#1803 Monthly-ish Mix: Manufactured Legitimacy and the Fight to Reclaim It

Air Date: 6/24/2026 The Monthly-ish Mix™ is here to get you caught up on recent news without being overwhelming! If you've been pulling back from the news for your own sanity, this one's built for you — a quick recap and reference guide to the past month or two, organized around a single idea: when power can't earn legitimacy, it manufactures it. The performance. Spectacle, religion, and health branding standing in for real consent: Trump collecting a FIFA "peace prize," Christian nationalism worn as a costume the actual church refuses to bless, and RFK Jr. dressing up a gutted vaccine agenda as "moderate," scapegoating immigrants as he goes, while the USAID cuts run up a body count. The machinery. The infrastructure that keeps the performance going while real consent drains away underneath: a legal system bent toward self-dealing and a $1.8 billion slush fund, billionaire money rewriting the rules since Citizens United, an AI gold rush sold as inevitable before anyone voted on it, and an economy booming on paper while the ground shifts under everyone's feet. The vacuum and the reclaiming. What rushes in when legitimacy collapses, from normalized political violence to a manifesto born of that collapse — and then the democratic answer: why the rupture hasn't come, why revolutions tend to devour themselves, and why the slower work wins. Nonviolent movements draw eleven times the participation, and the ballot box the Supreme Court is fighting hardest to narrow is the same one that just turned out 78% of Hungary to remove Orbán. Full Show Notes Be part of the show! Leave a voice message, message us on Signal at the handle bestoftheleft.01, or email [email protected] BestOfTheLeft.com/Support (Members Get Bonus Shows + No Ads!) Use our links to shop Bookshop.org and Libro.fm for a non-evil book and audiobook purchasing experience! Join our Discord community! SECTION 1: THE PERFORMANCE OF LEGITIMACY (00:01:31) #1798 - FIFA Sportswashing Fascism: The World Cup from Mussolini to Trump 1: Trump Is a 'master Marketer' Symone Reacts to President Getting FIFA Peace Prize - Chris Jansing Reports - Air Date 12-5-25 2: Jules Boykoff on World Cup and Sportswashing Part 1 - CounterSpin - Air Date 5-15-26 3: Trump LOSES IT as FIFA SUFFERS MAJOR CRISIS!! Part 1 - MeidasTouch - Air Date 5-6-26 (00:23:20) #1787 - The American President vs The American Pope: Leo XIV, Trump, and the MAGA-Catholic Rift 4: Someone Tell Pete Hegseth That "Pulp Fiction" Isn't in the Bible - Takes™ by Jamelle Bouie - Air Date 4-18-26 5: "Two Versions of Christianity": Pope Leo Calls for Peace as U.S. Uses Religion to Justify Iran War - Democracy Now! - Air Date 4-1-26 6: Why America and the Vatican Have Fallen Out - TLDR News Global - Air Date 4-11-26 (00:46:03) #1794 - From MAHA to Measles: RFK's Public Health Purge Will Make America Sick Again 7: Why RFK Jr. Is Projecting a More 'Moderate' MAHA Stance - The Brian Lehrer Show - Air Date 4-27-26 8: RFK Jr Goes Full Eugenics to Congress; IMMIGRANTS BRING DISEASE - Brittany Page - Air Date 4-22-26 9: As WHO Declares Ebola Outbreak a Global Health Emergency, Did USAID Cuts Worsen the Crisis - Democracy Now! - Air Date 5-18-26 SECTION 2: THE MACHINERY & THE LEAK (01:13:10) #1796 - 1.8 Billion for the Mob and a Kill List for Dissent: Trump's payout fund and counterterrorism strategy, decoded 10: We Will Find You and We Will Kill You Part 1 - The Intercept Briefing - Air Date 5-15-26 11: Congress Strikes Back as Trump Rushes $1.8 Billion Scam - Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Air Date 5-18-26 12: Dictatorship in Action David Cay Johnston on $1.8B Slush Fund Part 2 - Democracy Now! - Air Date 5-20-26 (01:34:00) #1792 - Capitalist Class Warfare: AI, Billionaire Capture, and the How to Fight Back 13: The Case Against Billionaires | Chuck Collins - Washington Monthly - Air Date 1-5-26 14: How Oligarchs Hijacked America in Just 16 Year - Benaminute - Air Date 4-30-26 15: It Will Be 17 Times Worse Than the .com Crash - Upper Echelon - Air Date 5-7-26 (02:04:29) #1797 - AI Spent $540 Billion to Make You Lonelier: Betting Against Jobs, Art, and Community 16: Will SpaceX and OpenAI Starve the Market? - UNFTR Media - Air Date 5-26-26 17: Astra Taylor on AI Data Center Resistance & Fighting "Billionaire Big Tech Agenda"- Democracy Now! - Air Date 5-13-26 18: The AI Backlash Just Got VERY Public - House of El - AI - Air Date 5-24-26 (02:33:22) #1789 - Boomcession: Why the Economy Looks Great on Paper and Hurts in Real Life 19: Monday Morning Economy Politics Inflation Soars Part 1 - The Brian Lehrer Show - Air Date 4-13-26 20: Economic Implications of the U.S. War on Iran Part 1 - Economic Update with Richard Wolff - Air Date 4-14-26 21: These Georgia Swing Voters Do Not Like the Iran War - The NPR Politics Podcast - Air Date 4-16-26 (02:58:12) #1793 - Anti-Immigrant Brutality Costs Countries More Than Their Morals: ICE, Mass Deportation, and the Global Far-Right 22: Trumps Brutal Immigration Crackdown Continues Part 1 - Velshi - Air Date 3-21-26 23: 'Buyer's Remorse' This Trump Stronghold TURNS on Massive ICE Facility Part 1 - MS Now - Air Date 4-20-26 SECTION 3: THE VACUUM & THE RECLAIMING (03:15:42) #1790 - Assassin Nation: How Political Violence Got Normalized And How To Reverse It 24: "Slow Civil War" Author Jeff Sharlet on the Growing NormalAation of Violence at Home & Abroad - Democracy Now! - Air Date 4-27-26 25: The Cole Hard Truth - The Muckrake Political Podcast - Air Date 4-28-26 26: The White House Correspondents Dinner Shooting: What the "Political Violence" Framing Is Hiding - Resistance History with Tad Stoermer - Air Date 4-26-26 (03:42:14) #1795 - You Say You Want A Revolution: Successful Revolutions are the Boring Ones 27: Why the Epstein Files Didn't Start a Revolution - Uncivilized - Air Date 4-21-26 28: Is The US In Its French Revolution Era? - Leeja Miller - Air Date 5-13-26 29: Why Nonviolence Wins - Degenerate Art by Andrea Pitzer - Air Date 5-14-26 (04:14:56) #1791 - Jim Crow 2.0 — SCOTUS Kills the Voting Rights Act and Unleashes the Gerrymandering War 30: Louisiana Is Ground Zero for Voting Rights, Abortion Pill Access Part 1 - Boom! Lawyered - Air Date 5-7-26 31: Elie Mystal Supreme Court Gutting Voting Rights Act Is About Again Making US an Apartheid State Part 1 - The Dean Obeidallah Show - Air Date 5-1-26 32: What Stacey Abrams Thinks About a Recent SCOTUS Decision and the Voting Rights Amendment Part 2 - Soundside - Air Date 5-526   Produced by Jay! Tomlinson Visit us at BestOfTheLeft.com Listen Anywhere! BestOfTheLeft.com/Listen Listen Anywhere! Follow BotL: Bluesky | Mastodon | Threads | X Like at Facebook.com/BestOfTheLeft Contact me directly at [email protected]