the detailed differences between recycling, composting, and rehabilitative justice broadly. Because there's some people that you want to like, rehabilitate in the sense that they are made into a full and ethical citizen of society that you can have a horizontal egalitarian relationship with as a neighbor because they've completed the process of making up for what was done wrong. And they've, you know, learned from what they've done. If someone has beat another person up, they could go through a process to become a full citizen again or whatever, something like that. But then there's other sort of types of rehabilitative justice where it's more about making the best out of someone who can't be integrated into society. I think of the US operation paper clip. They integrated Nazi scientists into American programs. They took Nazi scientists from the Nazi regime, gave them new identities, and allowed them to participate in, like, missile building programs for the US instead. I don't know the details on how repentant these Nazis were but assuming that you had an unrepentant Nazi who is also an expert on rocket science, wouldn't it be good to have some sort of way to safely contain them? Try to convince them to not be a Nazi, but also allow them to do rocket science work that could help your rocket program?

I mean, as long as you can contain the Nazi stuff, I guess? I don't know. Ask like... I feel like you're asking me to sign off on Operation Paper Clip right now.

No, I think they did it wrong. I think they could have done it a lot better.

Yeah. No, I mean in theory, like, I don't think anybody is fundamentally irredeemable. I think there might be people who we don't yet know how to reach or might never know how to reach. But I don't think that means that they're fundamentally irredeemable. Like, I guess, the different, like, besides the literal toxic waste that's going to hurt people if we don't safely contain it, the rest of how we treat quote-un-quote "trash" who are actually people, is that like you want to hold them accountable for the consequences of their actions like real consequences to their actions, even consequences they might not be aware of or might not be able to see. You, You want to be able to help them understand what the problem is. Like the reason we're calling somebody trash is because there's a problem. They're doing something that we think is wrong or bad or harmful in some way. So ideally what you want with someone who's doing something wrong or bad or harmful is for them to understand why what they did is wrong. What was going on for them that led them to do that? Like, why did it happen for them? And like, how can we prevent this kind of thing again in the future? And I mean like that's super vague and depending on if you're talking about someone who's too liberal on Twitter, just loves Nancy Pelosi, it's kind of trash. And like definitely you can make an argument that, like, openly supporting Nancy Pelosi widely on Twitter, can cause some harm. Whether it's that or whether it's someone who, like, takes an active role in spreading like different kinds of reactionary propaganda against different marginalized groups or something like that. An extreme, like, bad Twitter propagandist. like what you want for them, is for them to understand why what they did is wrong and to not do that again. So the thing that has to happen is that someone forms a human connection with them and helps them empathize with the victims of their trashiness. And that's like not an easy thing to do. That's like care work. That's like therapy in some instances. That's difficult. Emotional conversations with people, and yeah, there's all different kinds of levels to that. And like people who've hurt you specifically, obviously, you're not the person. There's a lot of caveats I could add, but like basically, that's it. That's what you do.

It's funny, I feel sort of foolish in a way, because I've been trying to figure out, OK, I know there's a similarity between the disposability culture that says that basically, you can just throw people out over a single mistake. And there's a continuity between that and restorative justice. And there's a continuity between that also with this sort of mythology of trash, where things can just be thrown away. And in trying to map it up and like, how does recycling and compost map cleanly to human social relations? Why can't I make this work? But it's such a foolish thing to even attempt because people aren't objects.

Yeah, it's hard to make an analogy, yeah.

The metaphor doesn't work because human beings have dignity and material matter doesn't. Inanimate objects don't. Inanimate objects, it's way more OK to throw something in the garbage than it is to make a person no longer alive. You know, like it's a it's a scale of difference is so huge. And I just realize, like, I'm doing somersaults with my brain trying to figure out how to make this metaphor work? Even though I know it never could. and the whole premise of this episode is that it doesn't' work. So yeah, I feel a bit foolish for even trying.

Yeah. It's like you have to make a human connection with the trash. It's so, it's, Yeah, it doesn't cross boundaries there. Because, like, I can berate and bully my ashtray as much as I want, and it's not immoral.

But, but, if, if, assume for a second, this ashtray is animate. You know, this is Pixar's *Aaron and the Ashtray: Going on smoking adventures together*. And you know, one time the ashtray spilled and you got ash on your carpet. And then you're like, man, this ashtray is trash. This ashtray didn't just spill ash on the ground, this ashtray is a well known ash spiller. And you're defending this ashtray. It's an ash, Spiller.

The end, by proxy defending all known ash spillers?

(sarcastically) So what you think Ash spilling is not a big deal? That's...

And the undercurrent of it, because you have a social relationship, you have a connection with your ashtray, and Disney and Pixar presents *Aaron an the Ashtray*, and you keep on telling something that has feelings and has a personhood, that they're worthless. It's very different.

Yeah, that's probably also why it's a good insult. Like you're an inanimate object.

"Ohh am I one of the good useful inanimate objects like a spoon or a chair?", "No, no, no. You're the least useful inanimate object."

You're like a broken spoon or a chair with bedbugs, something we'd throw out.

See, I think there is a continuity in sort of the ideology of trash around these things that we've flushed out, but it is worthwhile to note that calling people worthless is bad and antisocial because people have feelings. The reason that I object to the 100 trillion pounds of trash all around the world isn't that the trashiest feelings are hurt. But that is the reason I object to calling people trash. Because I think that people have feelings and it's really just best not to call people worthless, which is what I think calling people trash does.

Yeah, and it's probably counterproductive too, because I think a lot of the times that people act in trashy ways, it's for one reason or another, through some winding road or another, a lot of the times it leads back to the fact that they actually feel worthless, you know, and they're trying to make up for it by pretending the white race is the best or... of a true cause, and keeping trans people out of bathrooms. You know, like that, a lot of the time there's something in their heart that it like, they're hurting about themselves. So if you're calling them trash, trying to make them feel more worthless, like it's going to hurt them. But it might also reinforce all the emotional circuits that lead to the behavior in the first place.

Oh yeah, that's true, actually. And there's probably a wide application of that, but I'm thinking in particular, some of the most virulent Internet trolls I've ever run into, their energy seems to be completely fed by this stream of negative attention, and I can only guess is rooted in some sort of severe self hatred, that they would allow themselves to be the people that they are on the internet. And yeah, it makes sense that if you're acting out because you feel... and like, this is obviously, we should, Maybe we acknowledge there's such as, thing as like people who have really malicious intent and aren't wounded babies. I mean, in a sense, everyone's kind of a wounded baby also. But like, there's people who I wouldn't emphasize that about them. But for like these sort of like wounded baby people who see themselves as... they already know that they're trash before you tell them, and you telling them that their trash just reinforces the whole network that upholds their behavior, because their behavior is based on that understanding of themselves. That's an interesting paradox.

Yeah, it's based on like that understanding of themselves and like the rejection of it, and the reaction to it, and the whole artifice of whatever that's built up to avoid that thing that they already believe about themselves. Yeah, it's heavy.

I don't wanna deal with them if there's only some sort of man who could come and take them away I wouldn't have-

Or woman...

-to think about it anymore.

...or non binary person... Geez.

Oh, good point. Yeah. Ohh well.

Maybe we can shoot them into the sun on a rocket?

Ohh, that's a good idea. I was about to say maybe we're just stuck with dealing with the moral and ethical questions that come with living in an interdependent social society, where a lot of people's fucked up behavior's based on like trauma and institutional stuff beyond sort of individual control in many cases... But actually, no, I like your shoot-into-the-sun-idea a lot better.

Yeah. If we just shoot all the trash people into the sun, we'll breed it out, breed out the trash jeans.

Well, I think our whole breeding program is gonna be pretty hard to pull off after we send all the eugenicists on Earth into the sun.(both laugh)

True. And that's why eugenics doesn't work. Because in order to... The first people you gotta get rid of is the eugenicists. And then how do you do it?

I've got no one to ask? Wow, what's Step 2?

We now go to the deathbed of another man who's having his life summed up for him right there in the hospital.🔉 sound of beeping heartrate monitor & other medical technology—

Quincy, ever since you were the captain of the high school football team, through your whole career up to your time, retiring as the head of an enormous media conglomerate, you have kept your principles and dignity through the whole time.

You've never compromised. You've always kept your eye on the prize. You've always been focused on one thing, bringing the best out of everyone, making the best out of the best, bringing people to their full potential. You've been a mentor, you've been a legend, and you're here to many. And I think it's going to be a hard world without your cheeky Twitter commentary. You're one of the largest Twitter followings in the world and you have a you're known for your sarcastic and snarky humor, and I just don't know that the world's gonna be the same without you. Here's to a good life. Thank You.🔉 thumping heartbeat sound effect—🔉 flurry of medical equiptment in alert mode—

I always. appreciated. it...🔉 flatline sound—(a soft groan)

He's dead. Oh my God.

Gonna pour one out for this true legend.

I'll update his Twitter with what he asked.

huh!? That's irreverent! You're going to send that?

It's his last wish.🔉 ascending sound—🔉 droning ethereal background sound—🔉 whooshing sound—

Move towards the light.

Yeah, I'd love to.🔉 electric arc sound—

What the... it, it, there's something blocking me. I'm in this dark tunnel.🔉 electric arc sound—

Oh. Sorry, Don't. One second. Don't, Don't move towards the light for a second.

But there's nowhere else I can go. I can't go back.

Just stay there, sorry.🔉 electric arc sound—

Ow, this isn't pleasant. What is going on?

Let me just say on behalf of everyone, this is not what we wish to happen and someone's holding up the queue, just stay... and look...

Really, you can't put through more than one person at a time.

...

It's an old system. Look, I didn't design the system. It was enough work just keeping this stuff going, like I can build the new system. OK. He moved. Yeah, just keep moving, move towards the light🔉 whooshing sounds—

OK, OK. There, the light

Move, move, move. Come on.

and squeeze through there. Yikes.🔉 ascending sound—🔉 ethereal piano chord—

What is this? Is this the this old heaven sketch or?

Oh, sssorry, no, this, isn't, It's not the old heaven sketch. No this is the old purgatory sketch. Yeah, so.

Ooh, But I don't know if I made any mistakes in my life.

Well, you know, you had a spectacular record. You lifted a lot of people up. You did a lot of great things, cared deeply about animals. Obviously our nature work is impressive. And generally speaking, yes, we want to bring you into eternal paradise.

There's just one tiny thing, a little small thing. Do you see that crowd of people completely surrounding you?

Uuhh, neah, I just. I can't make out their faces. Who are they?

These are the people that over your lifetime you implied or said or agreed with someone else in one way or another, you called worthless.

Ohh, Look, I see a few of my ex partners... There's Jimmy Fallon.

You never gave a show a chance, but you still talked about him like you did.

What am I supposed to do with all these people? Why am I here with them?

Well, if you want to get into eternal paradise, you're going to have to systematically go through these people one by one and legitimately find something redeeming about them.

No, no, I can't. You can't. You can't make me.

There's no Hitlers here. There's no Nazis here. There's no one here that you said negative things about that are actually, did horrible things. These are all basically innocent people. So you-

No, no, you can't. No, it's wrong.

-Got to do it.

(demandingly) You *will* find redeeming things in these people.🔉 deep droning hollow sound—

(in despair) Noooooooooooooooooo.

Imagine if you will. Aw well lived, life filled with love and hope and fiery tweets, that, admittedly did a service to many. Media executive Quincy thought that he would have a clear path to the heavenly gates, but it turns out that social consequences are a part of reality, and he would have to make a little detour through, The Material-Consequences-Of-Your-Actions Zone.

But I think it's really worth thinking about how these concepts of disposability within the social and the ecological realm overlap uncomfortably. And how a deep understanding of our responsibilities within the ecosystem and within the social realm are both partially based on understanding in the sense of the ecological sphere, the things that we produce don't simply cease to exist. They don't simply disappear, and they need to be reused, recycled, repurposed, sorted, etcetera and then also in the social realm that we have a responsibility to work our way through similar steps, through similar considerations. Is rehabilitation and option? What degree of integration is safe to have such a person in society or in social groups? In the instance of the justice system, we want to look like: is what they did really a serious crime? Should they even go to jail over this sort of thing? But if it is, what was the motivation for it? Is there a way that through therapy or whatever else that we can make this person able to contribute to society, In a sense? Maybe this person can never be integrated back into society because they're a danger to others, can they be put in a context where they can have a dignified life and still somehow contribute and still be of use to other human beings and still get to experience what it means to be human, despite whatever dysfunction has caused them to do horrible things? I think we have a responsibility to do that in that case, and then if we look at it in the social, interpersonal realm—and this exists I think both in communities, but also in leftbook or left Twitter and Tumblr and Reddit, or wherever else where communities exist—we have a responsibility to find ways to self organize in ways that do not replicate the logic of punitive justice and the logic of the worthlessness of certain human beings.

I think it's a really sort of dangerous door to open to start frequently saying or being indifferent to people, frequently saying that some human beings are worthless. And I think that's one of the nasty sort of things underneath trashing people, or calling people trash, or unpersoning people, is to just repeatedly say, on the social realm, tell another person that they're worthless, in groups, and all come together and pick people that you're all deciding are worthless. There's something really creepy and freaky about that, and I think that we need to like socially be accountable for the shape of that. Like we need to be socially accountable for the ways that that sort of thing can replicate structures of punitive justice and that sort of thing can replicate methods of intervention that do not facilitate healing for the parties involved, and that increased recidivism. The same issues that we see in the prison system, but socially replicated through these informal structures. I think we got a responsibility to try to be better than that.

And I think in terms of expressiveness and like the value in being able to express your hatred or your anger or disdain for someone, disgust with someone, because of what they've done or said like I think that's really important. But I became aware we haven't offered any alternatives to calling things or people trash. You can express those things directly. You can say like, that thing you did, it kind of makes me hate you because I think it's damaging for this reason. Or if it's about this person like... who's a celebrity is trash right now?

Jimmy Fallon did blackface in 2000.

Right. Jimmy Fallon is trash rather than I'm feeling like pretty disgusted with Jimmy Fallon right now; that he wore blackface. Wasn't he aware in 2000 that it was... like if the expressiveness is what you're going for, there's much more precise ways to express yourself and what you're actually feeling and why you actually care than just saying X is trash. It's going to feel better to say what you really mean [than make] this, like, mockingly surfacetic statement with a lot of weird implications. Usually anyway. like I think accurate expression like, real expression of what's really going on, it's going to make you feel better.

There's something in the English language around the word "is" that can sometimes make us think about things in sort of an idiotic way, and it's really hard to keep on track of it. I'm gonna try to like pin this down here, but the idea that someone "*is*" trash, is a bizarre statement to put under a microscope because I guess in a sense someone could be trash and that they've done something wrong and that we're using the metaphor of trash to refer to that sort of behavior being socially undesirable, but it's also obscuring what it's actually being said. It's using a metaphor. It's using a thought terminating cliche, creating a negative reaction from the people who disagree, and it's preventing talking about the substance of the trashiness. It's preventing us from being able to better differentiate between the Jeffrey Epstein's and the awkward, weird people.

Well, and it also, while we're ragging on "is", like it misunderstands people as having fixed... It pretends that people don't grow and change. Like if someone "*is*" "trash", can it become not? like I guess you can take stuff out of the trash and like make arts and crafts with it. But I don't think that's usually what people are thinking about when they say someone is trash. like just because someone did something bad made dumb, like cheated on someone, whatever trashy thing or thing that made them like trash, doesn't mean that they are defined by that thing in their being, but that thing was part of their process of living and existing.

Yeah, ohh, and this just...

I mean part of what makes my skin crawl about this n the worst aspects of it is the stuff like "mask off", the implication of "mask off". And I know it's just the meme. I don't want to be a party pooper. I don't wanna not have fun on the Internet with everyone. I don't wanna not dog pile those blue checks. I get it. But the mask off thing is rooted in this weird subcultural assumption that the worst thing that you can find that someone did was the only time they weren't pretending to be good. And that's just such a creepy, cultish way to look at the world.

We're coming for you next. Everybody who says mask off. Just wait. The episodes coming down the pipe.

You're going to be called out.

You're put on notice.

This is wrapping up our show for the week. Thanks for listening folks. SRSLY Wrong podcast, we're Shawn and Aaron. I just want to be completely clear in case I wasn't clear enough before. I don't think people who call other people trash are trash. And I don't think people who say mask off are trash. And I don't think people who call people trash or say mask off are taking their mask off and showing who they really, truly are, evilly underneath the surface, we don't think anything like that on the show.

(interjecting) Nope.

That's what not what we're trying to say. These terms remain unforbidden, just a little more, analyzed, I think. That's what I was hoping to do.

That makes sense. Yeah. Their status right now: unforbidden, analyzed. I like that. I think that's a good place to end.

But being is becoming. So who knows if they'll be forbidden in the future... you know how the euphemism treadmill works.

Yeah. I don't think you and I can make that decision to forbid them, that would be more of a community decision, but we'll see.

I might be a little bit of a cultural libertarian about it and be like, come on, it's enough to criticize it.

Well, thank you so much for listening everybody and have a wonderful week.

Yeah. Take care.— closing theme fades out— 🎵

Next time, on SRSLY Wrong: Trash Puppet returns from a hiatus to his daytime talk show to address the controversy.

Hey folks, everyone, welcome to my show. Might have noticed we didn't start off the show with dancing in my can today. That's because, well, what I want to talk about is serious. I want to address the controversy that's erupted over the last few weeks with the clips of myself and the precocious child where I think I was fairly accused of reifying the hegemonic structure of the conceptual "trash" object, metaphorically speaking, and I'm sorry. But saying that I'm sorry for reifying a concept isn't enough. I need to commit to reifying other concepts instead, and that's what I'm doing.

Now I'm a radical leftist. My name's Trash Puppet, the radical leftist. This is my Ellen style show. And us radical leftists, we like Eugene Debs, socialist candidate for U.S. President in the early 1900s and there is a famous quote that is always attributed to him. "While there's a lower class, I'm in it. While there's a criminal element, I am of it. And while there's a soul in prison, I'm not free." Beautiful sentiment, but it's often misunderstood. People interpret that to mean if there's a criminal element, a criminalized yet innocent element, I'm of it. But he wasn't saying that. He was saying if there's a guilty criminal element, I am of it. And the whole quote really illustrates this. If you, if you look at his whole statement when he was convicted of violating the Sedition Act, he's accused of betraying the United States. "Years ago, I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made-up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on Earth." When he talks about the criminal element, he's talking about the meanest on Earth, not just unfairly criminalized people, but people who're legitimately criminalized. So yes, I live in the trash. And I'm proud to be of the trash, and I think we're all trash. I think we're all dirty, nasty trash covered in dirt and filth. And I think the search for some sort of abstract purity isn't radical. I think it can lead to really awful things, and it doesn't mean that we should be blind to people doing wrong. But we should assert: while there is trash, I am in it. While there's a problematic element I am of it. And while there is a soul who is cancelled, I am not free. Because I think it's time we all recognize our kinship with all human beings and make up our mind that none of us are one bit better than the meanest on Earth. Now that is our commitment to horizontality.

I love you Trash Puppet.🔉 applause—

(chanting in unison) We are trash. We are trash. We are trash. We are trash.🔉 metal trash can clanging—

And so, on a wave of support swelled by his brilliant rhetoric, Trash Puppet became the leader of a brand new political movement that culminated in him being named Dictator for Life, and he spent the rest of his days building a perfect trash utopia that was still going strong 200 years later.

Trash brother! Trash of the morning to you!

Trash you! Trash you for saying that. I had a rough sleep, so just someone to greet you nice in the morning.

Sorry to hear that trash brother. Personally, I slept like trash last night. I was just out like a light.

Nice.

So well rested.

Thats amazing.

So I have to ask you, I got an engagement ring, do you think that they're gonna trash it when I give it to them?

Ohh, of course they'll trash it, of course.

Obviously, in our society to trash an object means to hold it as your most dear possession for the rest of all time.

Don't worry. You two are trash together. Everyone wishes you 2 the trash.

Trash you trash you. I can't stop saying it.

I'm not just trashing your trash either. This is straight from the trash.

You know, one of the trashiest things about this society we've built is that we use the word trash for so many things. But it always makes sense.

That's one of the things that I trash about the society too. You know what they say: that's trash!

That is trash. And these are some trash memories we're building together, ahh.

Ohh! Someone's trashing me in my trash-comm. I'll have to trash you later?

No trash off my pile.

K, trash you, K, see you! trash!

Ohh and say I trash you to Herbert for me.

It would be my trash.

Trash you! Trash!

Trash everybody!

Trash! trash! See you next week.

trash you. You're trash!

Good trash, good trash to you, good trash to you, good trash to everybody. We'll see you later.

And, trash.

Trash!🔉 chirping birds fade—