Featured Essays Daredevil: Born Again

Daredevil: Born Again Offers a Much-Needed Corrective to Relentless Copaganda

Pushing back on decades of misleading media representations of law enforcement.

By Joe George

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Published on April 23, 2025

Credit: Marvel Television

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Credit: Marvel Television

Midway through the season one finale of Daredevil: Born Again, the mayor of New York City delivers a powerful speech about the dignity of the city’s police force. Positioning himself as someone who understands “the rank and file… down there on the streets, risking their lives to keep New York safe,” the mayor berates his opponent’s moral cowardice.

Scenes like this happen every day on television, but Daredevil: Born Again puts a unique twist on the concept. It’s not just that it occurs in a series about Marvel superhero Daredevil (Charlie Cox), a blind lawyer who uses his enhanced senses to fight crime. Nor is that the mayor is Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio), the one-time Kingpin of Crime who has found new power as the elected leader of the city.

No, the twist is that Fisk’s valorizing of the police is presented as deeply sinister. Against the wishes of his opponent, NYPD Commissioner Gallo (Michael Gaston), Fisk has put together a special Anti-Vigilante Task Force and authorized them to use lethal force as they see fit. He justifies his actions not in legal or rational terms, instead grounding his argument in manipulative pathos, insisting that cops have such a hard job keeping people safe that they should be able to act as they see fit, even killing with impunity.

The scene ends with a gory climax, as the cops watch in shock and awe as Fisk crushes Gallo’s head with his bare hands. But as over-the-top as it gets, in one key aspect the scene is incredibly realistic—it’s one of many instances in which Daredevil: Born Again boldly reminds viewers that for many citizens, the criminal justice system fails to provide either safety or justice.

Copaganda on Patrol

The idea of a renegade police force taking hold of the city might seem like a wild concept, a storyline ripped from the pages of an old Marvel comic book, but the focus on police is arguably one of the more mainstream aspects of Daredevil: Born Again. Police and law enforcement have long been fixtures of American popular culture, so prevalent that almost half of all dramatic television produced in 2020 was about cops.

Going far beyond a matter of taste or a mere cultural trend, the prevalence of cop shows and movies has real effects on the way we think about law enforcement. According to scholars such as Alex S. Vitale and Mark Neocleous, modern policing, first in the UK and then in the US, began as a method to oppress immigrants, non-white citizens, and the working class. Yet, thanks to these shows and movies, which has become known as “copaganda,” people are conditioned to think of law enforcement as a necessary social good, something that can and must exist for our protection and well-being, despite mounting evidence that the police do not stop crimes and often make situations less safe.

Copaganda is as old as moving pictures themselves. When Berkley Police Chief August Vollmer came to power in the early 20th century and instituted the reforms that would earn him the title “the Father of Modern Policing,” he took aim at the media, criticizing movies featuring the comedic Keystone Cops and appearing in one of the first examples of movie copaganda, the 1926 serial Officer 444.

In 1949, one of Volmer’s protégés, L.A. Police Chief William Parker, followed in his mentor’s footsteps by working with Jack Webb to create Dragnet, which soon became a television show in 1951. In addition to establishing the procedural model that continues to this day, Dragnet also put an emphasis on greater realism. Each of the episodes purported to be based on a case file from the LAPD (with the permission of Parker and his associates) and each episode portrayed Webb’s Sgt. Joe Friday and associates as consummate professionals, heroes who effectively kept citizens safe from danger.

The model established by Dragnet can still be see in use today in hits like the Law & Order franchise, Chicago P.D., and Blue Bloods, with the same attitudes and narratives reflected even in so-called reality shows like Cops, which tends to valorize police officers even when they disregard and violate rules of conduct while taking down “bad guys.”

Even after the Black Lives Matter movement brought greater attention to police brutality against Black citizens and called for a massive reappraisal of copaganda, TV shows and movies about heroic cops continue to hit our screens. Daredevil: Born Again might seem to follow suit with sympathetic characters such as no-nonsense hostage negotiator Angie Kim (Ruibo Qian) and retired cop-turned-Matt Murdock associate Cherry (Clark Johnson, formerly of Homicide: Life on the Street and The Wire)—both, it’s worth noting, are people of color. However, these good apples are completely outnumbered, buried under an avalanche of disturbingly bad apples, making Born Again a welcome corrective to the familiar narrative we’ve been taught to expect and accept.

Crime and Punishment

As Kingpin prepares for his grisly work against Gallo, the leaders of his task force come face to face with their true inspiration, Frank Castle, aka the Punisher. “I’m a big admirer of your work,” says the task force’s leader Powell (Hamish Allan-Headley), hoping to convince Frank to join them. “Everything you do, you can do with us,” Powell tells him, promising that Frank can continue to execute those he considers guilty with impunity.

Frank Castle may be a fictional character, first introduced in a 1973 issue of The Amazing Spider-Man, but the scene feels utterly realistic. For years, American police officers have adopted the Punisher’s skull logo, sporting it on their personal belongings and sometimes even their cars and on-duty uniforms, against department regulations, claiming as a hero a brutal vigilante who murders at will. Even though Punisher co-creator Gerry Conway has spoken out against the practice and the character of the Punisher himself called out the practice in the pages of Marvel comics, it still continues today.

It’s particularly powerful, then, to see this version of the Punisher, as played by Jon Bernthal, mocking the corrupt police for modeling themselves after him, precisely because of that history, and the utter pervasiveness of copaganda in most popular entertainment. “Buncha clowns,” Castle mutters to himself before telling them off, screaming “You think you know me? You think you know my pain?” With those questions, Castle forcefully underscores the show’s point: anyone who would try to live like Frank Castle must be broken, like him.

The showdown with the Punisher is just one of many depictions of violent police in Daredevil: Born Again. The first major arc involves Daredevil, in his civilian identity as Matt Murdock, defending a man named Hector Ayala (Kamar de los Reyes), who has been charged with killing a police officer. However, the officer in question died when Ayala stopped him and Powell, both undercover, from beating up a witness. Ayala simply saw two men brutalizing another and came to help, and when one of the aggressors accidentally fell into an oncoming subway train during the fracas, Powell immediately pinned the blame on the do-gooder.

The two-episode arc shows off a different side to Matt’s heroism, underscoring his resourcefulness as a lawyer and, of course, how his superpowers help him to gather evidence. In every instance, Matt finds himself stymied not by some costumed supervillain, but by police officers, both in and out of uniform. It’s not just Powell but the entire force who choose to stand by their fellow officer and hold the Blue Line rather than seeking true justice. Even after Matt proves his client’s innocence and helps him go free, Ayala is executed in the streets by a cop.

Was he killed in revenge for speaking out against the cops? Was he killed because the cops believe he’d killed one of their own? Was he murdered just because the cops hate him? It isn’t clear and doesn’t matter. The point is that the cops kill who they want.

That point is driven home even further by two shorter vignettes throughout the season. In one, a Black man named Leroy Bradford (Charlie Hudson III) is transported to Rikers Island for stealing a couple boxes of caramel corn from a bodega. The sequence, in which Matt uses his considerable charm to get Leroy’s sentence reduced down to ten days, serves to underscore our hero’s eroding faith in the law. We also see two cops munching on the caramel corn that Leroy stole and didn’t open, mockingly snacking on the merchandise that was used to justify taking away a man’s freedom. Bradford’s story illuminates the various ways in which the system is rigged against some members of society.

The other example serves to show that the systemic corruption of law enforcement extends far beyond Fisk’s clearly villainous task force to the uniformed police who patrol the city. In the finale, we witness a regular beat cop shooting an unarmed man looting a store. When the cop’s partner questions him over the killing, he simply pulls a knit cap over the dead man’s face and declares that his unarmed victim was a “masked vigilante.”

The fact that even these random, unnamed cops defy the law so flagrantly—shooting and killing unarmed people, and framing them as violent offenders, knowing that they will almost certainly be absolved of any blame, as we’ve seen time and again in real life—demonstrates that it’s not just Fisk’s handpicked officers that feel empowered to act with impunity. Born Again is not interested in assigning blame to a few very bad apples—in this story, the rot runs deep, from the very top all the way down through the rank and file. The system is irreparably broken, and there are no easy fixes—only hard questions, and the dire need for a sincere, constructive conversation about establishing a just and humane approach to public safety.

Devil’s Advocate

Some might argue that Daredevil: Born Again is overly sensational in its depiction of police, and that’s fair. After all, this is a Marvel superhero show, and the first season ends with Fisk declaring martial law, sending his task force to lay siege upon the city. Others will point out that the season finale’s closing montage, in which Daredevil gathers with supporters to plan a season two counterattack, does include some cops on his side, including the aforementioned Cherry and Kim.

However, when balanced against the oppressive, hulking weight of decades of shows and movies that depict the police as an inherent good without question, even when cops brutalize witnesses, disregard the law, and kill the innocent, Born Again is still an insufficient corrective, even at its most outrageous. In order to properly assess the effects of policing in our cities and communities, we need to be able to ask relevant questions, recognize systemic problems in policing and the justice system, and seek a clearer perspective on what’s wrong, and the endless stream of copaganda has muddied those waters for far too long.

It may be uncomfortable for many viewers to consider Born Again’s portrayal of most, if not all, cops in a negative light, and to see law enforcement depicted as broken and corrupt. But here in 2025, after over a century of glowing portrayals that focus heavily on acts of service, bravery, and sacrifice while ignoring or minimizing the darker realities of police brutality, misconduct, systemic racism and abuse, it’s time for those realities to take center stage. This certainly isn’t the first show to feature police corruption and officers who believe they’re above the law—not by a long shot. But usually, that corruption is seen as an aberration—the assumption is that the system might break down from time to time, but the good cops will inevitable win out, restoring law and order. It’s only recently that we’ve been invited to question the validity of that convenient, comfortable framing of reality, and whether it reflects the world we see around us.

Leave it to Daredevil, a show about a blind man seeking justice, to help us begin to balance the scales.[end-mark]

The post <i>Daredevil: Born Again</i> Offers a Much-Needed Corrective to Relentless Copaganda appeared first on Reactor.

Marches and “fast food strikes” like this one in 2015 outside the First Hill McDonald’s were part of the push for the new minimum wage

By Domenic Strazzabosco

April marks the tenth anniversary of Seattle taking a new path on its minimum wage. On April 1, 2015, the city became the first in the United States to enact a $15 minimum wage and a process to lever the wage higher to account for rising costs and inflation. As of January 1st, Seattle’s minimum wage sits at $20.76 an hour.

It has been a long climb to get here. A look around Capitol Hill shows some of the impact.

CHS checked out local postings to see what employers were offering new workers come the decade anniversary of the legislation.

Glo’s Diner, now next to Cal Anderson Park, is looking for a line cook and pays $21 an hour, just over the minimum, and the position is included in the tip pool. Menya Musashi Tsukemen & Ramen offers slightly more at $22 an hour, plus tips. Salt & Straw’s Seasonal Scooper position pays exactly the minimum wage, $20.76, and calculates that the average tip rate is $7.89 an hour.

Outside of the service industry, the Member Experience Sales Associate role at Orangetheory Fitness on Broadway pays $21 an hour, and the posting notes other benefits like a 401K and the potential for PTO and medical insurance after an “initial measurement period.”

Meanwhile, a Food & Beverage Lead with Seattle Rep pays $23.01 to $25.12 an hour, while an Administrative Assistant for affordable housing developer Community Roots Housing pays $24.50 to $26.50, depending on experience.

Both the Minimum Wage Ordinance and Wage Theft Ordinance were passed on April 1, 2015. The former immediately increased the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour (it was slightly over $9 an hour in 2014) with yearly increases, while the latter ensured that employers paid all owed wages and tips to employees.

Lan Chase, who is paid minimum wage at his job at Goodwill on Belmont, says that although the annual increases are nice, it never feels like enough. Soon after Chase received a pay increase at the new year, he was notified by his landlord that rent would be going up.

“Maybe for the first couple of months it’s nice and you’re able to put a little bit away because the cost of everything else hasn’t gone up yet, but after a little bit—after that initial raise and everything else around you starts to adjust to that—you’re not really able to put a lot away,” he said.

Chase said that his friends who make a few dollars an hour more seem more comfortable living in the neighborhood. He said that if minimum wage were somewhere between $23 and $25 an hour, minimum wage workers would feel more financially secure and be able to set money aside and save up for things.

Blue, who was involved with organizing the Fight for 15 movement starting back in 2011, said something along the same lines. Thirty dollars an hour is what she says would be an appropriate minimum wage to make life in Capitol Hill affordable.

“If you have to cut your profit margin down, that’s fine, pay your workers,” Blue said. “My personal philosophy is if you can’t afford to pay a living wage, you have no business being in business—point blank.”

The movement began with calls for “$15 Now”. It took Seattle seven years to get there.

Unanimously approved by the Seattle City Council in 2014, Chapter 14.19 required businesses in Seattle to incrementally raise their minimum wage each year until reaching $15 per hour over seven years. At the beginning of 2021, Seattle’s minimum wage increased to $16.69 per hour for large employers with more than 500 employees and small businesses with less than 500 employees finally reached the $15 an hour mark.

Flanked by Sawant’s Socialist Alternative wage advocates, Seattle’s mayor signed the minimum wage ordinance into law at a table in Cal Anderson Park in 2014

District 3 Councilmember Kshama Sawant held the minimum wage victory as the core  accomplishment in her decade on the city council.

In 2013, the Seattle Central and Seattle University economics professor included a promise of a fight for a $15 minimum wage in announcing she would take on incumbent Richard Conlin for his seat on the Seattle City Council.

By 2014 following Sawant’s victory at the polls, then-Mayor Ed Murray joined Seattle officials in applauding passage of the legislation as the city’s political establishment embraced the higher wage.

It is sometimes a tenuous hold. Last year, current District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth backed off a proposal to permanently extend a tip credit put in place ten years ago to protect the city’s small businesses during the phase-in of the higher minimum wage tied to inflation. The expiration meant hourly pay rates for the many small businesses subject to the credit leapt about $3 an hour in 2025.

While many predicted a massive wave of shutdowns in the city’s food and drink industry, there has not been an obvious increase in closures. The proposal was a reminder for many that the fight for the city’s minimum wage won’t ever really end.

From a worker’s view, the end of the tip credit and higher wages is hard to argue with. Chase said he doesn’t see how anyone could see expiration as anything but fair. He doesn’t think that being paid the minimum should depend on whether or not you receive the tips you’re hoping to get.

Recent data shows that the average Capitol Hill apartment costs about $2,100 per month, while working a minimum wage job at Seattle’s current rate comes out to $4,023 a month before taxes. Seattle’s current rate of $20.76 an hour is the highest for any major city in the United States and the fourth highest overall, coming in behind Burien, Tukwila and Renton, respectively.

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I’m into Bernie Sanders’ and AOC’s Fighting Oligarchy Tour. It is the one thing that genuinely gets me excited in a good way about modern politics.

Because, and I know I’m not alone in saying this, enough is enough. It’s time for the next version of Occupy. Things have gotten way WAY worse, and not better at all, in terms of the the power of the very rich dictating to the rest of society since the original Occupy.

And when I see media coverage of them speaking in places like Montana and Utah and Idaho, I’m thinking to myself, about fucking TIME some folks on the left talk to the people of these states about the way things are actually working against the working person.

So it came as a big surprise when I heard some folks on MSNBC talking about this. One of them was a TV journalist who just interviews people all the time about politics, and the other represented the Democratic party. I don’t remember their names and so I can’t find the clip, but it went something like this:

Journalist: why are Bernie and AOC in Utah? Isn’t that a super red state? They have no chance to help elect a Dem! There’s not even a viable candidate nor an election!

DNC rep: Well, my theory is that they are there to get media coverage, and after all we are talking about them.

Journo: Oh, that makes sense.

This, to me, is a great illustration of one of the many things that the Democrats have really really wrong. At some point in the distant past, they stopped thinking about voters. Instead they started looking at numbers, and polls, and focusing very narrowly on incremental elections and surgical strikes into purple states.

In other words, I don’t think it occured to either of these people that Bernie and AOC are actually there to talk to actual people with actual problems, and trying to persuade those folks by paying actual attention to them and their problems, even though they are not going to be living in a blue state tomorrow.

This blindness to how people actually are makes the poll-watchers super blind to what really matters in terms of changing people’s minds. And it’s a widespread illness for so many folks you see on TV. They literally don’t see the point of talking to people who live in red states. And that’s why the red states get deeper red and will continue to if those folks are in charge. Yeesh.

partialbirthabortion:

partialbirthabortion:

This NPR interview with with Angela Saini about how race science never really left the global scientific consciousness is super interesting! I’m gonna read her book!

my girlfriend has been talking about this since ancestry kits became A Thing

Exactly

It was my mom’s birthday this week and we went to see the play “Good Night, and Good Luck” on Broadway. George Clooney, his hair dyed jet black, plays the newsman Edward R. Murrow, who stood up to Joseph McCarthy during the height of McCarthy’s anti-communist witch hunts, helping to precipitate the greasy Senator’s downfall. The parallels to our current time were easy to see. The audience, hungry for hopeful bits of history to buoy their spirits in the age of Trump, cheered wildly at every deadpan line about standing up to bullies. But the underlying message of the story is not the simple good-and-evil story that everyone thought they were applauding.

It did, of course, take courage for Murrow to run stories critical of McCarthy. He knew that McCarthy would retaliate by smearing him as a communist sympathizer, and he did. In response, Murrow gave a speech denying any communist sympathy, and proclaiming his love for America, saying that he, unlike McCarthy, believed that people could engage in civil debate with the reds without become reds themselves. Murrow’s ultimate triumph was one of manners, which the public ultimately preferred over McCarthy’s boorish browbeating. The most important lesson in the play, however, lies in what Murrow didn’t do.

America’s most respected newsman told his audience that McCarthy’s most serious violation of decency was the fact that he flung around false accusations of unpatriotism. In defense of the ACLU, Murrow said, “Twice [McCarthy] said the American Civil Liberties Union was listed as a subversive front. The Attorney General’s list does not and has never listed the ACLU as subversive, nor does the FBI or any other federal government agency. And the American Civil Liberties Union holds in its files letters of commendation from President Truman, President Eisenhower and General MacArthur.” He went on to say, in that famous broadcast, “the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind, as between the internal and the external threats of Communism… This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent.”

McCarthy called people and institutions communists. Murrow replied that, in fact, they were not communist, they were upstanding patriotic Americans, and that McCarthy’s methods of accusation were out of line. What Murrow did not say is: “It doesn’t matter if people are communist or not.” He did not say: “The conflation of communism with anti-Americanism is a cheap rhetorical trick.” He did not say: “I reject the implication that communism is a threat to American values.” He did not say: “Perhaps the communists are making some valid points.” Murrow’s bravery was real, but its boundaries stopped at the edge of the stars and stripes. He wanted to contest McCarthy on the field of patriotism. He could not bring himself to peer into the hollow heart of patriotism itself. Thus, Murrow’s victory allowed Americans to sleep soundly in the knowledge that decency had prevailed, without ever peeking under their beds at the enormous pile of skulls.

When one child in a schoolyard tries to insult another by saying “You’re gay!”, the proper response is not to cry, “No I’m not!” It is to say, “So what if I was?” To accept the very premise of the slur is to validate it. Grasping this distinction is a mark of moral development. Yet this rudimentary principle has, from Murrow straight through today, always been a bridge that America’s pillars of liberalism could not bring themselves to cross. What held Murrow back, and what still holds his successors back, is their determination to Put America First. They are Americans and they work for Americans and they want (in the kindest way) for America to flourish and they believe (evidence notwithstanding) that America is good in its heart. It is a quasi-religious belief—by far the most popular religion in our country. You can call this American exceptionalism, but let’s call it patriotism for short. Those who presume themselves to be making a case for liberal morality first bash themselves on the head with the brick of patriotism, and then wonder why they can’t quite think straight.

Capitalism of the sort that America practices naturally generates patriotism for the same reason that jockeys put blinders on horses: It keeps things running smoothly. It precludes questions. It channels vision into a single direction with no distractions. It is good for business. This practice has been spectacularly successful for American capitalism. But there is no reason for the people and institutions who are supposed to promote the common good to hobble themselves with patriotic shackles. And yet they do. Murrow, for all of the praise that we lavish him with, could not wrap his head around the idea that perhaps communists—people who wished for a more fair and equal world!—should not be used as a repugnant counterpoint for all that America represents. The decency that Murrow sought existed in a sharply bounded channel of public discourse in which it was more outrageous to label an American as a communist than it was for the American government to launch a murderous global war against the ideology of communism that would destabilize nations, smash nascent democracies, and cause untold suffering over the next several decades. If you accept that America is good and America is free enterprise and communism is the opposite of free enterprise then communism is the opposite of America which means that communism is bad. This kindergarten-level puzzle was all it took for the right wing, the real army of capitalism, to create a social sanction against straying beyond the bounds of patriotism so strong that it still defines media and politics and popular culture today. Indeed, we are all swimming in its fetid political retaining pond right now.

Liberalism, with its embrace of universal values and the rights of mankind, has never truly prevailed in America because most of its alleged advocates have not been willing to release their grasp on patriotism. For fascists, patriotism is a door to pass through; for liberals, it is a wall. They should walk around it, but instead they continue to bang their heads against it. It makes liberals look pathetic, scared of their own conclusions. “We, ah, don’t support the war, but we support the troops, and we certainly support the pilot of the bomber, as an American, but we don’t support the bombs themselves, although we do support the company that makes the bombs, since it’s a pillar of the American economy, but we hope that the bombs don’t kill anyone innocent, but we still hope that American wins the war, though we know the war is unjust, because we love America.”

“We are outraged at January 6th not only because a bunch of poor suckers were dumped by lies but also because breaking into the US Capitol is an assault on democracy, notwithstanding the fact that all attempts to subvert democracy at home and abroad originate there. There are flags there and they must be respected.”

“We believe that Joe Biden is a good man, because he did good things for America, and yes, perhaps he facilitated the violent killings of a few tens of thousands of children, but that is complicated and we are going to therefore act as though it should not be a part of the conversation.”

“We are the free press. We are here to report the truth. In wartime, we run weepy graphics with waving flags and explicitly hope for America to win the war. We are the free press. We do not find it necessary to ask what ‘terrorism’ means, and instead focus our questions on whether, you know, teenage college students actually fit the description. We are the free press. We are here to support freedom and condemn the destruction of property. We call the president ‘sir’ no matter how tyrannical he is. We respect the same institutions that exist to oppress us. We wonder why our truth telling has not caused American democracy to flourish.”

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Alas for liberalism, it suffers from an acute lack of public figures with the courage of their own convictions. It is not tricky or complicated to believe in universal human rights, but following that belief to its logical conclusions is quite bad for the progression of your career. “Hello, I would like to be a national newsman. I will not wear a suit and call a man ‘Mr. President’ if I know he has committed crimes against humanity. I will not wish success to the troops if I do not believe they are killing people for just reasons. I will not brand people or organizations or entire nations ‘terrorists’ without interrogating what exactly they believe and what they are trying to accomplish and why they are trying to accomplish it that way. Do they really ‘hate our freedom’ or did we, you know, do a lot of evil stuff to them?” This does not fly. This is a nonstarter. This will bring mockery and job loss and marginalization. It is not that this sort of thinking is some esoteric intellectual secret—it is embraced by everyone from rural Buddhist monks to highly educated academics—but it is not the sort of thing that is allowed to flourish on the stage set that is Mainstream American Discourse. A total rejection of patriotism, which is a prerequisite for an honest discussion of national affairs, is a nonstarter for those who want to be a member in good standing of national politics or the national press. As a result, the conversation that flows out from these places is a warped and stunted version of free inquiry, a field that is fertile for thoughtless nationalism.

And here we are! Once you accept the premise of patriotism, you have already lost. There are those who believe that they can call themselves patriots because they yearn for the promise of America, the higher values that the founders vowed to aspire to, even knowing that we have never achieved them. But this, too, is a trap. What these people are embracing is not patriotism, but fandom. They were born in America and they are fans of it because it is their home and they hope that it will be good. Fine. I am a fan of the Jacksonville Jaguars. I cheer for them and hope they win. That is fandom. But if they lose, I do not accuse the Houston Texans of terrorism and communism and raise an army to subjugate the rest of the NFL to serve the interests of the one true and righteous team, the Jaguars. That would be patriotism. Do not call yourself a patriot if the latter version of things makes you uneasy. That is the final outcome that waving that flag leads to. Do not step on that train, and you won’t end up there. Simple.

Free yourself from patriotism’s burden. Breathe the clear air of universal human rights. It is the inability of the alleged liberals to walk away from the fixed game of American exceptionalism that leaves them always battered and bruised by those who don’t give a fuck about universal human rights at all. Once you stand on the field of patriotism, stealing all the world’s wealth and buying more guns than anyone else and using them to keep the whole world working for us makes more sense than anything else. Each year, the Global North uses its might to expropriate over 800 billion hours of labor from the Global South. Is that bad, for humanity and equality? Yes. But what are you gonna do—advocate for a lower standard of living for Americans to make up for it? Ha! Try rolling that one out at the presidential debate. It is out of bounds. It violates the law of American prosperity above all. Discussion of it must remain relegated to theory rather than practice. The wheedling liberals who try to have it both ways, who try to square the circle of American prosperity with the nice desire to be nice to all the nice people of the world, will always end up sputtering uselessly as strongmen vow to do whatever it takes to keep us rich. Patriotism has lured us to a losing game. As we gape and scratch our heads and wonder why the little steps of progress towards a more just nation seem to always be followed by a vicious backlash, and why the Democratic Party always seems to compromise its way to hell, and why an obviously corrupt and dishonest would-be dictator is able to accumulate power with promises of Making American Great Again, just look at that flag on the wall, on the lapel pin, on the football field, at the parade, on the shirts, in the corner of your TV news screen, and you will be able to deduce the answer.

I guess that’s kind of what the communists were talking about the whole time.

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• Related reading: Regarding January 6th, American Is Built to Feed Us Poison; Regarding elections, How to Think About Politics Without Wanting to Kill Yourself; Regarding the Democrats, Why Would Dick Cheney Endorse Kamala Harris?; Regarding language, Retire the Word “Terrorism”; Regarding the USA, Nationalism Is Poison.

• Bad shit is going down but it is not hopeless because the people ultimately have the power. There will be many actions on May Day: find one here. Protests are taking down Tesla: find one here. You can organize your workplace and join the labor movement: get help here. I wrote a book about how unions can get us out of the bad place we’re in: you can order it here.

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