#1671 The Non-Exclusive Impact of White Supremacy and Misogyny on the Election
Air Date: 11-20-2024
We live in a deeply racist and sexist society nearly devoid of people willing to admit to being racist or sexist. In a sense, this is a sign of progress - we're in the phase where prejudice still exists but it has become socially unacceptable to openly express it - but to deny the impact on our politics just because people don't admit to their prejudice would be to completely misunderstand the nature of the issue.
Read more#1668 We Are Going Back: Team post-election analysis
Air Date: 11-8-2024
The Best of the Left team holds a special post-election discussion available to all listeners to present the initial takes on the election as well as our own reactions and suggestions for how to move forward.
Read more#1666 The Holy War Against America: The New Apostolic Reformation, Opus Dei, Evangelicals, Christian Nationalists, and the Worship of Donald Trump
Air Date: 11-2-2024
The cult of Trump isn't just about Trump, it's religion and patriarchy reacting to a moment of global economic and climactic instability. But those organizing the religious right aren't just reacting to their environment, they've also been planning for a very long time.
Read more#1665 The GOP Is A Grift And Was Long Before Trump
Air Date: 10-29-2024
Trump has only come close to perfecting the grift of the American conservative, he certainly didn't invent the strategy. Today we look at some current and past grifts and explore why they work.
Read more#1661 Immigration is Actively Good for the Country Unless You're Racist
Air Date: 10-8-2024
Immigration dominates our politics in the worst way because one side benefits from lying about it and the other can't get their messaging together to create an effective rebuttal. Opposing immigration and stoking blatantly racist arguments doesn't just make the right bad or unsavory, it also makes them wrong on literally all of the facts.
Read more#1657 Modeling Positive Masculinity: Between Tim Walz and the Manosphere, boys are looking for guidance
Air Date: 9-24-2024
The positive dad vibes of Tim Walz came onto the national scene in the middle of an ongoing crisis of masculinity that stretches from the youngest generation to the oldest. Both positive and negative aspects of masculinity tie in with the general election, basically divided right down the partisan line, and the next generation of voters (not to mention humans) are often feeling stuck between the two with insufficient guidance from the men in their lives.
Read more#1656 How Far He Will Go: Election lies, intimidation, interference, insurrection
Air Date: 9-17-2024
It's not just the threat of the electoral college handing the presidency to the loser of the popular vote, nor the specter of a repeat of a January 6th-like event hanging over the election - there's also copious lies and disinformation including a new and improved nazi-to-Republican-talking-point-pipeline, and fresh new intimidation and voter suppression tactic experiments underway in the laboratories of democracy.
Read more#1653 Money-N-Politics: SuperPACS, Crypto, Billionaires, and Public Funding of Elections
Air Date: 9-6-2024
We're living in the world that dark money in politics and Citizen's United built. But since that Supreme Court ruling in 2010, we've invented cryptocurrency that promises to be a brand new source of opacity and financial power built on smoke and mirrors.
Read more#1651 The Politics of Migration in the Age of Insecurity: From the UK riots to GOP fear-mongering
Air Date: 8-27-2024
People feel lots of ways about immigration. Sometimes it's fear of the other, other times it's not about the people but just dismay over a broken system. The validity of these concerns and others certainly exist on a spectrum, some are utter bullshit and others aren't. Left-wing political parties tend to do a terrible job creating immigration policy - in that they just don't do it at all - while the right wing is all too happy to create and implement terrible policy. And given a choice between action and inaction, regardless of how misguided the proposed action is, people with concerns will choose action.
Read more#1650 The Vibes Election Explained: Harris is up, Trump is down and Gaza will not be forgotten
Air Date: 8-23-2024
The vibes of this election are nothing anyone could have predicted a month ago. And yet, some of the details have played out as though by a script. Democrats drink hope like ambrosia from the gods, Trump when confronted with reality initiates a full-blown meltdown, and everyone is doing their best to ignore the genocide in Gaza being carried out with our weapons.
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