I actually wrote most of this before the election, but I had got really busy in my personal life, but things have been good. Also, I would recommend watching videos by The Vanguard on YouTube about what is going on by Ana Kasparian.

But something is going on with Ana Kasparian.

Ana Kasparian published an article about how she is “leaving the Left”. To be honest I wasn’t that impressed by it. [Article: https://kasparian.substack.com/p/independent-and-unaligned]

She has also been ranting about criticism she has gotten on Twitter, though I suspect Ana…is being a little sly here. I will explain more later.

Maybe her current flare up against the Left will fade away as far as drama with Ana Kasparian being angry at Left Wing commentators and content creators such as the Serf Times (I believe), The Vanguard, etc. I do not have an X account, so keeping up with drama is hard to do, but better for my health.

Ana has been praised by Right Wing commentators who never give any kudos to liberals or the Left such American Justice Warrior, Tim Pool, etc., for her recent flare ups at the Left.

Maybe Ana is playing some sort of “four-dimensional chess” and by having a slight right leaning pivot she knows that any controversy will drive views, clicks, etc., which is vital in a competitive online media landscape. If she gets “cancelled” by the Left (which seems to be a comedian’s wet dream on another note), she will become a right-wing darling.

On a more moderate tangent, even if she courts Right Wing talking points, she is able to grow her own reputation, the audience of TYT, and possibly prep for her own separate audience in the event she goes full solo in the future. Ana blowing up at X (Twitter) comments seems to be her being an opportunist and needing pretext, a false flag, etc., to create top cover for her own and TYT’s business agendas.

Or, maybe Ana is being reactionary and living in her own echo chamber?

Ana is a human, so she is complicated whether she wants to openly admit it or not.

I would want Ana to reach out to other progressive contributors more so. I know she has a good working relationship with Emma Vigeland of the Majority Report with Sam Seder, but I think she should livestream with The Vanguard, The Serf Times, The Humanist Report, FD Signifier, etc. Showing your eagerness to learn is what I think what Ana is missing for herself personally and for her perception. If Ana is tempted at the Dave Rubin or Ben Shapiro models, which are successful in their own right (i.e., they can afford L.A. County home prices), I think this is the wrong decision by her.

I have always wanted to be a firm supporter of Ana Kasparian, but I can only handle her commentary in doses, and this is even before her recent drama with her “leaving the left”. I have witnessed Ana blow up, mispronounce or stutter her away through her segments, and generally make her own personal frustrations with grasping progressive concepts seem like it is a larger issue outside of herself, etc. I believe the frustration part for some on her audience is that the Political Right know exactly who they are whether they admit it or not, but the Left is trying to create a more unified front to combat conservatives, yet, it seems like Ana is airs her frustrations with the Left (embarrassing it) rather than linking up with more progressives that are popular online to learn, converse, share ideas, etc. You rarely if ever hear Tim Pool, Tomi Lahren, Dave Rubin, Candace Owens, The Red Elephant, Charlie Kirk, etc., question conservatism. They are cheerleaders for it. Their unwavering support for conservatism seems to attract more loyal followers somehow.

Yet, I have also seen Ana be one on the most personable media figures, and she has been an advocate and defender of progressive causes.

So, I suspect what she’s doing now is partially personal as she has a slight career crisis about her future and what she has accomplished.

However, personally, she has admitted publicly that all she knows is the Young Turks media outlet, she has no kids, etc.

Ana seems to be going thru a mid-life crisis looking back at her life and asking if she were as productive than she had hoped for. Feeling these feelings of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and probably thinking she is smarter than newer commentators who have benefitted from easier means of making money online (e.g., Serf Times, The Vanguard, etc.). She seems to be throwing the Left under the bus rather than understanding criticism comes with the job of being an activists and ally in order to make a career move. That is, it. She has to asks herself is she a newscaster or a real political activist? I think she wants to branch out on her own but is using criticism against her to gaslight her critics to make her run towards whatever future she sees for herself.

But that is a maybe and I could be wrong. Sometimes it seems she and Cenk seems to be having their Howard Stern and Robin tensions akin those depicted in the movie Private Parts, i.e., there are professional tensions, though there is a deep friendship between the two.

I think the Zodiac is corny and weird, but Ana seems like a bull-headed person.

Also, Ana does possess a level of professional envy such as towards Hasan Piker.

She has said some low blow things towards Hasan to minimalize his success as a political Twitch Streamer. Ana bought into Cenk’s idea of being an online news outlet, yet TYT did not adapt to the new arena of live streaming on platforms such as Twitch, which Hasan ran away with and capitalized on. Hasan is actually in the trenches of where the culture is, more so than where the news is. That’s the difference. Hasan understanding interfacing in real time is what younger people want, and it is the youth who are the ones most politically active now. TYT at this point is from mid-to-late twenties to mid-forties people, with some deviations in both directions. However, will TYT or a TYT host ever be on a panel on live TV asking presidential candidates questions? Is every single politician kicking down their doors to get a brief interview? However, we should be happy to have TYT because they are combating the likes of The Blaze, The Daily Wire etc., yet even these are somewhat obscure compared to mainstream media that many Americans still trust and watch.

Yet, Ana instead of praising and collaborating with Hasan, Ana unleashed her “Tracy Flick” on him. Even Hasan’s uncle in Cenk has helped collaborate with his nephew, though they both seem to understand they have different prerogatives.

Ana in a video titled Cenk Uygur Answers Tough Questions About His Past, published four years ago, stated she has full editorial control of the program now, and this was in the midst of Cenk’s eventual unsuccessful political run. I think Ana was hoping that Cenk would win his race, hand her the keys, and then they establish a direct pipeline network with him in political power and her running the media business. Yet, Cenk didn’t win and I suspect retained his original role of power within the company, likely at the cost of Ana’s perceived leadership amongst the TYT staff. Ana being loyal was maybe hoping to be the Queen Bee of the organization but with Cenk not leaving, her role was essentially reduced to co-equals. Compound this with the stellar rise of Hasan Piker being interviewed by major news outlets about his career. Ana may be asking herself “did I make the right decision for my career”.

This is going to sounds harsh starting off but it is just better to get this out of the way.

Ana seems to be kind of a… daddy’s girl and Valley Girl from a relatively sheltered existence who has a worldview that centers around Los Angeles County. The issue with being from a place like L.A. or even NYC is that these places are so large and layered that it creates the optical illusion that truth, standards, etc., must arise from these places. These are self-sustaining places that suck in resources from everywhere else and then spits back pop culture, media, and entertainment to everywhere else.

Playing detective, Ana (based on her social media activity) wants to be a salsa-dancing, L.A. hot wife, who catches up with Cat Power listening friends over mimosas and brunch, but who also has 2nd Wave to 3rd Wave feminist ideals, i.e., she wants to be an empowered working professional with her own financial security and wants to smash glass-ceilings, but she also does value traditional femininity. And…there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but maybe she needs to be honest with herself and maybe her audience (if she is comfortable with that) that this is who she is.

She and TYT call themselves progressive, but progressive is a sentiment and not necessarily a defined political position. A Progressive can be a person who rejects capitalism outright and wants a world of progressive social sentiments, or a progressive can possibly be a person who has capitalist bourgeoise leanings who wants a world of progressive social sentiments. Ana is more in the capitalist bourgeoise camp, and I would her call a Democratic Capitalist or Social Democratic Capitalist and not a Democratic Socialist, Communists, etc.

I think she is having an existential journey about where she really fits, yet I think she maybe acting reactionary based on Twitter or YouTube criticism, rather than seeing the criticism of her has potentially valid.

I like to say that “being critiqued isn’t being oppressed”

TYT is progressive but that’s broad. But being broad is good for business for them. Cenk however has stated publicly that he isn’t a socialist, but he doesn’t ascribe to conservative allegations that anything social in nature is socialist. But an issue with TYT trying to be the news rather than an activist organization is that at a certain point they will have to grow and scale which means becoming more center.

I believe TYT thinks they can shift the Overton Window more left wing by pulling more Right Wingers to the Left by agreeing with them, so the new center is more far left than what it was, but by doing so TYT faces a dilemma of throwing true hardened Leftists under the bus. Ana’s freaks out furthers the process of making the Left, Social Justice, etc., seem like a failed freakshow.

Better put, Ana, keep your frustrations to yourself in pivotal moments because showing a disunited front on the Left does more harm than good, especially considering TYT likely talks to left leaning yet independent voters who are just one issue away of abandoning the Left. Better put even more, Ana is a role model, so her acting this way insinuates there is more chaos on the Left than there needs to be, when really instead of freaking out she needs to “reach out”. Say it with me. “Don’t freak out. Reach out”.

This moderation of TYT seems noble but I think it actually be detrimental because in order to appeal to moderates, you may have to play into the conservative framing of leftists which insinuates they are cartoonish, dangerous, “postmodern”, etc. Also, can you really trust the conservatives? They are constantly looking for “one of the good ones”, i.e., a black person who spouts condescending talking abouts used by white supremacists about black people, or a woman who decries feminism as means of reconstructing men’s wounded egos.

Back to what I suspect her actual life and upbringing were like, Ana seems like the pre-teen and teenager who watched a little Sex and the City on HBO here and there, but being a 90s and early 2000s kid she was raised on the post-Cold war prosperity of MTV, Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, etc., yet the issue with 90s – coming from a black person’s perspective – is that even though we were trained to live in a post-MLK racial harmony-type world (which I was raised in and made many good memories within), the truth is that the 90s was defined by commodifying racial differences. Simply because Raven Simone was the black girl in Zenon Girl of the 21st Century, and youth white girls sang to Destiny’s Child, or non-black people tuned into In Livin’ Color, Martin, or the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, or non-black people knew Tupac lyrics, this does not somehow mean we “solved racism” or that “things were better”.

Reading her blog post about why she is leaving the Left, I noticed a tinge of nostalgia, which interestingly is something I notice as being a key tenant to conservative and MAGA politics. The myth that things were simply better back then because we didn’t question things or “get offended by everything”. Conservatives want to go back to racial jokes not because they’re simply funny, but because they do reinforce differences that were innate to a society built from a colonial and racial caste system. They want to go back to “don’t be so sensitive” so they can reinvigorate F-bomb dropping homophobia and “boys will be boys” get of out jail cards. A big part of why people are voting for MAGA which Ana doesn’t seem to get while see feels sorry for herself is that they are simply voting for him out of spite. It is a middle finger vote to knowing they are losing arguments but want to feel right in being wrong. They don’t want to admit people call the police on black people for simply existing sometimes. They don’t want to admit that society is largely about protecting male’s egos. They don’t want to see how the hot dogs are made but rather want to feel like a King for a brief moment by sending perfectly good food back to the kitchen, simply because they can.

Many are voting for Trump to double down on their first vote for him. They can’t be negotiated with.

They voted because they think they are right and will be right, and even if the data proves them wrong on certain issues, they don’t care. They have shown themselves as easily descending into dues ex machina thinking with conspiracy theories such as Qanon mythology. They voted for Trump not because they want their beliefs to be compromised with, but they want them to be the standard. Contrary to popular belief, is that you can be conservative in a liberal or progressive world, but you can’t be liberal or progressive in a conservative one. Vengeance (cleaning the swamp, purges, mass deportation, locking her up chants), fear, cruelty (e.g., mocking Haitian refugees as voodoo worshippers who eat people’s pets), mockery, and nostalgia are what underlies the logos of MAGA. Period.

And what is interesting is that the last paragraph I wrote above, I did so before the election. And I think I am right in what I said.

[Back to what I wrote pre-election] When we as a society did not get offended by everything was because we as American consumers were not trained to see how the “meat in the hotdogs” were processed, but rather to simply consume things. The 80s and 90s was in part about covering up the radicalism that occurred in the 60s and 70s. For example, I remember thinking back to hippies as being these failed oddballs like the bus driver on The Simpsons, rather than people who had tangible and merited criticisms of the status quo. Hippies, Black Panthers, feminists, etc., were turned into TV show caricatures trying to hurt the delicate balance of Al Bundy beer-drinking-with-hands-down-his-pants America. I am almost forty. I feel like Al Bundy, so when I say that pop cultural quote, I really mean it.

Moving on, Ana being the children of Armenian immigrants, to me means her understanding of the USA is not genealogical [and I would make the same assertion of Cenk Uyghur and Hasan Piker — where Hasan often has a condescending tone towards Americans].

Her understanding of issues such as race, class, etc., are not nuanced by having generations upon generations of ancestors within the United States who relate to these issues, e.g., the existences and consciousness of foundational African Americans (and many foundational White Americans) being explicitly linked to the questions of race within this country (slavery, Jim Crow, the very founding of the USA, etc.).

She knows racism, slavery, police brutality are bad, but based on her upbringing and background, her understanding of these issues can at best only be described as sympathetic and text-book level rather a deeper level grasp of the issues. I believe this is also a point of frustration for her. As a person who has to talk and ask a lot of questions, she seems to be scared of being in spaces where she has to listen.

For example, even if I were to move to Armenia, my understanding of the historicity and gravitas of the society would be limited, though as a human capable of feeling, I would be able to feel for Armenian people, but I would have to humble myself into not thinking I am an expert on deep cultural nuances, feuds, genocides, etc., that occurred there.

But, also back to her immigrant experiences is, that Ana does come from a literal Caucus Mountain, old world, patriarchal culture. A part of the world defined by ethnic feuds, good foods, and territorialism. I don’t want to minimize her ethnic culture, and I admit that I am making assumptions here, but I can assume that her Armenian heritage probably played a role her worldview such as emphasizing a strong, manly, bravado projecting masculinity in her desired partner, but also with a vocal matriarch who is the keeper of her home. Los Angeles has strong Armenian, Turkish, Iranian, Azerbaijani, and Jewish communities who set up in places like Reseda, Burbank, Topanga, Woodland Hills, North Hollywood, etc.

The world that Ana was raised in while in the San Fernando Valley is akin to the TV show, Cobra Kai being based in The Valley. Strip malls with some great secret find ethnic restaurants, car dealerships, ethnic newsletters in a people’s indigenous language, 1960s or 1970s ranch style homes, dingbat apartments, Cal State Northridge, and rumors here and there about how so-and-so from high school is now making hardcore pornography filmed in the home of a person who moonlights as a production assistant for TV studios down in Burbank where Unsolved Mysteries was made at.

The Valley is true suburban (not exurban which is what most people think suburbs are) existence in a megalopolis such as L.A., where one’s own neighborhood could effectively be considered its own city. These areas are often defined by socio-economic and racial lines.

The LAPD has a budget on par with the militaries of small lesser developed nations. The mayor of LA, the LA Sheriff’s office, the LA Public School Superintendent are powerful positions that would make lower-level federal a bureaucrat blush.

L.A. when Ana was a child was home to the notorious Rodney King Beating, O.J. Simpson trial, the Bloods vs Crypts beefs, Huntington Beach Skinheads, the LA Riots with the “Rooftop Koreans”, etc., but also positive things such the 1992 Olympics, etc. The world of her childhood was likely defined by an insular suburban protection away from the real social unrest affecting late 80s to early 90s Los Angeles. A city defined by real world issues yet glossed over by projecting images of Melrose Place and Beverly Hills 90210.

I was reading her blog post about why she is leaving the Left and I felt that she was more sheltered than what I had suspected.

Think about everything I have just said and then add on her personality type

I have mixed feelings on Ana Kasparian, but I mostly lean as being supportive of her. She is (not has been), but is an ally of progressive causes, but I wouldn’t call her a Leftist necessarily. However, a big dilemma in most debates centering around politics is that to be Left Wing means to be part of a larger spectrum, e.g., center left versus leftists.

Ana’s freak outs aren’t helping in building consensus on the Left. But building consensus is for activists, not necessarily for newscasters.

It’s on her to figure out which one she is.