Alright, excuse me, I guess that’s why I cleared my throat.
Alright, alright, this is Republic Today, RepublicToday.net.
I’m recording from the Empire State, Excelsior.
Today is August 12th, 2026.
I’m showing 523 p.m.
This is Republic Today, RepublicToday.net.
I’m in a phase where I’m just kind of jumping on here when I have a thought and then I forget
the thought by the time I turn the computer on.
Six seconds of silence there.
Just kind of stop talking.
But while recording, I’ve been saying this is a performance art project.
It’s not art, it’s humanities, it’s not really humanities.
It’s kind of just like low quality entertainment.
Why do I have to throw in the low quality?
I’ve been wanting to call it performance art.
I’ve been trying to gear my activities around arts.
I feel like when it comes to making money to live, I mean, I’m not, I have no illusions,
so like some background for me.
And I’m sure that if you are listening to this, you might like know me or something.
So it’s weird, like who is this audience and what is this?
Is it a performance art project where someone’s talking about running for Congress and Senate
in the United States of America?
I’ve been saying the Empire State, I should say, you know, I’m in this zip code, in this
part of this municipality, I’m in a county, in a state, I guess I have been referring
to, I’m in the NY 25, right?
But back in older iterations of Republic Today, I would get granular about exactly where I
was recording from and under which jurisdictions of, you know, which the layers of hierarchy
of the state, et cetera, above me, I mean, there’s been like a little bit of a Roman
Catholic element a long time ago, over 10 years ago, maybe not, I don’t know exactly
In the history of this podcast, there’s been some Catholicism and it’s like I could go
up through, you know, the parish and the diocese, et cetera, up to, you know, the pope, but
there’s like a distinct hierarchy there.
And we have it in, we have these towns, cities, towns, hamlets.
Just in Monroe County, New York, which is where the 25th district is, there’s lots of
like, lots, there’s a handful of towns within towns.
There’s like a town that’s a village and a town or something like that.
There’s like, yeah, so, and then there’s ones that are adjacent to sort of a city.
They call it a seat here in the United States of America.
They call it a seat, like a county seat.
What is the seat of that county and, you know, the biggest city seat is almost like short
for what’s the city in that county.
But most counties, I think, in the United States, I don’t know how that works.
Most counties, I would say, don’t have a big city in it.
In NY-25, it’s ra-cha-cha-cha-cha, cha-cha-cha-cha-cha-cha, cha-cha-cha-cha-cha-cha-cha, oh, explicit,
part of the name, but the motherfuckin’ ra, the ra.
It’s a city and it’s kind of descriptive of the city-suburb complex.
If you say you’re from Rochester, you might be from any, like, a specific set of suburbs.
If you go far enough out, I would say I’m far enough, I would say I was from outside
of Rochester, but where is that line that’s distinct?
Probably different individuals say different things.
I think of the Finger Lakes, maybe the, whatever, the parts of the Finger Lakes that are near
Rochester as kind of a greater, greater Rochester area outside of Rochester, right?
And then if you’re closer to suburban Buffalo than suburban Rochester, then you’re probably
not saying you’re outside of Rochester, you’re from outside of Buffalo.
Or same with Syracuse.
So there’s defined lines for what Monroe County, New York is, Monroe County, however you want
to say it, Monroe, Monroe, and then the 25th Congressional District is also different
outline than a city, a city-suburb sort of complex or a county.
So yeah, so there’s a bunch of jurisdictional hierarchies from where I’m sitting right this
moment and just kind of spitballing a podcast into the ether about nothing.
It’s about nothing, because it’s not, you know, the last couple episodes I’ve been talking
about a performance art project, a political performance art project.
And it’s not art, it’s not, like this is, it is an entertainment product.
I do care about serious news.
Wars are happening all over the world.
It’s terrible.
There’s like tons of child soldiers.
The human trafficking and rape of children is endemic around the world.
And things like, not that the world hasn’t always been this way, and not that the world
isn’t always going to be this way.
But what do I want to look back, I mean, if I have a moment before death, I’d rather have
made some podcasts and tried to focus energy into solutions and care, perhaps prayer, meditation
on trying to manifest a better life for people who are suffering right now.
And so that’s why on the granular level, like here I am, like I am, you know, relative
to child soldiers, I’m privileged.
Relative to child trafficked sex slaves, I’m very privileged.
As a middle-aged person in the United States of America, who didn’t go through trauma
like that, despite being around the Catholic Church as a child, I guess I was never an
altar boy.
God bless.
But I haven’t gone through childhood horrible trauma.
Because there’s generations of, again, has it always happened?
I guess it has.
I guess all of those kinds of horrible, barbaric things happened throughout history.
But I’m privileged to be part of a culture where that’s at a minimal.
Are there trafficked child sex slaves in the Greater Rochester area?
Yeah.
Yeah, I’m sure there are.
And are there the equivalent of child soldiers?
Yes.
Yes, there are here.
But it’s a small, small number of people.
And I want to be part of the solution.
How is me fighting that?
Is me putting a blue line American flag sticker on my vehicle, is that fighting the crime
in my community?
Podcasting obviously isn’t either.
I’m not saying that I’m doing some great thing, but I’m doing a thing.
Could it be positive?
Well, it’s got building and whatever, drawing attention to terrible things.
Am I reporting?
And saying, like, hey, look, I have evidence of kids with guns in the Greater Rochester
area.
You know, like, I don’t know, I don’t know.
Law enforcement is part, how do I want to phrase this?
I have said in the past, ACAB, things like that.
Like, I’ve been organized with Defund the Police, ACAB, sort of activists, and I think
that that current, that leftist current of Defund and then the more general, I mean,
it’s not more general, but less defined by leftism, or is it liberals?
Is it the Libs?
Hold on.
I’m doing a U-turn on you.
If you’re actually hanging and they’re listening to Republic Today, republictoday.net, sorry,
I got a little loud there.
I apologize.
I’m not probably going to go ahead and remix any of these episodes, so I also probably
not going to be screaming.
There used to be some rantiness on Republic Today, republictoday.net, but, you know, I
don’t think, I think that every candidate for office will lose if they run on all cops
are bad.
That’s not, and that’s not the job in electoral politics.
So all cops are bad, or Defund the Police sort of is by definition, and I’m including
Defund the Police in there for these Libs that are like, oh, we’ll do some mechanisms
or whatever, like Defund the Police is saying that you’re not, that you’re working outside
of electoral politics, and both tactics are fine.
I’d rather have people getting involved if everyone’s, hey, look, kids with guns is a
big problem in the streets of this here town, here on the shores of scenic Lake Ontario.
There are kids with guns, and in this, in this area, on the banks of the Genesee River,
and all over this republic, all over the republic of the United States of America,
there are kids with guns.
I’m not talking about a well-regulated militia, I’m talking about kids with guns.
I’m not talking about the National Guard.
Are they kids too?
Yeah, I don’t, I think, I mean, I think the age of consent, sexual consent, along with
military service, working for money, should all be as old as possible.
I think 21 is the baseline.
Did somebody say baseline?
Baseline.
But yeah, it’s entertainment, right?
I’m trying to talk about important, the most important things, right?
Is there, and if you’re saying there’s no God, that’s fine.
If you’re saying you believe in a specific Jesus Christ, that’s fine.
We’re all part of the republic here on RepublicToday.net.
So do I think all cops are bad currently, and the police should be defunded?
Because, like I said, I’ve said, I’ve said those things, and I’ve held those postures
in the past, and if I’m running for, if it’s a performance art project, so if it’s not
a performance art project, it doesn’t matter, am I doing good by ranting about how the
system’s just broken?
It becomes nihilistic when I think about how I am opposed to hierarchy.
However, I think once one’s actually getting out of the book club and into the street,
I think that there ends up being hierarchy, you end up having to collaborate with or build
coalitions with imperfect allies.
And so there’s a lot of anarcho, anarcha, anarch-x.
I like to throw the A out there, anarcha, I don’t think that means it’s specifically
feminine, I’ve never heard anyone say that, but anarcha, communist, you know, there’s
a triangle flag, right, black on one side, red on the other, anarcho-communists, anarcha,
anarchists who don’t believe in the hierarchy that the communists do, communists who also
oppose capitalism like the anarchists do.
You may have seen the red and black, it looks like diving maybe or something, there’s a
bank that had that flag, it was weird, and then there’s like, you’ll see gold and black
ones, and that doesn’t exist, that philosophy doesn’t exist.
So I wouldn’t take advertising money for Republic Today, republictoday.net, because you can’t
run for office if you’re like, I don’t believe in the institution of the state.
But it does exist, and so we’ve got your imperfect allies, the communists, who are like, hey,
the state should run everything, or as opposed to capitalists specifically, because when
I think of socialism, I think of labor owning the means of production, right, so if communism
is the state, if communism or national socialism is when the state and corporations kind of
are in collusion, because it ends up being about making money, and the number one output
of state and corporate collusion is the military industrial complex, national socialism.
So we don’t want national socialism like that kind of, when as here we are in 2026, the
United States government owns pieces and parts, shares of private corporations, is invested
in, in a way.
The no-bid contracts that the government can give to capitalist cronies is kind of communistsy,
national socialistsy, when I think of just like democratic socialism, and I don’t know,
not democratic socialism, when I think of a socialist or not, but a socialist or not
in the context of real world United States of America 2026, labor owns the means of production,
means of, see, here we go, making a big point, I’m rusty, the title of this one is going
to be rusty too, though I may transcribe it, but labor owning the means of production is
the definition of socialism, so when Scott Galloway, like, calls a socialist, a socialist,
President Trump a socialist, it’s like, no, no, no, no, he’s, I mean, maybe he’s a national
socialist, but labor owns the means of production. I heard Jessica Tarlov say that it’s democrats
versus republicans, and it’s like, actually, no, it’s fascists versus socialists, and it’s
labor versus capital, that’s what the fault lines are in the United States in 2026, it’s
not democrats versus republicans, that’s why the democrat party always has to have internal
fights about, well, you know, are we going to let labor or capital be in charge of the
party? The working class or the investing class? So, you know, I, sorry, I’m, this was
not going to be ranty, I said that, but hey, I got, I got a little bit of role, not bad
for being darn rusty, so also I’ve been checking out the Battle Hymn of the Republic, let’s
think about that, so are you pretending to run, it’s a humanity, it’s an entertainment
product, it’s not performance art, and so something I did want to throw out there is,
it is ludicrous for me, some loser to think that I would do a better job in the Senate
than Schumer Gillibrand, and a better job in the Congress than Joe Morelli, right,
like they know all the things and people and how it all goes, and I can concoct a performance
art project or an entertainment fantasy where, hey, if I had the budget, I could hire a,
a chief of staff whose full-time job it was to help me be the elected official, right,
as part of the function of the federal government, someone who is elected has like some kind
of a budget, right, do we know this, do most Americans, do most United States Americans,
Merica, Merica, do most Americans know this, republictoday.net, do most Americans know
how that budget works, right, I think we just take for granted something like, if one wins
an election to the federal House or Senate, they, they get like a decent enough salary
that they don’t need a second job, unless they’re in some kind of crazy debt or something,
they’ve got a huge extended family to take care of with medical bills and stuff, and
they’re all broke. Oh, which, yeah, it seems like, you know, there’s, there’s always an
excuse to try to steal money, right, if you’re a, a congressman, I mean, lots of them are
corrupt and go to jail and all kinds of stuff, and probably lots of them get away with it,
and so as, as your candidate for the New York 25, I’m not saying Joe Morelli is corrupt,
I’m saying I won’t be. That, that’s enough of a salary, I got a, a budget for a staff,
right, so I bring a chief of staff, I take some resumes, you know, I have a sit down
with Joe. Hey, look, shake hands, how, how, do you care about this district? Give me some
resumes for, for a transition chief of staff person. You know, get some, put some resumes,
give me some resumes. Like, tell me, give me some tips and tricks, I’ll listen, I’ll
listen to somebody, give me, you know, what, what guidance, even though I won an election
that Joe Morelli didn’t want me to win, this is fantasy, right, this is the, the left wing,
that I did watch that show, the left wing, the west wing, but I’m saying this is the
left wing, no, I don’t know, I don’t, I don’t associate with the, I’m, I’m, I’m, left nor
right, if saying I’m left is gonna get me elected in NY 25, then I’ll be left, but I
want to talk to social conservatives in, in the district before, before they vote. I’ll
get out there and talk, talk to those social conservatives. What am I gonna do? I’m not
gonna promise to be a bigot. I’m, I wanna, I’m gonna tell them straight up, yeah, I’m
gonna stand against bigotry, I’m gonna make votes that are for bills and laws that are
fighting bigotry. So if, if it’s, if you think of the left, right spectrum social conservative,
social liberal, I want people to be able to live the lives that they want to live. That’s,
that’s, it’s the Statue of Liberty is a symbol for America. The Statue of Liberty. People
come here because they can be themselves. People want to come here because they have
liberty. Maybe they did make a few bucks. They don’t want the government taking their
money away. That’s, that’s not liberty, right? They, they don’t want the government telling
them, hey, you can’t go to a trans sex club. Maybe somebody wants to go to a trans sex
club. They should be allowed to do that. They got the dough. They can, you know, they’re
not stealing from anyone. But, you know, I want to hear, hear what they have to, because
if people really feel like they’re being repressed because of their religious views, that’s a
problem. I’m not anti-religion. I’m pro-religion. I’m strongly pro-organized religion as being
part of the human balance between the military industrial complex and peace, right? Like
human, whether or not, wherever I get my philosophy, human beings aren’t doing a great job not
killing each other. And I think religion can be part of the solution. I think when, when
you get, when you fight against religion, and I mean liberty is not just religion, arts,
I think art is a very important part of the, I mean, not just the human experience, but
providing liberty for people. Like it’s a, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a line you can see. It’s
a way to kind of quantify, hey, how free, how much liberty do these people have? Are
they at liberty to participate in arts that may not make the powers that be? The state,
capitalism in the state. And yes, at times in history, religion has been one of those
hierarchical authorities. And so I, you know, when has art thrived? You know, there have
been times in the past, the arc of justice, just in our culture, in the United States
of American culture, things have gotten worse for people of color, the rainbow flag community,
gay people, queer, LGBTQ plus, allies, the whole, all those people, people were forced
in other eras to be openly gay. And maybe, yeah, white, right, fine, men, white men in
America were freer to be openly gay, or in Europe. There have been different situations
and different times when, you know, there weren’t masked armed groups on the street
throwing people in vans and disappearing them or detaining them even temporarily or shooting
people like in cold blood in the streets of the United States. There were times when that
wasn’t the case. So things can get worse. The idea that people come to America for a
better life because where they’re coming from, whether it was European colonists or Haitians
in 2026 are trying to get out of a worse situation. And it’s awesome here. It is, it is like,
I mean, what this, what we’re doing in Iran and all kinds of other foreign adventures
over the last, whatever, couple centuries, the colonies themselves are not great. The
history of slavery is not great, right? The genocide against the indigenous people in
the name of the USA waving the flag is like pretty bad, pretty bad. So it’s not perfect,
but people, black people will come here because it’s worse where they are, where they’re from
sometimes. People from the Americas who are of indigenous descent want to, still want
to come here often because it’s better than where they are. There’s plenty of Europeans
here that are still coming in, that want to come in. There are so many people from Asia
that are like, yeah, yeah, it’s better. I’d rather be in America. Now maybe sometimes
it is because you can get a few bucks. I think people without dough have a better time
in Europe for sure. And it seems like probably Asia, China for sure. I don’t know. It is
the case that there’s probably millions of people in India that would like to move here
but can’t afford to, cannot afford to. And I wish, I want as many people to come here
as possible. I think they have to follow the laws when they’re here and there needs
to be a legal process for a person to have a path towards citizenship or some kind of
mutually beneficial visa or, it’s not visa, but residency status. Wow. So this has been
going on. This is a long podcast today and I’m just kind of babbling on. But thank you
for listening to Republic Today, republictoday.net. Republic Today, republictoday.net. Thanks.
