The Rio Stanton Report

Author: Mario Stanton

If You Don’t Like the Reflection, Examine What’s in the Mirror

One of my missions in life is to hold a proverbial mirror up to society.

Sometimes people don’t like what I post because they don’t like what they see reflected in it. They recognize an attitude, an assumption, or a behavior they would rather not examine. Suddenly, the problem is the person holding the mirror. The problem is me.

Does that mean I am always right? No.

Does it mean I am perfect? Absolutely not.

I get criticized in my own posts. I also routinely call myself out on my own shit. That part sometimes gets missed by people who are too offended to notice that the criticism includes me.

I live in this society too. I have absorbed its prejudices, made mistakes, and had to confront things about myself that I did not like. And I am still doing that work.

But admitting that a problem exists is the first step toward doing something about it. We cannot fix what we refuse to acknowledge.

And I want something better. For myself. For my children. For the people whose lives are shaped by conditions they did not create and cannot simply wish away.

I want that “more perfect union” we keep talking about. I also want a better world beyond it.

You do not have to like the way I make my points. I know I can be blunt, sarcastic, angry, and confrontational. Sometimes I turn people’s own venom back toward them so they can hear how ugly it sounds when they are on the receiving end.

That approach can land. It can also miss. I am responsible for that. I am responsible for the “strays” caught by individuals and groups who didn’t do anything to me.

But I am tired of watching people show more concern about the tone of a response than the cruelty that provoked it.

They can demean marginalized people all day. The moment someone responds with anger, suddenly we need a discussion about civility.

Where was that concern before somebody answered back?

When I defend Black people, some accuse me of racism. But loving my people and refusing to let them become everybody’s punching bag does not establish hatred of anyone else.

Neither does questioning criticism that has been selectively aimed at us.

A criticism can contain a legitimate concern and still be used to advance a racist agenda. If someone cares about a problem only when it gives them a reason to demean Black people, I am going to question their motives.

That is especially true when they show no interest in solutions.

I also want to be precise about power. There is a difference between an individual’s prejudice and the power of institutions to turn racial prejudice into unequal treatment, exclusion, and deprivation.

That distinction is important. It does not mean my words are incapable of causing harm or that being Black makes everything I say acceptable. It means we should stop pretending that every expression of anger carries the same history, authority, or consequences.

I am responsible for my words. I am also entitled to challenge the systems and narratives that harm my people.

And I am not advocating physical harm against anyone. My goal is to eradicate racism, not give it another direction to travel.

That requires understanding racism beyond its most theatrical forms.

It is not limited to robes and hoods, shouted slurs, or segregated lunch counters. It also includes beliefs about whose intelligence, character, culture, and humanity deserve respect. It includes policies and institutional practices that maintain racial advantages and disadvantages.

A person does not have to announce that they hate Black people to support arrangements that keep Black people disadvantaged.

And a policy does not become harmless simply because the people defending it avoid racist language.

That is why I keep pointing these things out. Recognition should lead to examination. Examination should lead to action.

Take the constant fixation on violence in Black communities.

Black people living in those communities have every reason to care. We lose loved ones. We fear for our children. We want safe streets, and we want the people harming our neighbors held accountable.

But if someone claims to care about that violence, I expect them to care about the conditions surrounding it too.

Trauma. Poverty. Limited opportunities. Inadequate schools. Discrimination. Access to healthcare and mental-health support. The pressures that teach some young men to treat domination, retaliation, and performative toughness as the only ways to establish respect.

These conditions do not excuse a person who hurts someone else. They do matter if we intend to prevent the next person from doing it.

Calling the problem “Black culture” does not explain why it happens. Blaming DNA is racist nonsense. Reducing everything to bad parenting lets the rest of society wash its hands of conditions that families are struggling within.

Parents have responsibilities. Individuals have responsibilities. Institutions and governments have responsibilities too.

I am tired of arguments that recognize only the first two.

We should also examine struggling White communities affected by lost industries, declining opportunity, and neglect. Their suffering deserves attention, and comparing experiences could help us understand what people need.

Instead, some commentators use poor Black neighborhoods as a punching bag while offering very little to poor White people beyond somebody to resent.

How does that help either community?

If you care about people being safe, healthy, and able to build a life, then help address the conditions standing in their way. Stop using one group’s pain to distract another group from its own.

And stop acting as though racism disappeared when the Civil Rights Act passed.

A change in law can be a major victory without erasing the beliefs, habits, and power arrangements that made the law necessary. Those things do not vanish because open discrimination becomes less socially acceptable.

Nor did Barack Obama create racial division by acknowledging the realities facing Black people. Naming a problem is not the same as causing it.

The anger directed at those acknowledgments tells us something about what people expect Black public figures to leave unsaid.

That is part of what I want the mirror to show.

I want us to examine the difference between opposing racism in principle and resisting every uncomfortable conversation about how it operates. Between saying we care about a community and using its problems to humiliate it. Between demanding accountability from individuals and refusing accountability for institutions.

I am willing to have that examination include me.

But I am not going to stop holding up the mirror simply because the reflection pisses somebody off.

October 4, 2026
Racism Did Not Disappear. It Learned to Dress Better.

I have shared videos of Ku Klux Klan members and other racists explaining what they believe on my Facebook page. What interests me is how familiar some of those beliefs sound once you look past the robes, the slurs, and the willingness to say the quiet part out loud.

The KKK does not represent every American. Nor should one town, one interview, or one group stand in for the whole country.

David Duke wanted to make the KKK more acceptable to theAmerican public by presenting a more polished and white collar image of the group.

But that does not mean the ideas expressed in those videos exist only among people who openly identify as racists.

The belief that Black people are inherently less capable, less civilized, more dangerous, or less deserving can appear in different forms and degrees. Someone can reject the Klan and still accept assumptions that have a great deal in common with its worldview.

That is what I want people to examine.

For generations, racism helped justify conquest, enslavement, colonial exploitation, and exclusion. People dressed those justifications up as science, religion, common sense, and concern for civilization.

The cruelty came with an explanation. The explanation made the cruelty easier to defend.

We still need to pay attention to that process.

Racism can become so familiar that people stop recognizing it unless it appears in its most extreme form. They know a hood and a burning cross when they see them. They know an explicit slur when they hear one.

But a polished commentator making insinuations about Black intelligence, criminality, or belonging? Suddenly, we are supposed to consider whether that person is simply a misunderstood truth-teller.

Apparently, racism becomes harder to recognize when the speaker has a studio, a suit, and a respectable vocabulary.

Nick Fuentes is literally a self-professed Nazi (or Nazi sympathizer) who can get away with much of what he says, and was invited to Donald Trump’s mansion for dinner because he isn’t seen in the uniform of White supremacy.

I am tired of the idea that avoiding the N-word automatically makes an argument free of racism.

What is the argument asking us to believe? How is the evidence being used? What context has been left out? Is a problem being examined, or is an entire people being assigned a negative character?

Those questions matter more than whether the speaker remembered to avoid a slur.

Statistics deserve scrutiny too. A number can be accurate while the story built around it is misleading. Selective comparisons, missing context, and sweeping conclusions can turn data into a tool for reinforcing prejudice.

If someone uses a statistic to suggest that Black people are inherently defective, the presence of a number does not make that suggestion objective.

A spreadsheet does not wash racism out of an argument.

Charlie Kirk’s “truth” was nothing more than racism using cherry-picked and out-of-context statistics. These are often quoted on his podcast and while debating undergrad students on college campuses.

One of the things I wanted people to notice in those videos was the date.

When were these people saying these things? When were the incidents happening? How long after the major civil-rights victories were communities still facing intimidation, exclusion, and openly racist hostility?

Too many people talk as though the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 closed the book on racism.

Those laws were extremely important. But passing a law did not instantly change everyone’s beliefs, dismantle every discriminatory practice, or erase the advantages accumulated under the old arrangements.

Some attitudes changed. Some people changed. Others learned to conceal what they believed or express it in language that gave them plausible deniability.

We should recognize progress without pretending that it finished the job.

That is also why I keep returning to the contrast between how Barack Obama and Donald Trump have been judged.

I am not arguing that every criticism of Obama was racist. I criticized him myself. His policies and decisions deserve examination like those of any other president.

But I watched people demand that he be endlessly calm, polished, articulate, restrained, and reassuring—and still treat him as illegitimate, threatening, or fundamentally out of place.

He could meet their stated standards and still fail the test.

Then I watched some of those same people celebrate Trump’s belligerence, insults, and disregard for restraint as signs of strength.

Conduct they would have treated as disqualifying in Obama became proof that Trump was authentic and willing to fight.

Donald Trump can get away with egregious behavior that Obama is not able to get away with. Obama had to mostly remain stoic during his presidency, while Trump can be angry and belligerent.

What changed—the standard, or the person being judged?

That question deserves more than a reflexive accusation that I am “making everything about race.”

I do not need to claim that every measure of the country’s condition was better under Obama to make this point. Presidents should be judged on evidence, and different outcomes require different comparisons.

My concern here is the permission some people grant one leader while demanding constant reassurance from another.

If restraint is essential to presidential character, it should matter when Trump lacks it. If inflammatory rhetoric is dangerous, it should not become admirable simply because the speaker is someone you support.

And if intelligence, preparation, and dignity are the standards, meeting them should count regardless of the president’s race.

Too often, that consistency disappears.

This is why the openly racist videos matter to me. They make certain assumptions easier to hear. Once we recognize those assumptions in their bluntest form, we should be willing to examine where else they appear.

George Lincoln Rockwell was the founder of the American Nazi Party (ANP). He was a very articulate man who attended an Ivy League University (Brown University). Often, he would dress in Nazi uniforms but he would often dress in a suit and speak while smoking his signature pipe. Often, his message wasn’t necessarily antagonistic or violent, but they were exclusionary and racist.

The delivery may be smoother. The speaker may deny any prejudice. The audience may insist that it is all about policy, statistics, or “telling the truth.”

But we still have to examine the substance.

Racism does not need a hood, a slur, or a confession to operate.

And refusing to recognize it until someone supplies all three gives far too many people permission to keep doing it.

October 4, 2026
Black Women Do Not Owe You Proof of Their Womanhood

I have absolutely no respect for people who spread the racist and transphobic conspiracy theory that Michelle Obama was born male.

None.

This lie has been debunked repeatedly, yet people keep recycling it as though repetition will turn it into evidence. Michelle Obama was born Michelle LaVaughn Robinson. There is no credible evidence for the claim that she was born “Michael” or assigned male at birth.

A picture of Michelle Obama as a baby.

But this is about more than one lie about one woman.

It is about the willingness to treat Black women’s bodies, voices, and appearance as public property. Apparently, anyone with an internet connection gets to inspect them and decide whether they qualify as women.

And some Black men participate in this bullshit when they should know better.

There are few better examples of Black women’s sex and gender being questioned than Brittney Griner. Griner is the subject of some very ugly conspiracy theories and assumptions. Griner is tall, has a deep voice, has no pronounced breasts, and doesn’t conform to traditional gender roles. And all of those things are ok and don’t take away from her womanhood.

Black women get called “masculine” for being tall, strong, outspoken, athletic, angry, or unwilling to make themselves small. A deeper voice becomes suspicious. Short hair becomes suspicious. Muscles become suspicious.

Even confidence becomes suspicious.

Women of other races can possess those same characteristics, but Black women are too often treated as though they have violated some rule of womanhood by possessing them.

Who made that rule? And why are we helping enforce it?

Venus and Serena Williams were attacked for their appearance, their athleticism, and their muscular build.

Think about the scrutiny directed at Venus and Serena Williams. Think about Brittney Griner and Grace Jones. Think about how quickly people turn a Black woman’s strength, stature, or appearance into an accusation.

The details of each woman’s experience differ. But the impulse to inspect, mock, and police Black women’s bodies is familiar as hell.

I hear echoes of Malcolm X’s criticism of the disrespect and lack of protection Black women face. Decades later, we are still watching people turn that disrespect into entertainment.

And the supposed defense of Michelle Obama sometimes falls into the same trap.

People point to her children, her marriage, her clothes, or how feminine she looks, as though the right combination of evidence will finally satisfy the people attacking her.

We should challenge the lie. But we should also challenge the premise.

A woman does not have to give birth, wear dresses, have a particular body shape, or meet somebody’s beauty standard to deserve respect.

Picture of Michelle Obama throughout her young years.

Michelle Obama does not need an exception made for her height or her facial features. There is nothing about those things that needs explaining away.

Nor should defending her require treating transgender women as an insult she must be separated from. The conspiracy is false, and its use of trans identity as a weapon is part of what makes it ugly.

Being transgender is not a disgrace. Lying about someone’s identity to humiliate them is disgraceful.

The people spreading this story often try to demean Barack Obama at the same time. In their telling, supposedly exposing his wife would somehow diminish his manhood.

That tells us something about the prejudices doing the work here. Black womanhood becomes something to ridicule. Black manhood becomes something to undermine. Transgender identity becomes something to sneer at.

And the whole thing gets passed around as a joke.

Isis King is a trans woman who is an actress and a model. One doesn’t have to be born anatomically female to be feminine.

What, exactly, is funny?

The contempt for Black women? The attempt to humiliate a Black family? The idea that somebody’s gender can be determined by studying a photograph and making shit up?

I do not find any of that clever.

You do not have to like Michelle Obama. You do not have to agree with her politics, admire her speeches, buy her books, or defend her husband’s administration.

There are legitimate things to discuss and criticize.

But disagreement does not entitle you to invent a different identity for her or subject her body to some imaginary gender inspection.

And being Black does not make participation in that harassment less anti-Black.

If you are a Black man spreading this lie, ask yourself why you are so eager to help people degrade a Black woman. Ask yourself whose approval you are seeking and what, exactly, you think our community gains from your participation.

The same goes for Black women who join in. Familiarity with this kind of scrutiny should give us more reason to reject it.

Michelle Obama as a child with her brother and her parents.

I am not going to insult somebody’s mother, grandmother, or partner to make that point. Those women do not deserve to have their appearance dragged into this either.

That is the whole damn problem: too many people think a woman’s appearance is fair game whenever they want to win an argument.

It needs to stop.

Black women do not owe you a particular kind of femininity. They do not owe you access to their private lives. And they do not owe you proof that they are women.

Criticize what Michelle Obama actually says and does if you have an argument to make.

But stop spreading this racist, transphobic bullshit and pretending it is political commentary.

October 3, 2026
Policies Matter. Actions Matter More.

Let me explain something again for the liberals who keep confusing progressive politics with a cult of personality.

Ahem.

We do not give a fuck about worshipping politicians. We care about what they do.

If Trump delivered humane, progressive policies that materially improved people’s lives, I would acknowledge those accomplishments. That would not require me to excuse everything else about him.

When Biden was president, I wanted him to succeed. I wanted an administration willing to meet the scale of the problems facing us. Give us the ambition associated with FDR’s New Deal or LBJ’s Great Society (without the devastating and unjust war, of course), and I would have plenty to praise.

But wanting a president to succeed does not mean pretending that everything they do is enough.

And voting for someone does not mean surrendering the right to criticize them.

That was true when I wrote the original version of this post. It is still true now.

I am tired of people treating progressive demands as unreasonable while expecting us to accept political responses that fall short of the conditions we are living through.

Yes, Biden actually said this to a group of wealthy donors behind closed doors. But he governed surprisingly to the left (even by a little) than anyone who has occupied that position since Jimmy Carter, in my opinion.

People cannot afford housing. They struggle to get healthcare. They work themselves into exhaustion and still cannot establish financial security. Racism continues to shape their opportunities and treatment. Environmental threats keep demanding action.

Then we get told to be patient, lower our expectations, and remember how much worse the other side would be.

We know the other side is worse. What the fuck are you going to do about the problems we elected you to address?

That question should not cause this much damn discomfort.

I am not opposed to every smaller improvement. If a policy helps people today, that matters. What I reject is treating incrementalism as the permanent ceiling on what we can demand.

A partial victory should give us something to build on. It should not become an excuse to declare the work finished or tell the people who are still struggling that they are asking for too much.

Too often, “be realistic” means accepting that the people with power will remain comfortable while everyone else adjusts to insecurity.

I do not accept that as a political goal.

And no, Bernie Sanders is not a messiah.

He became important to many of us because he gave national attention to policies and grievances that other politicians dismissed. He spoke about healthcare, wages, education, corporate power, and the lives of people who felt unseen.

That is why we supported him. His appeal came from what he advocated and what he appeared willing to fight for.

My appeal to Bernie Sanders was solely based on policies that Sanders fights for.

Sanders is fallible. He has disappointed people on the left, including me. When he does, he gets criticized too.

The same should apply to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, any other progressive politician, and whoever comes next. Nobody gets to substitute their name or reputation for accountability.

If a politician abandons the commitments that earned our support, we have every right to challenge them. That is political consistency.

I wanted Biden to be a good progressive president. I wanted him to deliver. I wanted the people who voted for him to have something meaningful to show for it.

I also wanted the United States to confront its racism. Wanting that did not require me to pretend we had already achieved it.

The same principle applies to an administration. I can want it to succeed and still refuse to accept inadequate responses to real problems.

People’s lives cannot be managed as though the goal is to keep them just hopeful enough to make it to the next election cycle.

They need relief. They need security. They need power over the conditions shaping their lives.

And they need more than a lecture about how complicated everything is.

I like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). However, she is not above criticism. She needs to be judged on the policies that she fights for and her voting record, not on her looks, her former job, or slander about her intelligence.

Yes, governing is complicated. There are institutional barriers, hostile courts, narrow majorities, and opponents who will obstruct whatever they can. Those things deserve serious consideration. They really do.

But an explanation should help us understand what happened, what was attempted, and what needs to change. It should not shut down every question about whether leadership could have done more.

I hate excuses that make no logical sense. I hate watching people dodge simple questions about matters they are supposed to understand. I hate the double-speak that turns failure into strategy and criticism into disloyalty.

And I cannot stand the dismissive attitude toward corruption, donor influence, and the conflicts between what politicians promise voters and what they protect once they hold office.

Do not tell me I am being unreasonable for noticing those conflicts.

Policies are important. Policies are important. Policies are very important.

And actions are more important, especially when the country is watching how politicians move.

A platform tells me what you claim to support. Your actions tell me what you are willing to pursue, defend, compromise, or abandon.

That is what I am watching and paying the most attention to.

When Biden was president, many of us criticizing him had voted for him in the general election. We understood the choice before us. We made that choice.

But our votes were not promises to remain silent.

We did not agree to applaud every compromise, excuse every disappointment, or defend the administration against the very people whose needs it was supposed to serve.

We voted to put someone in office. Then we expected them to do the work.

That standard survives Biden’s presidency. It applies to the current administration, to Democratic leadership, and to every future candidate asking for our support.

At the time that this was written (well, rewritten) and published in this Blog, all of the people that you see here are speculated to seek the 2028 Democratic Party nomination for president. There are some that I like. There are some that I don’t like. Race doesn’t matter. Looks don’t matter. Name recognition doesn’t matter to me. What matters are the policies that help American people and end wars. Any one of these people could get my vote if they are advocating for things that align with my personal politics and morals.

You are not owed our devotion. You are accountable for what you do with our votes.

We have to keep holding their feet to the fire. Organize. Ask the questions. Make the demands. Recognize the gains, and keep pushing where the work falls short.

Because if we stop demanding accountability, the people in power have every reason to keep giving us less… and expecting us to thank them for it.

October 2, 2026
The Political Tightrope of Black Power

I think many people (Black, White, and those who identify as neither) fail to understand or appreciate the political tightrope Black people in positions of power have to walk.

I include myself in that criticism. Some of the things I have criticized Barack Obama for, or watched Kamala Harris get criticized for, deserve another look when we consider the power structure they were operating within.

Holding office does not mean controlling every lever of power. A “Black face in a high place” does not suddenly erase the influence of wealthy donors, corporate interests, entrenched institutions, or voters who become uncomfortable when Black leadership starts challenging arrangements they benefit from.

Winning a position within a power structure is not the same as gaining the power to remake it.

Many Black people and other minorities want leaders like Obama, Harris, Wes Moore, and Jasmine Crockett to speak and act with the radical commitment we associate with Malcolm X, Kathleen Cleaver, Assata Shakur, or Winnie Mandela.

I understand that desire. I want leaders who will stand up for us too.

But we have to consider what we are asking of people whose authority depends on operating within institutions that can limit, punish, or remove them. An elected official trying to maintain a governing coalition faces different pressures from an organizer whose purpose is to confront that government.

That does not make radical leadership impossible. It does make it costly. And we should be honest about who bears those costs and whether we have built enough collective power to support them.

We cannot demand that someone confront the whole damn structure while assuming their title gives them everything they need to survive the confrontation.

Some White people also expect Black officials to become the moral voice against every injustice. Apparently, being Black is supposed to make someone courageous, politically flawless, and willing to risk their career whenever the rest of us need a champion.

But these people are human. They have strengths, weaknesses, ambitions, fears, and limitations like everyone else.

Their positions also depend, in part, on voters who may praise the idea of justice while rejecting the policies required to achieve it. Some want the reassurance of a Black leader without the discomfort of having that leader challenge them.

They want representation they can celebrate and leadership they do not have to adjust to.

That is a hell of a tightrope.

This does not excuse everything Black politicians say, do, or fail to do. Some choices deserve criticism. Some compromises are unnecessary. Some silences are calculated, and some leaders protect their own careers at the expense of the people who helped put them there.

We should be able to say that.

Believe me, I’ve been criticizing many Black politicians for these things, including Obama, Harris, and others on the national stage.

But we should also distinguish between a failure of commitment and a limitation of power. Before declaring that someone has betrayed us, we ought to ask what they could actually do, what stood in their way, and whether they used the power they did have, not the power we imagined they had.

Those questions make our criticism stronger.

They also help explain why the political freedom available to someone like Trump can look so different from the freedom available to someone like Obama.

In my view, Trump benefits from a level of permission that Black leaders are rarely granted. His belligerence gets celebrated as strength. His disregard for convention gets sold as independence. His supporters can treat conduct they would condemn in a Black politician as proof that he is fighting for them.

Meanwhile, Black officials are expected to demonstrate restraint, reassure skeptical voters, build consensus, and prove, again and again, that they deserve to be where they are.

A policy can have public support, and a Black leader can still face hostility for being the person advancing it. The argument may be presented as a disagreement over policy, but race and power can shape whose authority people are willing to accept.

I have watched that happen too many times to pretend it is incidental.

There are White voters who will tolerate extraordinary conduct from a White leader while treating a Black leader’s challenge to the status quo as a threat. That tells me their attachment to White power can outweigh the principles they claim to defend.

And no, that does not describe every White voter. But it describes a political force Black leaders have to account for, whether the rest of us acknowledge it or not.

My point is that accountability requires us to understand the conditions under which people govern. I am not abandoning my criticism of Obama, Harris, or anyone else. I am asking whether all of that criticism has been fair, informed, and directed at the people who actually held the power to make a different outcome possible.

We need Black leaders willing to push. We also need organized communities capable of backing them when they do.

We cannot keep treating a Black person’s election as the transfer of power to Black people as a whole. Until we build the power to make our demands harder to ignore, our representatives will keep walking that tightrope, and we will keep arguing about whether they should have fallen off it for us.

October 2, 2026
Party Unity—Until the Left Wins

Whenever Democratic loyalists start lecturing the left about “party unity” and “Blue No Matter Who,” I want to ask a simple question:

Does that rule apply when your preferred candidate loses too?

Because I have been paying attention for a long time, and the demand for unity seems to get a lot louder when progressives are expected to fall in line. When the left challenges a favored incumbent, wins a primary, or questions the party’s direction, suddenly there are exceptions.

Then we hear about electability, ideological purity, troublesome supporters, and how the party cannot afford to be associated with those people.

Apparently, the big tent has a very selective admissions policy.

I remember 2008. Some disappointed Hillary Clinton supporters organized under the PUMA banner (“Party Unity My Ass”) and refused to support Barack Obama. Clinton herself urged supporters to back him, but the holdouts were serious determined, and angry. Some openly considered voting for John McCain.

I also remember Clinton invoking her support among “working, hard-working Americans, white Americans” while arguing that Obama’s support was weakening. I found that appeal offensive then, and time has not improved that feeling.

My political memory did not begin with Bernie Sanders, and it did not end when his presidential campaigns did.

That is why I get tired of hearing the left discussed as though we invented bitterness, divisive primaries, or resistance to a nominee. The party has a long history of internal conflict. But certain people’s resistance gets treated as understandable disappointment, while ours becomes a character defect.

And the same attitude is still with us.

Angie Nixon is a Florida state Representative who won the Democratic Party primary to be the party’s 2026 United States Senate candidate for the state of Florida.

Look at Angie Nixon. She won Florida’s Democratic Senate primary in August, defeating Alex Vindman despite his financial advantage. Whatever someone thinks of her politics, Democratic primary voters chose her.

Nixon subsequently clashed with Florida Democratic chair Nikki Fried over socialism and whether she was receiving sufficient party support.

Reporting this month also described Vindman directing resources toward other Democrats and the state party rather than Nixon herself, while Senate Majority PAC was steering clear of her race.

Now, Florida is a difficult race. Parties have limited resources, and nobody is obligated to pretend every election is equally winnable.

But that explanation deserves scrutiny when “support the nominee” has been preached to the left as a moral obligation.

If progressives are expected to swallow their objections, volunteer, donate, and turn out for candidates they did not want, then they have every right to ask what support looks like when their candidate wins.

You cannot spend years demanding loyalty and then act confused when people expect reciprocity.

To many of us further left of the political spectrum, Democrats and Republicans sound eerily similar.

Here in St. Louis, the fight involving Cori Bush makes the role of money impossible to ignore. Wesley Bell defeated her again in the August 2026 primary. AIPAC-backed efforts and other outside spending supported Bell, with spending on his behalf substantially exceeding spending for Bush.

Bush was not entitled to her seat. Voters could criticize her, challenge her, and choose someone else. That is how elections work.

Cori Bush was the U.S. Representative for Missouri’s FirstCongressional District. She served one term before being defeated by Wesley Bell. Bush was not defended by the same Democratic Party that stated that it would defend incumbents and frowned upon primary opponents.

But I am also entitled to question the priorities behind pouring money into defeating a progressive in a heavily Democratic district. I am entitled to ask why a Black organizer’s politics become something to neutralize rather than something the party has to engage.

Calling that spending “democracy” does not put its sources, motives, or effects beyond criticism.

Then there is Hasan Piker, who has become another target in this fight. In April, Democratic Representative Josh Gottheimer joined Republican Representative Mike Lawler in introducing a resolution condemning alleged antisemitic rhetoric from Piker and other online personalities. Gottheimer renewed his push for a vote in August.

Progressive commentator Hasan Piker has become the new boogeyman in mainstream media. His commentary, often taken out of context, had been weaponized against progressive and leftist candidates who he is associated with.

I do not have to agree with every damn thing Hasan says to question why Democratic politicians are devoting energy to this.

He is a commentator. He can be criticized. His statements should be examined, including statements people find offensive or harmful. Having an audience does not make him immune to accountability.

But neither should a controversial commentator become an excuse to discredit everyone on the left who has appeared with him, watched him, or supported a candidate he supports.

Criticize the statement. Make the argument. Stop treating association as a substitute for discussing policy.

For as controversial as many in the mainstream media find Hasan Piker on the left side of the political spectrum, there are many more people on the right side of the political spectrum who are not weaponized against political candidates on the right.

This is where my original frustration still stands: identity-based bigotry is real, but the existence of bigotry does not mean every political disagreement is driven by it.

Sexism against women politicians is real. I have said that repeatedly, including when defending Hillary Clinton against attacks that male politicians would not have faced.

Antisemitism is real. Racism is real. All deserve serious attention.

But criticism of a woman’s policies is not automatically sexism. Criticism of a Jewish politician is not automatically antisemitism. Criticism of a Black politician is not automatically racism.

Democrats often defend bad candidates with bad policies against criticisms and for losing elections by charging critics and voters with bigotry. Although their charges aren’t totally baseless, they are often exaggerated and made into the primary reason why campaigns were lost, and their candidates or politicians face legitimate criticism.

And criticism of a government’s actions is not automatically hatred of the people associated with that government.

Context is important here. There needs to be a careful and sober examination of the evidence. What was actually said matters more than the political spin.

These questions require more work than deciding that an accusation ends the conversation. Using genuine struggles against bigotry as political shields makes it harder to address both the bigotry and the policy disagreement honestly.

I do not want the left exempted from that standard. I want the standard applied consistently.

Progressive candidates should answer for their records. Their supporters should answer for what they actually say and do. But establishment candidates should face the same scrutiny over their donors, policies, alliances, and treatment of the people whose votes they expect.

Too often, the left’s demands are described as dangerous or unrealistic before they are even seriously discussed.

Progressive and leftist voters are told to “fall in line.” These voters are often scoffed at and then blamed for electoral losses.

Universal healthcare. Affordable housing. Stronger labor rights. Public investment. An end to policies that treat human suffering as an acceptable cost of somebody else’s profit.

Those are political demands. People can argue against them. But dismissing the people making them as naïve, toxic, disloyal, or unelectable is a convenient way to avoid the argument.

And I think some of that hostility comes from the interests those demands threaten. A party comfortable with its donors and existing arrangements is going to feel pressure when its own voters start demanding changes that those donors do not want.

That is my interpretation of the pattern. It is also why I refuse to accept every attack on the left as neutral advice about winning elections.

Winning for what? Delivering what? And accountable to whom?

The media and party leaders often dismiss progressive and leftist candidates as unelectable.

I understand the danger Republicans pose. I do not need that explained to me every time I criticize Democrats.

What I need is for Democratic leaders and loyalists to understand that opposing Republicans does not require me to surrender my judgment. It does not require silence about the party’s failures, and it certainly does not require pretending that its treatment of the left is fair.

If you want unity, give people a meaningful role in shaping the agenda. Respect their victories. Engage their demands. Show them that their participation matters beyond election-day turnout.

Stop treating the left as a workforce you can insult between elections and summon when you need votes.

Party unity cannot mean that we do the work, accept the blame, and shut the hell up.

October 2, 2026
Biracial Does Not Mean Less Black

Barack Obama, Bob Marley, and Benjamin Jealous have something in common that often gets overlooked: each had a Black parent and a White parent. Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington also described their fathers as White, although neither knew his father’s identity with certainty.

Yet I have heard people argue that having a White parent disqualifies someone like Obama from being considered Black. I have heard this from both Black and White people, but more often in Black circles, possibly because most of my affiliations are with Black people.

And I have a problem with it.

People who would otherwise recognize Obama as Black suddenly question his Blackness once they learn about his mother. His appearance hasn’t changed. His life hasn’t changed. What changed is their willingness to accept him.

Why does knowing that someone has a non-Black parent suddenly become grounds for pushing them out of the community?

Actress Zendaya Maree Stoermer Coleman is the child of a Black father and a White mother.

I have said this before: race is a social classification, not a set of neatly separated biological categories. The boundaries people draw around it are arbitrary, inconsistent, and shaped by history and power.

But some of us talk about Blackness as though there is a purity test we can administer.

Jermaine Lamarr Cole is the child of two American US Service members of different races. His mother is White, and his father is Black. He was born at a United States military base in Frankfurt, Germany.

This is personal for me. I am the product of generations of Black people who considered themselves part of a separate racial category and largely married within that category. I know that history comes with an ugly legacy of colorism, exclusion, and the infamous “paper bag test.”

That is not a legacy I want us to preserve.

Yet we risk carrying those same ideas forward when we treat our biracial kin as outsiders simply because one parent is of European, Asian, or Indigenous descent.

Raised in the United States, Naomi Osaka’s mother is Japanese and her father is Haitian.

We can recognize differences in our experiences without turning those differences into reasons to deny one another belonging. Colorism is real. The advantages some lighter-skinned people receive are real. Family background, upbringing, and how society perceives us can affect our lives.

We really need to have converstions about these privileges and injustices. But rejecting people’s Blackness does not resolve any of them.

What does that rejection say to biracial people?

Kristen Welker is the daughter of a Black American mother and a father who is an Ashkenazi Jewish American

Some already encounter exclusion in White or other non-Black spaces. Then they enter Black spaces and hear that they don’t belong there either. They are expected to choose a side, prove their loyalty, or downplay part of their family history to make other people comfortable.

Why should someone have to deny a parent to establish a place in a community?

Acknowledging a White mother does not erase a Black father. Acknowledging an Asian father does not erase a Black mother. People should be able to recognize their full heritage without having that recognition used against them.

Being biracial and being Black do not have to be mutually exclusive.

Kamala Harris, the first Black American Vice President, the first Vice President of South Asian (Indian) descent, and the first Woman Vice President, is the daughter of immigrant parents. Her mother was from India, and her father was from Jamaica.

That also does not mean forcing every biracial person to identify exactly the same way. People should have room to describe their own experiences and identities. My objection is to those who insist that a person with a non-Black parent cannot belong to us, regardless of how that person identifies or lives.

I am not interested in replacing one rigid rule with another. I want us to stop treating belonging as something that can be revoked over a family tree.

Many Black people already embrace our biracial kin. This criticism is directed at those who refuse—and especially those who dress that refusal up as protecting Black identity.

Bejamin Jealous was president of the National Association for the Advancment of Color People (NAACP). He is the child of a White father and a biracial mother.

Protecting our people should not require rejecting some of our children.

We have enough to confront without reproducing the same obsession with ancestry and supposed racial purity that has done so much damage to us. Further division will not solve our problems. It will give us more problems to solve.

Our biracial kin should not have to erase part of themselves to be embraced as our own.

October 1, 2026
The Best Way to Evaluate a Conspiracy Theory Is to Ask One Question: Why?

People often ask me why I don’t believe many of the conspiracy theories circulating online.

My answer is simple:

What’s the endgame?

In other words, what is the actual objective?

Throughout history, governments, corporations, intelligence agencies, and wealthy interests have absolutely conspired. Watergate happened. COINTELPRO happened. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study happened. The tobacco industry concealed evidence about smoking. Companies have colluded to fix prices. Governments have lied to justify wars.

Real conspiracies exist.

But they usually have understandable motivations.

In my view, nearly every major government or corporate conspiracy can be traced back to one or more of three goals.

First, preserving existing systems of power.

Whether that involves racial hierarchy, patriarchy, religious dominance, authoritarianism, or protecting political institutions, those in power often act to preserve the systems that benefit them.

Second, maximizing profits.

This is probably the biggest motivation of them all.

When you follow the money, countless scandals suddenly make sense. Companies cut corners because it’s cheaper. Industries lobby against regulation because it protects their profits. Politicians accept campaign money or bribes because it benefits them personally or politically.

Greed doesn’t require a master plan.

It only requires incentives.

Third, protecting the status quo by silencing credible threats.

History contains numerous examples of governments and institutions surveilling, discrediting, imprisoning, or otherwise neutralizing people they viewed as dangerous to their interests. The methods vary, but the underlying motivation is remarkably consistent: maintain existing power.

Those three motivations explain far more than most people realize.

They also provide a useful filter for evaluating extraordinary claims.

Take, for example, the claim that unnamed elites are trying to “make the world gay.”

My first question is always the same:

Why?

What is the practical objective?

How would governments, corporations, or powerful institutions materially benefit from such a plan?

Some argue it’s about reducing population growth. But if population reduction were actually the goal, declining birth rates in many developed countries are already being driven by rising housing costs, expensive childcare, economic uncertainty, delayed marriage, and changing social priorities. Those are observable economic and social trends that require no elaborate global conspiracy to explain.

Once a theory can’t identify a coherent objective rooted in power, profit, or political advantage, it often shifts toward increasingly fantastical explanations involving supernatural forces, secret societies with limitless power, or shadowy groups pursuing evil simply for the sake of being evil.

That’s usually where I stop taking it seriously.

Real conspiracies are rarely that dramatic.

They’re often surprisingly ordinary.

They’re driven by money.

They’re driven by politics.

They’re driven by fear.

They’re driven by self-interest.

And they’re frequently far sloppier than people imagine.

Consider the devastating earthquakes in Turkey. Investigations pointed to widespread failures in building standards and enforcement. Buildings that should have withstood the shaking collapsed because regulations were ignored or inadequately enforced, while corruption and cost-cutting reportedly played a role in some cases. That’s not evidence of a centuries-long master plan. It’s a reminder that corruption, weak oversight, and the pursuit of profit can produce catastrophic consequences.

Or consider the 2022 infant formula crisis in the United States. The shortage exposed vulnerabilities created by a highly concentrated domestic market, recalls at a major manufacturing facility, and regulatory challenges. The result was a crisis that left parents scrambling to feed their babies. Again, the lesson wasn’t that an all-powerful cabal had engineered the shortage. It was that weak competition, regulatory failures, and economic incentives created a system that was far more fragile than it appeared.

Those explanations may not be as exciting as internet conspiracy theories.

But they’re supported by evidence.

The truth is that reality is often more mundane—and more troubling—than fiction.

Powerful institutions don’t need to be all-knowing masterminds to cause enormous harm.

Sometimes greed is enough.

Sometimes incompetence is enough.

Sometimes protecting power is enough.

Before accepting any conspiracy theory, ask one simple question:

Who benefits?

If you can’t identify a believable answer rooted in power, profit, or preserving the status quo, then skepticism isn’t just reasonable.

It’s necessary.

October 1, 2026
MAGA’s Messiah and the Myth of the Good Old Days

The thing that fucks me up about the MAGA cult is that so many of them genuinely, blindly, and sadly believe that Chump (Trump) is some messianic figure here to rescue this country from cannibalizing itself through neoliberalism, crony capitalism, and privatization.

To me, he represents the same appetite dressed up in a red hat. Nepotism, grifting, self-promotion, and incompetence sold as strength. Somehow, his petty belligerence becomes courage. His obsessive whining becomes a legitimate grievance. His need for applause becomes devotion to the country.

They see a professional con man and call him their savior.

And what, exactly, is he supposed to save them from? Those imaginary glory days when a White man could supposedly support a family with little education, women happily stayed in the kitchen, and Black people knew their place?

The visible rise of black people and other marginalized groups into socioeconomic positions once held exclusively by White people, including the presidency, created irrational fear and panic in many White Americans who felt that absolute power, wealth, and prestige belonged only to them.

Some people had real economic security during those years. But the picture being sold leaves out who was excluded, whose labor was exploited, and whose freedom was sacrificed to maintain it. Women were not universally happy with dependence. Black people were not content with segregation, domestic service, limited menial work opportunities, and second-class citizenship.

Your nostalgia does not get to erase our history.

The past they long for is part memory, part mythology, and part desire to restore a hierarchy they think should never have been challenged. They want the wages and purchasing power associated with that period, but too many also want its social arrangements.

During the United States’ economic golden age, Black people were still mostly working in menial jobs as domestics and laborers. They were being denied equal access to housing, especially in the newly built suburbs.

Those are two different things. And I wish they would stop pretending otherwise.

Personally, I never fell under the illusion that Biden (or even Obama) was a hero or a messiah. His presidency is over, and my standard remains the same: policies, actions, competence, and accountability. A diverse cabinet does not automatically transform an administration into a vehicle for liberation. Neither does putting a Democrat in the White House.

I wanted someone to do his/her fucking job. I also wanted more than competent management of a system that keeps squeezing working people while rewarding those who already own everything.

That criticism did not disappear because Trump returned to power.

My problem with MAGA is that its devotion to Chump repeatedly swallows the very accountability its supporters claim to demand. When something goes wrong, somebody else must have caused it. When he contradicts himself, they supply the explanation. When he disappoints them, they move the goalposts.

To many in MAGA, everything bad that happens during Trump’s presidency is the fault of Biden, Obama, or the Democrats. They see everything good as a direct result of Trump’s leadership.

At what point does the man you elected become responsible for the things he does?

The economic pain that helped create this movement is not imaginary. Communities have lost jobs, stability, and a sense of a future. But the explanation cannot begin and end with whichever president a cable news host tells you to hate.

Deindustrialization devastated communities built around factory work. Automation changed how many workers employers needed. Highways and suburban development reshaped cities, often at the expense of established neighborhoods. Energy markets changed. Smaller towns lost employers, young people, and resources.

Deindustrialization devastated once-thriving communities and neighborhoods, leaving them impoverished and blighted.

These changes did not all come from one president, one party, or one secret meeting of cartoon villains.

But political choices determined who received protection, who absorbed the losses, and who got rich from the transition. Decisions about labor rights, taxation, trade, public investment, and privatization were very important. And they still are today.

And administrations from both parties helped build or preserve arrangements that concentrated wealth and weakened working people’s bargaining power.

That is why I do not accept the idea that electing a billionaire with a talent for branding somehow frees us from billionaire power.

Chump offers people a villain, a slogan, and somebody to look down on. That does not necessarily give them a pension, affordable housing, healthcare, or control over their working lives.

You cannot pay the electric bill with the satisfaction of making somebody else miserable.

I suspect that part of MAGA’s appeal goes beyond economics. For some of its most devoted supporters, the fear is having to share power with women, racial minorities, immigrants, and people of different faiths, gender identities, and sexual orientations.

Equality feels like dispossession when you believe the country belongs to you.

They hear demands for equal treatment and imagine revenge. They hear criticism of White supremacy and imagine an attack on their existence. Meanwhile, most of the people they fear are trying to live, raise their children, work, and enjoy some relative peace and prosperity.

Many conservative White people fear acts of revenge from Black people. What they fail to understand is that most Black people just want to have equal opportunities for good neighborhoods, education, and jobs rather than plotting or enacting any form of revenge.

We should not have to remain subordinate just to make somebody else feel secure.

And Mango Mussolini’s constant need for praise does nothing to convince me that he is the tough guy he wants people to see. Pettiness is not strength. Vindictiveness is not leadership. Surrounding yourself with loyal sycophants does not make your judgment better.

Neither does refusing to accept defeat.

Trump lost the 2020 election and won the 2024 election. Both results can be true. Winning later does not retroactively turn an earlier loss into a stolen victory. If your respect for elections depends on whether your candidate wins, your loyalty is to the candidate.

That is the problem.

I have compared this kind of devotion to the danger represented by Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. That is a serious analogy, and the circumstances are different. But the warning behind it is important here: people become vulnerable when loyalty to a leader takes priority over evidence, judgment, and their own well-being.

A movement becomes dangerous when every criticism is treated as persecution and every demand from the leader becomes a test of faith.

MAGA devotion to Trump looks eerily like the devotion that many people had to Jim Jones.

Cultlike devotion to a person is never a substitute for political principles.

And yes, that applies to Democrats too. It applies to politicians I like. It applies to politicians you like. Nobody should receive a lifetime exemption from scrutiny because they once inspired us or made the right people angry.

I do not want a messiah. I want humane policies, accountable leadership, and a society where people can live without being sacrificed to somebody else’s profits.

My admiration for Bernie Sanders and the Squad does not come from a cult of personality. It comes from the policy solutions that they propose and the fact that they seem to address the needs of average Americans rather than corporations and the super-rich. They do this without engaging in culture wars and mindless platitudes.

The people I call “Y’all-Qaeda” are not going to disappear simply because an election ends or a politician eventually leaves office. The grievances, authoritarian impulses, and appetite for enemies require more than waiting for the next news cycle.

We have to confront the conditions that make people desperate, and the politics that teach them to aim that desperation at everybody except those benefiting from it.

Because the country does not need more people worshipping a man who promises to make them great.

It needs people willing to ask who gets the wealth, who holds the power, and who keeps paying the fucking price.

October 1, 2026
Stop Trusting Republicans to Play Fair

One thing that used to really piss me off about the Obama administration (and the Democratic Party as a whole) was the refusal to recognize just how far Republicans were willing to go to gain and keep power.

Democratic leaders kept looking for reasonable partners. They kept talking about compromise, common ground, and reaching across the aisle. Meanwhile, Republicans kept showing them that their commitment to those things lasted only as long as it served their interests.

At some point, believing them becomes a choice.

There is no reasoning your way around people who negotiate in bad faith. There is no meaningful compromise when one side treats every concession as an opportunity to demand more. The Democratic Party needs to stand up and fight tooth and nail for the principles it claims to hold.

But the lessons of the Obama years still don’t seem to have sunk in.

We keep waiting for Republicans to come to their senses, embrace their better angels, or stand by their own words. Then, when they abandon those words, Democratic leaders act disappointed. They seem to think disappointment is going to shame Republicans into changing their behavior.

How many times do we have to watch this?

The fight over the Supreme Court in 2020 made this painfully clear. Some people genuinely counted on a handful of Republican senators to honor the standard their party had used to block Obama’s Supreme Court nominee. They expected consistency from people who had already demonstrated that the rules could change whenever power was at stake.

After the Senate failed to convict Trump in his first impeachment trial, some still believed that those same Republican senators would suddenly put fairness ahead of political advantage.

Why? What had they done to earn that faith?

The Democratic leadership, the corporate media, and far too many liberals keep convincing themselves that this time Republicans will play fairly. This time, institutional norms will hold. This time, someone will discover a conscience.

And when that doesn’t happen, we get another round of solemn speeches about how troubling it all is.

I am tired of being told to admire the restraint of people who keep getting their asses handed to them.

There is a familiar saying about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Whoever first said it, the point applies here. It is beyond frustrating to watch Democratic leaders repeat an approach that keeps failing, then have their defenders insist that the rest of us simply don’t understand the strategy.

Apparently, they’re always playing three-dimensional chess. Apparently, every defeat is part of some brilliant plan that will reveal itself later.

Meanwhile, the whole thing looks more like Wile E. Coyote chasing the damn Road Runner.

And every time a liberal shows up to explain that my lack of faith is unwarranted, I want to ask: What, exactly, am I supposed to be impressed by?

The speeches? The stern letters? The commitment to looking reasonable while the other side takes what it wants?

I do not need another lecture about patience from someone who confuses having a strategy with defending whatever the leadership happens to do.

Compromise requires people who will honor an agreement. When political leaders repeatedly abandon their own standards for an advantage, trusting them again should require evidence—not another appeal to their supposed decency.

And compromise itself should not be treated as a virtue regardless of what gets surrendered. People’s rights, livelihoods, and futures are on the line. The goal cannot simply be to reach an agreement so everyone in Washington can congratulate themselves for being bipartisan.

The goal should be to deliver something worth fighting for.

Democratic leaders need to stop acting as though Republican approval is necessary to make their demands legitimate. Make the case. Use the power voters gave you. Organize. Give people a reason to show up, stay involved, and believe that their participation matters.

If the party claims to stand for working people, civil rights, and democracy, then it needs to fight like those commitments mean something.

Stop trusting Republicans to become the partners you wish they were. Make your demands, prepare for a real political fight, and rally the damn people behind you.

October 1, 2026