Selling off the national lands is a one-way, dead-end street. But what the hell, anything for a buck. www.hatchmag.com/articles/tru...

human beings expect the world….to be set ablaze by a universal power which they themselves are and over which they are powerless.” — Dialectic of Enlightenment

Reasons to be alarmed #162. You may recall that in DR STRANGELOVE a crazed US general launched WW3. Well now we have religious nutcases in the US military who want to induce the Rapture / Second Coming. We also increasingly have AI control of weapons, and AI will believe whatever you tell it…

Enshitification (Cory Doctorow) is just a specific example of sabotage (Veblen). The best and most competitive American companies do everything they can to sabotage markets and collect rents. This is the foundation of the America way of life.

liberals don't want 💀FASCISM💀 liberals want 🌈fascism🌈

The reason the Democratic Party is incapable of fighting fascism is that fascism is itself a way to resolve tensions between capital and labor. Republicans have found their path to resolution (fascism), Democrats still don’t know what the question is.

If the stock market keeps going up, Trump is free to do anything he wants. Lots of folks are angry, but how many are selling US equities? Those precious "portfolios" are pulling the kids into a fascist abyss.

America can build more housing, but the existing financial system will keep prices out of reach. The financialization of assets moves faster than construction. www.brookings.edu/articles/qua...

Skyrocketing inequality created the material foundation for mass disillusionment with the American system. Assets get bailed out (market go up), and most people get left behind. Mainstream Democrats still have no theory/critique of that political economy.

lithub.com/maybe-dont-t...

If lumpen proletariat is understood as a social location of resentment, then Trump is clearly in the mold of Napoleon III. He has assembled the same cross-class, grab-bag collection of disaffected lumpen that kept Napoleon III in power for decades.

Probably a good time to be reminded that Disney has been a hell-hole for a long time now. thebaffler.com/salvos/the-m...

"A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud." ~ George Orwell

"The concrete wealth of America is vanishing into a black hole of pure financial destruction. Nothing is created from this destruction, while the financial class is expropriating the outcome of the general labor force and the general intellect." Berardi, Uprising

The American idea of a perfectly free market is a practical and theoretical lie. Working Americans got carved up by rent-seeking financial professionals — who know better.

Nothing says "Chicago School of Economics" better than losing all your real hard money investing in fake soft money.

The bottom 50% of wage earners in the US have an average savings of $4805, in China it’s $9760. So, 50% of Americans have nothing at all. These folks need radical change and fast. I don’t think corporate Dems grasp the urgency of this level of inequality — it destroys democracies.

“We are promoting catastrophic policies, for only catastrophe — that is, the collapse of the liberal system — will clear the way for the new order…. Every weakening of the system is good, very good for us.” Gregor Strasser (1929)

Is it a party of labor or capital? Republicans papered over their labor-capital divide with ethno-fascism — and that works pretty well for them. Until the Democratic Party resolves its labor/capital divide — or finds a gimmick to paper that over — it will continue to decline.

Democracy in America began to make its exit when the USA abandoned its industrial middle class and let entire cities collapse. A decades-long bipartisan consensus made this disaster. This moment is simply the end of a story we told ourselves about capital and labor.

America shifted to privately-owned retirement accounts in the 1980s. Educated professionals were best positioned to take advantage of that and many have huge stock market gains. Thus, they are structurally more aligned with capital than labor. This is why the Democratic Party never does anything.

In language, AI occupies the position of the pervert — it identities completely with the user’s enjoyment. So, it’s a bootlicker by design. And the most extreme bootlickers are….fascists.

The real villain here is the professional managerial class. These folks are well-educated and diversely invested in a portfolio of stocks devoted to destroying the earth — and they despise labor.

There is no successful politics without enjoyment. Republicans are having FUN. Yes, it's revenge porn craziness -- but it's FUN. Democrats are blandly campaigning to "save the system" -- but this (crisis capitalism) IS the system.

Race is, among other things, a capitalist strategy for pricing and devaluing labor. America is stuck in this colonial doom cycle until it breaks (or is broken by) the capitalist/military devaluation of life.

I know Trump stands for right-wing enjoyment — lurid revenge fantasies and the like — and he delivers a lot of that. Do Democrats have any left-wing enjoyment — or is it all just facts and programs? What thrills are on offer?

Are Democrats ever going to decide between low-wage globalism (good for stock/401ks) and American labor? The party is drowning in this unresolved contradiction.

DOGE is Pizzagate at scale.

Trump is acting out the collective rage that millions of Americans feel against the professional managerial class (professors, lawyers, doctors). The PMC was once aligned with labor but abandoned them during globalization/offshoring. This is the payback — rage and destruction.

sometimes i still think about how we were willing to settle for bernie sanders and rather than accept that coalition and the landslide victory that would have resulted, liberals decided to violently shit their pants for 10 years instead

This seems like a good time for Democrats to decide whether they are a party of labor or capital.

The Corporate Coup in Global Context Join @naomiaklein.bsky.social, @chenjerai.bsky.social, @astra.bsky.social, & @keeanga.bsky.social for an emergency town hall Monday, February 17th at 5:00 pm ET RSVP to attend: www.tickettailor.com/events/hayma...

America has been hollowed out by unregulated capital. Authoritarians say all this misery has been caused by “the other.” They did it. So, off we go, on this completely pointless and self-destructive search for our lost capitalist enjoyment.

If borrowed money pulls forward future demand, what happens when the rest of the future arrives?

All of my well-educated friends are worried about climate, but not one has reduced air travel. They just can’t stop “seeing world.” This is not hypocrisy. Burning oil is intimate to their sense of self as "citizens of the world." Is it possible to kick this high without feeling diminished?

Oil-amplified Cartesian subjects trying to navigate climate change with capitalist money.

“If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?” — Will Rogers