"Imperfect as it Was"

We notice how it has become standard practice to include a mea culpa when describing the present system: "imperfect as it is". Because only the fool expects perfection. And so yes, the status quo, the so-called "rules based order" of contemporary capitalist "democracy" may entail a bit of genocide, a bit of inequality, forever wars and ecological destruction, but c'mon, no one can expect perfection! Thinktankers express many opinions as they think deep in their tanks: "Cliff Kupchan, chairman emeritus of the Eurasia Group, a political risk assessment firm, said the risk of a months long shutdown of the strait was only beginning to “enter the collective mind of the markets.” And yet, imperfect as it still is, the Market's "collective mind" is still to be relied upon. We see much discussion about the "uncertainty index" and prediction markets, with insurance actuaries trying to parse the increasing chaotic tea leaves, yet day to day life in The West is an exercise in sublimating this anxiety and pathologically pushing ahead as if all was well. But all is not well. In the Manifesto, Marx presented history as the record of choices made, either "the revolutionary reconstitution of society at large or the common ruin of the contending classes." It is clear which choice we are making here in the 21st century. As Benjamin pointed out, there is already a massive pile of wreckage built up behind us, but it is nothing compared to what lies in store. This is why "imperfect" is such an obscene description of the current system, and such an incrdible example of disavowal, the ability to wake up so as to be able to keep dreaming. And why "woke" is such an ironic expression of our current historical conjuncture. The true nightmare is that we can't actually wake up and face head-on the traumatic reality of our situation. Of course the ruling elite believe they have the wherewithall to escape ruin; spaceships and private islands, and OH YEAH, private armies. Here is a new threat that could prove critical, from the WaPo: "Surging concentrations of carbon in the atmosphere, caused largely by burning fossil fuels, have produced potent changes in the way plants grow — from increasing their sugar content to depleting essential nutrients like zinc. Experts fear the degradation of Earth’s food supply will cause an epidemic of hidden hunger, in which even people who consume enough calories won’t get the nutrients they need to thrive."

Wile. E. Coyote

In my recollection, it was Slavoj Zizek (twenty-five years ago?) that first used Wiley and the road runner cartoon as a metaphor for our current reality, such as it is. Now I am watching Adam Tooze appropriate the same image of that goofy coyote lured off the edge of the cliff, suspended there as he realizes his predicament, not wishing to look down. As if magically, by not looking down, he will somehow escape his fate. Welcome to modern progress! For Tooze, the coyote is the financial and stock markets, oblivious to the overwhelming evidence of the polycrisis, assuming tomorrow will be like today. That there will always be a bailout, that the economy is too big to fail. But what about "pricing in the risk"? For instance, the type of brinkmanship that we are seeing in Iran, with the Revolutionary Guard daring Trump to invade or start more bombing. China daring the US to interdict one of its ships. And oh yeah, the planet heating past 1.5 degrees, bring super-storms and draught and mass migration. How would you actually price in that risk? You can't, obviously, so best to ignore it, pretend it will all work out. Pretend that you haven't run off a cliff. Just don't look down. After following the saga of The Straight of Hormuz for weeks now, I have decided it basically exists in a quantum state, a superposition, where it is both open and closed at the same time. This presents a dilemma for the Market, which has been bouncing like The Wham-O Super Ball, a famously high-bouncing toy invented in 1964 by Norman Stingley, made from a durable, synthetic rubber compound called Zectron. We citizens, however, are required to believe The Market is the best vehicle for pricing in risk, that insurance actuaries can tell us the future. What we know is that the longer this stalemate lasts, the less storgae capacity Gulf petro states have, forcing them to shut down wells. Some of which will be extremely difficult to get back online.The best strategy for investors is to just not look down. At some point I suppose we will have to open the box and see if Shrodinger's cat is alive or dead, but we can put it off as long as possible.

Prisoner of War or Peace

Quote of the DaY: "The market is inscrutable — and a terrible predictor of price moves. One thing we do know, though, is that we can’t separate ourselves from the global marketplace." Mark Finley an energy fellow at the Baker Institute at Rice U. (James Baker?) This is his answer as to why the price of gas won't go down. The deeper revealed truth is that we have all been captured and colonized by an "inscrutable" force, one from whose tentacles we can't escape. Apart from that minoir glitch, we are all kinds of free! Free to post on X, free to choose any deoderant you choose... This is an interesting take from a minister in the UAE government, basically set up as a mafia, saying they want to invest over a trillion of their hard earned dollars in the US. If only we can bring some stability to the region: "American firms increasingly see the Emirates as a launchpad into Africa, South Asia and the wider Indo-Pacific. In the other direction, the country’s vast network of family-run businesses, a largely untapped force in cross-border investment, is ready to deepen its stake in the American economy alongside Emirati sovereign capital." I guess No Kings doesn't include our new friends in the Middle East. To hear the neo-neocons, bringing freedom to the Iranian people is of the highest order but they are less concerned with the people living under the Gulf monarchies. Of course, the Iranian people would not be free to build a nuclear weapon, as are the Israelis. Sure, they can vote on it - but we have veto power. On the climate front, Microsoft has decided to back off on its committment to carbon removal. The latest IPCC report says not only do we have to stop burning fossil fuels starting yesterday, we also have to remove 5-16 gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere every year from now to 2050 to prevent massive overshoot of 1.5 degrees. So there was investment in technologies like direct air capture followed by burial. Bill Gates was buying carbon offset credits from these unproven projects but now he sees the need to invest in AI data centers instead. Air capture and storage was always a joke and planting trees isn't going to cut it either. All this news is on the bottom of page six because what are you going to do? Massive overshoot, obviously. Now just imagine the emissions caused by these latest wars. Yes there is some slight possibility that nations will begin to orient more toward renewable energy, but it will be added to the mix of fossil fuels.

Legal War Doctrine

Tuesday: You can't throw a dead cat without hitting some statement about "war crimes". With Trump's threat (empty) about destroying civilian infrastructure, the world was suddenly up in arms. illegal, immoral, just not cool. We know such hypocritical bullshit will fly right past most Americans, but it is worth noting a few examples of unpunished "war crimes". For instance, the fire bombing of cities by Allied forces in WWII. Dresden, as written about by Kurt Vonnegut. Beginning in 1945, the US military led by Curtis Lemay used napalm to burn 67 Japanese cities, constructed with wood, killing 26,000 civilians and making 13 million homeless. That's before we dropped atom bombs on them. Pick a war; Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. In, as Trump puts it, "the long and complex history of the world", targeting civilians and infrastructure was always part of the strategy. But of course, this is not the dominant narrative. Instead, all of that history goes down the memory hole and we are fed endless statements like these: “Our nation has always conducted military operations for just causes and through just and moral means. This must continue in the future; otherwise we forfeit our legitimacy to lead the world. So, let me be clear: I do not support the destruction of a ‘whole civilization.’ That is not who we are, and it is not consistent with the principles that have long guided America,” Moran wrote. Lisa Murkowski: “This type of rhetoric is an affront to the ideals our nation has sought to uphold and promote around the world for nearly 250 years. It undermines our long-standing role as a global beacon of freedom and directly endangers Americans both abroad and at home,” Blah, blah ,blah. Wednesday: Packistan managed to broker a ceasefire, so no "war crimes" or civilizational destruction for now. There are plenty of questions left unanswered but the main thing is that Markets are happy and the price of oil dropped. People can go back to TicToc or go enjoy a burger (unless you happen to be in Lebanon). We have a two week reprieve in "the history of the world", a history which, as Benjamin noted, is simply one huge pile of wreckage piling up higher and higher. I also enjoyed this little bit, an article on the perils of "growing inequality" in the New York Times today: "For any society in which this much wealth gets concentrated in so few hands, and is then so easily parlayed into political clout, the question becomes one not just of economics but of basic civic standing. At some point soon, we are no longer sharing in self-government." A liberal warning that we citizens might be losing our ability to determine our own fate! Wouldn't that be tragic! Along with the wreckage of history we have mountains of ideological rubble. And now this slop. So it goes.

Menacing the Region

Just like you couldn't read an article about Venezuela in the corporate media that didn't contain the phrase "Maduro is a terrible individual", you can't read an article now about Iran that doesn't begin by telling you they are "menacing the region". Now think about two other countries which are menacing the region, that is the Middle East. Hint: they both just started a war. And of course Israel is still orchestrating a genocidal project in Gaza as well as siezing territory in Syria and Lebanon. Now think of a country menacing the Carribean and Latin American region, for instance kidnapping the President of a country, randomly blowing up ships, imposing devastating sanctions on countries, etc.. That seems pretty menacing to me. Took my mom to the No Kings protest and watched people wave signs and elicit honks of support. With the usual mix of revving trucks and people flipping the bird. Same as it ever was, the grotesque status quo that is at once frozen and speeding towards the cliff. Holding both of these ideas as true at the same time is the esssence of post-post capitalism. Speaking of which, in his new history of capitalism, author Sven Beckert writes: "In a sense, capital freed itself from that nation-state in the late twentieth century, while trade unions and social democratic and socialist parties remained rooted in it." This is exactly what the IWW instinctually realized, that it would take workers organized globally in industrial unions to successfully challenge global capital. Unfortunately, trade unions remained stuck in their state-bound fiefdoms. So it goes. The Commander in Chief says he is willing to accept "two to three weeks" more of Market turmoil to defeat the evil empire. But the U.S. is still ahead of schedule. Our Nato allies are saying thanks anyway, but you broke it, you fix it. They tend to have serious military analysts who understand the grave peril involved with "opening the Straight of Hormuz." Meanwhile, whitey is going around the moon and I'm supposed to be concerned that Pam Bondi has been fired. I'm actually waiting for Pete Hegseth to be fired and blamed for the whole debacle. The perfect whipping boy.

From The Halls of Montezuma

How would you like to be some twenty-two-year-old kid steaming towards the Straight of Hormuz right now? Thinking I'm going to get my dick blown off because that moron started an insane war? I'm going to liberate the Straight so oil America doesn't need can flow to Japan? So Israel can achieve its decades-long project of ethnic cleansing? Oh dear. There to serve and protect global finance and it is a good time to invest in caskets. Next day: Markets plunged after Trump threatened to blow up energy infrastructure in 48 hours. So Trump caved, of course. This is government of, for and by the Market. Now he claims to be putting together a great deal, which translates to him bullshitting his way out of his self-induced catastrophe. Which most Americans will buy as long as the price of gas goes down. Trump and Rubio will probably move on to Cuba, a much easier, smaller country to bully. Closer to home, certainly. Digression: From 3 Quarks Daily: "The Championship (ethics) Bowl featured fifteen cases including, what to do about a hypothetical billionaire experimenting with geoengineering to mitigate global climate change without cooperating with any nation or group?" Just like in the famous novel Oblivion's Cross. I wonder what ethics were considered? I also wonder what sort of career choices these young folk will make. Another digression: It occurs to me that Howard Stern was the Father of our current Age of Transgression. He is described as a "comedian", in the same sense that Trump is a comedian. From his little booth starting in 1986, he would broacast outrageous slurs into the airwaves, titillating a tribe of mostly young men who had no political agency, who knew they were just cogs in a machine they couldn't name. But what they could do was gum up the gears of culture, blow up the accepted norms in a desperate, nihilistic cry. And now stupid outrage is the accepted currency of our attention economy. Most droids still have zero power, but they have a tribe of fellow spectators. And that's not nothing when you are dying of loneliness and alienation. When you have no agency to change your destiny. When dignity is a dream. Back to the Marines (and other US forces) heading for Iran: Even Doomberg is totally at a loss when it comes to predictions, which is his stock and trade. It beggars belief that the administration might be posting casualty figures on Truth Social but nothing is Real. To the Shores of Tripoli.

Adaptation

“The demand for climate information is going up,” said Sarah Kapnick, global head of climate advisory for J.P. Morgan. The position at the bank, created two years ago for Dr. Kapnick, a former chief scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, underscores the desire in the business world to understand the risks and opportunities of global warming, she said. So this dude Steffen started a seminar you can join for $25,000.00. He mostly talks about places you can move to that will be more climate resilient, a good lifeboat. "Most New Yorkers who take the seminar want to stay in the city, despite its risks of extreme heat and flooding, and buy themselves second homes elsewhere, Mr. Steffen said." Just so we know who these people with climate anxienty are, they are the people most responsible for the catastrophe, Rich Americans. One guy in the class bought himself 40 acres in the Catskills as a "sanctuary". So not exactly Extinction Rebellion and not exactly Dark Mountain. On the other end of the spectrum there is Max Wilbert of Biocentric saying eco-sabotage is our remaining hope for slowing the warming. Like myself, he points out how catastrophic events like the pandemic, the 2007 economic collapse and today's war in the Middle East are the only times emissions actually go down. A harsh reality. Straddling the middle is the venerable Robert Jensen ( not to be confused with Derek Jensen) who has a great critique but suggests "we" need more conversation and dialogue. I heard him on a new podcast put out by the folks at Overshoot, a subsidiary of Population Balance. Riding the wave, their slogan is Shrink Towards Abundance and by shrink they mean population and economic throughput/ resource use. Speaking of abundance, Ezra Klein had Naomi Klein on his show and when asked to recommend a book, she suggested Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin's On the Concept of History, written by fellow ecosocialist Michael Lowy. I have always been intrigued by that essay, especially the thesis that examines Klee's Angelus Novus, the crazy angel looking back at the wreckage of history as the wind of "progres"s blows her into the future. Progress in scare quotes because it is modernity itself which is the catastrophe. Or as Bruno Latour put it: "we have never been modern". Techno/industrial capitalism

Trump's Abundance Bill

Trump has jumped on Ezra Klien's abundance agenda, proposing legislation that would gut environmental protections in order to fast-track the building of housing. Apparently the thing holding back construction of more houses is the inability of developers to fill in wetlands or wipe out threatened species. So while the Pres is busy right now destroying another country he might find time at some point to get some de-regulation going. At the same time "Many of the consequences of global warming — such as more intense storms, warming oceans and melting glaciers — are arriving faster and more powerfully than many scientists had expected." This little blurb can be found at the bottom of page six in the NYTimes because all the headlines are about oil supplies being cut off in the Straight of Hormuz. From the same article: " new research found that the rate of global warming has nearly doubled over the last decade. " Doubled! Wow! That could prove troubling but all our attention is focused on securing reliable supplies of the stuff causing the warming! Remember 1.5 to stay alive? Well, you might need a new chant. How about 2.0 Here We Go! Ask a politician of any party what their plan is and you will get this answer: we are looking at common sense solutions that keep our economy strong and allow us to remain competitive in a global (China) market. Translation: drill, pump, burn. Meanwhile, you might want to let your membership in Antifa expire because the Feds want to lock you up as a terrorist. You could find yourself in Guantanamo just because you like wearng black outfits. And black boots. Actually, the FBI is investigating anybody who is anti-capitalist so if you don't see a blog post for a couple of months... Last point: I have always believed that the best Trump doppelganger is Rodney Dangerfield and this latest episode, where Trump, sitting next to the Prime Minister of Japan, says: "“We didn’t tell anybody about it because we wanted surprise,” he said. “Who knows better about surprise than Japan, OK? Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor, OK? Right?" That got some laughs, the kind Dangerfield would get in Caddyshack playing a rich guy throwing his weight around.

Risk

“The line between betting, speculating and investing has largely disappeared,” said Timothy Massad, who served as the Treasury Department’s assistant secretary for financial stability after the 2008 recession. “It’s very worrisome to me.” As if there was a well-defined line in some mythical past. We pretend it is not a casino so as to preserve legitimacy, I guess. But the system rewards and therefore creates gamblers. “Since 1980, the Arctic annual air temperatures have warmed nearly three times faster than the rest of the planet,” according to Dr. Druckenmiller. permafrost has been melting since the early 2000s, and researchers have now discovered toxic chemicals leaching into rivers in northern Alaska as the permafrost melts. Turkey, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, “pushed to dilute wording on the climate crisis, the science of melting glaciers and the role of young and Indigenous people”. Oil and gas profits drive this resistance, of course, and these profiteers are gambling with the future, betting on some miracle techno solution to emerge soon. How about AI driven quantum computers developing fusion energy? Perfect! "Time of Monsters" kind of says it all. Wack grifter ideologues warning us to wake up to "wokeness". All this as the next "extreme El Nino" begins to build and the polycrisis morphs into total chaos. War, "political" idiocy, in a word: oblivion. "The worst are filled with passionate intensity..." "We would rather die than change", plenty of ancient wisdom out there but none of it acknowledged. It should be obvious by now that there is only one way to reduce fossil fuel consumption in capitalism: catastrophe. We last saw reductions during the pandemic, but as soon as the masks came off, people went back to the status quo. Now we see the Straight of Hormuz closed through war and again consumption will go down temporarily. It is not difficult to extrapolate from this as to what needs to happen to arrest climate change. As Max Wilbert puts it, no one wants to see the inevitable short-term suffering, but "ecologically, collapse is likely the best path forward, given that governments and communities have refused to take meaningful action to halt global warming, the mass extinction of biological life, and the rest of the eco-crisis." The obvious argument is always "but we don't know if what comes after is better or worse". By this they mean governance or economic conditions or liberty/ rights etc.. This is a totally human-centric approach. The question we need to ask is "Will this be better for Nature, for the biosphere?"

America First Policy Institute

Watch out for "socialist green globalists" warn the patriots of the AFPI at their annual Global Energy Summit, what they called the "anti-COP". Lots and lots of talk about freedom and independence and the same shit Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman went on and on about: regulation and entrepreneurs and competition, econ 101 shit to put a little lipstick on the pig. As an ecosocialist I was bouyed a bit to hear about "The abyss of green socialism on a world wide scale", thinking maybe there was some amazing leftist movement taking power, but of course they were just talking about Biden policy and Europe's attempt to lower emissions. It is enlightening to watch video of the intellectual giant Harold Hamm, CEO of Continental Petroleum, speak about the big changes in Washington now that Trump is ready to take "common sense" advice and facilitate drill baby drill policies. Genius that he is, he even wrote his own book about the evils of central planning and any type of collectivism or other commie bullshit. These are all people who know the climate science but could care less. They understand that millions will suffer and die but again, they could give a shit, they just want to get richer. Right now the price of oil is not helping with that plan but you get a bunch of brilliant people like Harold and the folks at AFPI teamed up with some AI and watch out! America will be great again and secure and independent, lots of freedom of course, plus we'll all get rich. There will be abundance galore! Oliver McPherson-Smith opened the summit by drawing a sharp contrast between globalist energy centralization and America’s tradition of free-market innovation. Ollie looks like a Ken doll, a perfectly plastic person. Ollie had this original observation: “Around the world, governments are using environmentalism as a Trojan horse to justify control. America stands as the shining city on a hill — leading again through competition, innovation, and freedom.” Reagan would be proud. New Jersey Chair Mike Donohue shared the story of citizen-led resistance to destructive offshore wind projects. “They said it was inevitable. It wasn’t. We fought back and won — because truth and perseverance beat globalist lies every time.” Senator Dave McCormick offered a commanding perspective on how energy, AI, and manufacturing define the new American revival. “You can’t have AI leadership without energy leadership. Energy dominance is not just an economic policy — it’s a national security imperative.” You get the idea. Sea rise, melting permafrost, orange rivers, fires floods whatever. Full speed ahead for capitalist growth.

Tornado of Trauma

As Chalmers teaches, it's always the backlash. The CIA trains a killer in Afghanistan and it comes back to haunt. The US trained killers in Iraq and now we have all these damaged souls wandering our streets. Now imagine the generation of Israeli soldiers that just committed a horrific genocide ( just following orders) and the citizens who watched and enabled it. What kind of monsters will now be roaming their streets? Watch the suicide rate for clues. Caught in the vortex of violence and hate, they are sucked downward into the maw and they will have children who will carry the inherited burden of trauma and committ their own atrocities. And on it goes. Some theorize the possibility of collective trauma, manifesting at a national level, and it would be a logical answer for why American culture is all about diverting thought away from introspection. All those dead Indigenous people and all those slaves and all those workers ground up in Capital's maw. Is that how we explain neo-fascism? This familiar theme seems to re-surface whenever people feel unmoored. There is always blood and soil to fall back on. And mindless entertainment. The new National Security Strategy doc released by the Trump Administration is full of language about "civilization", a long-time meme for imperialists looking to save the white race from replacement. The document points to Europe's dissolution as the Gates of Vienna are breached by the brown, non-Christian hordes. It has always been the white man's burden to bring civilization to the inferior races but that doesn't mean they can come streaming into our countries for God's sake! They'll start changing our national culture with their wierd food and music and shit.Your daughter will start wanting to wear a burqa! The fact that it is the emissions from our industrialization which is forcing them to migrate only suggests one solution: start drone striking migrant boats, same as they are doing to the so-called drug boats in the Caribbean. Because we sure as hell aren't going to stop emissions. And everybody knows our biggest problem is overpopulation. Kind of a win- win! What the defense strategy document does is state the obvious: it's all about the money. It has always been written by and for big Capital but in the past they would try to give it some ideological/ intellectual sheen. No longer. They now concede that China has cleaned their clock in most of the globe so they will now focus on our old whipping boy, Latin America. Plenty of oil and gas and minerals to be had close to home. As for domestic policy: an AI in every pot! What can go wrong?

Teach Your Children Well

In an interview Ezra Klein did with some creep in the Israeli government, the creep said the key to peace in the region was re-education camps for Palestinian children. If only they would learn the correct facts and history (that of the victors), they would then abandon the ideology which prevents everyone from getting along. Ezra might have said something about Israeli education but didn't. Today there is an article about the 50th anniversary of the death of Generalismo Franco. In the piece, the author says "we must outline an educational curriculum to teach young people about both Franco and the terror of Francoism. It is the only way to challenge the power of deceitful social media." On a recent trip to Mexico City, our guide informed us that in his opinion, Profirio Diaz was the greatest president Mexico has ever had. He ruled as a murderous dictator for 35 years but hey, he got shit done. I was taught all kinds of bullshit in my own schooling and lots of important imformation was simply skipped over. Remember the Alamo! The Open Door policy in China. Invading the Philippines: "The American use of torture, then called the “water cure,” in the Philippines during the war of 1899–1902 shocked some Americans of the day." Naomi Klein asks: " What were all those museums and lesson plans and documentaries about the Holocaust for, if not to prevent a moment such as this? And what about all those books with checklists on how to spot your country sliding into fascism? Why did so many of the people who read them – and even some of the people who wrote them – falter when a genocide was unfolding on their screens, a genocide that has blown a hole in the moral universe and decimated the shaky edifice of international humanitarian law, making any further depravity now feel entirely possible?" My point (and hers) is that education and curriculum must be approached critically. Super critically."Teaching" is a powerful entry into young, susceptible minds and this doesn't only apply to "decieitful social media". Although the internet has exponentially increased the threat. There are no easy answers about establishing boundaries between propoganda and information, but self-reflection is a start.

The Times They Are A Changin

We now live in the era of distressed jeans. People save their money to buy clothes that come with the holes already in them. They buy "organic" food that costs three times as much, "craft beer" the same. In an article about how the Israeli military used AI to generate targets which were then considered "legitimate", such disavowal is explained thus: "There is also the active suppression of their own thinking." The trust in technology allowed them to avoid their own conscience and "pull the wool over their own eyes". Now we simply have to extrapolate and imagine this process happening on a meta scale. Speaking of Israeli military, soldiers in the West Bank were caught on video murdering two Palestinians who were attempting to surrender. As they have been doing for years. Israel promises to look into it. At a protest at a NY city synagogue, a group promoting settlement in the West Bank was met with chants of "death to the IDF". Everyone was outraged! Such language! Jews were afraid and Mamdani was forced to condemn the chants. Zionism is where fearful Jews take precedence over dead Palestinians. Who really wants to know what they are thinking? Hillary Clinton was asked in an interview why young people were turning against Israel and she said the Chinese control the algorithms on the social media they watch. What she sees is real, what you see is fake. The dead babies are manufactured. She is intelligent enough to recognize the absurdity of such a statement but prefers not to examine it, prefers to suppress her own thinking. This is the ludicrous, Kafkaesque, bureaucratic horror of Catch 22 taken to the next level. Thanks in part to the new technology mediating our direct experience, or as the poet Anne Winters put it so long ago: "a sift in the structure of experience." Young people prefer chatting with their AI companion to real humans.Some fall in love with their machines. But don't worry, soon we will have nuclear fission and free energy, genetic engineering and immortality and sentient AI to fuse with us. What me worry?

More Working Man's Blues

Now Argentinian libertarian Milei has an electoral mandate to impose yet more "free market" austerity on that fragile country. And he got the votes from the working classes living in the favelas of the large cities. Milei enjoys his popularity due to being Trump adjacent and he shares in some of Trumps entertainment qualities. This new form of anti-politics/ entertainer politician appeals to working people in many places now - for instant the entertainer Farage in Great Britian is leading in the poles. It is dubbed 'far right" in the mainstream media because of the anti-immigrant nationalist chauvinism these movements espouse. Left wingers are quick to see these folks as proto or neo-fascist with their mass appeal and authoritarian leaders and these same leftists seem to think good old redistributive policies are the way to organize these same masses in a progressive movement. What would Jane McAlevey do? In a piece in today's NYTimes the grifter running for governor of New Jersey puts it like this: “I can say, ‘I’m going to lower taxes,’ and I get a nice round of applause,” said Mr. Ciattarelli, the Republican candidate for governor of New Jersey. “But I say, ‘I’m bringing back the plastic bags,’ and it brings down the house, every time.” Everyday people just want to use plastic, they love plastic and will die for the freedom to use plastic. Sure, a guy like Mamdani can get people in a place like New York City to believe the place can become "affordable", whatever that means, and maybe they will figure out a way to get rich folk to pay for it. In NY City. Or San Francisco. Not in Montana. Here the people want to be able to afford a giant truck with wheels that stick way out. A black truck that is way off the ground. And they will vote for anybody who promises to lower rich people's taxes. To pay for the trucks they will support fossil fuels in any form because that is where the money is. Hence, the plastic bags. The 2.99 price of gasoline. This will be the campaign slogan for Democrats in 2026 : Fine. You Can Keep Your Plastic Bags! But once in power they run up against the same old problem, one that is much bigger than bags degrading in the biosphere. They will have to keep the workers in treats. And that gets more and more challenging as the chits get called in, all the claims on future growth get cashed and the only (non)solution is for everybody to put in longer hours producing less and less. While the bags degrade.

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.