Turns out there are more toxic group chats out there than Pete Hesgeth’s. This morning (or last night, depending on your time zone), Semafor reports on the years-long elite group chats that “changed America”. We are all well aware already that our elites long ago left the smoky back rooms where they used to define our fates for the friendlier environs of Davos and the Aspen Ideas Festival and what have you. Since 2020, those discussions are increasingly happening on Signal and WhatsApp. The Semafor article focuses on those which center around the incredible inedible egg, Marc Andreessen. A genuine innovator of tech 30 years ago – he was the inventor of the modern web browser and a co-founder of Netscape – Andreessen now seems to be in the grip of poster’s madness:
Occasionally over the past few years, I’ve had a friend or source tell me in wonder that Andreessen was blowing up their phone. His hunger for information was “astonishing,” one participant in the group chat said. “My impression is Marc spends half his life on 100 of these at the same time,” another correspondent marveled. “This man should be a lot busier than I am and I can barely keep up with his group chat. How does he have the time?”
Andreessen has told friends he finds the medium efficient — a way to keep in touch with three times the people in a third of the time. The fact that he and other billionaires spend so much time writing to group chats prompted participants to joke that the very pinnacle of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is posting.
Along with the tech-centric WhatsApp groups Krishnan had organized out of a16z, Andreessen joined a slew of others, including ones that Torenberg set up for tech founders and for more political discussions. The tech chats tended to be on WhatsApp and the political ones on Signal, which is more fully encrypted, and they had different settings.
It would be one thing if these dudes were just shitposting to each other, but they’re not. They are doing the ideological equivalent of huffing each other’s farts for “up to 20 hours a day (not kidding!)”, as Mark Halperin claims later in the article, to the point where multiple members, but particularly Andreessen, according to Richard Hanania, “radicalised over time”, becoming more and more authoritarian and reactionary.
Yes, that Richard Hanania. The guy who wrote The Origins of Woke, a book described as a “Trojan horse for white supremacy“. He’s alarmed by the radicalisation on display. Part of the article focuses on a large group called “Chatham House” – named for, but not associated with, the influential London-based international relations think tank. No, this group chat is a funhouse-mirror version of that, a nightmare blunt rotation that’s constantly blowing up your phone:
Two of [Chatham House’s] conservative participants said they see the group as a way to shift centrist Trump-curious figures to the Republican side, but its founder said he’d begun it to have “a left-right exchange where we could have real conversations because of filter bubble group chats.”
Chatham House includes high-profile figures like the economist Larry Summers and the historian Niall Ferguson, and more partisan figures like Shapiro and the Democratic analyst David Shor. Andreessen lurks. But several participants described it to me as something like a gladiatorial arena with Cuban most often in the center, sparring with conservatives….
The Group Chat Era depended on part of the American elite feeling shut out from public spaces, and on the formation of a new conservative consensus. Both of those are now fading (though Torenberg has invested in a company called ChatBCC that wants to commercialize the heady experience of sitting in on texts among the power elite).
Since Elon Musk turned X to the right and an alternative media ecosystem emerged on Substack, “a tremendous amount of the verboten conversations can now shift back into public view,” Andreessen told Fridman. “It’s much healthier to live in a society in which people are literally not scared of what they’re saying.”
Tell that to the college students who’ve been snatched by ICE for writing op-eds, you clod. Still, there does seem to be a plus side: the economic turmoil set in motion by Liberation Day is causing fissures in these latter-day salons of the great and good goofy:
Ben Smith (formerly of Buzzfeed and the NYT), whose article this is, notes that these chats (and their e-mail list predecessors, like JournoList) “encourage conformity, and then transform public fora — blogs then, social media now — into pitched battles between well-prepared debate clubs, rather than open conversations.”
Well, no kidding. Elites have always done and are always going to do shit like this – gather in secret, commiserate with one another about how hard it is to run the world, groom biddable journalists into surfacing their ideas, compare yachts – but at least in latter days they couldn’t instantaneously broadcast their ideas to their fellow insiders for 20 hours at a time. Send them back to smoke-filled rooms in the exclusive clubs, I say – at least then there’ll be a non-zero chance that they actually leave to do their jobs once in a while. And that their lungs might rot as fast as their brains are doing.
Anyway, good morning, I guess. Open thread.
On The Road – Albatrossity – Arizona desert birds
Suzanne
I do not have the deeply thirsty personality type that these weirdos do, but to me, the pinnacle of the Hierarchy of Needs is lounging poolside with a piña colada and a book.
Gin & Tonic
I spent the day yesterday enjoying my new grand-daughter; my phone spent the day in my coat pocket. I think I win.
different-church-lady
This morning’s WaPo front page is a catalog of hope breaking through: Trump losing public support, people speaking up and punching back.
Phylllis
His name pops up in Sarah Winn-William’s Careless People about Facebook. Which Zuckerberg et al are doing their damnedest to suppress, so make of that what you will. Well worth the read, tho you will need a good exfoliating shower at the end.
stinger
What can this possibly mean? Someone somewhere has labeled them “the elite”, and yet they feel shut out from public spaces? Aww, poor little rich boys. They own the public spaces. What they seem to mean is that they want to talk about how people other than themselves are undeserving, and they want to use degrading language in doing so, but the great unwashed masses don’t like hearing themselves described that way. What else would make their elite conversations “verboten”?
prostratedragon
Ayayay! [insert “Come l’ombra” or “I’ve Seen That Face Before” here]
Jeffro
OT but Geminid (and other VA BJers) – the VA GOP’s 2025 campaign is off to a great start. Great for Dems, that is…
VA GOP event no longer happening after Youngkin’s attempt to oust Lt Gov nominee fails
different-church-lady
It’s weird to think billionaires waste just as much time on the internet as I do.
Jeffro
@different-church-lady: and that’s BEFORE all the supply shortages that are coming thanks to trump’s magic money er tariffs
stinger
@Gin & Tonic:
Yes, you do! Congratulations!
different-church-lady
@Jeffro:
For them, a crime worse than murder.
cmorenc
The theme of Ross’s post this morning seems to be:
The chats turn smart fellers into fart smellers.
different-church-lady
@Phylllis:
The only reason I hope there is a God is so that fucker can be held accountable.
Gin & Tonic
@different-church-lady: Probably more.
different-church-lady
@stinger: Trans people were getting a share of attention and it broke their brains.
prostratedragon
Sen. Corey Booker on yesterday’s Capitol Steps Sunday with some words to remember:
Mathguy
I love Sacks suggesting a chat with only smart people. That would exclude you, Mr. Dunning-Kruger.
schrodingers_cat
This @Balaji person is an idiot. And a Modi bhakt to boot. He was born in this country, knows little about India and opines on Indian politics from a perspective of utter ignorance who is unaware of his own ignorance.
His parents are doctors. Figures. He and Vivek R are a type.
prostratedragon
@different-church-lady: I’m thinking it’s mainly because pictures of men.
Spanky
@Mathguy: All the smartest people I’ve known didn’t think they were so smart
Eta, ergo, the smartest people would have no interest in such foolery.
Professor Bigfoot
@Gin & Tonic: Definite, enormous win. ENJOY, Grandda!
Jeffro
@different-church-lady:
@prostratedragon:
Earle-Sears, Reid, and Miyares were already a real rogue’s gallery of kooky, unappealing types…this is just the cherry on the sundae (and there may well be other cherries coming! It’s only April!)
Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see each of them trying to run for their statewide offices as if the other two didn’t exist.
Rugosa
@stinger: Funny how conservatives think their speech is being suppressed because it’s no longer acceptable to use racial slurs while people speaking out against the regime are actually being detained and deported.
Omnes Omnibus
@Spanky:
So it’s like joining Mensa?
Birdie
The real crime is that all the billionaires on these chats would call this wankery “working”. 90% marginal tax rates can’t come soon enough.
Pink Tie
Oh God, I didn’t want to think about haunted marionette Richard Hanania this early in the week. Yeeesh.
Professor Bigfoot
@Birdie: I was thinking that myself. They “work so hard,” but they spend ridiculous amounts of time on social media.
Like, I’m retired and I don’t have as much SM time as the sout piel, for cryin’ out loud; I ain’t claiming to be running two major corporations!
Gin & Tonic
@Professor Bigfoot: Thanks. I just look at those people and see sad, empty lives.
Betty Cracker
It’s such a tell, the way these billionaire weirdos who spend 20 hours a day shitposting or playing golf or live-tweeting Fox News, etc., are also the ones demanding that regular employees show up at the office whether their job actually requires that or not. It’s a power play for sure — they enjoy lording it over the rank and file. But I think it also comes from a place of deep insecurity. They know they don’t really do any work anymore, so they assume the same is true of everyone else.
Baud
No wonder so many people were calling Blue sky an echo chamber. Once again, projection.
Geminid
@Jeffro: Cardinal News covered a Republican meeting in Abingdon Saturday where Reid spoke about the scandal. Reid disclaimed the photos in queston and expressed disappointment in Governor Youngkin’s overly quick reaction. Rep. Morgan Griffith was there, and said he still supports Reid. Rep. Griffith made a point of mentioning Reid’s father, Delegate “Jack” Reid, a 9-term Delegate from Henrico County with whom Griffith served back in the day.
The younger Reid was communications director for George Allen. He became the sole Republican Lt. Governor candidate when Pat Herrity dropped out a week ago. Herrity, a Fairfax County Supervisor, had heart surgery in early March and said his recovery was proceeding too slowly for him to mount an active campaign.
Matt
It’s great that we let Mark Cuban decide which policies were “too extreme” for the Democratic party while he was simultaneously giving fascists loving handjobs in the group-chat.
Heckuva job, “centrist” Democrats.
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt: “We” did what now?
Belafon
@Omnes Omnibus: We did nothing. Cuban decided nothing for the party. Matt’s just pissed Cuban let Luka get cut from the Mavericks.
tobie
@Matt: I didn’t know that Cuban was for having Medicare cover home care for the elderly or removing medical debt from credit reports. Good to know. Too bad it didn’t happen.
New Deal democrat
Prof. Jack Rakove, Professor of History and American Studies and professor of political science at Stanford University for the past 45 years, and a Constitutional historian and scholar, has become radicalized, calling the current US Constitution a failure:
“[I]mpeachment now exemplifies outright constitutional failure, where what the Framers would have regarded as a crucial mechanism for exceptional cases has collapsed.
“When Congress itself became the object of the impeachable events of Jan. 6, yet only a handful of GOP members vote to impeach in the House or convict in the Senate, you know it has become the rotten fruit of a failed Constitution.
“…. [W]e may be veering toward the point of necessity [for some type of new Constitutional Convention]. In that case, why not restore a confederal model of sorts[?]
“…. [F]or “internal police” (to borrow an 18th-c. term, one could easily imagine regional confederacies …. Living on the west coast one can easily imagine CA/OR/WA drawing in AZ/NM/CO.”
https://bsky.app/profile/jrakove.bsky.social/post/3lnslzksn6s2q
When a prominent historian like this thinks the previously unthinkable, all bets are off.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Matt:
Dems who basically launder many of the glibertarian-sourced policies or billionaire views from even the not-totally-nutjob billionaires like Cuban, seem to think that doubling down on extreme centrism is a path to victory and overlook (actually ignore) that Hair Furor and the GOP abandoned moderate politics and gee, look who controls all three branches at the moment?
I actually think there is an impact, whether or not we on the left like to admit it, that the Orange Fart Cloud is a draw when on the ticket. And, in a turnaround of sorts, there’s not massive voter turnout.
Phylllis
@different-church-lady: Abso-damn-lutely.
Baud
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
That’s a genteel way to say “promoted pride in bigotry.” Something that is not available to us.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
We failed to silence Mark Cuban and thereby forced people to embrace fascism. Don’t try to wash your hands of it.
Baud
For every leftie who claims Mark Cuban is the heart of the party and the reason we lose, there’s a centrist who claims AOC is the heart of the party and the reason we lose.
It’s a fool’s errand to try to mediate that debate.
Matt McIrvin
@Mathguy: It’s the old “if only we could get all the SMART people in a room together and let them hash it out”, only dude defines “smart” as “still ride or die for Trump”
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: Word. “Whatta you mean, ‘we’?” applies here.
But also: Imagine looking at a story like this and coming away thinking that Mark Cuban is the biggest problem.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: the only thing I know about that guy is that he was on Dancing with the Stars once. I think?
Geminid
@Jeffro: I expect this will be a bad year for Virginia Republicans at the state-wide level. The big question will be how much Dems can expand their 51-49 majority in the House of Delegates. Spanberger ought to be able to help there. We have some good candidates running for Attorney General and Lt. Governor as well.
Ocotillo
I wondered why the wankers on Shark Tank had or made time to do a stupid TV show. Also, it wasn’t like they needed the money unlike a certain orange scourge from a previous show. But really, if they have time to be on the internet like us non-elites, they need a hell of a tax hike.
Baud
@Suzanne:
The thinking is that the Democratic Party is the biggest problem. It always comes back to only Dems have agency.
RevRick
@Gin & Tonic: I preached an Earth Day sermon, went to a concert featuring Tschaicovsky’s 5th Symphony with MrsRev, went for a walk through the neighborhood, and ended the day watching episodes of Andor and The Handmaid’s Tale with MrsRev.
So much winning!
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
He’s popular on Blue sky. Or was last time I visited there.
The Audacity of Krope
Then you start looking at money and the party leadership and you realize…
ETA: To be clear, I think wealthy funders are the problem, not Cuban per se. Schiff’s donors are a problem. Clooney is a problem.
Baud
@The Audacity of Krope:
That both lefties and centrists are idiots.
ETA: I don’t disagree that I’d prefer less money in politics and in the Dem party. But I disagree that money is the only influencer in the party.
RevRick
@Birdie: Correction: 90% tax rates cannot be restored soon enough.
The Audacity of Krope
@Baud: There are idiots all over the political map. But the left has about as much sway in our politics as a light breeze has on a flat stone embedded in the ground.
We do have two parties committed to making sure nothing vaguely socialist reaches the typical American voters’ears.
Belafon
@Matt McIrvin: Mark Cuban is one of those people who has been driven since a very young age – you can read about him at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Cuban – and was one of the people that made a lot of money selling broadcast.com to Yahoo!. He bought the Mavericks, was a very outspoken as a team owner, but tended to actually let the smart basketball people run the team, which ultimately led to them winning a championship. He is libertarian, but at least a little on the good side, and runs Cost Plus, which provides access to medication at a lot cheaper values than other places.
Baud
@The Audacity of Krope:
I don’t think that’s true at all. They just don’t have control, so they tell themselves they’re irrelevant.
We also have an American electorate that pre-hates socialism or anything close to it and will only accept it after it becomes entrenched.
RevRick
@Baud: The fingers do get tired of all that pointing.
252man
@Betty Cracker: Having people return to the office also helps to maintain the value of commercial real estate. I think that explains the call for returning to the office.
They Call Me Noni
@Gin & Tonic: Congratulations of the newest family member. Don’t you just love that new baby smell?
The Audacity of Krope
A natural byproduct of the bipartisan consensus that we can’t talk about it honestly.
Baud
@The Audacity of Krope:
It’s also the cause of the bipartisan consensus.
We can’t talk about it honestly, because that would require “socialists” to accept responsibility for being unpersuasive rather than blaming others.
Belafon
@The Audacity of Krope:
Bull. We one party that loves socialism for the wealthy, and another party that passed 90% taxes on the rich, Medicare, Medicaid, tried to pass universal health care (failed because of public), the ACA, SNAP, increase spending on education, and a whole bunch of other stuff that gets blocked because it helps “those people.”
RevRick
@Baud: I think that last statement comes close to nailing it. I would add that they pre-hate it, because those people will benefit, which means taxing Real Americans.
Baud
@RevRick:
Yeah, I think that’s the primary reason too.
The Audacity of Krope
Plenty of people get persuaded by socialists. Plenty more conceive of rudimentary socialist as just an emergent phenomenon from looking at America’s problems and conceiving solutions.
However, in terms of our major media, it must not be discussed except to be mocked or outright slandered. There is absolutely motive behind the fact that advocating for the agency of working people is treated as though it’s an extreme position while deporting millions of people including permanent residents…at least merits public debate.
Socialists would probably be more effective and persuasive if they weren’t intentionally isolated. But that’s the whole point, isn’t it?
Perfect example. Socialism doesn’t recommend anything about taxation levels, per se. It doesn’t require anything specific from the government or even for a government to exist.
Yet, the definition you would get of socialism from most people would be along the lines of “government doing stuff” as opposed to anything involving who owns what.
Cliosfanboy
@schrodingers_cat:
Is D’Souza in that group as well???
Eolirin
@Baud: The electorate only pre hates socialism if it’s given to more than just white people.
Belafon
@The Audacity of Krope:
Up until the moment they need to be implemented, then it becomes “I shouldn’t have to pay for something other people will use.” We can’t even get bus service into my city from Dallas for that reason, and the same people who complain about paying for buses complain about the traffic problem.
schrodingers_cat
@Cliosfanboy: No D’Souza is an immigrant himself. I am talking about children of immigrant doctor parents
In some ways D’Souza is worse because he cannot plead ignorance to support his bigotry.
Eolirin
@Baud: It can’t be talked about because it’s absolutely forbidden to talk about how white people are racist and you can’t have that conversation without running face first into that.
We can barely tolerate having that conversation here.
Old Man Shadow
@different-church-lady: Still galls me and probably always will just how fucking clear Trump and the GOP were about their intentions and now people are screaming “Who could have known?”
I trust their newfound realization and turning as much as I trust Trump himself.
The Audacity of Krope
@Belafon: That isn’t people not wanting socialism. That’s people not wanting to pay for government services. Not really the same thing. Still a problem.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: The biggest drivers in our politics are racism and misogyny. Wealth is a means to achieve that racist and sexist utopia.
Our media is a fucking joke.
Old Man Shadow
@Eolirin: Bingo.
All of the “waste” and “fraud” people are convinced exists in the government budget generally boils down to “But Those people are getting benefits and that can’t be right!”
The Audacity of Krope
Right, which is why I find myself shaking my head at people crowing about Trump’s falling poll numbers. Those numbers don’t show anyone learned anything.
Eolirin
@The Audacity of Krope: The people “paying” for it frequently aren’t even looking at significant cost increases, if there are any at all, nor are they evaluating whether they end up making out on the deal in cost savings.
They’re reacting emotionally to the intended effects of a 50 year campaign to associate government services with helping black people. We’ve all seen the Lee Atwater bit. The very concept makes them angry, and being charitable, many of them don’t even know why anymore.
Jackie
Did FFOTUS just get Liberal Party leader Mark Carney elected? He just stuck his big fat nose into Canada’s federal election that’s essentially become a referendum on him.
I hope Carney wins in a landslide!
Belafon
@The Audacity of Krope: Nope. Read it again. This is people not wanting other people to have something they are paying for. If they’re not wanting to be part of a collective providing services as needed, they’re not wanting socialism.
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: Then again, there’s Virginia’s Democratic 10th CD Congressman Suhas Subramanyam. He was born near Houston but his parents came from Bangalore and I think they both are/were medical doctors.
Subramanyam succeeded Rep. Jennifer Wexton, who sadly had to retire for reasons of health. Age 38, Suhas Subramanyam is a former state Senator and graduated from Tulane University and the Northwestern University School of Law.
Eolirin
@Belafon: It’s a little more nuanced than that, a lot of those people are happy to receive social security and medicare/medicaid, and would fight you if you tried to take them away.
Hell, a lot of them would be pissed if you took away their bus service if they used it. Which they can’t do if it doesn’t exist. Makes getting things off the ground harder.
JaySinWA
@different-church-lady:
It’s like the old “dead girl or live boy” adage.
Matt McIrvin
@The Audacity of Krope: Real state socialism, where we outlaw the limited-liability corporation and nationalize all industries so the state owns the means of production, I think genuinely is way outside the US mainstream. I don’t think I want it, frankly. But I don’t think Bernie Sanders or AOC want that either and they call themselves socialists, so go figure. The kind of social-democratic state that West European “Socialist” parties support, with state services doing a lot of the things that are crappily privatized here, I think there is actually a lot of public support for in the US. Though I do think the Republicans do an effective job of eroding that through the mugger’s argument: “we’re going to get back in power and wreck those state services if you depend on them, so you better not.”
narya
Eye-opening conversation Saturday night, as we shared beers and food. Six of us, all democrats (of one form or another), one gay couple (one of whom is black). One person had expressed concerns about Joe’s health months before the debate, when he and I were out to dinner–he had actually met with Joe in person, so this was first-hand concern, not media-generated. At least two people thought that Joe should have stepped down much sooner and there should have been a full-on primary, even though everyone liked Harris/Walz. Several people thought that the NYT pushes back against T***p and thought of Haberman as a big ol truth-teller. These are reasonably well-informed folks, unlikely to vote R ever, mostly having worked/working in non-profit sectors (including a teacher), all of us come from working class roots, all have college educations. After awhile, I tried to listen more than talk, because I disagreed with so much. It took us two hours to get to politics, happily enough, and we managed to diverge from it to other stuff after awhile. I don’t have any grand conclusions, but it was definitely interesting to hear from people who aren’t as “online” as I am and, while informed and dem voters, aren’t as in the weeds as I am.
Belafon
@Eolirin: True. I am definitely dealing with a lot of people around me who don’t understand that Medicare is a social program, and don’t understand that paying for firefighters is also a social benefit, and can’t extrapolate from that to other things they benefit from if we all did them together. But I am definitely agreeing with you that the biggest reason they don’t want it is because of who they perceive would benefit.
schrodingers_cat
@Geminid: Good for him. But I just read his bio and there was the usual claptrap about India.
chemiclord
@The Audacity of Krope: A natural byproduct of the individualist and determinist population that scoured the land clean from sea to shining sea since its inception, you mean.
Betty Cracker
@The Audacity of Krope: Trump’s (historically!) shitty poll numbers aren’t a reason for celebration in and of themselves or because they make Trump mad. But would you agree that public opinion matters in a democracy, even in a compromised, half-assed democracy such as the one we have in the USA?
If so, why you keep sniffing contemptuously when polls come up? Are you aware of some other metric that’s a better gauge for current public opinion or a device other than voting that can bounce Repubs out of office and replace them with better politicians?
chemiclord
I do find it fascinating (and not at all genuine) that people could have lived through Trump’s first term, read even a Cliff Notes version of Project 2025, and take until now to go, “Gee… I’m starting to think this Trump guy isn’t actually very good at this. Who could have possibly seen this disaster coming?”
Jeffro
We do indeed!
It’s encouraging that despite the presidential/congressional outcomes nationwide last November, Virginia stayed blue and went for Harris. I suspect that has to do with education and diversity.
chemiclord
@Betty Cracker:
It could. But it most likely will only reinforce their ingrained, “Meh, both sides are bad” narrative.
Eolirin
@chemiclord: You mean the history of whites cosplaying as rugged individualists while other people did all the actual work?
We can’t really separate the country’s ideals of independent self determination and individual freedoms from it’s history of slavery and labor exploitation.
Jeffro
amen to that!
“Tax the billionaires. Just because.” fits on a bumper sticker and polls well. =)
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Yeah, “socialism” isn’t used in its historical sense anymore. For instance, I would not classify any country in Western Europe as “socialist.”
Jeffro
also voting…
“those people are voting! therefore, there must be voter fraud!!”
Eolirin
@chemiclord: Until you remember that the people who broke for Trump don’t follow any news, and don’t pay attention to politics at all, and about all they remember about Trump is having gotten pandemic checks with his name on them, and The Apprentice, and they’ve never heard of Project 2025.
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: I have not read Subramanyam’s bio since last fall. I just know he’s on the moderate side of ghe Democratic party. That may be why I don’t hear more about this 38 year-old Democrat. I figure a lot of the people clamoring for younger Democrats are like, not that kind of younger Democrat.
Cliosfanboy
@schrodingers_cat:
“in some ways, even worse” is a perfect description for him.
chemiclord
@Eolirin:
Yes. I should have been a bit more obvious with my sarcasm there.
Betty Cracker
Just saw on bsky that Rep. Gerry Connolly says his esophageal cancer has returned. He won’t run again, and his announcement says he’s stepping back as ranking member of Oversight “soon.”
Citizen Alan
@Eolirin: Reagan’s most famous campaign line plus the two words he didn’t say, but that all his followers heard loud and clear:
Eolirin
@Betty Cracker: I can think of devices to remove Republicans besides voting, they’re just difficult to contemplate, though it may be all that’s left to us anyway as voting is not a guarantee under these conditions, but I’d suggest looking at what’s had to happen in Eastern European nations when Russian backed political groups have taken control of their countries and tried to establish Russian friendly autocracies, because that’s basically what’s happening here.
The people only win some of the time.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Oh wow. Best of luck to him. I guess we’ll see if AOC gets to lead that committee now.
Eolirin
@chemiclord: Yeah, sorry for not picking up on that better. Too close in theme to the other strand of conversation.
Suzanne
@The Audacity of Krope:
I don’t always agree with you, but I very much do here.
Biggest problem remains the 27%. Second- or third-biggest problem remains the “politically incoherent” who sometimes-vote and it’s all squishy and vibe-y even when they do.
Rose Judson
@Gin & Tonic: I’d say you do. Congratulations!
Eolirin
@Baud: Don’t the Republicans technically lead the committee right now?
rikyrah
@Gin & Tonic:
Congratulations :)
Baud
@Eolirin:
I misspoke. I should have said lead the Dems on the committee.
Betty Cracker
@Eolirin: I don’t think we’re fully in a post-democracy model just yet. I could be wrong!
Eolirin
@Baud: I mean, I’d also like to contemplate Speaker Jeffries, so here’s hoping we get to that version of things.
rikyrah
@Rugosa:
They wanna party like it’s 1925
Ruckus
@stinger:
By George I think he’s got it!
Money is power, always has been, always will be. This is not a new or unusual human concept in life and has been true since the concept of money, buying and selling was invented/discovered/demanded.
Part of being an animal is that we need food and shelter, and we as humans have learned that the amount of money one has assists greatly with both. Being without copious amounts of money is not a huge detriment to living OK, but the concept that you need massive amounts is the basis of a lot of human lives. In olden times that meant taking/withholding money from the majority for the egos of the few. As life has increased the population of the world and created better food and shelter availability, more people can live comfortably, even while some live in excess, and some still live within not enough. The problem is that some believe that living in huge excess is far better and screw everyone else. And I believe that humanity will always be like this. Because greed is a basic human concept, one that is all too common. It’s hard to live with it and damn hard to control. Our taxation system has some level of doing that, but it will never fully work, because greed is never going away from humanity.
The Audacity of Krope
Why does it need to be state socialism? Clif bars was once run as an independent worker cooperative…until it was bought.
But why can’t we promote this as a form of structuring businesses? Or otherwise work on things that give employees more influence in boardrooms in companies not structured that way?
Socialism = government isn’t true and you would think a bunch of Democrats who are used to their party being slammed as socialists because they offer government-oriented solutions would know that.
Too busy running from the word to know what it means I guess?
schrodingers_cat
@Geminid: Many children of immigrants have distorted picture of their parents country of origin shaped by the parents views.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
We’re in a holding pattern. Whether we touch down on the runway or kersplat in the ocean remains hazy.
Betty Cracker
@NotMax: Sounds about right.
NotMax
Smoky Back Rooms
Obligatory?
;)
Cliosfanboy
@schrodingers_cat:
In the Indian diaspora in the US/Canada, particularly conservative??
The Audacity of Krope
Because polls are hot garbage. They can be manipulated by the framing of questions. They can be manipulated by creative reinterpretation after the fact. Nowadays it’s worse because everyone is on cellphones refusing to answer unfamiliar numbers.
One poll matters. It isn’t a sampling. It is everyone willing to participate. The public consumption polls are even used cynically to manipulate that, to create bandwagon effects or convince a bunch of delegates that the person people actually voted to nominate isn’t supported as the nominee or we shouldn’t be talking about this issue because it’s unpopular (God forbid we consider persuasion). Even in terms of elections, what good does constantly gauging. these approval rating matters two, four years out?
Polls are the primary weapon the media is using to pickle the brains of the electorate.
rikyrah
@New Deal democrat:
I disagree. I think the Founding Fathers saw the Orange Menace coming over 200 years ago.
What they could not have accounted for was an entire political party turning their backs on THEIR OATH to the Constitution.
You’ll never ever and I mean never ever will convince me that the truest problem isn’t WHITE SUPREMACY.
You will never convince me that if Barack Obama had done 2% of this….there would be no doubt about what’s in the Constitution.
Geminid
@Baud: Rep. Ocasio-Cortez is on the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee* now and might not be in the running for Oversight Ranking Member. D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton is the most senior Dem on Oversight but the job will more likely go to a regular Representative. I’m hoping they choose Chicago-area Rep. Raj Krishnamoorthi for Ranking Member; he’s really sharp.
* I think Democrats on the Energy and Commerce do not serve on other committees. It’s a good place for Ocasio-Cortez because she can work on clean energy and related legislation there. That was an early interest of hers. Democrats are unlikely to put environmental bills on the House floor this Congress but it could be a different story in the next.
schrodingers_cat
@Cliosfanboy: No I don’t think so, not where US politics is concerned if you look at the voting patterns.
It is difficult to ascertain how they think about politics back home. The Modi Bhakts are vocal but IDK if they are the majority of the diaspora.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Nailed it. It is the white supremacy.
AM in NC
@different-church-lady: And the bitches were claiming scalps of sexual assaulters and harassers. Can’t have that either.
New Deal democrat
@rikyrah:
They absolutely did foresee the mortal danger of demagogues. His point is that the barriers they erected against such a danger – e.g., the Electoral College, Impeachment, the Foreign Emoluments Clause – all have proven to be failures.
Have a nice day.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: Heh, I worked for a couple of years for a German company, and does anyone think the VW Group or Mercedes Benz aren’t interested in profits?
Americans have a hard time wrapping their little minds around the idea that capitalism is not in and of itself evil; and that well regulated capitalism can be a boon to everyone.
Just like Americans don’t seem to be able to internalize that if all Americans are free to be their own true selves in peace with their neighbors that they too would benefit.
Betty Cracker
@The Audacity of Krope: I don’t disagree about polling’s well-known flaws or media abuses thereof. But politicians pay attention to polls because they want to keep their jobs, and polls are one way to find out if they’re on the right side of public opinion before elections. Therefore, polls still matter as a gauge because they can inspire politicians to respond to what they think their voters want. I also think sustained polling trends from a bunch of different outlets can capture real public sentiment, e.g., Trump’s cratering approval rating across a bunch of issues is telling us something real.
Matt McIrvin
@rikyrah: The whole structure they put together was dependent on there not being political parties strong enough that partisan loyalties would outweigh institutional loyalties, and their plan for preventing that was to say “gee, I hope there won’t be strong political parties.”
Then they formed strong political parties about five minutes later and crashed the presidential election system so hard they had to pass the 12th Amendment to patch it.
And, yeah, you’re spot on, it was all about white supremacy and the fight between, mostly, different forms of it. Jefferson had the Slave Power on his side. The Civil War happened when the South decided a President who wasn’t wholly on board with expansion and entrenchment of slavery (though even he didn’t plan to abolish it) was too much to swallow. The post-WWII era had an unusual amount of bipartisan comity mostly because the civil rights issue cut across partisan lines, and the Southern Strategy gradually realigned that so that it didn’t any more.
Cliosfanboy
@schrodingers_cat:
OK, I wondered. thanks.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
We used to have more regional splits in the country, but the Southernization of white rural America has erased a lot of that.
Professor Bigfoot
@The Audacity of Krope: We have a population full of white people who are afraid that Black people might get some benefit from citizenship; white people who don’t believe immigrants are fully human, white people who don’t believe women have the capacity to make decisions about their own health.
Nearly 2/3 of white men voted directly for Mango Mussolini; and how many of that other third are David Hogg and the Justice Democrats; screaming over and over about how the Black and Jewish and female and LGBTQIA+ led Democrats are “doing it wrong,” are “stupid and feckless,” are “lazy and useless and need to be primaried.”
The problem is and always has been straight white men. Change THEM and you change the entire ballgame.
But that requires them to lose some of their privilege, so…
Captain C
@Phylllis: I haven’t read it yet, but I bought a copy on the grounds of who’s trying to suppress it.
RaflW
“the American elite feeling shut out from public spaces” is bullshit. They’re happy in their rarefied places like Aspen or each other’s absurd 10,000 sqft homes.
No, what they feel shut out from is being able to sexually harass women and openly mock gays. It’s that base, simplistic and gross.
Yeah, they probably also hope to not have their steak spit on by the line chef at their expensive restaurants, but those aren’t really very public public spaces due to the check cost.
Professor Bigfoot
@The Audacity of Krope: In Germany the trade unions are given by law a seat on the board of companies like the VW Group and Mercedes.
Remember when the managers of the VW plant in Tennessee actually WANTED a union that they could have meaningful negotiations with and Tennessee lawmakers nixed it?
Captain C
@Betty Cracker:
Added another variation of where that could correctly go.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: Polls do some things well and some things not so well. I tend to value what polling shows as to trend most of all. I also like the demographic breakdowns of registered and/or likely voters.
Anyway
There’s been a many-decades long concerted effort to help Americans reach that consensus. Any number of think-tanks institutes funded by people who think that the smallest regulation and/or tax increase is a huge government overreach.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: I think of it as “Confederationism.”
As one who was born and raise there, “the South is a place, the Confederacy is a worldview.”
White America seem to have internalized that worldview across the entire US.
ETA: SOUTHERNERS will eat that cornbread and drink that sweet tea, darlin’, but Confederates will wave that accursed flag.
karen gail
@Jackie:
I guess no one has ever shown the orange one a map of US when most of the Midwest belonged to Canada; my great grandmother was born in Canada in small trading post that her father owned/ran. Years later that trading post became her home and was located in Wisconsin; when I was born that same house was part of Stevens Point.
Suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot: There’s something else at work that includes racism but extends beyond it. There is a brainrot of cruelty and domination that has seeped into the dynamic of almost every public interaction. Racism, misogyny, homophobia are just some of the axes of that domination, but there’s others, too. How much money one makes is a big one. Body shape and size. It’s a value of extreme individualism and it is toxic AF. “Pick-me” behavior at societal scale.
Professor Bigfoot
@Suzanne: There comes a point at which it’s simpler to point out who they AREN’T targeting:
Straight white Christian men.
Period.
EVERYONE who is not a straight white Christian man WILL suffer if they can arrange it.
frosty
@Geminid: I have 1,000 postcards from Etsy on the way. Virginia is going to get a bunch of them.
RevRick
@The Audacity of Krope: And that precisely is the problem with socialism. It presupposes a model of industrialization that barely exists anymore. It is a 19th century solution to a 21st century problem.
Immediately following WW2, the British Labour government nationalized the “commanding heights” of the economy. And guess what? They no longer command much of anything. Coal, steel, rail and automobiles are a shadow of what they once were. It required later governments to prop up dinosaurs.
What is the source of most US billionaires’ wealth? In most cases, it’s an idea. Few own things; they own processes.
Everything on the Internet is a process that moves electrons around, including this blog. I suspect if us commenter’s threatened, “Hey, Cole, we’re going to nationalize Balloon Juice, he’d bust a gut laughing.”
The Audacity of Krope
@RevRick: Me: Socialism doesn’t necessarily mean nationalizing industries.
virtually everyone who wants to argue: Nationalizing industries won’t work/won’t be supported.
Reading is fundamental.
The Audacity of Krope
Those same people who look at massive, violent government overreach like what is happening now as just what ought to be done …
frosty
@Baud: I can’t figure out why DSA decided to call themselves Democratic Socialists instead of Social Democrats. Huge red flag! Big self-own putting the name socialist (which is totally demonized) out there.
The Audacity of Krope
That is something that I would endorse to grow worker influence. Note: does not require a penny of taxes.
Suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot: But many white men look down on other white men, also. If they’re poor or fat or weird/awkward or they went to college or they don’t lift, or any number of other things. That’s what I mean…. the essential core of the issue is that many Americans want to be better than others and use racism, misogyny, etc. to do that.
Geminid
@frosty: There will be dozen or so contested House of Delegates races in Virginia this year. Postcards will help, along with Abigail Spanberger’s coat tails. The former 7th CD Representative is a formidable politician and I expect her to work hard to elect Delegates this year.
Professor Bigfoot
@Suzanne: Oh, that’s so true in a Niemöllerian sense; but other white men will be the LAST to feel their “urge to power.”
The rest of us will be dead, in chains, or wearing Handmaid uniforms before then.
Suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot: Absolutely. There is a very clear ORDER.
But we make a mistake if we assume that there is a mindset of solidarity. Solidarity in this country is an inch deep.
RevRick
@The Audacity of Krope: Then what the heck is this socialism of which you speak?
The Audacity of Krope
@RevRick: Socialism is defined as workers owning the means of production. I brought up Clif bars being formerly owned by its employees, right here in America. Prof. Bigfoot raised Germany’s policy of having trade union representation on all corporate boards.
There are plenty of solutions that aren’t “the government owns and does everything.”
Omnes Omnibus
@karen gail: Are you suggesting that Steven Point is not part of Wisconsin?
RevRick
@The Audacity of Krope:
@Professor Bigfoot: Even at their peak membership as a % of US workers, unions could neither prevent Taft-Hartley from becoming law, nor penetrate various nonunion sectors.
Why?
Because unionization was highly concentrated in just eight states, mostly based in manufacturing. And today the manufacturing sector employs what, about 10% of the population?
What are the huge and growing sectors of our economy? Meds and eds and FIRE.
rikyrah
@Professor Bigfoot:
say it again for the bleacher seats.
rikyrah
@frosty:
thank you :)
Eyeroller
@narya: I would bet that in most of those cases, your friends arrived at their attitudes, including or perhaps especially their high opinions of the NYT, from reading the NYT. Even in the case of the personal meeting, there could have been some bias injected–the NYT went extremely negative on Biden around the Afghanistan withdrawal and pretty much never let up. It was because of all this that I finally canceled my 20+ year subscription a couple of months before the election. The persistent sanewashing of Trump and intense nitpicking of Harris were the final straws.
frosty
@The Audacity of Krope: I worked for an engineering firm that had an ESOP – Employee Stock Ownership Plan. Employees had one seat on the board. Technically, we owned the means of production. Practically, we didn’t have a say in how the company was run.
RevRick
@The Audacity of Krope: The German policy only works, because: a). Germany is a parliamentary democracy with a party historically tied to labor; b). manufacturing is a much bigger sector of their economy; and c). they effectively export all the consequences to the rest of the world.
Now do Sears, JC Penney, the NY Central Railroad, MySpace, TWA, PanAm… and shall I continue?
Llelldorin
@RaflW: For the worst of them, absolutely. For the rest, this is just rich people struggling with the concept of getting old.
I’m the same generation as a lot of these nutcases, but with a twist — I got my CS degree in 1995, but hated the overwhelming glibertarianism of CS in those days. I finally gave up and joined a tech firm in 2013. In that time, the basic zeitgeist of coders had shifted entirely — millennial coders were far to the left of their Gen X equivalents.
The problem is that the rich jerks of my generation didn’t understand the shift at all — it never occurred to them that it was a lot harder to come of age in 2010 and believe in Randian bullshit than it was if you came of age in the 1980s. They assumed it must be some sort of evil plot by universities, because “I’m pushing 50 and things are different now” COULD NOT BE THE ANSWER.
Hob
Tangential to the main topic: I’d rather not inflate Andreesen’s credentials. He was certainly an important figure in early Web history, but saying “the inventor” glosses over 1. his partnership with Eric Bina – who Andreesen has always credited with at least half of the work, but who wasn’t a big self-promoter or entrepreneur – and 2. the extent to which Mosaic was an incremental improvement over the ViolaWWW browser. You can debate what counts as “modern”, but the common idea that Mosaic was the first graphical browser with hyperlinks just isn’t true; those existed already. Mosaic’s main innovations were being able to run on non-Unix systems and being able to display images inline with text instead of in a pop-up window. I wouldn’t say the creator of Viola invented the modern browser either – the idea of what a browser is and what it should be able to do was mostly inherent in the HTML specification – but it did include concepts like scripting and stylesheets that were genuine innovations at the time, long before those ended up being implemented (in fairly different ways) in later browsers.
burritoboy
Many (perhaps even most) socialists traditionally (before the authoritarian regimes of Leninist / Stalinist USSR and Maoist China) advocated for each workplace to be democratically controlled by the workers at that workplace. They absolutely did not advocate for state ownership, and were strongly against the highly hierarchical types of state ownership that those regimes enforced. (Many socialists call and still do call that structure state capitalism and other formulations.) While there were Americans who were Stalinists (especially in the 1930s,) even then those were the very tiny number of people who were the most rigid members of the American Communist Party (probably never more than 100,000 people tops.) Large groups of other American socialists were in entities like the Socialist Party, which by no means agreed with the CP.
Gloria DryGarden
This succinct reel from Facebook sums up so clearly a counter to the prevailing lies about which things are destroying our society. For folks who have Facebook and can listen I thought this was worth sharing. Your life doesn’t suck because of__.
Anyway
Andreessen was in the right place at the right time. That’s not to knock his making the most of the opportunities available to him but the timing cannot be underestimated.
He’s turned into such an awful libertarian that thinks he invented sliced bread ….gack. Can’t stand him.
Llelldorin
@Anyway: I’m not so sure that he’s turned into an awful libertarian. “Awful libertarian” was the default setting for engineers in the 1980s.
The Audacity of Krope
@RevRick: I won’t pretend like there isn’t a lot of work to do in terms of getting labor to see itself as a class with common interest with its fellow members.
But, yes, unions do find their way into retail employment, computer software and hardware development, distribution.
Mind you, I’m just arguing to provide more space for socialists in the national discourse and doing a little listening. There are many accomplished and constructive-minded socialists out there. Treat us like your neighbors instead of a punchline.
Lauryn11
@Rugosa:
“Wall Street brokers and tech bros alike are celebrating the switch, [post-Trump] claiming that they no longer feel the need to culturally consider women, minorities, or disabled people while they talk, reported the Financial Times.”
“I feel liberated,” one top banker told the paper. “We can say ‘retard’ and ‘pussy’ without the fear of getting cancelled.… It’s a new dawn.”
I’ve never seen a group of fuckwits so giddy that they can use the ‘R’ word again as a playground slur. Every MAGA and tech bro on Elon’s hellsite including Elon horks up “retard” or “retarded” on the carpet every chance they get. Some of them are getting paid for it, no doubt.
Ruckus
@schrodingers_cat:
In some parts of this world many of those parent’s views can be truly honest. In some parts the tone of your skin, the concept of how wealthy are you, who your ancestors are is still considered extremely important. This part of the world may actually still be one of them. It can be a different definition in different countries and even in some parts of a large country. But it’s humanity and I doubt that all of this is going away anytime soon.
Kayla Rudbek
Even the Republicans over at IP Watchdog had an entry last week on the former director of the Patent and Trademark Office under Trump taking down Musk and Dorsey’s “delete all IP law” in a recent speech. So maybe we’re finally seeing a split between the sane money and the insane money?
Kayla Rudbek
@Captain C: yep, the masters of the universe are likely all on stimulants (caffeine, Adderall, amphetamines, cocaine) just like the 19th century