I'm a recently retired professor of Humanities and Social Sciences, and I've been warning for years that the oligarchic class is funneling wealth upwards in preparation for a general societal collapse. Believe me, I'm not making it up when I say that they've all built survivalist bunkers in preparation for that eventuality. You can read about this in any number of reputable sources. The New Yorker has an alarming extended account of it.
It appears that driving crypto and over-running the Fed with incompetent lackeys is characteristic of American late capitalism's last ditch snatch and grab, which is being perpetrated by "accelerationists" who believe that the faster the existing order collapses, the sooner the new order can emerge -- which includes in some quarters (looking at you Elon) establishing colonies on Mars with, I assume, the requisite harems of teenage virgins.
The degradation and derangement of the American oligarchy really is not to be underestimated. They are nihilists. And we -- both morally and legally -- have a well-established right of self-defense.
The next nationwide rally is July 17. Be there or be square!
We need 3.5% of the population, or around 12,000,000 people to be present. So bring all your friends and families. Spread the word as far and wide as possible. Let's all get out there with a Howard Beale spirit and yell "We're as mad as hell, and we're not gonna take it anymore!".
I’ve been speaking of the need to end the neofeudalim and accelerationism the billionaire class has been forcing on this republic for years Winston! Revolution is in the air, as is the need for the guillotine, with engraved Liberté, égalité, fraternité!!
"I wish you were exaggerating, but the more you know about these insane greed-mongers, the more you're looking for a pitchfork."
Fun fact: a constant behind-the-scenes reality in the TV show "Leverage" is that while most of their bad guys are based on real life one-percenters' crimes and abuses, they routinely find themselves having to dial *down* the crimes being portrayed, because the reality is so over-the-top that audiences have trouble believing it.
It happened at least once in James Bond too. The bad guys in "Quantum of Solace" were trying to privatize a nation's water supply in a plot loosely based on a real scheme that happened a decade earlier. Except the Bond villains were modest and grounded enough that they were only planning to *double* the amount of money being charged for water utilities. The real-life villains were planning to *triple* it.
With the OBBB , you now have a well-funded Gestapo and concentration camps in the swamps. Those pitchforks should not be symbolic. Why aren't Americans in the streets? That's how they got Ceacescu out in Rumania. Americans seem so unconcerned, limiting their resistance to the comments sections.
Yes Theil was given citizenship after only 10 days in NZ, by then right wing government. It was a disgrace. We now have another right wing government in place and I feel sure he will be feeding money to the ACT and National parties and be interfering in our democracy in the not too distant future (no evidence at this point he has, although I have my doubts).
Don't forget their depravity (rounding out the Killer D's). Texas oligarchs would rather innocent boys and girls die in a flood than spend $1 million on a flood warning system.
The report about the Texas legislature declining to grant $1 million to Kerr County is reminiscent of my blue state, which does try to provide grants to counties if the county also uses its property tax revenue to help pay. It’s called match and it’s the same idea as Medicaid, where states receive $6 for every $4 of state tax receipts spent. But some of our MAGA counties absolutely refuse to tax themselves sufficiently to help pay for anything. At that point our legislature either has to pay 100%, which isn’t fair to the non-MAGA counties who do tax themselves, or take a pass on helping the MAGA county. It may be that something similar happened with Kerr County, since reports state county officials chose not to spend the county’s own tax revenue on a warning system. Based on the voting behavior of my state’s MAGA constituents, those county officials likely anticipated the wishes of their constituents to avoid taxes even if it puts them at risk of losing their homes and lives.
We have the same situation in my county. We refuse to pay for anything...except our outlying town voted a special assessment for enhanced fire protection. The commissioners are so radical they got rid of Master Gardeners and 4-H. They are constantly trying to shut down the library even though that's a special assessment too.
solution : run for office!! Local govt & bodies, district, state, ntl ... all of them. We are the ones who actually know what is needed for a peaceful, safe, happy life. Keep it to that....
you get nobbled by the major parties and their billionaire sponsors.. or in europe u install an unelected EU bureaucracy which with NATO overrides any national interest you may have.
look how the uk labour party expelled corbin after the msm complied with a smear campaign. In Romania if ur anti-NATO and get elected you get the election "annulled".
in Australia our "Labour" has introduced legislation making it much harder for independents to effectively fund campaigns, with support from its partner in our duopoly choice.
if any antiwar/ anti-nato/ pro community party emerges in usa/ europe as a credible threat 2 the system and develops popular support its leaders are banned, expelled or killed.
i dont think trying to change the system from within works as its only an illusion of democracy provided anyway. its the system itself - late stage capitalism- that is the issue.
trying to keep open independent media where info and ideas can be shared is atleast a starting point in generating change.
latest news is that Noem cut the tiny grant to research best type of warning systems to use for natural disasters. Then... of course ... lied at a TX press conf in past week about how much 'her' DHS had earmarked for disaster warning systems.....
Oligarchs are like "Well, I made it: I'm living the American Dream. If all those others down there haven't made it by now, they probably never will, so screw 'em."
It's a lot worse than that. The 1% know the system is rotten, that the American Dream is a fallacy and a ruse for the mugs whom they see as nothing more than modern-day peasants to be exploited for all they are worth.
Marx knew that economic systems at least transform themselves, if not collapse under their own contradictions. The idea of revolution may have been to hasten the end of the ugly side of capitalism he was living through.
Literally written, stated and spoken in numerous Christian Nationalist discussions of last 15+ years. Not to be repetitive, but... read about the beliefs of extremist Curtis Yarvin. Vance has publicly praised him.
If a bunch of guys in the late eighteenth century can figure out that having a unitary executive isn't such a good idea... If we survive, we have to take the appointment of all these non-political government functionaries away from the Prez and come up with a better plan where cooler and more knowledgeable heads prevail.
It's an idea, but <points at congress> are you sure there is in fact someone else with "cooler and more knowledgeable heads" to appoint these people? Given its current subservience to the executive, I'm not sure what difference it would make at all. Who else is there?
Professional committees. There is no reason we cannot specify that the ABA nominates judges with the advice and consent of the Senate. The Fed could nominate the chairman. If the goal is competence, there is plenty of it out. We need to elevate the Inspectors General and DOJ to separate independent branches of government, as well as.
This has been going on for some time now. Of course, they also have their personal security teams to defend their monopoly on resources such as water. Especially water, what with the drought impact of global warming.
The good news is that private security has almost zero loyalty and unless these mofos have cult leader levels of charisma they'll be kicked out of their compounds by week two.
Beyond security, you also have support personnel at their compounds who keep things running -- prepare meals, clean the bathrooms, maintain the equipment, etc., and they also have zero loyalty.
however - internally many of them are horrified by what they are instructed to do, yet full of fear themselves. Of job loss, retaliation, etc. So over time they begin to 'accept' the justifications they're given, in absence of exposure to critical points of view & alternatives, and before you know it, they are betraying their own interests and morality, and part of the problem.
It has been stated in past that US interest in Canada, more than minerals & lumber, is water. Look at what hedge funds & multinationals have done in S.America, as previous poster reminded us.
Oh, Barb -- this is my nightmare. I've been saying for years, "If you want to understand Canada's future with the United States, look to Latin America's past."
That's why we need all the fight from Carney that he's promised us. Not a whit less.
Solar or deep water desalination might provide a solution. It won't help Iowa much, but should keep coastal cities from going dry. The other thing is that we waste most of the water. Only something like 10% of California's water goes to cities. Most of it is either agriculture or rivers.
That's true, and I have no doubt that there will be an explosion of desalination plants around the world. This will, of course, impact the oceans, like everything we do. And we definitely waste too much water. Trumpkopf "opening the spigot" in California is probably the most egregious example.
You are so right about their escape plans. Talk about delusional!
But Joe and Jill Six-pack continue to hover around their tribal bonfires and doom scroll on their phones and think it can't happen here.
Thanks to Ronnie Ray-gun's constant yammering about how 'government is the problem', and a segment of America that has always leaned libertarian, those seeds took root and are now blossoming across the country, especially in the rural areas, like where I live. These are the folks who, to paraphrase Mr. Obama, think all they need to survive and thrive are their guns and their God. They can't see how having clowns in charge of the levers of government leads to disaster, because they don't THINK they believe in government. Ask those poor souls in Texas what can go wrong when you kneecap the departments who used to give you fair warning to get the hell out of Dodge.
The real coup the Republicans pulled off over the last 40 years was displacing FDR as the 20th century's greatest president with a barely sentient nincompoop and his jelly bean jar full of hollow bromides.
It all follows from that. Right up to the unnecessary drowning deaths of scores of children in Texas.
The internet, bitcoin, AI are all examples of how it goes horribly wrong when you turn over social science to software engineers. There is not much substance in the CS degree. Perhaps they ought to all be required to at least minor in Econ and sociology.
I attend protests, standouts, make phone calls and write postcards. Since your paint brush assumes all CS majors are evil (I’m a Unix programmer who did not take Econ or Sociology classes), is there something wrong with me? Should I ditch my “NO KINGS” sign and don a MAGA hat?
And don't forget the Devil's own daughter, The Right Honorable Swine Thatcher, who took Reagan's whole cloth solution and wrapped it around sleepy little ol' Britain. With the inevitable dreadful result...
***** !!! Thom Hartmann on Substack (& books) is particularly precise in outlining the thru-lines - from the GOP's "Two Santas" strategy & anti-civil rights stances forward to what we face now. This is not a 'new' phenomenon we're facing - it has been a plan for a half-century. Not fantasizing. But a 'real' conspiracy theory - existence backed up by official, accepted & undenied documents, credible analysis, and - most importantly - the results.
Sounds like giving them a visit of Willie Pete with firebombs himself is good idea sooner rather than later. Before those savages build up their own private armies.
What you describe makes them little different than Putin's inner circle. Good thing Ukraine has shown that thugs without tanks have no defense against Drones backed up by AFVs and Artillery.
In all this US turmoil, ensure that you don't forget the horrors on a much greater scale happening in Ukraine, Sudan, Gaza, West Bank, ..... Not only US democracy being challenged, but human dignity and even survival on the international stage.
Illegal wars, mass murder, and even genocide are effectively being "normalized". I don't think people understand what this does to social expectations as a whole on a global scale.
How do they not understand that if society collapses, their wealth will become worthless?
Even their well-stocked bunkers will be either a magnet for roaming armed vagrants, or if they employ a private army to protect it, how will they enforce their will over those mercenaries?
I can't repeat that word -- nihilism -- too often when it comes to the American right.
They're literally dedicated to destroying an ecosystem they know is already in deep distress by doubling down on fossil fuels as energy demands rise sharply! It's like a case of mass-psychopathy.
I saw a tour of one of those bunkers. They proudly displayed .50 caliber sniper rifles that they intend to use against trespassers. They have it figured out pretty well. Stocks of MREs sufficient for years. Diesel-powered generators for power. They are aware that fuels like gasoline and diesel are only good for a few years, but they figure that all they have to do is survive until the rest of us die out. Once they can surface, they can establish an agrarian society. Or say hello to our Chinese conquerors.
This goes along with an observation I've been making for over a decade, which is that America's rich think the New Deal was the most gigantic mugging in history. FDR and his union thugs stole all their very hard-earned money at gunpoint under the threat of revolution, and have been living high off of it ever since. When the rich look at post-WWII society, with its safety nets and its consumer protections and its workers' rights and its lack of crippling depressions, they don't see a healthy middle-class society: they see thieves partying their lives away with money they didn't earn. In their world, they and the Republicans are Thorin's company and all the rest of us are Smaug.
Therefore, a total societal collapse is simply justice being done, depriving the greedy thieves of their ill-gotten gains and punishing them for their crimes. All the bunkers, the survivalist obsessions, the hyper-militarization of society, is just them prepping for the rematch: *this* time, they won't meekly hand over their wallets like their grandparents did, *this* time, they'll be ready when the muggers arrive and shoot them in the face. (Well, you know, have their secretary tell the hired help to shoot them in the face. Let's not go crazy here).
But the fact is that the oligarchs back in the day employed brutal union busters. So it was real flesh and blood workers who were the actual targets of violence -- including murder -- in their fight for rights. The rich weren't in the remotest danger, and they knew it.
After 1945, so much wealth had been destroyed through two world wars in less than 30 years -- and the collapse of European colonialism merely exacerbated the problem -- that the oligarchs allowed workers an equitable share in order to restore that lost wealth as quickly as possible.
But it is true that by the time of Reagan/Thatcher, capital resorted to its default condition of increasing profits by reducing wages.
And it is true that the billionaire class is very obviously making no provision for the survival of the rest of us as jobs disappear into a deranged form of AI that is, clinically speaking, already making people stupider.
I think the oligarchs believe that the marketplace is an expression of Darwinian evolution (or at least their degraded understanding of it). They'll survive because they've earned it. We won't because we're chumps and deserve what we get.
My AP European History teacher also pointed out the scare the French and Bolshevik revolutions put in the minds of oligarchs. The New Deal bought protection against the same thing happening here, but the oligarchs never actually took the distress of average folk to heart. By the late 1970s the fear of a revolution happening here had faded, and the greedy narcissists felt comfortable pushing their interests to the extreme.
I was a union carpenter in the late '70s. Some of the older guys lived through the union buster days. One of the business agents told me that they used to have to carry their hand saws like swords walking home. That would be a wicked weapon.
Yes, Professor Happy. As a fellow academic, I think I know how this sad story ends, or how it HAS to end. I'm not an accelerationist, but we are in a pressure cooker. Letters to the Editor, or substacks, won't save us. Civil disobedience for starters.
I don't see how anything short of a nationwide strike will get the attention of the current powers-that-be, but the population is still in fat, dumb and happy mode. Most people haven't been hit hard enough to know what's happening to them; it's only those who have the luxury of education and something of a historical perspective who can see what's coming: a slow-moving freight train.
The Big Beautiful Bill is maliciously designed to hurt Trump's impoverished supporters hardest of all (although I know the effects have been kicked down the road a couple of years), and of course the vandalism of DOGE is most likely to be felt by the same people.
Texas is of course Texas. But even they -- especially given the needless deaths of scores of children -- must be wondering why they were begrudged a flood warning system that in just the past week would have saved hundreds of lives.
Authoritarian regimes are by nature unstable. There comes a point where they'll tip and go belly up. The trick is we don't know when that will happen. We can only be ready for it when it does.
I'm thinking of the Nazi regime and even the old Soviet Union. Each, just a decade before, seemed like they'd be there forever. If they fail in just the right ways, they simply disappear, leaving only the carnage behind. Here the issue is educated, competent, and freedom-loving people refusing to let their prerogatives go...
One caveat, Ruth. Train is no longer (as in older & more recent history) 'slow-moving'. It is rapid, on all fronts, all at once, & in the most powerful & powerfully armed nation in history. Response you suggest is correct, but it has to happen almost impossibly fast. The wake-up call has to be ice-cold water splashed liberally. Otherwise the disaster result is inevitable and totally horrible. The train is right on the outskirts of town, about to enter the station.
You’re correct. But the “train” is imperceptible to people too distracted/uninformed to notice; also quite a few people are completely on board. I know many people, highly educated and not stupid, who believe that the coming tyranny of the right is a better alternative than what the left had to offer. I fear that they won’t know what freedom of speech, the press, the benefits of a social safety system, top flight research, and so many elements of American society, mean until they are gone.
Lots and lots of people are going to object to and be frightened of how this will inevitably end. But if many of those same people had acted appropriately and decisively earlier, we could probably have avoided it. But it's gone too far now. The only way these vermin are leaving is by dragging them out.
100% agree. Their goal is to destroy our burgeoning economy and the middle class; creating an Authoritarian Oligarchy or rich (rulers), and poor; the surfs who will do as they are told! It’s the new world order….:)
Counting just the people who voted for Trump, the low-end estimate for serfs in America currently is 77 million. But we could probably also include those who did not vote at all. It's a bad state of affairs. But the remainder are smarter and have a better grip on reality. Those are huge advantages, and we won't surrender them willingly.
Agreed. This resembles the rise of the Nazi’s. Hitler got a third of the vote, while another third stayed home and just watched. Neither Hitler or Trump had a mandate, but both regimes are so morally bankrupt, the opposition is or was, way out of its depth.
Additionally, one plays by the rules, the other either ignores them, or makes it up as they go along.
And now with absolute power, and a $170 billion slush fund, they could be unstoppable. In fact, most military’s in the world, including Israel don’t have a $170 billion budget just granted to ICE. In fact Homeland’s total budget for 2025 was $103 billion, which included ICE’s budget of $8 billion. Let that sink in!
The irony is that we saw this coming with Project 2025, yet no one believed it could happen here. Sadly, Trump had something Orban did not when he took office; a SCOTUS in his pocket, and complete control of Congress when he was inaugurated.
This cancer runs far deeper than MAGA Inc.; in fact, there are too many enablers and cohorts to even keep count, and the reason they are succeeding; in spite of Trump!…:)
Well, but the Nazis actually lost it all in a remarkably short period of time, the Thousand Year Reich lasting little more than a decade. And dictatorships are extraordinarily brittle because they are socially unstable. Under the right set of circumstances, they can shatter in an instant. You can't grind a desire for freedom out of people who cherish it.
If, however, you're giving up before the fight has really begun, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I’m not giving up, just letting everyone know what we’re up against. It’s not just Trump, it’s an army of masked men and groups whose entire existence depends on Trump’s success.
That said, the good news is that once Trump falters and he will (cognitive decline), there will be a civil war within MAGA for control, so mostly likely they will cannibalize themselves, or self immolate.
In the meantime, we need to attack where we can, and where they are weakest. That said, we need centralized leadership in the opposition. Right now, I’m not sure what the opposition is doing, other than going through the motions.
I saw articles yesterday indicating that the MAGA civil war may have begun already. The trigger was reported to be DonnyJon's announcement that certain undocumented workers (agricultural, restaurant employees, etc.) will not be deported.
But in that decade Nazis managed to kill or be responsible for the deaths of literally millions. And left a legacy of thought that persisted and is infecting & growing exponentially in our time. So little solace in your comment, Michael. That the inate desire for freedom flames up rapidly, before we 'rhyme' history
Eh.. 6 million dead from Nazis is 6 million dead, for sure. However, in the grand scheme of things, that was hopefully a one time thing, and we lose 9+ million every year to hunger. I'm not saying don't punch a Nazi. It brings luck! I'm just saying if you don't want the hunger problem to get 100 times worse, we ought to be paying far more attention to Global Warming than fighting the last world war again. Obviously, the Nazis seem to be pro Global Warming too. So, like the American South, the Nazis have a hard time finding a point of history to be on the correct side of.
I take the innate human desire for freedom as a constant, Barb, and that's the source of my hope.
But I never assume that it will inevitably triumph.
It must be fought for.
Even so, I stand by my claim that authoritarian societies are by nature unstable. They can maintain that condition for a very long time, but it's never indefinite, and the courage of a few people can make all the difference.
The Nazis were still the largest party in the reichstag and in constitutional terms had the right to form a government. It's an uncomfortable truth we need to acknowledge.
The Enabling Act required that it should expire when the coalition dissolved. From the moment Alfred Hugenberg resigned on June 27, 1933, it was an illegal government.
True, however, they did so with a little over a third of parliament. They needed to consolidate power to pull off the coup; hence, their Reichstag moment….:)
Not necessarily smarter, just more time to be exposed to the world of alternative ideas and thought & education and give them consideration, to reflect. I come from that layer ...
The US should reform their "winner-take-all"-electorial system to avoid the obvious gaming of the political system. "We the people" has become "Us with huge sums of money to spend".
Yes, when it comes to the electorate, but when it comes to the monarch changes were made some hundred years ago coinciding with the fall of European monarchies and the increasing popularity of communism. After that the British monarch is only ceremonial in their powers.
What I mean is that the UK is not a fully representative democracy, which is a particular problem for them because it is made up of four semi-autonomous countries: England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. England is by far the biggest and has by far the worst political culture, which is why the UK is governed so badly against the will of three of the four countries involved.
The Germans, on the other hand, do it very well! They really learned the lessons of history.
TBH we should fear the FED regardless of who's the Director. It's a banking cartel. Always has been, always will be. The price of money (aka interest rates) should be set by the market, not some pseudo-brainiacs in a smokey back room. History shows that the Fed blows it over and over and has since its inception, but particularly since the 70's when we abandoned Breton Woods.
It's spelled "Bretton Woods", not "Breton Woods". "Breton Woods" sounds like someplace in northern France or southern Newfoundland. "Bretton Woods" is in New Hampshire.
Can you cite some sources please? Nothing you say makes any sense that I recognize. Central banks and policy interest rates (which are not "set" rates) are the norm in OECD countries.
Are you suggesting that we go back to the gold standard?
Trump has lived, existed and relied on borrowed money. That was when he could find any one who was foolish enough to lend it to him. Most of his ventures and projects have shown that he does not and has not understood any basic rules of business and finance. I remember when he drove out an analyst who pointed out that his debt offering for one his casino projects would not survive at the interest rates and leverage he had put on the casino. By the way eventually the bond holders were the ones that lost out. His business record has been abysmal and his understanding of finance and the economy lacking. Once he gets his hands on the Fed we can expect to see not only more financial chaos but an economic contraction. He has no strategy or understanding this is a government being run on the day to day on his instincts and his needs to be the head line.
I have seen some of the damage first hand and had clients that lost large amounts of money. In fact, I was able to discourage one investment and found out that the value of the assets had been inflated several hundred percent, his rejoinder was 'it has my name on it".
I think he does understand basic rules of business and finance, just in a similar way to how a leech would understand hematology. It goes something like this:
“If you owe the bank $100, that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem.” - J. Paul Getty
It's the same pattern over and over, whether it is Credit Suisse, Rudy Giuliani or a tradesman redoing the tile in his bathroom.
1. Borrow capital (or labor)
2. (If necessary transfer the asset to another holding)
3. Refuse to pay / go bankrupt
It's like he's religiously transactional except always welches on his end of the deal. You are useful to him as long as you keep giving him stuff. After that, you're gone.
Sometimes, like in the tariffs, it might not even be about the apparent target. Maybe he's just looking to extort the little guy (e.g. Apple or Walmart) into bribery when he goes after China. Bribes are definitely aligned with the sort of 1-way deal he strikes. Expectations of reciprocity are the other guy's foolish mistake. Just ask Musk.
I was a member of the creditor committee during Trump's Atlantic City BK's 2&3. I can say that he always wants lower rates and no covenants. He's a condo guy!
I must commend Paul for his mention of the My Pillow guy as a possible Fed Chair! Brilliant! Now what about America's Mayor?
As a country, we've seen this before. Tricky Dickie convinced the Fed to leave interest rates low in an inflationary economy and set up protective tariffs (though much lower than DonnyJon's). The result was the "stagflation" that proved incurable without triggering a serious recession.
Watching from the outside, it’s just CRAZY that your Presidents get to choose all the people who run things - including the justices on the Supreme Court. I can’t see how that’s meant to fit with separation of the powers, let alone contribute to stability…
…and evidently it doesn’t. It’s like watching a race to the bottom, and it’s infecting countries like the UK. Funded of course by the rich individuals and corporations who never pay their taxes, but instead spend on political influence, to stitch things up to suit themselves.
And that’s not to mention the poor mid-ranking civil servants who have dedicated their lives to trying to do the right thing, often with very little recompense (and a huge weight of responsibility). They are thrown on the scrapheap while the pirates fleece the nation…
It used to work, not perfectly but just enough to keep us from rebelling. The Constitution is a deeply flawed document, hence our laws, based on it, are deeply flawed. The worst flaw is that the whole thing depended on an "honor" system. It never occurred to the framers that someone with no honor and no shame would ascend to the throne.
And for nearly two and a half centuries, we bought into it without much pushback. Our politicians were already beholden to their biggest donors, and then came Citizens United. That sham of a "decision" opened the floodgates to absolute graft.
If and when we retake our country, we'll obviously have to fix the Constitution to ensure this never happens again, as well as to bring to justice the culprits who got us here.
Yeah, I don't think people appreciate how rickety the Constitution's always been. The entire thing was based on a compromise with slavers that started coming apart before the ink was dry, and the country spent the next eighty years spiraling towards civil war. It was able to pull itself together because the good guys won that war, because the bad guys were reduced to a rump state in the Southeast that couldn't dominate the nation's politics anymore, and because for the next hundred and thirty years or so, the more liberal party (first Republicans, then Democrats) was largely the one in charge (even after people like Nixon and Reagan started winning big, it wasn't until the nineties that Congress went Republican).
People look at this series of fortunate events and think it all happened because the founding fathers designed a perfect system, rather than dumb luck that inevitably runs out eventually.
After Professor Krugman posted his talk with Ada Palmer, I ordered her book on the Renaissance. She has a section that agrees emphatically with your last sentence. She says people are always asking "What caused the fall of ancient Rome?" What they should be asking is "How the Heck did it last so long?" Our system is relatively young, but many democracies have disintegrated in much shorter times. While it was a separate State, Venice held the record at roughly 1,100 years.
I read that too, George, initially out of an interest in art & a recent visit to Florence. But I got so much more out of the analyses in the conversation. Highly recommended.....
It doesn’t help that most schools (at least the ones in the South) no longer teach Civics as a stand alone subject. I’d bet 70% of those under 40 to 45 have no real understanding of how government is supposed to work let alone how it really works.
Yes, justice has to be meted out. Without it, there is no deterrent for any future politician to break or bend the law. Bondi, Kennedy, Trump, Miller, Patel, the lot of them have to be Nuremberg-ed.
Our Congress has "advise and consent" powers, which theoretically allows them to torpedo bad nominees. But the Republican majority just rolls over and shows its belly to Trump, rubber stamping anything he wants.
Congress has lots more power than it uses. The US Constitution's language on appointments reads in Article II, Section 2:
"He [the President] ... shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint [various officials], whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments."
We tend to overlook the parts that say "established by law" and "but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment." If the US wanted to have the rule of law rather than of one person, Congress could do a lot with this.
PS: The US Constitution doesn't have the word "unitary" with respect to the President or anything else. Art. II.2 sounds like "the executive Power" may be exercised by more people than just those nominated by the President.
And that's just personnel appointments. As regards policy, by the time we get to Article II, Article I has already given that to Congress in Article I, Section 8: "The Congress shall have Power ... To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof." NB: all powers vested by the Constitution in the US Government may be controlled by the law of Congress.
All Article II's references to "executive" need to be read in the context already laid out in Article I. That is, the executive carries the law into execution. Doesn't make law.
This indeed gives you leeway in the future (I fervently hope it's sooner rather than later, but it WILL come) to push things back in the right direction, and perhaps nail them down there rather harder!
One of the things I like about the American system is that it has committees WITH POWER who come from both parties (and independents?). I'm not sure about how that's constructed, but it seems to me to be a fundamentally good idea.
One thing that's better in (most of) the Westminster systems is how the role of the Speaker is framed:
"...when the Speaker becomes the Speaker they give up their party allegiance. This means that they effectively sit as an Independent MP in the House of Commons. Importantly, by convention, the major parties do not put up a candidate against the Speaker at the next General Election. This is to avoid putting the Speaker in a position whereby they have to compromise their neutrality by being forced to campaign in a General Election." Which in practice means the Speaker is often originally from the party that is sitting in opposition. Does help to keep that neutrality...
As a bit more background, during my lifetime we’ve had ‘liberal’ Republicans and ‘conservative’ Democrats, rather than the party/ideology we have now. That’s what allowed for “working across the aisle “ that no longer exists. Another oversight on the part of the Founders (according to historian Heather Cox Richardson) is they didn’t envision the future political parties, which seems to us unbelievable!
I don't have any problem with the president choosing his cabinet. How many managers in business don't get to hire their employees. The problem is it is all predicated on an president interested in doing a good faith job. Ultimately, it was up to the voters to stop this kind of stuff. They just didn't (again).
Every evil President wants their own Arthur Burns, unfortunately.
I've been thinking more and more about these passages from members of W Bush's admin as related by Ron Suskind.
"This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts," Bartlett went on to say. "He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence." Bartlett paused, then said, "But you can't run the world on faith."
....
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
I remember the good old days, when America was great, and I was sure that GW Bush would be the worst president the US would ever have. Boy, was I naive.
What’s striking is Republicans regaining office only eight years after tanking the economy and bogging us down militarily in Iraq and Afghanistan. It took many decades for Republicans to recover from the Hoover administration.
“I call this Bessent’s Law because when Trump chose Scott Bessent as Treasury secretary a number of Wall Street people assured us that he was a good, competent choice, someone who would promote sensible policies. But Trump knew his man. In office, Bessent has enthusiastically backed every bit of Trumpian nonsense: Tax cuts pay for themselves, critics of Trump’s trade policy are suffering from “tariff derangement syndrome,” a trillion-dollar reduction in Medicaid isn’t really a benefits cut. Oh, and anyone doing serious analysis of Trump’s policies is just an angry partisan.”
It’s almost pathetic. Every time a person comes up in the MSM for a cabinet position like with Bessent, the MSM fawns over the guy or girl; and it’s only later, we learn what a corrupt, morally bankrupt charlatan the guy actually is.
How often does this occur? Bush/Cheney for one. How often were we told that Cheney and Rumsfeld were the adults in the room, and will bring great leadership to an ignorant Bush. FAIL! They were Bush’s worst self and the devils in disguise. And as far as Powell bringing prestige to the administration, he was nothing more than a token hero with a stellar reputation, who collapsed faster than a cheap lounge chair when given a choice between honor or disgrace!
Then we had Bill Barr as AG in Trump world 1. He was sold to us as an intellectual legal heavyweight with lots of experience, who will bring honor to the office and keep Trump in line. Turns out, he became one of Trump’s greatest enablers and one of the champions of the Unitary Executive Theory.
And in Trump World 2 it was Rubio as the adult in the room and our designated savior; and the rest is history!
Moral of the story? Don’t fall for the MSM spin and hype. They never live up to expectations. So from now on, expect the worst (pray for the best) and you won’t be disappointed!….:)
Mainstream media is complicit in getting Trump re-elected. In 2022-23 they stopped reporting on the basic civics questions of January 6 and started beating the drum about Biden’s unpopularity, which coincided with a significant decrease in their subscribers and readers. They traded the country for more clicks on their sites.
MSM pundits educated & socialized the same as the rest of us & have the same weaknesses - chase the same 'shiny objects' the rest of us do - not geniuses nor leaders, no greater insight on the whole - their job is to report & expose and generally doing this well - but the onslaught is rapid & deep & links can't be adequately explained in soundbites btwn commercials or space btwn ads - the responsibility, long hours & stress is unprecedented
My criticism was not of the pundits, it was of the management. And I’m just saying that we can’t trust their judgement about a third person’s character; not that they aren’t nice or well educated people, or good at their jobs….:)
A note of cautious optimism in the gloom: The Fed chair is the public face of the Federal Reserve, leads its work, and chairs the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). But he or she cannot just dictate interest interest policy because the chair has only one vote out of twelve on the FOMC. So the Fed chair's power over interest rates exactly equals their ability to persuade the other FOMC members they should follow the chair's lead. I don't know that a toady or a crank would be all that persuasive.
It also doesn't look like the Supreme Court will let Trump fire Fed governors at will, and he doesn't even have theoretical ability to fire the five members of the FOMC that are supplied by the regional Feds. So Trump's ability to bend the Federal Reserve to his will rests on the appointment of a single governor whose term ends in January of next year. (That's January by the way, not May, since the Fed chair is appointed from the sitting governors.) Also, just because Jay Powell's term as chair ends next year doesn't mean Trump will be rid of him, because Powell's term as governor is not up until January of 2028, so if he wants he can stay on as an eminence grise to potentially lead the internal opposition against whichever Fox News host Trump will appoint as his successor.
Of course, nobody can say this is what will actually happen, but it doesn't seem totally unlikely.
It's not possible that three+ years of this madness can be sustained. It simply cannot. So please, do us all a favour, and implode sooner, rather than later. I suppose you actually don't have to anything for your country to self-destruct, just keep on doing nothing. But it's like being with a terminal patient on life-support.
It's only a matter of time before Trump and his minions go full Jonestown and bring out the koolaid. I don't see how this can last three years either. Soon, I would think, the oligarchs would realize that their fortunes and persons were no long safe, and Trump would meet the window with his name on it, but you never know.
We've already imploded. It's just a matter of time before war breaks out. Don't get me wrong, I'm not personally advocating violence, but it's already being perpetrated against us, and will only expand exponentially from here. Once that happens, all bets are off.
Cynically, as a matter of law (and natural law) there is nothing to be done. There is no popular recall mechanism, Congress clearly wont act, and there is no chance that Congress can be made to act until 2027 after the 2026 elections, and then only if a super majority is elected, which is pretty unlikely because it would mean South Carolina and Alabama, not to mention others, would have to actually be on the right side of history, for once. Otherwise Congress will impeach and the Senate will once again fail to convict because it will be party over patriotism *again*, and majority of patriots is not sufficiently high.
It's almost enough to make you believe in a Constitutional Convention, except I firmly believe that the outcome of that would be:
New 2nd Amendment: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, all people shall be inducted to the militia at the age of 16, and the right of the people to not keep and bear Arms, shall be infringed."
Perhaps we might have a clause about state welfare for the oil and gas sector and the right of Texas to veto all legislation.
Actually, the instant the MAGA overloards really end the representative government, one of the first things they'll do is take away people's guns. Once in power, they'll have no more use for their "useful idiots" and they sure won't tolerate having them armed. ("In the real 4th Reich, You'll be the first to go!" the Dead Kennedy's noted.)
Powell is highly principled. We won’t see that again for a while. Low interest rates are a sugar boost to the economy but a diet of pure sugar isn’t sustainable.
Call. Write. Email. Protest. Unrelentingly. About everything ❤️🩹🤍💙
Use/share this spreadsheet as a resource to call/email/write members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Reach out to those in your own state, and those in a committee that fits your topic.
We’re in the year 2 of AI bull market. AI revolution is slow for now as all that CAPEX spending is only building an infrastructure. But just like Trump had to face COVID, he’ll likely have to face accelerating revamping of job market that can leave millions out of jobs instantly. In addition, current AI bubble can go through a massive correction phase under Trump as well.
I'm actually an AI Engineer and I'm getting a Masters in AI/ML stuff. Don't fall for the CEO hype.
Yes, AI capabilities are expanding in leaps and bounds and very stupid companies WILL be persuaded to replace a lot of junior engineers (a very bad idea), and mid-level and senior people will become MUCH more productive. But when you get into higher level stuff. For example, I used AI as a tutor for Deterministic Optimization and it was hallucinating right and left even on relatively simple (graduate level) tasks. It simply could not do it and even I, as a student learning, could catch its errors. IN NO WAY could it do the work professionally.
But what we are heading for is CEOs doing a lot of stupid things, then a crash when those stupid decisions have stupid results--as you say, a correction--and then a large reorientation and probably an AI Winter.
Thanks for the post. I am a retired IT professional. My field of expertise was system and network administration plus network security. LLMs are an interesting tech, but I agree with you that the hype goes well beyond the reality of what the tech is capable of. This is similar to the Internet bubble. You are correct that right now we are building a lot of very powerful computing infrastructure which is similar t all the fiber optic cable laid down in the 90s. That infrastructure can at least be repurposed for more productive uses. LLMs are expensive to train and expensive to run. There is no viable business model for their use at this time. So far the only way companies like Open AI stay in business is to continue to extract money from gullible investors.
Main market for AI is enterprise not direct consumers. I know for a fact that most software development firms have already replaced first lines of QC and first lines of tech support by AI. I have friends who are doing this kind of automation - building AI agents for mundane coding tasks, and they are overwhelmed with demand.
We’re not only building computing infrastructure, we’re building energy infrastructure as well, nuclear plants are making a comeback.
Everyone who thought internet was only useful to send emails proved to be wrong.
AI is going to be a bigger revolution than internet because it will also power robotics and autonomous driving even further. Check out Chinese BYD plants, they already have more robots than people. AI infrastructure will power it further.
I do not disagree that the ML models can work very well in specific fields with a good training set. What I object to is the quest for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). I think that is a pipe dream, but that is what Sam Altman is selling. Remember AI is more than just LLMs. Also remember it was Jon McCarthy who coined the term AI. He originally started with "Automata Studied", but that did not sell very well. So even the term AI is just a marketing term. Altman is apparently an excellent salesperson, but what he is selling is unrealistic and unobtainable.
But would you pay for Artificial Artificial Intelligence? For example, we in the US do a lot of bullshit for legal compliance without any real intent of solving the practical problem, just the legal one. Maybe deploying an artificial intelligence to satisfy the legal requirement without actually doing much to solve the practical problem is just what the Lawyer ordered! It is automated, demonstrable, private, safe, and doesn't go on vacation. Problem "solved"!
I am retired now, so I can joke about AI driven misogyny-aware shock collars, just as long as you young whooper-snappers keep working to deliver my dividend checks. Work harder!
Certainly in the markets, there will be a AI crash after the AI boom. Not every good idea is a profitable one, and regardless of the quality of the tech, the companies will need to navigate the landscape of market reality where in some cases where there is money on the table to be captured by AI, and other areas where there just isn't. Time will sort it out.
I’m not so sure. The speed of information delivery sped up market agility as well along with scenario planning. I think the adoption curve will be smoother and winter won’t be that bad, unless it’s triggered by a major security incident and we step into some sort of Matrix/Terminator scenario
There are a lot of areas where it might do a reasonable job. As a D&D Dungeon Master it is simply brilliant, because you are basically asking it to bullshit about a fantasy realm. It draws pictures better than I do, can spin yarns in most any style and any dialect, and occasionally is quite funny.
Prompt> The party, chased by ghouls, is racing a cart through the forest and is forced to make a rapid choice between track leading to a bridge with a sign "Bridge Out!" and a tunnel which leads under the earth into the dark. If they go under the earth, a trap door will drop behind them and a large net will fall on the cart. Give me a humorous title for the section.
AI: Net Gains and Ghastly Losses
I was quite amused. I just didn't expect a sense of humor out of a pile of racist linear algebra. Starting to think the campaign should be a series of Rocky and Bullwinkle titled scenes.
Also, there is politics, investment prospectus and toilet scrubbing where bullshit is the order of the day. Some areas will be completely transformed, because we really just don't need or at least expect quality / truthiness.
Again as a librarian, your last sentence reminds me of the onset of widespread internet use in business workplaces early 2000s and the dismissal or undermining of professionals capable of discerning authoritative information from chaff. Lots of really really bad decisions resulted. IMHO led directly to the 2008-9 crash.
AI will get better. Trillions of dollars have already been spent on it. I don’t think that in a long run AI will be replacing junior engineers. It’s just junior engineers jobs are getting revamped now. But AI will entirely kill the middle level of engineering, those who are now comfortable in their careers and are 40-65 yo. IT Managers and IT Generalists are already struggling to find new jobs. Project management will be completely revamped soon, and old school PMs will also be out.
I think you are wrong. A lot of the money spent on AI is in the hyperscalar server datacenters needed to train and run the LLMs. They need the capacity because it literally takes a lot of compute to train these monsters that still hallucinate. And the researchers are discovering that just making the models larger does not improve their accuracy. I suggest you read Karen Hao's book - "Empire of AI" about OpenAI and all the harm their quest for AGI is causing worldwide. Ironically, the Chinese AI community may have got the tech right which resulted in smaller models which consume a lot less resources.
Remember these models basically get their information by scanning the Internet which as we know contains a lot of disinformation. Look at what happened with Musk's LLM which ended up spewing a lot hateful fascist nonsense and had to be shutdown. It apparently even called itself MechaHitler.
What many folks are starting the realize is these huge models still do not reason which is supposedly a characteristic of AGI. They simply regurgitate the information they scoop up in the training. The old IT saying of GIGO (Garbage In Garbage Out) still applies.
If we remove AI from the market we’re in a deep recession, it’s the only economic driver now.
I know that many LLMs are garbage and tons of money and energy are spent to improve them, but for example Google’s Gemini is a solid model, Chinese DeepSeek, French Mistral and etc. Grok is not great because they are doing a lot of stupid things trying to catch up with leaders.
I think OpenAI will end up like Netscape, they will be buried by competition.
Also, current LLM algorithms will improve to be more energy efficient. DeepSeek did just that.
And I think AGI might only be possible after the revolution of quantum computing, which will most likely start around 2030
I believe that the major impacts will be on the junior engineers. The middle level people used to be junior engineers and will revert to their old jobs (with a cut in pay). That is, at least, what happened as my old employer (Bellcore/Telcordia) died.
I was at the optometrist getting a refraction, and the doctor mentioned her disagreement with the idea that AI could do a quality refraction. I agreed -- aside from the back-and-forth discussion (whether one or two is better, and if I can see one again?), she discussed my day-to-day activities. She asked if I'm a reader, how often I drive, and what my hobbies are (I mentioned sewing, painting, and embroidering). She used that information to plan my refractions (I have progressive lenses) to suit me and me alone, and explained why. AI lacks the ability to deal with singularities and nuance.
In the medical field, AI is not looking to replace your doctor, but rather to make you doctor more efficient, more accurate, and more productive--not computer diagnosis, but computer AIDED diagnosis. And frankly it's desperately needed. We don't have enough medical professionals in the US, much less in rural, remote, and underserved areas.
And yes, AI can manage nuance.
The largest challenge in medical progress for AI is the lack of good data sets. Superficially, there are many, but once you scratch the surface... nada. None. It's just not there.
Depends on your definition of worse. It made revolution in media and communication, and made a lot of money to investors. We’re on social media platform now.
If anything social media wide-spread toxicity proves my point of a widespread AI adoption
Anybody here but me concerned about un regulated crypto bubble and it's overt use to fund terrorism and other crimes? That feels a lot more in my face and immediate in the grand scheme of things.
Oh that train has passed the point of concern. I think of crypto as a new sort of religion. You could laugh at Christians all you wanted when they were a small ostracized group, but you can’t laugh at Catholics or Mormons, they will bury you. And they will keep nurturing their faith.
Crypto is already owned by about $60M Americans. Many of them voted for Trump to keep their crypto assets, cause they put real cash in it.
As a research librarian, AI's ability to demagogue & misinform frightens me as much as the Trump Republicans & those behind them. The thought of a combination of both, and cryptocurrencies layered on top, has me in a state of psychic panic.
I've been reading the NYT articles on Trump's erratic tariff threats and there still seems to be a determination to sanewash him. Somehow the absurd letters he was randomly posting on social media are all part of some unorthodox negotiating strategy which may or may not yield results. The emperor has no clothes, but they don't want to admit it.
The seven members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. A full term is fourteen years. One term begins every two years. So in theory Trump cant pack the board with puppets in this term. Hans makes my point more eloquently below
Russell Vought has no credentials other than as a hired Heritage Foundation hitman. Trump wants Powell out because he won't bend the knee, just like he wanted Comey out for the same reason. Inflation will go up, the economy will go down, chaos with stagflation is not a good place to be. But that's all that Trump can deliver. Americans have to find out for themselves that electing a lunatic and criminal as president was not a good idea.
Political theorists like Schumpeter, Mosca, and Michels would not have been a bit surprised by Trump’s reign of terror. They predicted that democracies would always fail, that in a democracy, the state would inevitably be captured by a cynical cabal of organized elites. The disorganized, marginally engaged and informed masses are simply no match for a determined pirate ship of ruthless, well-funded elites.
Answering these critics of democracy is no easy task, particularly now that the world’s oldest democracy is sinking fast. But we can answer them if we remember that government actually does something, that we actually need government. The key is the idea of legitimacy. Government, except in its most extreme police state form, requires legitimacy. And this legitimacy derives from its performing basic functions.
When the state is captured by a cabal of parasitical but organized and well-funded elites, it no longer performs the basic functions of a government. It is like a cell invade by a virus whose basic functions are subverted to serve the interests of the parasitical virus and not the body.
This inevitable failure to perform basic functions in favor of serving the interests of the cabal regime comes at the cost of legitimacy. The state loses legitimacy and becomes more and more unstable until eventually the body politic throws out the parasitical cabal and reconstitutes a functional democratic government that actually does the things we need a government to do.
So when we read with fresh horror each new day’s outrages, we at least can also see the seeds of MAGA’s eventual expulsion being planted. But even knowing that they are destroying themselves as they destroy the country does little to mitigate the agony of being forced to watch it happen…
Read any Marx & Engels lately? Or that former Greek finance minister ('Yxxx"-something - name escapes me for the moment). Problem is not democracy, but capitalism. Experiments in economic democracy failed so far, but let's devote ourselves to figuring it out for the future. Nica & Cuba appear to be trying, but falling unevenly short on the democracy side, primarily due to external econ, political, propaganda & military pressures.
I'm a recently retired professor of Humanities and Social Sciences, and I've been warning for years that the oligarchic class is funneling wealth upwards in preparation for a general societal collapse. Believe me, I'm not making it up when I say that they've all built survivalist bunkers in preparation for that eventuality. You can read about this in any number of reputable sources. The New Yorker has an alarming extended account of it.
It appears that driving crypto and over-running the Fed with incompetent lackeys is characteristic of American late capitalism's last ditch snatch and grab, which is being perpetrated by "accelerationists" who believe that the faster the existing order collapses, the sooner the new order can emerge -- which includes in some quarters (looking at you Elon) establishing colonies on Mars with, I assume, the requisite harems of teenage virgins.
The degradation and derangement of the American oligarchy really is not to be underestimated. They are nihilists. And we -- both morally and legally -- have a well-established right of self-defense.
I wish you were exaggerating, but the more you know about these insane greed-mongers, the more you're looking for a pitchfork.
And a tiki torch. And guillotines. Lots of guillotines.
Ask not for whom the tumbril wheels creak. They creak for thee.
Oh yeah, and I'm feeling it too. Make no mistake about that.
The comment was directed at the South Africans who are now essentially running the country.
But, sure, you cannot be opposed to these people without knowing how potentially dangerous it is.
But we're free citizens with guaranteed rights. What are we supposed to do?
We're no longer truly free citizens.
Either way, we're supposed to Rise! Resist! ✊✊✊
In any and every way we possibly can.
The next nationwide rally is July 17. Be there or be square!
We need 3.5% of the population, or around 12,000,000 people to be present. So bring all your friends and families. Spread the word as far and wide as possible. Let's all get out there with a Howard Beale spirit and yell "We're as mad as hell, and we're not gonna take it anymore!".
https://substack.com/home/post/p-166495524
Correction: *one* South African, who has since left DOGE, but who certainly still has his fingers in several big pies. Let's stay focussed, right?
...and four types of Mac n cheese and six grills going on at the same time and tons of fixin's.
I’ve been speaking of the need to end the neofeudalim and accelerationism the billionaire class has been forcing on this republic for years Winston! Revolution is in the air, as is the need for the guillotine, with engraved Liberté, égalité, fraternité!!
Excellent post!!
Well, there are over 350M firearms in the US.
Yes, we're awash in firearms, but we have to be careful here. Reichwingers are twice as likely to own firearms than those leaning left:
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/06/22/the-demographics-of-gun-ownership/
"I wish you were exaggerating, but the more you know about these insane greed-mongers, the more you're looking for a pitchfork."
Fun fact: a constant behind-the-scenes reality in the TV show "Leverage" is that while most of their bad guys are based on real life one-percenters' crimes and abuses, they routinely find themselves having to dial *down* the crimes being portrayed, because the reality is so over-the-top that audiences have trouble believing it.
It happened at least once in James Bond too. The bad guys in "Quantum of Solace" were trying to privatize a nation's water supply in a plot loosely based on a real scheme that happened a decade earlier. Except the Bond villains were modest and grounded enough that they were only planning to *double* the amount of money being charged for water utilities. The real-life villains were planning to *triple* it.
With the OBBB , you now have a well-funded Gestapo and concentration camps in the swamps. Those pitchforks should not be symbolic. Why aren't Americans in the streets? That's how they got Ceacescu out in Rumania. Americans seem so unconcerned, limiting their resistance to the comments sections.
100% in agreement Stephen!!
And a new country to live in ....
tech bros all have bolt holes in new zealand south island. likely to miss any nuclear fallout, abundant clean water and agricultural land.
Yes Theil was given citizenship after only 10 days in NZ, by then right wing government. It was a disgrace. We now have another right wing government in place and I feel sure he will be feeding money to the ACT and National parties and be interfering in our democracy in the not too distant future (no evidence at this point he has, although I have my doubts).
Money corrupts.
Don't forget their depravity (rounding out the Killer D's). Texas oligarchs would rather innocent boys and girls die in a flood than spend $1 million on a flood warning system.
The report about the Texas legislature declining to grant $1 million to Kerr County is reminiscent of my blue state, which does try to provide grants to counties if the county also uses its property tax revenue to help pay. It’s called match and it’s the same idea as Medicaid, where states receive $6 for every $4 of state tax receipts spent. But some of our MAGA counties absolutely refuse to tax themselves sufficiently to help pay for anything. At that point our legislature either has to pay 100%, which isn’t fair to the non-MAGA counties who do tax themselves, or take a pass on helping the MAGA county. It may be that something similar happened with Kerr County, since reports state county officials chose not to spend the county’s own tax revenue on a warning system. Based on the voting behavior of my state’s MAGA constituents, those county officials likely anticipated the wishes of their constituents to avoid taxes even if it puts them at risk of losing their homes and lives.
We have the same situation in my county. We refuse to pay for anything...except our outlying town voted a special assessment for enhanced fire protection. The commissioners are so radical they got rid of Master Gardeners and 4-H. They are constantly trying to shut down the library even though that's a special assessment too.
solution : run for office!! Local govt & bodies, district, state, ntl ... all of them. We are the ones who actually know what is needed for a peaceful, safe, happy life. Keep it to that....
you get nobbled by the major parties and their billionaire sponsors.. or in europe u install an unelected EU bureaucracy which with NATO overrides any national interest you may have.
look how the uk labour party expelled corbin after the msm complied with a smear campaign. In Romania if ur anti-NATO and get elected you get the election "annulled".
in Australia our "Labour" has introduced legislation making it much harder for independents to effectively fund campaigns, with support from its partner in our duopoly choice.
if any antiwar/ anti-nato/ pro community party emerges in usa/ europe as a credible threat 2 the system and develops popular support its leaders are banned, expelled or killed.
i dont think trying to change the system from within works as its only an illusion of democracy provided anyway. its the system itself - late stage capitalism- that is the issue.
trying to keep open independent media where info and ideas can be shared is atleast a starting point in generating change.
latest news is that Noem cut the tiny grant to research best type of warning systems to use for natural disasters. Then... of course ... lied at a TX press conf in past week about how much 'her' DHS had earmarked for disaster warning systems.....
Life is cheap in Texas.
A congressperson refused it GOP obvs
Like you, I regard this as a telling symptom.
The oligarchs now live on the blood of children.
They always have, of course. It's just more obvious, and the rising numbers are impossible to ignore.
Oligarchs are like "Well, I made it: I'm living the American Dream. If all those others down there haven't made it by now, they probably never will, so screw 'em."
It's a lot worse than that. The 1% know the system is rotten, that the American Dream is a fallacy and a ruse for the mugs whom they see as nothing more than modern-day peasants to be exploited for all they are worth.
Hmm ... was Marx prescient? Socialism or barbarism?
Marx knew that economic systems at least transform themselves, if not collapse under their own contradictions. The idea of revolution may have been to hasten the end of the ugly side of capitalism he was living through.
Literally written, stated and spoken in numerous Christian Nationalist discussions of last 15+ years. Not to be repetitive, but... read about the beliefs of extremist Curtis Yarvin. Vance has publicly praised him.
Yarvin doesn’t believe in democracy.
vance's sponsor peter theil also thinks democracy is incompatable with "freedom"
People have their priorities for their money. A couple of years ago Americans spent 10 billion dollars on Halloween.
Well, look at it from their side. Why should they spend all that money because some idiots built a camp on a known flood plain.
Sorry, but a lot more damage and death occurred besides that at the camp. A LOT.
If a bunch of guys in the late eighteenth century can figure out that having a unitary executive isn't such a good idea... If we survive, we have to take the appointment of all these non-political government functionaries away from the Prez and come up with a better plan where cooler and more knowledgeable heads prevail.
It's an idea, but <points at congress> are you sure there is in fact someone else with "cooler and more knowledgeable heads" to appoint these people? Given its current subservience to the executive, I'm not sure what difference it would make at all. Who else is there?
We need one of those paradigm-shift thingies.
Professional committees. There is no reason we cannot specify that the ABA nominates judges with the advice and consent of the Senate. The Fed could nominate the chairman. If the goal is competence, there is plenty of it out. We need to elevate the Inspectors General and DOJ to separate independent branches of government, as well as.
This has been going on for some time now. Of course, they also have their personal security teams to defend their monopoly on resources such as water. Especially water, what with the drought impact of global warming.
In fact, if I'm remembering this correctly, private security is now one of the world's largest employers -- 20 million and counting.
Can you make me any more depressed?
The good news is that private security has almost zero loyalty and unless these mofos have cult leader levels of charisma they'll be kicked out of their compounds by week two.
not so sure on that - these private security units almost 100% led by far-right, and indoctrination is an essential part of induction & training
Beyond security, you also have support personnel at their compounds who keep things running -- prepare meals, clean the bathrooms, maintain the equipment, etc., and they also have zero loyalty.
however - internally many of them are horrified by what they are instructed to do, yet full of fear themselves. Of job loss, retaliation, etc. So over time they begin to 'accept' the justifications they're given, in absence of exposure to critical points of view & alternatives, and before you know it, they are betraying their own interests and morality, and part of the problem.
Sadly. Yes.
The good news is that we can still fight it. And we will.
Sounds about right to me.
It has been stated in past that US interest in Canada, more than minerals & lumber, is water. Look at what hedge funds & multinationals have done in S.America, as previous poster reminded us.
Oh, Barb -- this is my nightmare. I've been saying for years, "If you want to understand Canada's future with the United States, look to Latin America's past."
That's why we need all the fight from Carney that he's promised us. Not a whit less.
Water will soon enough be more valuable than gold. Especially fresh, clean drinkable water.
Solar or deep water desalination might provide a solution. It won't help Iowa much, but should keep coastal cities from going dry. The other thing is that we waste most of the water. Only something like 10% of California's water goes to cities. Most of it is either agriculture or rivers.
That's true, and I have no doubt that there will be an explosion of desalination plants around the world. This will, of course, impact the oceans, like everything we do. And we definitely waste too much water. Trumpkopf "opening the spigot" in California is probably the most egregious example.
You are so right about their escape plans. Talk about delusional!
But Joe and Jill Six-pack continue to hover around their tribal bonfires and doom scroll on their phones and think it can't happen here.
Thanks to Ronnie Ray-gun's constant yammering about how 'government is the problem', and a segment of America that has always leaned libertarian, those seeds took root and are now blossoming across the country, especially in the rural areas, like where I live. These are the folks who, to paraphrase Mr. Obama, think all they need to survive and thrive are their guns and their God. They can't see how having clowns in charge of the levers of government leads to disaster, because they don't THINK they believe in government. Ask those poor souls in Texas what can go wrong when you kneecap the departments who used to give you fair warning to get the hell out of Dodge.
It really did all begin with Reagan, didn't it?
The real coup the Republicans pulled off over the last 40 years was displacing FDR as the 20th century's greatest president with a barely sentient nincompoop and his jelly bean jar full of hollow bromides.
It all follows from that. Right up to the unnecessary drowning deaths of scores of children in Texas.
I haven't decided what (IMHO) has done the most damage to human civilization:
1) Ronald Raegan ending the FCC Fairness Doctrine, opening the door for full time rightwing radio
2) All the other things Raegan did
3) The invention of the transistor, opening the doors to PCs, the Internet, and social media
I was very shaken by Reagan ending the Fairness Doctrine while I was still a young man, for obvious reasons.
I was also equally shaken by his mass firing of striking air traffic controllers for equally obvious reasons.
Looking back, this was clearly the inflection point. A declaration of class war that was fixed from the start.
The internet, bitcoin, AI are all examples of how it goes horribly wrong when you turn over social science to software engineers. There is not much substance in the CS degree. Perhaps they ought to all be required to at least minor in Econ and sociology.
I attend protests, standouts, make phone calls and write postcards. Since your paint brush assumes all CS majors are evil (I’m a Unix programmer who did not take Econ or Sociology classes), is there something wrong with me? Should I ditch my “NO KINGS” sign and don a MAGA hat?
And don't forget the Devil's own daughter, The Right Honorable Swine Thatcher, who took Reagan's whole cloth solution and wrapped it around sleepy little ol' Britain. With the inevitable dreadful result...
***** !!! Thom Hartmann on Substack (& books) is particularly precise in outlining the thru-lines - from the GOP's "Two Santas" strategy & anti-civil rights stances forward to what we face now. This is not a 'new' phenomenon we're facing - it has been a plan for a half-century. Not fantasizing. But a 'real' conspiracy theory - existence backed up by official, accepted & undenied documents, credible analysis, and - most importantly - the results.
The Republicans have been playing a long game since at least Goldwater and, man, has it ever paid off.
I used to say of GW Bush, "The damage he's done is generational."
It's almost sweet to think that I believed, however briefly, that this was a bad as it could get.
Sounds like giving them a visit of Willie Pete with firebombs himself is good idea sooner rather than later. Before those savages build up their own private armies.
What you describe makes them little different than Putin's inner circle. Good thing Ukraine has shown that thugs without tanks have no defense against Drones backed up by AFVs and Artillery.
In all this US turmoil, ensure that you don't forget the horrors on a much greater scale happening in Ukraine, Sudan, Gaza, West Bank, ..... Not only US democracy being challenged, but human dignity and even survival on the international stage.
Illegal wars, mass murder, and even genocide are effectively being "normalized". I don't think people understand what this does to social expectations as a whole on a global scale.
How do they not understand that if society collapses, their wealth will become worthless?
Even their well-stocked bunkers will be either a magnet for roaming armed vagrants, or if they employ a private army to protect it, how will they enforce their will over those mercenaries?
No one claims this is rational! It's exactly what makes them so dangerous. They're just that delusional.
But, yes, they are worried that their security forces will simply take over because -- well, this requires no explanation.
But they're looking into it!
Especially robots and AI to protect their authority, so they should be fine, right?
Nihilism is an underlying strain of White Christian Nationalist theorizing. The hatreds are so deeply ingrained they blind themselves.
I can't repeat that word -- nihilism -- too often when it comes to the American right.
They're literally dedicated to destroying an ecosystem they know is already in deep distress by doubling down on fossil fuels as energy demands rise sharply! It's like a case of mass-psychopathy.
I saw a tour of one of those bunkers. They proudly displayed .50 caliber sniper rifles that they intend to use against trespassers. They have it figured out pretty well. Stocks of MREs sufficient for years. Diesel-powered generators for power. They are aware that fuels like gasoline and diesel are only good for a few years, but they figure that all they have to do is survive until the rest of us die out. Once they can surface, they can establish an agrarian society. Or say hello to our Chinese conquerors.
I for one welcome our new Chinese overlords!
"... und I'm learning Chinese, says Werner Von Braun." - Tom Lehrer.
God bless Tom Lehrer!
97 years young this year, and who produced an eternity's worth of relevant satire.
This goes along with an observation I've been making for over a decade, which is that America's rich think the New Deal was the most gigantic mugging in history. FDR and his union thugs stole all their very hard-earned money at gunpoint under the threat of revolution, and have been living high off of it ever since. When the rich look at post-WWII society, with its safety nets and its consumer protections and its workers' rights and its lack of crippling depressions, they don't see a healthy middle-class society: they see thieves partying their lives away with money they didn't earn. In their world, they and the Republicans are Thorin's company and all the rest of us are Smaug.
Therefore, a total societal collapse is simply justice being done, depriving the greedy thieves of their ill-gotten gains and punishing them for their crimes. All the bunkers, the survivalist obsessions, the hyper-militarization of society, is just them prepping for the rematch: *this* time, they won't meekly hand over their wallets like their grandparents did, *this* time, they'll be ready when the muggers arrive and shoot them in the face. (Well, you know, have their secretary tell the hired help to shoot them in the face. Let's not go crazy here).
I don't think this is wrong as far as it goes.
But the fact is that the oligarchs back in the day employed brutal union busters. So it was real flesh and blood workers who were the actual targets of violence -- including murder -- in their fight for rights. The rich weren't in the remotest danger, and they knew it.
After 1945, so much wealth had been destroyed through two world wars in less than 30 years -- and the collapse of European colonialism merely exacerbated the problem -- that the oligarchs allowed workers an equitable share in order to restore that lost wealth as quickly as possible.
But it is true that by the time of Reagan/Thatcher, capital resorted to its default condition of increasing profits by reducing wages.
And it is true that the billionaire class is very obviously making no provision for the survival of the rest of us as jobs disappear into a deranged form of AI that is, clinically speaking, already making people stupider.
I think the oligarchs believe that the marketplace is an expression of Darwinian evolution (or at least their degraded understanding of it). They'll survive because they've earned it. We won't because we're chumps and deserve what we get.
We'll see about that...
My AP European History teacher also pointed out the scare the French and Bolshevik revolutions put in the minds of oligarchs. The New Deal bought protection against the same thing happening here, but the oligarchs never actually took the distress of average folk to heart. By the late 1970s the fear of a revolution happening here had faded, and the greedy narcissists felt comfortable pushing their interests to the extreme.
I think this is a very good read!
I was a union carpenter in the late '70s. Some of the older guys lived through the union buster days. One of the business agents told me that they used to have to carry their hand saws like swords walking home. That would be a wicked weapon.
Yes, Professor Happy. As a fellow academic, I think I know how this sad story ends, or how it HAS to end. I'm not an accelerationist, but we are in a pressure cooker. Letters to the Editor, or substacks, won't save us. Civil disobedience for starters.
This is our town hall, Professor Ollerhead.
This is where the civil disobedience begins.
For starters!
I don't see how anything short of a nationwide strike will get the attention of the current powers-that-be, but the population is still in fat, dumb and happy mode. Most people haven't been hit hard enough to know what's happening to them; it's only those who have the luxury of education and something of a historical perspective who can see what's coming: a slow-moving freight train.
The Big Beautiful Bill is maliciously designed to hurt Trump's impoverished supporters hardest of all (although I know the effects have been kicked down the road a couple of years), and of course the vandalism of DOGE is most likely to be felt by the same people.
Texas is of course Texas. But even they -- especially given the needless deaths of scores of children -- must be wondering why they were begrudged a flood warning system that in just the past week would have saved hundreds of lives.
Authoritarian regimes are by nature unstable. There comes a point where they'll tip and go belly up. The trick is we don't know when that will happen. We can only be ready for it when it does.
Rarely go belly-up,, Michael. They have to be pushed - hard & repeatedly.
I'm thinking of the Nazi regime and even the old Soviet Union. Each, just a decade before, seemed like they'd be there forever. If they fail in just the right ways, they simply disappear, leaving only the carnage behind. Here the issue is educated, competent, and freedom-loving people refusing to let their prerogatives go...
One caveat, Ruth. Train is no longer (as in older & more recent history) 'slow-moving'. It is rapid, on all fronts, all at once, & in the most powerful & powerfully armed nation in history. Response you suggest is correct, but it has to happen almost impossibly fast. The wake-up call has to be ice-cold water splashed liberally. Otherwise the disaster result is inevitable and totally horrible. The train is right on the outskirts of town, about to enter the station.
You’re correct. But the “train” is imperceptible to people too distracted/uninformed to notice; also quite a few people are completely on board. I know many people, highly educated and not stupid, who believe that the coming tyranny of the right is a better alternative than what the left had to offer. I fear that they won’t know what freedom of speech, the press, the benefits of a social safety system, top flight research, and so many elements of American society, mean until they are gone.
Lots and lots of people are going to object to and be frightened of how this will inevitably end. But if many of those same people had acted appropriately and decisively earlier, we could probably have avoided it. But it's gone too far now. The only way these vermin are leaving is by dragging them out.
Let the dragging begin then!
But there's dragging and there's dragging.
The law alone would be sufficient. It just needs to be enforced.
But the law also allows for self-defense, and that's worth remembering.
100% agree. Their goal is to destroy our burgeoning economy and the middle class; creating an Authoritarian Oligarchy or rich (rulers), and poor; the surfs who will do as they are told! It’s the new world order….:)
Counting just the people who voted for Trump, the low-end estimate for serfs in America currently is 77 million. But we could probably also include those who did not vote at all. It's a bad state of affairs. But the remainder are smarter and have a better grip on reality. Those are huge advantages, and we won't surrender them willingly.
Agreed. This resembles the rise of the Nazi’s. Hitler got a third of the vote, while another third stayed home and just watched. Neither Hitler or Trump had a mandate, but both regimes are so morally bankrupt, the opposition is or was, way out of its depth.
Additionally, one plays by the rules, the other either ignores them, or makes it up as they go along.
And now with absolute power, and a $170 billion slush fund, they could be unstoppable. In fact, most military’s in the world, including Israel don’t have a $170 billion budget just granted to ICE. In fact Homeland’s total budget for 2025 was $103 billion, which included ICE’s budget of $8 billion. Let that sink in!
The irony is that we saw this coming with Project 2025, yet no one believed it could happen here. Sadly, Trump had something Orban did not when he took office; a SCOTUS in his pocket, and complete control of Congress when he was inaugurated.
This cancer runs far deeper than MAGA Inc.; in fact, there are too many enablers and cohorts to even keep count, and the reason they are succeeding; in spite of Trump!…:)
Well, but the Nazis actually lost it all in a remarkably short period of time, the Thousand Year Reich lasting little more than a decade. And dictatorships are extraordinarily brittle because they are socially unstable. Under the right set of circumstances, they can shatter in an instant. You can't grind a desire for freedom out of people who cherish it.
If, however, you're giving up before the fight has really begun, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I’m not giving up, just letting everyone know what we’re up against. It’s not just Trump, it’s an army of masked men and groups whose entire existence depends on Trump’s success.
That said, the good news is that once Trump falters and he will (cognitive decline), there will be a civil war within MAGA for control, so mostly likely they will cannibalize themselves, or self immolate.
In the meantime, we need to attack where we can, and where they are weakest. That said, we need centralized leadership in the opposition. Right now, I’m not sure what the opposition is doing, other than going through the motions.
I saw articles yesterday indicating that the MAGA civil war may have begun already. The trigger was reported to be DonnyJon's announcement that certain undocumented workers (agricultural, restaurant employees, etc.) will not be deported.
Sorry for the poor wording -- it was a general "you", not a specific one.
There's a lot of fatalism out there. You provide a good account of it without advocating it.
But in that decade Nazis managed to kill or be responsible for the deaths of literally millions. And left a legacy of thought that persisted and is infecting & growing exponentially in our time. So little solace in your comment, Michael. That the inate desire for freedom flames up rapidly, before we 'rhyme' history
Eh.. 6 million dead from Nazis is 6 million dead, for sure. However, in the grand scheme of things, that was hopefully a one time thing, and we lose 9+ million every year to hunger. I'm not saying don't punch a Nazi. It brings luck! I'm just saying if you don't want the hunger problem to get 100 times worse, we ought to be paying far more attention to Global Warming than fighting the last world war again. Obviously, the Nazis seem to be pro Global Warming too. So, like the American South, the Nazis have a hard time finding a point of history to be on the correct side of.
I take the innate human desire for freedom as a constant, Barb, and that's the source of my hope.
But I never assume that it will inevitably triumph.
It must be fought for.
Even so, I stand by my claim that authoritarian societies are by nature unstable. They can maintain that condition for a very long time, but it's never indefinite, and the courage of a few people can make all the difference.
The Nazis were still the largest party in the reichstag and in constitutional terms had the right to form a government. It's an uncomfortable truth we need to acknowledge.
The Enabling Act required that it should expire when the coalition dissolved. From the moment Alfred Hugenberg resigned on June 27, 1933, it was an illegal government.
True, however, they did so with a little over a third of parliament. They needed to consolidate power to pull off the coup; hence, their Reichstag moment….:)
Not necessarily smarter, just more time to be exposed to the world of alternative ideas and thought & education and give them consideration, to reflect. I come from that layer ...
If travel broadens the mind, it must also make it smarter, at least in the sense of becoming more flexible, more tolerant, more intuitive.
I would wish the education I got on everyone. If I regard myself as a free man with undeniable obligations, I have my education to thank for that.
In the name of the Goddess, everybody please read about Curtis Yarvin .. the plot unveiled.
Will do...
The US should reform their "winner-take-all"-electorial system to avoid the obvious gaming of the political system. "We the people" has become "Us with huge sums of money to spend".
Except America was not designed to be a full democracy!
That's why there's an Electoral College and every state has two senators.
It's designed for minority rule favoring rural whites -- and the big city oligarchs who demagogue them.
"Except America was not designed to be a full democracy!"
Exactly, but few countries were back then.
After two World Wars at least Europe has learned the lesson.
Except the UK, of course...
Yes, when it comes to the electorate, but when it comes to the monarch changes were made some hundred years ago coinciding with the fall of European monarchies and the increasing popularity of communism. After that the British monarch is only ceremonial in their powers.
What I mean is that the UK is not a fully representative democracy, which is a particular problem for them because it is made up of four semi-autonomous countries: England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. England is by far the biggest and has by far the worst political culture, which is why the UK is governed so badly against the will of three of the four countries involved.
The Germans, on the other hand, do it very well! They really learned the lessons of history.
Sounds like echoes of Dr. Trumplove.
"establishing colonies on Mars with, I assume, the requisite harems of teenage virgins"
God help us that Dr Strangelove was probably more documentary than satire.
"The women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics, which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature."
Lol!
That's pretty much what I had in mind.
If you want "documentary", however, you need to watch Idiocracy. Twenty years ago it was a dystopian satire. Now it's an evening with Fox News.
TBH we should fear the FED regardless of who's the Director. It's a banking cartel. Always has been, always will be. The price of money (aka interest rates) should be set by the market, not some pseudo-brainiacs in a smokey back room. History shows that the Fed blows it over and over and has since its inception, but particularly since the 70's when we abandoned Breton Woods.
It's spelled "Bretton Woods", not "Breton Woods". "Breton Woods" sounds like someplace in northern France or southern Newfoundland. "Bretton Woods" is in New Hampshire.
Can you cite some sources please? Nothing you say makes any sense that I recognize. Central banks and policy interest rates (which are not "set" rates) are the norm in OECD countries.
Are you suggesting that we go back to the gold standard?
I think there's a Reddit for that.
Trump has lived, existed and relied on borrowed money. That was when he could find any one who was foolish enough to lend it to him. Most of his ventures and projects have shown that he does not and has not understood any basic rules of business and finance. I remember when he drove out an analyst who pointed out that his debt offering for one his casino projects would not survive at the interest rates and leverage he had put on the casino. By the way eventually the bond holders were the ones that lost out. His business record has been abysmal and his understanding of finance and the economy lacking. Once he gets his hands on the Fed we can expect to see not only more financial chaos but an economic contraction. He has no strategy or understanding this is a government being run on the day to day on his instincts and his needs to be the head line.
He loves taking huge risks with other people’s money and leave them holding the bag when things go south.
I have seen some of the damage first hand and had clients that lost large amounts of money. In fact, I was able to discourage one investment and found out that the value of the assets had been inflated several hundred percent, his rejoinder was 'it has my name on it".
It’s self generated hype.
Actually, he does have a strategy: destroy the government and pilfer the remains.
“An evil man will burn down his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes.” —Sun Tzu
No, just remake the government into an image like Putin's Russia, where it's basically a protection racket.
Same thing.
And it's people
I think he does understand basic rules of business and finance, just in a similar way to how a leech would understand hematology. It goes something like this:
“If you owe the bank $100, that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem.” - J. Paul Getty
It's the same pattern over and over, whether it is Credit Suisse, Rudy Giuliani or a tradesman redoing the tile in his bathroom.
1. Borrow capital (or labor)
2. (If necessary transfer the asset to another holding)
3. Refuse to pay / go bankrupt
It's like he's religiously transactional except always welches on his end of the deal. You are useful to him as long as you keep giving him stuff. After that, you're gone.
Sometimes, like in the tariffs, it might not even be about the apparent target. Maybe he's just looking to extort the little guy (e.g. Apple or Walmart) into bribery when he goes after China. Bribes are definitely aligned with the sort of 1-way deal he strikes. Expectations of reciprocity are the other guy's foolish mistake. Just ask Musk.
I was a member of the creditor committee during Trump's Atlantic City BK's 2&3. I can say that he always wants lower rates and no covenants. He's a condo guy!
I must commend Paul for his mention of the My Pillow guy as a possible Fed Chair! Brilliant! Now what about America's Mayor?
As a country, we've seen this before. Tricky Dickie convinced the Fed to leave interest rates low in an inflationary economy and set up protective tariffs (though much lower than DonnyJon's). The result was the "stagflation" that proved incurable without triggering a serious recession.
Watching from the outside, it’s just CRAZY that your Presidents get to choose all the people who run things - including the justices on the Supreme Court. I can’t see how that’s meant to fit with separation of the powers, let alone contribute to stability…
…and evidently it doesn’t. It’s like watching a race to the bottom, and it’s infecting countries like the UK. Funded of course by the rich individuals and corporations who never pay their taxes, but instead spend on political influence, to stitch things up to suit themselves.
And that’s not to mention the poor mid-ranking civil servants who have dedicated their lives to trying to do the right thing, often with very little recompense (and a huge weight of responsibility). They are thrown on the scrapheap while the pirates fleece the nation…
It used to work, not perfectly but just enough to keep us from rebelling. The Constitution is a deeply flawed document, hence our laws, based on it, are deeply flawed. The worst flaw is that the whole thing depended on an "honor" system. It never occurred to the framers that someone with no honor and no shame would ascend to the throne.
And for nearly two and a half centuries, we bought into it without much pushback. Our politicians were already beholden to their biggest donors, and then came Citizens United. That sham of a "decision" opened the floodgates to absolute graft.
If and when we retake our country, we'll obviously have to fix the Constitution to ensure this never happens again, as well as to bring to justice the culprits who got us here.
Yeah, I don't think people appreciate how rickety the Constitution's always been. The entire thing was based on a compromise with slavers that started coming apart before the ink was dry, and the country spent the next eighty years spiraling towards civil war. It was able to pull itself together because the good guys won that war, because the bad guys were reduced to a rump state in the Southeast that couldn't dominate the nation's politics anymore, and because for the next hundred and thirty years or so, the more liberal party (first Republicans, then Democrats) was largely the one in charge (even after people like Nixon and Reagan started winning big, it wasn't until the nineties that Congress went Republican).
People look at this series of fortunate events and think it all happened because the founding fathers designed a perfect system, rather than dumb luck that inevitably runs out eventually.
After Professor Krugman posted his talk with Ada Palmer, I ordered her book on the Renaissance. She has a section that agrees emphatically with your last sentence. She says people are always asking "What caused the fall of ancient Rome?" What they should be asking is "How the Heck did it last so long?" Our system is relatively young, but many democracies have disintegrated in much shorter times. While it was a separate State, Venice held the record at roughly 1,100 years.
I read that too, George, initially out of an interest in art & a recent visit to Florence. But I got so much more out of the analyses in the conversation. Highly recommended.....
It doesn’t help that most schools (at least the ones in the South) no longer teach Civics as a stand alone subject. I’d bet 70% of those under 40 to 45 have no real understanding of how government is supposed to work let alone how it really works.
Yes, justice has to be meted out. Without it, there is no deterrent for any future politician to break or bend the law. Bondi, Kennedy, Trump, Miller, Patel, the lot of them have to be Nuremberg-ed.
Completely agree that there needs to be a Nuremberg moment for them!
Our Congress has "advise and consent" powers, which theoretically allows them to torpedo bad nominees. But the Republican majority just rolls over and shows its belly to Trump, rubber stamping anything he wants.
Actually, they didn't just roll over. Recall that Bitch McConnell very actively pursued this. It was all by design.
Congress has lots more power than it uses. The US Constitution's language on appointments reads in Article II, Section 2:
"He [the President] ... shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint [various officials], whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments."
We tend to overlook the parts that say "established by law" and "but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment." If the US wanted to have the rule of law rather than of one person, Congress could do a lot with this.
PS: The US Constitution doesn't have the word "unitary" with respect to the President or anything else. Art. II.2 sounds like "the executive Power" may be exercised by more people than just those nominated by the President.
And that's just personnel appointments. As regards policy, by the time we get to Article II, Article I has already given that to Congress in Article I, Section 8: "The Congress shall have Power ... To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof." NB: all powers vested by the Constitution in the US Government may be controlled by the law of Congress.
All Article II's references to "executive" need to be read in the context already laid out in Article I. That is, the executive carries the law into execution. Doesn't make law.
That's interesting: thank you so much, Joe.
This indeed gives you leeway in the future (I fervently hope it's sooner rather than later, but it WILL come) to push things back in the right direction, and perhaps nail them down there rather harder!
One of the things I like about the American system is that it has committees WITH POWER who come from both parties (and independents?). I'm not sure about how that's constructed, but it seems to me to be a fundamentally good idea.
One thing that's better in (most of) the Westminster systems is how the role of the Speaker is framed:
"...when the Speaker becomes the Speaker they give up their party allegiance. This means that they effectively sit as an Independent MP in the House of Commons. Importantly, by convention, the major parties do not put up a candidate against the Speaker at the next General Election. This is to avoid putting the Speaker in a position whereby they have to compromise their neutrality by being forced to campaign in a General Election." Which in practice means the Speaker is often originally from the party that is sitting in opposition. Does help to keep that neutrality...
https://politicsteaching.com/2024/01/19/what-is-the-role-of-the-speaker-of-the-house-of-commons-and-what-is-the-denison-convention-2/
As a bit more background, during my lifetime we’ve had ‘liberal’ Republicans and ‘conservative’ Democrats, rather than the party/ideology we have now. That’s what allowed for “working across the aisle “ that no longer exists. Another oversight on the part of the Founders (according to historian Heather Cox Richardson) is they didn’t envision the future political parties, which seems to us unbelievable!
I don't have any problem with the president choosing his cabinet. How many managers in business don't get to hire their employees. The problem is it is all predicated on an president interested in doing a good faith job. Ultimately, it was up to the voters to stop this kind of stuff. They just didn't (again).
Every evil President wants their own Arthur Burns, unfortunately.
I've been thinking more and more about these passages from members of W Bush's admin as related by Ron Suskind.
"This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts," Bartlett went on to say. "He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence." Bartlett paused, then said, "But you can't run the world on faith."
....
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-and-the-presidency-of-george-w-bush.html?unlocked_article_code=1.4k0.pzPh.WU1Quy6_O_ms&smid=url-share
Reality will bite, as it did to W's team in Iraq.
Hard.
Reality doesn't care what anyone "believes."
*sigh*
They did not, in the end, create their own reality, they created a delusion.
I remember the good old days, when America was great, and I was sure that GW Bush would be the worst president the US would ever have. Boy, was I naive.
What’s striking is Republicans regaining office only eight years after tanking the economy and bogging us down militarily in Iraq and Afghanistan. It took many decades for Republicans to recover from the Hoover administration.
what was the purpose of 8 years of "war on woke" ....
Sorry, just spit my lunch all over my monitor.
I only tolerate W now having experienced T. Never thought he would ever appear sane by any comparison!
Nixon is looking like a real shining example of public service and statesmanship at this point.
The fact that Trump is clearly insane does not mean that W wasn't.
"appears" key here
“I call this Bessent’s Law because when Trump chose Scott Bessent as Treasury secretary a number of Wall Street people assured us that he was a good, competent choice, someone who would promote sensible policies. But Trump knew his man. In office, Bessent has enthusiastically backed every bit of Trumpian nonsense: Tax cuts pay for themselves, critics of Trump’s trade policy are suffering from “tariff derangement syndrome,” a trillion-dollar reduction in Medicaid isn’t really a benefits cut. Oh, and anyone doing serious analysis of Trump’s policies is just an angry partisan.”
It’s almost pathetic. Every time a person comes up in the MSM for a cabinet position like with Bessent, the MSM fawns over the guy or girl; and it’s only later, we learn what a corrupt, morally bankrupt charlatan the guy actually is.
How often does this occur? Bush/Cheney for one. How often were we told that Cheney and Rumsfeld were the adults in the room, and will bring great leadership to an ignorant Bush. FAIL! They were Bush’s worst self and the devils in disguise. And as far as Powell bringing prestige to the administration, he was nothing more than a token hero with a stellar reputation, who collapsed faster than a cheap lounge chair when given a choice between honor or disgrace!
Then we had Bill Barr as AG in Trump world 1. He was sold to us as an intellectual legal heavyweight with lots of experience, who will bring honor to the office and keep Trump in line. Turns out, he became one of Trump’s greatest enablers and one of the champions of the Unitary Executive Theory.
And in Trump World 2 it was Rubio as the adult in the room and our designated savior; and the rest is history!
Moral of the story? Don’t fall for the MSM spin and hype. They never live up to expectations. So from now on, expect the worst (pray for the best) and you won’t be disappointed!….:)
Mainstream media is complicit in getting Trump re-elected. In 2022-23 they stopped reporting on the basic civics questions of January 6 and started beating the drum about Biden’s unpopularity, which coincided with a significant decrease in their subscribers and readers. They traded the country for more clicks on their sites.
MSM pundits educated & socialized the same as the rest of us & have the same weaknesses - chase the same 'shiny objects' the rest of us do - not geniuses nor leaders, no greater insight on the whole - their job is to report & expose and generally doing this well - but the onslaught is rapid & deep & links can't be adequately explained in soundbites btwn commercials or space btwn ads - the responsibility, long hours & stress is unprecedented
My criticism was not of the pundits, it was of the management. And I’m just saying that we can’t trust their judgement about a third person’s character; not that they aren’t nice or well educated people, or good at their jobs….:)
A note of cautious optimism in the gloom: The Fed chair is the public face of the Federal Reserve, leads its work, and chairs the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). But he or she cannot just dictate interest interest policy because the chair has only one vote out of twelve on the FOMC. So the Fed chair's power over interest rates exactly equals their ability to persuade the other FOMC members they should follow the chair's lead. I don't know that a toady or a crank would be all that persuasive.
It also doesn't look like the Supreme Court will let Trump fire Fed governors at will, and he doesn't even have theoretical ability to fire the five members of the FOMC that are supplied by the regional Feds. So Trump's ability to bend the Federal Reserve to his will rests on the appointment of a single governor whose term ends in January of next year. (That's January by the way, not May, since the Fed chair is appointed from the sitting governors.) Also, just because Jay Powell's term as chair ends next year doesn't mean Trump will be rid of him, because Powell's term as governor is not up until January of 2028, so if he wants he can stay on as an eminence grise to potentially lead the internal opposition against whichever Fox News host Trump will appoint as his successor.
Of course, nobody can say this is what will actually happen, but it doesn't seem totally unlikely.
It's not possible that three+ years of this madness can be sustained. It simply cannot. So please, do us all a favour, and implode sooner, rather than later. I suppose you actually don't have to anything for your country to self-destruct, just keep on doing nothing. But it's like being with a terminal patient on life-support.
It's only a matter of time before Trump and his minions go full Jonestown and bring out the koolaid. I don't see how this can last three years either. Soon, I would think, the oligarchs would realize that their fortunes and persons were no long safe, and Trump would meet the window with his name on it, but you never know.
It wont last if MAGA turns on trump. Will this happen?
I don't understand MAGA. I'm not sure MAGA understands MAGA.
What would it really take?
We've already imploded. It's just a matter of time before war breaks out. Don't get me wrong, I'm not personally advocating violence, but it's already being perpetrated against us, and will only expand exponentially from here. Once that happens, all bets are off.
share your primal scream.....
Cynically, as a matter of law (and natural law) there is nothing to be done. There is no popular recall mechanism, Congress clearly wont act, and there is no chance that Congress can be made to act until 2027 after the 2026 elections, and then only if a super majority is elected, which is pretty unlikely because it would mean South Carolina and Alabama, not to mention others, would have to actually be on the right side of history, for once. Otherwise Congress will impeach and the Senate will once again fail to convict because it will be party over patriotism *again*, and majority of patriots is not sufficiently high.
It's almost enough to make you believe in a Constitutional Convention, except I firmly believe that the outcome of that would be:
New 2nd Amendment: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, all people shall be inducted to the militia at the age of 16, and the right of the people to not keep and bear Arms, shall be infringed."
Perhaps we might have a clause about state welfare for the oil and gas sector and the right of Texas to veto all legislation.
That's an interesting take. I think mostly moot, as there more than likely won't be another election, or one that approaches viability.
Actually, the instant the MAGA overloards really end the representative government, one of the first things they'll do is take away people's guns. Once in power, they'll have no more use for their "useful idiots" and they sure won't tolerate having them armed. ("In the real 4th Reich, You'll be the first to go!" the Dead Kennedy's noted.)
https://youtu.be/Y-Gj4_-3TFs
Powell is highly principled. We won’t see that again for a while. Low interest rates are a sugar boost to the economy but a diet of pure sugar isn’t sustainable.
True, I was not a fan at first but how he slipped in past the sychophantic needs to the despot.
At least he took the job seriously and drew the line firmly at the Fed not being political. The next person will make no such distinction.
That is exactly my fear. Hopefully the rest of the FOMC can act as guardrail
Call. Write. Email. Protest. Unrelentingly. About everything ❤️🩹🤍💙
Use/share this spreadsheet as a resource to call/email/write members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Reach out to those in your own state, and those in a committee that fits your topic.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13lYafj0P-6owAJcH-5_xcpcRvMUZI7rkBPW-Ma9e7hw/edit?usp=drivesdk
Thank you Megan!
You’re welcome! Thanks for speaking up right now!
We’re in the year 2 of AI bull market. AI revolution is slow for now as all that CAPEX spending is only building an infrastructure. But just like Trump had to face COVID, he’ll likely have to face accelerating revamping of job market that can leave millions out of jobs instantly. In addition, current AI bubble can go through a massive correction phase under Trump as well.
I'm actually an AI Engineer and I'm getting a Masters in AI/ML stuff. Don't fall for the CEO hype.
Yes, AI capabilities are expanding in leaps and bounds and very stupid companies WILL be persuaded to replace a lot of junior engineers (a very bad idea), and mid-level and senior people will become MUCH more productive. But when you get into higher level stuff. For example, I used AI as a tutor for Deterministic Optimization and it was hallucinating right and left even on relatively simple (graduate level) tasks. It simply could not do it and even I, as a student learning, could catch its errors. IN NO WAY could it do the work professionally.
But what we are heading for is CEOs doing a lot of stupid things, then a crash when those stupid decisions have stupid results--as you say, a correction--and then a large reorientation and probably an AI Winter.
Thanks for the post. I am a retired IT professional. My field of expertise was system and network administration plus network security. LLMs are an interesting tech, but I agree with you that the hype goes well beyond the reality of what the tech is capable of. This is similar to the Internet bubble. You are correct that right now we are building a lot of very powerful computing infrastructure which is similar t all the fiber optic cable laid down in the 90s. That infrastructure can at least be repurposed for more productive uses. LLMs are expensive to train and expensive to run. There is no viable business model for their use at this time. So far the only way companies like Open AI stay in business is to continue to extract money from gullible investors.
Main market for AI is enterprise not direct consumers. I know for a fact that most software development firms have already replaced first lines of QC and first lines of tech support by AI. I have friends who are doing this kind of automation - building AI agents for mundane coding tasks, and they are overwhelmed with demand.
We’re not only building computing infrastructure, we’re building energy infrastructure as well, nuclear plants are making a comeback.
Everyone who thought internet was only useful to send emails proved to be wrong.
AI is going to be a bigger revolution than internet because it will also power robotics and autonomous driving even further. Check out Chinese BYD plants, they already have more robots than people. AI infrastructure will power it further.
I do not disagree that the ML models can work very well in specific fields with a good training set. What I object to is the quest for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). I think that is a pipe dream, but that is what Sam Altman is selling. Remember AI is more than just LLMs. Also remember it was Jon McCarthy who coined the term AI. He originally started with "Automata Studied", but that did not sell very well. So even the term AI is just a marketing term. Altman is apparently an excellent salesperson, but what he is selling is unrealistic and unobtainable.
But would you pay for Artificial Artificial Intelligence? For example, we in the US do a lot of bullshit for legal compliance without any real intent of solving the practical problem, just the legal one. Maybe deploying an artificial intelligence to satisfy the legal requirement without actually doing much to solve the practical problem is just what the Lawyer ordered! It is automated, demonstrable, private, safe, and doesn't go on vacation. Problem "solved"!
I am retired now, so I can joke about AI driven misogyny-aware shock collars, just as long as you young whooper-snappers keep working to deliver my dividend checks. Work harder!
I agree with you, but I think there will be a winter before there is a summer.
Certainly in the markets, there will be a AI crash after the AI boom. Not every good idea is a profitable one, and regardless of the quality of the tech, the companies will need to navigate the landscape of market reality where in some cases where there is money on the table to be captured by AI, and other areas where there just isn't. Time will sort it out.
I’m not so sure. The speed of information delivery sped up market agility as well along with scenario planning. I think the adoption curve will be smoother and winter won’t be that bad, unless it’s triggered by a major security incident and we step into some sort of Matrix/Terminator scenario
Yep, given the complete softballs most engineers write for QC, I am not surprised AI is viewed as a substitute.
exit the human - in execution and consideration of results.....
There are a lot of areas where it might do a reasonable job. As a D&D Dungeon Master it is simply brilliant, because you are basically asking it to bullshit about a fantasy realm. It draws pictures better than I do, can spin yarns in most any style and any dialect, and occasionally is quite funny.
Prompt> The party, chased by ghouls, is racing a cart through the forest and is forced to make a rapid choice between track leading to a bridge with a sign "Bridge Out!" and a tunnel which leads under the earth into the dark. If they go under the earth, a trap door will drop behind them and a large net will fall on the cart. Give me a humorous title for the section.
AI: Net Gains and Ghastly Losses
I was quite amused. I just didn't expect a sense of humor out of a pile of racist linear algebra. Starting to think the campaign should be a series of Rocky and Bullwinkle titled scenes.
Also, there is politics, investment prospectus and toilet scrubbing where bullshit is the order of the day. Some areas will be completely transformed, because we really just don't need or at least expect quality / truthiness.
Again as a librarian, your last sentence reminds me of the onset of widespread internet use in business workplaces early 2000s and the dismissal or undermining of professionals capable of discerning authoritative information from chaff. Lots of really really bad decisions resulted. IMHO led directly to the 2008-9 crash.
AI will get better. Trillions of dollars have already been spent on it. I don’t think that in a long run AI will be replacing junior engineers. It’s just junior engineers jobs are getting revamped now. But AI will entirely kill the middle level of engineering, those who are now comfortable in their careers and are 40-65 yo. IT Managers and IT Generalists are already struggling to find new jobs. Project management will be completely revamped soon, and old school PMs will also be out.
I think you are wrong. A lot of the money spent on AI is in the hyperscalar server datacenters needed to train and run the LLMs. They need the capacity because it literally takes a lot of compute to train these monsters that still hallucinate. And the researchers are discovering that just making the models larger does not improve their accuracy. I suggest you read Karen Hao's book - "Empire of AI" about OpenAI and all the harm their quest for AGI is causing worldwide. Ironically, the Chinese AI community may have got the tech right which resulted in smaller models which consume a lot less resources.
Remember these models basically get their information by scanning the Internet which as we know contains a lot of disinformation. Look at what happened with Musk's LLM which ended up spewing a lot hateful fascist nonsense and had to be shutdown. It apparently even called itself MechaHitler.
What many folks are starting the realize is these huge models still do not reason which is supposedly a characteristic of AGI. They simply regurgitate the information they scoop up in the training. The old IT saying of GIGO (Garbage In Garbage Out) still applies.
If we remove AI from the market we’re in a deep recession, it’s the only economic driver now.
I know that many LLMs are garbage and tons of money and energy are spent to improve them, but for example Google’s Gemini is a solid model, Chinese DeepSeek, French Mistral and etc. Grok is not great because they are doing a lot of stupid things trying to catch up with leaders.
I think OpenAI will end up like Netscape, they will be buried by competition.
Also, current LLM algorithms will improve to be more energy efficient. DeepSeek did just that.
And I think AGI might only be possible after the revolution of quantum computing, which will most likely start around 2030
I believe that the major impacts will be on the junior engineers. The middle level people used to be junior engineers and will revert to their old jobs (with a cut in pay). That is, at least, what happened as my old employer (Bellcore/Telcordia) died.
I was at the optometrist getting a refraction, and the doctor mentioned her disagreement with the idea that AI could do a quality refraction. I agreed -- aside from the back-and-forth discussion (whether one or two is better, and if I can see one again?), she discussed my day-to-day activities. She asked if I'm a reader, how often I drive, and what my hobbies are (I mentioned sewing, painting, and embroidering). She used that information to plan my refractions (I have progressive lenses) to suit me and me alone, and explained why. AI lacks the ability to deal with singularities and nuance.
In the medical field, AI is not looking to replace your doctor, but rather to make you doctor more efficient, more accurate, and more productive--not computer diagnosis, but computer AIDED diagnosis. And frankly it's desperately needed. We don't have enough medical professionals in the US, much less in rural, remote, and underserved areas.
And yes, AI can manage nuance.
The largest challenge in medical progress for AI is the lack of good data sets. Superficially, there are many, but once you scratch the surface... nada. None. It's just not there.
AI will get better. It’s getting better by leaps and bounds already. And billions are being spent on helping it get better.
Billions were spent on social media as well and it just got progressively worse.
This is because of the inherent contradiction: The realized version of social media was antisocial.
Depends on your definition of worse. It made revolution in media and communication, and made a lot of money to investors. We’re on social media platform now.
If anything social media wide-spread toxicity proves my point of a widespread AI adoption
Anybody here but me concerned about un regulated crypto bubble and it's overt use to fund terrorism and other crimes? That feels a lot more in my face and immediate in the grand scheme of things.
Oh that train has passed the point of concern. I think of crypto as a new sort of religion. You could laugh at Christians all you wanted when they were a small ostracized group, but you can’t laugh at Catholics or Mormons, they will bury you. And they will keep nurturing their faith.
Crypto is already owned by about $60M Americans. Many of them voted for Trump to keep their crypto assets, cause they put real cash in it.
As a research librarian, AI's ability to demagogue & misinform frightens me as much as the Trump Republicans & those behind them. The thought of a combination of both, and cryptocurrencies layered on top, has me in a state of psychic panic.
It still amazes me Trump was able to politically bounce back from the capital insurrection. It was his Munich putsch.
He can keep doing what he's doing because he is not prosecuted.
Hope y'all are ready for the republican Depression 2.0. Will make the 1930s look like a picnic.
I've been reading the NYT articles on Trump's erratic tariff threats and there still seems to be a determination to sanewash him. Somehow the absurd letters he was randomly posting on social media are all part of some unorthodox negotiating strategy which may or may not yield results. The emperor has no clothes, but they don't want to admit it.
They don't want to get sued and they don't want to get shut down.
The Fed chair is but one vote of the Board, so maybe we're okay for a while.
I think this is an underappreciated point. The rest of the board doesnt automatically fall in line behind a puppet chair
but how immune are the rest of the Board members from presidential appointment and control?
The seven members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. A full term is fourteen years. One term begins every two years. So in theory Trump cant pack the board with puppets in this term. Hans makes my point more eloquently below
Russell Vought has no credentials other than as a hired Heritage Foundation hitman. Trump wants Powell out because he won't bend the knee, just like he wanted Comey out for the same reason. Inflation will go up, the economy will go down, chaos with stagflation is not a good place to be. But that's all that Trump can deliver. Americans have to find out for themselves that electing a lunatic and criminal as president was not a good idea.
Political theorists like Schumpeter, Mosca, and Michels would not have been a bit surprised by Trump’s reign of terror. They predicted that democracies would always fail, that in a democracy, the state would inevitably be captured by a cynical cabal of organized elites. The disorganized, marginally engaged and informed masses are simply no match for a determined pirate ship of ruthless, well-funded elites.
Answering these critics of democracy is no easy task, particularly now that the world’s oldest democracy is sinking fast. But we can answer them if we remember that government actually does something, that we actually need government. The key is the idea of legitimacy. Government, except in its most extreme police state form, requires legitimacy. And this legitimacy derives from its performing basic functions.
When the state is captured by a cabal of parasitical but organized and well-funded elites, it no longer performs the basic functions of a government. It is like a cell invade by a virus whose basic functions are subverted to serve the interests of the parasitical virus and not the body.
This inevitable failure to perform basic functions in favor of serving the interests of the cabal regime comes at the cost of legitimacy. The state loses legitimacy and becomes more and more unstable until eventually the body politic throws out the parasitical cabal and reconstitutes a functional democratic government that actually does the things we need a government to do.
So when we read with fresh horror each new day’s outrages, we at least can also see the seeds of MAGA’s eventual expulsion being planted. But even knowing that they are destroying themselves as they destroy the country does little to mitigate the agony of being forced to watch it happen…
Read any Marx & Engels lately? Or that former Greek finance minister ('Yxxx"-something - name escapes me for the moment). Problem is not democracy, but capitalism. Experiments in economic democracy failed so far, but let's devote ourselves to figuring it out for the future. Nica & Cuba appear to be trying, but falling unevenly short on the democracy side, primarily due to external econ, political, propaganda & military pressures.