Trillbilly Worker's Party Episode 462: Mad Cow Disease (w/ Special Guest: Alexander Aviña)
Sep 18, 2026
Alexander Aviña, a historian of modern Mexico and Latin American political violence, returns for a darkly comic tour of cascading crises. The conversation spans climate change, the Colorado River, fuel and diesel shortages, Middle Eastern geopolitics, and the economic fallout of 9/11. They also tackle AI escapism, attacks on social welfare, Trump-era political fractures, leaf blowers, and whether capitalism has any way out.
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Episode notes
The Colorado River Cannot Simply Be Refilled
- The Colorado River crisis threatens water supplies for roughly 40 million people, while refilling reservoirs would require eight impossibly wet winters.
- Proposed fixes such as desalination plants or importing glacier ice ignore the scale and political complexity of the crisis.
Capitalist Degrowth Makes Crisis More Unequal
- Fossil-fuel dependence should decline, but capitalist-led degrowth shifts the pain onto people least able to absorb it.
- Fuel riots in the Global South reflect an unmanaged collapse rather than an equitable transition away from fossil fuels.
Venezuela Cannot Replace Lost Oil Overnight
- U.S. leaders cannot quickly replace Middle Eastern oil by taking over Venezuela, because extraction infrastructure and profitability require time.
- The fantasy reveals how disconnected the bourgeoisie has become from the labor and logistics sustaining production.