They told us they were going to crash the market and destroy the economy before the election. Elon Musk said it. Of course this is what they were going to do. Maybe it helps to know what they’re like and what they talk about *constantly* but they have been talking like this for 9 years. Steve Bannon’s fantasies about world collapse (based on a book he read in 8th grade or something) were discussed in 2016…All the tech fascists are enchanted by the idea of collapse. The crypto ideologues had this as part of their fantasies as soon as bitcoin was created. This is a libertarian’s dream.
You are probably right. But when incoherence rules, how do you treat with its exponents? The real "n" word is nihilism. Not only approaching but arriving. The world of rationality can only identify but not treat. Hope and pray for a counter-revolution, and if you can, in your own way, act..
I think I cited Nancy MacLean's Democracy in Chains earlier. All about those Libertarians. I've searched in vain for mention of their place in the firmament of rightist ideology ..... until now; now I'm seeing it everywhere. Thanks Ro Yipes.
Tech fascism or whatever the other name for it—-they all started out as libertarians and then morphed into fantasies of world domination. As one could have easily predicted if you ever conversed with these dumbass wankers. Libertarians are generally borderline psychopaths at best (even if libertarianism can be an interesting view to think about, as absurdly implausible as it is). They clearly were fantasizing a situation of domination over others through non-governmental means—and when libertarianism started to seem boring to people, and mean-spirited, they simply started to become more explicit about what they really wanted.
The intention IS to take a wrecking ball to the way things run. They believe that the only way to truly affect change in moribund, beholden America is to blow the system up. The system hasn't worked for many a Trump voter in, well, possibly forever, so they think that this is absolutely what's needed. (And I doubt most Trump voters have a stock portfolio so that news doesn't register.)
Their mistake is in thinking they will somehow be taken care of through all this shock to the system and rebuilding of the country into an ethno-nationalist patriarchal nirvana. They are about to find out just how incredibly wrong they are.
“(And I doubt most Trump voters have a stock portfolio so that news doesn't register.)”
Well over 70 million Americans have 401k retirement plans, and a vast majority of those held some kind of equity-based investments (whether individual stocks, ETFs or mutual funds). I think it’s safe to assume a good portion of these people voted for Trump.
Much like our privatized health care system, most of our retirement savings plans (above and beyond government Social Security) are employer-based, self-directed investment accounts (401k for businesses, 403b for nonprofits). And almost all of these incorporate equities in some form. A lot of people are going to see a lot of their savings evaporate.
"The system hasn't worked for many a Trump voter . . . ." Is this really true? I would claim that the system has worked well for most, but somehow the right wing message has convinced them that the system hasn't worked. While is it true that many are struggling economically, are they any worse of than those of similar situations 30 years ago? And for most people, I would claim that their standards of living are higher than 30 years ago. So, while there are certainly problems with the system, I don't believe its any worse that typical, but somehow a large segment of the population has been convinced that its catastrophic and something drastic must be done. And of course, the catastrophies aren't directly affecting them since they are doing fine, but are affecting the rest of the country. I might be biased a bit since when I was a child, TV's were being introduced into homes. Color TV's were for the wealthy. Our phone was a "party line" which meant you shared phone service with your next door neighbor. Typical for a middle class neighborhood. Today, almost everyone has a smart phone. Multiple TV's and multiple cars in every home. "The system hasn't worked . . ." Give me a break.
The destruction of the economy and our Democratic institutions is 100% intentional. No one is this stupid or incompetent, not even the incomparably stupid and incompetent trump. It's all part of the evil destabilizing game plan of the techno-centibillionaires who are actively gunning for their anti-humanist anarcho-capitalist broligarchy to replace the existing order with a King/CEO instead of a president and co-equal branches of Democratic governance. It's the open playbook of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, aka Project 2025, the dystopic brainchild of the horrible Curtis Yarvin along with backing by Heritage Foundation, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and other nefarious architects and instigators. Thiel is on record saying Freedom and Democracy are incompatible. They want to run the country like it's some kind of entrepreneurial startup - move fast, break things, fail often and fast, pivot, destroy or buy out the competition, get richer, privatize, become trillionaires, ru(i)n the nation. These so-called SiliCON Valley pioneers are evil people with evil intent, true to life comic book villains, with their end sights being total oligarchic and plutocratic control over every facet and aspect of our lives.
5 minutes listening to him speak is all you need to know he is full of shit and never had any idea what he was doing. He has been a clown his whole life. Once he put an R next to his name people were so attached to their partisan blinders they refused to see it. The rich propped him up for the tax cuts but thought they could control him. Im honestly shocked they are letting him do this, guess we get to have another great depression because not a single Republican has the integrity to admit they fucked up by putting a mentally ill fascist in the white house.
Yiu write it's not about politics but about epistemology... but when knowledge is power, politics is epistemology. Those who profess the orange buffoon knows what he's doing, that America will soon be great again, and who are now moving the goalposts, may actually know better, but feel powerless to speak the truth because they fear retribution, or less of personal privilege and position. So it's also about ethics and a failure of morality. A reckoning is coming... people who haven't enough education to be familiar with the word epistemology or to take a philosophical perspective on the situation will soon realize en masse that they have been lied to - that they can't afford to live well, eat well, their kids are dying of measles or bird flu - and they will see the grotesquely wealthy cowering in their golden palaces afraid because they know the people are coming for them...
"...who are now moving the goalposts, may actually know better, but feel powerless to speak the truth because they fear retribution..."
To add to your point, I suspect a good number of them (at least those in the media or government) repeat lies as though they were disseminating true knowledge or, as you mention, "profess the orange buffoon knows what he's doing," because doing so allows them proximity to power.
I have no doubt we’re experiencing Disaster Capitalism. These people are deliberately destroying the economy for their own financial gain.
And let’s face it, the rich get rich during bull markets, and even richer during bear markets; if they know when the disaster is coming.
And by destroying the middle class and turning this nation into a country of oligarchs and worker bees, they consolidate power further, and democracy dies a certain death!
And sadly, as the rubes cheer our nations demise with bated breath, not fully comprehending that they are signing their death certificates as well.
America needs to wake up quickly because we are currently experiencing a shock doctrine, and people still can’t comprehend that this is a deliberate act, and the only method to this madness, is complete annihilation of our economy, and political coup.
Furthermore, these morally bankrupt fools have already destroyed the rule of law, , and when chaos ensues because of a failing economy (stagflation), Trump will invoke martial law, and complete his bloodless takeover of the country; or bloody takeover when he sends in the national guard. IMHO…:)
You could call it "the Cassandra Syndrome". That's how I feel most of the time. "I told you so" doesn't even begin to cover it. Not that my prophetic powers are right all the time. But there's a point when you realise you have somehow shifted, or been removed from, "received wisdom" to some other category of knowledge. I won't call it becoming wise. Somehow being still in touch with reality? Reason somehow prevailing over reactive outrage? Or over-confident performative zeitgeist surfing? It's what I love about our new Prime Minister, Dr. Serious the SuperBanker. His secret power? As The Walrus says. Reason.
I think it's the combination of 1. Freedom and equality of speech through social media and 2. The simple truth that genuine, intelligent people often doubt themselves in order to become better while fanatics and naive people are so sure of themselves and their opinions all the time.
I'm not complaining for either, it is just a fact and we have to navigate around this reality somehow.
Sunk cost fallacy will be the end of us. Sadly it seems too many are comfortable with what’s happening until it affects them personally.
Jesse Watters was fine until his friend had been “doged. Then he grumbled that maybe trump should show some empathy. Meagan McCain had the absolute gall, with no shame or self awardnsss, to call out the GOP now that her father’s cancer hospital has been impacted.
Few things are harder to confront than buyer's remorse, cause then someone would have to admit that one is to blame for one's own misery.
So, to answer your question - no, few of the Trumpies will admit fault. They will, instead, double down, with ever more ludicrous arguments and rationales, one of which will be to somehow blame the Democrats and/or the Biden crime family.
Or, more likely, Hippo Don will convince them their misery is caused NOT by his tariffs, but by retaliatory tariffs - by Canada and the EU. After which he'll increase tariffs even further.
Rinse, repeat.
Until finally they wake up one, bleak morning, on a battlefield, their feet frozen black, ducking Canadian and Danish bullets, and only then will they wonder when, exactly, things went wrong.
They told us they were going to crash the market and destroy the economy before the election. Elon Musk said it. Of course this is what they were going to do. Maybe it helps to know what they’re like and what they talk about *constantly* but they have been talking like this for 9 years. Steve Bannon’s fantasies about world collapse (based on a book he read in 8th grade or something) were discussed in 2016…All the tech fascists are enchanted by the idea of collapse. The crypto ideologues had this as part of their fantasies as soon as bitcoin was created. This is a libertarian’s dream.
You are probably right. But when incoherence rules, how do you treat with its exponents? The real "n" word is nihilism. Not only approaching but arriving. The world of rationality can only identify but not treat. Hope and pray for a counter-revolution, and if you can, in your own way, act..
🙏🌈
I think I cited Nancy MacLean's Democracy in Chains earlier. All about those Libertarians. I've searched in vain for mention of their place in the firmament of rightist ideology ..... until now; now I'm seeing it everywhere. Thanks Ro Yipes.
Tech fascism or whatever the other name for it—-they all started out as libertarians and then morphed into fantasies of world domination. As one could have easily predicted if you ever conversed with these dumbass wankers. Libertarians are generally borderline psychopaths at best (even if libertarianism can be an interesting view to think about, as absurdly implausible as it is). They clearly were fantasizing a situation of domination over others through non-governmental means—and when libertarianism started to seem boring to people, and mean-spirited, they simply started to become more explicit about what they really wanted.
The intention IS to take a wrecking ball to the way things run. They believe that the only way to truly affect change in moribund, beholden America is to blow the system up. The system hasn't worked for many a Trump voter in, well, possibly forever, so they think that this is absolutely what's needed. (And I doubt most Trump voters have a stock portfolio so that news doesn't register.)
Their mistake is in thinking they will somehow be taken care of through all this shock to the system and rebuilding of the country into an ethno-nationalist patriarchal nirvana. They are about to find out just how incredibly wrong they are.
Sure. I'm not discussing why they're doing it. I'm questioning the credibility of people who said they wouldn't!
“(And I doubt most Trump voters have a stock portfolio so that news doesn't register.)”
Well over 70 million Americans have 401k retirement plans, and a vast majority of those held some kind of equity-based investments (whether individual stocks, ETFs or mutual funds). I think it’s safe to assume a good portion of these people voted for Trump.
Well, I'm Canadian so what do I know! The very few Americans I do know who are Trump supporters are self-employed.
Fair enough.
Much like our privatized health care system, most of our retirement savings plans (above and beyond government Social Security) are employer-based, self-directed investment accounts (401k for businesses, 403b for nonprofits). And almost all of these incorporate equities in some form. A lot of people are going to see a lot of their savings evaporate.
"The system hasn't worked for many a Trump voter . . . ." Is this really true? I would claim that the system has worked well for most, but somehow the right wing message has convinced them that the system hasn't worked. While is it true that many are struggling economically, are they any worse of than those of similar situations 30 years ago? And for most people, I would claim that their standards of living are higher than 30 years ago. So, while there are certainly problems with the system, I don't believe its any worse that typical, but somehow a large segment of the population has been convinced that its catastrophic and something drastic must be done. And of course, the catastrophies aren't directly affecting them since they are doing fine, but are affecting the rest of the country. I might be biased a bit since when I was a child, TV's were being introduced into homes. Color TV's were for the wealthy. Our phone was a "party line" which meant you shared phone service with your next door neighbor. Typical for a middle class neighborhood. Today, almost everyone has a smart phone. Multiple TV's and multiple cars in every home. "The system hasn't worked . . ." Give me a break.
The destruction of the economy and our Democratic institutions is 100% intentional. No one is this stupid or incompetent, not even the incomparably stupid and incompetent trump. It's all part of the evil destabilizing game plan of the techno-centibillionaires who are actively gunning for their anti-humanist anarcho-capitalist broligarchy to replace the existing order with a King/CEO instead of a president and co-equal branches of Democratic governance. It's the open playbook of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, aka Project 2025, the dystopic brainchild of the horrible Curtis Yarvin along with backing by Heritage Foundation, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and other nefarious architects and instigators. Thiel is on record saying Freedom and Democracy are incompatible. They want to run the country like it's some kind of entrepreneurial startup - move fast, break things, fail often and fast, pivot, destroy or buy out the competition, get richer, privatize, become trillionaires, ru(i)n the nation. These so-called SiliCON Valley pioneers are evil people with evil intent, true to life comic book villains, with their end sights being total oligarchic and plutocratic control over every facet and aspect of our lives.
Read all about it in this eye-opening expose:
https://open.substack.com/pub/mikebrock/p/the-plot-against-america?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=b023b
You realize I'm the author of the piece you just linked, right?
I do!
Get all self-referential why don’t you?
5 minutes listening to him speak is all you need to know he is full of shit and never had any idea what he was doing. He has been a clown his whole life. Once he put an R next to his name people were so attached to their partisan blinders they refused to see it. The rich propped him up for the tax cuts but thought they could control him. Im honestly shocked they are letting him do this, guess we get to have another great depression because not a single Republican has the integrity to admit they fucked up by putting a mentally ill fascist in the white house.
I'm looking forward corporate America, the sponsors of the Circus, having the next Jan 6 type show!
Yiu write it's not about politics but about epistemology... but when knowledge is power, politics is epistemology. Those who profess the orange buffoon knows what he's doing, that America will soon be great again, and who are now moving the goalposts, may actually know better, but feel powerless to speak the truth because they fear retribution, or less of personal privilege and position. So it's also about ethics and a failure of morality. A reckoning is coming... people who haven't enough education to be familiar with the word epistemology or to take a philosophical perspective on the situation will soon realize en masse that they have been lied to - that they can't afford to live well, eat well, their kids are dying of measles or bird flu - and they will see the grotesquely wealthy cowering in their golden palaces afraid because they know the people are coming for them...
"...who are now moving the goalposts, may actually know better, but feel powerless to speak the truth because they fear retribution..."
To add to your point, I suspect a good number of them (at least those in the media or government) repeat lies as though they were disseminating true knowledge or, as you mention, "profess the orange buffoon knows what he's doing," because doing so allows them proximity to power.
I have no doubt we’re experiencing Disaster Capitalism. These people are deliberately destroying the economy for their own financial gain.
And let’s face it, the rich get rich during bull markets, and even richer during bear markets; if they know when the disaster is coming.
And by destroying the middle class and turning this nation into a country of oligarchs and worker bees, they consolidate power further, and democracy dies a certain death!
And sadly, as the rubes cheer our nations demise with bated breath, not fully comprehending that they are signing their death certificates as well.
America needs to wake up quickly because we are currently experiencing a shock doctrine, and people still can’t comprehend that this is a deliberate act, and the only method to this madness, is complete annihilation of our economy, and political coup.
Furthermore, these morally bankrupt fools have already destroyed the rule of law, , and when chaos ensues because of a failing economy (stagflation), Trump will invoke martial law, and complete his bloodless takeover of the country; or bloody takeover when he sends in the national guard. IMHO…:)
You could call it "the Cassandra Syndrome". That's how I feel most of the time. "I told you so" doesn't even begin to cover it. Not that my prophetic powers are right all the time. But there's a point when you realise you have somehow shifted, or been removed from, "received wisdom" to some other category of knowledge. I won't call it becoming wise. Somehow being still in touch with reality? Reason somehow prevailing over reactive outrage? Or over-confident performative zeitgeist surfing? It's what I love about our new Prime Minister, Dr. Serious the SuperBanker. His secret power? As The Walrus says. Reason.
You nailed it: "This isn't about politics, it's about epistemology." There are no "alternative facts," just "falsehoods."
I think it's the combination of 1. Freedom and equality of speech through social media and 2. The simple truth that genuine, intelligent people often doubt themselves in order to become better while fanatics and naive people are so sure of themselves and their opinions all the time.
I'm not complaining for either, it is just a fact and we have to navigate around this reality somehow.
"The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity." WBYates, The Second Coming.
Sunk cost fallacy will be the end of us. Sadly it seems too many are comfortable with what’s happening until it affects them personally.
Jesse Watters was fine until his friend had been “doged. Then he grumbled that maybe trump should show some empathy. Meagan McCain had the absolute gall, with no shame or self awardnsss, to call out the GOP now that her father’s cancer hospital has been impacted.
Reads exactly like Brexit phenomenon my side of the pond.
Few things are harder to confront than buyer's remorse, cause then someone would have to admit that one is to blame for one's own misery.
So, to answer your question - no, few of the Trumpies will admit fault. They will, instead, double down, with ever more ludicrous arguments and rationales, one of which will be to somehow blame the Democrats and/or the Biden crime family.
Or, more likely, Hippo Don will convince them their misery is caused NOT by his tariffs, but by retaliatory tariffs - by Canada and the EU. After which he'll increase tariffs even further.
Rinse, repeat.
Until finally they wake up one, bleak morning, on a battlefield, their feet frozen black, ducking Canadian and Danish bullets, and only then will they wonder when, exactly, things went wrong.
There is no cure for stupidity...
Some kind of track record for pundits and economists is so long overdue!
For crap's sake, Larry Kudlow is being treated like Kenneth Galbraith!
Anyone who knows you understand this is not why some of your friends no longer speak to you.
Right on (and write on). Your blogs are unvarnished truth, gems of clear thinking and logic. Thank you.