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Nignorance from across the diaspora. We discuss politics and pop culture from a left perspective. Enjoy and tell a friend.
Episodes
Sunday Sep 29, 2024
Sunday Sep 29, 2024
Watching an NFL pregame show today feels less like a breakdown of the upcoming contests and more like an exercise in oddsmakers reducing the game's strategy to betting talk. Fantasy sports have long been the gateway drug into the sports betting app economy. Now, sports punditry mimics the shock-jock antics of the '90s, turning analysis into a hyper-commercialized spectacle of “hot or not” takes.
Let’s consider the legendary 1983 draft class. Hall of Famers, including three elite quarterbacks, emerged from that round, yet how many Super Bowls did they collectively win? Just two, both by John Elway. Dan Marino, arguably one of the most talented quarterbacks of all time, appeared in a single Super Bowl after obliterating passing records in 1984, an era where the run game was king. Yet despite Marino's historic success, his classmate Eric Dickerson would never touch a Super Bowl trophy either, even after setting an NFL record for rushing yards in a season.
Now, imagine these legendary players in today’s era, where success is too often framed through the lens of fantasy sports and app-based betting. Could they withstand the media’s hunger for instant success or survive the ruthless churn of the 24-hour sports news cycle?
Take the 2024 season. Players once written off as "busts" are starting to rewrite their stories. Malik Willis, discarded as an afterthought in Tennessee, is showing flashes of brilliance. Sam Darnold, written off in New York and quickly traded, has found new life as a backup-turned-starter. Jared Goff, shipped off to Detroit as a disappointment, has led the Lions to NFC North contention. In the pre-fantasy sports world, these players would have had time to grow into their roles, but today's instant-gratification culture has no room for slow-burning talent.
Pundits already labeled the 2024 first overall pick, Caleb Williams, a bust after just three games. Bryce Young, last year’s first pick, faced the same brutal criticism even before his rookie season ended. Compare that to the ’83 draft class, who were given time to play through rookie mistakes and eventually lead teams to the playoffs, even Super Bowls. But in this hyper-commercialized, short-term focused environment, teams cut bait on young talent before it has time to develop, driven by media narratives and the endless thirst for immediate returns.
Sports betting and fantasy leagues have fueled this culture of rapid turnover. It’s no longer about team-building or long-term development. The market dictates which players are valuable, not for their contributions on the field, but for how well they perform against the betting lines or in fantasy stats. In our current epoch, we want what we want, when we want it, with little patience for process or growth. Has this commodification of athletes killed player development?
We’ll dive into this on today’s episode.
Thursday Sep 26, 2024
Thursday Sep 26, 2024
Clark and I have a fun sports and music talk, where Clark explains why Kendrick Lamar is overrated and Lil Wayne should be playing the super bowl. There's also some trash rapper video commentary. Good times.
Thursday Sep 26, 2024
Thursday Sep 26, 2024
Read Clark's work here: https://shorturl.at/XvteW
Introduction
Watching sports has always been a communal experience, a moment to witness skill, strategy, and competition. But these days, for many people, simply “watching the game” seems to be a thing of the past. The line between spectatorship and speculation has blurred, thanks to the rise of fantasy sports and the explosion of legal sports betting across the United States. As I sat at my favorite bar watching last night’s Monday Night Football doubleheader, it became clear that the focus of contemporary sports coverage is no longer on the game itself, but on the odds, prop bets, and over/unders. What used to be a pastime has transformed into a calculated, quantified experience, where every throw, every yard, and every touchdown is tied to a monetary wager.
The commodification of sports through the lens of gambling has created a new form of alienation. Fans are no longer simply enjoying a game but engaging in what amounts to a mass, profit-driven enterprise designed to exploit their passions. The apps, sponsorships, and partnerships with gambling companies make placing bets easier and more normalized than ever before. But who really wins in this system?
Our guest today, Clark Randle, a journalist for *Jacobin* magazine, argues that it’s not the fans who are winning. In his latest article, "Make Sports Betting Taboo Again," he shows that the real losers are downwardly mobile young men, whose participation in sports betting often deepens their financial precarity. As states rake in the tax revenue from legalized gambling, the social costs mount. Clark challenges us to reconsider our normalization of sports betting and asks: where should the Left draw the line in a world of hyper-liberalized consumption?
Wednesday Sep 25, 2024
Wednesday Sep 25, 2024
Introduction
Recently, political commentator and NGO CEO, Angela Rye appeared on The Breakfast Club morning show, engaging with Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running mate Butch Ware. Rye wasted no time in attacking Stein, invoking the well-worn "spoiler" argument, often cited by liberals and conservative critics alike, framing this election as "the most important of our time." This rhetoric pits a perceived fascism from the right against a supposed fascism from the left, which conveniently reinforces the capitalist status quo by limiting political debate to the narrow confines of the two-party system.
In her critique, Rye portrayed Stein as a political failure, dismissing her candidacy as a distraction from the "real issues" facing Black Americans. This critique, however, serves to obscure the reality that Stein, while flawed, represents a political platform far to the left of anything the Democratic Party offers. Stein’s Green Party candidacy pushes for policies that directly confront the neoliberal and imperialist frameworks of both major parties, a fact seemingly lost on Rye, who positions herself as a spokesperson for the 41 million Black Americans.
Rye’s role in this context mirrors what Adolph Reed Jr. critiqued over three decades ago in his collection of essays, Class Notes. In the chapter titled “What Are the Drums Saying, Booker?”, Reed describes how Black public intellectuals often serve as intermediaries for white audiences, performing an interpretation of the "Black experience" that suits liberal sensibilities. Rye’s race reductionist arguments, presented as radical critiques, actually reinforce the logic of liberal pluralism and identity politics, reducing complex issues like capitalism, imperialism, and class struggle to mere questions of racial representation.
While Rye has occasionally voiced concern over U.S.-backed atrocities, such as the genocidal war in Gaza, her alignment with Kamala Harris—a Black woman who has publicly supported Israel’s right to "defend itself"—underscores her complicity in the very structures of imperialism she claims to oppose. This reflects a broader tendency in the liberal racial discourse, where race-conscious rhetoric is weaponized to justify imperialist and capitalist policies under the guise of representation.
In essence, Rye is engaging in what might be termed "race-conscious imperialism," using racial identity as a shield for defending a capitalist-imperialist agenda. This is a continuation of the tradition Reed identified—one where race is used to deflect from class struggle and systemic critique, ensuring that neoliberal capitalism remains unchallenged, even when presented as a fight for racial justice.
Monday Sep 23, 2024
Monday Sep 23, 2024
MT shows Jason the internet gossip around Andrew Schultz and two Black Brits.
Monday Sep 23, 2024
Monday Sep 23, 2024
Introduction
Recently, during a trip to San Francisco, I witnessed a family, awestruck, stepping out of a driverless car—a vivid reminder of the city's dual realities. On one hand, San Francisco remains a global tech hub, a gleaming symbol of neoliberal capitalism's promise of innovation. On the other, the glaring failures of this same system are evident in the staggering number of unhoused people lining the streets. Walking into a McDonald's, I was struck by the ubiquity of automated kiosks and mobile apps, making the labor force practically invisible.
While many on the left celebrate labor victories at Starbucks, the struggles of fast food workers remain underemphasized. The "Fight for 15" campaign—a demand that would still leave workers in poverty in cities like San Francisco—highlights the grim reality. Although California's minimum wage is higher, 20 states still cling to the federal minimum wage of $7.25. The specter of automation is wielded as a fear mongering tactic, used to suppress labor demands, but this is a decades-old strategy to prevent worker solidarity.
As Alex Park argues in his article for *Jacobin*, **"Raise Wages? No Need—McDonald's Is Hiring Inmates Instead"**, the fear of robots replacing workers is a distraction from neoliberal capitalism's deeper exploitations. Park writes:
> "In Toronto, the salad and smoothie chain Freshii came under fire two years ago for outsourcing order-taking to workers in Nicaragua, beamed to customers through a video conferencing system."
This practice, while momentarily halted, continues in other forms, with companies like Happy Cashier exploiting virtual labor from the Global South.
Park also raises the specter of child labor, a grim reminder of how low-wage industries exploit the most vulnerable. According to the Economic Policy Institute, cases of child labor violations in fast food have more than tripled from 2015 to 2022. Meanwhile, states like Alabama are passing laws to weaken child labor protections, legalizing what is already happening under the radar.
The reality is that automation, child labor, and even prison labor aren’t inevitable byproducts of technological progress. They are deliberate strategies under neoliberal capitalism to drive down wages and weaken worker solidarity, ensuring the continuous extraction of profit from marginalized labor. Tonight, we will delve into Alex Park’s work and discuss how to resist these exploitative tactics and build a global working-class movement in solidarity with fast food workers.
Sunday Sep 22, 2024
Sunday Sep 22, 2024
This past NFL weekend reminded us that flashes of brilliance in a preseason game from highly touted rookies often don't translate directly into regular-season success, at least not right away. Transitioning to the NFL isn't simply about individual talent—it’s a process that requires time, adaptation to complex systems, and team cohesion. But in a league where players are commodified and thrown into media narratives driven by a capitalist sports industry, these athletes are often set up for failure.
Take Caleb Williams, the number one overall pick. His potential is undeniable, but the Bears were never just one player away from being a contender. They’re a franchise that has long been defined by its defensive legacy, not its quarterbacks. Cutting ties with Justin Fields too early in their desperate search for a savior QB reflects a broader problem: the NFL’s obsession with immediate results and marketability over long-term team-building.
This commodification is part of a larger issue in sports today. In the post-Moneyball era, franchises often treat players like marketable assets rather than focusing on sustainable success. The media plays a crucial role in this, constructing simplified, binary narratives of failure or success to feed a 24-hour sports cycle largely driven by gambling interests. When an athlete struggles, like Sam Darnold did with the Jets, they’re labeled a "bust" without recognizing the systemic failures that contributed to their struggles. Now, Darnold is proving his potential in Minnesota, throwing a beautiful 97-yard touchdown pass to Justin Jefferson, showing what he can do when provided with a functional system and offensive weapons.
The media and the sports industry rely on these narratives, particularly when it comes to quarterbacks. Figures like Brock Purdy, who wasn’t highly touted coming out of college, face constant skepticism even when they succeed. Their talent is questioned, not because of their play, but because they don’t fit into the hyper-commercialized mold of what a “star quarterback” should look like.
We need to start asking bigger questions: are players like C.J. Stroud thriving solely because of their talent, or do they benefit from better organizational structures than their peers? How much of the success and failure we assign to individual players is actually rooted in the deeper systemic issues within the capitalist machine of modern sports? Why are young quarterbacks given all the blame while the broader economic and management failures of their teams go unchecked?
We'll discuss this and more in today's episode.
Thursday Sep 19, 2024
Thursday Sep 19, 2024
A New Approach to Building Community Wealth
Introduction
In many leftist circles, the term "wealth building" can trigger skepticism. It often brings to mind the language of neoliberal capitalism, where wealth creation is synonymous with the exploitation of labor and the concentration of resources in the hands of the few. With wealth inequality reaching historic highs, housing costs soaring beyond reach for many, and environmental devastation rampant due to the unbridled market forces of capital, should we rethink how we approach wealth? The concept of "community wealth building" offers an alternative rooted in collective ownership and control, challenging the individualist, competitive frameworks of traditional wealth accumulation.
Community wealth building seeks to empower workers and communities through cooperative models of enterprise, public ownership, and socially controlled financial institutions. It challenges the logic of capital by redistributing economic power from corporations and financial elites to the people. As Colin Bruce Anthes argues in his article "Canada Needs A Federal Community Wealth Building Agenda" for Canadian Dimension, this model represents a radical departure from the status quo, positioning economic justice as the foundation of democratic life. In a time when neoliberalism has hollowed out communities and starved them of resources, could community wealth building be the pathway to a more egalitarian and environmentally sustainable future?
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Wednesday Sep 18, 2024
Wednesday Sep 18, 2024
Introduction
When we talk about “white privilege,” does renouncing it close the racial wealth gap or liberate people of color from systemic oppression? Will it dismantle mass incarceration or challenge the roots of racialized poverty? Or does this discourse obscure the deeper class antagonisms that undergird capitalism itself? Today, we’ll explore what’s often missed in these discussions: how the focus on white privilege detracts from a collective fight against the structures of capital, reinforcing economic inequalities and diverting attention from solidarity-building across racial lines.
In her essay *Inventing 'White Privilege': Pseudo-Progressivism in American Political Discourse Hadass Silver critiques how “white privilege” rhetoric serves to reproduce, rather than challenge, class exploitation. This discussion will critically examine the five main facets of "white privilege" discourse: (1) greater access to material resources, (2) the enjoyment of rights without discrimination, (3) the dominant culture as a normative standard, (4) racial superiority, and (5) not being discriminated against.
Silver highlights that while these elements of privilege may describe real disparities, they fail to address the root cause of social stratification—capitalism itself. As Silver argues, “privilege rhetoric perpetuates a hyper-focus on identity and obscures the material conditions that shape inequality, class exploitation, and the functioning of capital”. By focusing on perceived privilege, we obscure the real mechanisms of exploitation that affect all working-class people—Black, Brown, and white. This framing, as Silver emphasizes, is “anti-solidaristic,” driving a wedge between potential allies in the struggle for a more egalitarian society.
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www.twitch.tv/leftflankvets
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Twitter: @TIRShowOakland
Instagram: @thisisrevolutionoakland
Monday Sep 16, 2024
Monday Sep 16, 2024
Jason once again looks for trouble, this time with the Moor community, and then he explains why he things Mos Def is an idiot.