Bursting Bubbles

Everywhere there is increasing nervousness about this growing AI/ data center bubble. According to much of what I am reading, the insane investment in this one dubious sector is the only thing propping up a hollow global economy. If you think there is rebellion now, if /when that bubble bursts it will be ugly. I guess that's why so many are hedging with gold, but it seems unlikely a safe full of gold will save you when there are soup lines stretching around the block. The other problem with having your entire economy depend on one technology is that somebody who doesn't like you might have control over a critical component of said technology. If you forgot about the whole "supply chain" thing, because you were busy deporting workers or firing workers, you could be screwed. The other bubble that could burst is the idea that so-called "democracies" are governed by and for the people. As Trump threatens to crash Argentina (again) unless they vote in his boy, the people get a glimpse of who is in charge. Sort of like the Brits did when the markets forced Liz Truss to resign. Mamdani is touting the past success of "sewer socialism" as he campaigns, but if this program was so successful, wouldn't we all be social democrats by now, if not actual socialists? Unfortunately, the opposite is true, that is, it is the forces of reaction which now dominate. Shouldn't we be asking why "sewer socialism" failed? Dozens of major cities were governed by socialist mayors in the last century and brought lots of services and benefits to working class people. What happened to all that? I would suggest a couple of things. First, those benefits proved to a lot of people that you could have a kinder, gentler capitalism that shares some of the surplus. The other thing that happened was when the balance of power began to shift a bit too far towards labor, Capital went on strike. As it always will. A couple more bubbles bursting: The Children's Trust lawsuits against the Trump administration's lack of climate action and The No Kings protests. This is the most resistance liberals can imagine: going to court or standing on the sidewalk counting honks. Neither gets you where you need to go, in fact it could be argued ( I do) that these actions are counter-productive, that they just set you spinning in an endless loop. They are designed for the old media/ political landscape that no longer exists. We now live in the liminal space predicted by Baudrillard- the Spectacle of DeBord. That means any reistance has to adapt.

"No Kings" Misses The Point

Liberals, progressives and Democrats eagerly await the No Kings protest set for next week. But the problem is not Kings. Western society already had those bourgeois revolutions long ago; the English revolution in 1688, the French Revolution in 1799, the American revolution ending in 1783. We don't want or need those revolutions repeated now, we need to confront the contradiction of so-called liberal "democratic" capitalism, which is the real ruler over us all. This upset over authoritarians misses the point; leaders like Trump are symptoms of a much more insidious disease. Getting rid of him or MAGA or Project 2025 doesn't get rid of the problem, at best it only kicks the can down the road, giving us a kinder, gentler capitalism for a little while. But it is the entire system which is in crisis. Perfect example: they just awarded the Nobel in economics to promoters of Green Tech Capitalism. They claim there is no limit to economic growth as long as we embrace technological innovation. A self-reinforcing feedback loop of capitalist promotion, cranking out a whole new generation of innovators and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who turn a blind eye to energy and ecological limits. It is a religion, a cult of true believers all wanting to get in on the ground floor of the next big thing. While ignoring the social and biological collapse happening in real time. Another bourgeois democratic revolution with another constitution cannot slow this collapse. That's a liberal fantasy that is totally discredited yet remains dominant. That was then, this is now. Meanwhile, all across the globe, angry young people are getting rid of corrupt leaders while they remain stuck in an unsustainable system. The new leaders will face the same pressures as the old ones; having to attract investment, having to exploit resources and workers, having to embrace austerity to deal with debt. That doesn't change. They can write a wonderful constitution and they can have free and fair elections and have a free press yada yada. But they will still be taking orders from their central banks who will be taking orders from other central banks. That's the King you need to get rid of.

Much Later

106 years ago Emma Goldman wrote : "Sooner or later the American people are going to wake up." Open ended predictions such as this are never "wrong", but I think it is fair to say that by the time the American people "wake up", it will hardly matter. In the current conjuncture, being awake is taboo. People now strive to be extremely asleep, which somehow correlates with being "politcally uncorrect". If this seems incoherent, it's because it is. Such are the times we are living through. It is increasingly difficult to imagine the event or scenario that might precipitate Emma's awakening. It is not that people have unformed or ill-informed opinions or ideas. They now find it easier to let others have their opinions and ideas for them. Let others fuck with all that! Let the AI fuck with that. So far the strategy is working fabulously. Our country has the most bombs, the most famous celebrities, the Superbowl champions. We have the funniest President and the biggest cars and trucks. Why would you want to wake up from that? A lot of leftists worry that identity politics have superceded class politics. That happened about sixty years ago. It is now identity all the way down. Still the pundits worry about our "fragile democracy" and pine for the days of old. You know, FDR and the New Deal. Here is how capitalist "democracy" actually works.From the Washington Post: "The treasury secretary said he also has heard from “numerous US companies who intend to make substantial foreign direct investments in Argentina” if Milei’s coalition wins next month, which could boost reserves." Our elected reppresentatives get to make a few token decisions but the veto power rests with "foreign direct investments", another word for Capital. A word you won't hear Ezra Klien use as he considers ways for Democrats (the left?) to regain power ( basically conceding on culture). As to Argentina, they just made a deal to sell China the soybeans American farmers no longer can, due to tariffs and export controls. Farmers are angry but they also hate tansgender commies so they will take a payout and grouse and vote "conservative". And a lot of farmers are Christians and who is more Christ-like than Trump? Now we have to pretend to be interested in yet another "government shutdown" and yet another madman shooting up a church or shooting a celebrity or whatever. Sooner or later Americans will wake up.

Chevron: Green, Woke and Here for the Duration

In an interview with NYTImes, the CEO of Chevron says they are investing plenty in "carbon capture and storage, lithium and renewable fuels." And you thought they didn't care about warming. He also claims they " put a premium on diversity and inclusion," which they might want to keep a little closer to the vest. Cause it sounds a little bit like gay race communism to me. Basically, the CEO uses Doomberg's logic; every last molecule of hydrocarbons is going to be used by somebody so it might as well be us. " When the world stops using oil and gas, we’ll stop looking for it" he says with a shrug. They are just giving the customer what she wants. "We need to do things that meet demand as it exists and then evolve as demand evolves." In other words, capitalism. It's just the way it is. " The CEO says he has to " balance out all these competing interests." You know, the mass extinction of species versus making a profit. The forced displacement of millions of people versus keeeping his job. A very tough task, doing this "balancing". I'm not saying he is a monster, but what he does is monstrous. Not everyone is cut out for this line of work, balancing your children's future against keeping the economy humming. Actually, his kids will be mostly fine, they'll learn to live with the suffering around them much as he has. "We’re not engaged in idealism. We’ve got to be pragmatic and real," he says. He's real and realistic, not caught up in some idealistic "save the glaciers" bullshit, save the coral reefs, whatever. What is real is the lifestyle we have become accustomed to. Doomberg will tell you the same thing. Speaking of capitalist realism, some heavy hitters in NY are getting nervous about this Mandami upstart. "“The time to act is now,” read the email. “If we fail to mobilize, the financial capital of the world risks being handed over to a socialist this November. We cannot — and will not — let that happen.” Sounds like the Czar, fretting about the Bolsheviks. Maybe Rudy Guiliani should step in! In other world news, Gen Z has overrun the government of Nepal because "democratic" capitalism has failed the country. Old story, corruption, elite capture, rule of the wealthy. Which takes us to France where the government is calling for , wait for it...austerity! Cutting back on social provision and taxes for the wealthy. How original. The rich are threatening "capital flight" if they get taxed. The system cannot work. Period.

Conservative Thought

Harvard is working on a "center for conservative thought". No doubt in reaction to the pressure campaign the Trump administration is waging against "woke", which is equated with liberal thought. The problem of course is that what passes for conservative thought is just banal, nostalgic whining for a lost world that actually never existed. Liberal thought is no more coherent but that's for another day. I suppose you could find people who identify as intellectuals hanging out in think tanks or editorial pages who could give lectures at the new "center". But average Joe's who identify as conservative won't go to listen. They have influencers and pods to think for them. These Joe's and Jane's are riding high now that their cultural warrior in chief is writing daily decrees and posting on Truth Social. After years of being called stupid, they are, by proxie, now in charge. But they are still stupid. Nothing changes that sorry state of affairs. It's just that we live in a "democracy", and the stupids are in the majority. Plato warned us of the hazards. The Center for Conservative Thought would be very upset that Cracker Barrel wanted to change its logo. Sean Davis , chief executive of The Federalist would have a seat at the table thanks to comments like this: Cracker Barrel’s CEO and leadership clearly hate the company’s customers and see their mission as re-educating them with the principles of gay race communism.” They could put out a white paper on why it is necessary for Israel to annihilate the Palestinians. Not gay race communism but Islamic antisemitic terrorism. Conservatives like Bret Stephens would wince but end up going along.

All In

If, as the authors of All In: A Revolutionary Theory to Stop Climate Collapse tell us, it is time for revolution, the question is how to kick-start the process. We don't want to wait for another world war or global depression. We want folks to understand what those in power are doing to our world. But how? My idea is mass, militant, non-violent civil disobedience. Militant in the sense of filling the jails till those in power cede it. Globally. Nobody knows exactly how that works, but we know we have to get there. Here is how the scholars put it: "It is also evident, however, that as they are observed through the rearview mirror, disobedience and movement-generated social turbulence have defined the zeitgeist of the most storied periods of American history." Social turbulence. That's not easy to define in these days of Trumpism, when turbulence is the point, the new ambient modus operendi. What a poisoned atmosphere and ecosystem breakdown will bring is a turbulence that will be hard to structure into socialist revolution but what other options exist? The point of NVCD is moral suasion. We assume there still exists some sense of morality and that if the action is scaled up to the point where people feel compelled to get off the sidelines and join in, if it can start to feel like a duty to one's conscience, it can trigger a cascading effect. It is "all in" in both senses; risk everything and everybody doing it. Then comes the tricky part. Like the dog who actually catches the car, what is to be done with the power once you have achieved it? Vacuumes get filled qand these outcomes are dependent on many factors. My question for the authors and folks at Climaximo is whatthe world looks like the day after you have stopped all new fossil fuel projects and all those assets are stranded. Turbulence and then some.

Red Sea

Those of us in the comfortable, priviledged part of the world would prefer not to know how bad it is for those on the outside. At the moment it is Gaza that is intruding on our tranquility but if you just travel on down the Red Sea, towards the Horn of Africa, you find it is grim and grimmer. Luckily our media spares us these unpleasantries. You have to want to know about places like Eritrea and do some digging. While those few who care focus on starvation and genocide in Palestine, there are horrors and atrocities occurring throughout the region as tribal factions splinter off and take up arms, as they all scramble for gold or other precious resources, as outside powers like the Saudis, Egyptians, UAE and Turks fight proxy wars using corrupt elites and ambitious warlords. As the U.S. "superpower" trys to "manage" the conflicts, in other words, making sure proxy wars weaken our enemies and strengthen our allies. Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Syria. Tigrays, Houthis, Druze - who can really keep up? Who recalls the devastating 2020–22 war between the Ethiopian federal government in Addis Ababa and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front which cost as many as 600,000 lives, including hundreds of thousands of civilians? How about the ongoing civil war in the Darfur region of Sudan? The army and a rebel group clashed in 2023 and now more than 150,000 people have died in the conflict across the country, and about 12 million have fled their homes in what the United Nations has called the world's largest humanitarian crisis. There are other conflicts in the region ( Niger, Syria, etc..) and plenty of corrupt regimes, but the point is that the architecture of the so-called global order doesn't work for a vast part of the population. We sit happily in our Western bubble, raking in the wealth and resources from around the globe to support a comfortable, relatively secure lifestyle. Just don't look behind the curtain. Now That Trump has declared the U.S. the number 1 global power and Russia number 2, we Americans can feel that surge of pride that goes along with being on top, being the alpha. This is what capitalism creates; a competitive hierarcy of power. What could possibly go wrong?