Interestingly, some of the strongest backlash is coming from a huge group generally assumed to be politically apathetic or enthusiastic about all technology: Young people.
The revolution of 1776 was about freedom "from", and the Constitution spelled out freedoms (plural) "to". Extra guardrails (amendments) helped define these. What we need now: a few more amendments, with teeth, that protect us from the enemies within. And the true enemies are not journalists, comedians nor even Democrats. Oligarchy is the biggest threat, period. There are lots of books that describe and explain the problem. We need more books in plain English that can serve as handbooks for fighting the oligarchs and changing the system. And they need to be accessible and affordable, especially to those who have little money and little time to read. Anybody know of such books? Please share.
Clinton and Susanne, I had the same thought about how we need more books in plain English that can serve as handbooks for fighting the oligarchs and changing the system, so I wrote one. The target audience for the book is a huge group generally assumed to be politically apathetic: young people. That said, I think it could be informative, entertaining, and inspiring for a wider audience.
I'l tell you what an old fool I am: I wrote a little description of the book to Mr Hightower and asked if he'd be willing to give it a look and maybe write a blurb or a short review I could use. It was kind of like when I was a young fool and sent Peter Frampton a letter inviting him over to jam since he was going to be in the same city as me anyway, doing a concert...
Thank you for sharing, Ian. Old fools like us have more valuable skills and life experience, and young people have more energy. If these could be combined, think of the possibilities. Your book sounds like an interesting read, but how do we detach the young from their cellphones and other devices, and from social media garbage like Tiktok etc.? We are nostalgic for the Sixties - they were not perfect but young people were engaged and passionate about change. That is largely lost now, or so it seems. Hope lies in groups like Jamie Raskin's Democracy Summer, or in College Democrats (we support both). You may want to contact them, they might appreciate a guidebook.
C&S, Sometimes I think that not even crowbars or sticks of dynamite would be up to the job of detaching the young from their cellphones and other devices, and from social media garbage like Tiktok etc.
The passion and engagement of the 60s does seem largely lost now, even in spite of the way the current regime throws gas on the fire and fans the flames. Gen Z has grown up without ever having experienced an FDR type of president, or an Earl Warren type of Supreme Court, or a Hubert Humphrey type of Congress. They have little if any concept of what a powerful force for good the government can be. "Government is the problem " is a big part of the zeitgeist they've grown up with.
We may see a surge of activism fuelled with youthful energy if Gen Z finds it impossible to manage the cost of living. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Economic activism feels more likely to me than social and anti-war activism like we saw in the 60s. I guess you'd call it history rhyming, instead of repeating, if economic activism really started to erupt.
Thanks for mentioning Jamie Raskin's Democracy Summer, and College Democrats. I'll reach out to them. Maybe this old fool could move the needle a little along with them.
You are so right. We did not appreciate what we had then. How sad that it takes times like these to show us what we may be losing. But it helps to remember that not all young people are addicted to the aforementioned garbage, or to Maga propaganda. College Democrats make a point of being the opposite of Turning Point USA. That is what we need. If resistance is fired up by economic troubles, so be it. Better than apathy! And the oft-invoked zeitgeist is not known to be permanent, ever. In fact, it famously goes through cycles and is capable of changing when you least expect it. That must be our hope. And never underestimate us old fools (Clinton, 87 and Susanne, 82) as well as Ian (??). Good night, and good luck (per Mr. Edward Murrow)!
Stupidity reigns supreme, even in tech billionaire genius-land. Not surprised that the most powerful self serving among us are revealing themselves to be even dumber than those who follow them.
The Billionaires ARE coming for ALL of us. They already are picking us off.... Human beings are in their way and the ONLY thing they want from Humans are their MONEY and LABOR (and with AI very little of that, the CEO of Microsoft just said that white collar job will disappear in 18 months thanks to AI) and NOTHING ELSE! Just like Nature, they just use it for their ends and the damage they cause means NOTHING to them. They KNOW the damage they are doing and what is coming, but the billionaires are all planning ways to escape from their caused damage and leave the rest of us in the collapse. To see how all this works, how billionaires are taking control of all aspects of our lives, the massive destruction they are causing, the more damage and disaster to come, and how to get out of all this (hint - part of it is to rein them in once and for all, One example "Numerous studies have concluded that economic elites now enjoy substantially more impact on government policy, while 'citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence". Why do you think the Billionaires are working in Cahoots with Trump? ). (1) Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires" by Douglas Rushkoff, (2) "The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy" by Gil Duran, (3) "Burned By Billionaires: How Concentrated Wealthy and Power are Ruining Our Lives and Planet" by Chuck Collins, and (4) "Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism" by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison.
Also read Chris Hedges' prescient 2010 /Death of the Liberal Class./ Intro: "It abrogated its moral role. It did not defy corporate abuse when it had the chance. ...not only removed all barriers to neofeudalism and corporate abuse but also ensured that the liberal class will, in its turn, be swept aside." P. 140: "...the New Deal Democrats, who understood that a democracy is not safe if it does not give its citizens an acceptable standard of living and protect the state from being hijacked by private power, are gone." Except a few relicts like Jim on the farmer side and a few of us old blue collar activists on the labor side of New Deal populism. We're not liberal Dems.
The D party went neolib decades ago, dumping the New Deal and abandoning us, the majority working class, to make nation and world safe for corporate economics. Read Les Leopold's in-depth 2024 /Wall Street's War on Workers./ We're seeing the result. The liberal class, professional and managerial 20%ers, response is to blame the victims--they're stupid. How smart is it never to notice 4 decades of suffering in the Rust Belt and the well documented deaths of despair? How about the failure to ask WHY votes for D presidential candidates in Mingo Co WV, an historical hotbed of labor battles and 90% for FDR, went from 69.7% D in 1996 to 13.9% in 2020? Leopold documents the connection to mass layoffs, which fund stock buybacks benefitting only Wall St. financial vultures and the CEOs whose compensation contains a huge % of stocks. The D elite and their upper middle class loyalists didn't object. How Pastor Niemoller like--"first they came for..."
Yanis Varoufakis in his 2023 book /Technofeudalism/ shows the techie reality. Those he calls technoproles are the many poorly paid employees. Practically everyone else on the planet he calls technoserfs, providing for free the data by which the very few have become obscenely wealthy. So now the alarm "white collar jobs will disappear!" And OMG! MDs and university profs are being treated like assembly line workers! I say welcome to our world. The working class sacrificial lamb turned out to be a bellwether.
Many of these "brilliant" people had very dysfunctional childhoods and suffer from arrested development. Put this together with more money than they can handle and a "Tony Stark" self-image and you get this mess. If they really wanted to help society, they have the power to make a difference, but I think they are only interested in the own, perverse, grandiose world views. The media needs to stop quoting them - it makes them believe their ideas are worth repeating. We need to stop supporting their enterprises in any way possible and publicly condemn their actions.
Revolt is in the air. These idiots would be wise to recall the French Revolution...as there are more of us than them. I've got to say, I have been feeling a little "pitch-forky" lately. Data centers going up all around us, taking huge amounts of our precious resources, and giving back next to nothing. Our local politicians have been bought off or duped. Backlash is coming!
I just have a feeling that a true to life and elevated version of "The Monkey Wrench Gang" by Edward Abbey is coming. Eventually, people WILL have had enough and take back everything the sociopathic, greedy, filthy rich have stolen from us. Can't wait to see it.
I don't think that will happen as long as the Republicans are so adept at playing the culture war cards to get people to vote against their economic interests and so much of the electorate is so susceptible to the con.
That is manifestly untrue. It's just an easy way of deflecting blame from the neolib D party that sold out both the majority working class and as Jim has documented, the farmer half of the old Farmer-Labor Populist coalition. We workers are not a bunch of stupid bigots! Read the stats in Les Leopold's 2024 book /Wall Street's War on Workers./ I'm BIPOC and LGBTQ; a blue collar rank and file union activist for 28 years plus managing local D campaigns. I fought the neolib takeover; their dumping of the New Deal to support corporate economics. What I'm saying I know by first hand experience as well as decades of research.
What exactly is smart about not seeing four decades of suffering in the Rust Belt and in Jim's rural America? How could the well documented deaths of despair be ignored? Why don't the well educated upper middle class Dem loyalists ask WHY, for example, Mingo Co. WV, a center of intense labor history, went from 69.7% for the D presidential candidate in 1992 to 13.9% in 2020? What is so difficult about understanding desperation and deep anger? And if empathy or history aren't persuasive, consider that dissing people whose votes you need to win may not be the best strategy.
Of course the Dems are sadly misguided, but Trump and his followers are inexcusable and hopelessly un-American! Trump is the greatest con man of all time, and the failings of the Democratic party don't change the fact that Trump disrespects and manipulates his followers for no other reason than to compensate for his innate insecurities. You could not find someone more unfit to by president.
Who said Trump & Co are excusable? We workers, and it turns out the farmers and rural folks Jim writes about, were both betrayed by the neolib Ds. I just read the book by the author Jim is interviewing live today 6p CT. The worst part was realizing none of this horror was necessary. Where midwest Ds stuck to the New Deal and the old Farmer-Labor Populist programs, they won. But the D neolibs who run the party didn't support that, instead going for a "centrism" of corporate economics. To me, seems since the 20%er admin and professional class weren't affected, they, like WWII German Pastor Niemoller, didn't protest; they're still loyal D voters. Yet bewildered the rest of us, the majority, are so angry at Ds. What responsibility do they have for this situation? Ah, denial, denial...
I'm not an apologist for the Dems. However, in my view, there is nothing about the current situation that justifies throwing in with a con man, who is not only running down the lives of every working person in the country, but also destroying a country that was an example for the world in many ways. Trump is despicable and anyone who supports him is tearing down America and its future!
Also look at the growing number of non-voters, who are in effect saying NO to both corporate parties. Are you aware the Biden Dept of State was run by neocons trained by Dick Cheney? The neocon fantasy is a unipolar world, de facto economic empire backed up by the military.
The gist of your argument is like saying "Hitler bad." Duh. The question is how did Hitler come to power? WWI was a war over empires, and the winning Allies imposed onerous debts onto the Germans that mangled their economy even before 1929. BTW, the UK and France divided up the loser Ottoman empire to suit themselves, never mind what the Arabs and other west Asian peoples might have wanted. So we're still fighting WWI. That's why knowing some history matters.
Similarly, Trump wasn't created ex nihilo. There's four decades of despair and denigration from which that monster emerged. The "No Kings" rallies seem to imply were Trump gone, a D paradise would ensue. Notice it isn't "No Oligarchs and No Plutocrats." We nobodies realize we're supposed to accept a 'choice' between managerial and professional class oligarchy or 1%er and corporate plutocracy. NO!
As I've explained ad nauseam (see my comment directly below) we, the majority working class, were abandoned by the neolib Ds who went for corporate economics decades ago. We ARE voting how we feel--deeply angry and increasingly desperate. I read the book of the author Jim is speaking with today live 6p CT. /When Democrats Won the Heartland (Progressive Populism in the Age of Reagan 1978-1992)/ Seems the neolib D elite did the same to farmers and rural Americans, who also angrily rejected the "New" Dems. Yet in many places, where D candidates didn't go all mealy and centrist apologetic, staying true to the old New Deal, they won. So the horror to me is we could have had a progressive, fair economic system all along. But yeah, we're stupid for rejecting the meager rationalization "vote for the lesser of two evils." Turns out no version of evil was necessary whatsoever.
If you look at some of the serious bloopers that AI has been doing on a continual basis, you realize that there is nothing intelligent about AI. It's the tech version of the intelligent creator that invented back problems, diabetes, and dementia.
It will be hard to stop the a.i. geniuses when the current administration sold them front row tickets to the inauguration. When gas prices soared because of the war on strategy the America first agenda dropped sanctions on Russian oil so it could be shipped to Cuba. The human race would be sold out to a.i. if Benedict donald is given a large enough bribe.
If you feel, as I do,that AI is a tech tool with potential to improve the quality of life for humans and that it should work for the public good,then it is logical to set up committees of scientists and laymen to see that AI follows that outline.
The revolution of 1776 was about freedom "from", and the Constitution spelled out freedoms (plural) "to". Extra guardrails (amendments) helped define these. What we need now: a few more amendments, with teeth, that protect us from the enemies within. And the true enemies are not journalists, comedians nor even Democrats. Oligarchy is the biggest threat, period. There are lots of books that describe and explain the problem. We need more books in plain English that can serve as handbooks for fighting the oligarchs and changing the system. And they need to be accessible and affordable, especially to those who have little money and little time to read. Anybody know of such books? Please share.
Clinton and Susanne, I had the same thought about how we need more books in plain English that can serve as handbooks for fighting the oligarchs and changing the system, so I wrote one. The target audience for the book is a huge group generally assumed to be politically apathetic: young people. That said, I think it could be informative, entertaining, and inspiring for a wider audience.
I'l tell you what an old fool I am: I wrote a little description of the book to Mr Hightower and asked if he'd be willing to give it a look and maybe write a blurb or a short review I could use. It was kind of like when I was a young fool and sent Peter Frampton a letter inviting him over to jam since he was going to be in the same city as me anyway, doing a concert...
Thank you for sharing, Ian. Old fools like us have more valuable skills and life experience, and young people have more energy. If these could be combined, think of the possibilities. Your book sounds like an interesting read, but how do we detach the young from their cellphones and other devices, and from social media garbage like Tiktok etc.? We are nostalgic for the Sixties - they were not perfect but young people were engaged and passionate about change. That is largely lost now, or so it seems. Hope lies in groups like Jamie Raskin's Democracy Summer, or in College Democrats (we support both). You may want to contact them, they might appreciate a guidebook.
C&S, Sometimes I think that not even crowbars or sticks of dynamite would be up to the job of detaching the young from their cellphones and other devices, and from social media garbage like Tiktok etc.
The passion and engagement of the 60s does seem largely lost now, even in spite of the way the current regime throws gas on the fire and fans the flames. Gen Z has grown up without ever having experienced an FDR type of president, or an Earl Warren type of Supreme Court, or a Hubert Humphrey type of Congress. They have little if any concept of what a powerful force for good the government can be. "Government is the problem " is a big part of the zeitgeist they've grown up with.
We may see a surge of activism fuelled with youthful energy if Gen Z finds it impossible to manage the cost of living. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Economic activism feels more likely to me than social and anti-war activism like we saw in the 60s. I guess you'd call it history rhyming, instead of repeating, if economic activism really started to erupt.
Thanks for mentioning Jamie Raskin's Democracy Summer, and College Democrats. I'll reach out to them. Maybe this old fool could move the needle a little along with them.
You are so right. We did not appreciate what we had then. How sad that it takes times like these to show us what we may be losing. But it helps to remember that not all young people are addicted to the aforementioned garbage, or to Maga propaganda. College Democrats make a point of being the opposite of Turning Point USA. That is what we need. If resistance is fired up by economic troubles, so be it. Better than apathy! And the oft-invoked zeitgeist is not known to be permanent, ever. In fact, it famously goes through cycles and is capable of changing when you least expect it. That must be our hope. And never underestimate us old fools (Clinton, 87 and Susanne, 82) as well as Ian (??). Good night, and good luck (per Mr. Edward Murrow)!
Good night and good luck to you as well, C&S.
Stupidity reigns supreme, even in tech billionaire genius-land. Not surprised that the most powerful self serving among us are revealing themselves to be even dumber than those who follow them.
The Billionaires ARE coming for ALL of us. They already are picking us off.... Human beings are in their way and the ONLY thing they want from Humans are their MONEY and LABOR (and with AI very little of that, the CEO of Microsoft just said that white collar job will disappear in 18 months thanks to AI) and NOTHING ELSE! Just like Nature, they just use it for their ends and the damage they cause means NOTHING to them. They KNOW the damage they are doing and what is coming, but the billionaires are all planning ways to escape from their caused damage and leave the rest of us in the collapse. To see how all this works, how billionaires are taking control of all aspects of our lives, the massive destruction they are causing, the more damage and disaster to come, and how to get out of all this (hint - part of it is to rein them in once and for all, One example "Numerous studies have concluded that economic elites now enjoy substantially more impact on government policy, while 'citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence". Why do you think the Billionaires are working in Cahoots with Trump? ). (1) Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires" by Douglas Rushkoff, (2) "The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy" by Gil Duran, (3) "Burned By Billionaires: How Concentrated Wealthy and Power are Ruining Our Lives and Planet" by Chuck Collins, and (4) "Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism" by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison.
Also read Chris Hedges' prescient 2010 /Death of the Liberal Class./ Intro: "It abrogated its moral role. It did not defy corporate abuse when it had the chance. ...not only removed all barriers to neofeudalism and corporate abuse but also ensured that the liberal class will, in its turn, be swept aside." P. 140: "...the New Deal Democrats, who understood that a democracy is not safe if it does not give its citizens an acceptable standard of living and protect the state from being hijacked by private power, are gone." Except a few relicts like Jim on the farmer side and a few of us old blue collar activists on the labor side of New Deal populism. We're not liberal Dems.
The D party went neolib decades ago, dumping the New Deal and abandoning us, the majority working class, to make nation and world safe for corporate economics. Read Les Leopold's in-depth 2024 /Wall Street's War on Workers./ We're seeing the result. The liberal class, professional and managerial 20%ers, response is to blame the victims--they're stupid. How smart is it never to notice 4 decades of suffering in the Rust Belt and the well documented deaths of despair? How about the failure to ask WHY votes for D presidential candidates in Mingo Co WV, an historical hotbed of labor battles and 90% for FDR, went from 69.7% D in 1996 to 13.9% in 2020? Leopold documents the connection to mass layoffs, which fund stock buybacks benefitting only Wall St. financial vultures and the CEOs whose compensation contains a huge % of stocks. The D elite and their upper middle class loyalists didn't object. How Pastor Niemoller like--"first they came for..."
Yanis Varoufakis in his 2023 book /Technofeudalism/ shows the techie reality. Those he calls technoproles are the many poorly paid employees. Practically everyone else on the planet he calls technoserfs, providing for free the data by which the very few have become obscenely wealthy. So now the alarm "white collar jobs will disappear!" And OMG! MDs and university profs are being treated like assembly line workers! I say welcome to our world. The working class sacrificial lamb turned out to be a bellwether.
Many of these "brilliant" people had very dysfunctional childhoods and suffer from arrested development. Put this together with more money than they can handle and a "Tony Stark" self-image and you get this mess. If they really wanted to help society, they have the power to make a difference, but I think they are only interested in the own, perverse, grandiose world views. The media needs to stop quoting them - it makes them believe their ideas are worth repeating. We need to stop supporting their enterprises in any way possible and publicly condemn their actions.
Revolt is in the air. These idiots would be wise to recall the French Revolution...as there are more of us than them. I've got to say, I have been feeling a little "pitch-forky" lately. Data centers going up all around us, taking huge amounts of our precious resources, and giving back next to nothing. Our local politicians have been bought off or duped. Backlash is coming!
Your words in God's ear, Carolyn!
I just have a feeling that a true to life and elevated version of "The Monkey Wrench Gang" by Edward Abbey is coming. Eventually, people WILL have had enough and take back everything the sociopathic, greedy, filthy rich have stolen from us. Can't wait to see it.
If only people voted the way they say they feel.
I don't think that will happen as long as the Republicans are so adept at playing the culture war cards to get people to vote against their economic interests and so much of the electorate is so susceptible to the con.
That is manifestly untrue. It's just an easy way of deflecting blame from the neolib D party that sold out both the majority working class and as Jim has documented, the farmer half of the old Farmer-Labor Populist coalition. We workers are not a bunch of stupid bigots! Read the stats in Les Leopold's 2024 book /Wall Street's War on Workers./ I'm BIPOC and LGBTQ; a blue collar rank and file union activist for 28 years plus managing local D campaigns. I fought the neolib takeover; their dumping of the New Deal to support corporate economics. What I'm saying I know by first hand experience as well as decades of research.
What exactly is smart about not seeing four decades of suffering in the Rust Belt and in Jim's rural America? How could the well documented deaths of despair be ignored? Why don't the well educated upper middle class Dem loyalists ask WHY, for example, Mingo Co. WV, a center of intense labor history, went from 69.7% for the D presidential candidate in 1992 to 13.9% in 2020? What is so difficult about understanding desperation and deep anger? And if empathy or history aren't persuasive, consider that dissing people whose votes you need to win may not be the best strategy.
Of course the Dems are sadly misguided, but Trump and his followers are inexcusable and hopelessly un-American! Trump is the greatest con man of all time, and the failings of the Democratic party don't change the fact that Trump disrespects and manipulates his followers for no other reason than to compensate for his innate insecurities. You could not find someone more unfit to by president.
Who said Trump & Co are excusable? We workers, and it turns out the farmers and rural folks Jim writes about, were both betrayed by the neolib Ds. I just read the book by the author Jim is interviewing live today 6p CT. The worst part was realizing none of this horror was necessary. Where midwest Ds stuck to the New Deal and the old Farmer-Labor Populist programs, they won. But the D neolibs who run the party didn't support that, instead going for a "centrism" of corporate economics. To me, seems since the 20%er admin and professional class weren't affected, they, like WWII German Pastor Niemoller, didn't protest; they're still loyal D voters. Yet bewildered the rest of us, the majority, are so angry at Ds. What responsibility do they have for this situation? Ah, denial, denial...
I'm not an apologist for the Dems. However, in my view, there is nothing about the current situation that justifies throwing in with a con man, who is not only running down the lives of every working person in the country, but also destroying a country that was an example for the world in many ways. Trump is despicable and anyone who supports him is tearing down America and its future!
Also look at the growing number of non-voters, who are in effect saying NO to both corporate parties. Are you aware the Biden Dept of State was run by neocons trained by Dick Cheney? The neocon fantasy is a unipolar world, de facto economic empire backed up by the military.
The gist of your argument is like saying "Hitler bad." Duh. The question is how did Hitler come to power? WWI was a war over empires, and the winning Allies imposed onerous debts onto the Germans that mangled their economy even before 1929. BTW, the UK and France divided up the loser Ottoman empire to suit themselves, never mind what the Arabs and other west Asian peoples might have wanted. So we're still fighting WWI. That's why knowing some history matters.
Similarly, Trump wasn't created ex nihilo. There's four decades of despair and denigration from which that monster emerged. The "No Kings" rallies seem to imply were Trump gone, a D paradise would ensue. Notice it isn't "No Oligarchs and No Plutocrats." We nobodies realize we're supposed to accept a 'choice' between managerial and professional class oligarchy or 1%er and corporate plutocracy. NO!
Sadly.
As I've explained ad nauseam (see my comment directly below) we, the majority working class, were abandoned by the neolib Ds who went for corporate economics decades ago. We ARE voting how we feel--deeply angry and increasingly desperate. I read the book of the author Jim is speaking with today live 6p CT. /When Democrats Won the Heartland (Progressive Populism in the Age of Reagan 1978-1992)/ Seems the neolib D elite did the same to farmers and rural Americans, who also angrily rejected the "New" Dems. Yet in many places, where D candidates didn't go all mealy and centrist apologetic, staying true to the old New Deal, they won. So the horror to me is we could have had a progressive, fair economic system all along. But yeah, we're stupid for rejecting the meager rationalization "vote for the lesser of two evils." Turns out no version of evil was necessary whatsoever.
If you look at some of the serious bloopers that AI has been doing on a continual basis, you realize that there is nothing intelligent about AI. It's the tech version of the intelligent creator that invented back problems, diabetes, and dementia.
Yeah...weirdly people want to exist. The idiots at the top can't comprehend that
It will be hard to stop the a.i. geniuses when the current administration sold them front row tickets to the inauguration. When gas prices soared because of the war on strategy the America first agenda dropped sanctions on Russian oil so it could be shipped to Cuba. The human race would be sold out to a.i. if Benedict donald is given a large enough bribe.
If you feel, as I do,that AI is a tech tool with potential to improve the quality of life for humans and that it should work for the public good,then it is logical to set up committees of scientists and laymen to see that AI follows that outline.