The state of Texas tonight appealed a lower court decision which banned their new redistricting maps to the Supreme Court, and Justice Alito has officially put that lower court ban on hold. . . .

“‘The Running Man’ Fell Down At The Box Office,” declared Deadline in an article published on Sunday. Did it? Just looking at the box office returns, sure. The film, which cost $110 million to make, opened this weekend to just $28 million in sales worldwide. I suspect, however, that money is not the primary measure by which the creators of The Running Man are evaluating their success. The Running Man is a remake of the 1987 film of the same name starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, which itself is based on a Stephen King novel. The story takes place in a dystopian world where the United States is run by a quasi-fascist state that keeps the mostly impoverished population pacified with violent reality TV shows. Glen Powell’s Ben Richards is a blue-collar worker who’s been blacklisted from legitimate employment for his involvement in unions. He decides to try out for one of these shows to raise money to treat his daughter’s illness. Richards ends up being selected for the most lucrative one, The Running Man, where contestants can earn $1 billion if they can survive for 30 days against the show’s hunters and everyday civilians, all of whom can earn a cash reward for killing him. Not since Vice (2018) have I seen a movie as left-wing as The Running Man. Now, that does not make it a bad film per se. Good art can serve bad causes. But as art, I found The Running Man melodramatic and dull. The action is… fine, I guess. The film is best understood as political propaganda with a story bolted on to it, rather than the reverse. However, the political message is, sad to say, potent. The Running Man presents a form of what’s called “class-first” leftism, in the school of political science professor Adolph Reed and, less high-mindedly, the /leftypol/ message board on 8chan. The Running Man presents a form of what’s called “class-first” leftism, in the school of political science professor Adolph Reed and, less high-mindedly, the /leftypol/ message board on 8chan. In this accounting, while racism exists and is used as one tool among many by the elite to divide the working class against itself, people’s fundamental identity is their class, not their race, sex, or such. Leftists should therefore dispense with identity politics — idpol, in short hand — and seek to unify working class voters of all races and backgrounds with a hard left and populist economic message. In practice, this “hicklib” school of leftism — neo-communist, identity politics skeptical, and heterodox on the issue of guns — is often the purview of those rural white voters who remain staunchly on the left for ideological reasons. Institutionally, they are largely embodied by the network of John Brown Gun Clubs and, in King’s own Maine, by self-avowed communist and Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner. Indeed, one of CNN’s revelations about Platner’s online history was that he was once active in a “Socialist Rifle Association” Reddit forum. (RELATED: Meet Graham Platner: The Latest Democratic Dud for Senate) How does this manifest in the film? Richards becomes an icon for the poor and working class, white and nonwhite alike, for his defiance of the elites, corporate media, and an authoritarian police state that has merged into one hegemonic entity. While racism doubtless exists, the conflict is not about race at all — in fact, the host of The Running Man Show is Colman Domingo’s Bobby Thompson, a black man. Something else: Richards is a legitimately masculine and heroic figure. He steps up and faces very probable, if not certain, death to protect his family. He’s not made into the butt of a joke or pushed to the side as a secondary character just for being a white man. As Richards survives longer and longer, he becomes an icon to people fed up with the system. The film culminates in him refusing to play the part demanded of him by the network and using his earned status as a symbol to stage what is essentially an anarcho-communist revolution. While it’s a dystopian film, anyone with eyes will be able to observe that this dystopia is essentially the left’s idea of President Trump’s vision for America. That being an authoritarian police state that has merged with a wealthy elite, a corrupt media, and greedy corporations, who keep the poor and working classes sedated and divided against themselves with media slop and blood sports. And what’s the solution, in their telling? A courageous, principled man who steps up to protect his family and becomes an icon to the downtrodden. While reluctant to become anything political, he eventually embraces his role as an icon to working-class people and overthrows the corrupt order that’s oppressing all of them in the service of a few. It goes without saying that this worldview misses a great many things. Critiques of leftist economics aside, affirmative action programs that disadvantage whites and men because of their race and sex are still endemic and almost unanimously supported by the left. To call that a distraction is farcical. Rather than a genuine desire to improve the lives of the poor, this strain of leftism seems more preoccupied with envy for the rich. Nor is it obvious that class is the primary vector of political conflict — after all, “the rich” are a diverse and varied group of people with many different values and interests. For example, of the 10 most wealthy counties in the United States, just two voted for Trump in the 2024 election, and those only narrowly. In just two of those 10 counties did Trump perform better than losing 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney. Rather than a genuine desire to improve the lives of the poor, this strain of leftism seems more preoccupied with envy for the rich. Hence the “abolish billionaires” slogan. That’s not to say that billionaires are the best ever — as with most large groups of people, there are some that are good and some that are bad. It’s simply to say that relevant political divisions are primarily within classes rather than between them. To borrow a common trope from the left, the focus on and scapegoating of the rich largely serves the purpose of distracting people from ridiculous leftist positions on immigration, crime, gender ideology, and so much else that class-first leftists do not disavow in principle, but only seek to downplay in practice. But a leftism that is intelligent enough not to tell white men that they’re evil for being born, but that they have a role and purpose, and that they should aspire to heroism is clearly compelling. That is what I think The Running Man sought to lay out, and it did just that. Conservatives underestimate that message at their peril. READ MORE from Stephan Kaputska: Charlie Kirk and My Friend From Boy Scouts Jurassic World: Rebirth Fails to Reboot the Series How to Create a Mediocre Remake

Real Religious Persecution

Charlie Kirk Showed Young People They Could Be Rebellious and Don't Need College Degrees, with VDH