Dispatches from the Race War Podcast

In this audio commentary, I explore Ed Sheeran's decision to kick Macklemore off his concert tour after billionaire Robert Kraft (whose stadium they were slated to play) pressured him to do so, following Macklemore's “Free Palestine” at a prior show. While Sheeran’s capitulation was obviously cowardly, the real villain in the scenario is Kraft, whose wealth and power (and those of other stadium owners who issued the same threat to Sheeran) led him to believe he was entitled to impose such censorship at his venue. Sadly, as anger has been directed at Sheeran, the role of billionaire owners like Kraft has been largely elided.

At the same time, while Sheeran could have been more courageous, perhaps, those who say he should have canceled the tour rather than agree to Kraft’s terms, and those of the other stadium owners — or called their bluff, and possibly risked them pulling the plug on the shows — overlook an important point: namely, there are hundreds, if not thousands of people for whom Sheeran is responsible directly and indirectly on the tour. From crew on his payroll to stadium crew to contractors, if the shows got canceled because of his political decision, it would not simply be Sheeran himself who paid the price (arguably a cost he should be willing to pay so as to make a moral statement); rather, it would be others, for whom he most certainly does not have the right to make that decision.

To say the lives of Gazans are more important than the paychecks of all those people is existentially true, of course, but also irrelevant: one person does not have the right to jeopardize other people’s paychecks to satisfy that moral calculus for themselves—and especially when there is absolutely no chance that Ed Sheeran making such a statement and jeopardizing the tour would save even one life in Palestine. At best, it would be a powerful symbolic and moral statement; at worst, it would be performative, especially coming from someone not known for activism.

Ultimately, this entire episode raises questions about what we expect from celebrities and why. Should we demand celebrities speak out about important issues? And if so, which ones? How do we decide? And if they don’t, do we abandon them as fans? If so, are we consistent in our condemnation, or do we selectively condemn, only singling out artists we already didn’t like anyway? And do celebrity statements really work? Might they backfire? And why do we care what celebrities think anyway?

In the end, we should obviously celebrate whenever anyone condemns genocide in Gaza. But expecting celebrities to speak out more than anyone else is not only unrealistic; it’s likely unproductive. And spending time condemning them or expending energy critiquing them for what they do or don’t say about this or that issue is time we’re not spending educating people about issues ourselves.

On this, the 25th anniversary of 9/11, I reflect on where I was that day and one of the often-missed lessons of the day’s tragedy—specifically, how a failure to see oneself (or one’s nation) as others see it can leave one (or one’s nation) vulnerable. I discuss how the same lesson applies to domestic mass school shootings, which disproportionately occur in “nice, safe” (read: white, middle class and above) communities, and each time shock residents who assumed such horrors and dysfunction “can’t happen here.”

By viewing danger, pathology, and dysfunction as something that happens “over there,” we are prepared neither for violence in certain neighborhoods nor for terrorism in our own nation. And by not seeing one’s community or country clearly, one can let down one’s guard to danger, whether from within or from outside the community, either because one overlooks local dysfunction or because one assumes others, in other nations, view you as you view yourself. In both cases, everyone is less safe.

Donald Trump’s decision to declassify the JFK assassination files was not about satiating some historical curiosity on his part. It was about feeding the idea that conspiracies are everywhere, because this kind of thinking serves the narcissistic ends of MAGA. If all “official stories” are suspect, but Trump is “brave” enough to tell the truth about JFK, then it “proves” he’s the only one to be trusted. The left needs to figure out how to respond to conspiracism not simply with mockery, but with systemic thinking that explains why bad things happen, but without the Wizard of Oz-type manipulation behind the scenes that conspiracists always look for.

As Elon Musk and his DOGE twinks threaten to lay waste to government programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, many can’t understand why they would do such a thing, especially when so many people clearly oppose the plans. But if you understand Musk’s messianism — he thinks he is the most important person ever to live, with a unique ability to save humankind — it all makes sense.

Every dollar spent on mundane things like income support, education, health care, retirement benefits or anything else that isn’t tech related is a waste to people like this. Slashing government programs and redirecting money to the tech sector is all that matters because the lives of future generations (infinitely large, by necessity compared to humans alive today) are worth more than the lives of old people and the sick today. Especially if meeting the latter’s needs might take money away from rockets and AI and other tech advances which we need, supposedly, to save humanity from other technology that threatens to kill us all, which was also made by guys with God complexes and no sense of irony, obviously.

Anyway, in this recording — the first of an audio series I’m kicking off today — I explore the broken philosophy of Musk and the broligarchs. These people are the problem and they need to be stopped.