One does wonder if the American people have been turned on one another purposely to create a smoke screen not only to draw attention away from the interference of foreign governments, but also from the obscene money grab by the top one-half-percent “here at home.” I’m not sure these (actually, most) human beings are intelligent and cooperative enough to design and implement an actual conspiracy like this…but somehow through their combined greed and selfishness we seem to have stumbled into it.
Capitalism is the problem. We couldn’t fix inequality and corruption in 100 years. There’s no country on earth where we could say capitalism fully works. Total failure in every country. Capitalism is a dead end and it’s getting worse with time. Why nobody talks about that? Isn’t it a problem of all problems?
Now, why there is no replacement system of society and economics? We have institutions for physics, biology, construction, logistics and every other science. And all of them make discoveries and move science forward. Except for this one.
Why nobody is working on a replacement society and economics system? Why only this specific science is in standstill? looks like a conspiracy, or does capitalism cause it?
this is particularly poignant: "I still think most Americans want the same things, but I don’t see how we even get ourselves to sit at the same Thanksgiving table. When I wrote the book with Meghan, we did so because we thought the Obama/Romney election was getting too divisive. Obama/Romney! Now we’ve got one of our presidential standard bearers calling American citizens, the people he is hoping to lead, “vermin.” If you’re not sure which candidate I’m referring to, it’s the one currently sitting in a criminal courtroom in Manhattan. When half the country supports somebody like that, how do you begin a conversation about comity?"
If I remember from the movie, the ending was about debt relief. The end of the novel was probably more realistic with a narcissistic martyrdom in a symbolic blast of a museum. Instead of that, maybe what we need world-wide jubilee?
I’m curious about a way forward. Any thoughts? lol
And curious - are you hopeful about the younger generation?
And would you say a good amount of what you describe can also be attributed to general western / individualistic culture as well (vs eastern more collective culture)? (The fact that we have exported this culture through the global economy the last several decades, aside.)
I have, literally, no thought about a way forward. As for the younger generation, time will tell. And yes, I would say much of what I describe can be attributed to general western/individualistic culture, but as you say, we're the biggest proponents of that lifestyle.
"Here's where I think I got it wrong: I undervalued American fear and American greed."
SAME.
My ungreedy even if spoiled ass does not get greed when one can see neighbors' shoulders slump with relief when they get helped out of something dire, monetarily or letting them borrow something, or fixing something for them. How can people not want that for others is something I've never understood. And people do more when they're happy AND rested.
scarcity mindset is instilled in us from birth, when it really doesn't have to be. we don't need the fast pace. it's like a whole society gonna have a heart attack at 40 aka 250 from all the uppers, downers, stresses both internal and external...
This- “people are having to work harder and harder just to stand still” is depressingly accurate. Currently standing still but every damned day I feel the ground beneath my feet shifting just a little bit more.
What's the difference between American greed and, say Ethiopian greed, or Nigerian greed, or Somalian greed, or Russian greed, or Roman greed, or Chinese greed? IDK. Just curious.
I don't think there is a difference in terms of human behavior and motives, but what's got my goat is that I grew up believing that the US was somehow different than these other countries. That we may be flawed but we're not corrupt in the same way as so many other nations. Now I think that's true; we're worse. It's the difference between a Nigerian Prince scam and a wholesale pillaging of the global housing market.
What's distressing to me about the US is that we have the resources and might to take without end; we don't need to do it at the point of a sword, although we do that too. Instead we can just use the power of our economy and the dollar's unrivaled status as the world's de facto currency to muscle our way wherever we want to go. At the same time, when we're spending our money for the global greater good, such as with the Marshall Plan or funding various global healh initiatives, we have unparalleled advantages. I just wish it was more of the latter and less of the former.
Humans are the dumbest and most savage animals on the planet. We're facing 3 existential threats: diseases😷, climate mayhem, and the rise of fascism, again. This will not end well for anyone 😕
My great fear is that human beings often seek the ‘surety’ authoritarians promise (but never deliver) when shit hits the fan. With so many existential threats coming, I feel that democracy will be an early casualty. If it is, all hope for human survival is lost. Catastrophe is baked into the fascist brand because truth becomes a mutable concept.
I don't know if I worry democracy will be lost so much as set back a couple years (or centuries). We're obviously on course for some sort of cataclysm. The question is its severity and its duration. My hope is that we get our shit together enough to at least offset some of the damage from whatever's coming.
If it were just the US, I would be less pessimistic. These crisis are global and will be worse in other places. When rising waters causes mass migration, rise of disease, food scarcity, economic breakdown, etc, on a global scale, democracy cannot stand. Higher thinking and the willingness to accept the rule of law requires a modicum of social stability. When civilization is tossed into a blender, Mad Max is going to seem like a Disney movie compared to most people’s lives. And yes, I’m available to entertain at parties.
This is why the fascists have been planning this for at least 50 years. If not longer. The human species gets culled once every hundred years. The 1918 pandemic. Covid emerging in late 2019. Totally predictable. Our climate models fell woefully short on the predicting actual speed of our climate's breakdown. Unsurprising, because there were too many unknown unknowns.
I think you could make an argument that the two-party system has made the country more stable than other countries. For decades both of the parties actively suppressed the more extreme, fanatical viewpoints of some people as a means of being relatable to a majority of Americans. The advent of the internet, cable news, and talk radio gave voices to those extreme viewpoints and they could no longer be suppressed (at least by the Republican party). Of course, we used to have laws that prohibited talk radio and television from being too one-sided. Republicans and the Republican-dominated Supreme Court gutted those laws (Republicans have had a majority on the Supreme Court since the 1970's!). I'm not saying a two-party system is the best, but it's not like the multi-party systems in Europe have produced the most stable of political environments. Sometimes you sacrifice the best possible policy outcome you want for political stability.
" For decades both of the parties actively suppressed the more extreme, fanatical viewpoints of some people as a means of being relatable to a majority of Americans."
I'm not sure that's true of the GOP. I agree that they have suppressed the public expression of that fanaticism, but I would argue that extremism has been moving the country rightward since Reagan, at least.
By contrast, the Dems have done such a good job suppressing their left flank that they've been moving right for at least as long. Biden has represented the first real break from that drift in my lifetime, what with his embrace of unions and rejection of supply-side economics and tax cuts.
I feel like there was some suppression of the John Birch Society in the 60's through 90's. It sounds like that movement broke through in the 2000's and became what maga is today. I agree that the far right as been much more successful at implementing its agenda. That may be because older people, who tend to be more conservative, are much more likely to consistently vote. I don't know, though. I mean Biden has been doing all the things young people said they wanted and young people hate him.
They do. Some of it is the fickle...fickleness? (not sure if that's a word) of youth, I suppose. But some of it is kinda deserved - Biden should go further on student debt relief and maybe should have been better on climate policy earlier on (I think he's done better on that lately.) But the big thing to me is that, at least lately, it kinda seems biden is more than happy to shit on young people who dare question his wisdom re: Israel/Gaza. Regardless of how one feels about the conflict, young people clearly have a dominant viewpoint, and he keeps telling them he's wrong and he won't change anything despite their protests. That's a great way to lose votes, and I think that's what we're seeing.
It's hard though...as Mehdi Hasan has said, Biden is probably the best president in a lot of respects (including foreign policy at least until lately) in probably the last 40ish years. But also that's an incredibly low bar to clear, since that list includes trump and w bush.
Great piece. I've always felt though, that fear leads to greed, not the other way around. Frightened people are trying to exert control on the chaos of life by having MORE for themselves. The wealthiest people I have known are also the biggest cowards I've ever met. Giant vehicles, gated communities, armed guards, 'law and order' philosophies (sanitized racism for the most part), fragile egos, etc.
Their fear has become a vortex that is sucking in all of humanity, all of nature. To overcome this fear, is to overcome human frailty. And that takes courage.
One does wonder if the American people have been turned on one another purposely to create a smoke screen not only to draw attention away from the interference of foreign governments, but also from the obscene money grab by the top one-half-percent “here at home.” I’m not sure these (actually, most) human beings are intelligent and cooperative enough to design and implement an actual conspiracy like this…but somehow through their combined greed and selfishness we seem to have stumbled into it.
Capitalism is the problem. We couldn’t fix inequality and corruption in 100 years. There’s no country on earth where we could say capitalism fully works. Total failure in every country. Capitalism is a dead end and it’s getting worse with time. Why nobody talks about that? Isn’t it a problem of all problems?
Now, why there is no replacement system of society and economics? We have institutions for physics, biology, construction, logistics and every other science. And all of them make discoveries and move science forward. Except for this one.
Why nobody is working on a replacement society and economics system? Why only this specific science is in standstill? looks like a conspiracy, or does capitalism cause it?
dear michael,
another thoughtful piece!
this is particularly poignant: "I still think most Americans want the same things, but I don’t see how we even get ourselves to sit at the same Thanksgiving table. When I wrote the book with Meghan, we did so because we thought the Obama/Romney election was getting too divisive. Obama/Romney! Now we’ve got one of our presidential standard bearers calling American citizens, the people he is hoping to lead, “vermin.” If you’re not sure which candidate I’m referring to, it’s the one currently sitting in a criminal courtroom in Manhattan. When half the country supports somebody like that, how do you begin a conversation about comity?"
good questions!
thank you for sharing.
love
myq
If I remember from the movie, the ending was about debt relief. The end of the novel was probably more realistic with a narcissistic martyrdom in a symbolic blast of a museum. Instead of that, maybe what we need world-wide jubilee?
I appreciate the post. Plenty to ponder here.
I’m curious about a way forward. Any thoughts? lol
And curious - are you hopeful about the younger generation?
And would you say a good amount of what you describe can also be attributed to general western / individualistic culture as well (vs eastern more collective culture)? (The fact that we have exported this culture through the global economy the last several decades, aside.)
I have, literally, no thought about a way forward. As for the younger generation, time will tell. And yes, I would say much of what I describe can be attributed to general western/individualistic culture, but as you say, we're the biggest proponents of that lifestyle.
BUNDLING LOL AND D:
"Here's where I think I got it wrong: I undervalued American fear and American greed."
SAME.
My ungreedy even if spoiled ass does not get greed when one can see neighbors' shoulders slump with relief when they get helped out of something dire, monetarily or letting them borrow something, or fixing something for them. How can people not want that for others is something I've never understood. And people do more when they're happy AND rested.
scarcity mindset is instilled in us from birth, when it really doesn't have to be. we don't need the fast pace. it's like a whole society gonna have a heart attack at 40 aka 250 from all the uppers, downers, stresses both internal and external...
This- “people are having to work harder and harder just to stand still” is depressingly accurate. Currently standing still but every damned day I feel the ground beneath my feet shifting just a little bit more.
What's the difference between American greed and, say Ethiopian greed, or Nigerian greed, or Somalian greed, or Russian greed, or Roman greed, or Chinese greed? IDK. Just curious.
I don't think there is a difference in terms of human behavior and motives, but what's got my goat is that I grew up believing that the US was somehow different than these other countries. That we may be flawed but we're not corrupt in the same way as so many other nations. Now I think that's true; we're worse. It's the difference between a Nigerian Prince scam and a wholesale pillaging of the global housing market.
What's distressing to me about the US is that we have the resources and might to take without end; we don't need to do it at the point of a sword, although we do that too. Instead we can just use the power of our economy and the dollar's unrivaled status as the world's de facto currency to muscle our way wherever we want to go. At the same time, when we're spending our money for the global greater good, such as with the Marshall Plan or funding various global healh initiatives, we have unparalleled advantages. I just wish it was more of the latter and less of the former.
Humans are the dumbest and most savage animals on the planet. We're facing 3 existential threats: diseases😷, climate mayhem, and the rise of fascism, again. This will not end well for anyone 😕
My great fear is that human beings often seek the ‘surety’ authoritarians promise (but never deliver) when shit hits the fan. With so many existential threats coming, I feel that democracy will be an early casualty. If it is, all hope for human survival is lost. Catastrophe is baked into the fascist brand because truth becomes a mutable concept.
I don't know if I worry democracy will be lost so much as set back a couple years (or centuries). We're obviously on course for some sort of cataclysm. The question is its severity and its duration. My hope is that we get our shit together enough to at least offset some of the damage from whatever's coming.
If it were just the US, I would be less pessimistic. These crisis are global and will be worse in other places. When rising waters causes mass migration, rise of disease, food scarcity, economic breakdown, etc, on a global scale, democracy cannot stand. Higher thinking and the willingness to accept the rule of law requires a modicum of social stability. When civilization is tossed into a blender, Mad Max is going to seem like a Disney movie compared to most people’s lives. And yes, I’m available to entertain at parties.
This is why the fascists have been planning this for at least 50 years. If not longer. The human species gets culled once every hundred years. The 1918 pandemic. Covid emerging in late 2019. Totally predictable. Our climate models fell woefully short on the predicting actual speed of our climate's breakdown. Unsurprising, because there were too many unknown unknowns.
I think you could make an argument that the two-party system has made the country more stable than other countries. For decades both of the parties actively suppressed the more extreme, fanatical viewpoints of some people as a means of being relatable to a majority of Americans. The advent of the internet, cable news, and talk radio gave voices to those extreme viewpoints and they could no longer be suppressed (at least by the Republican party). Of course, we used to have laws that prohibited talk radio and television from being too one-sided. Republicans and the Republican-dominated Supreme Court gutted those laws (Republicans have had a majority on the Supreme Court since the 1970's!). I'm not saying a two-party system is the best, but it's not like the multi-party systems in Europe have produced the most stable of political environments. Sometimes you sacrifice the best possible policy outcome you want for political stability.
" For decades both of the parties actively suppressed the more extreme, fanatical viewpoints of some people as a means of being relatable to a majority of Americans."
I'm not sure that's true of the GOP. I agree that they have suppressed the public expression of that fanaticism, but I would argue that extremism has been moving the country rightward since Reagan, at least.
By contrast, the Dems have done such a good job suppressing their left flank that they've been moving right for at least as long. Biden has represented the first real break from that drift in my lifetime, what with his embrace of unions and rejection of supply-side economics and tax cuts.
Biden has done a commendable job, but it was Bernie who got my attention and gave me a brief glimmer of hope.
Agreed on both counts.
I feel like there was some suppression of the John Birch Society in the 60's through 90's. It sounds like that movement broke through in the 2000's and became what maga is today. I agree that the far right as been much more successful at implementing its agenda. That may be because older people, who tend to be more conservative, are much more likely to consistently vote. I don't know, though. I mean Biden has been doing all the things young people said they wanted and young people hate him.
They do. Some of it is the fickle...fickleness? (not sure if that's a word) of youth, I suppose. But some of it is kinda deserved - Biden should go further on student debt relief and maybe should have been better on climate policy earlier on (I think he's done better on that lately.) But the big thing to me is that, at least lately, it kinda seems biden is more than happy to shit on young people who dare question his wisdom re: Israel/Gaza. Regardless of how one feels about the conflict, young people clearly have a dominant viewpoint, and he keeps telling them he's wrong and he won't change anything despite their protests. That's a great way to lose votes, and I think that's what we're seeing.
It's hard though...as Mehdi Hasan has said, Biden is probably the best president in a lot of respects (including foreign policy at least until lately) in probably the last 40ish years. But also that's an incredibly low bar to clear, since that list includes trump and w bush.
I’m frightened and I don’t know what to do.
Animal tranquilizers.
Also, the tried and true solvent injection?
I hear good things about ketamine these days.
Great piece. I've always felt though, that fear leads to greed, not the other way around. Frightened people are trying to exert control on the chaos of life by having MORE for themselves. The wealthiest people I have known are also the biggest cowards I've ever met. Giant vehicles, gated communities, armed guards, 'law and order' philosophies (sanitized racism for the most part), fragile egos, etc.
Their fear has become a vortex that is sucking in all of humanity, all of nature. To overcome this fear, is to overcome human frailty. And that takes courage.
I'm not confident for a future for mankind.