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Disgust, disdain and disbelief are emotions many of us have felt since the November election – and with good reason. But how long can we stay disillusioned and disaffected before fighting back? This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with author Dave Zirin, from The Nation and Edge of Sports, to have a cathartic chat about the future of this country and how to cope.
Narrator | 00:02 – This is Sea Change Radio, covering the shift to sustainability. I’m Alex Wise.
Dave Zirin (DZ) | 00:20 – History’s gotta be our guide. Like there have been reactionary and revanchist periods in US society before. I think the real difference here, honestly, is people’s lack of belief in an absolute truth.
Narrator | 00:35 – Disgust, disdain, and disbelief or emotions many of us have felt since the November election and with good reason. But how long can we stay disillusioned and disaffected before fighting back? This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with author Dave Zirin from The Nation and Edge of Sports, to have a cathartic chat about the future of this country and how to cope.
Alex Wise (AW) | 01:10 – I’m joined now on Sea Change Radio by Dave Zirin. He is the sports editor at The Nation, and he also runs the Edge of Sports, the Edge of Sports podcast, TV show, and he’s the author of 11 books. Dave, it’s a pleasure to have you back on Sea Change Radio.
Dave Zirin (DZ) | 01:29 – No, it’s great to be here because we need a sea change, so why not start here with you, Alex?
Alex Wise (AW) | 01:34 – Well, thank you. Like a lot of Americans, I’m at a crossroads spiritually right now in terms of fighting the good fight. When I read articles that tell me, you know, we got to keep fighting. I can’t help but feel a little bit defeated at this point. I read a, a title of an article called the Triumph of Ignorance, that this latest election was the triumph of ignorance. And I can’t help but feel that yes, the most vulnerable in our populations will suffer from this election, but so many of those people who are going to be affected by it voted for Trump and his lackeys. So how does one keep fighting the good fight in the face of all this terrible news, Dave?
Dave Zirin (DZ) | 02:20 – Well, first and foremost, again, thanks for having me. Second, of course, we need history to be our guide, and we have to know that nothing in this country that’s worth a damn was given to us on high. It has all been fought for from below. The other thing we learned from history is that struggle and opposition can come up from the wildest and most unexpected of places. And when it does come up, when it does rise, and I, I’m not only telling you it will rise, Alex, I’m saying it is rye zing right now demonstration in DC right now, freeway in la shut down yesterday. I mean, people are starting to wake up after an incredibly bruising year. And we could talk about what was so bruising about the past year if we can, but the anger and audience for a fight back. And it is so real and it’s never been angrier. I mean, you think about the response to, uh, the, the Luigi killing of the healthcare CEO and I mean, I couldn’t, I went to New York and there’s Luigi Graffiti all over the place now. I think that’s more of a cry of despair. You know, people feel like, well, there’s nothing we can do. So the best we can hope for is kind of a lone assassin to extract justice from a society built on such terribly savage inequalities. But the, the anger in our healthcare system that exploded after that, I think was something that took a ton of people off guard. I mean, the, the governor of New York even set up a hotline for CEOs if they felt threatened or dangerous. I mean, it was unbelievable <laugh> that, that our tax dollars are going to a CEO hotline. Thank you Kathy Hochul, about to push forward a $2 billion stadium for the Buffalo Bills on our tax dollars. Thanks for that. Um, but I think what we’re looking at here is the potential for us to try to reclaim what’s being taken from us. And I think what one of our strategies needs to be looking at some of the figures and statistics that are out there right now, the Democratic Party is at historic lows in terms of approval, in terms of people thinking that it’s a useful and even viable political institution. But Trump is not much higher. And what does that tell you? It tells you that there is a reservoir of people, um, out there who are really, really unhappy with the state of this country. And I think that’s a much better way to understand the election that just took place, because like, how much pain must there be out there for people in ways that just does not get calculated to turn to Trump as kind of like a big screw you, not just at the system, not just at the last four years, not just at all of that, but, but a big middle finger at like everything, even themselves, their own lives. I mean, you mentioned ignorance. I would’ve said the triumph of nihilism, not the triumph of ignorance. Like a real absence of hope that says, well, we might as well elect the gangster because then maybe something will move and get done. Of course, what’s getting done, a lot of which is what he promised, not all of which is what he promised. I don’t think people voted for, um, an African autocrat with dreams of apartheid running the show. Um, I don’t think that was ever really on the table. But you, you get my broader point. Like people like you and I have to realize that we’re not gonna be the spark that starts stuff. It’s almost certainly gonna come from working people, from youth, from college campuses, but people like you and I have to be prepared to support these struggles however we can. It’s our duty. And, and in that regard, I don’t think that our demoralization, which of course I have shared with you, of course I have, I’m a human being for God’s sakes, uh, but in this world, but it, it’s something we just can’t afford. And even if it’s simple as putting up some posts, if there’s an email plan or a phone call plan against a particular institution, like some, that’s something I’ve been working on today, actually, uh, then we have to engage with that because we will never have mass descent in this country unless that descent is visible.
AW | 06:28 – You mentioned the youth, and I can’t help but think that if I were a younger man and my country was going to war, there is no way in God’s name I would be fighting for this country at this juncture in our nation’s history in terms of the intersection of sports and politics that you cover. We just saw the nicest people on the planet. The Canadians booing the national anthem, and rightly so. We deserve to get booed. I’ve been a lifelong patriot and somebody who believes in my country, but I don’t like nationalism. And at this point, I feel more connected to people in Canada or in Italy or in South Africa than I do with people who voted for Trump at this point. I feel like a citizen of the world, which puts the wind at my sails in some ways. Like, yes, I should care about everybody, but I’m feeling this patriotism and this caring about my own country seeping out of me. And that’s, that’s sad and painful.
DZ | 07:30 – No, I mean, I could see that being a sense of loss. You know what you sound like right now, you sound like, it might not be Mario Savio, but one of the early Berkeley free speech protestors. No, it wasn’t Savio, but it was one of his partners who had this line where he said to the US government, he, in his speech, he said, “God damn you for breaking my American heart.” And I think there’s a lot of that going on right now. I also would take pains to separate the Trump hardcore Nazis. I, you see this all the time, people being like, well, if you’re sitting at a table with a Nazi, guess what? You’re a Nazi. And I am very sympathetic to that because if I was sitting at a table with a Nazi, I would break a bottle and leap across the table, but voting’s a little bit different. Voting’s not the same as breaking bread with somebody. There are things like protest votes. There are obviously people who didn’t vote. There was a huge campaign. We don’t have to re-litigate it around Gaza and Israel, and, I mean, but actually I do wanna talk about Gaza at one point as we talk about this. I think the last year split and exhausted the liberals in the left, to the point of which now this election has happened, and people are just bleary-eyed about what do we do next? Because the targets have changed. The, the issues have changed. And you have an autocracy developing run by this, uh, guy who dreams of apartheid and his orange, uh, you know, the the orange guy who works for him. And so I, I think that this is the perilous place where we stand right now as our side really needs to get our stuff together and move forward in a way that challenges the priorities being set. And of course, your American heart is broken, Alex, I mean, look at, this is not America, but by any stretch of the imagination, they’re shutting down agencies that require congressional approval. They are violating the, the full credit of the United States. The, the, you know, that that used to actually mean something. I mean, this is, I don’t wanna say it’s madness because what it is, is oligarchy. What it is, is kleptocracy, um, you know, this is a political strategy. They are not mad men. They are just trying to create a society where people are left to the wolves and they can profit from each and every, everything that comes out of any institution. And government, of course, as a nonprofit entity is their enemy.
(Music Break)| 10:05
AW | 11:15 – This is Alex Wise on Sea Change Radio, and I’m speaking to Dave Zirin from the Edge of Sports in The Nation. So you didn’t finish your thought about, we’re not just talking about hardcore Nazi right wingers, but what I think you were getting to is that the sad part is that there’s so many people there who are just kind of caught in the malaise of it all. And, and, and were not in engaged enough to care and get the information correct. I mean, if you look at the post-election surveys, people who thought all these crazy things were almost down the line voting for the Republican ticket. So that’s why the triumph of ignorance kind of resonated with me because I’ve been knocking on doors since 2004 e except for 2020. I’ve gone to swing states. I’ve gone all around the country, probably 10 states. I’ve gotten hundreds of people to come with me over the years to knock on doors, because I think it’s the single most effective thing that somebody who’s not a gazillionaire can do to affect change is engage with your fellow citizens. This election was so deflating, not because of the hardcore Nazis, it was because there were some really nice people that I met who were voting for Trump when I went to Nevada several times in the fall, you know, oh, come on in, can I get you a lemonade? You know, really nice people. Oh yeah, we’re voting for Trump. And it was just like, that hit me in the stomach, in a solar plexus in a way that I didn’t know I could feel.
DZ | 12:45 – Hey man, I, no, I get you. I get you. But if we, but we, this again, where history’s gotta be our guide. Like there have been reactionary and revanchist periods in US society before. I think the real difference here, honestly, is people’s lack of belief in an absolute truth. You know, whether you wanna blame the algorithms, whether you wanna blame social media. But there, i I, I certainly would prefer a terrain more like the late 1930s when you had the German bun and the, you know, the Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden, and we’re arguing, fighting, sometimes physically fighting over, over what we should do about the facts on the ground. But there’s a common belief in what the facts are like, okay, war with Germany, let’s not fight Germany because the Nazis should be our friends. You know, like, like, like at least there was a common, uh, set of facts that people could debate over. I don’t think there’s a common set of facts right now, and I certainly don’t think there was a common set of facts in the election cycle. The thing is, though, is that facts are stubborn things like, look what Trump did this morning that we’re doing this interview. All of a sudden, a bunch of the tariffs on Mexico got pulled back because the financial markets went in an uproar. And Trump judges his success by those markets. So that’s a fact that he couldn’t, he lied similarly, the other week when they paused all the grants and, and, you know, the, the, the phone call effect into members of Congress – Red State, Blue State, was enough that they pulled back. And now they have a different strategy of waiting for Trump’s boy Sam Alito to save the day and say he’s allowed to control all the money in this country like an absolute king. So they’re, they’re putting their stock more in that than being able to do it unilaterally. And think about that though, like red states, and also I, I do want to point out that as recently as 2020 and four and a half years ago, we had the largest set of demonstrations in the history of the United States after the police murder of George Floyd. Now, how many of those people did not vote, or how many of those people voted for Trump because they heard Joe Biden say, fund the police, fund the police, you know, and, and hammer that home in his first state of the Union address. Again, I don’t want to re-litigate the Biden years, the Harris campaign. I’m not sure how much that frankly helps us at this point, but I do think that us looking to social movements, how to build them, how to support them in the face of this revanchist reactionary onslaught is our best hope because I think a lot of people are also just scared. And if we’re able to make dissent visible, if we’re able to talk to the 57% of the country that thinks Trump is a, you know what, uh, then I think we begin to start to build something that can be a viable power, especially since I’m not seeing a lot of viable power at this point from the opposition party.
AW | 15:58 -Although this morning you saw Brian Schatz, he’s threatening to use every power as a senator that he can to shut down the Senate as long as USAID was going to be threatened, and that, that’s the latest shot across the bow.
DZ | 16:14 – Brian Schatz is a good senator. I like Brian Schatz. I like his politics. It shouldn’t just be Brian Schatz. Just like, it just shouldn’t be just AOC saying like, “Nazis, hell no.” You know, and using that word, it’s like, we need people to start to speak truth for power. And if Chuck Schumer sends one more tweet that says, when your salsa is more expensive on Super Bowl Sunday, remember who to blame. I’m like, dude, they’re about to stop. They have stopped funding tuberculosis treatments. You know, they like, like, what, what are you, what are you doing? I don’t care about my salsa. I care about, you know, my family members being at risk from communicable diseases.
AW | 16:58 – The, the misinformation that Trump was spreading about like egg prices, if Schumer’s getting into those waters, you’re just, you’re losing.
DZ | 17:07 – Yeah, you’re losing. Also, because prices, and I, I can’t believe we have to explain this. Maybe it’s because, you know, you know this…
AW | 17:14 – We don’t have to explain this to our listeners, I don’t think, I like to think that they understand that there’s avian flu and that there’s a free market out there, and that the president of the United States doesn’t control egg prices.
DZ | 17:24 – No. I would just also point out, you know, the senatorial class in this country has never been wealthier. That’s a statistical fact. And they don’t really understand that different places and different cities and different markets have different prices. So it it, when you just start yelling things like the price of salsa is up, and someone’s just sort of like, well, maybe, you know, by a quarter, I don’t know, or I’m going to a party. It just, it doesn’t have the resonance of, frankly, the, the reality and the seriousness of the situation that we’re in right now.
AW | 17:56 – I read this from Nicholas Grossman, who’s a professor of international relations at University of Illinois. He wrote, what the Constitution did not foresee is the President doing whatever he wants, saying, “what are you going to do about it, dork? And that both the legislature and the judiciary would be on board with it. That last part is crucial. The founders didn’t think other branches would forfeit so much power.” So this constitutional crisis is going to be the new normal, I fear.
DZ | 18:24 – Yeah, and I, I fear that as well. And I think I keep thinking about, I, I’m sorry, I said I wouldn’t go backwards, but that nine month period where Biden had absolute power according to the Supreme Court, and perhaps some things that could have been done with that to ensure that the branches of government would be in Violet. I mean, maybe I, you could say, I mean, I don’t know, man. I don’t know. I, I think that a lot of people were kind of asleep at the wheel because of the shock of two things. Like one, the shock of the durability of Trump, you know, in the face of the lawsuits, et cetera. The whole, the fever will break thing never happened. Even Musk was backing DeSantis, if you remember that. And then the other thing is, I really do think Gaza, you know, and having a huge group of their constituency being like, you need to stand firm on Israel, or you can forget our support, but then, like, they can’t even campaign on college campuses because people are in such arms about what’s taking place. They’ll be interrupted and have like scenes and all the rest of it. And, and then meanwhile surrounding all of it is Benjamin Netanyahu openly, openly playing them for Trumps and, you know, and, and provoking the crisis and prolonging it and, and, you know, cheering on Trump. And then of course, ceasefire right away. I mean, it, it just, it, it was a lot of people have said using, and again, you remember I’m the sports guy here. A lot of people have said that this election was America scoring an own goal on itself. But let me just say it, it’s not just the people that kicked that own goal. That’s all I’m saying. And by the way, I wanna reemphasize good for Senator Schatz doing this. Maybe that courage will be contagious as well. I just wanna see a lot of people having his back in those chambers right now.
(Music Break)| 20:20
AW | 21:12 – This is Alex Wise on Sea Change Radio, and I’m speaking to Dave Zirin from the Edge of Sports and The Nation. So Dave, you’re talking about Gaza and how it splintered the left and, and also Joe Biden’s, relative unpopularity, I think splintered Democrats as well. There was arguments about we want someone else, and in the end, we did get someone else who I think was an exemplary candidate. Maybe Kamala Harris didn’t have enough time to really build the kind of national movement required, but I thought she ran a flawless campaign in the limited time that she had. And, and, but I want to dive into that splintering where, because of social media, we’re in this echo chamber and we end up kind of shaming and arguing with ourselves a amongst people who we agree on 90 to 95% of all issues, and we’re, we’re picking the wrong…
DZ | 22:05 – Agreed
AW | 22:06 …enemies. Like, what’s the term where you’re, um, a circular firing squad, if you will.
DZ | 22:10 – That is a phrase. Yes. Uh, <laugh>, unfortunately, I don’t have the firing squad metaphors feeling a little real these days.
AW | 22:18 – That’s true. Well, let’s get back to the intersection of sports and politics. You are bailiwick for a minute. I have been using sports as an oasis since election day and have been doing as much of a media blackout, self-imposed media blackout as possible for the last three or four months. And I could see the value in, not wanting to have that part of my brain activated right now. That doesn’t mean that all the important work by these athletes throughout the decades should be minimized in any way. Maybe talk about this shut up and dribble of element, how it relates to your book, “The Kaepernick Effect: Taking A Knee, Changing The World.”
DZ | 23:01 – No, I mean, and, and in my world, like you feel the reactionary fervor, you feel the reaction to so much of what we’re dealing with Alex is a reaction. I think that’s intertwined against the mass protests after George Floyd was killed. And especially the rightwing reaction to seeing masses of young white people in the streets protesting, uh, that killing. And then of course, you know, that combined with how COVID discombobulated all of us and sent people down rabbit holes of online conspiracies, especially around vaccines and the like. Um, both have had just a terrible effect, um, on this country. And of course, the Republicans have been more than happy to opportunistically take advantage of both, uh, elder white fear about their grandkids being, you know, anti-racist, being trans, all the rest of it. But then also playing into the incredibly dangerous, uh, conspiracy stuff that came out of, out of the pandemic. And, and I, I think when you asked about the Kaepernick effect stuff, what you’ve seen since 2020 is that is athletes and really, um, Howard Bryant, my sports writer friend, he, he puts it more at, on January 6th is kind of the turning point. And on January 6th after that, after the show of right-wing violence and the pathetic response, I thought too, that Trump should have been indicted within 48 hours. I mean, one of the great historic wonders, I think in the history of democracy, um, that, that that was sort of led to slide to the states and these small court hearings that people maybe didn’t understand, and it all looked like a conspiracy to get him and all the rest of it. Or it could be played that way, I should say. Um, is bring it on back to after January 6th, athletes have shut up and athletes were not loud around this election either. And I’m talking about resistance athletes who came out in full force.
AW | 25:08 – I can’t help but think that a lot of these athletes like myself thought that there was no way Trump was gonna win. So why expend valuable capital to, in Michael Jordan’s famous words, you know, Republicans also buy Nike’s. Why alienate people if you don’t need to? Because Kamala Harris has got this. There’s no way that we would vote Trump back in. Maybe that’s one calculation note some of these athletes made, but that’s just my hypothesis. I have no nothing to back that up with.
DZ | 25:39 – I think that you are correct that they were banking on people. Just, I wrote a piece about this for The Nation using Tim Walz’s love of football to talk about the prevent defense and the old expression that the only thing a prevent defense does is prevent you from winning. And a lot of the year felt like a prevent defense by, by athletes, by political athletes, not just the people running the campaign.
AW | 26:05 – That’s why Tim Walz seemed like the right pick to me, he seemed like he understood that, and they went after Trump in a new way that the Biden campaign hadn’t gone after him.
DZ | 26:16 – I am still, I mean, I said we wouldn’t re-litigate, but I’m still extremely upset by how Tim Walz was used during that campaign. It felt like they had him locked in a basement when he first came out and made that first speech. And you learned his history about being a union man for 20 years, former teacher running the cafeteria, helping kids, making sure they had meals. I was like, whoa, we have something here. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. We have, have something here we can work with. Even the BLM people in Minnesota had things to say about him that were positive after George Floyd, you know, and, and it’s just like the, the not using that was ridiculous. <laugh>, another thing that’s so bothersome is that it felt like an exact replay for me of 2016 where, you know, Tim Kane, who I know pretty well, because, you know, I’m in the DC area. He’s Virginia. I mean, this is a guy who speaks fluent Spanish, was a missionary, and I was like, oh, this, they should have this guy on Spanish radio and Univision every fricking day. Never happened.
AW | 27:20 – Yeah, they marginalized him.
DZ | 27:21 – But it’s just like, what are you doing?
AW | 27:23 – Well, I’m glad to have talked to you and, and gotten the wind back in my sails. I’m going to keep fighting the good fight.
DZ | 27:31 – Have you, though?
AW | 27:32 – I have, for now at least, I’m going to stick to the fight for climate justice and environmental issues. There’s just so many issues for us to pick and choose from that we have to play to our strengths.
DZ | 27:44 – I’m glad you said that, Alex, because you know, well, and I’m sure your listeners know well that that’s their strategy. Flood the zone, make it a million issues, make us disoriented, et cetera.
AW | 27:55 – Dave Zirin from the Edge of Sports and The Nation, thanks so much for being my guest on Sea Change Radio.
DZ | 28:00 – No, it was good for me too, Alex, thank you.
Narrator | 28:17 – You’ve been listening to Sea Change Radio. Our intro music is by Sanford Lewis. And our outro music is by Alex Wise, additional music by Rodney Jones, Public Enemy and The Meters. To read a transcript of this show, go to SeaChangeRadio.com to stream or download the show or subscribe to our podcast on our site, or visit our archives to hear from Doris Kearns Goodwin, Gavin Newsom, Stewart Brand, and many others – and tune in to Sea Change Radio next week as we continue making connections for sustainability. For Sea Change Radio. I’m Alex Wise.