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Calls for “Medicare for All” are often vapid. A phrase alone isn’t policy; it’s words that signal membership in a group, like when people say “have a blessed day” (Christians) or “the book was so much better than the movie” (assholes). And things get less serious still when people suggest that we could pay for Medicare for All with a wealth tax or by ending aid to Israel, which is like imagining that you could buy a Ferrari by selling framed needlepoints of your witticisms.

That being said, single-payer health insurance is not a crazy idea. Many countries have some version of single-payer, so much so that the “OMG LITERALLY EVERY ADVANCED COUNTRY DOES THIS!!!!” pleas from online lunatics are about 60 percent true. In a sane world, we’d be having a serious discussion about the pros and cons of changing systems. Of course, in our world, we’re having an unserious shouting match over a slogan that could mean 100 different things and that is about as likely to happen in the near term as Snuggle Bear being voted Sexiest Man Alive.

But what would a serious sales pitch sound like? I’ll volunteer to make that pitch because, though I know that single payer is not the only method of achieving universal coverage, I’m friendly to the concept.1 And I’m one of few people incentivised to lay the pros and cons bare, because I’m professional Blog Curmudgeon, not a politician. So, if I was compelled to make a serious pitch for Medicare for All in the US, this would be that pitch:

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The tradeoff with driverless cars is clear: They save lives, but they cause some job displacement. Most people who take the “jobs” side of the jobs/lives tradeoff don’t advertise it; unions don’t march carrying “YOU SHOULD DIE” signs, and nobody tweets “Bring back The Terror because I FEED MY FAMILY OPERATING A GUILLOTINE!!! ✊✊✊”. But the tradeoff remains real: The latest data is that Waymos reduce accidents resulting in a serious injury or worse by 94 percent compared to human drivers in cities where they operate. More than 40,000 people die in car crashes in the US every year. Maybe Waymos results won’t scale, maybe their results are somewhat context-dependent, but the potential to save lives is obvious.

Even so, a “people should die so that I can keep my job” movement exists. Incredibly, that movement tries to claim the moral high ground by waving away safety data and emphasizing job losses. This video by More Perfect Union — a progressive media outlet — treats every job loss as a deadweight loss, though technology typically destroys some jobs and creates others. The video also makes treacly emotional appeals and leans heavily on music that was probably listed in iStock as “Ominous Progressive Media Theme 47-D”. And ironically, this video from a progressive source (it was founded by Bernie Sanders’ former campaign manager) treats Uber jobs as indispensable, though it was only last year that Uber was to Online Lefty Nutcases what The Odyssey is today to Right-Wing Rage Fetishists.

Driving carries risk, but we do it anyway.1 Smoking also carries risk, but people do it anyway. Of course, they do it a lot less than they used to: Smoking is down by about two-thirds since the ‘60s. That drop is mostly because people now know that smoking is deadly, and a little because smoking is now banned everywhere except for Wilco concerts and one cornfield in Ladner, South Dakota. The tobacco industry fought hard to keep smoking common, famously defending their product in a high-profile hearing — it was the most gripping Senate hearing of the ‘90s that didn’t involve a discussion of Clarence Thomas’ pubic hair. People now consider Big Tobacco’s arguments a PR disaster, and nobody calls for re-popularizing cigarettes, though I’ve noticed that pro-tobacco arguments back then map fairly well onto anti-Waymo arguments today.

Most people don’t think of tobacco use as a jobs issue, but most people aren’t from places that grow tobacco. I, however, am: I grew up mostly in Kentucky and Virginia. In those places, anti-smoking campaigns were treated as a Bolshevik plot to destroy the local economy. Smoking bans were resisted; well into the 2000s, you’d come back from a restaurant in Norfolk smelling like you’d been at a mafia-run poker game. Generally, smoking was treated as patriotic-bordering-on-noble, and anti-smoking campaigns were thought of as overbearing Yankee moralism — who were they to tell us how many cartons per day our kids should smoke?

Data was waved away. Sure, research showed that nicotine is addictive and tobacco is a carcinogen, but the Nazis used “research” to show that the Aryans are the master race — you’re not a Nazi, are you? Smarter idiots would dismiss the damning studies by noting that correlation doesn’t prove causation, which is true, but it’s also true that correlation sometimes is due to causation, and that was true with smoking and cancer. The reality was that people were scared, they felt that their livelihoods were threatened, so they defended an industry that was causing preventable deaths. And what ultimately happened is that smoking did fade away, local tobacco production did plummet, but there was no discernible effect on the local economy.

And, frankly: I think Big Tobacco had a better argument than the anti-Waymo people, because the anti-Waymo crowd are trying to ban access to a service, while the tobacco companies were merely trying to preserve an individual’s God-given right to assault their organs with tar. Cigarettes aren’t banned, but Waymo’s opponents are trying to get the cars off the streets. And there’s a big difference between giving someone information so that they can make a different choice and precluding someone’s choice due to a misguided sense of how jobs are created and preserved.

Nobody today argues that we should bring back dangerous and or deadly practices in the name of “jobs”. Removing seat belts from cars would create jobs at hospitals; putting cocaine back in soft drinks would surely boost productivity, especially in the Terrible Screenplay industry. That doesn’t mean we should turn back the clock. And though every technology affects jobs, the solution is to help people manage the transition, not to return to the Stone Age. And when a technology saves lives, the switch should be accelerated, not stopped. People today laugh at Big Tobacco’s cynicism; they’re seen as corporate villains only slightly more cartoonish than Mr. Burns. I think that the anti-Waymo movement might look similar in the future.

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The debate over the meaning of the word “socialist” is almost certainly causing more confusion than clarity. We’re thoroughly spinning our pants and peeing our wheels in a pointless semantic discussion, and that discussion seems to have reached a new low this week for perhaps the 10,000th week in a row. Here are Zohran Mamdani and John Leguizamo — yes, Luigi from the Mario Brothers movie where everyone was drunk all the time — road testing the newest definition of “socialism”.

I don’t freak out over the word “socialism”; I know that when many people say “socialism”, they just mean “public spending”. And if John Leguizamo is a socialist because he loves fire departments, then fine, Roger that, I will reiterate my position that we should never ask actors about their political opinions, but sure: I agree that fire departments are good! And Mamdani is right that libraries are public goods, and I’ll be a mensch and not point out that many US libraries were gifts from literal Gilded Age oligarchs. If socialism means support for well-functioning social services, then sign me up: I’ll do everything except attend meetings, because Oscar Wilde was right when he said that the problem with socialism is that it takes up too many evenings.

But I have a follow-up question: If socialism is defined by support for run-of-the-mill public services like schools, fire departments, and libraries, then why does the DSA exist? Because basically everybody supports those things — why do we need the DSA or the word “socialism” at all? Why did the DSA to create a party within a party that presents itself as a pure alternative to a corrupted “establishment”, and why is that faction determined to take over a party whose support for public services has been an ideological lodestone for at least a hundred years? If this is about libraries and schools, then great news: The battle was won during the van Buren administration! But everyone knows that the fight is about other policies, so let’s talk about those.

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It’s time for the columnist equivalent of crowd work: a mailbag column. Why should I dominate the conversation — let’s talk about what you want to talk about! And by “you”, I mean “readers who wrote in with questions about things that I want to talk about.”

For future reference: Questions go to questions@imightbewrong.org. Paid subscribers are far more likely to have their questions answered, and that’s not only because 80 percent of my unpaid subscribers are illiterate. Let’s dive in!

From Max: If you could design a university course on the history of 20th and 21st century comedy, what would be on the syllabus?

I’m going to make two assumptions: 1) This is a 15-hour semester course, and 2) I can’t be fired or dragged into Whiny Student Hell for assigning material that some would consider offensive. And that’s important, because I can hardly cover over a century of comedy if I’m only allowed to assign JibJab videos and reruns of Alf. So, here’s a hypothetical class that would never exist in the real world due to assumption #2.

Class 1: Vaudeville: what is a joke? (alternate title: Which ethnic stereotypes are the funniest?)

Assigned material: Who’s on First?, Henny Youngman

Class 2: Silent film: the importance of visuals. (alternate title: Why is it funny to watch someone almost die?)

Assigned material: Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, Buster Keaton’s The General

Class 3: Satire — mocking the recognizable. (alternate title: How to flatter people’s egos by sharing their opinions)

Assigned material: The Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup

Class 4: Three-camera sitcoms — your life, but better. (alternate title: What if some fuckup schlub husband could still have a hot wife?)

Assigned material: The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Jeffersons

Class 5: Subversive comedy — freaking out the squares. (alternate title: Butchering sacred cows all the way to the bank)

Assigned material: Monty Python’s The Life of Brian

Class 6: Absurdism — nothing makes sense, nothing matters. (alternate title: What’s the exact right amount of drugs to do while writing comedy?)

Assigned material: Airplane!, Conan’s “Satellite TV” bit

Class 7: Political comedy — the challenge of being more interesting than the PBS Newshour. (alternate title: Voltaire, but retarded)

Assigned material: Mort Sahl, SNL’s Bush/Gore debate sketch, Key & Peele “anger translator” sketch, The Daily Show on the night of the Dick Cheney hunting accident

Class 8: Standup comedy — laughing at someone laughing at themselves. (alternate title: A socially acceptable forum in which to say “fingerblast”)

Assigned material: Louie CK’s Chewed Up, Eddie Izzard’s Dress to Kill

Class 9: Sketch comedy — a crazy person walks into a bar. (alternate title: Yelling catchphrases while wearing wigs)

Assigned material: Chappelle’s Show “Clayton Bigsby” sketch, SNL “Motivational speaker” sketch, The Kids in the Hall “Eradicator” sketch, Mr. Show’s “Pre-taped call-in sketch”

Class 10: Improv comedy — people love a high-wire act. (alternate title: Your friend’s troupe is not the apotheosis of the form)

Assigned material: TJ & Dave

Class 11: Low-budget comedy movies — taking many low-stakes swings for the fences (alternate title: Throwing $2 million at some young punk and seeing if he strikes gold)

Assigned material: The Jerk, Superbad

Class 12: Late night shows — sublime filler (alternate title: One good joke a night, five nights a week)

Assigned material: Johnny Carson’s monologue, Rodney Dangerfield on Carson, Letterman’s “Stupid Pet Tricks”, Will Ferrell as Robert Goulet on Conan

Class 13: Single-camera sitcoms — the joke bucket becomes optimized (alternate title: Quantity traded for quality, and then cancelled)

Assigned material: Arrested Development, 30 Rock, The Simpsons

Class 14: Musical comedy — the hard-to-access cheat code (alternate title: Great — now I’m lacking talent in two genres)

Assigned material: Weird Al “Eat It”, Tenacious D “Tribute”, Lonely Island “Lazy Sunday”, Flight of the Conchords “Business Time”

Class 15: Independent creators — total freedom, utter irrelevance (alternate title: The gatekeepers are gone and we miss them)

Assigned material: Bo Burnham “Welcome to the Internet”, Zach Galifianakis “Between Two Ferns”, Kyle Gordon “Mr. Jambo”, Nicole Daniels “Nonprofit boss”

From Steve: [Steve references a recent Pod Save America episode in which the DSA was lauded for their ability to "energize young people", which is something they feel the Democratic Party fails to do right now. And Steve asks…] If you were part of the Democratic Party leadership, what would your advice be to capture the DSA energy without capitulating to the DSA?

Oh Lord…I’m part of Democratic Party leadership in this scenario? What Greek God did I fuck over to bring this living hell into existence? Regardless, I’ll try to see if I can find something to say other than “This is your mess and I resign.”

My first advice would be to not worry too much about failing to match the energy of DSA zealots — zealots are definitionally energetic and motivated. Consider the number of people wearing masks at this recent DSA meeting:

Does it take commitment to still wear a Covid mask four years after most of us gleefully set our mask ablaze and peed on the ashes? Yes! But that doesn’t make it a sensible thing to do.

My other advice would be to not try to split the baby with the DSA. Many leftists’ identity is based on placing themselves in opposition to the mainstream, which means that when you move left, they move left in order to remain edgy. Recent attempts at appeasement have not gone well: Elizabeth Warren flopped in 2020 running as Bernie Lite, Biden’s slew of concessions to the progressive wing didn’t prevent a leftist revolt, and the recent DSA primary victories have exclusively come against highly progressive Democrats (several were co-sponsors of Bernie’s Medicare for All bill!). The DSA wants you all-in, and going part-of-the-way-in will probably cost you moderate votes but not prevent you from being called a handmaiden of the Epstein class.

I would also point out that trying to craft a perfectly inoffensive-to-all-parties persona is antithetical to inspiring enthusiasm. People want to follow leaders — they’re turned off by politicians who come across as inauthentic and calculating. As it happens, the DSA is adamant on this point — that’s why they developed instant puppy love for Graham Platner’s seafood-scented machismo and decry “smoothgroin” politics and “Tracy Flick types”. There’s an undercurrent of masculine energy in DSA politics; it contrasts with the often-feminine energy of the mainstream Democratic Party. So, counterintuitively, a politician could possibly siphon some of the DSA’s mojo by clearly and forcefully telling them to jump up their own asses.

I’ll cite what I’ve previously said about Israel-Palestine as an example: In a presidential primary, it’s not going to be possible to fudge that issue. My advice is to loudly embrace the complexity: Affirm your desire for a two-state solution, resist all efforts oversimplify the conflict, and inform everyone who’s annoyed by that that they are free to lick your balls. And perhaps the “lick my balls” part is optional, but I think it should at least be implied.

From Jacob: What is your opinion of conservative readers who read and appreciate your work?

20 years ago, I would have thought it was odd; now, I get it. And that’s because the fringes of American politics have grown, which has shrunk the perceived differences between conservatives and liberals.

Of the many explanations for the changes in our politics over the last 20-ish years, I think an underappreciated one is that the World War II generation died out. That generation witnessed real communism and real fascism and did not think that either was cool; the edgelord takes about Hitler and Mao that exist these days are possible largely because young people usually don’t have a firm grasp on what those guys did. But for about 50 years — basically the adult lifespan of the Silent Generation — fringe politics were fringe and both parties were mostly what you’d call “classically liberal”. There would be heated debates about things like gay rights and the top marginal tax rate, but not things like whether the last election was secretly rigged or whether the streets should run red with the blood of bankers and landlords.

Today, one party is dominated by a right-populist know-nothing, and extremists on the other side are trying to exert control. In that context, the distance between old-school liberals and conservatives seems small. I probably disagree with the typical Wall Street Journal reader on Obamacare and climate change, but we probably agree that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and we should not model our economy on The Great Leap Forward. I think a lot of people are sensing that compression, so when a small-c conservative encounters me — a political comic full of hot takes like “Hamas is bad” and “supply and demand exist” — I seem a lot more tolerable than I might have seemed back when we were debating Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the Bush tax cut.

From Greg: [Greg notes that I’ve become an accidental aficionado of 1920s jazz due to the copyright-expired music I use on my podcast, and observes that songs of that era often have themes that — to put it delicately — are very outdated. And to put it not delicately: They’re so fucking racist they could stop time. And then he asks…] What is the moral calculus of playing songs, sometimes songs that we do not even sing the words to, that contain some cringeworthy allusions or phraseology of an earlier time?

I think the best approach to that stuff is a straightforward approach: Acknowledge that old art often contains things that were considered okay a long time ago but are not considered okay now. And if you’re with a child, who needs guidance from adults about what’s acceptable and what’s not, it probably makes sense to make it clear that the old ideas are bad.

I feel like the alternative — hiding things, censoring things — gives those the allure of forbidden fruit; I’m reminded of The Simpsons’ “What is your fascination with my forbidden closet of mystery?” joke. It also treats people like children; I think grown-ups are capable of encountering these things and understanding what they are. To wit: My wife and I recently watched Gone with the Wind (she had never seen it), which — as you may have heard — is a very racist movie. Ugly stereotypes abound, and the South is treated as the unambiguous good guys. But the movie remains a cultural artifact — still the highest-grossing movie of all time adjusted for inflation — and both of us heroically managed to make it through the 962-minute runtime without being brainwashed into thinking that the antebellum South was good. And the disclaimer that HBO put at the beginning saying “Warning: Ahead thar be racism” put the movie in context for anyone who didn’t know what they were getting into.

I think that the matter-of-fact approach marginalizes the bad elements of old content and avoids treating it like powerful magic. It also solves the throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater problem, because, sure, the “call me Loretta” joke in The Life of Brian doesn’t play well these days, but if I disown everything that contains anything problematic, I’ll only be able to watch a few Bluey episodes and Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium. A more dignified approach is to acknowledge that old stuff frequently contains outdated views, and those views are, indeed, outdated because societies evolve.

That’s all for today! Thanks very much to everyone who wrote in!

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***Hi there! I’m planning to do a Q&A soon, so please send your questions, comments, and Adderall-aided 10,000 word screeds to questions@imightbewrong.org. Questions from paid subscribers get priority, because — as it says in Leviticus — “Paid subscribers before free imbibers”.

Recently, Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed was asked about comments he made in 2020 about defunding the police.

That is a sanewashing master class. That wasn’t the run-of-the-mill ten dollar in-and-out sanewashing package: That was a bumper-to-bumper deep sanity cleanse, wax, and buff — you could eat off that dumbass Peak Woke statement! My favorite part was “Do you disagree with investing in libraries?” — that’s the socialist motte and bailey gambit taken to its apotheosis. I wonder: Do people buy that? If I said “WE MUST MURDER ALL METHODISTS AND BUILD A BRIDGE OUT OF THEIR BONES!!!”, when people object, could I say “Oh, so you don’t support infrastructure improvements”? El-Sayed’s position seems to have gone from “let’s spend significantly less money on police” to “let’s spend significantly more money on police” — he did, after all, bring up pensions, the ravenous beast that stalks every municipal budget — yet he claims that his position hasn’t changed.

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Making a big-budget, high-profile movie forces a director to chart a course between left-wing and right-wing dangers. This type of dilemma has been known for millennia, and actually appears in the ancient Greek poem Odysseus’ Bogus Journey (sometimes translated as “The Odyssey”). Here’s the situation:

Faced with this dilemma, Christopher Nolan arguably tacked towards woke and put his film at risk of being ravaged by the right-wing social media beast. Nolan got flak for casting several non-white actors, infuriating those who would like the ancient Greek tale to exclusively star historically-accurate 5’4” hairy dudes and women with unibrows.1 Nolan also cast the transgender actor Elliot Page as Sinon, causing some people to reveal that they have — and surely have always had — strong preconceptions about the physical appearance of Sinon from The Odyssey. But the cancellation attempts seem to have failed: The Odyssey made $264 million last weekend, which isn’t just sailing successfully past the metaphorical beast — that’s bringing the beast’s wife to a toe-curling orgasm and then leaving a huge deuce in the beast’s bathroom.

Is the movie woke, though? I would say so if I thought it was. I’ve been candid about the silly woke stuff that I saw when I worked in entertainment; though people are currently trying to cram these events down a very-crowded memory hole, there was a moment when Hollywood decided that everything from Darkwing Duck: The Next Generation to Anal MILFs 19 had to be a sobering comment on race and identity. That season of Master of None where Aziz Ansari turned into a Black lesbian did happen — it seems like a hallucination, but it was real. Though some people want to treat the woke wave like a college rasta phase — that is, they want to move on and never acknowledge that it existed — that stuff did happen and does happen, and I don’t pretend otherwise.

But IMHO, The Odyssey is not woke. Of course, maybe that’s partly why it’s set to make more money than God makes in a really good year.

To the extent that the film has a message,2 that message might be one of the most small-c conservative messages possible, namely: If you disobey God, he will smite your ass and laugh about it. The gods in Nolan’s Odyssey aren’t impish, quasi-human pranksters: They’re an omnipotent police state that punishes every infraction with ruthless panache. The concept of “entrapment” doesn’t seem to exist in this world: At one point, the gods trap the sailors on an island containing nothing but cows and then punish them for eating the cows. The gods could have protected the cows by not letting the sailors near them to begin with, but they would apparently rather coax the sailors into a rule violation so that they can dispense some Ancient World justice. The plot is basically Dirty Harry in sandals.

What about the casting? Well, IMHO, Elliot Page is miscast. I have to be honest: When Page was on screen, my eyes did not tell me “That’s the grown-up version of the boy we saw earlier” — they said “Hey, its Juno!” But I’m aware that Page was in Inception and directors have actors they like working with, so that’s probably what happened here. If Scorsese remade Porgy and Bess, Joe Pesci would probably be in it; if Tim Burton made The Little Rascals, I’d back Johnny Depp to be Alfalfa. For better or worse, this is how directors work.

As for the race-blind casting, that didn’t throw me because hyper-realism was never at play. After all: There’s a cyclops in this movie. The poem is an ancient myth. Odysseus’ vessel is a Viking ship 2,000 years out-of-time, and the characters not only speak English — they say words like “dad” and “amazeballs”.3 Nolan made umpteen choices that serve movie-making, not realism, and the casting can be explained by this hilariously-unwoke-and-obviously-true explanation from Ridley Scott about why he didn’t cast an Egyptian lead in the movie Exodus: Gods and Kings.

"I can't mount a film of this budget, where I have to rely on tax rebates in Spain, and say that my lead actor is Muhammad so-and-so from such-and-such.”

Progressive Twitter shat a Ziggurat of Ur worth of bricks at that statement, but Scott was right: Big movies require big movie stars. Matt Damon is one of perhaps four people on Earth who can lead a movie this size. Does Matt Damon look Greek? No. Does Charlize Theron look Greek? Haha fuck no. Do Anne Hathaway, Lupita Nyong’o, Robert Pattinson, John Leguizamo, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Travis Scott, or Hamish Patel look Greek? The answers range from “not really” to “pffft come on”. And you could demand that this movie be made with George Stephanopoulos as Odysseus and Pete Sampras as Antinous, but I propose that we be adults and acknowledge that Nolan simply chose actors that he thought audiences would like.

Nolan’s Odyssey — like Homer’s Odyssey — is not a story about race. And that, to me, makes the story not woke. The hallmark of wokeness is to make all things about race and identity. Race, gender, and sexual orientation are the omnipresent lenses through which the world must be viewed — wokeness slanders the word “colorblindness” as a smokescreen for privilege. Nolan’s “Ancient Greece” happens to look a hell of a lot like present-day America, and if people want to get hung up on the actors’ races, that’s their prerogative. But the movie’s sole comment on race seems to be “get over it”, and based on the box office and reviews, a lot of people are agreeing to that condition.

Which is yet another reminder that Twitter is not real life. Twitter is full of clout chasers who try to exploit division for personal gain. Right-wing rage peddlers tried to run the “THIS MOVIE IS WOKE!!!” play because that play worked on Snow White, The Marvels, Supergirl, and others.4 The people behind those campaigns got attention and clout, which are usually convertible to American dollars. And the exact same dynamic exists on the left. If a narrative resonates once, people will repeat it over and over again until it eventually fails — no one knows that better than Hollywood! But the failure of the “IT’S WOKE!!!” narrative in this case indicates that people might be ready for a new story.

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I’m from Virginia: I grew up near Norfolk and have been in the DC suburbs for much of my adult life. And I know that most people think that Virginians are — how do I put this? — inbred pig people wallowing in the filth of our own ignorance. Backwards, backwoods moonshine monkeys who marry our cousins and cheat on them with goats. Knuckle-dragging mud-tards whose idea of cultured evening is to get drunk on antifreeze and suck each other off in a chicken coop. These are, of course, crude stereotypes — I, personally, have never found them to be more than 75 percent true.

But it’s time to update your stereotypes of Virginia, because — far from being the banjo-strumming, pumpkin-fucking illiterates we’re assumed to be — Virginia’s labor force has the second-highest percentage of tech workers of any state. And we specialize in data centers: 13 percent of the entire world’s data center capacity is in Virginia. So: Who’s the pumpkin fucker now? I mean…still my cousin Jed, he’s insatiable, he’s been cited like 20 times and he’s decided that the fines are just the cost of doing business. But Jed also works for Nvidia and makes $200K a year, and I guess my point is: Virginia contains multitudes.

And to my delight, our competition has decided to trample their own balls: New York just passed the nation’s first statewide moratorium on data centers. Other states are considering similar laws. The populist panic against data centers seems to be growing, to which I say: Awesome, hilarious, please do more, you laughable dimwit troglo-dolts. I’ll never pay property taxes again and my kids will go to school on the International Space Station — Culpeper fucking Virginia will be the capital of the Space Age and New York City will eventually be reclaimed by weeds.

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There’s a debate happening over whether Democratic Socialists of America are socialist or communist. Both DSA folks and their critics seem to agree that the distinction is important; few seem compelled to dismiss the argument as a pointless slap fight over semantics. Many DSA folks, in particular, seem to view the “communist” label as libelous right-wing slander, and I’m going to give those people the benefit of the doubt and assume that they’re not the same people who show up at DSA meetings to express their abiding love for communism.

And now for a confession: I don’t know what the hell anyone on either side of this argument is talking about. My understanding of “socialism” and “communism” render the whole dialogue gibberish. I feel like a dog listening to a conversation between humans: I’m tilting my head and staring intently because I know that talking is happening but I’ll be damned if there are any words in there that I recognize. And my confusion only deepens when I confront the fact that I really, really, really don’t know what the hell socialism or communism have to do with Palestine.

Before I get to the crucial question of what other people think these words mean, here’s where I’m at: I was taught1 that communism evolves from socialism. To Marx, communism — sometimes called “full communism” even though that’s kind of like saying “totally dead” — is the hippified state of nature that emerges after capitalist structures have been dismantled. This is Marx’s “New Man” stuff: “Today he is a fisherman, tomorrow he is a painter” — you know, that hilarious bullshit. Socialism, to Marx, is the intermediate phase required to move from capitalism to communism. In that intermediate phase, the government seizes the means of production, and once capitalism is dismantled, human behavior fundamentally changes; the government becomes unnecessary and eventually withers away. True or untrue, it’s an elegant theory, even if scores of dead do get kind of “yada yada’d” out somewhere in the middle.

So to me, when people say “I’m socialist, not communist,” I hear: “I support the hellish purgatory that Marx himself called ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’, not the beautiful utopia that Marx thought would make the oppressive intermediary period worth tolerating.” Seems weird! Kind of like saying “You know what I love about corn? The HUSK!”

But obviously that’s not what people mean when they call themselves socialists. So, what do they mean? I’m not trying to convince anyone that my definitions are correct; I want to know what people mean when they apply these labels to themselves and others. It seems that there are a few interpretations.

Possible meaning #1: Communism is socialism, but, like…MORE

Communism is associated with the color red, and we sometimes call socialists “pinkos” (especially if “we” are a cop in a ‘50s police procedural). Do those colors represent the difference, i.e.: It’s just matter of degree? Are you a communist if you want jackbooted thugs to drag capitalists from their factories and have them pelted with rocks in the street, but you’re a socialist if you want medium-sized guys in Ugg boots to cajole capitalists onto the sidewalk where they will be lightly beaned with tennis balls? This seems to be how some people think.

If true, then the socialist/communist labels are just the far edge of the semantic hierarchy that’s emerging on the American left. In the same way that tabasco sauce comes in “medium”, “hot”, “blazin’”, “hellfire”, and “rectal Hiroshima”, some people’s labeling system seems to basically be this:

Possible meaning #2: Socialism means progressive taxes to fund a generous social safety net; communism means state control of business

This makes logical sense, though it’s basically the opposite of what “socialism” means in classical Marxism. Consistent with the sense that communism represents something beyond socialism, this definition identifies a step that communist would take that socialists won’t. Which is a reminder that unless you are the most extreme extremist in the leftist galaxy, someone will be around to call you a corporate pantywaist.

What confuses me about this definition is that it seems to render the word “socialist” completely unnecessary — doesn’t this definition simply describe mainstream Democrats? To wit: I support progressive taxes to fund a generous social safety net, I’m about as popular with socialists as water slides are with cats. This definition has the same matter-of-degree dynamic as meaning #1, but in the other direction: This time, socialists are Democrats, except…ya know…moreso. And I know that socialists like to pretend that they’re the only people who ever thought to subsidize health care or food, but that’s actually been a standard belief for pretty much every Democrat for the past hundred years.

Possible meaning #3: Socialism is democratic; communism is authoritarian

This seems to be the fault line for many people: Socialism is viewed as compatible with democratic governance, but communism is ipso facto authoritarian. And for sure, every government that has ever adopted the “communist” label has been authoritarian. Meanwhile there are nominally socialist parties all over Europe who are indisputably democratic, as proved by the fact that they take their frequent-and-often-brutal electoral ass-kickings with admirable aplomb.

But, again, the presence of other words confuses me: If socialists are definitionally democratic, then why do many people call themselves “democratic socialists”? That’s redundant — it’s like calling yourself a “celibate Civil War reenactor”. And socialists have huge debates — decades long debates, in fact — over whether socialism can or should incorporate liberal principles like free speech and elections. I don’t understand how that can exist within the “socialism” label if socialism implies a belief in liberal democracy.

So…thoughts? The floor is open, and on a non-paywall day, so I encourage the sane people to chime in so as to balance out the irradiated mutants who are sure to wander in. I think it’s unlikely that this debate will be settled to the satisfaction of anyone involved, but maybe — just maybe — I might at least figure out what the hell people are talking about.

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Last week, Bernie Sanders-backed Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed gave an answer to a question about preserving Social Security that was so remarkable that an “On this spot in 2026…” plaque might be needed to commemorate the event. Here it is:

Absolutely phenomenal. That answer was the Willy Wonka seven course dinner gum of dumb political answers, in that the many flavors of stupid just keep hitting you until your sense are overwhelmed.

The first problem is that El-Sayed answered a question about how to protect Social Security with a scheme to raise less revenue. The scheme would benefit elderly land-owners, a wealthy demographic, so a progressive making this proposal is a bit like a Klansman making a generous donation to Howard University. After proposing a tax cut on wealth, El-Sayed suggested paying for it with a wealth tax, and then capped his answer — which, I’ll remind you, was supposed to be about raising revenue and/or cutting spending — by proposing more spending on something totally unrelated. Also: Property taxes are levied at the state and local level, but El-Sayed is running for US Senate, so his whole answer is like promising to cut sales taxes in Jakarta. Just boffo stuff — if political numbskullery was art, then we just watched the Mona Lisa get painted. My only note is that El-Sayed should have found a way for his pants to fall down while accompanied by old-timey car horn going “AAAROOOOOOOOO-GAH!” — that would have elevated his response from transcendent comedy to perfect comedy.

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You know how when you were a kid, when someone asked what you want to do when you grow up, you’d say “I want to scan groceries at a Sam’s Club in Warwick, Rhode Island”? Well, awesome news: Rhode Island has passed a law requiring grocery stores to have one traditional check out lane operating for every three self-checkout machines, and also someone has to staff the self-checkout machines at all times. The law was backed by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, and its goals is to protect Space Age scanning-stuff-while-making-idle-chit-chat-because-you’re-bored-out-of-your-fucking-mind jobs.

One downside of the law is that food will probably get more expensive; voters once cared about that so much that they elected a retarded criminal in a Hail Mary attempt to bring prices down. Another downside is that people will spend more time standing in line at the grocery store. Those effects will surely be small, but so will any positive effect on employment. When measured in dollars, minutes, or jobs, the impact is tiny; the law only becomes noteworthy when you quantify its stupidity.

Grocery stores need customers. Stores attract customers by doing things like having sales, remodeling their stores, and hiring the least-weird high school kids they can find. One such innovation is self-checkout machines, which reduce time spent waiting in line and minimize the amount that customers have to interact with the still-pretty-weird high school kids who work at the store.

The ubiquity of self-checkout machines proves that customers like them. But Rhode Island lawmakers seem to believe that the rich fat cats who run grocery stores became rich fat cats by being total idiots, and that the stores could be run better by small-town lawmakers in a state that’s basically a series of mafia-run lighthouses. Instead of saying “The union wanted this bill, so we passed it,” lawmakers argued that these changes benefit the masses, even though businesses whose livelihoods depend on appealing to the masses could have made these changes but didn’t.

“This law is about preserving choice and keeping people at the center of the shopping experience,” said Rhode Island governor Dan McKee. Of course, the law limits choice; if you’d like to choose to use self-checkout, then this law makes it harder for you to do that. You’re also not allowed to choose to let the grocery store operate as efficiently as possible in order to keep prices low. At a time when the the low-overhead-low-price model of grocery stores is growing — Aldi, for example, is less of a “store” and more of a “warehouse that allows public access” — Rhode Island is bravely limiting your options in the name of “choice”.

One of the bill’s sponsors argued that it would “[improve] the store environment for workers and consumers.” The part about workers might be true — or might not! — but the part about consumers is almost certainly not true. Again: The grocery store’s business is to give customers what they want. If people wanted a better human-to-robot ratio, a store would give it to them, and that store’s owner would get rich. Incredibly, some advocates proclaimed the bill to be an anti-theft measure, even though grocery stores obviously don’t like stealing! Especially in a famously-mobbed-up place like Rhode Island! The people behind this bill have an extremely odd view of grocery store owners: They’re seen as rapacious capitalists feverishly optimizing their operation, but they’re also total morons who don’t know what their customers want and are being robbed blind.

All of this is being done to preserve a few checkout jobs. Maybe — a similar law in Long Beach, California resulted in stores simply ending self-checkout, so the effect on employment was unclear. Longer lines and a less customer-friendly experience could also push more people towards delivery, which is good if you’re a driver, but bad if you’re a cashier. As always, it’s far from clear that trying to save a specific job saves jobs on the whole, and we’ve known about this dynamic for about 200 years, but lawmakers always seem to think “Maybe this time.”

At any rate: If you live in the Newport-Providence corridor, and your dream is to have a low-paying job where you stand all day and make the same motion five jillion times in a row, you may keep hope alive. The state legislature has your back. And you’re extra lucky if you also don’t eat food, value your time, or exist in the broader economy — if that’s you, then this law is unambiguously good! Unfortunately, that’s much less true for everyone else, as Rhode Islanders are about to find out.

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***Hi! This article — written during the 2022 World Cup — represents the end of my little half-vacation. I’ll be back in the comedy mines on Monday, with a new article on Tuesday.

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The World Cup promises to be a dazzling spectacle of athletic skill. It also promises to be a gobsmacking display of anti-social dumbassery, as the world’s most obtuse idiots will have their in-stadium antics broadcast to billions around the globe. People on every continent will cringe with embarrassment as their countrymen cause perceptions of their country to be set back decades, if not centuries. While much has been written about the players who are likely to capture the world’s attention at the tournament, not enough has been written about the fans who will do the same. Therefore, here are ten fans to watch for at the 2022 World Cup.

Ian Dixon, England

Soccer brings countries together, and nowhere has this been more true than in England, where the entire nation has united to try to sweep Ian Dixon under the rug. Still reeling from the memory of soccer hooliganry that dogged England for decades, the Football Association, Parliament, and the British crown united for a “Stop Ian” campaign targeted at the East Midlands civil servant. For more than a year, “Stop Ian” ads have been ubiquitous in British media, with celebrities including Adele, David Beckham, and Sir Ian McKellen encouraging people to “kick Ian out of football”. Every Premier League match this season has begun with players uniting behind a banner that reads: “Fuck you, Ian”. The Paul McCartney/Elton John “Ian is a Tosser” concert at Wembley Stadium sold out within minutes. Credible sources allege that Queen Elizabeth’s last words were “keep that shithead out of the stadium,” presumably referring to Dixon.

Sadly, the campaign seems to have fallen short, as Dixon was apprehended by Qatari authorities during half time of the opening match, having allegedly mooned the Emir of Qatar and headbutted a police horse.

Antônia Vega, Brazil

Five-time champions Brazil are famous for two things: Dazzling football and scorching-hot female fans wearing next to nothing who dominate mid-game cutaway shots. Antônia Vega is determined to make her name via the latter. Inspired by the story of Pam Anderson being discovered during a Canadian Football game, Vega will stop at nothing to gain the attention needed to launch her modeling career. She plans to arrive at the Brazil-Serbia match wearing a thong that’s essentially a green-and-yellow eye patch, along with pasties and a hefty dose of body glitter. As soon as the opening whistle blows, she’ll present her surgically-enhanced buttocks like a baboon in the heat of mating season. Should the world feed fail to find her within 30 minutes, she intends to oil up her substantial breasts and swing them in a clockwise motion until she sees herself on the jumbotron. Should that fail, she will lay in the stadium aisle and strike a series of poses that Larry Flynt would find immodest. If necessary, Vega stands prepared to completely disrobe, force her way past security, and lie behind the goal, legs up, while stretching apart her labial folds as Neymar lines up a penalty kick. Such is her determination to appear in Maxim.

Cody “Goose” Goosen, United States

Despite having previously dismissed soccer as “kinda faggy”, the Dubai-based, Princeton-educated Credit Suisse employee will be lured to Doha by fourth-row tickets provided free of charge by his employer. Delighted to find a strong Wi-Fi signal in Khalifa International Stadium, Goosen will spend the first half of the USA-Netherlands round of 16 match posting Instagrams with captions like “USA-Holland — DEAD ASS FIRE, KID!” and “So close I can see the highlights in Westin O’Kenney’s hair!!!” When Christian Pulisic scores a 30-yard screamer in the last minute of extra time to send the US to a legendary 5-4 victory, Goosen will be captured on the world feed responding to a work e-mail, completely devoid of emotion. Despite having witnessed one of the greatest matches in US soccer history, Goosen will remember the experience as “a D-minus networking event and total poon desert.”

Mpho Zwane, South Africa

Even though South Africa didn’t qualify for this year’s tournament, and even though vuvuzelas are about as popular world-wide as rectal bleeding, Zwane plans to attend several matches in Qatar with a vuvuzela in tow. The plastic South African horn — which produces a sound not unlike a thousand bears farting into a canyon — has been banned from matches in what proved to be FIFA’s only popular decision of the past 20 years. Nonetheless, Zwane plans to don crutches and hide the vuvuzela inside a leg brace like he’s Carlos The Jackal sneaking a rifle past French security. Once inside, Zwane will flit about the stadium boisterously blowing his horn and narrowly avoiding vicious beat-downs from annoyed fans. The South African will spend the knockout stages of the tournament in a hospital after a group of surly Aussies manage to get 3/4 of the horn up Zwane’s ass.

Andrej Pavlovic, Serbia

Stunned by Qatar’s last-minute decision to ban the sale of alcohol at games, Pavlovic will overcompensate to disastrous effect. Terrified by the prospect of attending a game while sober, Pavlovic will spend the hours before kickoff attempting to get so drunk that even if the match goes to extra time an penalty kicks, he will remain smashed. Unfortunately, in the course of imbibing twice the amount of alcohol that killed John Bonham, Pavlovic will lose consciousness and spend the entire match passed out on the floor of Applebee’s Central Doha location. Upon coming to, he will stumble into a cab and deliver instructions that result in the cabbie driving him to eastern Oman. Unable to pay his $1,600 cab fare, Pavlovic will spend the rest of the tournament working off his debt in the service of Omani warlords, thus missing Serbia’s Cinderella run to the final.

Francois Amadou, Cameroon

Determined to show his colors as the ultimate Cameroon fan, Amadou will paint himself head to toe before slowly realizing that the paint covering every inch of his body is toxic. In the hours before kickoff, Amadou will revel in the festival-like atmosphere while dismissing the noticeable drop-off in his energy level as an effect of the Qatari heat. He will enter the stadium wondering if he’s contracted Covid but determined to press on. When the Cameroonian anthem plays, Amadou will be on his knees violently vomiting into the men’s room toilet. Most Cameroonians will remember December 2 as the day they overcame a two-goal deficit to upset Brazil, but Amadou will remember it as the day he survived dual kidney failure while Qatari doctors frantically sponged green paint out of his ass crack.

Meghan Markle, United States

Holy shit: Could you imagine if she showed up at the USA-England match and cheered her ass off for the USA? God damn that would be awesome. It would be such a middle finger to England, but as far as I can tell, middle fingers to England are this lady’s bread-and-butter. Plus she absolutely has the ovaries to sit in Sam’s Army and do the thunder clap while 56 million English curse her name, because she clearly stopped giving a fuck years ago. This probably won’t happen but I’d also say that we can’t completely rule it out.

Karl Beversdorf, Argentina

Arguably the #1 fan to watch out for in any tournament, the 100 year-old German-born Argentinian is being actively pursued by authorities in the Hague. Thought to be living under an assumed name in Buenos Aires, Beversdorf — a.k.a. “the Butcher of Bratislava” — has evaded authorities for decades. Should he appear on the world feed, immediately contact the International Criminal Court.

Chikorita, Japan

I’ve been trying to catch this little green fucker since 2016. He’s one of the rarest Pokemon Go characters and slippery as hell; I once ditched a friend’s weddings in the middle of the vows because one was spotted in central New Jersey. Of course, by the time I got there, someone else had caught him. I feel like my chances of nabbing this leafy bastard have improved since basically everyone stopped playing Pokemon Go five years ago, but if his little verdant ass shows up at a game I swear to God I’ll hop a plane to Qatar and nab him with an Ultra Ball.

Blepp Smather, Switz…uh, no, let’s say France

This inconspicuous Swi — I’m sorry, French — fan might be found observing the goings-on at any number of matches. Despite being an impartial observer with no apparent stake in the tournament’s success, he may appear to be obsessed by the question: Was staging the tournament in Qatar a good idea? After all: The heat forced the tournament to be played at the wrong time of year. And the whole thing is crammed into a city the size of Houston. Qatar has no real soccer tradition, has never qualified for a World Cup, and they looked terrible in their opening match against Ecuador. The government’s last-minute 180 on alcohol sales highlighted the hazards of being subject to the whims of an autocratic regime. The allegations surrounding the treatment of migrant workers are shocking, and many gay fans surely chose to stay away from the tournament. Is this — Smather might wonder — a gigantic fucking disaster? Does it, perhaps, demonstrate the greatest failure of leadership in sports history? These are questions that unassuming soccer fan Blepp Smather can’t help but ponder.

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Photos courtesy of (from first to last): Richard Clifford, linos88, Alvin Caal, Phil Whitehouse, Sergei F, Jake Brown, Budiey, Marllon Cristhian Barbosa, David Madison (Getty), Asian FC

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The DSA is largely a movement of Youngs. That gives it an aura, since Olds gravitate towards things liked by the Youngs because we’re reluctant to admit that we’re now an unfuckable pile of bones.1 The Youngs have energy, optimism, and the ability to drink three cocktails without having to spend a week in traction. All us Olds have is wisdom and — eventually — discount coffee at McDonald’s.

But about that wisdom: It increases the number of times that you find yourself thinking “I’ve seen this before”. And many Olds have noticed that the current Democratic Party schism seems a lot like what happened to Britain’s Labour Party in the 2010s. For five years, Labour was led by a self-proclaimed socialist named Jeremy Corbyn, which every Old knows because in our frame of reference, these events occurred nanoseconds ago. But there are people casting votes today who were seven when Corbyn came to power and twelve when he was ignominiously drummed out of the party — they likely haven’t heard this story. So, this article is for them: Gather ‘round, Youngs, and I shall tell you a tale from many iPhones ago.

The year was 2015. The top film in the country was The Strumpet’s Dalliance starring Lillian Gish, and a h’penny would still buy you a phosphate, a bowler hat, and a year’s labor from a stout Irish nanny. In the United Kingdom, the Prime Minister was Conservative David “Sexual Chocolate” Cameron, and Labour had been out of power since The Hundred Years War ended in 2010. The 2015 elections were bad for Labour, and — in accordance with custom — then-leader Ed Miliband was executed in Trafalgar Square and his severed head was made to give wrong answers to trivia questions on 8 Out of 10 Cats.

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In shocking news, Graham Platner — the Senate candidate widely known to have 50 skeletons in his closet — actually has 51 skeletons in his closet. And that 51 number is as of press time; there honestly seems to be something of a Skeleton Pride Parade going on in there. People who previously defended Platner took to social media to express shock — shock! — at this totally unforeseeable development. Here’s an example from Minority Report host Emma Vigeland:

People shocked by these revelations might want to ask themselves why so many people were emphatically not shocked. It is, of course, true that “Platner Is Making My Piece-Of-Shit Detector Melt Down” articles have been an entire genre of literature for several months now. I was one of many to sound the alarm, which I seek no credit for, because to me, noticing that Platner is a scumbag feels like noticing that Victor Wembanyama is tall. The interesting thing here is how anyone who considers themselves a fully-formed adult failed to notice.

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***Hey! I’m lightening my schedule this week to take a little time off for July 4 and to recover from watching us get ragdolled by Belgium. I’ll be back to a full schedule in the comedy mines soon.

Of the six things I learned in school that I still remember, the Stamp Act might be the most baffling. In 1765, British Parliament levied a tax on printed materials in the colonies, which ignited violent protests and was one of the early events that led to the American Revolution. The tax also affected Canada, which probably contributed to Canada throwing off the shackles of their British oppressors a mere 217 years later.

As a kid, I didn’t get it: We fought a revolution over stamps? I knew that adults didn't like it when the price of stamps went up; I remember my dad being furious when his Sports Illustrated subscription got sent back for insufficient postage and he missed the college football preview. Still: He wasn’t (quite) ready to take up arms. Of course, the Stamp Act wasn’t actually a tax on stamps, it was a tax on anything printed on paper, but it’s only slightly less lame to say “Colonists didn’t want to pay more to read ‘The Ribald Undertakings of Goodwife Jellybosom’”.

The Stamp Act was one of several affronts that led to the Revolution. Parliament also imposed taxes on sugar, glass, and of course tea, the last of which led to the Boston Tea Party. From my distant vantagepoint, none of these taxes seem likely to provoke a revolution. That's especially true with the tea tax — I mean, picture guys who drink tea. What would it take to make them physically violent? No offense to tea drinkers — I like a cup myself sometimes — but I feel like aggressive actions by tea-drinking dudes generally don’t get more extreme than a pithy letter to The New Yorker.

To be honest, I’ve always found the American Revolution slightly lame. It was momentous, to be sure, and the constitution it produced was the most advanced in the world for more than a century. But it just doesn’t have the zazzle of other revolutions. And by “zazzle”, I mean “sky-high body count produced by a complete disintegration of social order”.

The French Revolution was driven at several points by mob action motivated by the fear of starvation. The Haitian Revolution was a slave uprising. The Russian Revolution began1 because people worried that the Tsar’s incompetence would make them lose World War I. These are desperate, existential struggles that led to unspeakable brutality. The American Revolution started with…taxes on sugar, paper, and tea. One of the major events was the Boston Massacre, in which five people died. I think enough time has passed that I can say this: five people? That’s it? Are you fucking kidding me — five measly people??? The French Revolution killed more people than that every day before breakfast, or what would have been breakfast if they had any food, which they did not.

So, the question I have is: How did taxes lead to a rebellion, war, and the splintering of the British Empire? And — though I’m not a historian or other type of expert and frankly you shouldn’t be reading this — I think the answer is “they didn’t”. I think the right way to look at things is that taxes were the source of the disagreement, but the revolution happened because Americans were shut out of government.

“No taxation without representation” implies that taxes would be okay with representation. And it does seem that the lack of political rights, not the taxes themselves, really lit the fire beneath colonial pantaloons. After all: The Stamp Act led to riots, and the Tea Act led to cosplay-friendly vandalism, but the Intolerable Acts — passed in 1774 to punish Massachusetts for the Boston Tea Party — led to the First Continental Congress. The Declaration of Independence contains 27 righteous dunks on King George’s misbehavior, but only one of them is about taxes; most of the others are about the denial of political rights. Complaints about violations of good parliamentary order get top billing, while “burnt our towns” — which seems pretty serious — barely ekes its way onto the list at #24.

In this pattern, there’s a similarity with other revolutions: There’s a disagreement, but that disagreement doesn’t cause people to demand that that one thing be changed. It causes them to demand a stake in government — they want power. The disagreeable thing — be it a tea tax, bread shortage, or harassment of a street vendor (which kicked off the Arab Spring) — highlights how powerless the people are. And when the sovereign responds with “My authority is total and P.S. suck my dick” (that’s a loose translation), then he has struck the match that lights the powder keg.

In this pattern, I think there’s a slight endorsement of Francis Fukuyama’s belief that there’s something fundamentally desirable about liberal democracy. If I may badly sum up part of Fukuyama’s argument — which is the main way people experience Fukuyama, so I’m on solid ground here — liberal democracy seems to be the system best designed to serve people’s need for recognition and dignity. Nobody wants to be dominated; nobody wants to be told “you don’t matter”. All manner of slights can cause all manner of grumbling, but people rise up when their powerlessness is rubbed in their faces.

So, no, I don’t think we fought a revolution over stamps. The Stamp Act and other taxes of that era probably explain why the revolution happened when it did; if Britain hadn’t been desperate to squeeze money out of the colonies to pay for the Seven Years’ War, then independence might have moved along a slower, dare I say “Canada-esque” timeline. But the lack of representation is probably why the revolution happened. You can’t keep people powerless forever — they won’t stand for it. A revolution over paper products is, indeed, silly, but a revolution over the right to have a voice seems to be a common occurrence in world history.

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