In comments the other day, we were laughing about John’s recent misinterpretation of a BREAKING NEWS ALERT during the Olympics and musing about the personal joy we will individually experience and the spontaneous street parties, etc., that will eventually occur When It Happens.
That sort of daydreaming is harmless enough. But as we all know, the rancid orange fart cloud is merely an avatar for a much larger constellation of problems, and those problems won’t dissipate when their current mascot joins the Choir Invisible.
Josh Marshall at TPM published a piece yesterday about the global authoritarian movement that Trump is arguably leading right now but that will persist when Piggy hoofs it to hell. It includes Gulf princelings like Jared Kushner’s bone saw pal, European revanchist governments, post-Soviet autocracies and U.S.-based far-right tech and media oligarchs who control major communication channels.
The whole thing is worth reading, so here’s a gift link. Below is an excerpt:
I’ve discussed this concept in the past. So I don’t want to belabor the point of its existence. I want to point out how its forces are arrayed against civic democracy in the U.S. — quite apart from Donald Trump. This wasn’t always the case. There didn’t use to be so many U.S. billionaires. And they characteristically had economic views which aimed to preserve their wealth. But they were not clearly on the right in the way they are now. They have moved an increasingly anti-civic democratic direction as the scale of their wealth and their identity as a class has exploded. They also weren’t so increasingly allied with primitive economy petro-states of the Gulf.
The point is that they will exist no matter what happens to Trump. They command vast economic resources; they run the governments in many countries where the government never changes; they have deep tentacles into the U.S. political system and many of its key players are from the U.S. Trump didn’t create this movement precisely. But his role in global politics over the last decade solidified it as a self-conscious group and congealed it together. Any movement of civic democratic revival in the U.S. will be menaced by its continued existence. Now is the time to think about how a revived and revitalized civic democratic movement in the U.S. could combat it and avoid being destroyed by it.
Emphasis mine.
Piggy is flailing politically and deteriorating physically. He’s grasping at a “legacy” by gilding White House surfaces, slapping his accursed name on edifices and overseeing the construction of a garish ballroom.
But his real legacy is a more consolidated global authoritarian movement that assembled under his banner. Marshall asks how a revitalized civic democratic movement might combat it, but I think the answer is implied in the bolded sentence above, which is to end its existence as a threat.
Figuring out how to do that is above my paygrade, but taxing billionaires out of existence seems like an essential component, along with reestablishing a global democratic movement, hopefully with less cynicism and a more sincere commitment to human rights. I have no idea if that’s possible, but defining the opponent and understanding their weak points is a good start.
Whether deliberately or not Trump strengthened that alliance, but it’s possible his buffoonish flailing might provide opportunities to undermine it. I think Senator Ossoff is onto something here:
Ossoff: We were told that MAGA was for working-class Americans. But this is a government of, by, and for the ultra-rich. It’s the wealthiest Cabinet ever. This is the Epstein class. They are the elites they pretend to hate.
What Ossoff says has the advantage of being true, but I have no idea if the message will break through. We’ll learn more as we live through these interesting times.
Open thread.
Do We Have a Real Shot at the KY Senate Seat?
Eolirin
Russia is a major contributor to this as well. If things continue as they are for them and they have a massive economic collapse by the end of the year, that could have something of an impact too.
Snarki, child of Loki
“Hey Q-Anoners! We found the cabal of rich elite pedos that you were looking for”
crickets
Jeffro
I’m okay if we do all this at once, or if 2c is just heads on pikes and then do the rest.
trollhattan
Least surprising thing I’ll read today, possibly this week.
They don’t trust us, yo. And here I thought wealth = security on its on accord.
Baud
Orban has a real shot of losing in April.
They Call Me Noni
Headline on HuffPost says ICE is ending operations in MN!!!
Kirklin
Explicit legislation to overturn Citizens United is something I think would have significant beneficial consequences. It cuts back on the defacto “everyone has a vote per dollar” situation.
Wapiti
Banning crypto currency might be necessary to block foreign autocrats from useful idiots here.
Jeffro
@trollhattan: which is amazing, since crime in general has been on a downward trend for decades now (especially in affluent areas)
they’re picking up on the ‘vibe’, I guess? I’ll give them credit for that. it’s definitely MY vibe
they also have too much money, I guess…maybe we should help them with that via reinstalling highly progressive taxation?
trollhattan
@Baud: Who does he need to arrest to keep his day job?
Steve LaBonne
As Confucius taught, calling things by their right names is essential to a functioning society. So I applaud the phrase “the Epstein class” and hope Democrats use it more and more. It’s crucial to get low-info voters to understand that the ultra-rich are not benign “job creators”, but dangerous predators.
Miss Bianca
@They Call Me Noni: Yeah, I’ll believe it when Minnesotans tell me they see it.
WeimarGerman
We need the iconography and labels of a movement. “Elites” is not pejorative enough to work. Billionaires can be good (MacKenzie Scott seems more than decent).
Can we label them “predator” class? It fits for Epstein, climate change, minimum wage, …
Trivia Man
@Jeffro: The first step is such an easy one – build infrastructure. That creates jobs and economic activity AND improves quality of life. If it is done wisely it will pay off in lower energy use, lower health care expenses, and more educated children.
Bonus: it benefits the billionaires too!
Doug
Anne Applebaum has written a while book, Autocracy Inc., and you can read that or you can read my review
thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/03/02/autocracy-inc-by-anne-applebaum/
or you can just read this paragraph:
“Applebaum gives her readers one of the key insights right at the beginning: contemporary dictators are no longer stand-alone villains. Though there is no overarching ideology as there was among Communists during the Cold War, the autocrats work with each other for mutual benefit. They may be more a syndicate than a corporation, but the different branches of Autocracy Inc. know they have more in common with each other than any of them do with liberal democracies, and they act on that knowledge.”
Suzanne
Yes.
Also…. I think it is important to create an attitude of optimism, progress, building. Shiny new nice things! Stuff like going to the Moon, building skyscrapers. I don’t know what today’s equivalent would be… but seeing significant change is incredibly inspiring and foments genuine pride.
trollhattan
Sure, Jan.
Hildebrand
Hamstringing the petro states seems to be one of the components in all of this. Pushing the oligarchs in charge of extractive economies into the outer darkness will help immensely.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Going to the Moon and building data centers.
Professor Bigfoot
“… and everybody knows it. Everybody knows it!”
That’s a deep truth right there.
Steve LaBonne
@Suzanne: I think people would like shiny new health care that they can actually access and shiny new housing that they can actually afford and a shiny new living wage that enables them to actually put food on the table.
different-church-lady
I missed John’s freakout live, but trust me: “when it happens” NBC won’t make nearly as big a deal out of it as news about one of its own anchors.
different-church-lady
@Steve LaBonne: I would be happy with slightly tarnished second-hand insurance prices, thank you.
MT
I think the way to take down the oligarchs is to very publicly destroy Elon Musk for the DOGE shit. Freeze his assets and eminent domain anything useful from his businesses under the pretense that the government funded all the research so we are just reclaiming what is rightfully ours. Make him personally liable to anyone whose data was illegally copied from SSA. If you are feeling extra nasty, refer the destruction of USAID to the Hague as a crime against humanity.
If you succeed in even a fraction of that I think you put the fear of god into the rest of them, to the point where many would be happy retreating to the status quo that used to exist
MattF
The Tax Foundation has the Federal income tax brackets going back to the 19th century. Notable that incomes over $400,000 were taxed at over 90% until the early ‘60s. I realize that the true rates were presumably lower and that wealth and income are different things, but still— the idea of higher tax rates isn’t all that unprecedented.
VFX Lurker
There’s an argument in favor of electric cars.
Professor Bigfoot
@Doug: Mob families.
Dividing up their territories.
Highly corrupt, criminal regimes.
lowtechcyclist
@Miss Bianca:
Ditto. eclare mentioned in the morning thread that she’d heard that, pre-surge, there were ~70 ICE agents in Minneapolis. When they’re down to that number again, we might be able to believe them when they say the ‘surge’ is over. But not until then.
different-church-lady
deleted, mispost
NotMax
A kajillion counter-curses on whomever first said “May you live in interesting times.”
;)
Jeffro
@Trivia Man: don’t we need $$$ if we’re going to build infrastructure? that’s why I made it my #1 priority upthread
Steve LaBonne
@different-church-lady: When ICE leaves that will actually be true!
different-church-lady
@MT:
Elon himself is kinda already doing that.
Trivia Man
@MattF: Them: MAGA!!!
me: when was America great? You mean the 1950’s? great! Let’s start by reinstating those tax rates for 5 years and see what we can do with that!
different-church-lady
@Steve LaBonne: I was going to say “at least they know how to lie” but I was afraid it would be misinterpreted.
lowtechcyclist
@Suzanne:
Medicare (or maybe Medicaid) for all. High-speed intercity rail. I’m sure I could think of some others.
NotMax
@MattF
In context, the 90% and other similar sky high rates were meant to pay off the debt (and promissory war bonds) incurred by WW2.
Gin & Tonic
No disrespect intended to Ms. Cracker, but the Soviet Union collapsed over 35 years ago. Were people referring to “post-Ottoman” territories in the late 1950’s?
trollhattan
@NotMax:
Had to have been someone with four teenagers at home.
Deputinize America
Trump, Netanyahu, Putin – lose two and the rest of the world settles down, even in authoritarian spaces. Xi is no big bad – he’s simply a shrewd opportunist playing the game board that the others are fucking up.
Suzanne
@lowtechcyclist: As much as I would love M4A, I am specifically talking about visible stuff. Aided by good policy, of course, but not specifically political. Infrastructure, yes. Compelling moments, yes.
Good citizenship can feel like a grind sometimes. It’s important to see and feel the great things that we can also make possible.
Josie
The first thing should be to enshrine voting rights for all citizens. Then we would be in a position to accomplish the other changes.
trollhattan
@VFX Lurker:
Hell yeah. And PV solar, wind, IOW everything Trump loathes.
Steve LaBonne
@Suzanne: Panem et circenses sine panem?
Deputinize America
@trollhattan:
The wealthy still have weak points at clubs and other social events, plus their extended families aren’t as protected. And no executive protection detail employee is going to take a bullet voluntarily in saving the protectee.
lowtechcyclist
@Gin & Tonic:
The regime in Ukraine that the Revolution of Dignity overthrew was a post-Soviet regime by any reasonable definition. Maybe the USSR was officially dissolved, but I don’t need to tell you that Russia was (and is) still controlling a bunch of the former Soviet Socialist ‘Republics.’ ISTM that ‘post-Soviet’ is a good descriptor.
Suzanne
@Steve LaBonne: Nah. It’s not “bread and circuses” to see tangible improvements. A new bridge or a new subway line or a new scientific advancement….. shit, this is what we pay taxes for.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Agree. I don’t think social welfare emotionally moves people, even though it’s very important to their lives.
p.a.
@MattF: Job #1 of Reagan and his puppet masters: make “taxes” a 4-letter word. Job 1a: “taxes= $$$ for blahs”
trollhattan
How about some history?
Today in 1809 Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born. What a pair, I tell ya.
This week in 1964, Beatlemania swept ‘Murka and the Library of Congress has photos.
petapixel.com/2026/02/12/fabulous-library-of-congress-photos-show-the-beatles-arriving-for-first-us-…
Is it possible Donny didn’t hate Lennon sufficiently to have this collection banned or burned or something?
“Hardly knew the guy.”
Hildebrand
@VFX Lurker: Yep. Anything that loosens their grip is a step in the right direction.
Wind. Solar. Hydro. Even nuclear (if we can better solve the waste issue). Anything that peels us away from oil, gas, and coal.
Steve LaBonne
@Suzanne: People certainly want roads and bridges that work (though that’s a basic expectation rather than something they get excited about}, but very few give a shit about costly moon shots and a much larger number are basically like Gil Scott Heron’s “Whitey on the Moon”.
Suzanne
@Baud: Social welfare is important, of course, but it’s the difference between going to the gym on a normal day, vs. competing in a big-deal competition. It doesn’t have a milestone quality.
One of the things about continuous improvements is that it isn’t always easy to see it in the moment.
schrodingers_cat
During the 2024 election Kamala Harris had a message of optimism, she is a sunny personality. She also addressed a lot of real problems people have like housing, education and eldercare. But the message that won was Somali immigrants are eating your dogs and cats.
Don’t tell me that its messaging that lost Democrats the last election. I was alive then and could see, hear and think.
Bigotry and complacency about it won in 2024. That doesn’t mean it will win again. 2024 is a point in time.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Agree.
different-church-lady
@Josie: I’ve seen enough lately to have lost my faith that citizens will do the right thing with that.
no body no name
@Deputinize America:
They don’t give a shit about their extended families.
Years ago there was one of those rich people confabs where they were talking about security. One of the media types there who talked about it pointed out to them if the shit hit the fan their security would turn on them so maybe they should accept taxes. The wealthy response was they would require shock/bomb collars on their security to stop that rather than pay taxes. When pointed out that nobody competent would accept that the rich argued for robots rather than pay taxes.
Make no mistake they are not going to pay taxes without violence. And any distractions to the issue of super wealth are simply handing them a victory.
trollhattan
Has Trump packed too much navy into too small an ocean? Experts disagree.
Importantly, fishing boats are still being held in check.
different-church-lady
@schrodingers_cat: Their hateful lies were more appealing than our sunny optimism. The folks who claim the messaging sucks never have an answer for that other than hinting that somehow we need to get better at appealing to hateful people.
Steve LaBonne
@schrodingers_cat: When people are seriously discontented, as they were in 2024 and even moreso now, they cast about for someone to blame. Republicans for years have gotten them to focus on immigrants. Democrats need to do everything possible to shift their ire onto the Epstein class. And then when they regain power, they had better follow through.
different-church-lady
@trollhattan: Look, if you want to have world domination you gotta break a few battleships.
Baud
Not shocked
Suzanne
@Steve LaBonne: Well, we can’t build a modern high-speed rail system, we haven’t built a new international airport since Denver….. what do you think we can do to create a sense of progress and optimism?
Frank Wilhoit
Category error. It is not about the billionaires. The people to watch out for are the ones who have given up on ever having anything. Blood is the new money.
different-church-lady
@Frank Wilhoit: Eh?
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Steve LaBonne
@Suzanne: Get them affordable health insurance and housing and enough income to pay for groceries. And visibly go after the Epstein class. People who are struggling with the cost of basic necessities DGAF about high speed rail. That’s a perfect example of the trap, which so many center left parties have fallen into, of prioritizing the interests of the professional upper middle class.
Eyeroller
@Steve LaBonne: The reality is that there was little public support for the Apollo program. There were a lot of complaints about its cost (see the intro to Tom Lehrer’s Wernher von Braun). The excitement over the first landing faded almost immediately, the public lost interest except for nerds, and complaints about cost resumed. Even though it was a drop in the bucket compared to the military budget even at the time.
And we don’t see a lot of public interest in robotic spacecraft, but at least those are comparatively cheap and return a lot of valuable data. But of course Trump is trying to kill that.
different-church-lady
@Baud: I gotta start reading the daily memos…
Eyeroller
@schrodingers_cat: It was depressingly obvious at the time. However, it’s well established that people who are angry about their life circumstances are more vulnerable to racism and especially xenophobia. And (with a big boost from the media) they were big mad about inflation. I and I think Fair Economist have noted several times that incumbent parties lost around the world in 2023-2024 due in part to Covid restrictions and inflation. It wasn’t just here. And we are seeing xenophobia in multiple countries now. With a strong push by social media, of course.
different-church-lady
@Steve LaBonne: What this comes down to is “solve a society’s natural gravitation towards greed.” Biden didn’t pay enough lip service to the problem and couldn’t solve it anyway. Trump is deliberately accelerating it. Just getting a trifecta doesn’t mean we’ll be able to solve it either. It’d be nice if we can get back to at least chipping away at it, but that might not make people happy in the way we’re discussing.
different-church-lady
@Eyeroller: I’m still of the opinion that social media is the primary ingredient in the toxic cocktail.
Suzanne
@Steve LaBonne: I am not going to disagree with any of the things you just called for (affordable healthcare, housing, groceries, etc.). All of that, IMO, is the basic work of governance.
I do think we have absolutely lost the taste for visible progress, though, and that has been incredibly detrimental. It is hard to get people excited about government doing good things when it isn’t visible. And I disagree that HSR is “prioritizing the needs of the upper middle class”, as opposed to “building basic contemporary infrastructure”. Middle- and working-class Americans use airplanes and drive on interstate highways every day. Those were the HSR of their day.
schrodingers_cat
@different-church-lady: Without a doubt, whatsapp has been weilded as a weapon by the BJP-RSS in India.
cmorenc
To the extent our fight is against an oligarchy of the wealthy, and a key goal is to exact some wealth-distribution leveling off the top – where does too much begin that ought to be subject to special levies? Somewhere 100-500k net worth? 500k-1M? Somewhere in the 1M-10M range? (note that somewhere just shy of $2M net worth is where top 10% in US currently is, and somewhere apx $13-14M net worth is currently top 1%). Or if it’s somewhere above the 1% net worth line, where should that be? Informally, “ultra-high net worth” in the US (as viewed by financial management institutions) starts somewhere in the $30M neighborhood, kinda the level where folks can do pretty much whatever the fuck they want. Or $1B?
An important caveat is that with the recent runup in real-estate prices, at least $300k, up to near $1Mk of net worth is tied up in primary residences. So, should the measure instead be net worth of more liquid assets? Any special exemptions for nominally valuable, but de facto relatively illiquid businesses like the remaining individual farmers and small merchants?
Inheritances and intergenerational wealth is yet another nut to crack, carefully so the true oligarchs get hit, not remaining family farmers etc.
Careful about how you go about this – many of the $500k to $10M net worthers (exlusive of prime residence) are tied up in 401ks or other type of tax-deferred retirement accounts that cannot be quickly liquidated without severe tax penalties.
schrodingers_cat
@different-church-lady: People prefer comforting lies than unpleasant truths so you will see comments and posts about “messaging” being the problem for Ds until the end of time.
Also the same messaging folks will vehemently deny that using the language of the campus socialist-Marxist luncheons is not in their words a “vibe killer” for those who haven’t already drunk the koolaid. and is not a path to getting elected even in blue MA
AOC and Mamdani would have a hard time getting elected in most places in this country. Their patron saint lost 2 back to back presidential primaries. They are not as popular as they think.
Baud
Via Reddit
Eyeroller
@different-church-lady: My opinion is that it’s more of a force multiplier. These ideas have been around for many decades (some would say going back to the Confederacy)–a lot of the current wackiness like isolationism and even the obsession with water fluoridation is right out of 1950s John Birch Society pamphlets. But back then the loonies couldn’t find each other so easily and their “thoughts” were transmitted by thinks like mimeographed broadsheets and Chick Tracts and the like. Much less reach. Now those doctrines are amplified and broadcast ceaselessly, so we end up the the “familiarity” cognitive failure (repetition makes it true) and more influence on people who don’t think deeply or abstractly.
Steve LaBonne
We had inheritance taxes that walked that line, until Republicans gutted them.
cain
Unfortunately, until we can address bot farms and propaganda as a national security threat we are not going to get anywhere. People who stop watching fox news revert back to their own personalities.
If we do not as a nation and as a democratic party address this, we will continue to have these abusive cycles. Rush Limbaugh and other right wing radio personalities set things up and Fox News and others carry the torch. They are creating domestic terrorists. Eventually, we will be at the stage where the future will look extremely bleak. Especially if the economy crashes – even if it is the fault of the republicans, these propaganda networks will cover it up and America will do what Germany did when it was under hyper-inflation.
I hope the Democratic party, federal judges, state legislators understand the assignment. The Republican party must be stopped.
ETA – what I”m trying to say is that once Dems are back in charge, they’ll be tempted to go for kitchen table issues. That’s not going to work when there is a propaganda network that is working against them and changing reality. You have to address the propaganda network first otherwise you’ll be doing all these great things that Biden did and get nothing.
cain
@Baud: Oh good. I’m sure this is what they all voted for.
Baud
Kelly wins his injunction against Hegseth.
Baud
@cain:
They literally just did vote for it.
schrodingers_cat
@schrodingers_cat: * typo wielded not weilded.
cain
@Baud: I hope hogsbreath is drinking a lot and killing his liver and his mom is laughing at him.
Eyeroller
@Steve LaBonne: They’ve screamed about “family farms” as the excuse to eliminate “death taxes” for as long as I can remember, but the laws we actually had excluded things like family farms and family businesses and it was never a big problem anyway. Didn’t stop them from propagandizing it.
Trivia Man
@Jeffro: Exactly – point 1 gets the $, i was just specifying step 2. Who can object to better infrastructure for all?
Gin & Tonic
@Baud: Now I feel like an idiot donating my blood for free.
Bupalos
Quibble with a great point- I’m really not sure who has been holding the banner and who has been assembling. Putin and Russia seem to have gotten here first, I think he may have dibs on the whole “legacy” thing.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
Expand the reach and meaning of what it means to be a monopoly. For example, right now you aren’t a monopoly if you control a large proportion of radio across the US, but have robust competitors locally. You can control vast amounts of land or a large chunk of the economy via a diverse variety of industries and regulators shrug. No company or person should control large chunks of our economy or land, period. You hit a threshold and you are forced to sell. Our current rules are a threat to Democracy.
no body no name
@Steve LaBonne:
I hate to break this to you but our party is the party of, by, and for the professional upper middle class. We aren’t going to change that until we are fully under fascism and that class begins to suffer so much they are willing to cede their power and control to the masses.
We built this mess. And pointing fingers at Bernie, the MSM, social media, are all just bullshit excuses to hold onto power and control. And everyone but that class sees straight fucking through it now. Those above us are laughing at us and those below us justifiably hate our guts.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic:
That’s why you’ll never be as rich as Elon Musk.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Eyeroller:
I wonder why that didn’t seem to be a theme in speeches at the World Economic Forum?
r€nato
81 years ago Italians figured this out for future generations #piazzaleloreto Mussolini e Petacci a Piazzale Loreto, 1945 – Piazzale Loreto – Wikipedia
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Forcing them to sell and divest keeps them from having too much power and acts as one constraint on amassing too much wealth. More constraints are needed, but keeping single people or single companies from owning too much of the economy is something even average GOPers agree with. The billionaires will howl, though.
Steve LaBonne
@no body no name: Rather than just giving up and accepting fascism I would rather at least make a serious attempt to appeal to people who are not us, but maybe that’s just me. Also, as the good Professor would remind us, it’s WHITE people who are not us that fall for fascist propaganda- Black people, having spent their entire existence in this hemisphere living under fascism, know better.
Old School
Rusty
@Kirklin: Citizens United was decided on constitutional grounds, no legislation will over turn it. We either amend the constitution (essentially impossible at this point), or reform the court. This court is extremely pro-wealth and is knocking down any barrier to maximizing the ability of money to capture the political process. We will make little headway even with majorities and the presidency if don’t reform the court. We need a court the values democracy and individuals over wealth.
Mr. Bemused Senior
I understand Musk donates plenty of precious bodily fluids.
Tony Jay
Over here in the UK the Right of the Labour Party spent the period 2015-2020 working hand in hand with corporate media and foreign governments to attack the Left of their own party for their ‘sixth-form student politics’ and the ‘Hard-Left radicalism’ they claimed was turning off voters. When anyone hit back by pointing out that what was really turning off voters was the 24/7 hatchet-job the Labour Right was enthusiastically taking part in, they were dismissed as loser whiners and told that the mark of a sensible, grown-up and electable Party was the ability to ‘handle the media’ and ‘get their message across’ regardless of Press hostility.
Now the Labour Right are in charge, pursuing their ‘sensible’, ‘grown up’ and ‘electable’ policies, and they’re so unpopular we’re staring down the barrel of a majority Reform PLC fascist Government after the next election. Needless to say, they excuse their unpopularity by bemoaning media hostility, and blame ‘The Left’ for confusing the electorate by refusing to wholeheartedly embrace the same leadership that dismissed them as ‘fleas’ that the Party needed to ‘shake off’.
So, yeah, messaging is important, in all kinds of ways. But it depends on the message and the messengers and the medium. In other words, it’s hard, and simplistic factionalism doesn’t help anyone worth helping.
Belafon
@Suzanne: I need Democrats to be secretly drafting legislation to fix SCOTUS, repeal Citizens United, break up DHS, allow abortion, rebuild the electric grid and shift to renewables, etc. so they can already have a year or more worth of debate on day one.
Old School
@Mr. Bemused Senior: And pays for the privilege!
Eolirin
@Eyeroller: That’s only because the US government killed their access to radio though. It wasn’t an accident. It was a consequence of policy.
Belafon
@Suzanne: Going to the Moon, for one thing. And the first thing we build is an art installation. For now, we provide the ability to do VR tours.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Belafon: High speed rail would be nice.
Baud
Jeffro
right…which is why I made it my first priority, back upthread
we’re going to need to defund the predator class *just because* and then we’ll need the proceeds to fund the rest of the things that need doing
Melancholy Jaques
This global wave of authoritarianism is reminiscent of the 1920s & 1930s when all over Europe democracies were replaced by dictators. There are many differences, of course. It was post WWI, there was a worldwide depression in the 30s, many of the democracies and nations were nascent & fragile. But the similarity that strikes me is that the people, by slight majorities, are choosing the authoritarian government. And they seem to be doing it because they believe – for a variety of reasons – that democracy has failed them.
Here in the US, every election for the last 40 years we hear about people who are left behind or forgotten or otherwise resentful & angry at the government. Why these are almost all right wingers, I am not sure. But I do think one factor fueling it is the failure of the consumer capitalist system to deliver the good life it continually promises. It’s always, like Fitzgerald says at the end of The Great Gatsby, a future that year by year recedes before us. It can be infuriating, especially if you buy into it and believe that your life will be a lot better if your income goes up 10% or if the price of gas & eggs goes down 10%. But the truth is that won’t do it. There will always be some other thing that the money will be spent on.
I’m not saying there are not people who struggle to make ends meet. There are always people who struggle to make ends meet in a capitalist system. What I’m saying is that it isn’t the struggling to make ends meet people who are choosing the corrupt, racist dictator wannabe. It’s people who think they are just falling short of some imagined good life and their bigotry or stupidity allows them to be convinced that if we just got rid of these immigrants, if we just stopped hiring black people and women, if we just got rid of all these bullshit federal rules about the environment, safety, health, etc. they’d be living that good life.
cain
@Baud:
May they get the outcome they voted for.
They Call Me Noni
@Old School: They’re all disgusting. Every last one. Not a decent human amongst this cruel crew.
cain
@Melancholy Jaques:
Looks like every 2-3 generations we flirt with fascism. It’s like they all forget what happened before in the between times.
Bupalos
I think we are very likely to be in a worse place the day after Trump departs than we are today. Like pretty overwhelmingly likely. There are a lot of things that go underestimated under the cover of Trump’s buffo pyrotechnics.
A society-wide (really civilization-wide) collapse in democratic capacity and social trust.
technological disruption of economic and social life, disruptions that extend into our brains and change the way we think and act and react. Disruptions that are likely to get more pronounced.
A hanging cloud of climate doom that most of us are demonstrating every day we simply will not address.
Quiet top-line and mid-line political realignments that are priming the pump for autocratic manipulators. Quiet because the bottom line only moves a little… but the poor and less educated across traditional identity divides are basically flocking to authoritarianism amidst the political collapse of neoliberal technocracy.
The reality that Trump is actually incredibly bad at this. The sheer number of much more adept political talents that must be in the pipeline, means this is almost certainly the least effective of the post-truth right-wing authoritarians we are going to see. And we’re failing badly overall at fighting this one.
Relatedly, the degree to which a personalized and moralized anti-Trump sentiment holds the opposition together, rather than positive agreement or agenda…. Oppositions like this tend to fly apart when the boogeyman is removed.
”I can’t wait for Trump to be gone” may be a “be careful what you wish for” kind of thing unless we make progress now in understanding what we’re actually up against.
They Call Me Noni
@Jeffro: How much would $400,000 be in today’s money?
Eolirin
@Jeffro: We technically don’t need the funds as such. But it’ll help tamp down inflation from the massive amounts of money being pushed into the economy.
And let’s be honest here too, successful large scale rebalancing of the economy away from the rich will inevitably lead to some degree of price inflation, at least in some sectors. We need to be able to set the groundwork for that being accepted as an alternative, so we’re really going to need an expansion of wealth transfers to the bottom that’s large enough to swamp that and we’re going to need to see more interference in markets to keep prices from spiraling too much.
Too many things like housing and health care are supply constrained. Infrastructure needs to be built out enough, and that’s going to harm the existing beneficiaries of that supply limit. People who own property need to take a hit to get housing costs back in line, we need a lot more doctors, which will limit their earning potential, etc.
Quick fixes that actually work will be highly disruptive.
Aziz, light!
The Congress is a club for millionaires and billionaires. For many if not most, self-dealing is the point of getting elected, while in office or soon thereafter. Even if the Dems retake both chambers, I don’t see members of Congress ever voting to raise their taxes.
People with way too much money rarely think they have enough.
taumaturgo
I read an economist proposing an innovative approach. Rather than threatening what is perceived and portrayed as punitive taxation of the wealthy, they suggest implementing a modest progressive excise tax of 3-5% on total wealth exceeding X million dollars. The revenue generated would fund a wellness program dedicated to education, healthcare, housing, and childcare for those most in need. Additionally, CEO compensation would be taxed when it surpasses X times the average worker’s compensation, with tax rates increasing proportionally to the compensation gap. This is not “tax the rich,” but “tax the excess compensation and wealth hoarding.”
Old School
@They Call Me Noni:
$400,000 in 1963 would be about $4.2 million today.
Eolirin
@Melancholy Jaques: It’s simpler than that. They don’t use economic improvement and what we’d look at as being standard of living as their marker for how they’re doing, they look at relative status.
And on that metric they’re doing much worse than they used to be. They’re leaving themselves behind more than anything else, but they are being left behind. The culture really is shifting.
This is in many ways the Tulsa massacre writ large.
Baud
trollhattan
Shocked faces: deploy.
Again with those independents. I’ll head to a diner in Red Bluff and talk with them, over the holiday.
Ramona
@MT: I think autocorrect changed “premise” to “pretense”. You are right. We the People finance SpaceX and we are within our rights to nationalize it.
Bupalos
@Steve LaBonne: (You’ve worded it how you’ve worded it, so I’ll go with an “and” instead of a but)
And non-white people under 50 have much lower levels of commitment to the Democratic Party than prior generations, show particularly low levels of concern about threats to democracy.
The overall level of non-white commitment to the Democratic Party has returned to where it was prior to the big run post civil rights. From 1960 to 1980 it went from low 60’s to ‘mid-80’s, stayed there for 30 years, then began dropping, and for a while has been dropping on the same steep slope as the post-civil rights run up.
Eolirin
@Bupalos: The data does not show a clear trend line on voting outcomes. Are you basing this on polling sentiment?
brendancalling
Expand the House and SCOTUS. Tax the shit out of the billionaires. Others have said this. These are essential to rebuilding.
However, justice and consequences must be swift and harsh. We need Nuremberg style trials, publicly aired.
We need long/life prison sentences for the guilty, without favor–from the President to the lowliest J6er to the most braindead ICE recruit. Because this crew acts like a mafia, it would be unwise to allow them any opportunity to network and rebuild so I would recommend SuperMax, where you’re in solitary 23 hours a day. Capital punishment for the worst of the worst (Miller, Musk, Noem, Bondi, Trump if he’s still alive). I’m not big on capital punishment, but there’s no question of guilt with these ones.
I would also completely unperson them.
catclub
@Suzanne:
 
So telling people: “you could become a billionaire”?
wait, I’ll come in again.
laura
@Kirklin: Buckley v Vallejo needs overturning as much, or possibly more than CU to really get elections out of a nonstop, for profit cycle.
Baud
@laura:
Valeo.
catclub
They (CNN in my case) trumpeted the January Jobs numbers, which were good. and basically hid the important news that the revised 2025 jobs numbers for the year were TERRIBLE. Worst year outside of recession since 2003. much worse than … 2024.
Melancholy Jaques
@Eolirin:
I’m thinking we agree, but maybe not. I don’t mean economic improvement on metrics like unemployment or jobs reports or the stock market. For the financially stressed, who are mostly not what we would call poor, improvement pretty much means money left over at the end of the month after all the bills have been paid. Add to that the ability over time to afford new cars, bigger houses, swankier vacations, and other elements of what I’m referring to as the good life. What they believe to be the good life that would be happiness.
There are always struggling people, but I’m looking for the source of the rage & resentment that convinces people to abandon democracy and choose a cruel dictator. I find it not in the struggling to make ends meet class, but in the frustrated aspirations for the good life class. I could be wrong but I believe it is the latter class that forms the core of MAGA.
Obligatory anecdotal observation: I live in a precinct that went 70% for that asshole all three times. There are about ten of his flags flying at all times. There are also three or four vehicles in every driveway. The median home price is north of $600K. Nobody mows their own lawn. These people have not fallen behind anything but their own expectations.
Eolirin
@Melancholy Jaques: As I said, relative status. They’re not socially dominant.
Doing well or doing poorly in terms of having money left over isn’t relevant to that. The mere existence of the wrong kind of people doing better than them is the problem. Those people need to be destroyed.
catclub
@Mr. Bemused Senior:
‘donates’
Bupalos
If we can’t do M4A or better, if it’s impossible to do something that popular, that (internationally) normal, and that clearly in promotion of life, liberty, happiness, and the general welfare, then we simply are not going to be able to remain a democracy in the coming years. It’s a basic threshold thing, like a pitcher cannot be in the MLB if he can’t throw at least 70MPH and get it over the plate. There is no combination of magic pitches and secret sauce that will allow you to hang if you can’t do that.
Tony Jay
@catclub:
Hand delivered, I heard.
Old School
laura
@Baud: derp! In my defense, I’m grossly under caffeinated.
trollhattan
It’s interesting. My fairly tony city neighborhood has lots of “liberal” signage and no Trump paraphernalia even during election season. What Trumpers there surely are are too a-skeert of being looked at side-eye, to let their freak flags fly.
Tony suburban neighborhoods in the region have a LOT of Trumpy people and stuff. But If you compared demographics you wouldn’t find a lot of differences. If you did a vehicle compao you’d likewise find a similar infestation of full-size pickups and SUVs.
My only theory is people congregate with the like-minded so long as they’re sufficiently mobile to have the option. NB I’m not moving to the burbs to try and fix them.
Timill
@Jeffro: Tax Musk’s income at 300%? That punitive enough? That’ll raise you $3.00…
Capital is the problem, not income, particularly unrealized capital gains.
Melancholy Jaques
The memorandum opinion of the court granting a preliminary injunction in Kelly v Hegseth, Leon, J. It’s a good one.
As the saying goes, read the whole thing. Remember that guy that said people here don’t read? Prove them wrong.
Timill
@Bupalos: The late Tim Wakefield would like a word…
Jeffro
@Old School: you beat me to it, thanks!
Jeffro
@brendancalling:
bears repeating!
Sure Lurkalot
@Suzanne:
Sports stadiums, we build a fuckton of those. Not enough luxury boxes? Scrap that 20 year old “obsolete” structure, often financed by a significant portion of taxpayers, many of whom never step foot in one. We are exceptionally good at building those “public” “assets”.
StringOnAStick
@Melancholy Jaques: That was definitely worth reading, thank you for providing the link.
Scout211
Senate fails to advance DHS funding, teeing up partial shutdown as deal remains out of reach
Suzanne
@Sure Lurkalot:
Ain’t that the truth.
The last time I was in a baseball stadium was about three years ago. Bought two bottles of water at an electronic kiosk. $8 apiece, so I spent $16…… and then it prompted me for a tip.
Fuck you, sports stadia!
brendancalling
@Jeffro: And when they are convicted, they should be publicly hanged.
As for ICE, treat them the way they treat their victims.
AM in NC
@Suzanne: How about installing solar on every house/apartment building in America?
Want lower/no electricity bills AND to make the world better for your kids? Well, here’s a way to do it AND allow us to say “Fuck You” to the entire Middle East.
That would seem to me to be a compelling argument to MAGA-lite voters.
Eyeroller
@Ramona: Take away Elon’s security clearances due to drug use and other violations of standards for holders. That would inhibit their ability to get certain government contracts.
Bill Arnold
@Old School:
I am genuinely angry about that EPA move.
A person might be tempted to get into an elevator with him, let loose a liter of bananas-eggs-and-dark-beer farts, then praise the clean beautiful flatulence. It’s what plants crave!
Edward Teller, noted left-wing eco-terrorist (and hydrogen bomb aficionado):
Page 12, ENERGY PATTERNS OF THE FUTURE by Edward Teller (1959, Energy and Man Symposium)
Specifically, page 14:
Mr. Bemused Senior
Is our machines learning?
He, Claudius, the vending machine at the WSJ.
Eyeroller
@Melancholy Jaques: ”One truck contractors” are often cited as the type species of MAGA. They may have a nice truck but one can bet they want a better one. They may have a boat but they want a fancier one. Etc.
AM in NC
@Steve LaBonne: Yep, finding someone to blame for problems is a time-honored, effective strategy, and this one has the benefit of being true, plus it is a small class of people, so you’re not alienating a ton of people with it. Of course, they are the people with the money, so you need to overcome that, but Democrats get such a small percentage of billionaires’ donations, that won’t be such a big deal.
And you are 100% correct about needing to follow-through on reining these predators in HARD, when Dems are back in power.
Melancholy Jaques
@Scout211:
That guy really turned into Manic Manchin, didn’t he.
trollhattan
@Bill Arnold:
Same. They’re a suicide cult doing everything possible to take us back to mid-industrial age. Ironic to learn yesterday China’s GHG emission dropped slightly in 2025, first time in history.
Can I add a couple details? As I type this Texas, yes Texas, is generating 25.7 gigawatts of solar electricity. That is a LOT and you’ll never hear Greg Abbott say a peep, because it’s embarrassing.
Cal ISO is generating 18.4 GW solar and renewables are comprising 88.6% of total consumption—a much higher fraction than Texas because they’re energy pigs, but what are you gonna do?
In conclusion: fuck Trump and his idiotic wars.
Nettoyeur
@cmorenc: Estate taxes now kick in at about $13M and are high. It would be smarter to have them kick in at $2-4M at low rates like 10%. This would still be far lower than estate taxes in Europe.
Old School
@Bill Arnold:
Understandably.
I saw this at The Grist:
Suzanne
Can I just note that if I have to spend even three more minutes reviewing flooring transition details….. I might slap someone with a wet banana?!?! It might even be myself.
Sure Lurkalot
@Doug:
With all due and deserved respect to Anne Applebaum, many of our tech overlords subscribe to one or more “ideologies” subsumed under the TESCREAL acronym (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TESCREAL), which Gil Duran focuses on in his podcast The NerdReich, as well as eugenics. Though admittedly, these philosophies are not mainstream or overarching, they do unite a bunch of our billionaire bros whose turn to autocracy is undeniable.
prostratedragon
@Baud:
… over, and … over again.
Deputinize America
@Rusty:
Citizens United can be undone in many parts within state statutes regarding corporate powers and obligations, as well as in the tax code.
Bupalos
@Timill: I think wakefield threw a low 80’s “fastball.” Maybe mid or low-70’s at the end.
The Republic of Stupidity
“the rancid orange fart cloud…”
Damn, that’s good…
I tip my hat to you, Ms Cracker…
I stand in awe of your ability to come up with an appropriately derogatory nick name for you-know-who…
Last night, Jimmy Kimmel pointed out that since Trump insists on putting his name on everything, perhaps it’s time to start calling them the Trump-Epstein Files…
I think this is an excellent suggestion. Hoping this goes viral…
Old School
@Suzanne:
As much as you might want to, do not slap the client!
Kayla Rudbek
@Trivia Man: more bike lanes and trains! Turn the Dutch Cycling Embassy loose!
Kayla Rudbek
@Suzanne: building green cities, reclaiming urban wastelands, building more housing and libraries and arts centers, doing solarpunk projects (any fool can waste energy, a real engineer knows how to be efficient with energy)
Kayla Rudbek
@Hildebrand: or down to the ocean depths like that one billionaire with the janky carbon fiber submarine
Kayla Rudbek
@AM in NC: and also solar panels over ever single parking lot and parking garage roof as well
The Republic of Stupidity
@Bill Arnold:
‘Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Wednesday on Fox Business that repealing the finding would boost the coal industry.’
Today’s GOP… proudly marching forward… into the past…
Definitely, set on dragging the country back into the ’50s…
The only question is which ’50s…
1950s?
1850s?
Or the 1750s?
Yellow Dog
As much as I look forward to dancing on his grave, I want him to stay alive long enough to be put in prison.
Doug
@Sure Lurkalot:
Thanks for the pointer!
Doug
@Professor Bigfoot: Yep.