In the last three months, tech giants have censored political speech and journalism to manipulate U.S. politics, while liberals, with virtual unanimity, have cheered.
The zeal with which my Ivy League educated friends are endorsing this move against Parler and/or calling for the outright persecution of anyone who was legally at a political rally in DC or even just voted for Trump is frightening. They seem incapable of realizing that this power will be turned around on them and are treating it as a zero sum game where they will emerge victorious over the forces of evil. Those that disagree with them, even if it's simply over their means, are racists, troglodytes, or worse. The lessons of 2001 and unchecked power in the name of security are lost on them.
I fear we're headed for even darker times as these totalitarian measures will certainly inspire a reactionary wave that will then be used as justification to crack down even harder. It is an eminently foreseeable consequence, and therefore must be intended. Stay well everyone and stay safe, it's going to be a bumpy ride.
Lee, I'm having the same experience. Virtually without exception, all my Ivy League pals are fully on-board with Democratic Authoritarianism. These are primarily high-achieving professionals who have sailed through 20-40 years of career success and personal financial expansion. They have solid family legacies in the form of trust funds and inheritances. A Marxist would call them "bourgeois." In spite of all their education and intellectualism, they're unable to recall that the "bourgeois" are always the first to go under totalitarian regimes as their critical thinking abilities and inside information (as direct servants to the elite) represent a serious threat to tyrants.
The psychology is complex and I'm trying to analyze it. These people have always studied hard and received Straight A's -- a reward for their ideology as much as intellectual effort. They don't understand failure; I recall that at Harvard Business School there was in fact a course in how to handle failures and mistakes. They have a deep investment in The System and have been handsomely rewarded by it. Tunnel-visioned, they have completely disregarded numerous recent "signal moments" like 9/11 and willingly parrot whatever the NY Times has to say.
Externally they celebrate success and achievement by posting happy family pics of expensive summer homes and exotic vacations. Internally things seem to be more complicated as they openly support "leftist" policies and positions that oppose their own class and the "dominance" of their ethnic group (almost invariably White), including gangs and groups that have publicly-avowed Marxist leaders. These achievers constantly shout against racism but live in a world entirely populated by people like themselves and would vehemently fight to keep a housing project or homeless shelter out of their own neighborhoods. They publicly sign on with the fantasy of "economic fairness" but pay high fees to accountants to shelter their incomes from taxes.
Is it guilt? I don't think so. I think it all stems from a complicated mix of enormous self-regard, entitlement (usually from birth), sense of moral authority, "head-in-the-sand" levels of naivete, a generally sincere wish to be "good," and deeply buried anxiety. The anxiety is rooted in the day-to-day moral compromises, big and small, that are almost impossible to avoid in banking, law, medical, journalism, and tech exec professions. It's also rooted in their inability to protect themselves at the most basic levels: personal body integrity, food production, wilderness hunting, fishing, etc. Even if they have a country house, they are truly "all in" when it comes to the dependencies of suburban life.
Also, for these people, *how they are perceived* is everything. They want you to think that they are Thinking Correctly and they signal virtue at every opportunity.
Basically they are all a lost cause and I've stopped talking to them on any meaningful level.
Lee and Urban, you are both on point and I just want to add detail that I think is useful for understanding.
1) The impact of social media is huge in this - in the creation of the bubble these people are in. Watch "Social Dilemma" and realize that the movement leftward of the Dem party starting around 2010 was social-media driven. The fact that the media was affected first draws even people who aren't on social media in, because the social media bubble first took over all of those producing content for the MSM.
2) This is an oligarchic elite being created, which will not end in authoritarian monarchy but rather in oligarchy looking more and more like China. These people have no fear and are eager to head that way because they are "in". The people who should worry about the repercussions are the working class and poor minority voters who support them, they are the ones who will be abandoned when push comes to shove. In fact, they effectively already are abandoned as their votes are sought through continued grievance, rather than solving their problems to create their happiness and contentment in life.
Succinct and accurate. The tribes that matter aren't L/R or R/D. They're authoritarian and libertarian. That's the battle, and the authoritarians are winning.
I disagree with the last part. In the early 90s, you had "free speech" enough to run your jaw at the bar or the thanksgiving table. If you wanted to go further and speak to the masses, you'd have to persuade ABC to give you a half hour slot, which they wouldn't do unless you promised to keep it politically insipid AND no cuss words AND no blasphemy AND no titties AND nothing gay. Joe Biden wanted to make raves as verboten as marijuana, and the ideas you read were limited to what was on sale at the local book store or library.
In 2020 ordinary people can broadcast their voice to the whole world while smoking weed and swearing like a trooper. You can download more or less anything from the history of subversive books, and probably find it for free even if Amazon won't sell you a copy. If your editor won't publish your articles you can set up for yourself on substack. And at the end of a hard day, free porn is streamed into the home like tap water.
I can't square this with the idea that the authoritarians and moral ninnies are winning. They have been routed, no?
Didn't Lennon write something about buying the peasants off with sex and tv?
They used to let the eunuchs wander anywhere in the castle, knowing they were harmless. Don't be fooled. They could give a rip if you marinate in dope, porn, blasphemy, subversive books and naughty words as long as you're harmless. In fact they may prefer that you're marinated as to better operate.
Authoritarians will move to end currency as quickly as they are moving to into censorship. Then they will monetize everything and privacy (read freedom) will no longer exist.
Not yet. They are winning the battle, not the war. On August 9, 1974, the Republican Party's funeral took place. Six years later Reagan won in a landslide. In 2020 ordinary people still had internet access that hadn't been terminated yet for dissidence. Their dissidence wasn't subject to reporting by their kids. There was no mandatory national registration and monitoring. We have more authoritarian advances yet to endure before routing can begin.
I don't believe you can blame social media for PMC love of status quo. I listened to a great rant by populism explainer-extraordinaire and Listen Liberal, The People, No author Thomas Frank on the Bad Faith podcast this week. He summarized all I know about elites going back to the 80s, when I met them in sororities, fraternities. Conformists to a tee, ready to look the other way if any of their tribe breaks the rules, always willing to throw lower classes under the bus, and that goes for Dems and Reps alike. Populism, working class consciousness, is our only hope.
I did watch "Social Dilemma" but found all the millennial smugness so irritating that I couldn't take the geeks seriously. I still find it hard to believe that "social media" has shaped Generation X to this degree.
In the oligarchic context you propose, the Ivy Leaguers' "virtue" is the skin that covers the skull -- they are unable to empathize, morally compromised, and operating at an instinctive animal level. Also some of them have real *hatred* for Trump and supporters, another sign of moral fissure. The American Political Class is therefore divided from its own humanity and universal truth.
At least wealthy Trumpers don't make claims about virtue. They're just fine with enriching themselves on the backs of others without empathy nor concern. This is also a sad condition but at least it's refreshingly direct.
I used to share a house with a starting football player for the NY Giants. He was a smart Midwest guy with an analytical mind. Everyone in the world was enamored with Lawrence Taylor at the time, but to me he was a beast who had one job in life....get the QB. There was no reason to aspire to be him, be like him, or even like him. When he put the uniform on, he was a one man wrecking crew. He won..we won...everyone won...until he crashed and burned by his own excesses.
I didn’t lose any sleep over his decline because I knew that he was a tool to be used by the Giants and by the state of New Jersey to excite and delight the masses. That’s Donald J Trump.
Am I ashamed I’ve used him the last 4 years to get done what needed to get done?
Am I shocked he broken some furniture and china in the West Wing?
Am I mature enough to understand that he puts his pants on one leg at a time just like Lawrence Taylor used to?
Don’t fall in love with the man or the woman promising you X, Y or Z...no matter how good they are at a particular task.
Always...Always...Always..... Think for yourself and own your own agency.
It’s the only think that separates us from 1984 and The Brave New World.
The hate comes from social media and media. Same as Fox News making people hate the Clintons in the 90s. It becomes lizard brain, and the bubbles literally include separate sets of facts. Lesley Stahl asks Trump questions based on things that your Ivy Gen X folks believe to be true but just ain't. But the whole bubble believes them to be true (e.g. Hunter Biden laptop = Russian disinfo).
The forces at work here are the same. Many on the left, both these Ivy leaguers as well as antifa, get indoctrinated and brainwashed on one set of falsehoods. Many on the right, including the Capitol rioters, get indoctrinated on another. Antifa and the Capitol rioters have fewer jobs and less happiness in the middle of the pandemic and their hate moves them to violence. The Ivy Leaguers are moved to hate but not violence. But it's the same phenomenon, driven largely by social media and the media forces laid out in Taibbi's "Hate, Inc".
Thank you, I'm well aware of this. I'm Gen X and this is the group I was referring to in my original post about Ivy Leaguers at the top of the thread.
The Millennials are the public face of Social Media and these are the self-congratulatory types featured in Social Dilemma, grandiosely assigning themselves the awesome blame for "Destroying the World." I disagree with this perspective. IMO Social Media is a symptom, not a cause.
When Ned Lamont defeated Joe Liebermann in the Democratic Senate Primary in 2006, the strong leftward movement was already well underway. The internet (if not social media) played a large part in that movement.
Here's a fascinating take: woke ideas can be understood as a type of Veblen good. If I'm a straight white male, embracing woke principles *should* be against my selfish interest. Therefore embracing these principles is a demonstration not just of how good and moral I am, but also how *strong* I am.
This was a fascinating and insightful article. The thing I see missing among these Luxury Leisure Class types is “character”. The kind of character one learns while digging ditches or bailing hay. Perhaps the only thing that will save us is mandatory military service. At a minimum it would teach discipline and character by, at least for a time, putting everyone at the same level of worthlessness(in the eyes of a Gunnery Sargent).
Commentor, dodging military service is one of the perks of being in the 1%. We haven't had a President with any military experience since Bush Sr. circa 1990 -- since the Pentagon is running that show there is no need from their point of view, but it would be better for the American People if this were a requirement for the Presidency.
I did sign up for Selective Service when I turned 18 and I'd do it again.
I think in terms of activism itself it must be said that you also need to be in luxury to devote the time to social criticism instead of assuring your own economic well being. You can be Laurie David or you can be an antifa chud living off a rich parent, but you can't spend time on woke activism unless you have the luxury of time.
ON the flip side, racism correlates indirectly with economic status - less educated people hate the "other" not only due to ignorance but because of the direct loss of economic opportunity as equality improves.
Whereas you are saying Richie Rich is so next level untouchable that he shows he is all for the elevation of the other, who will remain several stations below him.
Classically you describe it wellbut I don;t thinmk they are in any danger in this version.
This is a uniquely American fascism, it is an Oligarchic fascism without a visible Dear Leader hidden by a Potemkin democracy that shepherds voters to chose one or the other of the allowed candidates at the national level.
As for legitimacy, yeah, well, people get deplatformed for pointing at the studies of how quickly these voting machines can be owned onsite which then leads to the unanswered question of their system security knowledge on the actual tally servers.
Yeah, I don't question it, I just point at it so I don't get banned for pointing at the easily verifiable already highly public info.
In any case your friends, they should be just fine if they get on board with the sharks down at the country club.
Country club membership is no guarantee. In the most extreme example, check the bond traders etc. that didn't make it out of the WTC. Some were lucky, others were protected...and a few others were neither.
I agree with Wally below. Many of these people are stressed around the clock and only as useful as their masters find them on any given day. You'd think they'd realize this and jump the track, but if SubStack Commentator 34 is correct, then they are up late at night praying to continue Insider status.
Early in Stalin's reign, he had a lieutenant that was very loyal. So loyal that he informed Stalin about a plot to kill Stalin and install him as the leader. What did Stalin do? Killed his perceived competitor. Loyal or not, he was a threat. Same thing will happen here.
They think they'll be able to charm the socks for the dictators. It won't work; it never works. And as you said, they will be the first people led to the gallows.
As a sad parallel to this: I worked with Newsom's team early in the pandemic on potential paths and responses. It became perfectly clear very early on that lots and lots of Latinos were going to die, and the reason wasn't only worse health and access to healthcare. Newsom's "diversity" on his staff consists of Latinx folks who went to Berkeley and UCLA and have very little to no understanding of what the life of a Latino in multigenerational living space in LA is like. They had no idea how to communicate to them, no idea how to help them, and no clue why they weren't simply magically doing the things all of their buddies from college would rationally do in response to the pandemic. 80% of the deaths in LA County are Latino, versus 48% of the population.
I live in a semi rural area in San Diego county, and can attest to the truth of what you describe. Folks need to understand that California has the highest poverty rate in the US, while also having among the highest cost of living. Poor people in CA have no choice but to live 3 and 4 generations together
It does, but it's more than this. California is a very business unfriendly. The state income tax is, I believe, the highest in the US (if not, it's no. 2 or 3). The middle class grows smaller as middle income earners move out of state to places like Texas with better job prospects and cost of living, as do many retirees looking for lower cost of living. The poor stay either because of family or because they can't afford to move. It's also interesting that we are starting to the some large silicon valley business moving or expanding out of state, such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise an Tesla. I've lived here my whole life, and will be moving when I retire. The direction of California is toward two classes - the very rich and the poor. It causes me pain to see what my beautiful state has become.
The big secret that no one is saying: HP, Tesla, etc are moving under cover of general issues with California, but the specific issue is Board diversity. CA already started requiring one woman on Boards, but starting end of 2021 it's a higher number of women and also need specific POC or LGBTQ. The people moving just don't want to change their boards just yet. Usually a CEO has been put in place by the board and Board changes put their job at risk. Board members obviously like their slots and don't want to lose them.
I'm not sure that's much of an issue with the silicon valley companies,. The issue I recall as mentioned by most of these companies is cost of llivifor thei g
Their diet plays a huge role. I lived directly next to a housing project for eight years (until quite recently) and saw first-hand how food stamps are spent. It should be illegal to use your food stamp allocation to buy more than 15% of sugar and trash foods, but it isn't. Therefore "food stamps" represent a transfer payment to Coca Cola Inc.
I live in the Southwest and lived in SoCal. Latinos and Hispanics aren't living in housing projects in CA. They're living crowded into apartments and single family houses as rent is exorbitant. And many, esp elder, eat traditional staples. They are dying at higher rates all over the US, as are Native Americans and blacks.
I would start by blaming the agribusiness and city planning for that. How do you expect poor people to be able to eat well without a decently priced farmer's market within biking distance ?
Urban grocery stores have decent food, including some organic options, and it is possible to obtain a solid diet.
Farmer's markets don't take food stamps but there is a an urban farmer's market a 15-minute walk from the housing projects described above.
The problem is not access, it is policy. All these "progressive" mayors and governors really show their true stripes on this one. They don't care what poor people eat. If they did, they'd do something about it.
Meanwhile Coke and Monsanto keep raking it in on our tax dime.
Hmm, I thought that you were talking about one of those "food deserts". Are they actually just not that common in the USA, or were your neighbors just lucky ?
Thanks - and a question. Shouldn't we learn from China how to do fast mass Covid-19 (the "Trump" virus) vaccination? We are extremely slow -- it will take by new reports about 14 weeks to vaccinate priority groups. How possibly we can be so slow and disorganized. China vaccinates million plus people essentially overnight. Is anybody studying this -- how they can do it? Many thanks
Great question. US and China use different practices. Step one in the US is for a private company to spend more than $2B over twelve years before the first clinical dose can be taken. That's a result of ever-increasing demands from the FDA, that Trump spent four years fighting to get only a lowering of cost and shortage of length of time to bring new generics to market. Step one in China is that a government lab develops a medication and the government orders is manufactured and used.
China's vaccine is carried on an adenovirus so that it can infiltrate cells to prompt making antibodies. Adenoviruses are common cold viruses just like COVID19, they are just less contagious but create complications regardless of age. China tweaked a biowarfare weapon, an adenovirus carrying deadly infections, to carry bits of COVID19. If the patient has adenovirus antibodies from a prior cold, they will kill the vaccine. If the vaccine works, the first sign is usually symptoms that look exactly like COVID19.
US vaccines rely on messengerRNA, having no viruses at all. Much more expensive than China's vaccine to develop and manufacture, but far safer. Project Warp Speed was the first time in history that the FDA was part of the solution instead of part of the problem.
Logistics of mRNA vaccines are the hardest part. The science is relatively simple, every scientist to whom I've spoken concurs that the logistics are the hardest part. Our Federal form of government lets the central government manage delivery to the states to centers identified by the states. The planning was intense, very difficult, and pulled off well until states took possession. No US President has the authority to order state health departments what to do with the vaccines, and some states - noticeably California and NY, fucked it up. The Coronavirus Task Force and the CDC issued guidance, not orders, to the states. No change of name on the Oval Office will make this any different. My state, Tennessee, is vaccinating quickly without any wasted doses; NY had to destroy nearly half its vaccines.
I'm not a Trump supporter, I am a now-retired physician, guided by evidence. The COVID19 response by Trump was better than I could have hoped for. I don't like the guy, never voted for him, but this was a real success. Too bad you'll never read about it on Facespace or Whastwitinstagoogletube.
Thank you very very much. All in all -- US acted as a failed state. China has total of less than 5K dead -- we are now approaching that number daily.
After nine months we are still unprepared for mass vaccination. Moreover, we still don't information -- daily, weekly - by city, county -- how many people were vaccinated, percentage of total -- basic information. This is horrible incompetency for a country that wants to be "a shining example" and organizes coup after coup - to bring "democracy and freedom" (except in Saudi Arabia).
I never supported insane clown Trump but -- the rot appears to be MUCH deeper, starting with health for profit instead universal health care.
Once again, many thanks for your kind response. Stay well and my best regards, Boris
Boris, the nature of a federation is not well understood even among most US citizens. In 1776 thirteen sovereign nations surrendered a small part of their sovereignty to a central government, and wrote a constitution to keep power at the state level, closer to the people. The constitution was never written for efficiency, it was written for individual liberty. It contained many compromises, including two chambers of congress and the electoral college, to prevent the tyranny of either the majority or the federal government.
My friends in Europe and Asia point to how compliant their citizens are with government orders, never recalling that the U.S. was settled by people fleeing over-reaching governments. We don't have the submission gene built-in; we do have the freedom-to-dissent gene.
Compare annual deaths COVID19 to annual deaths from medical errors. Then recognize that a diagnosis of COVID19 and a cause of death of COVID19 are both rewarded financially, and you begin to squint. The cost of China's achieved efficiency was as many as 150M dead at the hands of authoritarian government during the 20th century. We can have another 149M plus die before paying the same cost.
Centralized control (like China) gets the details right and the big picture wrong. Democratic republics do the opposite. We have the big picture right but and drive the details off of profit motives or incompetent civil servants. Democracy needs to improve its candidate selection processes - right now it's resting on its laurels because it's good at its key innovation - ousting bad performers fairly quickly without blood, but it still hasn't learned how to pick good performers.
How China organize and do almost overnight vaccination of more than a million people in one city? They must have tens of thousands teams and superb organization to be able to do that. I thought that you perhaps know details...
Occam's razor should make it obvious that the Chicoms didn’t vaccinate a million people in one city overnight and that they are simply lying about it. How would anyone know?
It helped that the virology institute in Wuhan was the center for Chinese biowarfare at least until a decade ago when I stopped following it. A couple tweaks to an existing bioweapon and presto, you've got a COVID vaccine. Tell the population when to be where to get the vaccine, and there's 100% compliance. Efficiency is one measurement and it considers only elapsed time and resources consumed. The end result and the means to get there are irrelevant, which is why professionals measure more than one aspect of a program.
US vaccinated almost 2 million with Salk's free polio jab and placebo, many of them kids, in one month in 1956. I think Americans under 40 have only seen our privatized, neolib systems. They cannot even envision a country with competent public logistics and citizen cooperation.
Lee, I surmise this crack down is timed so to create a backlash. Then Kamala, the corrupt DA[Jow is gone soon] can crack down. The problem is the people who are victims of the crack down are well armed and will not go quietly into the night. The left has restarted fighting the Civil War recently. Hardly a coincidence.
Emergency!! Call the Southern Poverty Law Center with their $471 Million endowment! Since there's no Poverty in the South that needs their attention, they can use it to round up active Neo-Nazis!!
LOL! Born and bred Connecticut Yankee. Oh..and the Klan "don't cotton fucking Eyetalians!" Your unbridled anger is something you should deal with soon. I'm a longtime fan of Greenwald. I'm a true libertarian, you are a knee jerk liberal. Glenn is intellectually honest. You are neither.
Maybe this power will be turned around on them, or maybe they can use this power to permanently entrench their own power. It's a high stakes game of poker, playing with freedom chips, and the eventual winner takes all.
The true believers always end up on the receiving end with those they burnt down the forest of laws to get at, while the cynical opportunists end up in charge.
Funny, those Ivy League schools were thrilled to be endowed by the slave shipping fortunes of the 17th and 18th centuries. No reparations, no "sorry", nothing.
Scared is an understatement. Especially for liberals disenfranchised by their own party who voted for Trump. The only strategy is a bunker mentallity one. Stay low and incognito for the next four years or longer.
What we have is fascism and the melding of corporations and government is the very defining characteristic of fascism. Read Mussolini's chief theoretician's (Alfredo Rocco) works if you need more convincing. Great work again Glenn, and we civil libertarians are in deep trouble as I see it. They are going to make us pay and pay dearly.
Seems like there are at least two kinds of libertarians - those who want liberty for people and those who want liberty for corporations, and you can't have both. If one argues for corporate freedom then one argues for the removal of personal liberty. No rules at all amounts to corporate tyranny.
The deplatforming of Parler, mass calls to excommunicate those who basically supported a political opponent while being cheered by neoliberal zealots backed by an opportunistic corrupt class is the latest manifestation of the establishment authoritarians intent on burning dissent at the stake in the guise of protecting “Democracy. It’s the kind of thing that happened during the Spanish Inquisition where a corrupt Catholic Church backed by moneyed classes defined what were allowable views or not with dire penalties for those who blasphemed. (Today that could mean not just being robbed of the ability to speak freely on social media, but loss of livelihood, ability to shop, bank, travel...and even subject to violence.)
What the US Empire in the throes of its latest orgy of hysteria against its never ending enemies - now fully turned inwards, in a blowback of historic proportions - may be missing is the reaction this is having in the rest of the World where US Big Tech is already viewed with deep suspicion due to their monopoly on data and information. What is especially disquieting is the knowledge that the CIA/NSA have their hooks in these companies which operate under US laws and jurisdictions and increasingly not even that. Amazon brazenly broke its contract with Parler without even a chance of a stay order. Lawyers even quit representing Parler with erstwhile civil libertarians like ACLU - which had once defended the rights of actual Nazis to march as part of their First Amendment Rights - joining in on the feeding frenzy. Even a serial killer has right of representation but ironically a serial killer will have a better chance of justice in the US than having a view that the 2020 election was unfair (which incidentally was the exact same thing Dems yammered on to cheers for 4 years with Clinton repeatedly calling Trump “illegitimate” and the 2016 election “stolen”.
If a sitting POTUS and tens of millions of his followers could be hounded in the US by tech monopolies and corporations clearly allied with a party that has gained power, ignoring US laws and precedent, what protection is there for other countries where US laws don’t even nominally apply?
Countries such as China and Russia have actively started building out their own verticals - hardware, networks, domain nodes, data centers, operating systems, social media applications - that don’t rely on the latest whims and politics of an Empire in the midst of a civil war between Establishment and anti-Establishment ideologies. Turkey is already accelerating its move away from WhatsApp into a home grown app. There are active calls in India - with its giant population and ubiquitous use of digital services even among the poor - which is almost entirely reliant on US technology, that these latest shenanigans in the US - against around half its *own* people - are the wake up call for digital independence. (This is akin to the increasing call for independence from the dollar by various countries - including China, Russia, India which are parts of RIC, SCO, BRICS organizations - since basically the dollar under the Obama and accelerated during the Trump admin has become a tool of raw US power to dictate who sovereign nations may trade with and who not.)
The left does have much in common with institutional religion these days — questioning dogma not allowed, excommunication and shunning for heretics, collusion with the governmental powers that be to eliminate dissenting views, etc. Ironically the ostensibly rationalist left are basically the new religious right — self-important moral busybodies who think it is their job to tell everyone else how they should think, feel and act.
Absolutely. What’s amazing and disheartening at the same time is that many of my peers, many PhDs in hard sciences where questioning established theories in rational ways is not only tolerated but encouraged, and who are wary of religious dogma - generally a hallmark of the right, have become brainwashed into not only not applying the same dispassionate rigor to the obviously messianic and hypocritical stances of the neoliberal authoritarians, but immediately shrieking “blasphemer” to anyone who points out the clearly self-serving contradictions in the pronouncements of this era’s High Priests of Moral Order.
Your comment doesn't make me think "other countries have wised up and are avoiding working with US Tech giants, and the US needs to constrain them, too". Your comment makes me think "other countries are taking control of the technology infrastructure using centralized control from authoritarian governments, in the United States the same thing is happening but under the control of an oligarchic technopolitical elite."
I am suggesting that assaults on neutrality (further commercial power grabs) are the logical progression of the events discussed here. I'm also suggesting that the most likely motivation for your reply is that you are an unhappy troll.
No, the most likely motivation for my reply is usage that strongly indicates the user didn't know what they were saying.
Few people in the USA actually know what the expression means.
"Net neutrality" is the principal that participants of a network need to treat all data traveling on the network identically, without regard to who it's from, who it's to, or what the content is.
That's fairly accurate. "Net neutrality" means that a private corporation can spend its money building infrastructure that then becomes de facto public property. The $20T plus cost of building the internet was paid for by private, not government, money. Now that others have spent their money, government feels entitled to lay claim to controlling it. It's the effective reverse of Obama's "You didn't build that."
Unfortunately, it isn't completely clear how this should be addressed. If ABC Corporation builds out a wired and wireless network for its use at a cost of $300B, why does it have to make the network equally available to its competitors? On the other hand, should ABC Corporation end up owning much of the nation's internet infrastructure, should it be allowed to deny use to others, or charge others different prices for the same services?
Reality is that, as almost always occurs, private money has built something and now government wants to appropriate it for its own use. Government can never be sufficiently nimble to do what private industry does, but it can always be sufficiently authoritarian to seize what it wants.
If access to food and healthcare are basic rights, isn't access to information a basic right as well? When philosophy hits reality, things rarely go well. I'm honestly not smart enough to know what to do here. I am smart enough to know that perhaps, as with roadways, the information superhighway must be made equally available to everyone, but not everyone is entitled to a Rolls Royce to drive on it.
That's profoundly ignorant about computer networking - and wrong.
Anyone can build out their own network and keep it for their own use or rent it out as they may see fit, charge whatever they want, change packet rates however they want - pay per performance, give priority to some users and not others, etc. Knock your lights out.
What you can't do is provide for the actual flow of the actual internet to go through and have those special treatment rules apply on the same network links; that's the price you pay for having it be a part of the actual internet. Any given network link can be private or on the public internet, but not both at the same time, and that's the issue.
If you want special treatment, fine, do it, not any problem at all, and you can connect in to the actual internet at multiple points if you want - not a problem at all. Each link can be one, public, the other, private, just not do both at the same time.
So your complaints are simply false and are based on a failed understanding of what the internet actually is and what you can and cannot do with it or other "private" networks. ... It's a lot like air travel; you can either own or rent a private jet to take you from New York to Los Angeles, or you can go with a "common carrier" like United Airlines, and there are advantages to either, but it's up to you to choose.
Yeah, with organizations responsible for such critical Internet and Web infrastructure as top-level domains being based in the USA, there are risks to neutrality (see what almost happened with .org). IMHO these kind of institutions should be on their own or "UN" soil (like embassies), and be located somewhere more neutral, like Geneva, Switzerland (for instance).
If Parler restarts on its own infrastructure, we still may see people go after them by preventing the backbone from pointing to them. That would be a calamity.
The strange thing, to me, of Glenn’s post is that AWS absolutely does not have a monopoly here. Sure, they only gave them a couple days to move their site to another service. But move it, they can. Of course, Parler then proved how poorly they were handling the privacy of their users, and how poorly the entire site was developed.
Those are not back up services. Those are other services that run things like “log in authentication” and “notifications.” They are complementary services, and again, there are plenty of alternatives.
You seem to be implying that somehow it’s Parler’s fault that they couldn’t move their code and get them up and running in 48 hrs because of “poor code”. (It’s akin to blaming a woman for getting molested because she was wearing a short skirt).
It’s not easy to move a whole infrastructure, storage, servers, two-factor-authentication service providers etc in the best of times eg to create a fully functional hot back-up disaster recovery setup requires months though with providers like AWS, a lot of it is turnkey - which is why they are so popular.
Incidentally Gab had the same issue years ago when they were nearly erased. They apparently learnt from that and built a more robust big-tech proof infrastructure. Though as per latest rumor they may also be under threat of getting their domain name deregistered with ICANN in which case you’d have to find them via direct IP.
There were times when real estate agents would not sell homes to black people in white neighborhoods because they would bring down prices. After all the black people could go elsewhere. It was simply “good business”.
Thankfully society realized that this “good business” was discriminatory and laws were passed against such activities.
We’ll await the lawsuit Parler has launched vs Amazon for breaching their 30 day rule (let alone any monopolistic collusion)
AWS is not a monopoly, but they clearly exerted monopolistic power in conjunction with Apple and Google. Once the tech giants crossed that Rubicon, they have run afoul of the antitrust statutes. Unfortunately for Parler antitrust litigation is likely to take the best part of 10 years.
I and other early users of CompuServe recall how poorly the site functioned in its youth. Parler is today's CompuServe, except nobody was trying to destroy CompuServe while it got its act together.
AWS does not have a monopoly, but Amazon has shown it will muscle aside dissent and competition. Eventually nearly all web traffic flows through a server controlled by FAANG. It has become a self-appointed world government in control of information.
" leading left-wing politicians" There are no such animals in DC. They are liberals and DemocRATS, not remotely of the left. It would help if very smart writers like Glenn Greenwald and Caitlin Johnstone would stop using "left" in their descriptions of these hacks.... unless in quotes... please.... otherwise, great article, as usual.
I’m very careful about this distinction. But one of the most vocal voices demanding this Silicon Valley censorship was AOC, and she then praised them once they heeded her calls. I suppose you could say AOC isn’t really of the left but then we’re just into semantics land. In any event, I consciously used it here because of examples like that.
I don’t think AOC is mature enough to understand her role in the larger ecosystem.
Right now she’s a campus rebel yelling slogans at a Sandinista rally, not knowing that Daniel Ortega right now is on 5th Ave in NY loading up on a million $ worth of US Goods so he can go back and be among the working class.
She heads up to her Watergate Apartment while guys like Paul Ryan used to sleep in a cot in their office.
End of the day, when it came to really spend her political capital to get what her supporters wanted, she sold out. Another cover of Vogue..though this time they left her keep the $30,000 in new clothes.
Which means Pelosi has sucked her into Pelosi’s vortex and now AOC is but one more Flying Monkey in the pantry ready to go do Pelosi’s bidding up on the witch’s command.
That’s the problem with $ and Leftists.
People in the Establishment will test to see if you’re truly principled or if mere $ will move you off your core values. And since there’s so much money in DC...it’s worth floating a $ figure or two first...just to see if they are really who they say they are.
Communism is attractive to people with little valuable utility to society that dream of riches. They all think they will be chosen but in doing so they need to appropriate those with valuable utility. For every socialist that thinks they will be chosen because they are faithful, YOU won't! Lenin and his cohorts all died because in the wings of every socialist movement is the worst arseholes on earth.
communism has its roots in a broken antisemitic self hating Jewish narcissist who let his own family go to rot while creating his life works. Pretty appropriate.
Rumor has it she made it selling cat tacos after her father, in true socialist fashion, destroyed the economy of the country with the largest proven oil reserves on the planet.
Thats the kicker, the left cannot point to a single example of success. You may not like their methods but at least the capitalist dogs had success with America.
No one is fleeing capitalism to the safety of socialism and communism, even Oswald knew that.
The words left and politician is a contradiction in terms. Bernie is the best we have for now. I'd love to see an interview with Bernie discussing his ideas and the reality of functioning in a snake pit.
Bernie Sanders has had DECADES to put out meaningful legislation. Hes never done it. He has 2 bills in his entire career and one was naming a post office. He tweeted how SC spends 2x on inmates what they spend on students....VERMONT SPENDS 3X ON INMATES WHAT IT SPENDS ON STUDENTS, and ships its fucking inmates out of state. The dude is a bullshit artist. TO. THE. CORE.
Bernie is a southern hemisphere socialist, hes 100% full of shit when you look at the hard facts.
He is not called the *amendment king* for nothing. Most of his meaningful legislation is tacked onto bills written by other senators. He is the reason why $600 checks (pittance as that may be) became part of the stimulus package. The for-profit prison system is a national disgrace and not particular to any one state, but Vermont's inmate population is quite low both in and out of state. We also lack the number of colleges and universities of many other states so it stands to reason that we spend less than some on higher education. Bernie is many things but a bullshit artist is not one of them.
Right so hes not a bullshit artist hes just pointing at SC as a state for spending 2x on prisoners what it spends on students, while at the same time ignoring the fact his own state is worse and spends 3x? That's not being a bullshit artists?
Standard uninformed right wing talking point about Bernie there. bernie's done a hell of a lot more than that, including how he's voted on pretty well on the bills of others that Dems promote over any Independent "socialist, but I'll let others correct you on that and the Amendment King stuff. If you're surprised that Dems didn't roll over to support his bills then tomorrow's sunrise will also startle you. Also not surprising: the the GOP doesn't embrace Bernie's agenda or bills.
Another thing the state of Vermont doesn't do is what Sanders demands as sole leader. They have a state legislature or that other part. He's their Senator, a tiny difference in your hard facts you imagined you know so much better.
From my understanding Ind Sanders had a deal with the Dems - he wouldn't cross them in Congress and they wouldn't run a Dem against him for the Sen - Obama and Schumer endorsed him when he ran.
When Conyers, et.al introduced their roughly 20 page M4A bill in the House, HR 676, Sanders, instead of slapping an S in front of it and introducing it in the Sen, introduced his own 200+ page bill - moved to have it read into the record, but after 1/2 hour or so of the Clerk's reading, when told that it was interfering with Sen business (no doubt naming more POs) withdrew the request - he sat down and shut up - his routine MO when told to do so.
There are so many more examples along the same line - he is tolerated in order to put a "prog" face on the party - to keep lefties from bolting and to keep them donating to Ds instead of 3rd parties whose actual platforms align with their principles - I can't help wondering what Stein could have done with the $200+ million given to Sanders in '16 ...
Who passes the criteria – TYT, Intercept, corp. media, Congress/Senate -- certainly NOT. Anything still missing on this list?
Interestingly, a rising star in DNC in 2015, who was “excommunicated” after declaring for socialist Bernie and not for corrupt queen Hillary (who brazenly named her “Russian asset” after Tulsi demolished Hillary’s protégé Kamala Harris), Tulsi Gabbard, passes most of my criteria. While most opponents of DNC cabal would meekly “bring chocolates” to Pelosi and Schumer here is the truly epic and exceptional Tulsi’s response:
Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton . You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why.
Now we know — it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose. It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly.
Dem Party of oligarchs is beyond salvation – a viable third (and fourth..) party is THE solution.
I am always amazed that so many people think there is a huge difference between the Red and Blue corporate/political teams. They are so similar in policy that they are nearly indistinguishable. In favor of forever wars? check. In favor of massive wealth inequality and massive corporate mergers? check. In favor of the Patriot Act? check. Take huge donations from the oligarchs? check. Wars of regime change and staged CIA-backed coups in socialist countries? check. Endlessly increasing military budgets? check. You know I could go on like this for an hour, and it would be check, check and more check. They all agree on all major policy issues, and they pretend to fight over things like gun laws and abortion rights. I just wish everyone would pay attention.
I keep saying: when the protestors from DC and the protestors across all the major cities form the summer realize they have a common enemy, it will be a glorious revolution.
As a liberal. I love Tulsi and her rational approach. Unfortunately, after she knee-capped Kamala in a primary debate, she was cutoff by the Democratic establishment by barring her from future debates ending her candidacy for all tense and purposes.
The socialist states aren't sanctioned because they are godless. Why would you choose that one piece of PR to believe? You think we sanctioned Russia because of religion? Wow.
You still believe in the Russia-gate fairytale? Basic fact: The entire anti-Russian narrative is a deliberate fabrication.
Clapper, Brennan & Hayden trio were among former 50 intelligence officials stating that Hunter-laptop is classical “Russian disinformation”.
- They were also key promoters of the three-year Russia-gate hoax.
- They were also key intelligence executives in Obama/Biden/Hillary government – the government which hunted Snowden (forcing Bolivian plane with Bolivia’s president to land to search it) and armed Al Qaeda (including “white helmets” hoax) and staged all chemical attacks in Syria to remove its government.
Trump’s utter incompetence in handling Covid-19 created the human and economic catastrophe that will be called - Trump-virus; he brought into government religious extremism and racism.
The Russia-gate hoax and Ukraine-impeachment “entertainment” was concocted by Obama/Hillary/Biden/Pelosi, Schumer, etc. and their intelligence and DNC executives on behalf of their Wall Street and military industry donors, i.e., the imperial War party
Trump was not totally incompetent in handling epidemic which will enter the US history as "Trump virus"... After nine months of our suffering and soon 400,000 deaths. Because of human and economic catastrophe created by Trump's incompetency and religious extremism... You must be drinking again.
We now have, after nine months daily deaths reaching China's total number of deaths. Instead we have Pompeo's and Trump's endless accusations of China to deflect responsibility -- for which both should be impeached !!
We need to thank and congratulate China and its able government for acting speedily and rapidly containing what should enter US history as a Trump-virus. And try to figure out just how China is able to vaccinate a million city almost overnight -- they must deploy tens of thousands teams.
We can and should do the same yet we are still in 14 (fourteen) weeks estimates for just primary vaccination groups. This is nothing but the federal crime -- after nine months of "preparations"
The US is a failed state - a state that totally failed both its "left" and "right" citizens
Upvoted for your pinpointing of the DNC's Russia-gate fable, but I disagree that Trump was incompetent in his handling of the pandemic. I had *expected* that he might join with the anti-vaxxers in a fit of his usual narcissistic denial of reality. Instead he promoted the quick development of vaccines and dubbed the unprecedented swift roll-out "operation warp speed."
This pandemic is working its way across the globe, and countries and states that escaped the first wave fell victim in later waves, regardless of actions taken by their governments.
No, countries that did well with the first wave helped to dampen the second - Trump, from the beginning, in public, consistently underplayed the seriousness of the virus, though in private he admitted it was bad news - remember, it would be gone "by Easter" etc. and he consistently pooh-poohed masks, mocking Biden wearing one He could have used the DPA to ramp up the production of PPE enormously - by concentrating on masks instead of ventilators many lived could have been saved - I said early on what a shame it would be if we had to ration ventilators because we rationed masks. As someone said - if Trump had told his followers it was "Patriotic" to wear a mask and consistently modeled that behavior, many could have been saved - again, look at Taiwan, e.g.
And when Mr Macho got sick, and apparently he was sicker than was let on - he got whisked off in a helicopter to a mil. hospital, got all the best Rx - then came back, whipped off his mask on the WH balcony and with a big grin said "See, it's fine" (he was probably on a steroid high at the time - dexamethasone) Rx that were not available to the public.
I'll give him credit for Operation Warp Speed - got a vaccine developed but no plan for its delivery and distribution.
Sorry - when the chips were down, he failed miserably to "take care of the people" I thought Russiagate was indeed a farce and that Ukraine bit may well have deserved a censure (Gabbard, I think, suggested that) but Impeachment? Naw. I do think he deserved impeachment for his handling of the corona virus - "reckless endangerment and disregard for human life"
I think he, and many others, know that if it hadn't been for Corona, he would have been re-elected ...
Thank you. My recollection is that initially he was among anti-vaxxers -- he quickly changed mind after he realized vaccine as a solution. Thanks again
Who passes the criteria – TYT, Intercept, corp. media, Congress/Senate -- certainly NOT. Anything still missing on this list?
Interestingly, a rising star in DNC in 2015, who was “excommunicated” after declaring for socialist Bernie and not for corrupt queen Hillary (who brazenly named her “Russian asset” after Tulsi demolished Hillary’s protégé Kamala Harris), Tulsi Gabbard, passes most and more progressive criteria. While most opponents of DNC cabal would meekly “bring chocolates” to Pelosi and Schumer here is the truly epic and exceptional Tulsi’s response:
Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton . You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why.
Now we know — it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose. It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly.
Dem Party is beyond salvation – a viable third (and fourth..) party is THE solution.
I see a tired mother at a bus stop waiting to ride home with a bag of groceries or a black grandmother being abused at a title loan joint while her grandchildren watch the ugliness of it. Or young people cramming into prisons for selling a little weed. For me, everything begins there. Little online about such people....not in "religion" or politics or economic whiz kids.
Take 30% of the population who is Progressive Populist and marry them (temporarily) to the 30% of the population who are Patriotic Populists and you get an aggregate 60%...leaving the Establishment to fight over 40% of the vote.
The Establishment Left will offer trinkets for those Populists on the Left to sell out and come to the middle..and the Establishment Right will offer trinkets for the Populists on the right to sell out and come to the middle..and the Establishment Media and Tech will use their power to tell those on the Left and those not he Right now much they hate each other; using the age old tactic of FUD to cement their ability to constantly overlord over our this nation (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) from a Big & Powerful Oz (DC).
It helps to look at the population in the aggregate within the construct of a Rubik’s Cube.
There is no “left” and “right” in a linear definition.
it’s a 3D construct and every individual is unique in their beliefs, values and principles...just like every other individual.
What we each have though..is a Reptilian Brain.
Thus...conservatives are more likely to draw morality from Reverence for Traditional Institutions with Moral Authority, Fairness, Tradition, Loyalty, and Sanctity...whereas Liberals/Progressies are more ap to view the world through the narrow construct of what they consider to be “Fairness or Ending Oppression.”
If that’s your whole moral construct and everything you see, read and hear comes through that lense...you end up in a place where America is unfair, unjust and inequitable..always has been and always will be.
It’s why liberals and progressives don’t get hair standing on their neck when Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA comes on or an old Paul Harvey piece about virtues and values and the American Ethic.
It’s helpful to read Jonathan Haidt to understand ourselves as well as others. It puts a more human spin on what comes out of people’s mouths before you judge them, lest ye be judged.
This is the longest comment on this site I've read that says nothing. Everything in this entire statement is ambiguous book-speak and asking us to read some book by some scholar.
As someone everyone would call "on the right" its incredible tiring here a few of you college try-hards tell us how the "left" isn't what we think it is and only you know.
Reads to me like they have something to say and backed it up. They're succinctly explaining why people on the left and right think the way they do and why they cannot understand one another. The vast majority of American voters are just people, not commies or fascists.
We can at least start by adding one dimension, that will make the left vs right model a bit less wrong :
"That is because the dominant strain of American liberalism is not economic socialism but political authoritarianism."
In a way similar to what happened to "conservatives" some time ago, it seems that you shouldn't name "liberals" without the quotes any more. As a reminder, liberalism is supposed to be *the opposite* of authoritarianism !
Or maybe the term "libertarianism" (that this compass uses to mean the opposite of authoritarianism, rather than of leftism) is indeed better, but right-wingers have kind of stolen that one too.
My problem with the conservative moral codes is that forgiveness and unbending good will are missing. They depend on legalities and even scrupulosity, which in my church, are sins, not virtues.
Here's yet another person who confuses or conflates neo-liberals as "the left." -ugh- You guys are innumerable. Get A Damned Clue; "the left" and neo-liberals are TWO DIFFERENT GROUPS and the only one you know anything about are the neo-liberals - the left is a true mystery to the right in the USA as reflected in hundreds - soon to be thousands - of comments under Greenwald articles.
Both political parties try for the moral high ground. People forget about the christian coalition back in the early '90's where Republicans had to meet their litmus test in order to back their candidacy. And don't get it twisted that they used racial tactics to divide the country in an effort to incite rage in rural white voters to vote for them (The Southern Strategy) and surpress the black vote since the civil rights/voting rights bill was passed in 1964. The infamous Willie Horton ad was the most disgusting one that was approved by Lee Atwater who was none other than 41's campagain manager back in 1988. So both parties are complicit.
You are so very wrong, and mostly opposite of the truth. About the only think that isn't opposite is that the those on the left in the US today have no moral code.
Genuine liberals MUST have a strong personal morality. Immoral slob people are very severe on other people...abandoned lovers, pregnant girl friends, elderly parents. Quite ruthless! Their 'leftie' brand is for themselves, thank you very much!!!
The reptilian brain references the part of the brain that is the most primitive, and is in control of instinctual behavior, that is, everything you do without thinking, like eating, sex, etc. It has to do with all those things we do to survive as a species. Nothing to do with morality, or higher thought processes.
Left and right are artifacts of one French parliament for a few weeks in the 1700s. It's not really a useful way of categorizing people. You need at least 2 axes. Most modern politicians are authoritarian statists of various stripes.
If this invokes the "No True Scotsman" stance, then so be it. Liberals, such as Glenn and Matt Taibbi, and I, recognize the rapid descent into stifling dissent, the necessary move before all others in authoritarians seize power and the jails fill rapidly. We probably missed the Portland Kristallnacht that should have warned us.
Biden and the democrats will attempt to use the hyperbolized “insurrection” last week as an excuse to try to ignore the 2nd Amendment and confiscate guns. This will be in his “first 100 days” agenda. We will see what happens...
He might lose the Senate. Joe Manchin is the only bluedog Democrat remaining, all others have been driven out along with the rest of the plebeians. If he switches parties, then the Republicans have 51 seats, then Biden's agenda is dead. If he's unwilling to switch parties, all he has to do is resign and his state's Republican governor appoints his successor. I suspect just the threat of that will stave off the bullies.
The "insurrection" is a fiction. I can't believe I have to say this again: Read the transcript. The words are plain. Go and demonstrate, be heard, do no violence. If that is now a disqualifying statement, listen again to the news broadcasts about peaceful protesters.
Mr Clueless Bill Heath here seems to not know that around 80% of elected Democrats are "blue dogs." They're fucking Republicans who just happen to prefer blue and the letter D on their jerseys.
You need to go pretty far in the authoritarian direction in order to get to 80% of elected Democrats. In the Senate, "fucking Republicans who just happen to prefer blue" would include Sheldon Whitehouse who has suggested expelling Senators who dissent from the approved narrative, Chris Van Hollen, who has said "I know a couple of Republicans who aren't racists," as well as Sherrod Brown and Patrick Leahy, who should react unfavorably at that label.
In the House, bluedogs would include Maxine Waters, Adam Schiff and Joseph Kennedy. I'm sure they're all happy to discover they really don't mean a word they say because they're Republicans in disguise.
See: govtrack.us. I now have a clue, apparently. Thanks for clearing that up for us, the benighted.
I disagree that Trump didn't have any intentions to do a coup, but yes, looks like that anyone arguing about it will need to suffer the Trump speech. And better in video, as a lot of nuance/context is likely to be lost in a transcript.
Thanks for your reply, Glenn, long time reader and admirer of your work. I have to disagree. It is not just semantics to label political factions. AOC is rhetorically left, which does not make her a leftist by any stretch. She flirts hard with regime change coups and folds like a cheap suit in the face of her party's power. There are very few leftists in politics... Kshama Sawant is the only one I can think of.... perhaps a few others dip their toe now and again, but the term "left" loses all meaning when spread thin enough to cover any DemonRATS. Sarah Palin is to the left of AOC on the important issue of Assange's torture and imprisonment.... gob-smackingly enough! While (if) I have your attention, I wonder what you think of the fact that the DemonRATS sound so much like the Sarah Palin of yesteryear with all the Putin under their beds hysterics?
Oh boy, Glenn, it really isn’t just semantics. The traditional position/ideology of the left - an opposition to hierarchical power and the control of the citizenry by either government OR oligarchs/corporations is being lost. In this thread you see the equating of “the left” with “communism,” and of course the Democrats have completely lost the idea of opposing corporate control that was understood in the 70s (and even the 80s). Likewise the opposition to imperialism and a military state that traditionally came from the left is rapidly disappearing if not already gone from what is getting called the “left.”
There is a reason Kropotkin split with the Bolsheviks and why “the left” does not simplistically equal “the communists.” Likewise, the left isn’t simply not-Republican. We need these distinctions and understandings or “the left” becomes defined solely in relation to an ever right moving right and center or it is just a pointless tautology where the left is just what the left does and it is just about cheering for teams and personalities.
No, it's just semantics. The fact that you mention "traditional" interpretations and what Dems have abandoned just shows that interpretations of labels are malleable even over shorts periods of time and anything but universal. As they moved right over 3 decades it's a continuum, not a series of distinct level and even saying "they"is inadequate. Some were worse than others.
Without a common and precise vocabulary, it devolves further and precision ain't exactly popular. How many time shave you seen someone call anyone left of Goebels a Marxist? Nobody should care what artificial designation best fits AOC - just what her actions and decisions are relative to helping the population or their constituents
You are actually making my point. The fact that words change over time doesn’t mean they are just willy-nilly to be changed as one chooses. And sorry, understanding etymology of words and history of ideas is what marks someone as smarter and more learned, not the opposite.
You write, “Without a common and precise vocabulary, it devolves further and precision ain't exactly popular.”
Yes, without a common and precise vocabulary it devolves further which is the point and I don’t give a fuck about having my, or any public discourse, about anything of substance based on how “popular” it is. This is the worst of pop-postmodernism (and I have no problem with GOOD postmodernism).
Aldous Huxley devotes a portion of Brave New World Revisited to precisely how authoritarians (soft or hard) utilize, and will utilize in (his) future, the destruction of word meaning to control the masses. (If I remember correctly, he also discusses Orwell’s recognition of this idiocy creating tool in this section as well. A point I make note of because I see a few headlines in my news aggregators of the sort, “You probably aren’t using the word Orwellian correctly,” which most likely means a correction of one set of dunces’ misuses with a seventh grade understanding at best and likely incorrect itself.)
It is pointless for anyone to discuss anything with this mindset. What’s the point if the Capital Building and leprechaun literally mean the exact same thing. (And yes, I know “literally” is literally in the dictionary as having the definition of “figuratively.” It is also noted as coming from a misuse).
The article about the correct use of "Orwellian" couldn't have come at a worse time. I think typically "Orwellian" describes using rhetorical devices to construct an alternate reality.
The writer seems to be making a point that Orwellian opposed totalitarianism and that people making the accusation of Orwellian recently are actually in fact advocating fascism and totalitarianism and are therefore contradicting themselves. But what we're really seeing more and more is that the agents of Orwellian rhetoric are now often on the opposite side of the political spectrum.
At the end of the day AOC is an important voice. She is very young and I hope that she is reading everything she can including you, Glenn. I am reading Lofgren's The Deep State. Of course since my early anti-Vietnam war years and as an SDS member, today at 74 I have gained so much perspective. I've been a socialist since childhood when I realized that the playing field was not level. I was an outcast in the 4th grade. My mother would drive onto Mission Valley Road in San Diego when it was lined with actual farms before being destroyed by the developer Del Webb. Anyway, I wondered why she had to stop because I thought that if everyone went the same speed that traffic would be seamless. I wanted true equality. Now I realize, as one Zen teacher told me, that everybody's different. As a young adult living in poverty working minimum wage jobs I cried when I saw a beautiful Mexican shawl in a store that I couldn't afford. The Vogue shoot was a big mistake. But she is young. Let's work to keep her on the right path. She can't do it alone. It's exciting to have a good job and a boyfriend who supports her. It's so easy to be entranced by power and money. I would be fine speaking with Trump supporters and those who stormed the Capitol. I've spent my life as an ambassador for those who are different. I know where they are coming from and I'm not a snob.
Suzanne, I'm glad Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is enjoying her life, discovering herself, having a supportive boyfriend, while being entranced by power and money. It's a privilege I wish could be afforded to all young Americans. Yes, she's young. I disagree that we need to keep her on the right path, because I see no evidence she has any idea where the path is, let alone the directions in which it can head.
She has an undergraduate degree in economics, and suggested we just "print more money." I was smart enough at age four to understand that money itself has no value, it is a proxy for value that has already been created. She was 29. She demonstrated complete lack of understanding of the difference between a pile of ready cash and a future forgiveness of taxes on income generated by business. When they were teenagers, my daughters knew the difference. She celebrated denying her constituents good-paying jobs. She's young, and I can forgive her ignorance. I have a harder time forgiving her attitude that she should be allowed to learn on the job while proposing and voting on legislation for the rest of us. My objection would be the same regardless of her political positions.
We don't let surgeons "learn on the job" by allowing them to operate on members of the public to discover that the toe bone is not, indeed, connected to the foot bone. We don't allow police officers to walk around with their weapons in hand, shooting randomly at people to practice. What Representative Ocasio-Cortez is doing is malfeasance of office, and those who protect her from the consequences of that are no better than physicians who allow incompetents to perform surgery, or chiefs of police who overlook "just a few unfortunate deaths of innocent people."
I'm a year younger than you. I flirted with socialism because my parents were lost somewhere in a haze between Marxism and the KKK. I demonstrated for Biafra, marched for civil rights, attended sit-ins, was thrown out of multiple venues, spit on, beaten, the whole works. I was completely on my own once I graduated college, and woke up to the fact that the world doesn't owe me anything. Eventually I found my way to libertarianism, social liberal and fiscal conservative, because I recognize that social liberalism is a luxury we can afford only if we are fiscally conservative. That doesn't mean throwing the poor to the wolves. It means that, unlike my friends who are fiscal liberals, I don't outsource my compassion to the government.
I and my family support the homeless, the ill, the hungry, those denied a decent education by politicians unable to free themselves from teachers union teats, the disabled and other marginalized groups. We are far from wealthy, yet we contribute regularly to specific well-run charitable organizations serving eating-disorder patients, patients with autoimmune disorders and needy active-duty military families. We support medical missions to Africa and the Caribbean. I put together a syndicate of college students, attorneys, food banks and undocumented aliens when serving as a volunteer translator for local courts. My biggest supporters were the police, because we finally established an atmosphere in which illegal drivers pulled over for police rather than endangering others with a high speed chase.
You're right, the playing field isn't level. Crony capitalism is no better than socialism at leveling the playing field. I find it ironic that a man who made his money through crony capitalism, a man I abominate, was the first president to work toward a real leveling of the playing field.
Well, since Paul Krugman said it, then deficits don't matter. See what has happened in Zimbabwe, which adopted the same attitude. Or, Venezuela today. Greece. Puerto Rico. Deficits don't matter as long as we are willing to burden our children in order to enjoy ourselves today. They don't matter as long as we can convince other people to accept meaningless pieces of paper in exchange for food, manufactured items, and other things of real value. When the crash comes, it will be sudden and brutal.
Virtue-signaling numbskulls will wag their fingers at the hoi pollloi and the greedy capitalists, blaming them for the destruction. Krugman et al will have no clue about their own culpability, and the two real villains - Johnson and Nixon, one of whom brought Social Security and Medicare on budget, the other who was afraid to point out the ticking time bomb - are dead and buried. So, we'll blame Trump, or AOC, or the nearest racist (defined as any white male), and learn the wrong lessons. Happens every time.
You left out Larry Kudlow, and the Chicago School. I guess that when you are old enough to collect Social Security and Medicare, you will refuse it based on your conscience.
Apologies for being an ignorant Canadian but the money involved in all this tech biz is so huge. My impression of the States is that the underlying political colour is actually green. I could be way off though.
"216. Some leftists may seem to oppose technology, but they will oppose it only so long as they are outsiders and the technological system is controlled by non-leftists. If leftism ever becomes dominant in society, so that the technological system becomes a tool in the hands of leftists, they will enthusiastically use it and promote its growth. In doing this they will be repeating a pattern that leftism has shown again and again in the past. When the Bolsheviks in Russia were outsiders, they vigorously opposed censorship and the secret police, they advocated self-determination for ethnic minorities, and so forth; but as soon as they came into power themselves, they imposed a tighter censorship and created a more ruthless secret police than any that had existed under the tsars, and they oppressed ethnic minorities at least as much as the tsars had done. In the United States, a couple of decades ago when leftists were a minority in our universities, leftist professors were vigorous proponents of academic freedom, but today, in those of our universities where leftists have become dominant, they have shown themselves ready to take away from everyone else's academic freedom. (This is "political correctness.") The same will happen with leftists and technology: They will use it to oppress everyone else if they ever get it under their own control."
The post I am now replying to shows a remarkable lack of insightfulness because what it really says is something it's author clearly never even thought about: the real left are the oppressed, NOT those in power.
That is an unfortunate circumstance since it implies humanity's doom as right-wingers, pretty much always the ones in control, are, on whole, too selfish to do the right thing (such as having true compassion for their fellow man and concern for the rest of the biosphere) - and that may well be "the human condition."
If my conjecture is correct - and I see scant evidence it isn't - we can all bend over and kiss our asses goodbye; hello Holocene, we're on our way.
Of course it doesn't help that Kaczynski has a very… idiosyncratic? definition of leftism (and maybe also of power), which he himself admits.
As a reminder, this whole discussion is indeed about whether there are "fake-leftists" in power that only pretend to be leftists.
Kaczynski talks a lot about power, and has something to say about those in power too, but in his opinion they aren't fundamentally different :
33. Human beings have a need (probably based in biology) for something that we will call the power process. This is closely related to the need for power (which is widely recognized) but is not quite the same thing.[...]
21. Leftists may claim that their activism is motivated by compassion or by moral principles, and moral principle does play a role for the leftist of the oversocialized type. But compassion and moral principle cannot be the main motives for leftist activism. Hostility is too prominent a component of leftist behavior; so is the drive for power. Moreover, much leftist behavior is not rationally calculated to be of benefit to the people whom the leftists claim to be trying to help. For example, if one believes that affirmative action is good for black people, does it make sense to demand affirmative action in hostile or dogmatic terms? Obviously it would be more productive to take a diplomatic and conciliatory approach that would make at least verbal and symbolic concessions to white people who think that affirmative action discriminates against them. But leftist activists do not take such an approach because it would not satisfy their emotional needs. Helping black people is not their real goal. Instead, race problems serve as an excuse for them to express their own hostility and frustrated need for power. In doing so they actually harm black people, because the activists' hostile attitude toward the white majority tends to intensify race hatred.
83. […] In particular, leftist movements tend to attract people who are seeking to satisfy their need for power. But for most people identification with a large organization or a mass movement does not fully satisfy the need for power. […]
214. [...] Above all, leftism is driven by the need for power, and the leftist seeks power on a collective basis, through identification with a mass movement or an organization. Leftism is unlikely ever to give up technology, because technology is too valuable a source of collective power. [...]
217. In earlier revolutions, leftists of the most powerhungry type, repeatedly, have first cooperated with nonleftist revolutionaries, as well as with leftists of a more libertarian inclination, and later have double-crossed them to seize power for themselves. Robespierre did this in the French Revolution, the Bolsheviks did it in the Russian Revolution, the communists did it in Spain in 1938 and Castro and his followers did it in Cuba. Given the past history of leftism, it would be utterly foolish for non-leftist revolutionaries today to collaborate with leftists.
224. The people who rise to positions of power in leftist movements tend to be leftists of the most power-hungry type, because power-hungry people are those who strive hardest to get into positions of power. Once the powerhungry types have captured control of the movement, there are many leftists of a gentler breed who inwardly disapprove of many of the actions of the leaders, but cannot bring themselves to oppose them. They NEED their faith in the movement, and because they cannot give up this faith they go along with the leaders. True, SOME leftists do have the guts to oppose the totalitarian tendencies that emerge, but they generally lose, because the powerhungry types are better organized, are more ruthless and Machiavellian and have taken care to build themselves a strong power base.
227. Our discussion of leftism has a serious weakness. It is still far from clear what we mean by the word "leftist." There doesn't seem to be much we can do about this. [...]
Here, read this - you can skip over all the graphing stuff at the top; the author has a pretty good write up that answers your question from your closing paragraph - what left is:
John Kelly gets it exactly right. There is something very perverse about using the term "liberal" for some of the most conservative, war-mongering denizens of DC. Biden, Clinton, Pelosi and Schumer are extreme right wingers that give themselves the "Blue Team" moniker, but they are hard-core corporatists. They don't have a liberal bone in their bodies. So now, the conservatives have two teams; Red and Blue, and then I suppose there is that out-of-power, little bitty group off on the side... the "progressives". I strongly suggest that everyone stop calling people in DC "conservatives and liberals". They are all conservatives with two teams, Red and Blue, fighting like organized crime families over turf in DC.
“Venezuela is fundamental threat to USA” -- declared Obama formally initiating regime change.
What he meant is “Socialism is a threat to capitalism”… hence imperial War-party endless wars -- against Bolivia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Syria, Cuba, Libya, China….. - for 70 years immense suffering and destruction across the glibe
Defund US military terrorism and end "Jakarta Method" horrible practices
Actually, Obama won in 2008 as an antiestablishment Populist.
Took him 2 years to sell out..right after D’s got wiped out in the 2020 mid-terms.
About the same time Michelle fell in love vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard while hanging out with Oprah, Ellen and the Spielberg’s..and enjoying the finer things in life.
Exactly, and I don't see it changing any time soon. The politicians are either oligarchs, or oligarch wannabes, so all of them are on the same page policy wise. Lower taxes, no corporate regulations, endless wars for profit and geo-strategic advantage and a constant squeezing of working people to keep the money flowing from the bottom to the top. There aren't two political parties, there is one (the corporate party) with two fake flavors to cater to two different audiences.
Stop claiming the shitty part of your party is actually "right wing". Would you allow conservatives to call Trump "left" because he frequently supports non-conservative legislation?
I spent 10 hours in a Tea Party camp in 2010 and 10 hours in a OWS camp in 2011.
The one takeaway is that the political spectrum is always describe by the Establishment as linear..meaning a line from left to right.
In nature, the spectrum arcs back upon itself.
It’s what allowed Sen. Paul Wellstone and Sen. Jesse Helms to be kindred spirits in the US Senate.
It’s what had Vladimr Lenin on one side of the street with his Socialist Ideals and Stalin on the other side with his Communist Ideals.
What i found from that experience is that Populism is Antiestablishment...that’s the common goal of both sides of the spectrum and it’s what connects the dots.
When explaining to each group that they needed to do a reach around and join forces with their fellow Antiestablishment travelers instead of getting sucked back into the Vortex of the Establishment....it was a hard sell..but both groups new that the enemy of their enemy could be their friend if the goal was to unite behind the right sizing of the Federal Government and distribution of power back to the states, counties and towns.
The Establishment Media and Establishment...period...doesn’t want people to understand this context which is why it’s always pitting right vs. left and leaving they Establishment itself out of the crossfire. This is how propaganda works.
You rile up one side...then rile up the other side...convince people it’s the other side that’s the enemy...all while knowing it’s the swamp in the middle that ‘s the real enemy.
The right thinks the establishment consists mostly the corrupt government. The left used to think it was the evil corporations. There is less and less difference between the corrupt government and the evil corporations, that's the problem, and that realization is what may unite the populists.
I liked your post except for the one point that you have the wrong goal.
The CORRECT goal is to tax the ultra-rich out of existence so they don't control us any longer.
Government is a tool, and it's the ONLY tool that can constrain the rapaciousness of the ultra-rich and their corporations. Bifurcating its power exclusively to the local level(s) means that to constrain them we have to fight thousands of battles - pretty much the same one over-and-over-and-over-and over.
Don't be a strategic fool. Set your sights on the REAL problem - it's not the hammer, government, it's the carpenter, the ultra-rich and their corporations; we need a new carpenter, We, The People.
The problem is the government. It is no accident that the growth of government and the growth in wealth inequality have the same time frame, and that wealth inequality is greatest in centers of government based power. Cut the government in half, and in one generation you'll not have ultra-rich. Think strategically...
AOC supports the coup attempts against the leftist government of Venezuela. She supports the DemocRATic party, which is one half of the death cult circus of capitalists, war mongers, and surveillance state goons known as the US political class. When faced with Israel's brutal slow motion genocide of Palestinians, the deadly and criminal sanctions against Iran and Venezuela, and the torture and imprisonment of Assange and other political prisoners... she runs away. She is a leftist in the same sense Nancy Fucking Pelosi, Hillary We-Came-We Saw-He Died Clinton, and Barack Kill-List Obama are leftists. She will keep moving right the more power she achieves, and the shit-lib-rubes will follow. It is a long standing pattern of betrayal and deceit that the left has seen over and over again. There is nobody of the left allowed into the halls of power or on any cable news except occasionally on FOX... which is only because they are critical of the DemocRATS, of course. People like Sanders and AOC talk a good game and then they vote for trillions in defense spending, they are silent on Assange, they run from questions about Palestinian rights, and they demonize and smear actual leftist leaders of other countries. If you think AOC is left, you need to educate yourself on what she actually supports, and stop listening to the flowery rhetorical garbage emanating from the pie-holes of her and these other fakes.... or spout clever and SO original cliches. That works, too.
She also wants to confiscate private property, massively expand the welfare state, and reorganize the entire economy according to government dictate. That sounds pretty far left to me, but what do I know.
Do you have a positive contribution to make? All I've seen you do is take pot-shots at those who are trying to contribute. Have at it; just don't expect anyone else to think you're even 1% as clever as you think. Please continue demonstrating your lack of insight. It's amusing.
There is no one definition of right and left, or "progressive" for that matter. They are all terms massively abused to support whatever agenda you're trying to promote.
No, I did not. Spouting cliched quips meant to shut down debate is "boring". As a matter of fact I read what you wrote and you apparently missed everything I said because you did not respond to any of it. Carry on.
Democrats define their agenda as liberal, and claim to represent the left, or that they are actually progressive. At one time they could say that with greater honesty since their base was the working class whom they did support, and their unions as well, but through the decades they have abandoned their base, and are in no way liberal, or progressive. With a limited agenda of supporting gay rights, abortion, BLM, etc. they feel entitled to lie about what they have become. I was a registered democrat and I guess I would play along, voted for Clinton first time around, and then Obama, the first time around, until I gave up and refused to support the lesser of the two evils, as they say. The Republicans are more honest about who they are and they are on the right, and conservative in their agenda.
From what I gather, actual conservatives are about as rare as actual "leftists" and have far more in common than the ultra-rich controlled media would have us believe.
The old saw is that libertarians like to argue about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Honestly, I don't care what you call the authoritarian pols in Washington associated with the Democrat party. These people, and those who enable them, have spent 5 years accusing Trump of being a fascist. How ironic that THEY, in conjunction with the tech giants (the new robber barons) are the ACTUAL fascists. THAT is what matters to me.
I call these folks establishment neoliberal corporate warmonger whores. Every single one of my "progressive" friends are cheering all this on with one exception (a union guy). They thought Trump was a fascist? I laugh, the fascists are the Democrats and the Republicans sucking up to them. We haven't seen anything yet. Great article, I wish everyone would read it that supports this mass censorship.
This reminds me of how the Stalinist propaganda was that the ruling Socialists were the "real" fascists, and how proto-Antifa often allied itself with the Nazis.
Ironically, this propaganda might become 'true' a century later ?
John Kelly,I think you are confused. A liberal is a defender of free speech. That is what it always meant historically, and in particular in Europe. It is the Left that is anti-free speech and is illiberal. The Leftists in the US co-opted the word liberal to whitewash their decrepit socialist ideology. And everyone fell for it. Greenwald and others should call them Leftists and not liberals. An illiberal cannot be called a liberal. What you say is contradictory.
Some people think that the left-right dichotomy is always relative - as in, right of some position, or left of it. Others, the group I'm in, perceive its' about whether the policies one wants to advocate for help the status-quo / ultra-rich, or help The People - the former being right-wing the latter being left. And, as many people have long observed, a single linear dichotomy isn't really sufficient to discuss human politics. Be that as it may, traditionally, liberalism rose up as neither left nor right, criticized by both.
There's a good write up about it here, AFTER the author discusses (yet another) graphical, two dimensional grid type way of looking at politics. In my view, he makes a few mistakes, but the historical record he cites seems pretty good to me, but incomplete or the USA today, though it was written about 16 years ago:
Unfortunately, the attempt to reserve "left" for one's favored tribe of leftists (for most people on this board making the attempt, it seems to be what I call the Wobblies-version of the left) is as hopeless id as the attempt in America to reserve "right" for one's favored tribe of opponents of the left (most often undertaken by either what were called "fusionists" back during the Cold War or the species of rightist with a romantic attachment to the U.S. Constitution as read narrowly, though lately the Trumpists have started to try to claim to be the only authentic "right").
You may regard the "woke" as a heresy from the left, but they are, by and large, the intellectual descendants and idiot children of Gramsci, Marcuse, and Derrida, all of whom claimed to be Marxists. You may see them as useful idiots for the Democrat version of fascism, which Greenwald likes to call "neoliberalism", but they are of the left nonetheless. Anyone taking offense at the notion that the Democrats are fascist should remember the union of corporate and state power was the main defining feature of fascism (cf. the topic of the article we are commenting on), not having ruffians engage in politically motivated street brawling, which has intermittently been a feature of almost every political movement in modern history. Okay, maybe not the Whigs -- I can find no instance of either American or British Whigs fielding bands of ruffians analogous to either the Capitol-invading Trumpists or to Antifa.
Where would we be without journalists like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi? But I fear for their future in this current environment, so hostile to truth and justice.
Trump is mendacious, for sure. But our environment is broadly hostile to truth, you are right.
Biden just said that the US bombing of Dresden killed like 250 to 2,500 people and the Nazis lied to the people and said it was 25,000 or more.
Whereas the reality is the US bombing of Dresden killed 25,000 people, and the Nazis actually lied to their people by saying the equivalently destructive prior bombing of Hamburg killed barely anyone and not to worry about losing the war.
Indeed. When I returned home from studying in the USSR in 1983, the CIA reached out to recruit me. As part of the interviewing process, I was given numerous publications, books, and CIA papers to read so I could familiarize myself how the company operated, and what my role may be. Several of the items detailed the process by which the CIA overthrew Latin American countries and installed U.S. puppets. Of course, this practice is relatively well known today, and the book "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" illuminates the financial aspect of the practice.
After the crash of 2008, it became terrifyingly clear to me that the CIA - who "purchased" Jeff Bezos for $600 million, $300 million of which went immediately to purchase the WaPo - was doing in the U.S. to the people of the U.S. exactly what they'd been doing around the world for decades. Backed by trillions of dollars of government and personal debt, the plan was being executed here at home, exactly as it had been abroad for generations.
If anyone is complicit in crimes against the state, it is the media, not the Trumpers that stormed the Reichstag...er.. Capitol
Well, you've brought it up: 6 January is now a Rorschach test. You show it to some people and the see the Beer Hall Putsch with Trump cast as Hitler. You show it to other people and they see the Reichstag Fire with Trump cast as Marinus van der Lubbe. Personally, I see a blot, a blot on Trump and a blot on the American republic, that ought to be cleaned up with an impeachment, for which I sincerely hope 17 GOP votes for conviction can be found.
While still others see it as men dressed up throwing tea into the harbor, and burning the governors, soldiers, and king in effigy. And of course there are those more contemporaries that see blacks burning cities and antifa shooting automatic weapons at white people...
I see Jan 6, 2021 as our Tiananmen Square. Which was a protest that got a bit rowdy and was used as justification for one of the biggest crackdowns on freedom in history. And like they are doing now, many in western media at the time we’re echoing Chinese propaganda and called the protests “insurrection”....
I see the US having narrowly avoided a far greater event that could have devolved into civil war. The animosity runs deep on both sides, and following the demands of hotheads will not lower the temperature.
Please lay out a plan whereby a bunch of unarmed fanatics rioting with flagpoles for a few hours could have led to a civil war. Personally, the ongoing crackdown seems like a much more viable path to civil war.
I cashiered at Walmart in 1993 and saw the glee everywhere over the cheap, sweatshop/slave everything.......very ominous then. Had to quit. Now our poor have to go there.
The constitutional issue is whether censorship practiced by a publicly held monopoly that exhibits the attributes of a communications utility can qualify as state action sufficient to implicate the First and Fifth Amendments when it proceeds from thinly veiled warnings from Congress, voiced in public hearings, that if censorship is not practiced legislation will follow. The answer is unclear, but I think the question is sufficiently meritorious and close that litigation should be initiated and pursued.
Otherwise, we are left with a situation in which billionaires control social and political discourse, regulated only by the very politicians they have purchased wholesale. That is a recipe for authoritarian disaster. The primary goal of neoliberalism is to privatize the public realm, ultimately political speech and discourse. Neoliberalism's defeat begins with the redefining of what is public and what is private.
I don't think the 1st and 5th amendments are likely to bear fruit. There is no likelihood of redefining the tech companies as public. In any event that road could easily lead to totalitarian fascism. I think ultimately it will take both antitrust litigation and legislation. Trouble is that DC has become nearly devoid of principles, with everything being about winning and losing power in a zero sum game. As other have posted, this threat should have been dealt with long ago. The power wielded by big tech now makes a solution very difficult, if not impossible.
I agree with you. These giant tech companies are so entangled in the government through contracts, hiring out as consultants to the Pentagon and Department of Defense, working for the government by collecting information which they turn over to it, etc., that they have become literal arms of the government. Glenn has said it is not good business to exclude and censor internet users, but the tech giants do it because they are essentially told to (threatened) by Congressional representatives and members of the government. When a Congressman says he/she is unhappy that you do not censor more, if you know what's good for you you do it. Therefore, censorship is being done at the behest of the government and I believe that implicates my Constitutional rights. I believe in a multi-pronged approach to the issue of censorship.
"Otherwise, we are left with a situation in which billionaires control social and political discourse, regulated only by the very politicians they have purchased wholesale. That is a recipe for authoritarian disaster."
Agree, which is why the constitutional issue I have described should be raised, along with the broader effort to redefine and reassert the public realm -- the commons. I also agree that anti-trust can be useful tool (per the comment below), but disagree that defining broadly used tech platforms as part of the commons, and thus subject to public control, could "easily lead to totalitarian fascism." I know of no such example in the utilities context, and if democratic control to assure open speech and discourse threatens fascism, then we are doomed indeed.
Yes and no. We are not doomed but politics will not save us as there are forces in our government too corrupt to even speak of. There are so many people who are aware of the dangers, so many who aren't. Our world is extremely broken at this moment in time. BUT we are free to share love, connect each other, see the humanity within the soul. Take away the phone, social media - all this garbage is a way to get us hooked, forget our humanity, and then take away our "freedom". But the internet isn't the source of our freedom. What did people do before it? They got to know each other. This is the sign all along that the internet is a source of oppression where people see only the most superficial aspects of humanity without coming close up and seeing humanity face to face soul to soul. yes i know this comment has almost zero to do with your previous comment - but i firmly believe that despite all the bad things that are going on, there is a vacuum of loneliness that desperately wants to be filled. When we act on our humanity then people really are truly good at heart. No more political media lies, identity politics, or the politicization of anything. It's broken, it won't help us.
I've worked in Silicon Valley and these companies do coordinate. Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe, Ebay, Intuit, Pixar/Lucas were sued for coordinating to prevent "poaching" and thus keep worker salary down. This was in the early 2010's with the suit coming about in 2013 or so.
Also happening in the 2010's was influx of politics into Silicon Valley. The Obama administration hired a lot of tech to work in Washington. These were not engineers, they were well connected "people that know people". I believe many of those people have come back to the Valley in recent years. Additionally there has been an influx of political types into Silicon Valley, particularly in social media companies. I think there have also been Board appointees that are "think tank" types
Next, there is a phenomenon of company encouraged employee activist groups. I believe the intent was for these groups to help people of similar race, gender, sexual preference, etc, work through challenges in tech. However, these people are often politically volatile and constantly interject political or social justice into large company meetings. An example of this a group within Spotify throwing a fit over Joe Rogan having Alex Jones on. Additionally I've former colleagues have heard of activists at left leaning offices imposing their will on other offices for things as petty as what food or food providers are used to cater events.
Finally, tools like Slack further encourage virtue signalling. Any political or social event has people clamoring to get visibility by raising issues in large company wide channels.
It's sad what it's becoming. Years ago it felt like everything was made by an eclectic group of misfits. The main requirement was talent and passion for what you were working on, pay may or may not come. The first group I worked with was more diverse than anything I've been a part of recently. I don't know what's to blame for that, it may have been the social media / smart phone revolution funneling more of the elite graduates into the system in search of $$$.
Much of the silicon valley tech population has yet to face serious adversity. Smart phones and social media were on the rise as everything else was crumbling. There was a large influx in 2011-2014 and these people have made out like bandits. They could use their stock/bonus to buy a condo for say 500K. By 2017 that condo might run 1.0 to 1.2 million. They've amassed large net worths in the matter of a few years.
However, they have yet to face the dot com bust and rolling blackouts of the early 2000's or the housing market bust of 2009 and municipalities struggling to provide services because of tax revenue declines. Because of this lack of adversity, they are trying to find adversity to overcome on their own. I've more than once walked into the office and seen 50% of building instantly empty with desks being just as the left them, only for them to get a call not to come in. I've been there when the conference rooms are all booked and blocked off mysteriously so that staff can be laid off all at once. When this happens, you don't need to look for something to fight, you are fighting for your own preservation or that of your family.
The AI "ethics" (race/diversity) researcher at Google is another classic example of SJW narratives going off the rails, biting the hand that feeds them.
For those on the left who are celebrating this, I give you a cautionary tale. A friend of mine - lifelong Democrat - supported Tulsi Gabbard in the primaries. She used her Twitter account solely for the purpose of talking up her favored candidate in a civil and polite manner. Nothing in her posts would even move the needle even on today's oh-so-sensitive "offend-o-meter".
When she received an email soliciting donations from the DNC, she replied that she did not support them because of how they had treated Tulsi. Within 24 hours, her Twitter account was deleted. She had not violated a single term of service, though that's what they purported, and was told that she could not appeal the decision. So in a heartbeat, she was silenced. If you think you're safe, just wait until you disagree with them.
I literally wept for this country as the stake was driven into the heart of freedom this week. No one should be celebrating this.
Excellent work, Glenn. Also notable is the absence of media reporting on or political class concern about Merkel commentary. It appears leadership on this issue must come from outside the U.S.
European countries prefer to have government regulations that apply to everyone. Americans are more comfortable with Twitter making up the rules as they go. It's just a difference of style, but we should keep in mind that everyone is ultimately trying to get to the same authoritarian destination.
There's a huge difference between the decisions by a company that only represents its owners/shareholders and those by a government that represents all its citizens.
Germany mostly runs the EU and they love to make up regulations that fuck over businesses in Greece, Italy, Spain, Ireland, etc. when doing so leads to more profits for German companies and banks.
Once again, great work! Something to add is this is just another avenue where nearly half of the country can be written off as deplorable Nazis that do not deserve to be in the conversation. The actions since the January 6th have been breathtaking despite universal agreement that the perpetrators should be charged and punished. First, in unison all media termed the rioters has insurrectionist, a term that is technically accurate for a group attempting to overpower civil authority. It is noteworthy that term was not used when a city block was seized in Seattle. Next, people that were in DC at the Rally but not committing crimes started to get fired as their employers found out they were there. Third, the tech purge that Glenn lays out here. Next, large corporations announced they will not contribute to the GOP as Biden compares two sitting Senators to Nazi propogandists. Finally, 25th Amendment is floated but ultimately Articles of Impeachment are drawn up.
If you were one of the peaceful 100K in DC or even one of the 74 million that voted for Trump, where do you think this is headed for you? It sure isn’t unity and coming together! To some degree, half the country is looking over their shoulder. They see the MSM reporting as if 9-11 happened again, liberals’ politicians plotting a course of revenge, and giant companies preparing to impose their power on all areas of their life. Nobody is working to tamp down the temperature. All the ingredients for disaster are in place and it doesn't look like anyone is concerned about stirring up the recipe.
The insidiousness of this monopoly on information is actually frightening. There’s YouTube videos I watched a number of years ago on various issues, conflicts etc that have now disappeared. These weren’t conspiratorial videos but would’ve challenged some mainstream narratives with alternative viewpoints. It’s ironic that sections of the left have been crying fascism during the Trump years whilst big tech have literally followed through on actual fascistic behaviours right under their noses, too blind, righteous, and dumb to see what is problematic about this.
It technically isn't "fascism", it is tribalistic totalitarianism, but "sections of the left" have always been totalitarian (see Rousseau, arguably the original anti-rationalist utopian "leftist", who himself inherited the anti-rationalist tendencies of the counter-enlightenment and inquisitions).
Agreed. Tribalistic totalitarianism a more accurate description of what I was describing. It feels like the word fascism is bandied about a bit too much these days (as I dutifully demonstrated). Either way I don’t care much for tribalist totalitarianism or fascism. Thanks for that though :)
Woodward was always doing what the CIA told him. People hate to hear that, even rebellious but naive dissidents will argue that it’s impossible for the CIA to want rid of Nixon. And it’s just so normal that a former Navy Intelligence officer turned journo at the CIA’s magazine WaPo, gets a career making Deep Throat that oust the president, and this upstart Woodward gets full support from all the mainstream media to boot! If only they treated Glenn and Robert Parry and Gary Webb and all the other threats to power as nicely as they dod Woodward and Bernstein
Thanks for all of this honest reporting. I am a new subscriber and I feel like your level-headed investigations and quest for truth-telling have kept me sane the last few weeks. What is happening concurrently with the tech/government policing of political speech, is, in my opinion, a terrifying silencing of anyone who attempts to question the prevailing science narrative. Is it a coincidence that this pandemic has enabled our government to illegally grant itself the authority to shut down small businesses, private schools, etc, eroding basic civil liberties of its citizens all in the name of "protecting them" whilst Amazon, FB, Google, Zoom, Twitter, Apple, et al become massively more powerful and rich? I think not. From the early days of the pandemic, there have been respected virologists, epidemiologists, doctors and statisticians who have argued that all of the restrictive measures were/are unnecessary and in fact, more harmful than the virus itself. They're routinely silenced on social media for spreading "misinformation" as the corporate media delights in daily death counts, ginning up paranoia and fear and promoting never-ending lockdowns and universal mask-use, without ever questioning the effectiveness of these measures or the dangers/damage that has been done to children, small business owners, our economy. I'm sure that none of the election irregularities were due to unprecedented, last-minute changes to election laws or just outright disregard for them - all in the name of "emergency powers" governors granted themselves.
There is much in what you say, but the governors did not grant themselves emergency powers. Public health emergency powers are among the powers reserved to the states (and to the people) by the Tenth Amendment, and most state constitutions, because they are emergency powers needed without delay for legislative deliberation, lodge these powers in the state executive.
I suppose I am referring more to those like Gavin Newsom, who has been governing under the emergency decree for almost a year. One superior court judge did rule that he overstepped his authority in what she called an "unconstitutional exercise of legislative power."
There is generally a time limitation on executive emergency powers in the states, though. Several governors have flaunted this, refusing to defer to legislatures. Widmer in MI is a great example.
How does the 10th amendment allow trampling of the 1st and 14th amendments? There is no exemption for "public health emergency powers". I'm not a constitutional scholar but can read. Surly, the constitution would discuss public health emergencies if it were necessary.
medicine was primitive when the constitution was written, a lot of people died all the time.
a series of court cases later, 1800s, 1900s, about quarantines presumably established the appropriate mechanisms for setting aside other rights and legal principles for the "common good" during epidemics (such as the 1918 Spanish Flu that killed millions).
If you really wanted to make a good case against the "prevailing science narrative" (by which I assume you mean dysfunctional and /or corrupt corporate-state institutions), you would simply cite REAL scientific dissidents, of which there are many.
Leave off the added conspiracy bs and the claims you are attempting to make will look much more credible.
As it is it looks like you are violating one of the basic principles of scientific-rationalism (objectivity), which is that say that you started with a narrative (a subjective set of ideas and values) and then cherry picked data, facts and evidence to fit that narrative.
If you want to argue for better science you use the scientific method.
If you are making a political argument against the corrupt nature of the political and economic establishment, your argument should PRIMARILY focus on the failure of the establishment to legitimize itself and gain the support of citizens.
One approach to reforms is working inside the system, usually via incremental changes.
Another is more sweeping, and populist and disruptive to entrenched power and wealth.
To be clear, the main problem with "science" now is that it has been corrupted by elite power and wealth, corporate influence.
One of the political tactics of right wing astroturfers* is to reframe an issue such as "medicine and bureaucratic corruption" (or "climate change" etc) merely to do damage to "the left".
What those right astroturfers are NOT doing is actually improving science.
Not that it will matter to you, but I have never published a single word in association with the anti-vaxxer movement and as far as I can see, did not mention the covid vaccine in my post.
Thank you. Eloquently put.
The zeal with which my Ivy League educated friends are endorsing this move against Parler and/or calling for the outright persecution of anyone who was legally at a political rally in DC or even just voted for Trump is frightening. They seem incapable of realizing that this power will be turned around on them and are treating it as a zero sum game where they will emerge victorious over the forces of evil. Those that disagree with them, even if it's simply over their means, are racists, troglodytes, or worse. The lessons of 2001 and unchecked power in the name of security are lost on them.
I fear we're headed for even darker times as these totalitarian measures will certainly inspire a reactionary wave that will then be used as justification to crack down even harder. It is an eminently foreseeable consequence, and therefore must be intended. Stay well everyone and stay safe, it's going to be a bumpy ride.
Lee, I'm having the same experience. Virtually without exception, all my Ivy League pals are fully on-board with Democratic Authoritarianism. These are primarily high-achieving professionals who have sailed through 20-40 years of career success and personal financial expansion. They have solid family legacies in the form of trust funds and inheritances. A Marxist would call them "bourgeois." In spite of all their education and intellectualism, they're unable to recall that the "bourgeois" are always the first to go under totalitarian regimes as their critical thinking abilities and inside information (as direct servants to the elite) represent a serious threat to tyrants.
The psychology is complex and I'm trying to analyze it. These people have always studied hard and received Straight A's -- a reward for their ideology as much as intellectual effort. They don't understand failure; I recall that at Harvard Business School there was in fact a course in how to handle failures and mistakes. They have a deep investment in The System and have been handsomely rewarded by it. Tunnel-visioned, they have completely disregarded numerous recent "signal moments" like 9/11 and willingly parrot whatever the NY Times has to say.
Externally they celebrate success and achievement by posting happy family pics of expensive summer homes and exotic vacations. Internally things seem to be more complicated as they openly support "leftist" policies and positions that oppose their own class and the "dominance" of their ethnic group (almost invariably White), including gangs and groups that have publicly-avowed Marxist leaders. These achievers constantly shout against racism but live in a world entirely populated by people like themselves and would vehemently fight to keep a housing project or homeless shelter out of their own neighborhoods. They publicly sign on with the fantasy of "economic fairness" but pay high fees to accountants to shelter their incomes from taxes.
Is it guilt? I don't think so. I think it all stems from a complicated mix of enormous self-regard, entitlement (usually from birth), sense of moral authority, "head-in-the-sand" levels of naivete, a generally sincere wish to be "good," and deeply buried anxiety. The anxiety is rooted in the day-to-day moral compromises, big and small, that are almost impossible to avoid in banking, law, medical, journalism, and tech exec professions. It's also rooted in their inability to protect themselves at the most basic levels: personal body integrity, food production, wilderness hunting, fishing, etc. Even if they have a country house, they are truly "all in" when it comes to the dependencies of suburban life.
Also, for these people, *how they are perceived* is everything. They want you to think that they are Thinking Correctly and they signal virtue at every opportunity.
Basically they are all a lost cause and I've stopped talking to them on any meaningful level.
Lee and Urban, you are both on point and I just want to add detail that I think is useful for understanding.
1) The impact of social media is huge in this - in the creation of the bubble these people are in. Watch "Social Dilemma" and realize that the movement leftward of the Dem party starting around 2010 was social-media driven. The fact that the media was affected first draws even people who aren't on social media in, because the social media bubble first took over all of those producing content for the MSM.
2) This is an oligarchic elite being created, which will not end in authoritarian monarchy but rather in oligarchy looking more and more like China. These people have no fear and are eager to head that way because they are "in". The people who should worry about the repercussions are the working class and poor minority voters who support them, they are the ones who will be abandoned when push comes to shove. In fact, they effectively already are abandoned as their votes are sought through continued grievance, rather than solving their problems to create their happiness and contentment in life.
Succinct and accurate. The tribes that matter aren't L/R or R/D. They're authoritarian and libertarian. That's the battle, and the authoritarians are winning.
I disagree with the last part. In the early 90s, you had "free speech" enough to run your jaw at the bar or the thanksgiving table. If you wanted to go further and speak to the masses, you'd have to persuade ABC to give you a half hour slot, which they wouldn't do unless you promised to keep it politically insipid AND no cuss words AND no blasphemy AND no titties AND nothing gay. Joe Biden wanted to make raves as verboten as marijuana, and the ideas you read were limited to what was on sale at the local book store or library.
In 2020 ordinary people can broadcast their voice to the whole world while smoking weed and swearing like a trooper. You can download more or less anything from the history of subversive books, and probably find it for free even if Amazon won't sell you a copy. If your editor won't publish your articles you can set up for yourself on substack. And at the end of a hard day, free porn is streamed into the home like tap water.
I can't square this with the idea that the authoritarians and moral ninnies are winning. They have been routed, no?
Didn't Lennon write something about buying the peasants off with sex and tv?
They used to let the eunuchs wander anywhere in the castle, knowing they were harmless. Don't be fooled. They could give a rip if you marinate in dope, porn, blasphemy, subversive books and naughty words as long as you're harmless. In fact they may prefer that you're marinated as to better operate.
Authoritarians will move to end currency as quickly as they are moving to into censorship. Then they will monetize everything and privacy (read freedom) will no longer exist.
Not yet. They are winning the battle, not the war. On August 9, 1974, the Republican Party's funeral took place. Six years later Reagan won in a landslide. In 2020 ordinary people still had internet access that hadn't been terminated yet for dissidence. Their dissidence wasn't subject to reporting by their kids. There was no mandatory national registration and monitoring. We have more authoritarian advances yet to endure before routing can begin.
I don't believe you can blame social media for PMC love of status quo. I listened to a great rant by populism explainer-extraordinaire and Listen Liberal, The People, No author Thomas Frank on the Bad Faith podcast this week. He summarized all I know about elites going back to the 80s, when I met them in sororities, fraternities. Conformists to a tee, ready to look the other way if any of their tribe breaks the rules, always willing to throw lower classes under the bus, and that goes for Dems and Reps alike. Populism, working class consciousness, is our only hope.
I did watch "Social Dilemma" but found all the millennial smugness so irritating that I couldn't take the geeks seriously. I still find it hard to believe that "social media" has shaped Generation X to this degree.
In the oligarchic context you propose, the Ivy Leaguers' "virtue" is the skin that covers the skull -- they are unable to empathize, morally compromised, and operating at an instinctive animal level. Also some of them have real *hatred* for Trump and supporters, another sign of moral fissure. The American Political Class is therefore divided from its own humanity and universal truth.
At least wealthy Trumpers don't make claims about virtue. They're just fine with enriching themselves on the backs of others without empathy nor concern. This is also a sad condition but at least it's refreshingly direct.
I used to share a house with a starting football player for the NY Giants. He was a smart Midwest guy with an analytical mind. Everyone in the world was enamored with Lawrence Taylor at the time, but to me he was a beast who had one job in life....get the QB. There was no reason to aspire to be him, be like him, or even like him. When he put the uniform on, he was a one man wrecking crew. He won..we won...everyone won...until he crashed and burned by his own excesses.
I didn’t lose any sleep over his decline because I knew that he was a tool to be used by the Giants and by the state of New Jersey to excite and delight the masses. That’s Donald J Trump.
Am I ashamed I’ve used him the last 4 years to get done what needed to get done?
Am I shocked he broken some furniture and china in the West Wing?
Am I mature enough to understand that he puts his pants on one leg at a time just like Lawrence Taylor used to?
Don’t fall in love with the man or the woman promising you X, Y or Z...no matter how good they are at a particular task.
Always...Always...Always..... Think for yourself and own your own agency.
It’s the only think that separates us from 1984 and The Brave New World.
The hate comes from social media and media. Same as Fox News making people hate the Clintons in the 90s. It becomes lizard brain, and the bubbles literally include separate sets of facts. Lesley Stahl asks Trump questions based on things that your Ivy Gen X folks believe to be true but just ain't. But the whole bubble believes them to be true (e.g. Hunter Biden laptop = Russian disinfo).
The forces at work here are the same. Many on the left, both these Ivy leaguers as well as antifa, get indoctrinated and brainwashed on one set of falsehoods. Many on the right, including the Capitol rioters, get indoctrinated on another. Antifa and the Capitol rioters have fewer jobs and less happiness in the middle of the pandemic and their hate moves them to violence. The Ivy Leaguers are moved to hate but not violence. But it's the same phenomenon, driven largely by social media and the media forces laid out in Taibbi's "Hate, Inc".
Gen X are the 41-56 years old.
Millenials are the 25-40 years old. (aka Gen Y)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X
Thank you, I'm well aware of this. I'm Gen X and this is the group I was referring to in my original post about Ivy Leaguers at the top of the thread.
The Millennials are the public face of Social Media and these are the self-congratulatory types featured in Social Dilemma, grandiosely assigning themselves the awesome blame for "Destroying the World." I disagree with this perspective. IMO Social Media is a symptom, not a cause.
Yeah, I wasn't completely sure, just in case. Yeah, something was off for me in «Social Dilemma» too, thanks for putting it into words !
However, note that the generations 'raised' on Social Media will eventually come in power, so we're far from having seen all the impacts yet…
Nothing I've read in a long time says, "I have no idea what I'm talking about" quite as effectively as:
"the movement leftward of the Dem party starting around 2010"
When Ned Lamont defeated Joe Liebermann in the Democratic Senate Primary in 2006, the strong leftward movement was already well underway. The internet (if not social media) played a large part in that movement.
Here's a fascinating take: woke ideas can be understood as a type of Veblen good. If I'm a straight white male, embracing woke principles *should* be against my selfish interest. Therefore embracing these principles is a demonstration not just of how good and moral I am, but also how *strong* I am.
https://quillette.com/2019/11/16/thorstein-veblens-theory-of-the-leisure-class-a-status-update/
This was a fascinating and insightful article. The thing I see missing among these Luxury Leisure Class types is “character”. The kind of character one learns while digging ditches or bailing hay. Perhaps the only thing that will save us is mandatory military service. At a minimum it would teach discipline and character by, at least for a time, putting everyone at the same level of worthlessness(in the eyes of a Gunnery Sargent).
Commentor, dodging military service is one of the perks of being in the 1%. We haven't had a President with any military experience since Bush Sr. circa 1990 -- since the Pentagon is running that show there is no need from their point of view, but it would be better for the American People if this were a requirement for the Presidency.
I did sign up for Selective Service when I turned 18 and I'd do it again.
Yeah, it would have to be a mandate without loopholes. No exceptions for any reason. Everyone gets treated the same way. This will build character.
Almost everyone, the kids of the 0.1% will always find ways to avoid it. But it will still be good for the kids of the 9.9%
That is awesome, thanks!!
I think in terms of activism itself it must be said that you also need to be in luxury to devote the time to social criticism instead of assuring your own economic well being. You can be Laurie David or you can be an antifa chud living off a rich parent, but you can't spend time on woke activism unless you have the luxury of time.
ON the flip side, racism correlates indirectly with economic status - less educated people hate the "other" not only due to ignorance but because of the direct loss of economic opportunity as equality improves.
Whereas you are saying Richie Rich is so next level untouchable that he shows he is all for the elevation of the other, who will remain several stations below him.
Classically you describe it wellbut I don;t thinmk they are in any danger in this version.
This is a uniquely American fascism, it is an Oligarchic fascism without a visible Dear Leader hidden by a Potemkin democracy that shepherds voters to chose one or the other of the allowed candidates at the national level.
As for legitimacy, yeah, well, people get deplatformed for pointing at the studies of how quickly these voting machines can be owned onsite which then leads to the unanswered question of their system security knowledge on the actual tally servers.
Yeah, I don't question it, I just point at it so I don't get banned for pointing at the easily verifiable already highly public info.
In any case your friends, they should be just fine if they get on board with the sharks down at the country club.
Country club membership is no guarantee. In the most extreme example, check the bond traders etc. that didn't make it out of the WTC. Some were lucky, others were protected...and a few others were neither.
I agree with Wally below. Many of these people are stressed around the clock and only as useful as their masters find them on any given day. You'd think they'd realize this and jump the track, but if SubStack Commentator 34 is correct, then they are up late at night praying to continue Insider status.
"The "bourgeois" are always the first to go under totalitarian regimes"
Not always true : it was the middle class that put Nazis in power, and even reaped some of the rewards (except for the middle-class Jews).
Early in Stalin's reign, he had a lieutenant that was very loyal. So loyal that he informed Stalin about a plot to kill Stalin and install him as the leader. What did Stalin do? Killed his perceived competitor. Loyal or not, he was a threat. Same thing will happen here.
They think they'll be able to charm the socks for the dictators. It won't work; it never works. And as you said, they will be the first people led to the gallows.
To make a complex argument crude, being sufficiently woke is as helpful as a moat when the pitchforks come?
As a sad parallel to this: I worked with Newsom's team early in the pandemic on potential paths and responses. It became perfectly clear very early on that lots and lots of Latinos were going to die, and the reason wasn't only worse health and access to healthcare. Newsom's "diversity" on his staff consists of Latinx folks who went to Berkeley and UCLA and have very little to no understanding of what the life of a Latino in multigenerational living space in LA is like. They had no idea how to communicate to them, no idea how to help them, and no clue why they weren't simply magically doing the things all of their buddies from college would rationally do in response to the pandemic. 80% of the deaths in LA County are Latino, versus 48% of the population.
I live in a semi rural area in San Diego county, and can attest to the truth of what you describe. Folks need to understand that California has the highest poverty rate in the US, while also having among the highest cost of living. Poor people in CA have no choice but to live 3 and 4 generations together
"the highest poverty rate in the US, while also having among the highest cost of living"
Seems obvious put like this, doesn't it ?
It does, but it's more than this. California is a very business unfriendly. The state income tax is, I believe, the highest in the US (if not, it's no. 2 or 3). The middle class grows smaller as middle income earners move out of state to places like Texas with better job prospects and cost of living, as do many retirees looking for lower cost of living. The poor stay either because of family or because they can't afford to move. It's also interesting that we are starting to the some large silicon valley business moving or expanding out of state, such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise an Tesla. I've lived here my whole life, and will be moving when I retire. The direction of California is toward two classes - the very rich and the poor. It causes me pain to see what my beautiful state has become.
The big secret that no one is saying: HP, Tesla, etc are moving under cover of general issues with California, but the specific issue is Board diversity. CA already started requiring one woman on Boards, but starting end of 2021 it's a higher number of women and also need specific POC or LGBTQ. The people moving just don't want to change their boards just yet. Usually a CEO has been put in place by the board and Board changes put their job at risk. Board members obviously like their slots and don't want to lose them.
I'm not sure that's much of an issue with the silicon valley companies,. The issue I recall as mentioned by most of these companies is cost of llivifor thei g
Their diet plays a huge role. I lived directly next to a housing project for eight years (until quite recently) and saw first-hand how food stamps are spent. It should be illegal to use your food stamp allocation to buy more than 15% of sugar and trash foods, but it isn't. Therefore "food stamps" represent a transfer payment to Coca Cola Inc.
An ER doc I know says he regularly sees kids these days come in with massive GI distress from eating too much Flamin' Hot Cheetos.
I live in the Southwest and lived in SoCal. Latinos and Hispanics aren't living in housing projects in CA. They're living crowded into apartments and single family houses as rent is exorbitant. And many, esp elder, eat traditional staples. They are dying at higher rates all over the US, as are Native Americans and blacks.
I would start by blaming the agribusiness and city planning for that. How do you expect poor people to be able to eat well without a decently priced farmer's market within biking distance ?
Urban grocery stores have decent food, including some organic options, and it is possible to obtain a solid diet.
Farmer's markets don't take food stamps but there is a an urban farmer's market a 15-minute walk from the housing projects described above.
The problem is not access, it is policy. All these "progressive" mayors and governors really show their true stripes on this one. They don't care what poor people eat. If they did, they'd do something about it.
Meanwhile Coke and Monsanto keep raking it in on our tax dime.
Hmm, I thought that you were talking about one of those "food deserts". Are they actually just not that common in the USA, or were your neighbors just lucky ?
Thanks - and a question. Shouldn't we learn from China how to do fast mass Covid-19 (the "Trump" virus) vaccination? We are extremely slow -- it will take by new reports about 14 weeks to vaccinate priority groups. How possibly we can be so slow and disorganized. China vaccinates million plus people essentially overnight. Is anybody studying this -- how they can do it? Many thanks
Great question. US and China use different practices. Step one in the US is for a private company to spend more than $2B over twelve years before the first clinical dose can be taken. That's a result of ever-increasing demands from the FDA, that Trump spent four years fighting to get only a lowering of cost and shortage of length of time to bring new generics to market. Step one in China is that a government lab develops a medication and the government orders is manufactured and used.
China's vaccine is carried on an adenovirus so that it can infiltrate cells to prompt making antibodies. Adenoviruses are common cold viruses just like COVID19, they are just less contagious but create complications regardless of age. China tweaked a biowarfare weapon, an adenovirus carrying deadly infections, to carry bits of COVID19. If the patient has adenovirus antibodies from a prior cold, they will kill the vaccine. If the vaccine works, the first sign is usually symptoms that look exactly like COVID19.
US vaccines rely on messengerRNA, having no viruses at all. Much more expensive than China's vaccine to develop and manufacture, but far safer. Project Warp Speed was the first time in history that the FDA was part of the solution instead of part of the problem.
Logistics of mRNA vaccines are the hardest part. The science is relatively simple, every scientist to whom I've spoken concurs that the logistics are the hardest part. Our Federal form of government lets the central government manage delivery to the states to centers identified by the states. The planning was intense, very difficult, and pulled off well until states took possession. No US President has the authority to order state health departments what to do with the vaccines, and some states - noticeably California and NY, fucked it up. The Coronavirus Task Force and the CDC issued guidance, not orders, to the states. No change of name on the Oval Office will make this any different. My state, Tennessee, is vaccinating quickly without any wasted doses; NY had to destroy nearly half its vaccines.
I'm not a Trump supporter, I am a now-retired physician, guided by evidence. The COVID19 response by Trump was better than I could have hoped for. I don't like the guy, never voted for him, but this was a real success. Too bad you'll never read about it on Facespace or Whastwitinstagoogletube.
Thank you very very much. All in all -- US acted as a failed state. China has total of less than 5K dead -- we are now approaching that number daily.
After nine months we are still unprepared for mass vaccination. Moreover, we still don't information -- daily, weekly - by city, county -- how many people were vaccinated, percentage of total -- basic information. This is horrible incompetency for a country that wants to be "a shining example" and organizes coup after coup - to bring "democracy and freedom" (except in Saudi Arabia).
I never supported insane clown Trump but -- the rot appears to be MUCH deeper, starting with health for profit instead universal health care.
Once again, many thanks for your kind response. Stay well and my best regards, Boris
Boris, the nature of a federation is not well understood even among most US citizens. In 1776 thirteen sovereign nations surrendered a small part of their sovereignty to a central government, and wrote a constitution to keep power at the state level, closer to the people. The constitution was never written for efficiency, it was written for individual liberty. It contained many compromises, including two chambers of congress and the electoral college, to prevent the tyranny of either the majority or the federal government.
My friends in Europe and Asia point to how compliant their citizens are with government orders, never recalling that the U.S. was settled by people fleeing over-reaching governments. We don't have the submission gene built-in; we do have the freedom-to-dissent gene.
Compare annual deaths COVID19 to annual deaths from medical errors. Then recognize that a diagnosis of COVID19 and a cause of death of COVID19 are both rewarded financially, and you begin to squint. The cost of China's achieved efficiency was as many as 150M dead at the hands of authoritarian government during the 20th century. We can have another 149M plus die before paying the same cost.
Centralized control (like China) gets the details right and the big picture wrong. Democratic republics do the opposite. We have the big picture right but and drive the details off of profit motives or incompetent civil servants. Democracy needs to improve its candidate selection processes - right now it's resting on its laurels because it's good at its key innovation - ousting bad performers fairly quickly without blood, but it still hasn't learned how to pick good performers.
Don't understand your response. I asked:
How China organize and do almost overnight vaccination of more than a million people in one city? They must have tens of thousands teams and superb organization to be able to do that. I thought that you perhaps know details...
Occam's razor should make it obvious that the Chicoms didn’t vaccinate a million people in one city overnight and that they are simply lying about it. How would anyone know?
It helped that the virology institute in Wuhan was the center for Chinese biowarfare at least until a decade ago when I stopped following it. A couple tweaks to an existing bioweapon and presto, you've got a COVID vaccine. Tell the population when to be where to get the vaccine, and there's 100% compliance. Efficiency is one measurement and it considers only elapsed time and resources consumed. The end result and the means to get there are irrelevant, which is why professionals measure more than one aspect of a program.
I thought he answered it quite well...
The answer at ground level is that they have tens of thousands teams and superb organization. The answer at 30,000 feet is what I said.
US vaccinated almost 2 million with Salk's free polio jab and placebo, many of them kids, in one month in 1956. I think Americans under 40 have only seen our privatized, neolib systems. They cannot even envision a country with competent public logistics and citizen cooperation.
Lee, I surmise this crack down is timed so to create a backlash. Then Kamala, the corrupt DA[Jow is gone soon] can crack down. The problem is the people who are victims of the crack down are well armed and will not go quietly into the night. The left has restarted fighting the Civil War recently. Hardly a coincidence.
White supremacists have never *conceded* the fact that the union snd human rights won.
It's not white supremacists that you have to worry about, comrade.
Comrade yourself.
Interesting, did that appelation offend you?
Make you angry?
Oh no all two dozen of them are coming to getcha!
Emergency!! Call the Southern Poverty Law Center with their $471 Million endowment! Since there's no Poverty in the South that needs their attention, they can use it to round up active Neo-Nazis!!
spoken like an unreconstructed Confederate from a long line of Lost Cause Confedrates, Klan Kleages and Southern Democrat Jim Crow Enforcers.
Clearly it hasn't taken long for Parler's homeless to take refugee in Glenn World.
Give Ben health insurance now Glenn.
LOL! Born and bred Connecticut Yankee. Oh..and the Klan "don't cotton fucking Eyetalians!" Your unbridled anger is something you should deal with soon. I'm a longtime fan of Greenwald. I'm a true libertarian, you are a knee jerk liberal. Glenn is intellectually honest. You are neither.
Oh look it's TE again, hi TE. I hate Trump, and I'm not even American, but sure, all Trump supporters are KKK and all Democrats are communists.
Maybe this power will be turned around on them, or maybe they can use this power to permanently entrench their own power. It's a high stakes game of poker, playing with freedom chips, and the eventual winner takes all.
The true believers always end up on the receiving end with those they burnt down the forest of laws to get at, while the cynical opportunists end up in charge.
As a cynical opportunist, I hope you're right.
LOL
How? Who counts the votes, NoSuch?
Funny, those Ivy League schools were thrilled to be endowed by the slave shipping fortunes of the 17th and 18th centuries. No reparations, no "sorry", nothing.
Elihu who?
Well, they did raise a bunch of Useful Idiots, so.....
LOL
Scared is an understatement. Especially for liberals disenfranchised by their own party who voted for Trump. The only strategy is a bunker mentallity one. Stay low and incognito for the next four years or longer.
I don't have - or keep - people who believe like that as friends.
You need new friends.
What we have is fascism and the melding of corporations and government is the very defining characteristic of fascism. Read Mussolini's chief theoretician's (Alfredo Rocco) works if you need more convincing. Great work again Glenn, and we civil libertarians are in deep trouble as I see it. They are going to make us pay and pay dearly.
Seems like there are at least two kinds of libertarians - those who want liberty for people and those who want liberty for corporations, and you can't have both. If one argues for corporate freedom then one argues for the removal of personal liberty. No rules at all amounts to corporate tyranny.
Meh, nah some of us have spines and plans. Nor have we ever relied on people whose obvious tact is EVIL.
The deplatforming of Parler, mass calls to excommunicate those who basically supported a political opponent while being cheered by neoliberal zealots backed by an opportunistic corrupt class is the latest manifestation of the establishment authoritarians intent on burning dissent at the stake in the guise of protecting “Democracy. It’s the kind of thing that happened during the Spanish Inquisition where a corrupt Catholic Church backed by moneyed classes defined what were allowable views or not with dire penalties for those who blasphemed. (Today that could mean not just being robbed of the ability to speak freely on social media, but loss of livelihood, ability to shop, bank, travel...and even subject to violence.)
What the US Empire in the throes of its latest orgy of hysteria against its never ending enemies - now fully turned inwards, in a blowback of historic proportions - may be missing is the reaction this is having in the rest of the World where US Big Tech is already viewed with deep suspicion due to their monopoly on data and information. What is especially disquieting is the knowledge that the CIA/NSA have their hooks in these companies which operate under US laws and jurisdictions and increasingly not even that. Amazon brazenly broke its contract with Parler without even a chance of a stay order. Lawyers even quit representing Parler with erstwhile civil libertarians like ACLU - which had once defended the rights of actual Nazis to march as part of their First Amendment Rights - joining in on the feeding frenzy. Even a serial killer has right of representation but ironically a serial killer will have a better chance of justice in the US than having a view that the 2020 election was unfair (which incidentally was the exact same thing Dems yammered on to cheers for 4 years with Clinton repeatedly calling Trump “illegitimate” and the 2016 election “stolen”.
If a sitting POTUS and tens of millions of his followers could be hounded in the US by tech monopolies and corporations clearly allied with a party that has gained power, ignoring US laws and precedent, what protection is there for other countries where US laws don’t even nominally apply?
Countries such as China and Russia have actively started building out their own verticals - hardware, networks, domain nodes, data centers, operating systems, social media applications - that don’t rely on the latest whims and politics of an Empire in the midst of a civil war between Establishment and anti-Establishment ideologies. Turkey is already accelerating its move away from WhatsApp into a home grown app. There are active calls in India - with its giant population and ubiquitous use of digital services even among the poor - which is almost entirely reliant on US technology, that these latest shenanigans in the US - against around half its *own* people - are the wake up call for digital independence. (This is akin to the increasing call for independence from the dollar by various countries - including China, Russia, India which are parts of RIC, SCO, BRICS organizations - since basically the dollar under the Obama and accelerated during the Trump admin has become a tool of raw US power to dictate who sovereign nations may trade with and who not.)
The left does have much in common with institutional religion these days — questioning dogma not allowed, excommunication and shunning for heretics, collusion with the governmental powers that be to eliminate dissenting views, etc. Ironically the ostensibly rationalist left are basically the new religious right — self-important moral busybodies who think it is their job to tell everyone else how they should think, feel and act.
Absolutely. What’s amazing and disheartening at the same time is that many of my peers, many PhDs in hard sciences where questioning established theories in rational ways is not only tolerated but encouraged, and who are wary of religious dogma - generally a hallmark of the right, have become brainwashed into not only not applying the same dispassionate rigor to the obviously messianic and hypocritical stances of the neoliberal authoritarians, but immediately shrieking “blasphemer” to anyone who points out the clearly self-serving contradictions in the pronouncements of this era’s High Priests of Moral Order.
I don't think think there is much correlation between intelligence and ethics.
Your comment doesn't make me think "other countries have wised up and are avoiding working with US Tech giants, and the US needs to constrain them, too". Your comment makes me think "other countries are taking control of the technology infrastructure using centralized control from authoritarian governments, in the United States the same thing is happening but under the control of an oligarchic technopolitical elite."
Best comment award. ☆☆☆☆☆
Indeed. Please start your own sub stack Galileo ;)
The elephant in the room is international net neutrality.
You obviously have no idea what "net neutrality" even means.
I am suggesting that assaults on neutrality (further commercial power grabs) are the logical progression of the events discussed here. I'm also suggesting that the most likely motivation for your reply is that you are an unhappy troll.
No, the most likely motivation for my reply is usage that strongly indicates the user didn't know what they were saying.
Few people in the USA actually know what the expression means.
"Net neutrality" is the principal that participants of a network need to treat all data traveling on the network identically, without regard to who it's from, who it's to, or what the content is.
That's fairly accurate. "Net neutrality" means that a private corporation can spend its money building infrastructure that then becomes de facto public property. The $20T plus cost of building the internet was paid for by private, not government, money. Now that others have spent their money, government feels entitled to lay claim to controlling it. It's the effective reverse of Obama's "You didn't build that."
Unfortunately, it isn't completely clear how this should be addressed. If ABC Corporation builds out a wired and wireless network for its use at a cost of $300B, why does it have to make the network equally available to its competitors? On the other hand, should ABC Corporation end up owning much of the nation's internet infrastructure, should it be allowed to deny use to others, or charge others different prices for the same services?
Reality is that, as almost always occurs, private money has built something and now government wants to appropriate it for its own use. Government can never be sufficiently nimble to do what private industry does, but it can always be sufficiently authoritarian to seize what it wants.
If access to food and healthcare are basic rights, isn't access to information a basic right as well? When philosophy hits reality, things rarely go well. I'm honestly not smart enough to know what to do here. I am smart enough to know that perhaps, as with roadways, the information superhighway must be made equally available to everyone, but not everyone is entitled to a Rolls Royce to drive on it.
That's profoundly ignorant about computer networking - and wrong.
Anyone can build out their own network and keep it for their own use or rent it out as they may see fit, charge whatever they want, change packet rates however they want - pay per performance, give priority to some users and not others, etc. Knock your lights out.
What you can't do is provide for the actual flow of the actual internet to go through and have those special treatment rules apply on the same network links; that's the price you pay for having it be a part of the actual internet. Any given network link can be private or on the public internet, but not both at the same time, and that's the issue.
If you want special treatment, fine, do it, not any problem at all, and you can connect in to the actual internet at multiple points if you want - not a problem at all. Each link can be one, public, the other, private, just not do both at the same time.
So your complaints are simply false and are based on a failed understanding of what the internet actually is and what you can and cannot do with it or other "private" networks. ... It's a lot like air travel; you can either own or rent a private jet to take you from New York to Los Angeles, or you can go with a "common carrier" like United Airlines, and there are advantages to either, but it's up to you to choose.
Zero bandwidth prioritization.
Yeah, with organizations responsible for such critical Internet and Web infrastructure as top-level domains being based in the USA, there are risks to neutrality (see what almost happened with .org). IMHO these kind of institutions should be on their own or "UN" soil (like embassies), and be located somewhere more neutral, like Geneva, Switzerland (for instance).
If Parler restarts on its own infrastructure, we still may see people go after them by preventing the backbone from pointing to them. That would be a calamity.
In other news, one of the pirate bay founders mocked Parler (and… Gab??) for not being able to keep their website up.
They might, but I can hardly see it succeeding, considering how thepiratebay or stormfront are still up…
an apt description of Peter Thiel's deplatforming of Gawker settle a grudge.
Wasn’t that by court order due to Gawker’s defamation? Was there a court order requiring that Parler be shut down?
a court order resultant from Thiel's deep pockets financing the legal fees that authored the defamation suit and delivered the court order.
There is a legal system for the wealthy and one for everyone else.
A court order...from Florida. Judge Gong-Show... https://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/trial-judge-in-hulk-hogan-gawker-case-is-most-reversed-in-pinellas/2270818/
The strange thing, to me, of Glenn’s post is that AWS absolutely does not have a monopoly here. Sure, they only gave them a couple days to move their site to another service. But move it, they can. Of course, Parler then proved how poorly they were handling the privacy of their users, and how poorly the entire site was developed.
All their back-up services who they thought they could move their code to dropped out virtually on the same day. It was a fairly coordinated attack. See eg https://deadline.com/2021/01/parler-ceo-says-service-dropped-by-every-vendor-and-could-end-the-company-1234670607/
Those are not back up services. Those are other services that run things like “log in authentication” and “notifications.” They are complementary services, and again, there are plenty of alternatives.
You seem to be implying that somehow it’s Parler’s fault that they couldn’t move their code and get them up and running in 48 hrs because of “poor code”. (It’s akin to blaming a woman for getting molested because she was wearing a short skirt).
It’s not easy to move a whole infrastructure, storage, servers, two-factor-authentication service providers etc in the best of times eg to create a fully functional hot back-up disaster recovery setup requires months though with providers like AWS, a lot of it is turnkey - which is why they are so popular.
Incidentally Gab had the same issue years ago when they were nearly erased. They apparently learnt from that and built a more robust big-tech proof infrastructure. Though as per latest rumor they may also be under threat of getting their domain name deregistered with ICANN in which case you’d have to find them via direct IP.
I read it the same way.
“It’s akin to blaming a woman for getting molested because she was wearing a short skirt”
My goodness. Good effort trying to score a quick point there. But that’s a poor analogy. And you misread what I was implying.
I agree that it was not surmountable to smoothly transition in two days.
That's not the point and you know it.
The point is that these private companies have decided it’s not good business to serve this customer. Now this customer can move to other services.
There were times when real estate agents would not sell homes to black people in white neighborhoods because they would bring down prices. After all the black people could go elsewhere. It was simply “good business”.
Thankfully society realized that this “good business” was discriminatory and laws were passed against such activities.
We’ll await the lawsuit Parler has launched vs Amazon for breaching their 30 day rule (let alone any monopolistic collusion)
AWS is not a monopoly, but they clearly exerted monopolistic power in conjunction with Apple and Google. Once the tech giants crossed that Rubicon, they have run afoul of the antitrust statutes. Unfortunately for Parler antitrust litigation is likely to take the best part of 10 years.
As of today, I believe the CEO of Parler and his family are in hiding due to death threats.
I and other early users of CompuServe recall how poorly the site functioned in its youth. Parler is today's CompuServe, except nobody was trying to destroy CompuServe while it got its act together.
AWS does not have a monopoly, but Amazon has shown it will muscle aside dissent and competition. Eventually nearly all web traffic flows through a server controlled by FAANG. It has become a self-appointed world government in control of information.
" leading left-wing politicians" There are no such animals in DC. They are liberals and DemocRATS, not remotely of the left. It would help if very smart writers like Glenn Greenwald and Caitlin Johnstone would stop using "left" in their descriptions of these hacks.... unless in quotes... please.... otherwise, great article, as usual.
I’m very careful about this distinction. But one of the most vocal voices demanding this Silicon Valley censorship was AOC, and she then praised them once they heeded her calls. I suppose you could say AOC isn’t really of the left but then we’re just into semantics land. In any event, I consciously used it here because of examples like that.
I don’t think AOC is mature enough to understand her role in the larger ecosystem.
Right now she’s a campus rebel yelling slogans at a Sandinista rally, not knowing that Daniel Ortega right now is on 5th Ave in NY loading up on a million $ worth of US Goods so he can go back and be among the working class.
She heads up to her Watergate Apartment while guys like Paul Ryan used to sleep in a cot in their office.
End of the day, when it came to really spend her political capital to get what her supporters wanted, she sold out. Another cover of Vogue..though this time they left her keep the $30,000 in new clothes.
Which means Pelosi has sucked her into Pelosi’s vortex and now AOC is but one more Flying Monkey in the pantry ready to go do Pelosi’s bidding up on the witch’s command.
That’s the problem with $ and Leftists.
People in the Establishment will test to see if you’re truly principled or if mere $ will move you off your core values. And since there’s so much money in DC...it’s worth floating a $ figure or two first...just to see if they are really who they say they are.
Giving credence to the phrase “Young and Dumb.”
Ortega is reportedly the richest man in Nicaragua. Not bad for a former communist ;-)
Communism is attractive to people with little valuable utility to society that dream of riches. They all think they will be chosen but in doing so they need to appropriate those with valuable utility. For every socialist that thinks they will be chosen because they are faithful, YOU won't! Lenin and his cohorts all died because in the wings of every socialist movement is the worst arseholes on earth.
communism has its roots in a broken antisemitic self hating Jewish narcissist who let his own family go to rot while creating his life works. Pretty appropriate.
The curse of the left has always been "parlor pinks" who love the sound of their own voices.
María Gabriela Chávez was worth a cool US$4.2 billion in 2015.
https://www.latinpost.com/articles/71424/20150812/maria-gabriela-ch%C3%A1vez-net-worth-hugo-ch%C3%A1vezs-daughter-richest-woman-in-venezuela-worth-4-2-billion.htm
Rumor has it she made it selling cat tacos after her father, in true socialist fashion, destroyed the economy of the country with the largest proven oil reserves on the planet.
Another triumph of leftism.
Thats the kicker, the left cannot point to a single example of success. You may not like their methods but at least the capitalist dogs had success with America.
No one is fleeing capitalism to the safety of socialism and communism, even Oswald knew that.
I think this is the best, most concise assessment of AOC I have ever seen. Bravo, good sir!
I notice none of you who say "these aren't left" never give actual examples of politicians you consider left for us to refute as well. Odd.
The words left and politician is a contradiction in terms. Bernie is the best we have for now. I'd love to see an interview with Bernie discussing his ideas and the reality of functioning in a snake pit.
Oh dear - if Bernie is the "best we have", we are screwed - the best what, btw, the best D?
Tulsi Gabbard is to the left of Bernie...
It's a shame to see her selling out.
Excellent! I could not agree more. AOC is history she sold out and it was predictable...
I wondered if AOC is royalty somehow, through the Jamaica British upper caste....
You say a lot of stuff here about AOC without any proof whatsoever of its truth.
The vogue shoot was a bad idea but she went for it.
Come on now.
Bernie Sanders has had DECADES to put out meaningful legislation. Hes never done it. He has 2 bills in his entire career and one was naming a post office. He tweeted how SC spends 2x on inmates what they spend on students....VERMONT SPENDS 3X ON INMATES WHAT IT SPENDS ON STUDENTS, and ships its fucking inmates out of state. The dude is a bullshit artist. TO. THE. CORE.
Bernie is a southern hemisphere socialist, hes 100% full of shit when you look at the hard facts.
He is not called the *amendment king* for nothing. Most of his meaningful legislation is tacked onto bills written by other senators. He is the reason why $600 checks (pittance as that may be) became part of the stimulus package. The for-profit prison system is a national disgrace and not particular to any one state, but Vermont's inmate population is quite low both in and out of state. We also lack the number of colleges and universities of many other states so it stands to reason that we spend less than some on higher education. Bernie is many things but a bullshit artist is not one of them.
Right so hes not a bullshit artist hes just pointing at SC as a state for spending 2x on prisoners what it spends on students, while at the same time ignoring the fact his own state is worse and spends 3x? That's not being a bullshit artists?
What's he doing there then?
Good points you bring up Marci about him not being the main sponsor, but that is another problem I have with DC as a whole and not Bernie specific.
This is an outright lie:
"Bernie Sanders has had DECADES to put out meaningful legislation. Hes never done it"
He has authored more legislation enacted into law than any living politician in the USA. He's done it by amendments, riders and reconciliation.
Another day, another one of your FALSE ALLEGATIONS refuted by facts.
https://www.congress.gov/member/bernard-sanders/S000033?pageSort=dateOfIntroduction%3Adesc&q=%7B%22bill-status%22%3A%22law%22%2C%22sponsorship%22%3A%22sponsored%22%7D
Thats Congress.gov's official record of the three bills he got passed, two were post offices, sorry. He still has 1 bill. Ever.
Or is congress also lying?
Also what fucking color is the sky in the world you live in?
Standard uninformed right wing talking point about Bernie there. bernie's done a hell of a lot more than that, including how he's voted on pretty well on the bills of others that Dems promote over any Independent "socialist, but I'll let others correct you on that and the Amendment King stuff. If you're surprised that Dems didn't roll over to support his bills then tomorrow's sunrise will also startle you. Also not surprising: the the GOP doesn't embrace Bernie's agenda or bills.
Another thing the state of Vermont doesn't do is what Sanders demands as sole leader. They have a state legislature or that other part. He's their Senator, a tiny difference in your hard facts you imagined you know so much better.
LOL - how many "Ind 'socialists'" ARE there in Cong.?
From my understanding Ind Sanders had a deal with the Dems - he wouldn't cross them in Congress and they wouldn't run a Dem against him for the Sen - Obama and Schumer endorsed him when he ran.
When Conyers, et.al introduced their roughly 20 page M4A bill in the House, HR 676, Sanders, instead of slapping an S in front of it and introducing it in the Sen, introduced his own 200+ page bill - moved to have it read into the record, but after 1/2 hour or so of the Clerk's reading, when told that it was interfering with Sen business (no doubt naming more POs) withdrew the request - he sat down and shut up - his routine MO when told to do so.
There are so many more examples along the same line - he is tolerated in order to put a "prog" face on the party - to keep lefties from bolting and to keep them donating to Ds instead of 3rd parties whose actual platforms align with their principles - I can't help wondering what Stein could have done with the $200+ million given to Sanders in '16 ...
My simple test proposal on who is progressive - “Left” versus “fake Left”:
- Defended publisher Assange
- Protested “Russia-gate” hoax and impeachment “entertainment” time waste - while citizens were collapsing into poverty
- Demand massive DNC and Biden family corruption investigation (e.g., Hunter’s laptops)
- Demand stop of sanctions against “godless” socialist countries
- (plus -- M4A, Trump virus $2K/mo, urgent action on climate change, police brutality, (in)justice reform, “defense” budget, etc.)
Who passes the criteria – TYT, Intercept, corp. media, Congress/Senate -- certainly NOT. Anything still missing on this list?
Interestingly, a rising star in DNC in 2015, who was “excommunicated” after declaring for socialist Bernie and not for corrupt queen Hillary (who brazenly named her “Russian asset” after Tulsi demolished Hillary’s protégé Kamala Harris), Tulsi Gabbard, passes most of my criteria. While most opponents of DNC cabal would meekly “bring chocolates” to Pelosi and Schumer here is the truly epic and exceptional Tulsi’s response:
Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton . You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why.
Now we know — it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose. It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly.
Dem Party of oligarchs is beyond salvation – a viable third (and fourth..) party is THE solution.
I am always amazed that so many people think there is a huge difference between the Red and Blue corporate/political teams. They are so similar in policy that they are nearly indistinguishable. In favor of forever wars? check. In favor of massive wealth inequality and massive corporate mergers? check. In favor of the Patriot Act? check. Take huge donations from the oligarchs? check. Wars of regime change and staged CIA-backed coups in socialist countries? check. Endlessly increasing military budgets? check. You know I could go on like this for an hour, and it would be check, check and more check. They all agree on all major policy issues, and they pretend to fight over things like gun laws and abortion rights. I just wish everyone would pay attention.
That is why I call them all "corporate-owned warmongers."
Two wings one party.
Nader, for whom I voted 4x, called it the "duopoly"
I keep saying: when the protestors from DC and the protestors across all the major cities form the summer realize they have a common enemy, it will be a glorious revolution.
You're describing tribalism. Unfair. My tribe good, your tribe bad.
Tulsi Supporter here! MPP a viable option?
As a liberal. I love Tulsi and her rational approach. Unfortunately, after she knee-capped Kamala in a primary debate, she was cutoff by the Democratic establishment by barring her from future debates ending her candidacy for all tense and purposes.
Thanks and see: https://tulsi.locals.com/
Thanks for that - I signed up! Looks BRAND NEW, as in only about three days old at this point!
Before I do - is it "powered by AWS"?
I totally agree about Tulsi Gabbard. She is a needle in the elite "democrate" haystack.
Great response.
It's very unfortunate that AOC appears to have drunk of the neoliberal kool-aid.
AND it's very unfortunate that Glenn used left as he did; I agree with you. And no, it wasn't just semantics.
The socialist states aren't sanctioned because they are godless. Why would you choose that one piece of PR to believe? You think we sanctioned Russia because of religion? Wow.
You still believe in the Russia-gate fairytale? Basic fact: The entire anti-Russian narrative is a deliberate fabrication.
Clapper, Brennan & Hayden trio were among former 50 intelligence officials stating that Hunter-laptop is classical “Russian disinformation”.
- They were also key promoters of the three-year Russia-gate hoax.
- They were also key intelligence executives in Obama/Biden/Hillary government – the government which hunted Snowden (forcing Bolivian plane with Bolivia’s president to land to search it) and armed Al Qaeda (including “white helmets” hoax) and staged all chemical attacks in Syria to remove its government.
Trump’s utter incompetence in handling Covid-19 created the human and economic catastrophe that will be called - Trump-virus; he brought into government religious extremism and racism.
The Russia-gate hoax and Ukraine-impeachment “entertainment” was concocted by Obama/Hillary/Biden/Pelosi, Schumer, etc. and their intelligence and DNC executives on behalf of their Wall Street and military industry donors, i.e., the imperial War party
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/were-in-a-permanent-coup
Im an anti-government conservative, in no way shape or form did I ever believe the McCarthyism the DNC was pushing.
Trump isn't incompetent in handling COVID-19, the Governors were. Look at the facts between NY and FL.
https://nypost.com/2021/01/10/florida-puts-new-york-to-shame-in-rational-pandemic-policies/
Trump was not totally incompetent in handling epidemic which will enter the US history as "Trump virus"... After nine months of our suffering and soon 400,000 deaths. Because of human and economic catastrophe created by Trump's incompetency and religious extremism... You must be drinking again.
We now have, after nine months daily deaths reaching China's total number of deaths. Instead we have Pompeo's and Trump's endless accusations of China to deflect responsibility -- for which both should be impeached !!
We need to thank and congratulate China and its able government for acting speedily and rapidly containing what should enter US history as a Trump-virus. And try to figure out just how China is able to vaccinate a million city almost overnight -- they must deploy tens of thousands teams.
We can and should do the same yet we are still in 14 (fourteen) weeks estimates for just primary vaccination groups. This is nothing but the federal crime -- after nine months of "preparations"
The US is a failed state - a state that totally failed both its "left" and "right" citizens
Upvoted for your pinpointing of the DNC's Russia-gate fable, but I disagree that Trump was incompetent in his handling of the pandemic. I had *expected* that he might join with the anti-vaxxers in a fit of his usual narcissistic denial of reality. Instead he promoted the quick development of vaccines and dubbed the unprecedented swift roll-out "operation warp speed."
This pandemic is working its way across the globe, and countries and states that escaped the first wave fell victim in later waves, regardless of actions taken by their governments.
No, countries that did well with the first wave helped to dampen the second - Trump, from the beginning, in public, consistently underplayed the seriousness of the virus, though in private he admitted it was bad news - remember, it would be gone "by Easter" etc. and he consistently pooh-poohed masks, mocking Biden wearing one He could have used the DPA to ramp up the production of PPE enormously - by concentrating on masks instead of ventilators many lived could have been saved - I said early on what a shame it would be if we had to ration ventilators because we rationed masks. As someone said - if Trump had told his followers it was "Patriotic" to wear a mask and consistently modeled that behavior, many could have been saved - again, look at Taiwan, e.g.
And when Mr Macho got sick, and apparently he was sicker than was let on - he got whisked off in a helicopter to a mil. hospital, got all the best Rx - then came back, whipped off his mask on the WH balcony and with a big grin said "See, it's fine" (he was probably on a steroid high at the time - dexamethasone) Rx that were not available to the public.
I'll give him credit for Operation Warp Speed - got a vaccine developed but no plan for its delivery and distribution.
Sorry - when the chips were down, he failed miserably to "take care of the people" I thought Russiagate was indeed a farce and that Ukraine bit may well have deserved a censure (Gabbard, I think, suggested that) but Impeachment? Naw. I do think he deserved impeachment for his handling of the corona virus - "reckless endangerment and disregard for human life"
I think he, and many others, know that if it hadn't been for Corona, he would have been re-elected ...
Thank you. My recollection is that initially he was among anti-vaxxers -- he quickly changed mind after he realized vaccine as a solution. Thanks again
Don't forget Madeline Albright who was a basket of ideas to create wars. Add to shitlist.
Just here to say thumbs up for Tulsi! I believe she will be president in an election of two.
A simple test proposal on who is progressive - “Left” versus “fake Left”:
- Defended publisher Assange
- Protested “Russia-gate” hoax and impeachment “entertainment” time waste - while citizens were collapsing into poverty
- Demand massive DNC and Biden family corruption investigation (e.g., Hunter’s laptops)
- Demand stop of sanctions against “godless” socialist countries
- (plus -- M4A, Trump virus $2K/mo, urgent action on climate change, police brutality, (in)justice reform, “defense” budget, etc.)
Who passes the criteria – TYT, Intercept, corp. media, Congress/Senate -- certainly NOT. Anything still missing on this list?
Interestingly, a rising star in DNC in 2015, who was “excommunicated” after declaring for socialist Bernie and not for corrupt queen Hillary (who brazenly named her “Russian asset” after Tulsi demolished Hillary’s protégé Kamala Harris), Tulsi Gabbard, passes most and more progressive criteria. While most opponents of DNC cabal would meekly “bring chocolates” to Pelosi and Schumer here is the truly epic and exceptional Tulsi’s response:
Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton . You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why.
Now we know — it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose. It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly.
Dem Party is beyond salvation – a viable third (and fourth..) party is THE solution.
I see a tired mother at a bus stop waiting to ride home with a bag of groceries or a black grandmother being abused at a title loan joint while her grandchildren watch the ugliness of it. Or young people cramming into prisons for selling a little weed. For me, everything begins there. Little online about such people....not in "religion" or politics or economic whiz kids.
Take 30% of the population who is Progressive Populist and marry them (temporarily) to the 30% of the population who are Patriotic Populists and you get an aggregate 60%...leaving the Establishment to fight over 40% of the vote.
The Establishment Left will offer trinkets for those Populists on the Left to sell out and come to the middle..and the Establishment Right will offer trinkets for the Populists on the right to sell out and come to the middle..and the Establishment Media and Tech will use their power to tell those on the Left and those not he Right now much they hate each other; using the age old tactic of FUD to cement their ability to constantly overlord over our this nation (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) from a Big & Powerful Oz (DC).
At 73 I still associate 'left' with the working classes and unions before mobs got 'em. We need a new terminology for our new/old villains.
It helps to look at the population in the aggregate within the construct of a Rubik’s Cube.
There is no “left” and “right” in a linear definition.
it’s a 3D construct and every individual is unique in their beliefs, values and principles...just like every other individual.
What we each have though..is a Reptilian Brain.
Thus...conservatives are more likely to draw morality from Reverence for Traditional Institutions with Moral Authority, Fairness, Tradition, Loyalty, and Sanctity...whereas Liberals/Progressies are more ap to view the world through the narrow construct of what they consider to be “Fairness or Ending Oppression.”
If that’s your whole moral construct and everything you see, read and hear comes through that lense...you end up in a place where America is unfair, unjust and inequitable..always has been and always will be.
It’s why liberals and progressives don’t get hair standing on their neck when Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA comes on or an old Paul Harvey piece about virtues and values and the American Ethic.
It’s helpful to read Jonathan Haidt to understand ourselves as well as others. It puts a more human spin on what comes out of people’s mouths before you judge them, lest ye be judged.
This is the longest comment on this site I've read that says nothing. Everything in this entire statement is ambiguous book-speak and asking us to read some book by some scholar.
As someone everyone would call "on the right" its incredible tiring here a few of you college try-hards tell us how the "left" isn't what we think it is and only you know.
Reads to me like they have something to say and backed it up. They're succinctly explaining why people on the left and right think the way they do and why they cannot understand one another. The vast majority of American voters are just people, not commies or fascists.
Left does not mean communist necessarily, neither does right mean fascist.
It's best to understand political philosophy, and the negative roles of collectivism and authoritarianism.
We can at least start by adding one dimension, that will make the left vs right model a bit less wrong :
"That is because the dominant strain of American liberalism is not economic socialism but political authoritarianism."
In a way similar to what happened to "conservatives" some time ago, it seems that you shouldn't name "liberals" without the quotes any more. As a reminder, liberalism is supposed to be *the opposite* of authoritarianism !
https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2016
Or maybe the term "libertarianism" (that this compass uses to mean the opposite of authoritarianism, rather than of leftism) is indeed better, but right-wingers have kind of stolen that one too.
My problem with the conservative moral codes is that forgiveness and unbending good will are missing. They depend on legalities and even scrupulosity, which in my church, are sins, not virtues.
I was looking over on the left for some forgiveness and came up empty-handed. It's apparently in short supply these days.
Here's yet another person who confuses or conflates neo-liberals as "the left." -ugh- You guys are innumerable. Get A Damned Clue; "the left" and neo-liberals are TWO DIFFERENT GROUPS and the only one you know anything about are the neo-liberals - the left is a true mystery to the right in the USA as reflected in hundreds - soon to be thousands - of comments under Greenwald articles.
Both political parties try for the moral high ground. People forget about the christian coalition back in the early '90's where Republicans had to meet their litmus test in order to back their candidacy. And don't get it twisted that they used racial tactics to divide the country in an effort to incite rage in rural white voters to vote for them (The Southern Strategy) and surpress the black vote since the civil rights/voting rights bill was passed in 1964. The infamous Willie Horton ad was the most disgusting one that was approved by Lee Atwater who was none other than 41's campagain manager back in 1988. So both parties are complicit.
You are so very wrong, and mostly opposite of the truth. About the only think that isn't opposite is that the those on the left in the US today have no moral code.
Genuine liberals MUST have a strong personal morality. Immoral slob people are very severe on other people...abandoned lovers, pregnant girl friends, elderly parents. Quite ruthless! Their 'leftie' brand is for themselves, thank you very much!!!
Again, you're talking about the neo-liberals, NOT "the left."
On one minimum wage job in 1966 my nazi sympathizing employers had Harvey blaring from a radio all morning. It made me sick.
I remember...virtue signalling mason of high degree. Little Christian mercy from those people.
The reptilian brain references the part of the brain that is the most primitive, and is in control of instinctual behavior, that is, everything you do without thinking, like eating, sex, etc. It has to do with all those things we do to survive as a species. Nothing to do with morality, or higher thought processes.
...or as my mother would say, "To hell with the 10 Commandments, this is serious." She had a great sense of humor!
Good for her.
Yours is the best post I've seen on the internet in a long, long time.
Left and right are artifacts of one French parliament for a few weeks in the 1700s. It's not really a useful way of categorizing people. You need at least 2 axes. Most modern politicians are authoritarian statists of various stripes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pournelle_chart
nothing like an old BIGLIE to confirm today's BIGLIE
If this invokes the "No True Scotsman" stance, then so be it. Liberals, such as Glenn and Matt Taibbi, and I, recognize the rapid descent into stifling dissent, the necessary move before all others in authoritarians seize power and the jails fill rapidly. We probably missed the Portland Kristallnacht that should have warned us.
Biden and the democrats will attempt to use the hyperbolized “insurrection” last week as an excuse to try to ignore the 2nd Amendment and confiscate guns. This will be in his “first 100 days” agenda. We will see what happens...
He might lose the Senate. Joe Manchin is the only bluedog Democrat remaining, all others have been driven out along with the rest of the plebeians. If he switches parties, then the Republicans have 51 seats, then Biden's agenda is dead. If he's unwilling to switch parties, all he has to do is resign and his state's Republican governor appoints his successor. I suspect just the threat of that will stave off the bullies.
The "insurrection" is a fiction. I can't believe I have to say this again: Read the transcript. The words are plain. Go and demonstrate, be heard, do no violence. If that is now a disqualifying statement, listen again to the news broadcasts about peaceful protesters.
Of course it’s pure fantasy; thus the quotation marks. There won’t be any legitimate elections any time soon.
Mr Clueless Bill Heath here seems to not know that around 80% of elected Democrats are "blue dogs." They're fucking Republicans who just happen to prefer blue and the letter D on their jerseys.
You need to go pretty far in the authoritarian direction in order to get to 80% of elected Democrats. In the Senate, "fucking Republicans who just happen to prefer blue" would include Sheldon Whitehouse who has suggested expelling Senators who dissent from the approved narrative, Chris Van Hollen, who has said "I know a couple of Republicans who aren't racists," as well as Sherrod Brown and Patrick Leahy, who should react unfavorably at that label.
In the House, bluedogs would include Maxine Waters, Adam Schiff and Joseph Kennedy. I'm sure they're all happy to discover they really don't mean a word they say because they're Republicans in disguise.
See: govtrack.us. I now have a clue, apparently. Thanks for clearing that up for us, the benighted.
I disagree that Trump didn't have any intentions to do a coup, but yes, looks like that anyone arguing about it will need to suffer the Trump speech. And better in video, as a lot of nuance/context is likely to be lost in a transcript.
Thanks for your reply, Glenn, long time reader and admirer of your work. I have to disagree. It is not just semantics to label political factions. AOC is rhetorically left, which does not make her a leftist by any stretch. She flirts hard with regime change coups and folds like a cheap suit in the face of her party's power. There are very few leftists in politics... Kshama Sawant is the only one I can think of.... perhaps a few others dip their toe now and again, but the term "left" loses all meaning when spread thin enough to cover any DemonRATS. Sarah Palin is to the left of AOC on the important issue of Assange's torture and imprisonment.... gob-smackingly enough! While (if) I have your attention, I wonder what you think of the fact that the DemonRATS sound so much like the Sarah Palin of yesteryear with all the Putin under their beds hysterics?
Oh boy, Glenn, it really isn’t just semantics. The traditional position/ideology of the left - an opposition to hierarchical power and the control of the citizenry by either government OR oligarchs/corporations is being lost. In this thread you see the equating of “the left” with “communism,” and of course the Democrats have completely lost the idea of opposing corporate control that was understood in the 70s (and even the 80s). Likewise the opposition to imperialism and a military state that traditionally came from the left is rapidly disappearing if not already gone from what is getting called the “left.”
There is a reason Kropotkin split with the Bolsheviks and why “the left” does not simplistically equal “the communists.” Likewise, the left isn’t simply not-Republican. We need these distinctions and understandings or “the left” becomes defined solely in relation to an ever right moving right and center or it is just a pointless tautology where the left is just what the left does and it is just about cheering for teams and personalities.
No, it's just semantics. The fact that you mention "traditional" interpretations and what Dems have abandoned just shows that interpretations of labels are malleable even over shorts periods of time and anything but universal. As they moved right over 3 decades it's a continuum, not a series of distinct level and even saying "they"is inadequate. Some were worse than others.
Without a common and precise vocabulary, it devolves further and precision ain't exactly popular. How many time shave you seen someone call anyone left of Goebels a Marxist? Nobody should care what artificial designation best fits AOC - just what her actions and decisions are relative to helping the population or their constituents
You are actually making my point. The fact that words change over time doesn’t mean they are just willy-nilly to be changed as one chooses. And sorry, understanding etymology of words and history of ideas is what marks someone as smarter and more learned, not the opposite.
You write, “Without a common and precise vocabulary, it devolves further and precision ain't exactly popular.”
Yes, without a common and precise vocabulary it devolves further which is the point and I don’t give a fuck about having my, or any public discourse, about anything of substance based on how “popular” it is. This is the worst of pop-postmodernism (and I have no problem with GOOD postmodernism).
Aldous Huxley devotes a portion of Brave New World Revisited to precisely how authoritarians (soft or hard) utilize, and will utilize in (his) future, the destruction of word meaning to control the masses. (If I remember correctly, he also discusses Orwell’s recognition of this idiocy creating tool in this section as well. A point I make note of because I see a few headlines in my news aggregators of the sort, “You probably aren’t using the word Orwellian correctly,” which most likely means a correction of one set of dunces’ misuses with a seventh grade understanding at best and likely incorrect itself.)
It is pointless for anyone to discuss anything with this mindset. What’s the point if the Capital Building and leprechaun literally mean the exact same thing. (And yes, I know “literally” is literally in the dictionary as having the definition of “figuratively.” It is also noted as coming from a misuse).
The article about the correct use of "Orwellian" couldn't have come at a worse time. I think typically "Orwellian" describes using rhetorical devices to construct an alternate reality.
The writer seems to be making a point that Orwellian opposed totalitarianism and that people making the accusation of Orwellian recently are actually in fact advocating fascism and totalitarianism and are therefore contradicting themselves. But what we're really seeing more and more is that the agents of Orwellian rhetoric are now often on the opposite side of the political spectrum.
That last one is literally disgusting.
At the end of the day AOC is an important voice. She is very young and I hope that she is reading everything she can including you, Glenn. I am reading Lofgren's The Deep State. Of course since my early anti-Vietnam war years and as an SDS member, today at 74 I have gained so much perspective. I've been a socialist since childhood when I realized that the playing field was not level. I was an outcast in the 4th grade. My mother would drive onto Mission Valley Road in San Diego when it was lined with actual farms before being destroyed by the developer Del Webb. Anyway, I wondered why she had to stop because I thought that if everyone went the same speed that traffic would be seamless. I wanted true equality. Now I realize, as one Zen teacher told me, that everybody's different. As a young adult living in poverty working minimum wage jobs I cried when I saw a beautiful Mexican shawl in a store that I couldn't afford. The Vogue shoot was a big mistake. But she is young. Let's work to keep her on the right path. She can't do it alone. It's exciting to have a good job and a boyfriend who supports her. It's so easy to be entranced by power and money. I would be fine speaking with Trump supporters and those who stormed the Capitol. I've spent my life as an ambassador for those who are different. I know where they are coming from and I'm not a snob.
Suzanne, I'm glad Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is enjoying her life, discovering herself, having a supportive boyfriend, while being entranced by power and money. It's a privilege I wish could be afforded to all young Americans. Yes, she's young. I disagree that we need to keep her on the right path, because I see no evidence she has any idea where the path is, let alone the directions in which it can head.
She has an undergraduate degree in economics, and suggested we just "print more money." I was smart enough at age four to understand that money itself has no value, it is a proxy for value that has already been created. She was 29. She demonstrated complete lack of understanding of the difference between a pile of ready cash and a future forgiveness of taxes on income generated by business. When they were teenagers, my daughters knew the difference. She celebrated denying her constituents good-paying jobs. She's young, and I can forgive her ignorance. I have a harder time forgiving her attitude that she should be allowed to learn on the job while proposing and voting on legislation for the rest of us. My objection would be the same regardless of her political positions.
We don't let surgeons "learn on the job" by allowing them to operate on members of the public to discover that the toe bone is not, indeed, connected to the foot bone. We don't allow police officers to walk around with their weapons in hand, shooting randomly at people to practice. What Representative Ocasio-Cortez is doing is malfeasance of office, and those who protect her from the consequences of that are no better than physicians who allow incompetents to perform surgery, or chiefs of police who overlook "just a few unfortunate deaths of innocent people."
I'm a year younger than you. I flirted with socialism because my parents were lost somewhere in a haze between Marxism and the KKK. I demonstrated for Biafra, marched for civil rights, attended sit-ins, was thrown out of multiple venues, spit on, beaten, the whole works. I was completely on my own once I graduated college, and woke up to the fact that the world doesn't owe me anything. Eventually I found my way to libertarianism, social liberal and fiscal conservative, because I recognize that social liberalism is a luxury we can afford only if we are fiscally conservative. That doesn't mean throwing the poor to the wolves. It means that, unlike my friends who are fiscal liberals, I don't outsource my compassion to the government.
I and my family support the homeless, the ill, the hungry, those denied a decent education by politicians unable to free themselves from teachers union teats, the disabled and other marginalized groups. We are far from wealthy, yet we contribute regularly to specific well-run charitable organizations serving eating-disorder patients, patients with autoimmune disorders and needy active-duty military families. We support medical missions to Africa and the Caribbean. I put together a syndicate of college students, attorneys, food banks and undocumented aliens when serving as a volunteer translator for local courts. My biggest supporters were the police, because we finally established an atmosphere in which illegal drivers pulled over for police rather than endangering others with a high speed chase.
You're right, the playing field isn't level. Crony capitalism is no better than socialism at leveling the playing field. I find it ironic that a man who made his money through crony capitalism, a man I abominate, was the first president to work toward a real leveling of the playing field.
Even Paul Krugman says that deficits don't matter. Money today is meaningless unless your are poor. Then, it's everything you don't have access to.
Well, since Paul Krugman said it, then deficits don't matter. See what has happened in Zimbabwe, which adopted the same attitude. Or, Venezuela today. Greece. Puerto Rico. Deficits don't matter as long as we are willing to burden our children in order to enjoy ourselves today. They don't matter as long as we can convince other people to accept meaningless pieces of paper in exchange for food, manufactured items, and other things of real value. When the crash comes, it will be sudden and brutal.
Virtue-signaling numbskulls will wag their fingers at the hoi pollloi and the greedy capitalists, blaming them for the destruction. Krugman et al will have no clue about their own culpability, and the two real villains - Johnson and Nixon, one of whom brought Social Security and Medicare on budget, the other who was afraid to point out the ticking time bomb - are dead and buried. So, we'll blame Trump, or AOC, or the nearest racist (defined as any white male), and learn the wrong lessons. Happens every time.
You left out Larry Kudlow, and the Chicago School. I guess that when you are old enough to collect Social Security and Medicare, you will refuse it based on your conscience.
Hi Glen, do you see any similarities between the current situation and the Anti Trust actions against the movie studios in the 30s/40s?
I've seen someone comparing this to the Reichstag fire, but IMHO there are too many differences :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire
Apologies for being an ignorant Canadian but the money involved in all this tech biz is so huge. My impression of the States is that the underlying political colour is actually green. I could be way off though.
You missed the Reichstag fire. It was in Seattle this time.
That's worthy of a big laugh for it's author's demonstrated lack of understanding of either.
Maybe I did. I try to not to waste too much time on local politics on the other side of the world.
Capitol invaders were breaking windows. Small potatoes.
why no mention of Peter Thiel?
As much as it pains me to admit, Jordan Peterson was kind of right with his "Cultural Marxists". (Though I prefer to call them "neo-maoists".)
Yeah, sure, JP is hilariously wrong about postmodernism :
https://medium.com/s/story/peterson-historian-aide-m%C3%A9moire-9aa3b6b3de04
(And was hilariously offtopic in that debate with Žižek.)
But then the American academics that he's criticizing seem to be misunderstanding French Theory too!
https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/french-theory-how-foucault-derrida-deleuze-co-transformed-the-intellectual-life-of-the-united-states/
Though worse, you know what this whole discussion reminds me of ?
This guy :
https://unabombermanifesto.com/#THE%20DANGER%20OF%20LEFTISM
"216. Some leftists may seem to oppose technology, but they will oppose it only so long as they are outsiders and the technological system is controlled by non-leftists. If leftism ever becomes dominant in society, so that the technological system becomes a tool in the hands of leftists, they will enthusiastically use it and promote its growth. In doing this they will be repeating a pattern that leftism has shown again and again in the past. When the Bolsheviks in Russia were outsiders, they vigorously opposed censorship and the secret police, they advocated self-determination for ethnic minorities, and so forth; but as soon as they came into power themselves, they imposed a tighter censorship and created a more ruthless secret police than any that had existed under the tsars, and they oppressed ethnic minorities at least as much as the tsars had done. In the United States, a couple of decades ago when leftists were a minority in our universities, leftist professors were vigorous proponents of academic freedom, but today, in those of our universities where leftists have become dominant, they have shown themselves ready to take away from everyone else's academic freedom. (This is "political correctness.") The same will happen with leftists and technology: They will use it to oppress everyone else if they ever get it under their own control."
Ugh…
You can't say the Unabomber was far off in his analysis
The post I am now replying to shows a remarkable lack of insightfulness because what it really says is something it's author clearly never even thought about: the real left are the oppressed, NOT those in power.
That is an unfortunate circumstance since it implies humanity's doom as right-wingers, pretty much always the ones in control, are, on whole, too selfish to do the right thing (such as having true compassion for their fellow man and concern for the rest of the biosphere) - and that may well be "the human condition."
If my conjecture is correct - and I see scant evidence it isn't - we can all bend over and kiss our asses goodbye; hello Holocene, we're on our way.
You've fallen into the semantics trap here.
Of course it doesn't help that Kaczynski has a very… idiosyncratic? definition of leftism (and maybe also of power), which he himself admits.
As a reminder, this whole discussion is indeed about whether there are "fake-leftists" in power that only pretend to be leftists.
Kaczynski talks a lot about power, and has something to say about those in power too, but in his opinion they aren't fundamentally different :
33. Human beings have a need (probably based in biology) for something that we will call the power process. This is closely related to the need for power (which is widely recognized) but is not quite the same thing.[...]
21. Leftists may claim that their activism is motivated by compassion or by moral principles, and moral principle does play a role for the leftist of the oversocialized type. But compassion and moral principle cannot be the main motives for leftist activism. Hostility is too prominent a component of leftist behavior; so is the drive for power. Moreover, much leftist behavior is not rationally calculated to be of benefit to the people whom the leftists claim to be trying to help. For example, if one believes that affirmative action is good for black people, does it make sense to demand affirmative action in hostile or dogmatic terms? Obviously it would be more productive to take a diplomatic and conciliatory approach that would make at least verbal and symbolic concessions to white people who think that affirmative action discriminates against them. But leftist activists do not take such an approach because it would not satisfy their emotional needs. Helping black people is not their real goal. Instead, race problems serve as an excuse for them to express their own hostility and frustrated need for power. In doing so they actually harm black people, because the activists' hostile attitude toward the white majority tends to intensify race hatred.
83. […] In particular, leftist movements tend to attract people who are seeking to satisfy their need for power. But for most people identification with a large organization or a mass movement does not fully satisfy the need for power. […]
214. [...] Above all, leftism is driven by the need for power, and the leftist seeks power on a collective basis, through identification with a mass movement or an organization. Leftism is unlikely ever to give up technology, because technology is too valuable a source of collective power. [...]
217. In earlier revolutions, leftists of the most powerhungry type, repeatedly, have first cooperated with nonleftist revolutionaries, as well as with leftists of a more libertarian inclination, and later have double-crossed them to seize power for themselves. Robespierre did this in the French Revolution, the Bolsheviks did it in the Russian Revolution, the communists did it in Spain in 1938 and Castro and his followers did it in Cuba. Given the past history of leftism, it would be utterly foolish for non-leftist revolutionaries today to collaborate with leftists.
224. The people who rise to positions of power in leftist movements tend to be leftists of the most power-hungry type, because power-hungry people are those who strive hardest to get into positions of power. Once the powerhungry types have captured control of the movement, there are many leftists of a gentler breed who inwardly disapprove of many of the actions of the leaders, but cannot bring themselves to oppose them. They NEED their faith in the movement, and because they cannot give up this faith they go along with the leaders. True, SOME leftists do have the guts to oppose the totalitarian tendencies that emerge, but they generally lose, because the powerhungry types are better organized, are more ruthless and Machiavellian and have taken care to build themselves a strong power base.
227. Our discussion of leftism has a serious weakness. It is still far from clear what we mean by the word "leftist." There doesn't seem to be much we can do about this. [...]
Here, read this - you can skip over all the graphing stuff at the top; the author has a pretty good write up that answers your question from your closing paragraph - what left is:
http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/redefining_the_political_spectru.htm
John Kelly gets it exactly right. There is something very perverse about using the term "liberal" for some of the most conservative, war-mongering denizens of DC. Biden, Clinton, Pelosi and Schumer are extreme right wingers that give themselves the "Blue Team" moniker, but they are hard-core corporatists. They don't have a liberal bone in their bodies. So now, the conservatives have two teams; Red and Blue, and then I suppose there is that out-of-power, little bitty group off on the side... the "progressives". I strongly suggest that everyone stop calling people in DC "conservatives and liberals". They are all conservatives with two teams, Red and Blue, fighting like organized crime families over turf in DC.
Saint Obama was also -- "left" ;-))
“Venezuela is fundamental threat to USA” -- declared Obama formally initiating regime change.
What he meant is “Socialism is a threat to capitalism”… hence imperial War-party endless wars -- against Bolivia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Syria, Cuba, Libya, China….. - for 70 years immense suffering and destruction across the glibe
Defund US military terrorism and end "Jakarta Method" horrible practices
Actually, Obama won in 2008 as an antiestablishment Populist.
Took him 2 years to sell out..right after D’s got wiped out in the 2020 mid-terms.
About the same time Michelle fell in love vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard while hanging out with Oprah, Ellen and the Spielberg’s..and enjoying the finer things in life.
Two years? Didn't he start bailing out CitiBank et al almost immediately.
He ran on that, but he didn't believe in it nor did he govern on it from the moment he stepped into the office.
Exactly, and I don't see it changing any time soon. The politicians are either oligarchs, or oligarch wannabes, so all of them are on the same page policy wise. Lower taxes, no corporate regulations, endless wars for profit and geo-strategic advantage and a constant squeezing of working people to keep the money flowing from the bottom to the top. There aren't two political parties, there is one (the corporate party) with two fake flavors to cater to two different audiences.
Stop claiming the shitty part of your party is actually "right wing". Would you allow conservatives to call Trump "left" because he frequently supports non-conservative legislation?
Well, yes, Trump has a quite leftist stance on immigration :
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Workingmen%27s_Association#Origins
He's also classified here to be (slightly) to the left of Clinton :
https://politicalcompass.org/uselection2016
The Blues I don't know, but the Reds haven't been conservatives for a long time now :
https://archdruidmirror.blogspot.com/2017/06/a-christmas-speculation.html
https://archdruidmirror.blogspot.com/2017/06/a-few-notes-on-burkean-conservatism.html
I spent 10 hours in a Tea Party camp in 2010 and 10 hours in a OWS camp in 2011.
The one takeaway is that the political spectrum is always describe by the Establishment as linear..meaning a line from left to right.
In nature, the spectrum arcs back upon itself.
It’s what allowed Sen. Paul Wellstone and Sen. Jesse Helms to be kindred spirits in the US Senate.
It’s what had Vladimr Lenin on one side of the street with his Socialist Ideals and Stalin on the other side with his Communist Ideals.
What i found from that experience is that Populism is Antiestablishment...that’s the common goal of both sides of the spectrum and it’s what connects the dots.
When explaining to each group that they needed to do a reach around and join forces with their fellow Antiestablishment travelers instead of getting sucked back into the Vortex of the Establishment....it was a hard sell..but both groups new that the enemy of their enemy could be their friend if the goal was to unite behind the right sizing of the Federal Government and distribution of power back to the states, counties and towns.
The Establishment Media and Establishment...period...doesn’t want people to understand this context which is why it’s always pitting right vs. left and leaving they Establishment itself out of the crossfire. This is how propaganda works.
You rile up one side...then rile up the other side...convince people it’s the other side that’s the enemy...all while knowing it’s the swamp in the middle that ‘s the real enemy.
The right thinks the establishment consists mostly the corrupt government. The left used to think it was the evil corporations. There is less and less difference between the corrupt government and the evil corporations, that's the problem, and that realization is what may unite the populists.
I liked your post except for the one point that you have the wrong goal.
The CORRECT goal is to tax the ultra-rich out of existence so they don't control us any longer.
Government is a tool, and it's the ONLY tool that can constrain the rapaciousness of the ultra-rich and their corporations. Bifurcating its power exclusively to the local level(s) means that to constrain them we have to fight thousands of battles - pretty much the same one over-and-over-and-over-and over.
Don't be a strategic fool. Set your sights on the REAL problem - it's not the hammer, government, it's the carpenter, the ultra-rich and their corporations; we need a new carpenter, We, The People.
The problem is the government. It is no accident that the growth of government and the growth in wealth inequality have the same time frame, and that wealth inequality is greatest in centers of government based power. Cut the government in half, and in one generation you'll not have ultra-rich. Think strategically...
This is laughably naive:
"Cut the government in half, and in one generation you'll not have ultra-rich. "
Cut the government in half and in one generation 99% of the population will be in extreme poverty.
Well, it's a bit of a tautology, isn't it ?
It's not surprising that the most successful radical movements are going to converge on the same means of action…
Trump, Ross and Mnuchin prosper in that swamp.
So does Obama, Clinton (both) and Pelosi.
So what's your point?
If they prospered in the swamp then why is the swamp doing everything in their power to destroy them?
No True Scotsman discussions are boring.
If you don't think AOC is left wing enough to be called left wing, you need to get out of your bubble.
AOC supports the coup attempts against the leftist government of Venezuela. She supports the DemocRATic party, which is one half of the death cult circus of capitalists, war mongers, and surveillance state goons known as the US political class. When faced with Israel's brutal slow motion genocide of Palestinians, the deadly and criminal sanctions against Iran and Venezuela, and the torture and imprisonment of Assange and other political prisoners... she runs away. She is a leftist in the same sense Nancy Fucking Pelosi, Hillary We-Came-We Saw-He Died Clinton, and Barack Kill-List Obama are leftists. She will keep moving right the more power she achieves, and the shit-lib-rubes will follow. It is a long standing pattern of betrayal and deceit that the left has seen over and over again. There is nobody of the left allowed into the halls of power or on any cable news except occasionally on FOX... which is only because they are critical of the DemocRATS, of course. People like Sanders and AOC talk a good game and then they vote for trillions in defense spending, they are silent on Assange, they run from questions about Palestinian rights, and they demonize and smear actual leftist leaders of other countries. If you think AOC is left, you need to educate yourself on what she actually supports, and stop listening to the flowery rhetorical garbage emanating from the pie-holes of her and these other fakes.... or spout clever and SO original cliches. That works, too.
She also wants to confiscate private property, massively expand the welfare state, and reorganize the entire economy according to government dictate. That sounds pretty far left to me, but what do I know.
"but what do I know."
Not enough, apparently.
Do you have a positive contribution to make? All I've seen you do is take pot-shots at those who are trying to contribute. Have at it; just don't expect anyone else to think you're even 1% as clever as you think. Please continue demonstrating your lack of insight. It's amusing.
There is no one definition of right and left, or "progressive" for that matter. They are all terms massively abused to support whatever agenda you're trying to promote.
Paragraphs are your friend - or your readers at least.
I take your point, thanks.
As I said, you need to get out of your bubble.
Wow, you are a tough debater!
No true Scotsman discussions are boring. Did you miss that part?
No, I did not. Spouting cliched quips meant to shut down debate is "boring". As a matter of fact I read what you wrote and you apparently missed everything I said because you did not respond to any of it. Carry on.
I see -- you have started drinking again ;-))
Democrats define their agenda as liberal, and claim to represent the left, or that they are actually progressive. At one time they could say that with greater honesty since their base was the working class whom they did support, and their unions as well, but through the decades they have abandoned their base, and are in no way liberal, or progressive. With a limited agenda of supporting gay rights, abortion, BLM, etc. they feel entitled to lie about what they have become. I was a registered democrat and I guess I would play along, voted for Clinton first time around, and then Obama, the first time around, until I gave up and refused to support the lesser of the two evils, as they say. The Republicans are more honest about who they are and they are on the right, and conservative in their agenda.
The worshippers of Ayn Rand are pretty much the opposite of conservative.
I always saw her as a fanatical extremist.
From what I gather, actual conservatives are about as rare as actual "leftists" and have far more in common than the ultra-rich controlled media would have us believe.
The old saw is that libertarians like to argue about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Honestly, I don't care what you call the authoritarian pols in Washington associated with the Democrat party. These people, and those who enable them, have spent 5 years accusing Trump of being a fascist. How ironic that THEY, in conjunction with the tech giants (the new robber barons) are the ACTUAL fascists. THAT is what matters to me.
I call these folks establishment neoliberal corporate warmonger whores. Every single one of my "progressive" friends are cheering all this on with one exception (a union guy). They thought Trump was a fascist? I laugh, the fascists are the Democrats and the Republicans sucking up to them. We haven't seen anything yet. Great article, I wish everyone would read it that supports this mass censorship.
This reminds me of how the Stalinist propaganda was that the ruling Socialists were the "real" fascists, and how proto-Antifa often allied itself with the Nazis.
Ironically, this propaganda might become 'true' a century later ?
Exactly Mr Kelly. Thank you! Only not even in quotes. Very important article, though, as you say.
John Kelly,I think you are confused. A liberal is a defender of free speech. That is what it always meant historically, and in particular in Europe. It is the Left that is anti-free speech and is illiberal. The Leftists in the US co-opted the word liberal to whitewash their decrepit socialist ideology. And everyone fell for it. Greenwald and others should call them Leftists and not liberals. An illiberal cannot be called a liberal. What you say is contradictory.
Yes, in their way, these people are just as illiberal as New England Puritans. Simplistic, faux inclusiveness is their religion.
Don't leftists/progressives and liberals together constitute the left wing?
No.
Some people think that the left-right dichotomy is always relative - as in, right of some position, or left of it. Others, the group I'm in, perceive its' about whether the policies one wants to advocate for help the status-quo / ultra-rich, or help The People - the former being right-wing the latter being left. And, as many people have long observed, a single linear dichotomy isn't really sufficient to discuss human politics. Be that as it may, traditionally, liberalism rose up as neither left nor right, criticized by both.
There's a good write up about it here, AFTER the author discusses (yet another) graphical, two dimensional grid type way of looking at politics. In my view, he makes a few mistakes, but the historical record he cites seems pretty good to me, but incomplete or the USA today, though it was written about 16 years ago:
http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/redefining_the_political_spectru.htm
Unfortunately, the attempt to reserve "left" for one's favored tribe of leftists (for most people on this board making the attempt, it seems to be what I call the Wobblies-version of the left) is as hopeless id as the attempt in America to reserve "right" for one's favored tribe of opponents of the left (most often undertaken by either what were called "fusionists" back during the Cold War or the species of rightist with a romantic attachment to the U.S. Constitution as read narrowly, though lately the Trumpists have started to try to claim to be the only authentic "right").
You may regard the "woke" as a heresy from the left, but they are, by and large, the intellectual descendants and idiot children of Gramsci, Marcuse, and Derrida, all of whom claimed to be Marxists. You may see them as useful idiots for the Democrat version of fascism, which Greenwald likes to call "neoliberalism", but they are of the left nonetheless. Anyone taking offense at the notion that the Democrats are fascist should remember the union of corporate and state power was the main defining feature of fascism (cf. the topic of the article we are commenting on), not having ruffians engage in politically motivated street brawling, which has intermittently been a feature of almost every political movement in modern history. Okay, maybe not the Whigs -- I can find no instance of either American or British Whigs fielding bands of ruffians analogous to either the Capitol-invading Trumpists or to Antifa.
Why?
You're splitting hairs.
Where would we be without journalists like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi? But I fear for their future in this current environment, so hostile to truth and justice.
Truth is treason in the empire of lies. Now, who said that. You had a chance. Now, we all get to pay. Thanks!
Trump is mendacious, for sure. But our environment is broadly hostile to truth, you are right.
Biden just said that the US bombing of Dresden killed like 250 to 2,500 people and the Nazis lied to the people and said it was 25,000 or more.
Whereas the reality is the US bombing of Dresden killed 25,000 people, and the Nazis actually lied to their people by saying the equivalently destructive prior bombing of Hamburg killed barely anyone and not to worry about losing the war.
No way he will be called out in this environment!
Independently literate researchers?
Some of you old-time readers of Glenn's work might recall these words:
"the war ALWAYS comes home."
Now you get to experience what your government has been inflicting on three-quarters of the world for decades.
Good luck.
Indeed. When I returned home from studying in the USSR in 1983, the CIA reached out to recruit me. As part of the interviewing process, I was given numerous publications, books, and CIA papers to read so I could familiarize myself how the company operated, and what my role may be. Several of the items detailed the process by which the CIA overthrew Latin American countries and installed U.S. puppets. Of course, this practice is relatively well known today, and the book "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" illuminates the financial aspect of the practice.
After the crash of 2008, it became terrifyingly clear to me that the CIA - who "purchased" Jeff Bezos for $600 million, $300 million of which went immediately to purchase the WaPo - was doing in the U.S. to the people of the U.S. exactly what they'd been doing around the world for decades. Backed by trillions of dollars of government and personal debt, the plan was being executed here at home, exactly as it had been abroad for generations.
If anyone is complicit in crimes against the state, it is the media, not the Trumpers that stormed the Reichstag...er.. Capitol
Well, you've brought it up: 6 January is now a Rorschach test. You show it to some people and the see the Beer Hall Putsch with Trump cast as Hitler. You show it to other people and they see the Reichstag Fire with Trump cast as Marinus van der Lubbe. Personally, I see a blot, a blot on Trump and a blot on the American republic, that ought to be cleaned up with an impeachment, for which I sincerely hope 17 GOP votes for conviction can be found.
While still others see it as men dressed up throwing tea into the harbor, and burning the governors, soldiers, and king in effigy. And of course there are those more contemporaries that see blacks burning cities and antifa shooting automatic weapons at white people...
That Roarschac...it sure is fun, isn't it?
I see Jan 6, 2021 as our Tiananmen Square. Which was a protest that got a bit rowdy and was used as justification for one of the biggest crackdowns on freedom in history. And like they are doing now, many in western media at the time we’re echoing Chinese propaganda and called the protests “insurrection”....
Funny I see America’s Tiananmen Square
I see the US having narrowly avoided a far greater event that could have devolved into civil war. The animosity runs deep on both sides, and following the demands of hotheads will not lower the temperature.
Please lay out a plan whereby a bunch of unarmed fanatics rioting with flagpoles for a few hours could have led to a civil war. Personally, the ongoing crackdown seems like a much more viable path to civil war.
Agreed. Well put.
I cashiered at Walmart in 1993 and saw the glee everywhere over the cheap, sweatshop/slave everything.......very ominous then. Had to quit. Now our poor have to go there.
ROFL
The constitutional issue is whether censorship practiced by a publicly held monopoly that exhibits the attributes of a communications utility can qualify as state action sufficient to implicate the First and Fifth Amendments when it proceeds from thinly veiled warnings from Congress, voiced in public hearings, that if censorship is not practiced legislation will follow. The answer is unclear, but I think the question is sufficiently meritorious and close that litigation should be initiated and pursued.
Otherwise, we are left with a situation in which billionaires control social and political discourse, regulated only by the very politicians they have purchased wholesale. That is a recipe for authoritarian disaster. The primary goal of neoliberalism is to privatize the public realm, ultimately political speech and discourse. Neoliberalism's defeat begins with the redefining of what is public and what is private.
I don't think the 1st and 5th amendments are likely to bear fruit. There is no likelihood of redefining the tech companies as public. In any event that road could easily lead to totalitarian fascism. I think ultimately it will take both antitrust litigation and legislation. Trouble is that DC has become nearly devoid of principles, with everything being about winning and losing power in a zero sum game. As other have posted, this threat should have been dealt with long ago. The power wielded by big tech now makes a solution very difficult, if not impossible.
I agree with you. These giant tech companies are so entangled in the government through contracts, hiring out as consultants to the Pentagon and Department of Defense, working for the government by collecting information which they turn over to it, etc., that they have become literal arms of the government. Glenn has said it is not good business to exclude and censor internet users, but the tech giants do it because they are essentially told to (threatened) by Congressional representatives and members of the government. When a Congressman says he/she is unhappy that you do not censor more, if you know what's good for you you do it. Therefore, censorship is being done at the behest of the government and I believe that implicates my Constitutional rights. I believe in a multi-pronged approach to the issue of censorship.
we're already there.
"Otherwise, we are left with a situation in which billionaires control social and political discourse, regulated only by the very politicians they have purchased wholesale. That is a recipe for authoritarian disaster."
Agree, which is why the constitutional issue I have described should be raised, along with the broader effort to redefine and reassert the public realm -- the commons. I also agree that anti-trust can be useful tool (per the comment below), but disagree that defining broadly used tech platforms as part of the commons, and thus subject to public control, could "easily lead to totalitarian fascism." I know of no such example in the utilities context, and if democratic control to assure open speech and discourse threatens fascism, then we are doomed indeed.
Yes and no. We are not doomed but politics will not save us as there are forces in our government too corrupt to even speak of. There are so many people who are aware of the dangers, so many who aren't. Our world is extremely broken at this moment in time. BUT we are free to share love, connect each other, see the humanity within the soul. Take away the phone, social media - all this garbage is a way to get us hooked, forget our humanity, and then take away our "freedom". But the internet isn't the source of our freedom. What did people do before it? They got to know each other. This is the sign all along that the internet is a source of oppression where people see only the most superficial aspects of humanity without coming close up and seeing humanity face to face soul to soul. yes i know this comment has almost zero to do with your previous comment - but i firmly believe that despite all the bad things that are going on, there is a vacuum of loneliness that desperately wants to be filled. When we act on our humanity then people really are truly good at heart. No more political media lies, identity politics, or the politicization of anything. It's broken, it won't help us.
I've worked in Silicon Valley and these companies do coordinate. Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe, Ebay, Intuit, Pixar/Lucas were sued for coordinating to prevent "poaching" and thus keep worker salary down. This was in the early 2010's with the suit coming about in 2013 or so.
Also happening in the 2010's was influx of politics into Silicon Valley. The Obama administration hired a lot of tech to work in Washington. These were not engineers, they were well connected "people that know people". I believe many of those people have come back to the Valley in recent years. Additionally there has been an influx of political types into Silicon Valley, particularly in social media companies. I think there have also been Board appointees that are "think tank" types
Next, there is a phenomenon of company encouraged employee activist groups. I believe the intent was for these groups to help people of similar race, gender, sexual preference, etc, work through challenges in tech. However, these people are often politically volatile and constantly interject political or social justice into large company meetings. An example of this a group within Spotify throwing a fit over Joe Rogan having Alex Jones on. Additionally I've former colleagues have heard of activists at left leaning offices imposing their will on other offices for things as petty as what food or food providers are used to cater events.
Finally, tools like Slack further encourage virtue signalling. Any political or social event has people clamoring to get visibility by raising issues in large company wide channels.
It's sad what it's becoming. Years ago it felt like everything was made by an eclectic group of misfits. The main requirement was talent and passion for what you were working on, pay may or may not come. The first group I worked with was more diverse than anything I've been a part of recently. I don't know what's to blame for that, it may have been the social media / smart phone revolution funneling more of the elite graduates into the system in search of $$$.
And to add one more thing...
Much of the silicon valley tech population has yet to face serious adversity. Smart phones and social media were on the rise as everything else was crumbling. There was a large influx in 2011-2014 and these people have made out like bandits. They could use their stock/bonus to buy a condo for say 500K. By 2017 that condo might run 1.0 to 1.2 million. They've amassed large net worths in the matter of a few years.
However, they have yet to face the dot com bust and rolling blackouts of the early 2000's or the housing market bust of 2009 and municipalities struggling to provide services because of tax revenue declines. Because of this lack of adversity, they are trying to find adversity to overcome on their own. I've more than once walked into the office and seen 50% of building instantly empty with desks being just as the left them, only for them to get a call not to come in. I've been there when the conference rooms are all booked and blocked off mysteriously so that staff can be laid off all at once. When this happens, you don't need to look for something to fight, you are fighting for your own preservation or that of your family.
dot com bust...made Wall Stree wealthy and the rolling blackouts made ENRON and Kenny Boy Lay wealthy.
don't forget Cheney/Bush's appointment to the Presidency.
It did have the benefit of kicking Gray Davis to the curb, though Arnie didn't fare much better when tough times hit.
As far as I know, the classic toxic/surrealistic SJW-grifter-narrative-gone-bad case in Silicon Valley is Shanley Kane of Model View Culture.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2014/12/10/The-Madness-Of-Queen-Shanley/
The AI "ethics" (race/diversity) researcher at Google is another classic example of SJW narratives going off the rails, biting the hand that feeds them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timnit_Gebru
For those on the left who are celebrating this, I give you a cautionary tale. A friend of mine - lifelong Democrat - supported Tulsi Gabbard in the primaries. She used her Twitter account solely for the purpose of talking up her favored candidate in a civil and polite manner. Nothing in her posts would even move the needle even on today's oh-so-sensitive "offend-o-meter".
When she received an email soliciting donations from the DNC, she replied that she did not support them because of how they had treated Tulsi. Within 24 hours, her Twitter account was deleted. She had not violated a single term of service, though that's what they purported, and was told that she could not appeal the decision. So in a heartbeat, she was silenced. If you think you're safe, just wait until you disagree with them.
I literally wept for this country as the stake was driven into the heart of freedom this week. No one should be celebrating this.
Tulsi is a Klaus Schwab protegee, along with many familiar names...bright young things. He's very proud of them...it's on WEF site.
Excellent work, Glenn. Also notable is the absence of media reporting on or political class concern about Merkel commentary. It appears leadership on this issue must come from outside the U.S.
European countries prefer to have government regulations that apply to everyone. Americans are more comfortable with Twitter making up the rules as they go. It's just a difference of style, but we should keep in mind that everyone is ultimately trying to get to the same authoritarian destination.
There's a huge difference between the decisions by a company that only represents its owners/shareholders and those by a government that represents all its citizens.
Germany mostly runs the EU and they love to make up regulations that fuck over businesses in Greece, Italy, Spain, Ireland, etc. when doing so leads to more profits for German companies and banks.
"It appears leadership on this issue must come from outside the U.S."
That's everything these days, isn't it?
No, the USA is still leading in its production of idiots.
Exactly. Funny how that works eh? Total silence on that. Not even a talking point. "We are of ONE MIND"
AMLO, te amo!
Once again, great work! Something to add is this is just another avenue where nearly half of the country can be written off as deplorable Nazis that do not deserve to be in the conversation. The actions since the January 6th have been breathtaking despite universal agreement that the perpetrators should be charged and punished. First, in unison all media termed the rioters has insurrectionist, a term that is technically accurate for a group attempting to overpower civil authority. It is noteworthy that term was not used when a city block was seized in Seattle. Next, people that were in DC at the Rally but not committing crimes started to get fired as their employers found out they were there. Third, the tech purge that Glenn lays out here. Next, large corporations announced they will not contribute to the GOP as Biden compares two sitting Senators to Nazi propogandists. Finally, 25th Amendment is floated but ultimately Articles of Impeachment are drawn up.
If you were one of the peaceful 100K in DC or even one of the 74 million that voted for Trump, where do you think this is headed for you? It sure isn’t unity and coming together! To some degree, half the country is looking over their shoulder. They see the MSM reporting as if 9-11 happened again, liberals’ politicians plotting a course of revenge, and giant companies preparing to impose their power on all areas of their life. Nobody is working to tamp down the temperature. All the ingredients for disaster are in place and it doesn't look like anyone is concerned about stirring up the recipe.
The insidiousness of this monopoly on information is actually frightening. There’s YouTube videos I watched a number of years ago on various issues, conflicts etc that have now disappeared. These weren’t conspiratorial videos but would’ve challenged some mainstream narratives with alternative viewpoints. It’s ironic that sections of the left have been crying fascism during the Trump years whilst big tech have literally followed through on actual fascistic behaviours right under their noses, too blind, righteous, and dumb to see what is problematic about this.
It technically isn't "fascism", it is tribalistic totalitarianism, but "sections of the left" have always been totalitarian (see Rousseau, arguably the original anti-rationalist utopian "leftist", who himself inherited the anti-rationalist tendencies of the counter-enlightenment and inquisitions).
Agreed. Tribalistic totalitarianism a more accurate description of what I was describing. It feels like the word fascism is bandied about a bit too much these days (as I dutifully demonstrated). Either way I don’t care much for tribalist totalitarianism or fascism. Thanks for that though :)
Indeed.
Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi are the Woodward and Bernsteins of the modern age since both Woodward and Bernstein have become mostly toothless.
Woodward was always doing what the CIA told him. People hate to hear that, even rebellious but naive dissidents will argue that it’s impossible for the CIA to want rid of Nixon. And it’s just so normal that a former Navy Intelligence officer turned journo at the CIA’s magazine WaPo, gets a career making Deep Throat that oust the president, and this upstart Woodward gets full support from all the mainstream media to boot! If only they treated Glenn and Robert Parry and Gary Webb and all the other threats to power as nicely as they dod Woodward and Bernstein
Predictable altercockers....
Thanks for all of this honest reporting. I am a new subscriber and I feel like your level-headed investigations and quest for truth-telling have kept me sane the last few weeks. What is happening concurrently with the tech/government policing of political speech, is, in my opinion, a terrifying silencing of anyone who attempts to question the prevailing science narrative. Is it a coincidence that this pandemic has enabled our government to illegally grant itself the authority to shut down small businesses, private schools, etc, eroding basic civil liberties of its citizens all in the name of "protecting them" whilst Amazon, FB, Google, Zoom, Twitter, Apple, et al become massively more powerful and rich? I think not. From the early days of the pandemic, there have been respected virologists, epidemiologists, doctors and statisticians who have argued that all of the restrictive measures were/are unnecessary and in fact, more harmful than the virus itself. They're routinely silenced on social media for spreading "misinformation" as the corporate media delights in daily death counts, ginning up paranoia and fear and promoting never-ending lockdowns and universal mask-use, without ever questioning the effectiveness of these measures or the dangers/damage that has been done to children, small business owners, our economy. I'm sure that none of the election irregularities were due to unprecedented, last-minute changes to election laws or just outright disregard for them - all in the name of "emergency powers" governors granted themselves.
There is much in what you say, but the governors did not grant themselves emergency powers. Public health emergency powers are among the powers reserved to the states (and to the people) by the Tenth Amendment, and most state constitutions, because they are emergency powers needed without delay for legislative deliberation, lodge these powers in the state executive.
I suppose I am referring more to those like Gavin Newsom, who has been governing under the emergency decree for almost a year. One superior court judge did rule that he overstepped his authority in what she called an "unconstitutional exercise of legislative power."
I wish I could sign the petition to recall Newsom more than once.
There is generally a time limitation on executive emergency powers in the states, though. Several governors have flaunted this, refusing to defer to legislatures. Widmer in MI is a great example.
How does the 10th amendment allow trampling of the 1st and 14th amendments? There is no exemption for "public health emergency powers". I'm not a constitutional scholar but can read. Surly, the constitution would discuss public health emergencies if it were necessary.
medicine was primitive when the constitution was written, a lot of people died all the time.
a series of court cases later, 1800s, 1900s, about quarantines presumably established the appropriate mechanisms for setting aside other rights and legal principles for the "common good" during epidemics (such as the 1918 Spanish Flu that killed millions).
If you really wanted to make a good case against the "prevailing science narrative" (by which I assume you mean dysfunctional and /or corrupt corporate-state institutions), you would simply cite REAL scientific dissidents, of which there are many.
Leave off the added conspiracy bs and the claims you are attempting to make will look much more credible.
As it is it looks like you are violating one of the basic principles of scientific-rationalism (objectivity), which is that say that you started with a narrative (a subjective set of ideas and values) and then cherry picked data, facts and evidence to fit that narrative.
If you want to argue for better science you use the scientific method.
If you are making a political argument against the corrupt nature of the political and economic establishment, your argument should PRIMARILY focus on the failure of the establishment to legitimize itself and gain the support of citizens.
One approach to reforms is working inside the system, usually via incremental changes.
Another is more sweeping, and populist and disruptive to entrenched power and wealth.
To be clear, the main problem with "science" now is that it has been corrupted by elite power and wealth, corporate influence.
One of the political tactics of right wing astroturfers* is to reframe an issue such as "medicine and bureaucratic corruption" (or "climate change" etc) merely to do damage to "the left".
What those right astroturfers are NOT doing is actually improving science.
so you are saying you can no longer publish your anti-vaxxer calumnies and you plan to do so on these threads.
Glenn you must be so proud.
Not that it will matter to you, but I have never published a single word in association with the anti-vaxxer movement and as far as I can see, did not mention the covid vaccine in my post.
Nikki, he's either a bot, or a darned good imitation. Best to ignore him/it as much as possible. Glad to see you've subscribed.
Glad to be here! Thanks, Jeff.
and here is one of Glenn's Parler refugees he is counting on the secure his comfortable retirement.
Please take your useless insults to a different forum.
Adults are attempting to exchange perspectives.
Substack is disappointing : it's slow, buggy, has no way to hide annoying trolls…
thanks for the levity.
I hope he makes millions from this, but his retirement will never be as comfortable as 44’s
https://www.businessinsider.com/barack-obama-michelle-obama-net-worth-2018-7?amp
Enjoy YOUR check....
So, how long until they deplatform substack?
"Something like that could never happen in the US." Umm, it just did...