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Calaruga Shark Media.
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How did July fourthom Johnny Mack with your daily comedy
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news Today, I thought I would talk about America's great prophet,
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George Carlin. If you're a regular listening there to this program,
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you've heard me say before. The stuff Carlin put out
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at the beginning of this century, it feels like it
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was recorded yesterday. At the time, I thought Carlan sounded
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angry and had lost his fastball, And I am so,
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so so wrong to have had that opinion. He is
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America's great profit.
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I just want to talk a little bit about that
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war in the Persian golf, big doings in the Persian golf.
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You know my.
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Favorite part of that war. It's the first war.
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We ever had that was on every channel plus cable.
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And the war got good ratings too, didn't it got
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good ratings?
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Well, we like war. We like war. We're war like people.
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We like war because we're good at it.
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And you know why we're good at it because we
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get a lot of practice. Those country is only two
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hundred years old and already we've had ten major wars.
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We average a major war in this country every twenty years,
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So we're good at it, and it's a good thing
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we are. We're not very good at anything else anymore.
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Can't build a decent car, got no steel industry left,
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can't get healthcare to our old people, can't educate our
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young people. But we can bomb the shit out of
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your country, all right. We can bomb the shit out
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of your country, all right.
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Now, Before we get into this, some housekeeping. If you
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go looking for George Carlin quotes online, a huge percentage
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of what you'll find is fig They're not exaggerated or paraphrased.
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They're just attributed to him by people who never bother
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to check. One example is something called the Paradox of
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Our Time. That's the one about taller buildings and shorter tempers,
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wider freeways and arrow of viewpoints that gets reposted with
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his name on it constantly. He didn't write that. That's
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from Bob Moorehead, a pastor who wrote it in nineteen
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ninety five. Carlan was reportedly furious that he would be
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credited for it, and said nothing should be attributed to
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him unless it actually came from one of his album's books,
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HBO Specials, or his own site. Let's start with the
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bit that's the actual backbone of this whole conversation. It
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gets quoted, the most it's understood, the least it's from.
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Life is worth losing. His thirteenth HBO special, recorded November fifth,
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two thousand and five, at the Beacon Theater in New York.
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The bit is officially titled Dumb Americans. And that title
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alone tells you something because the version of the bit
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that circulates online almost never gets attached to that title
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or that context. It gets cut down to the punchest
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twenty seconds. It passed around like a standalone thought. So
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here's my challenge here. I want to play a little
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in context here, but I can't go playing the whole bit.
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I'm just as bad as the people of critiquing. But
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here's George Carland.
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Only a really low IQ population could have taken this
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beautiful content, this magnificent American landscape that we inherited. Well,
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actually we stole it from the Mexicans and the Indians,
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but hey, it was a nice one. We stole it.
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It looked pretty good. It was pristine paradise. Have you
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seen it lately? Have you taken a good look at
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it lately? It's embarrassing. Only a nation of unenlightened half
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wits could have taken this beautiful place and turned it
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into what it is today. A shopping mall. That's all
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you've got here, folks, Mile after mile of mall after mall,
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many many malls, major malls and mini malls. They put
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the mini malls in between the major malls, and in
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between the mini walls they put the mini marts. And
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in between the mini march you got the car lots,
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gas stations, muffler shops, launder match, cheap hotels, fast food joints,
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strip clubs, and dirty bookstores. America the beautiful, one big
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trans continental commercial cesspool. And how did the people feel
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about all this? How did the people feel about living
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in a coast to coast shopping mall. Well, it's just dandy.
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They think it is cool as can be because Americans
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love them all. They love them all. That's where they
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get to satisfy their two most prominent addictions at the
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same time, shopping and eating.
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What was actually happening in that room that night? Carlon
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spent several minutes building a case about American voters, calling
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out what he saw as wilful ignorance, mocking people for
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not paying attention, and then he pivots hard into something
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much more structural. He says, there's a reason education in
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this country doesn't get better, and it's not in competence.
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It's designed Forget the politicians, he says, they're relevant. They're
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there to give you the idea you have freedom of choice.
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The real owners, he says, are the big wealthy business interests.
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They control the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the
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city halls, the judges, the media. They got you, in
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his words, by the balls two thousand and five. And
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then he lands the whole thing on the line everyone
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knows when they don't know where it's from. It's called
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the American dream because you have to be asleep to
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believe it.
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That's the big answer to everything. Education. They said, we
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need more money for education. We need more books, more teachers,
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more classrooms, more schools. We need more testing for the kids.
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You say to well, you know we've tried all of
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that and the kids still can't pass the tests. So
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don't you worry about that. We're going to lower the
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passing grades. And I said, they're doing a lot of
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these schools. Now they lower the passing grades, the more
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kids can pass, more kids passed, the school looks good,
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everybody's happy. The IQ of the country slips another two
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or three points, and pretty soon all you'll need to
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get into college is a pencil. Then everyone wonders why
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seventeen other countries graduate more scientists than we do. Education
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politicians know that word. They use it on you. Politicians
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have traditionally hidden behind three things, the flag, the Bible,
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and children. No child left behind, No child left behind.
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Oh really, well, it wasn't long ago you were talking
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about giving kids a head start, head start, left behind.
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Someone's losing ground here. But there's a reason. There's a reason.
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There's a reason for this. There's a reason education sucks.
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It's the same reason that it will never ever ever
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be fixed. It's never gonna get any better. Don't look
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for it. Be happy with what you got because the
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owners of this country don't want that. I'm talking about
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the real owners now, the big, the wealthy that the
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real owners, the big wealthy business interests that control things
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and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians. They're
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they're they're irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give
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you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You
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don't you have no choice. You have owners. They own you.
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They own everything, They own all the important land. They
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own and control the corporations they've long since bought and
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paid for, the Senate, the Congress, the state houses and
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city halls. They got the judges in their back buckets.
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And they own all the big media media news, all
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the big media companies, so they control just about all
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of the news and information you get to hear. They
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got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars
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every year lobbying, lobbying to get what they want. Well,
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we know what they want. They want more for themselves
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and less for everybody else. But I'll tell you what
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they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens
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capable of critical thinking. They don't want well informed, well
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educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that.
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That doesn't help them. You know what they want. They
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want obedient workers. Obedient workers people who are just smart
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enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and
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just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier
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jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours to reduce benefits,
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the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension that disappears
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the minute you go to collect it. And now they're
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coming for your social Security money. They want your retirement money.
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They want it back so they can give it to
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their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something,
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they'll get it. They'll get it all from you sooner
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related because they own this place. It's a big club,
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and you ain't in it.
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What's important is the shape of the argument underneath that all.
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He's not telling a joke with a setup and a
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Twisty's making an accusation point by point, like a closing argument.
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And the laughs on the rum are happening because the
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audience recognizes something true in real time, not because he's
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surprised him with a punch line. That's why this bit
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has invaded the way topical material usually does. He wasn't
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joking about a specific two thousand and five scandal. He
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was describing a mechanism, and mechanisms don't expire on a
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news cycle. The second piece of that conversation, the fascism line,
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has a different and more interesting origin than most people assume,
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because it didn't come up from a stand up special
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at all. It came from a TV appearance September ninth,
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two thousand and five, on Real Time with Bill Maher,
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days after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. Harlan was
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on the panel and the conversation turned to President Bush
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calling for zero tolerance on looters and price gougers in
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the storm's aftermath. Carlin used the moment to say something
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he clearly believed. When fascism comes to America, it won't
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be in brown and black shirts. It won't be with
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Jack boots. It'll be Nike sneakers and Smiley shirts. And
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then he throws out in a side Germany lost the
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Second World War, fascism didn't.
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The real looting in this country takes place in the
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transfer of the wealth from the poor to the rich.
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I'm sorry that you don't like class and the truth,
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my friend, but you're just stuck with it. And the
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poor have been systematically looted in this country. The rich
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have been made richer under this criminal, fascist president and
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his government.
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Book.
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That line has had a second life, completely disconnected from Katrina,
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completely disconnected from two thousand and five, completely disconnected from Bush.
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It gets pulled out now by people across a wide
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range of political positions attached to whatever they're worried about
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in their own moment. And that's not a misuse of
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the quote. That's actually what the quote was built to do.
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Carlan wasn't describing a specific political party. He was describing
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the mechanism, the idea that authoritarianism doesn't need to look
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authoritarian if it can dress itself in comfort and branding
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and a friendly logo instead. Hmm, that's a structural observation. Hm.
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The great profit of our time. Then there's the bid
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that almost never gets the credit it needs next to
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the political stuff, because it's not really about the government,
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it's about the planet. This one from Jammin in New York,
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April nineteen ninety two, Paramount Theater inside Madison Square Garden.
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Carland reportedly said that one was his personal favorite of
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everything he ever did for HBO. George starts by going
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after the language of environmentalism itself. Everybody's saying something now,
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save the tree, save the bees, save the whales, save
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the snails, and then, in his own words, the supreme arrogance,
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save the planet. He says, we don't even know how
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to take care of ourselves. We haven't learned how to
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take care of each other, and we think we're going
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to save the entire planet, and then the turn the
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planet's fine. The people are the one who are finished.
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The planet's four billion years old, he said, it isn't
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going anywhere. We are pack your stuff, we're going away.
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We won't even leave much of a trace. The bit
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isn't really making a claim about climate change one way
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or the other. It's making a claim about human arrogance,
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the assumption that we are significant enough to destroy something
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that's outlasted ice ages and asteroid impacts. It's aged in
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a strange way because every time there's a wave or
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wildfire season dominating headlines, someone resurfaces the clip and it
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lands like he's narrating this week's news from thirty years
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in the past. He wasn't predicting anything specific. He was
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describing a posture, and the posture is still recognizable.
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See, I'm not one of these people who's worried about everything.
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You got people like this around you, Countries full of
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them now, people walking around all day long, every minute
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of the day, worried about everything, Worried about the air,
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worried about the water, worried about the soil, worried about insecticides, pesticides,
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food additives, carcinogens, worried about graydon gas, worried about asbestos,
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worried about saving endangered species. Let me tell you about
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endangered species, all right. Saving endangered species is just one
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more arrogant attempt by humans to control nature. It's arrogant meddling.
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It's what got us in trouble in the first place.
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Doesn't anybody understand that interfering with nature? Over ninety percent,
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over way over ninety.
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Percent of all the species that have ever lived on
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this line, that ever lived are gone. They're extinct. We
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didn't kill them all.
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What ties all those pieces together, the owner bit, the
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fascism line, the planet bit, is that none of them
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are about a specific event. That's the difference between material
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that ages and material that doesn't. Jokes built around a
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particular scandal, particular politician, a particular headline, those need a
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footnote a few years later to even make sense. Carlin,
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especially in his last decade, was mostly building arguments about
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systems and habits of thought that don't get retired just