Education is Elevation

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When billionaires talk about replacing democracy with corporate governance, believe them. When technologists say consent is inefficient, listen. When investors build surveillance tools, connect the dots. Scifi stories are cool but, this is reality and not science fiction. This is a political economy evolving in real time right before our eyes and algorithm. I would argue that working people have two choices:

* normalize oligarchy

* or organize against it

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Two of the most influential anti-democratic thinkers in modern tech have been preparing that terrain for years.. Curtis Yarvin and Peter Theil.

Curtis Yarvin: the blogger who wants to end democracy

Before Silicon Valley venture capitalists, senators, and tech founders were repeating his ideas, Curtis Yarvin was writing under a pseudonym: Mencius Moldbug.

His project was not policy reform. It was regime replacement.

Yarvin’s central thesis is blunt:

* Democracy produces disorder

* Equality is a myth

* Mass politics is irrational

* Elite rule is natural

* Monarchy is efficient

Curtis proposes what he calls a “neocameralist” state — essentially a country run like a corporation, where sovereignty is treated as property and governance is executed by a CEO with absolute authority.

Citizens become customers or employees. Rights become contractual privileges. Political participation disappears.That’s not a metaphor. That is his explicit model. For years, Yarvin was dismissed as an internet crank. Then his readership shifted Tech founders, venture capitalists, Right-wing intellectual circles and Policy-adjacent elites started riding his coattail legitimizing his ideology.

His essays circulated in private forums, salons, and VC networks in Silicon Valley. Eventually, figures like Peter Thiel publicly engaged his ideas. Vice President J.D. Vance acknowledged Yarvin as an influence. Hell even major media outlets began covering his philosophy as a rising ideological current in tech conservatism.

Yarvin’s thought is not novel so much as recombined. He draws from:

* 19th-century reactionary monarchists

* corporate managerial theory

* libertarian anti-state economics

* techno-futurism

* colonial governance models

The through-line is consistent.. Society should be ordered by competence and capital, not equality.

Which is why his writing repeatedly frames democracy as a historical mistake — a deviation from what he sees as the natural order of hierarchy.

Peter Thiel: the financier of anti-democratic tech

If Yarvin is the theorist, Peter Thiel is the executor.

Thiel’s biography matters here. Co-founder of PayPal. Early investor in Facebook and Founder of Palantir. One of Silicon Valley’s most powerful venture capitalists.

He has also said plainly:He no longer believes freedom and democracy are compatible.

That statement is not rhetorical flourish. It reflects a coherent worldview:

* mass democracy redistributes wealth

* redistribution constrains capital

* constrained capital limits innovation

* therefore democracy obstructs progress

From that premise, elite autonomy becomes morally justified. Thiel’s most consequential company is Palantir. Originally funded with CIA venture backing, Palantir builds data-integration and surveillance analysis platforms used by:

* intelligence agencies

* military operations

* immigration enforcement

* policing systems

Its core function is pattern detection across massive datasets — connecting identities, movements, communications, and behaviors.

This is not neutral technology. It is governance infrastructure. Technology of surveillance and domination. A technology that ignores consent to violate rights materially.

When a political philosophy skeptical of democracy aligns with tools capable of mapping entire populations, the implications extend far beyond business.

Peter Thiel has been remarkably transparent about his own position. He has stated that he no longer believes freedom and democracy are compatible. He has also said that winning elections is unnecessary if technol\gical leverage can reshape society without public approval.

That ain’t democratic persuasion. That is governance by infrastructure and look at where his capital goes:

Palantir — a data analytics firm with deep ties to intelligence agencies, policing systems, and military operations. Surveillance capacity at planetary scale.

When Yarvin imagines a CEO-king state, and Thiel funds tools capable of population-level monitoring, you are not looking at coincidence.

You are looking at ideological alignment meeting technological capacity.

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The Yarvin–Thiel convergence

The relationship between Yarvin and Thiel is ideological alignment rather than formal partnership.

Yarvin supplies: a justification for hierarchical, post-democratic governance.

Thiel supplies:capital, networks, and technology that expand elite autonomy from democratic constraint.

One normalizes the idea that rule should concentrate upward. The other builds systems that make concentrated rule more feasible. Theory meets capacity. That is how political transformation actually occurs.

When billionaires entertain anti-democratic theory, it matters. When venture capital circulates it, it spreads. When political actors absorb it, it influences governance. Ideas about hierarchy and rule do not stay academic when backed by wealth.

They become institutional direction.

Why data control is central to this ideology

In a democratic system, legitimacy flows upward from people. In an oligarchic system, control flows downward from elites.

Information asymmetry determines which model prevails.

The more elites know about populations, the easier populations are to predict, segment, and influence.

Data brokerage therefore becomes structural power.

Your identity, habits, location, networks, and behavior patterns become inputs into systems you do not govern.

Which is why privacy is political, not merely personal.

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The stakes: democracy vs managerial rule

The Yarvin–Thiel axis represents a broader tension shaping the 21st century:

democratic governance Versus technocratic oligarchy

One distributes authority. The other concentrates it.

One requires consent. The other requires compliance.

One treats people as citizens. The other treats them as managed populations.

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Because the same elite networks imagining post-democratic governance operate inside an economy built on harvesting personal data at scale.

Reducing that visibility is not just self-protection. It is refusing passive participation in surveillance capitalism.

Study power. Track ideology. Organize collectively.

Because Yarvin is not hiding his monarchism. Thiel is not hiding his anti-democratic skepticism.

They are articulating a future where authority concentrates upward and public consent becomes optional.

The question is not whether they mean it. The question is whether democratic society recognizes it in time.

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What Malcolm X Understood About Integration That America Still Refuses to Face

I’m sitting here watching a Malcolm X speech from the early 1960s. Civil rights era. NAACP conversations. Integration debates. The kind of history most of us think we already understand.

Then Malcolm says something that forces you to pause and think deeper.

Not surface-level thinking. Structural thinking.

Because the way America teaches the history of segregation and integration has always been incomplete.

What we’re taught sounds simple:

Segregation was bad.Integration fixed it.

Case closed.

That narrative is clean. Palatable. Comfortable.

It’s also incomplete.

When you actually study the archives, when you actually listen to Malcolm X and many other thinkers from that era, you realize the debate wasn’t just separate versus together.

The real debate was about power.

And that’s the part history classrooms rarely unpack.

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The Part of “Separate but Equal” We Were Never Taught to Examine

Most Americans learn about Plessy v. Ferguson like this:

Separate but equal.

Then teachers jump immediately to the separate part and explain why segregation was wrong.

Which it was.

Yet something important gets skipped.

The equal part.

When you look at the archives of Black political organizing in the early twentieth century, many Black leaders were focused on forcing America to actually deliver the equality it claimed existed.

Schools. Funding. Infrastructure. Jobs.

Equality meant material conditions.

It meant power.

Instead, history rewrote the story to make it sound like Black people were simply fighting to sit next to white people.

That’s not what the fight was about.

The fight was about justice, opportunity, and autonomy.

Your transcript captures this tension perfectly when questioning how integration is taught as the ultimate solution to inequality while ignoring how power structures remain unchanged.

The Illusion of Inclusion

When I used to do diversity trainings, one of the concepts I would talk about is something I call the illusion of inclusion.

Let me explain it the way I explained it in those trainings.

Imagine a piggy bank.

Now imagine you put a penny, a nickel, a dime, and a quarter inside that same bank.

They all now share the same space.

They all have equal access to the container.

Yet their value hasn’t changed.

The penny is still worth one cent.

The quarter is still worth twenty-five.

Being in the same space does not automatically create equality.

Access is not power.

Presence is not equity.

That’s the illusion.

And liberal political frameworks have spent decades convincing people that integration equals equality.

Malcolm X saw through that illusion sixty years ago.

Integration and the Decline of Black Institutions

There’s another uncomfortable truth that rarely gets discussed.

Integration created trade-offs.

Black schools closed.

Black businesses lost customers.

Black professional networks weakened.

Black teachers lost jobs when school districts integrated and white districts refused to hire them.

When Black communities gained access to white institutions, there was often a mass exodus away from Black institutions.

Why?

Because white supremacy had already established the hierarchy:

White spaces = valuableBlack spaces = inferior

Integration didn’t dismantle that hierarchy.

In many ways it reinforced it.

Malcolm X and the Structural Analysis of Power

Malcolm X’s critique was never about interpersonal relationships between Black people and white people.

It was about structures.

Structures of law.

Structures of economics.

Structures of power.

When Malcolm critiques white liberals, he isn’t talking about individual kindness or intentions.

He’s talking about systems that preserve control while appearing progressive.

He famously described the difference between white conservatives and white liberals like this:

The wolf and the fox.

Different personalities.

Same appetite.

That critique still resonates today because American politics often operates through two different forms of power:

Hard power.Soft power.

Conservatives typically represent the hard version.

Liberals often represent the soft version.

Both can still sustain the same system.

Why Malcolm X Still Feels Dangerous Today

One of the reasons Malcolm X is often misrepresented in American education is because his analysis was structural.

Structural critiques are uncomfortable.

They force people to question institutions themselves rather than individual actors within them.

That’s why Malcolm X is often framed as extreme.

Dangerous.

Radical.

Yet when you listen carefully to his speeches, what you actually hear is something else.

A rigorous analysis of power.

And a relentless commitment to Black autonomy.

Your transcript captures this reflection well, especially the realization that Malcolm’s arguments from 1963 still apply to political debates today.

Equality, According to Malcolm X

In the speech you were watching, Malcolm makes something very clear.

Equality isn’t measured by proximity to white people.

Equality means the ability to develop your full potential.

Equality means autonomy.

Equality means the power to build institutions that serve your people.

That definition of equality is radically different from the one commonly taught in American political discourse.

One version focuses on access to existing power structures.

The other focuses on the ability to create your own power structures.

Those are two very different visions of freedom.

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The Pattern Recognition Problem

One of the most important skills political education can give people is pattern recognition.

When you look closely at history, you start seeing the same debates repeating themselves.

Black liberals versus Black radicals.

Integration versus autonomy.

Reform versus transformation.

These conversations happening online today are not new.

They’ve been happening for generations.

Understanding that historical continuity is crucial if we want to avoid repeating the same mistakes.

The Real Lesson Malcolm X Leaves Us With

Malcolm X forces us to ask a difficult question:

Is equality about inclusion into existing systems?

Or is equality about the power to determine your own future?

That question remains unresolved.

And until we answer it honestly, we will continue confusing proximity to power with actual freedom.

Education is elevation.

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5 Key Takeaways

1. Integration and equality are not the same thing.Sharing physical spaces does not automatically redistribute power or resources. Malcolm X’s critique forces us to ask whether integration changed structures or simply expanded access to them.

2. American history sanitizes political debate.Many Black intellectuals during the civil rights era disagreed about strategy. The idea that everyone supported the same vision of integration is historically inaccurate.

3. Institutions often maintain their original function.Legal reforms and landmark court cases may appear transformative, yet institutions frequently continue operating according to their founding logic.

4. Liberalism often operates through soft power.Progressive language and reformist policies can coexist with systems that maintain inequality. Malcolm X’s critique of liberalism was structural, not personal.

5. True equality requires autonomy.Malcolm X framed equality as the ability for Black communities to develop their own institutions, economies, and political power—not simply access to existing ones.

Related Readings

* Malcolm X — The Ballot or the Bullet

* Malcolm X & Alex Haley — The Autobiography of Malcolm X

* Cedric Robinson — Black Marxism

* W.E.B. Du Bois — Black Reconstruction

* Derrick Bell — Faces at the Bottom of the Well

* Michelle Alexander — The New Jim Crow

References

* Malcolm X speeches and interviews (1960–1965)

* Transcript of commentary analyzing Malcolm X speech and integration debate

* Derrick Bell, Critical Race Theory scholarship

* Cedric Robinson, Black Radical Tradition

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“I could have saved more slaves, if only they knew they were slaves.”

That quote—allegedly from Harriet Tubman—has been rattling around my spirit for years. Not because I need historical verification (though Dr. Ware and I debated whether it’s apocryphal), but because it speaks to the condition we find ourselves in right now, in 2026, watching the empire burn while too many of us are still trying to figure out which arsonist to vote for.

Welcome to the inaugural episode of Education is Elevation. And for this first one, I needed to go heavy. I needed to go to someone who moves through the world the way I try to: rooted in the Black radical tradition, unafraid to be unpopular, and unwilling to let respectability politics silence the truth.

I’m talking about Dr. Butch Ware. Rudolph McKinley Ware III. Professor at UC Santa Barbara. 2024 Green Party Vice Presidential candidate. Current candidate for Governor of California. A brother who converted to Islam at 15 after reading Malcolm X’s autobiography in one night—the same way I found myself in them pages years later. A brother who speaks Wolof, who did oral history interviews in West Africa, who carries the weight of Ware County, Georgia—where his ancestors were held in bondage by three white men who owned 1,100 human beings.

We sat down for what was supposed to be an hour. We went damn near 90 minutes. And by the time we finished, I realized we hadn’t even scratched the surface. This is Part One of what will definitely be a recurring conversation.

Let me be transparent with you from the jump: I asked Dr. Ware the question my audience been screaming. I asked him about the blame. I asked him about the resentment. I asked him about the folks who still believe that he and Jill Stein handed the election to Donald Trump.

His answer? “The math ain’t math.”

And then he proceeded to explain why the math ain’t math—and why the Democratic Party’s refusal to stop killing children in Gaza cost them an election they could have won if they’d just shown an ounce of humanity.

But this conversation went so much deeper than electoral politics. We talked about the past, present, and future of Black liberation. We talked about why the Black radical tradition is fundamentally internationalist. We talked about why Malcolm X was killed when he started building the Organization of Afro-American Unity. We talked about why Fred Hampton was killed when he started building the Rainbow Coalition. We talked about why Dr. King was killed when he started connecting the dots between Vietnam and economic justice.

And we talked about what it’s going to take for us to get free—for real this time.

PART I: THE PRESENT — Why the 2024 Election Wasn’t About Spoilers, It Was About Genocide

Let me set the scene. My audience is... complex. I got liberals in there. I got leftists in there. I got folks who still believe the Democratic Party can be saved and folks who think I’m too soft on Democrats. I got Black folks who voted for Kamala holding their breath and Black folks who voted Green or sat out entirely feeling vindicated.

So when I sat down with Dr. Ware, I had to address the elephant in the room. The comments been hot. The DMs been hot. People want to know: Why you talking to him? Ain’t he part of the reason Trump is back?

Dr. Ware didn’t flinch.

“Feelings are feelings and facts are facts,” he said. “Anyone that holds the Green Party ticket responsible for the Democrats losing the election? That’s not how math works. If you add up all the third-party candidates together, they won’t get commonly even one of the swing states, much less all of them.”

He reminded me—and I needed the reminder—that he said this back in August of 2024. He saw what was coming because he was connected to communities the Democratic Party took for granted.

“I’m a Muslim. Converted at 15 when I read Malcolm. I’m connected to the Black Muslim community, the broader Muslim community. I’ve been a speaker and lecturer in that community for decades. The Democrats went from carrying 65% of the Muslim vote in swing states to polling at about 12% in those same swing states because of the genocide in Gaza.”

Let that sink in. A 53-point drop. Not because of Jill Stein. Not because of Cornel West. Because the Biden-Harris administration kept sending bombs. Because Kamala Harris stood on that stage and said her policy would not change “one iota” from Biden’s policy on Gaza.

“She could have won that election if she just stopped killing kids,” Dr. Ware said. “If she had marked any distance between Biden’s genocidal policies towards Gaza, she might have had a chance. But that’s not my responsibility. They were getting paid good money by AIPAC, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman to keep right on killing kids.”

I asked him about Kamala’s recent interviews—the ones where she talks about regretting some of her 2024 decisions. I asked him if that should matter to us.

His response cut deep.

“As somebody that learned Black liberation from Malcolm’s teaching, I have no love for Black imperialists or for Black Zionists. I really am not interested in Kamala’s explanations about what she did or didn’t do unless and until she’s willing to reassess her overall position.”

Then he said something I had to sit with:

“I’m harder on Obama than I am on Trump. Because I don’t expect nothing from Trump. But if somebody is repping our culture and our tradition, there’s nothing worse to me than a Black imperialist. It’s a betrayal of the fundamental thing of what Blackness and Black liberation is about.”

This is the tension we don’t talk about enough. We are so hungry for representation—so desperate for people who look like us in high places—that we let them betray us and call it progress. Obama deported more people than any president in history. Obama dropped bombs on Yemeni children. Obama bailed out the banks and let Black homeowners drown. And because he was smooth, because he was “articulate,” because he made white people comfortable, we gave him a pass.

Dr. Ware isn’t giving passes.

PART II: THE PHILOSOPHY — Solidarity Beyond Identity and Ideology

One of the reasons I wanted to have this conversation is because Dr. Ware represents something I’ve been trying to articulate for years. He’s running for Governor of California as a Green Party candidate. But if you go to his website—butchwareforgov.com—at the bottom it says: “Solidarity Beyond Identity and Ideology.”

That line hit me.

Because the truth is, I’ve spent the last year and a half coming to a painful realization: not everybody’s goal is liberation. Some people just want to be included in the neoliberal project. Some people are cool with imperialism. They’re cool with killing babies. They’re cool with the bloodshed that keeps the empire running. They just want comfort. They want privilege. They want to be the ones holding the whip instead of being whipped.

“I’ve sadly accepted that everybody’s goal is not liberation,” I told him. “Some people have a burning passion to just be included in the neoliberal project. I’m cool with the imperialism s**t, as long as you see my humanity. As long as I have comfort.”

Dr. Ware nodded. Then he took it deeper.

“For me, a lot of our people don’t want freedom. They just want their turn as the oppressor. I saw a lot of people that claimed abolitionists, but all of a sudden were willing to throw their credibility onto the table to defend an agent of the carceral state—somebody that locked people up in Oakland for truancy of their children, somebody that locked up a generation of Black men, somebody actively supporting an ongoing genocide.”

He pointed to the Malcolm X poster behind him—El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.

“Malcolm said of the Zionist entity in 1964: ‘This is a white Jewish population being empowered by white imperialists to move brown Arabs off their land.’ Malcolm understood Zionism as white supremacy. James Baldwin understood Zionism as white supremacy. In 1979, Baldwin said the state of Israel was not created for the salvation of the Jews; it was created for the salvation of Western interests.”

This is the Black radical tradition. Not asking for a seat at the table. Not begging to be included in the empire. Recognizing that the table itself is the problem. Recognizing that the empire must be dismantled, not diversified.

Dr. Ware broke it down: “I don’t want to be an overseer on Master’s plantation. I want us all to get free. I want Master’s plantation to be completely gone.”

PART III: THE CALIFORNIA CONTEXT — Why the Jungle Primary Matters and Why the Democrats Are Fear-Mongering

We shifted gears to talk about his current race. Dr. Ware is running for Governor of California in a jungle primary. That means only the top two candidates advance, regardless of party. The primary is June 2nd. Ballots get mailed out May 4th. And right now, he’s polling at 5%—eight points off the lead.

“Let me break it down,” he said. “There’s no scenario where two Republican candidates get through. The only two scenarios are either blue versus green or blue versus red. So the question is: do you want them running against me, or chasing a Republican to the right?”

He contrasted his campaign with others. “Mamdani, for example, in February before his primary in June, was polling at 1%. Bro, I’m polling at 5%—five times ahead of where Mamdani was. But Mamdani had to get to 50% in a Democrat primary. I have to finish in the top two in an open primary. The leaders are at 13%. I’m eight points off the lead.”

So why all the fear-mongering? Why are Democrats running ads saying that a Ware campaign will hand the state to Republicans?

“They’re playing in y’all faces,” he said. “If they’re serious, they can get the Republicans out of the race on June 2nd, 2026. And it’ll just be whichever corporate Democrat is running to be the next Gavin Newsom—probably Eric Swalwell, or as I called him in my diss track, Eric Swallowwell for Israel.”

That’s right. Dr. Butch Ware is the first candidate in history to do a political ad in the form of a diss track. Because he came up spitting. Because he never wanted to be anything except an emcee or a baseball player—and he did both. College baseball scholarship. Minor league ball. Ball overseas. And bars for days.

I told him straight up: “I know regardless of what anybody would want to say about that performance, specifically when it comes to bars and using your position to spit Black culture—I would have been one of them little boys that would have been inspired by everything you’re doing and saying.”

He’s 52. I’m 35. But the throughline is the same. We both came up on hip hop. We both came up on the golden age. We both understand that the culture is not separate from the politics.

“That’s why we fell for the Obama okie doke,” he said. “We are so desperately in need of people that look like us—but they’re not all like us. Obama was setting records for deportation. Obama was bombing Yemeni kids. We need folks that not just represent our skin color and our culture, but that represent our politics.”

PART IV: THE TEXAS PERSPECTIVE — Imagination, Limitation, and the Harriet Tubman Principle

I had to be real with him about where I’m at. Texas is... Texas. We’ve been run by Republicans for decades. But the Democrats have been in power on the local level for just as long, and nothing changes. They run the same weak ads. They blame the border. They blame us. They never take responsibility.

“To be honest with you, it always puts me in this weird position,” I told him. “Knowing what is possible—materially possible—but also knowing the people in my reality have a very limited understanding of what we can have.”

I brought up the Harriet Tubman quote—whether it’s real or not, the sentiment is real: “I could have saved most slaves. I could have convinced them they were slaves.”

“It’s a lot of things here in Texas that people just accept as a truism,” I said. “And because they accept it as a truism, it limits their imagination for how we can think about our political reality.”

Dr. Ware nodded. Then he went deep.

“When I was 15, I read Malcolm’s autobiography. I read that book cover to cover in one night. I could not put it down. I wanted what Malcolm had because Malcolm was honest about how badly America had broken him and what it turned him into. A hustler. In and out of foster care.”

He told me about his father—a locksmith with a sixth-grade education who stayed strapped. About his mother—15 years old, pregnant with him, told by her high school guidance counselor to abort the child because she was pregnant by a Black man.

“I came in in 1973 with white supremacy trying to take me out. I never lived at the same street address for a calendar year until I turned nine. Shelters. Public housing. Staying with relatives. Facing homelessness.”

And then he connected it to why Malcolm mattered.

“What got Malcolm free was that he escaped all of those mental chains. Malcolm said: never let your enemy tell you how many of you there are. Never let the man that you are against form your opinions for you. Malcolm was always making his own independent assessment of the situation because once he got free in here and in here—in his mind and in his spirit—then they couldn’t hold him with noose. He was able to have triumph over all of his inner demons and his external oppressors.”

He looked at me and said: “Our people need the healing from the trauma that white supremacy and empire has inscribed upon us. That is actually the thing that leads us to true liberation.”

PART V: THE INTERNATIONAL LENS — Why Malcolm Was Right About Congo and Mississippi

We talked about the moment we’re in right now. Trump is back. The bombs are falling. Iran is in the crosshairs. And the same playbook they ran in Iraq, they’re running again.

Dr. Ware broke it down with a clarity that made me lean in.

“They are very clearly running the same destabilization playbook in the United States that they ran in all of their regime change operations around the globe. Once you apply a colonial lens and you understand that the problem of Black suffering in the United States is produced by a broader system of capitalism, white supremacy, and imperialism—then you are actually capable of getting free.”

He quoted Julius Nyerere, the first president of Tanzania: “The United States is a single-party state. But with classic American extravagance, they have two of them.”

I had to sit with that. Two parties. Same donors. Same imperial interests. Same war machine. Just different packaging.

“If you were to make a Venn diagram of the donor base for the Democrat Party and the Republican Party, it’s going to be a single circle,” Dr. Ware said. “Their donor base is the same. So they stage a fake culture war between right and left. They have the so-called right and so-called left, but they’re both right-wing parties. They’re both capitalist parties. They’re both imperialist parties. They’re both white supremacist parties. It’s just that some allow a little more skin folk and others don’t.”

I had to check myself. I told him: “We say the same s**t, and we believe most of the same s**t. All it is is your delivery is more matter-of-fact unapologetic, and mine is a little bit more... uh.”

He laughed. “You can sweeten it for me.”

He reminded me that it’s always been our culture driving liberation. Hundreds of different African ethnicities, speaking different languages, forged themselves into one people on this soil. That never happened in human history anywhere else before. The slaves of the Romans didn’t make themselves into a people. The slaves of the Greeks didn’t make themselves into a people. It had never happened.

“We did that. Blackness by itself is a miracle. And the key to defeating white supremacy one good time, once and for all, is definitely going to come from us.”

FIVE KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. The 2024 Election Was Lost by Democrats, Not “Spoiled” by Third PartiesDr. Ware’s math is simple: third-party votes don’t add up to a single swing state victory. The real culprit was the Democratic Party’s refusal to break from a genocide that cost them 53 points of Muslim support and alienated young voters, progressive voters, and anyone with a conscience. Kamala could have won if she’d stopped killing kids. She chose AIPAC money over human life. That’s on her, not on us.

2. Some of Us Don’t Want Liberation; We Want to Be the OppressorThis is the hard truth we don’t want to face. There are Black people who are perfectly fine with imperialism, with the carceral state, with genocide—as long as they get a seat at the table. As long as they get comfort. As long as they get privilege. But the Black radical tradition, from Malcolm to Baldwin to Assata, teaches us that liberation isn’t about who holds the whip. It’s about burning the whip entirely.

3. The Two-Party System is a Cage Designed to Look Like a ChoiceJulius Nyerere said it best: America is a single-party state with two extravagant wings. The donor base is the same. The imperial interests are the same. The war machine is the same. The only difference is marketing. The Democrats chase the Republicans to the right, and we’re left with no one representing our interests. Voting blue no matter who is a strategy for staying enslaved, not getting free.

4. An International Lens is the Only Path to LiberationYou cannot understand Mississippi without understanding Congo. You cannot understand Gaza without understanding the transatlantic slave trade. The system is global, and so must be our resistance. The colonizer breaks your connection to the past so you’ll believe whatever they tell you about who you are. Reconnecting with the Haitian Revolution, with West African anti-slavery movements, with the global struggle against empire—that’s how we get free.

5. The War Will Be Won in the CultureElectoral politics alone won’t save us. Organizing alone won’t save us. The war for our consciousness will be fought in the culture—in the music, in the stories, in the images we create and consume. Black culture has always been the engine of our liberation. From the spirituals to hip hop, we have coded resistance into our art. We need to do it again. We need to tell stories that script liberation, not captivity.

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING

If you want to go deeper into the history, theory, and context we discussed, start here:

Books:

* The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley – The foundational text. Read it in one night like Dr. Ware did.

* Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition by Cedric Robinson – The essential text for understanding the Black radical tradition.

* The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon – On colonialism, violence, and liberation.

* Discourse on Colonialism by Aimé Césaire – On the relationship between colonialism and fascism.

* Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass – Because we have to know where we’ve been.

* Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur – Because the ancestors are still speaking.

Speeches and Essays:7. “Message to the Grassroots” – Malcolm X (1963)8. “The Ballot or the Bullet” – Malcolm X (1964)9. “Letter from Birmingham Jail” – Martin Luther King Jr. (1963)10. “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” – Martin Luther King Jr. (1967)11. “Open Letter to the Born Again” – James Baldwin (1979)12. “The Women’s Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements” – Huey P. Newton (1970)

Scholars and Thinkers:13. Julius Nyerere – First President of Tanzania, theorist of Ujamaa and African socialism.14. Walter Rodney – Author of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.15. Cedric Robinson – UC Santa Barbara professor, author of Black Marxism.16. Abdul Kader Khan – 18th-century West African Muslim revolutionary who abolished the slave trade in the Senegal River Valley.

Cultural References:17. “The Message” – Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five (1982)18. X-Clan – “To the East, Blackwards” (1990)19. Poor Righteous Teachers – “Holy Intellect” (1990)20. Wise Intelligent – Lectures on narrative and consciousness.

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Thank you Reda Rountree (she/her), PJ Schuster, M Hope, Victoria Viste, Dalai Mama 💗, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Let me break this down for anybody who’s confused about how we ended up here.

February 28th: United States and Israel, in a joint effort, struck Iran. Donald Trump claimed it was to address their nuclear program.

But here’s the history: there was a nuclear deal. It allowed inspections. Iran committed to using nuclear tech only for energy. Trump killed that deal. Tried to make his own—which would’ve looked basically the same—and that fell through.

Now we’re here.

Benjamin Netanyahu has been sounding the alarm about Iran having nuclear weapons since the 80s. Decades. They’ve been “a week away” from developing nukes for 40 years. But now we have an administration that doesn’t care about nuance, doesn’t care about diplomacy, and sees conflict as the first option, not the last.

After February 28th, March 1st, Iran retaliated. Explosions all through the Middle East. Dubai. Drones flying past buildings. It’s getting wild in ways we haven’t seen in years.

And then Marco Rubio said the quiet part out loud: “We knew that if Iran was attacked, they would attack us. So we attacked them first.”

That’s not defense. That’s premeditated aggression dressed up in flag pins.

The Jasmine Crockett Situation: Being Right About the Wrong Thing

I started the night with this, and I meant every word. The outrage I’ve been seeing about Jasmine Crockett’s loss in Texas? I get it. I do. When you see Dr. Rashad Richey and other progressives pointing at the electability conversation and saying it wasn’t fair to her, they’re not wrong.

But here’s the thing—and I need y’all to sit with this—they’re right about the wrong thing.

Her electability was tied to her being a Black woman. Texas is the biggest state in the continental U.S. It ain’t Georgia, where you can win Atlanta and some suburbs and squeak it out. Texas has rural areas the size of small countries, and those areas don’t like Black people like that. Specifically, they don’t like outspoken Black women.

People literally said, “We love her, but she’s not gonna win a statewide election in Texas on some cultural s**t.” That’s the quote. That’s the reality.

Now, here’s where I need my people to hear me: we can’t abandon the electability conversation just because it’s Jasmine Crockett. Those same people shouting “electability is a dog whistle” were fine with voting for Kamala Harris because she was “more electable” than Joe Biden. You can’t have it both ways.

In a winner-take-all, first-past-the-post system, if you don’t win elections, the whole thing was pointless. The policy doesn’t matter if you’re not in the room.

Born and Raised in Texas: A Different View

I’m from Texas. I live here right now. And watching this conversation unfold from outside the state has been... interesting.

A lot of people are missing that this was a primary election. They’re comparing it to general elections, to Stacey Abrams vs. Brian Kemp. That’s a bad metaphor.

Most people who voted for James Talarico also voted for Kamala Harris. This wasn’t about Democrat vs. Republican—it was about who we thought could win in November.

And here’s the timeline people ignore: Talarico was in this race first. People had already made up their minds when it was him versus Colin Allred. When Jasmine got in, nothing she brought to the table made folks switch. Not because she’s not talented—she is. But because in a primary, you’re asking people to abandon a candidate they already believed in.

I saw a TikTok breaking down legislative accomplishments: Talarico had passed 18 bills. Jasmine had passed 0. That’s not a value judgment on her potential, but in a primary where people are looking at who can actually do the job, that gap matters.

Toya’s Point: Don’t Take Your Ball and Go Home

Toya brought the heat on this one, and I was nodding the whole time.

She said, “Don’t be the fool that’s just like, ‘Oh, another one of them is getting that chance.’ You need to show up and lock in.”

Because here’s what happens when you fall in love with a candidate and they lose: you stop paying attention. You stop caring about the midterms. You let the real enemy—Ken Paxton, Ted Cruz, whoever—slide because you’re having a pity party.

Jasmine conceded gracefully. She posted the text. But there were mishandlings in Dallas, people getting turned away from lines. That’s the system working exactly how it’s designed to work. And if you don’t pay attention to that—if you don’t show up for the next election because your girl lost—then the system wins.

Beto didn’t get the support he needed when it mattered. Don’t let that happen again.

The Constitutional Question

Here’s where I’m going to piss some people off, and I’m okay with that.

The Plug asked whether the Constitution is a real check on power or if we’ve been lying to ourselves. My answer? We’ve been lying to ourselves since 1803.

Let’s talk about the Louisiana Purchase. Thomas Jefferson didn’t have Congressional approval to do that. The Constitution was less than 30 years old and already being reinterpreted by whoever had the power to reinterpret it.

James Monroe? Monroe Doctrine. Set policy without Congress. Didn’t deploy troops that time, but set a precedent that allowed every president after him to stretch war powers like taffy.

Harry Truman? Korean War. No Congressional approval.Dwight Eisenhower? Lebanon. No approval.JFK? Cuban Missile Crisis. No approval.LBJ? Vietnam. No approval.

Every president since World War II has done military actions without Congress. The only difference with Trump is speed and shamelessness. He’s moving faster and caring less about hiding it.

But here’s what I need y’all to understand: when we romanticize the Constitution, when we put it on a pedestal and pretend it’s always been this pure document that protected the vulnerable, we’re ignoring the material reality. The Constitution was written on the backs of enslaved people. It had to be amended—multiple times—to include the people it originally excluded.

That’s not a bug. That’s the feature. It’s always been “good for me, not for thee.”

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Why This Matters to Black People

Somebody in the chat asked the question that always comes up when we talk deep politics like this: “What does this have to do with niggas? Donald Trump ain’t droning the hood.”

And look, I get why people ask that. When you’re struggling to pay rent, when you’re watching your kids navigate schools that don’t care about them, when you’re dealing with police who see you as a problem before a person—international politics feels distant.

But here’s the thing: Black people represent 20% of the military. We’re less than one-fifth of the population, but we’re one-fifth of the people getting shipped overseas to fight these unconstitutional wars.

When the president decides to bomb another country, those bombs are being loaded by Black hands. When troops get deployed, Black bodies are on those planes. When soldiers don’t come home, Black families are grieving.

And it’s not just the fighting. When the U.S. engages militarily, domestic surveillance goes up. Local police departments get more military equipment. ICE gets more aggressive. The same “national security” justification used to bomb a school in Iran gets used to raid a neighborhood in Chicago.

I just came back from Iowa. Shout out to Des Moines. And while I was there, I learned something that blew my mind. The founders of the Divine Nine—the Alphas, the Ques, the Kappas—after they started those organizations on college campuses in the early 1900s, they all got recruited to go to Des Moines to be captains and sergeants leading Black folks in the military.

The same pattern, different century. The best and brightest Black Americans get funneled into the military machine. That’s the pipeline. That’s the trap.

So when you ask why this matters, I’m telling you: the president’s interpretation of the Constitution always has a direct impact on Black livelihood. Always.

The Enemy of My Enemy Is Still My Enemy

Toya raised an interesting point: Iran’s leaders have acknowledged Black American struggles. They tweeted “I Can’t Breathe” during the Eric Garner protests. They released Black hostages in 1979 because they recognized the unique oppression Black people face in America.

Does that create an “enemy of my enemy” dynamic?

Short answer: no.

Long answer: hell no.

I know about Afro-Iranian history. I know about the erasure of Black Iranians in that country. You can’t convince me you care about Black folks in America when you don’t care about Black folks in your own country. That’s not solidarity—that’s performance. That’s using our pain as a cudgel against America while running the same playbook at home.

The Ayatollah who was just killed in these recent attacks tweeted support for Black Lives Matter. Cool. But what about the Black Iranians who can’t live freely in Iran? What about the erasure of their history, their culture, their existence?

We don’t have friends in governments. Not here, not there. Our solidarity is with oppressed people, not the people oppressing them.

50 Cent and the Weaponization of Trauma

We couldn’t leave without touching pop culture, and this 50 Cent vs. T.I. situation is a perfect example of how the same dynamics play out in the culture.

50 Cent posted a picture of T.I. and Tiny, saying he’s developing a “Surviving T.I. & Tiny” documentary—like the one he did on Diddy. And the caption: “Remember how quiet I got before the Diddy doc? I hope this doesn’t mess up your promo tour. You might want to talk to a crisis PR person.”

Here’s my problem with this: it’s the second time somebody’s taken a rap battle somewhere it didn’t need to go. This is Drake energy—going to the law, going to the legal system, using the courts and documentaries as weapons instead of bars.

Why can’t you just rap about it? What happened to the craft?

And more importantly: you’re weaponizing trauma. You’re commodifying victimization to get at your opp. You don’t care about those women’s suffering—you care about the “aha, gotcha” moment. You’re moving like a sleazeball.

We saw this with the Diddy doc. A lot of those claims were refuted. A lot of it wasn’t factual. But the damage was done because trauma sells.

At this age, at this point in hip-hop’s history, we need to be better than this.

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Where We Go From Here

We’re in a wicked time. Congress has refused to check presidential power. The House voted 219-212 against a war powers resolution. The Senate did the same, with Fetterman—remember that name—voting to block efforts to stop unconstitutional war.

Parents are sending their kids to war for a president who said he wouldn’t start any. The definition of when this war ends? They said “we’ll know it when we see it.” That’s the pornography defense applied to military conflict. No clear goals, no exit strategy, just vibes and bombs.

Donald Trump said four weeks. Four weeks. We all remember George Bush standing on that aircraft carrier with the “Mission Accomplished” banner. We’re still in Iraq.

And while the bombs aren’t dropping on U.S. soil, we’re going to feel it. Gas prices are up. Shipping costs are up. The economic squeeze is real, and it’s going to hit the people who can afford it least.

But here’s what I need you to take away from all of this: we have to pay attention. We have to stay engaged. Not because the system works—it doesn’t—but because the people who benefit from it working against us are counting on us to check out.

They’re counting on us to say “politics ain’t for me” and go back to scrolling. They’re counting on us to fall in love with candidates instead of movements. They’re counting on us to let the grief of losing make us quit the game entirely.

Don’t give them that satisfaction.

Stay woke. Stay engaged. Stay ready.

Related Readings

* The Condemnation of Blackness by Khalil Gibran Muhammad

* The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois (for that double consciousness conversation)

* Dark Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform by Tommie Shelby

* How to Hide an Empire by Daniel Immerwahr (for understanding U.S. military bases globally)

* The Half Has Never Been Told by Edward E. Baptist (for the real history of American capitalism)

Major Takeaways from Episode

* Electability is class reductionist, but it’s real. We can hate the game while acknowledging we’re stuck in it. Jasmine Crockett lost because Texas rural voters weren’t ready for her. That’s not fair, but it’s facts. And facts don’t care about our feelings.

* The Constitution was never pure. It was broken by Jefferson in 1803. It was written by enslavers in 1787. Every president since WWII has ignored its war powers provisions. Trump isn’t an aberration—he’s acceleration.

* Black people are the tip of the military spear. 20% of the armed forces, 14% of the population. When the bombs drop, our kids are dropping them. When soldiers die, our families grieve. This is our business.

* Iran ain’t our friend, even when they cosign our struggle. Performative solidarity is still performance. If you oppress Black people in your country, I don’t care what you tweet about Black Lives Matter.

* The culture is sick too. 50 Cent making trauma docs to win rap beef is the same energy as the government using “national security” to start wars. It’s all weaponization dressed up in respectable clothes.

* Don’t take your ball and go home. Your candidate lost? Show up anyway. The midterms matter. The local elections matter. The sheriff matters. The judges matter. All of it matters.

* War costs what you don’t have. Gas prices, grocery bills, shipping—it’s all going up. We’re paying for these bombs whether we wanted them dropped or not.

* Checks and balances died when partisanship won. Fetterman and company blocked war powers resolutions. That’s not a bug—that’s the system working exactly how it’s designed when party matters more than country.

* The imminent threat is always manufactured. Iran can’t hit the U.S. mainland. They don’t have the missiles. So what are we really fighting for? Oil. Always oil.

* Niggas ain’t got no friends in government. Not here. Not there. Our solidarity is horizontal—with the protesters, the oppressed, the people getting tear-gassed. Not the people doing the gassing.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theconsciouslee.substack.com/subscribe

Thank you Will Fullwood, Mandy Ohman, Seneca Dunmore, Reda Rountree (she/her), Frank Johnson, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

I know it’s been a minute since a livestream—about a week and a half, maybe two. But you know the deal: sometimes research requires research. I’ve been on the ground, moving through Detroit, Iowa, and Kentucky, connecting with y’all at the Charles H. Wright Museum, the Debate League, and doing a screening with the homies like Kendrick Sampson and the late great powerhouses discussing Black women’s trust. Shout out to everybody in Des Moines, Waterloo, and Brunel—I see y’all. And shout out to Lanae for taking that NAACP Image Award home. That’s the reason for the radio silence: I’ve been a one-man band with an editor and an assistant, trying to keep up with the demand for real talk.

But today, we ain’t talking about travel. We’re talking about imperialism.

We are officially in March of 2026, and the war machine is fully operational. While you were scrolling past the chaos in Dallas County during the primaries or watching the highlights of the “Iran situation,” I was looking at the structural engineering behind the building. Today, we are dissecting the phenomenon of American imperialism—how it deploys itself in Texas voting booths, in the boardrooms of Silicon Valley, and in the bombing of schoolgirls in Iran.

THE TEXAS WARM-UP: FASCISM SOFT LAUNCH

Before we cross the Atlantic, we have to look at our own backyard. Yesterday in Texas, we saw a soft launch of what’s coming in November. In Dallas County, there was chaos at the polls—voter suppression dressed up as administrative disarray. They changed the voting destinations, made it a musical chairs game to cast a ballot, and created long lines designed to leave a nasty taste in the mouths of first-time voters.

Let’s connect the dots: Donald Trump called down to Texas begging for five seats. He knows that if Texas slips, his whole house of cards falls. So what do they do? They create discord. They make sure that in Jasmine Crockett’s political home, the process is so dysfunctional that people feel disempowered.

We saw it with Ken Paxton and John Cornyn going at each other’s throats. But the real story is Proposition 8—the legalization of cannabis and the clearing of past convictions. We have data that shows a direct correlation between high voter turnout and legalization. Republicans know this. So when you see high Democratic primary turnout, you know they are shaking in their boots. They have to figure out how to discourage the vote, or they lose the state.

This isn’t just Texas politics. This is the American project. Whether it’s in Dallas County or Tehran, the goal is the same: control the population, suppress the opposition, and secure resources.

THE INFANTILE POLITICS OF “OLD MEN”

Speaking of control, we have to talk about the geriatrics running the show. We have a bunch of elders in Washington. These politicians, from Mitch McConnell to the senior citizens in both parties, have tied their political position to their personhood. They believe they are the only ones who can maintain “social order.” They are so self-centered that they think they should dictate the livelihood of people who will be living for the next 50 years, even though they are one foot in the grave.

We saw it in 2025: five Democrats died in office, Republicans filled those seats, and they pushed through a “big, beautiful bill” that hurt the rest of us. This isn’t just about age; it’s about a paternalistic, selfish worldview. If you’re old enough to qualify for retirement, you shouldn’t be making decisions about a future you won’t inhabit. It’s time to impart knowledge, not hoard power.

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THE REAL REASON FOR THE WAR: FOLLOW THE MONEY (AND THE MEDIA)

You want to know why we are going to war? It ain’t about “defense.” It’s about the merger.

This weekend, the largest media merger in American history closed. One family now controls CNN, HBO, CBS, Warner Brothers, Paramount Pictures—all running on Oracle’s infrastructure. That same family owns Oracle.

And within the last two weeks, Oracle won brand new contracts to host Medicare and Medicaid data for 150 million Americans, and to run Air Force operations using AI.

So, follow the internal link:

* Your tax dollars go to Oracle via federal contracts.

* That revenue props up Oracle’s stock price.

* Larry Ellison uses that stock as collateral to finance his son’s purchase of the largest media company in history.

* That media company now controls the narrative of the war.

* Another couple billion dollars for this merger is coming from Saudi Arabia and Qatar—the same governments we are now allying with against Iran.

This is the definition of imperialism. It’s not about “politically correct wars” or “nation-building.” As Pete Hegseth said, it’s about “maximum authorities” and “no stupid rules of engagement.” They are telling us they don’t care about the Geneva Convention. They are bragging about having the most lethal air power in history.

We were taught that the Nazi regime was inhumane because they engaged in war without rules. We created the Nuremberg trials and the Geneva Convention to prevent that. Now, the very people who claimed to defeat that regime are bragging that they can do the same thing.

THE VENN DIAGRAM OF IMPERIALISM: DEMOCRATS VS. REPUBLICANS

I’m not doing the lazy “both sides” rhetoric. I’m drawing a Venn diagram.

* Republicans (Hard Power): Pete Hegseth is telling you straight up: “We fight to win. No democracy-building exercise. No politically correct wars.” They are unapologetic imperialists. They want the oil, the land, and the resources, and they don’t care if you know it.

* Democrats (Soft Power): Democrats care about the quorum and diplomacy while engaging in imperialism. They will wring their hands, clutch their pearls, and then drop the same bombs, but they’ll call it “humanitarian intervention” or “stability operations.”

The common denominator is imperialism.

And I have the receipts. During the Vice Presidential debate, Tim Walz let a Freudian slip fly. He said, “The expansion of Iran and its proxies is an absolute fundamental necessity for the United States.” He meant Israel.

That slip told us everything. The expansion of Israel is fundamental to the United States. That’s why we can’t have nice things. That’s why they banned TikTok—not because of Chinese data, but because Israel was losing the narrative war. They had to control the story.

From Hillary Clinton saying we would “totally obliterate” Iran, to every president since the 80s talking about the “Paperclip Theory” (Iran is always 3-5 years away from a bomb), the script has been consistent. They paint the “brown Islamic other” as an irrational actor, while Israel—the only nuclear power in the region that refuses to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty—gets a free pass.

1953. Remember that number. That’s when the CIA and MI6 orchestrated a coup against a democratically elected leader, Mossadegh, because he wanted to nationalize Iranian oil. We destroyed their democracy for oil. And now we act surprised when they chant “Death to America.”

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THE BLACK AMERICAN CONNECTION: WHY THIS IS OUR FIGHT

To my Black American audience: if you think this doesn’t affect you, you are smoking dope and dog food.

* The Military: They go into our neighborhoods and recruit our Black children with promises of scholarships and a way out, only to send them to Iraq and Afghanistan to fight for oil companies.

* The Economy: Texas is the number one manufacturer of weapons in the country. Our communities are starving, but we have “money for war, can’t feed the poor.”

* The Morality: Malcolm X was right. Dr. King was right. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. How can you quote MLK during Black History Month and then turn around and say “I don’t give a f**k about Iran”? That’s faker than pleather.

Barack Obama was the “commander in chief.” That means he was the commander of the most lethal military in world history. He deported more people than any president before him and he drone-struck weddings. I’m not saying this to take away from the symbolism of his presidency for some, but if you let your cultural pride substitute for your political accountability, you are part of the problem.

The American project doesn’t care about you. It doesn’t care about you regardless of the blackface you put on it. It is designed to operate a certain way. If you can be critical of Trump’s wars but get defensive when I mention Obama’s drone strikes, you aren’t anti-war. You’re just a fan of a sports team.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

* Imperialism is Bipartisan: The flavor changes (soft vs. hard power), but the meal is the same. Both parties prioritize the American empire and the security of Israel over the welfare of the American people and the sovereignty of other nations.

* Follow the Internal Link: There is always a connection between the geopolitical event and your material reality. Whether it’s Oracle’s stock price, the price of gas, or the recruitment of our youth, the war machine impacts you. Don’t be infantile and say it doesn’t.

* The “Paperclip Theory” is a Lie: For 40 years, we’ve been told Iran is on the verge of a nuclear bomb. The only country to ever use a nuclear weapon on civilian populations is the United States. The pathology of the “irrational brown boogeyman” is a tool to manufacture consent for war.

* Israel is the Center of Gravity: The U.S.-Israel alliance is the only thing both parties can agree on. It dictates our foreign policy in the Middle East. Understanding the “Greater Israel Project” and the goal of regional hegemony is key to understanding why we are bombing Iran today.

* Don’t Be a Bootlicker: Stop defending politicians because of their skin color or party letter. Hold them accountable. Malcolm X warned us about the “bootlicking Negroes” who will justify anything for a crumb from the master’s table. Prove him wrong.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

I’m not here to force you to follow me. If this made you uncomfortable, block me, unfollow me, unhand me. I’m an acquired taste. But if you are still here, I challenge you.

Whatever you understood about American imperialism when you woke up this morning, I challenge you to know more when you go to sleep. Do better.

Education is elevation. Never take my word for it. As my grandma said, “A pair of lips can tell anything.” Do the research.

CALL TO ACTION #1

This kind of structural analysis takes time, travel, and resources. I’m in the streets, from Detroit to Iowa to Kentucky, and I’m bringing those receipts back to you. If you value this content and want to see it continue, I need your support.

Become a paid subscriber to Research over MeSearch on Substack. Your subscription allows me to stay independent, travel to where the story is, and push back against the algorithm shadow bans. It keeps the lights on and the research flowing. Link in the bio. Let’s build.

COMMENTS & RESOURCES

Shout out to Luis Polo: You said, “Just more rich people problems, not interested.” I hear you, but that’s the point. The phenomenon we are dissecting is about how rich people’s desires dictate poor people’s lives. Don’t divorce yourself from the analysis because you hate the subjects.

Related Reading & Resources:

* The CIA and MI6 Coup in Iran (1953): Look up Operation Ajax.

* The Greater Israel Project: Research the biblical borders and the political movement to expand Israeli territory from the Nile to the Euphrates.

* Oracle & Government Contracts: Follow the merger between Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount, and look into Larry Ellison’s involvement.

* Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.”

* Malcolm X: “The Ballot or the Bullet.”

CALL TO ACTION #2

If you made it this far, you know I’m not playing with this information. The algorithms are working against voices like ours. Don’t let them silence this conversation.

Upgrade to a paid subscription today. You’ll get access to exclusive threads, the sources I use for my research, and early episode drops. This is how we build an autonomous space for real talk. Don’t wait—lock in now.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theconsciouslee.substack.com/subscribe

Thank you ITS Never Happening…, Jack, Lynette, Shirley Figueroa, Mary Lummis, and many others for tuning into my live video with Andrew Yang! Join me for my next live video in the app.

It ain’t every day you’re sitting in a car in Iowa, snow falling, talking to a man who ran for president. That’s the beauty of this journey—you show up, you ask questions, and the ancestors line up the conversation for you.

I pulled up on Andrew Yang livestream somewhere off a highway in Iowa. We got to conversating, and man... it was one of those talks that makes your brain feel like it’s doing backflips. We talked about Dr. King, union leaders getting shot through their windows, the robots taking our jobs, and why your cell phone bill is basically legalized theft.

If you think you know Andrew Yang, or you think you know American history, I promise you, by the end of this, you’ll realize you was only holding half the puzzle piece. Here is the breakdown.

Research Over Mesearch is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The Real Dr. King Was a Radical (And a Futurist)

We started on Black History Month, but Andrew took it somewhere deeper than the textbook. He reminded me that the image of Dr. King we get fed every January—the nice, sanitized man dreaming about content of character—is a ghost. A clean version of a revolutionary.

Andrew hit me with the dots that changed my whole vibe for the rest of the day.

First, he told me about Walter Reuther. Reuther was the head of the UAW back in the day. A union legend. This man got shot through his window, his brother was killed, he got beaten up multiple times—because that’s what it took to stand up for the working man back then. He was one of the speakers right before Dr. King gave the “I Have a Dream” speech. Why? Because Reuther looked at the March on Washington and said, “This is the same movement I’m in.”

That blew my mind. The fight for Black lives and the fight for workers’ rights? Same family tree.

Then Andrew dropped the bomb. He said, “You know Dr. King was talking about universal basic income before he was killed, right?”

I had to stop him. I literally had to pause the interview because I didn’t know that. Dr. King wasn’t just marching against Jim Crow; he was looking at the future and seeing automation coming. In his book Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, he literally said that technology was going to automate jobs away. He said poor Blacks and poor whites needed to team up and abolish poverty. He was calling for a guaranteed income.

So when we see his legacy getting stripped away, his name getting used to sell mattresses or whatever, it stings. Because if he was alive today, he wouldn’t be happy with just a parade. He’d be looking at the poverty, the AI taking jobs, and the data centers poisoning Iowa’s water, and he’d say, “Y’all ain’t listening.”

The “Magical Asian Man from the Future” & The Politics of Identity

I had to ask Andrew the vulnerable question. You ran in 2019 talking about AI and $1,000 a month (the Freedom Dividend). People looked at you crazy. Now, everybody from politicians to your barber is talking about AI taking over. How does that feel?

Andrew kept it a buck. He said, look, he ran because he saw the math. He was talking about artificial intelligence before ChatGPT was a household name. But he also acknowledged that the way people received him had a lot to do with his race.

He told me a story about being on a panel with Michael Tubbs, the young Black mayor of Stockton who actually started a UBI pilot program. Mayor Tubbs told Andrew, “You can get away with saying s**t I could never get away with. If I, as a young Black mayor, said we should start giving everyone money, they’d laugh me out of the room. But if you say it, people are like, ‘Oh, the magical Asian man from the future has some interesting ideas.’”

That’s that “model minority” myth in action. The same idea, coming from a Black mouth, is a threat. Coming from an Asian mouth, it’s an innovation. We gotta be real about that dynamic if we’re going to build the coalitions Dr. King and Walter Reuther were talking about.

Your Phone is Making You Poor and Sad (Here’s the Fix)

We pivoted to the rectangle in our pocket. Andrew’s new venture, Noble Mobile, ain’t just a phone company—it’s a protest.

He dropped some stats that had me tight:

* The average American pays $83 a month for wireless.

* The average European pays $35 a month.

* That extra $48 a month times 300 million people equals $100 BILLION a year we’re getting overcharged.

A hundred billion. For a service that’s basically a utility at this point.

Andrew looked at what his friend Mark Cuban did with Cost Plus Drugs (selling generics at a fair price) and applied it to phones. He cut a deal with T-Mobile to use their network (so the coverage is the same, if not better), and now he’s selling it for around $40 a month at NobleMobile.com.

Here’s where the politics come in… I asked him the hard question we all scared to ask: “If I sign up, what you doing with my data? You selling it to ICE? Is Palantir backdooring my texts?”

Andrew’s answer was solid. He ran on a Data Use Bill of Rights when he was campaigning. He believes we should own our data. So with Noble, they stipulate that they cannot sell or resell your data. They don’t even have access to it. They made T-Mobile agree to the same terms. It’s locked down.

And the kicker? They give you money back if you don’t use data. And they pay you interest on that money. The goal is to make you look at your phone and think, “Damn, I’m rotting my brain and losing money?” It’s an incentive to touch grass.

The average Noble user uses their phone 17% less. That’s a win in my book.

“I Could Have Saved More If They Knew They Were Slaves”

As we wrapped up, I had to leave Andrew and the audience with a thought that’s been burning in my chest. I got my degree in African American Studies, and traveling this country, I realize that a lot of folks just don’t know the history—so they keep being surprised by the present.

There’s a quote, allegedly from Harriet Tubman. They asked her what she would have done differently. She said, “I could have saved more slaves if I could have convinced them they were slaves.”

If you’re looking at what ICE is doing right now, or how corporations are poisoning water in Iowa, or how they’re replacing workers with AI, and you’re shocked—you haven’t been paying attention to Black history. Don’t look at Germany for the playbook; look at the Fugitive Slave Act. Look at the indigenous folks in this country who been through this before.

We don’t need to map American horror onto other people’s stories. We wrote the book on it. We need to understand our own domestic history so we can see the future coming before it hits us.

Andrew Yang’s Challenge to Us

Andrew closed with a simple truth: Dr. King was right. The poor whites and the poor Blacks need to team up. Because right now, it’s not about us versus each other. It’s about us against the extractive industries, the megacorps, and the algorithms designed to make our kids anxious for a profit.

He said America’s slogan should be “Extracting Maximum Profit.” That’s it.

Andrew believes Americans are good. We want the same things. We just need to come together, put the phones down, and follow the money back to our common humanity.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

* Dr. King’s Final Fight Was Economic: He wasn’t just about ending segregation. In his final years, he was laser-focused on poverty, warning about automation, and advocating for a Universal Basic Income (Guaranteed Income). His assassination cut short a multi-racial poor people’s movement.

* Coalitions Are Historical: The link between the Civil Rights Movement and the Labor Movement is real. Walter Reuther (UAW) and MLK Jr. stood on the same stage because they understood that workers’ rights and Black liberation are intertwined.

* Identity Shapes Policy Reception: Andrew Yang acknowledged that his Asian identity allowed him to propose radical ideas (like UBI) that a Black politician like Michael Tubbs would have been crucified for. The “model minority” myth provides a permission structure that Black leaders don’t get.

* We Are Being Financially Exploited by Telecoms: Americans are overpaying by roughly $100 billion a year for wireless service compared to Europe. Cell service has become a highly profitable utility with little resistance.

* Data is Power: Your data is being sold and weaponized. Andrew Yang’s “Data Use Bill of Rights” and the Noble Mobile model (refusing to sell data) is a small act of resistance against the surveillance economy.

* American History Repeats: To understand the current political climate (raids, deportations, corporate control), look at American history first—specifically the Fugitive Slave era and the treatment of Indigenous peoples—before looking at foreign analogs.

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RELATED READINGS / FURTHER STUDY

* Book: Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – This is the book where he lays out his economic vision and talks about automation. Essential reading.

* Essay: MLK, The Futurist by Andrew Yang – Look up Andrew’s piece connecting Dr. King to modern tech realities.

* History: The Life and Times of Walter Reuther – Research the UAW’s history and the physical price paid by labor leaders.

* Policy: The Data Use Bill of Rights (Andrew Yang 2020 Campaign Platform) – A blueprint for how we should own our digital selves.

* Concept: Guaranteed Income – Look into the work of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income (founded by Michael Tubbs) to see how King’s idea is being piloted today.

* Save Money & Protect Your Data: Check out NobleMobile.com for a phone plan that won’t sell you out.

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Thank you Seneca Dunmore, Shirley Figueroa, Dalai Mama 💗, Tung no, Jayme Hightower, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

It’s February 21st, and we are in the middle of the 100th celebration of Black History Month. It’s a time for reflection, for education, and for holding a mirror up to the nation to see where we truly stand. In today’s session of “Research Over Me,” we have to tackle a lot. We have to move past the superficial takes and dig into the material reality of what it means to be Black in America in 2026.

We started with a tragedy that didn’t trend. A white father in Texas shot and killed his daughter over an argument about Donald Trump. The media machine didn’t spin this into a narrative about white violence or white supremacy. Why? Because the framework of individualism protects whiteness, while Black people are always held collectively accountable for the actions of one. This single event is a gateway into understanding the concepts we need to break down today: Racial Literacy, the performative politics of potential presidential candidates, and the vital importance of centering Black women.

Let’s get into it.

The Stephen A. Smith Conundrum: Racial Illiteracy and the Pursuit of Power

Stephen A. Smith is floating the idea of running for president in 2028. And in doing so, he is giving us a masterclass in what happens when bourgeois aspiration meets racial illiteracy.

In the clip we analyzed, Smith argues that he wouldn’t be worried about racism if he ran for president. He posits that a “vast majority of Americans judge you on the content of your individual character” and that racism isn’t “as prevalent as someone on the left would like us to believe.” He suggests white Americans are too worried about their own suffering to be concerned with holding Black people back.

This is a dangerous and ahistorical take. It’s a textbook example of weaponizing “individualism” to deny systemic reality.

* The Material Reality vs. The Symbolic: Smith wants us to believe racism is fading, but the evidence screams otherwise. We are witnessing the erasure of landmark legislation—Affirmative Action, Roe v. Wade, and the gutting of the Civil Rights Act. The Supreme Court has legalized racial profiling under the guise of immigration enforcement. We see it in the story of Dr. Linda Davis, a Black educator in Savannah, Georgia, who was killed as collateral damage in an ICE chase—a story that received a fraction of the coverage of others because Black women’s humanity is perpetually marginalized.

* The Good Negro Fallacy: Smith’s positioning is a classic play for white approval. By downplaying racism, he signals to a white moderate/conservative audience that he is a “rational,” “articulate” Black man who won’t make them feel guilty. He trades in the fallacy that logic and emotion are mutually exclusive, painting those who acknowledge the pain of racism as hysterical, while he remains the clear-thinking “free thinker.”

* The COINTELPRO Connection: We have to connect the dots. The same 77 million people who voted for Trump are the ones quoting Dr. King’s “content of character” line. Yet, the current administration’s first “file release” wasn’t about Epstein; it was the COINTELPRO files on Dr. King, designed to smear and delegitimize him by sensationalizing his private life. They are actively erasing the legacy of the only Black man with a national holiday. So, when Smith says racism isn’t prevalent, he is actively insulting our intelligence and ignoring the war on Black history.

This isn’t about being “emotional.” This is about having the racial literacy to read the situation. If you can’t see that the policies of this administration are designed to disproportionately harm Black people, you are either illiterate or lying.

The Trust Black Women Roundtable: Generations Clashing in Good Faith

Switching gears, we have to talk about the incredible, viral moment from the SisterSong “Trust Black Women” roundtable featuring Clifton Powell, my brother Joseph Irvin, and others.

A clip of Clifton and Joseph engaging in a tense, passionate exchange has been circulating, and as expected, the internet is reacting with a severe lack of nuance.

* What Actually Happened: This was an intergenerational conversation about Black men’s accountability to Black women. Clifton Powell, speaking from his experience as an older Black man, spoke about not knowing what he didn’t know for much of his life, and the challenge of unlearning toxic behaviors later in life. Joseph Irvin, representing a younger generation, pushed back on the idea that a lack of knowledge is an excuse, especially after decades of partnership and procreation. He challenged the notion of “weaponized incompetence”—using past trauma as a shield to avoid present-day accountability.

* The Homophobic Response: Immediately, the comments section filled with vitriol questioning Joseph Irvin’s “right” to speak on women because of his perceived sexuality. This reveals a profound gender illiteracy. The idea that only heterosexual men can advocate for or have a stake in the well-being of Black women is a fallacy rooted in patriarchy. It conflates sexuality with gender and assumes that the only valid relationship between men and women is a sexual or romantic one. Gay Black men have mothers, sisters, friends, and colleagues. They are just as implicated in and affected by sexism and patriarchy as straight men.

* The Core Message: As David Daniels perfectly articulated, “Trusting Black women is not believing that all black women are always telling the truth, but believing that all black women deserve to be heard.” The conversation wasn’t about perfection; it was about intention. It was about Black men creating a space where Black women feel safe to be vulnerable, to be angry, and to be heard without us immediately getting defensive or “ready to play football,” as another panelist, Luke James, so eloquently put it.

This conversation was a beautiful, messy, and necessary brick in the foundation of building real trust. To reduce it to a salacious clip is to miss the entire point.

Conclusion

We are living in a moment of reconfiguration. We see the future slave era being drafted through policies like the Laken Riley Act, which funnels money to ICE at the expense of social services, and through the legalized terrorizing of Black and brown communities.

We must be racially literate. We must be gender literate. We must reject the siren song of “individualism” that only serves to protect the powerful. And we must, as Black men, do the work to show up for Black women, not just when they are our mothers or partners, but because their liberation is central to all of our power.

Education is elevation.

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5 KEY TAKEAWAYS

* Individualism is a White Privilege Tool: When a white person commits a violent act, it’s framed as an isolated incident. When a Black person does, it’s often framed as a reflection on the entire race. This double standard is a core component of systemic racism.

* Racial Literacy vs. Illiteracy: Racial literacy is the ability to read, write, and interpret situations involving race and power. Stephen A. Smith’s denial of racism’s prevalence is a prime example of racial illiteracy, which often serves to protect the status quo and appeal to white moderate sensibilities.

* Symbolic vs. Material Racism: We must look beyond the “symbolic” (a racist slur, a monkey video) and focus on the “material” (policy rollbacks like Affirmative Action, funding ICE over education, Black women losing jobs at disproportionate rates). Material racism has tangible consequences on our lives, safety, and economic stability.

* Gender Illiteracy & The “Trust Black Women” Conversation: Critiques of the SisterSong roundtable exposed a deep gender illiteracy. Reducing a necessary conversation about Black male accountability to a clash of personalities or dismissing a gay Black man’s contribution reveals a failure to understand that patriarchy and sexism are systems we all participate in, regardless of our sexuality.

* Policy is the Proof: The prevalence of racism isn’t measured by our feelings, but by policy. From the gutting of the Voting Rights Act to the Supreme Court’s sanctioning of racial profiling, the law is actively being shaped to create a racial hierarchy. Denying this is denying reality.

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Huey P. Newton said we must think globally and act locally. Too often, Americans do the opposite. We react locally while refusing to think globally. We talk about freedom as if it is contained inside U.S. borders. We debate human rights as if they are a domestic brand rather than a universal claim.

This conversation forced me to confront that contradiction head-on.

I recently spoke with Tamara Rudnev, whose husband, Konstantin Rudnev, has been held in Argentina for nearly a year without conviction, without trial, and according to her account, without even meaningful evidence. Their story moves across Russia, Montenegro, and Argentina. Their story sits at the intersection of geopolitics, migration, propaganda, and criminal justice. Their story also reveals something deeper: how state power operates across borders while ordinary people struggle to secure even the most basic legal protections.

The Anatomy of Detention Without Conviction

Tamara describes an arrest that happened at an airport, without explanation, without charges, and without immediate access to legal counsel. She describes being forced to sign documents in a language they did not understand. She describes prosecutors invoking a broad human-trafficking statute that, in her words, could mean “whatever they want.”

Her account alleges that Argentine authorities used media articles and reputational narratives from Russia as evidence. Her account alleges that her husband has been held under preventive detention for months while prosecutors “investigate,” without trial or conviction.

Preventive detention is not unique to Argentina. Many legal systems allow pre-trial detention under certain conditions. What stands out here is the duration and the alleged lack of procedural movement. Tamara claims that in Argentina some people remain jailed for years under investigation alone, even without guilt established in court.

If accurate, that raises a fundamental question about due process. A legal system that allows indefinite detention without conviction erodes the presumption of innocence. A state that can hold a body without proving a crime holds power beyond accountability.

Allegations, Propaganda, and Narrative Control

Tamara frames her husband as a longtime dissident of Vladimir Putin. She claims Russian media spent years constructing a negative public image of him. She believes Argentine authorities relied on that reputational framing.

Here lies a critical lesson about globalized information warfare. Reputation travels across borders faster than law. Allegations move faster than evidence. Headlines become proxies for truth in legal contexts that should rely on proof.

Public narrative often becomes a shadow courtroom. Whoever controls the story shapes the perception of guilt long before any judge rules.

The “Victim” Who Denied Being a Victim

One of the most disturbing elements of Tamara’s account concerns the alleged victim. She states that the woman prosecutors identified as a victim later declared she did not know Konstantin and did not consider herself harmed. She states that prosecutors and judges did not attend the hearing where that declaration was made, and later refused to incorporate it into the case.

If accurate, that scenario challenges the legitimacy of the prosecution itself. Criminal cases depend on evidence, witnesses, and testimony. A victim’s denial does not automatically end a case. Yet ignoring exculpatory testimony raises serious due-process concerns.

Justice cannot function if institutions choose which facts count.

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Global Power, U.S. Influence, and Carceral Expansion

This story also intersects with U.S. foreign policy. Tamara explicitly hopes U.S. influence might pressure Argentina. I connected that appeal to a broader reality: U.S. tax dollars, diplomatic leverage, and security partnerships shape institutions far beyond U.S. borders.

Americans often debate domestic incarceration while ignoring the global carceral footprint of U.S. power. Security assistance, training programs, and geopolitical alliances export legal norms and enforcement models. The United States participates in building the very systems that detain people abroad.

Global imperial influence rarely looks like occupation anymore. It looks like funding, cooperation, and institutional alignment.

Due Process as a Universal Principle

This case ultimately returns to a simple principle. Even if someone is guilty, they deserve trial. Even if allegations are serious, they require proof. Even if public opinion condemns, courts must still adjudicate.

I said it plainly in the conversation: if Konstantin committed crimes, prosecute him. If he is innocent, release him. The injustice lies in limbo. The injustice lies in indefinite waiting without adjudication.

Preventive detention without resolution creates a category of people who exist outside justice altogether. Not convicted. Not acquitted. Not free.

That condition is not justice delayed. That condition is justice suspended.

Why This Story Matters Beyond One Man

Some people will not care about Russia. Some will not care about Argentina. Many will not care about a man accused of leading a cult.

That reaction misses the point.

Legal precedents built on unpopular defendants shape the future of everyone else. Systems that ignore due process for foreigners eventually erode it for citizens. Carceral expansion abroad echoes domestically.

Freedom cannot be territorial. Human rights cannot be selective. Due process cannot depend on nationality or reputation.

Education is elevation. Research over me-search.

This case is not only about Konstantin Rudnev. This case is about what happens when power outruns procedure and narrative outruns law.

5 Major Takeaways

1. Preventive detention can function as punishment without conviction.Tamara’s account describes months of incarceration without trial, highlighting how pre-trial detention can become de facto sentencing. Legal systems that allow indefinite investigative detention risk nullifying presumption of innocence. Justice requires timelines and procedural safeguards, not open-ended confinement.

2. Global propaganda ecosystems influence legal outcomes.Reputational narratives constructed in one country can shape judicial perceptions in another. Media framing often travels faster than evidence. Cross-border information warfare complicates due process by importing bias into legal systems.

3. Victim testimony is central to legitimacy in criminal prosecution.The alleged refusal to incorporate a victim’s denial, if accurate, undermines procedural fairness. Courts depend on evaluating all relevant testimony. Selective recognition of evidence erodes public trust in justice institutions.

4. U.S. geopolitical power intersects with foreign carceral systems.International influence, funding, and alliances shape detention practices abroad. Americans cannot critique domestic incarceration while ignoring global carceral expansion linked to U.S. policy. Human rights discourse must be transnational.

5. Due process is universal or it is meaningless.Legal protections lose integrity when applied selectively. The right to trial, defense, and adjudication cannot depend on nationality, ideology, or public opinion. Justice systems are measured by how they treat the accused, not the popular.

Related Readings

Preventive Detention & Due Process

* David Cole — No Equal Justice

* Malcolm Feeley — The Process Is the Punishment

* UN Human Rights Committee — General Comment on Liberty and Security of Person

Global Carceral Systems & Imperial Power

* Naomi Murakawa — The First Civil Right

* Stuart Schrader — Badges Without Borders

* Elizabeth Hinton — America on Fire

Propaganda, Narrative, and State Power

* Peter Pomerantsev — Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible

* Edward Herman & Noam Chomsky — Manufacturing Consent

* Masha Gessen — The Future Is History

Migration, Law, and Transnational Justice

* Harsha Walia — Border and Rule

* Didier Fassin — Enforcing Order

* Ayelet Shachar — The Shifting Border

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theconsciouslee.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theconsciouslee.substack.com/subscribe