There is tyranny in the womb of every Utopia. Bertrand De Jouvenel We’ve had about four months of Trump 2.0 now, and the most staggering thing about his new term is the sheer volume of damage he is able to do, mostly just from speaking and tweeting off the cuff. The overall sense is of a bloated and bored sultan, lying on a mountain of … Continue reading Poison Pyramid: The Tyrannous Tiers of Trumpism
Tis the time’s plague when madmen lead the blind. King Lear Those who are most asleep think they are most awake, being under the power of vivid and fixed visions, so that those who are most ignorant think they know the most. Theodotus (2nd century C.E.) The dizzying pace of Trump’s rampage through the tattered hallways of American precedent continues. The Walmart Price-Fixer-in-Chief can wreak … Continue reading The Illusory Future of Trumptopia
The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. Albert Einstein There is always an easy solution to every problem — neat, plausible, and wrong, H.L. Mencken The world is not about Batman and Robin fighting the Joker. Things are more complicated than that. And nothing is scarier than the people who … Continue reading The Tyranny of Easy Answers: Trump’s comic-book destruction of America
Reagan proved deficits don’t matter. Dick Cheney Who the hell cares about the budget? We’re going to have a country. Donald Trump In Part 1, we looked at UBI as the new primary purpose of government, the only way out of the immediate predicaments of underemployment, collapsing labor value, and the political explosiveness generated by the resulting economic deprivation. Then in Part 2, we explored … Continue reading Last Chance Moonshot – Part 3: Modern Money Theory
You are captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live. I think there are many among you who would be glad to release the world from captivity. This is what prevents them: they are unable to find the bars of the cage. Daniel Quinn The child who is not embraced by the … Continue reading Last Chance Moonshot – Part 2: Bigger Home Bases
I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective – the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1967) The assurance of a certain minimum income for everyone, or a sort of floor below which nobody need fall even when he is unable to provide … Continue reading Last Chance Moonshot – Part 1: Basic Income
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. Buckminster Fuller You have to see it to be it. Billie Jean King Today is Martin Luther King Jr Day, and by a cruel twist of fate, Inauguration Day for Donald Trump. As we lurch into this new year and new era, partisans … Continue reading A Different Project for 2025: Finding an Off-Ramp from Trumpism
For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. H.L. Mencken In (what feels like) the thousand years since the election, the postmortems have been coming fast and furious, including one on this very blog. The theories for the Democratic debacle are many, from the perseverance of systemic racism and sexism, to the global turn to strongman leaders in times of … Continue reading Where Do Dems Go From Here? The Chimera of Appealing to the Working Class
Clinging to politics is one way of avoiding the confrontation with the devouring logic of civilization. John Zerzan The only paradise is paradise lost. Proust In the big picture, the pandemic was probably the best thing that could have happened to Donald Trump. Had there been no Covid, he would have cruised to reelection, mainly due to the favorable conditions inherited from the Obama years. … Continue reading Convergence & Cataclysm: The Tectonic Plates of Trumpism
I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those of you who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. Donald Trump (2023 speech) It’s hard to believe that it hasn’t even been a week since the election. I guess gnashing of teeth really slows down the passage of time. There have been plenty of analyses done already, and they will continue … Continue reading Postdiluvian Postmortem
Entropolitan 