We’re having a mayoral election in LA this year and like most of the political world right now, it’s incredibly stupid. It’s another of those popular races that take up the news these days—a progressive democratic socialist, Nithya Raman, against an establishment liberal incumbent, Karen Bass. The establishment does not like this (surprise, surprise). Meanwhile, every time there’s news about this thing, I want to slam my head into the wall in disbelief that Raman isn’t running away with it.

Just today, Bass came out in favor of the potential merger between Paramount and Warner Brothers, even though just yesterday it was reported that the merger would cost Los Angeles over 10,000 total jobs between entertainment and the businesses it supports—around $2.8 billion in the local economy, gone. The Writers Guild immediately issued a statement tearing Bass apart.

There was also a kind of insane warehouse fire in Boyle Heights this year that saw no city declarations for evacuation—only Bass, who spent the first two days of the fire out of the city, telling residents the air was not dangerous. (That ‘safe’ air caused hundreds to suffer health affects directly from exposure.)

Of course, this is all after Bass botched her oversight of the wildfires that burned the Palisades and Altadena to the ground in January of 2025. Los Angeles has also seen cuts to city service budgets in order to give the LAPD more cash. (The LAPD already had an annual budget of over three billion dollars.)

While the criticism could continue, the point is this: All over the United States, in governments local and national alike, establishment democrats are being called out for their decades of stalled policy, lack of ambition, and corporate interests being prioritized over serving the public. What makes me crazy is that the general public is somewhere between fearful of and hateful toward the label of socialism, even if policies like upgrading infrastructure or improving conditions for schools are wildly popular.

Red Scare tactics have proven very successful in the United States, where even ‘liberal’ cities like LA have a substantial population that doesn’t want to lean too far to the left. (What that political ideology actually looks like is beyond me—but I’m pretty sure it’s more in alignment with fascism than humanism.) As conditions continue to rapidly decay while wealth consolidates in the hands of a few, I wonder at what point people will come around to the idea of listening to voices from the left—or if by that time there’ll be anything left to actually govern.

Defector has the right tone when talking about Tom Dundon and his recent acquisition of the Portland Trail Blazers:

Fans of the Portland Trail Blazers should prepare themselves for a very unpleasant time. Tom Dundon, the team’s new owner, is digging in. Arena renovations would improve the value of his property, and so he wants arena renovations. He is simply and resolutely refusing to commit any of his own money to the project. If Portland refuses to pay for stadium renovations, and the stadium thus goes un-renovated, Dundon will have an ironclad pretext for packing the team into a U-Haul and moving it to Las Vegas, or Nashville, or—the monkey’s paw finally directing a shriveled middle finger at the world—Seattle. That’s how investor ownership works, and why it is fucked: The franchise has been in Portland for almost 60 years; Dundon bought it four months ago, and it is entirely and irrevocably his.

…

There’s a handy lesson in class solidarity. Dundon, wielding Hankins like a sock puppet, is putting tax dollars on one side of the scale and private investor wealth on the other, and arguing that because private wealth was previously spent by a member of Dundon’s billionaire class, the class has already contributed its share to the pot. It is now time for the tax-paying public to pitch money back at the billionaires, goes this argument. Dundon will simply collect this payment on behalf of his tribe.

The great irony about the rich is that they demean socialism, or honestly anything to the left of fascism, but expect taxpayers to foot the bill as a collective class for what is owned by private investment. ‘Socialism for me, not for thee,’ is basically the motto of the rich. (See also: Elected officials receiving healthcare benefits that amount to federal subsidies covering 72% of costs.)

Billionaires like Dundon should be driven out of places like Portland with pitchforks and vats of tar and the team reclaimed by the city with force, and given how much Portland loves the Blazers, I could almost imagine something like that happening. John Fisher notoriously moved the beloved Athletics out of Oakland instead of selling the team so they could stay in the East Bay.

The rich care nothing about culture or what things mean to the people who create and support it; they see only numbers, bottom lines, and profit margins in everything. Capitalism is a cancer on humanity—and I mean that in the most literal sense. It destroys what we are able to create with our minds and bodies for the sole purpose of money (another invention) to a select few beneficiaries and will eventually lead to the destruction of the planet. These people are barely human—grotesque obsessives hoarding wealth and we’d all be better for it if they were collectively disposed of.