What exactly is it that Thiel can't do because of democracy? There's really nothing worse than a whining boy billionaire lamenting the limits of his freedom because the system that allowed him to amass all that wealth is somehow in his way. Pathetic.
We gotta stop trying to explain these people. Thiel is an empty man. He only wants more, as do the rest of these people. Our job is to contain them and limit the damage they can do.
Since Thiel is another fan of of Tolkien's work, let's call Thiel what he is : Saruman, a once great wizard who is lured to the dark side by his lust for power.
Saruman ended up diminished as a remnant of himself.
Calling Thiel Saruman would be acknowledging he was once in any way great, a position for which their is no real evidence. Much like Elon Musk, one of this fanboys and proteges. If we accomplish nothing else from this period in history I hope its that we treat the Paypal Mafia with far more seriousness than we treated the Sicilian Mafia.
I agree with you 100%! And I’m sorry that I didn’t get your name! bitchy is my nick name!
And tramp , theil nazi miller should be imprisoned! CECOT is perfect for the trampers!
WTF WHY aren’t the supposedly educated rethuglikkkrussians in congress doing their job for we the people????
202 225 3121 or 202 224 3121
Call ANY member of congress! Give a name! Give them hell! WTF are they afraid of! For some, it’s outright fing stupidity! Why the hell do they kiss is fing 🍊💩ass!??
tramp MUST BE IMPEACHED! And his people n family need to be punished n imprisoned!
I get your stance. These people want to live forever, pure and simple. They want their wealth to buy them the one thing its never been able to buy them. Godhood. They want to escape to a place where they will not only live forever, but also have complete and total dominion over that place.
The system that allowed Thiel to amass wealth is capitalism. The freedom he valorizes is not that of human individuals, but of capital to accumulate in any way it seems fit. The base of all capital accumulation is the expropriation of labor. There are more workers than captains of capital. Therefore, when government responds to the demos there is always the threat that the freedom of capital will be impinged in some way. This is why Libertarianism -- the brand name of unfettered laissez faire capitalism -- is so beloved by oligarchs. Democracy as Theil frames it is a form of government, and capital is anti-government because any government represents a potential counterforce to its rule. Robber barons by nature imagine themselves to be the meanest predator in the jungle, and thus want to erase any rule beyond the rule of the jungle, in their confidence that they will be dog that eats, and you will be the dog that gets eaten.
This, for example, is why financial deregulation always leads to a bubble followed by economic collapse. Which, btw, the advocates of capitalism take as a feature not a bug. "Creative destruction." Now, who do you think gets pinned under the rubble, and how 'free' they feel as they starve to death trapped in the darkness?
I think all those people hate the idea of being governed by anyone but themselves and their base impulses. They get to play emperor of their company or VC firm, so why shouldn’t they get to lord over us little people as well?
They rightly assume that since their is no check on their wealth, there should be no check on their freedoms. They are largely correct because their wealth has made it so that this is basically true, which is why so many of them are sex offenders and other forms of base criminal, yet they remain free and unpunished.
It always makes me question the supposed courage of the American people that they recognize that their Justice department doesn't dispense justice to anyone but the wealthy, but they continue to believe that it will protect them from the depredations of the worst people in the country, rather than recognizing that the same tool marketed as making "all men equal" will end the inequality present in the United States today.
For those unaware, "Makes all men equal" was the advertising slogan of the colt revolver.
Well, that and immortality. He thinks death is not inevitable if you have enough money and the right technology. He thinks that death is and should be a choice. A choice which he rejects for himself but will gladly force on others.
At a certain income level, a lot of these guys think it makes them brilliant and insightful in the ways of humanity. But really they just love the smell of their own farts and think everyone else should too.
I know! He has more than God, but can't stand the thought a family might get food stamps because the job they work at dont pay enough to feed their kids. The reason some families can't afford food is because people like Theil went to war against unions that fought for living wages for workers. No he hates that they have to eat. I guess the unemployed should just die.
Thiel has been obsessing on the Anti-Christ lately. When asked by a reporter whether he himself might be the Anti-Christ, he did not have a ready answer.
As a black dude, I definitely want to throttle him. And why are we letting a dude who wasn’t even born here try to tell America when it was best and what he’s hellbent on turning it into???
"I no longer believe that freedom FOR ME TO DO WHATEVER I WANT and democracy are compatible." Mr. Thiel forgot the most salient (to him) part of his sentence, so I fixed it for him.
Speaking of ghouls, Peter Thiel is another one of these Silicon Valley asshats who wants to live forever. If only he could get his wish and end up like Walton Goggins’ character on the “Fallout” tv show. Unlike The Ghoul, Thiel is no antihero, and never was a decent human.
The most horrifying aspect of the Greenland demand is not the madness of the orange pirate, but the anesthesia of the public.
We are witnessing a terminal fracture in the postwar order, yet it is being discussed like an eccentric footnote, a curiosity to be smirked at and safely ignored. Greenland is not a bauble. It is a NATO member’s sovereign territory. To threaten it is to strike the alliance at its spine. There is no rational response from NATO that does not involve classifying the United States as a hostile vector. Alliances are not poetry. They are machinery, and that machinery either responds to aggression or admits it is dead.
Once that line is crossed, the cascade is not political; it is actuarial. The United States Treasury bond and Article 5 of NATO are backed by the exact same asset:
The absolute sanctity of the American guarantee.
You cannot default on one without incinerating the value of the other. The moment Washington treats a sovereign border as a suggestion, the "Full Faith and Credit" of the United States becomes a junk rating. Global capital does not store value in the coffers of a rogue state. Central banks will not anchor their survival to a partner who behaves like a neighborhood racketeer. The dollar will not be debated out of dominance; it will be dumped in a fire sale.
What is obscene is the pretense that this is abstract. If China announced the seizure of a treaty ally's territory, headlines would be screaming about war, contagion, and collapse. Yet when Washington does it, we get historical trivia and amused detachment. We are treating a breach of contract as a quirk of personality.
This is a full-scale failure of American self-preservation. We are watching the foundation of our own wealth liquefy, and we are discussing it with the casual detachment of tourists watching a distant fire.
This is the sound of a superpower forgetting how to survive.
While I generally try to avoid the overwrought Nazi comparisons, I can’t help but see the parallels. We have a personalist regime bent on regional conquest, with the other world powers being bullied into ceding territory. The parallels between Greenland and the Sudetenland are striking. I hope that Europe does not repeat its mistake of Munich.
The parallel holds geographically, but to me the mechanism is actually quite different. Chamberlain could trade the Sudetenland for 'peace' without crashing the British economy. Europe has no such luxury with Greenland. They cannot sign away a NATO member’s territory without shattering the legal contract that underpins the entire Western order.
There is no room for appeasement when the aggressor holds the reserve currency. If they blink, the system doesn't bend, I think it completely breaks. You cannot be the world's safe deposit box and its active predator simultaneously.
It is a fact of risk management. The US dollar enjoys a 'safety premium' specifically because we don't act like predators. If we start seizing allied territory, that premium turns into a risk discount. Global capital doesn't operate on hope; it operates on risk assessment. You cannot ask the world to fund your debt while you are actively burning down their security architecture. That is a fact.
This is probably a true statement. To this point, I'd say that the US Dollar was the EASY choice until now for all the reasons Patrick outlined/insinuates. If the United States becomes another shark in the water, then individual nation states will have to assess which shark is least likely to bite them and/or which shark with they have no choice but to align with because it is most likely to bite them.
This is the whole sphere's of influence thing, right? So, NA, CA, and SA all abide by the USD. SEA abides by the RMB. The EU, will follow...the Rubel? I don't think so. What about Africa? Well, this could become a bigger mess than it already is...
I think you're getting at a question that I've been pondering: if the world's reserve currency is not USD, then what? Patrick has a solid premise, but where do the capital flows go if they decide to abandon the USD? I don't think there is a simple answer. This outcome may be beyond the event horizon.
The majority of the capital in any sphere of influence will remain in the sphere of influence. Transactions across spheres will become fraught, difficult, and expensive. Oh, sure there will be random nations that pick/play favorites (Africa could become a massive economic battle zone mess.), but this is all working to take us backwards, to an isolationist world that existed in the early 1800s, you know, when moving ideas, things, etc. was actually difficult.
The idea of a reserve currency is itself a hedge against the economy of your own nation. The EU can simply use Euros, the Chinese can issue a reserve currency for private use, etc etc etc.
If the world becomes a more dangerous place, it doesn't follow that the US petrodollar can't simply cease to have value as a currency. It literally can and has happened before, and it seems very likely it will happen again, and frankly I look forward to seeing America impoverished by its own inflation as the world abandons the dollar.
It's a good hypothesis. At least in the US, the outright corruption is going hand-in-hand with the predatory conduct. A lot has been written about how autocracies inevitably become incompetent and corrupt (since no dissenting voices are allowed). A corrupt regime is not predictable and is therefore a bad investment.
Europe won't. But are POS, Vance, Miller, etc. even aware of what happened after Munich? They mouth words, some of them anyway, but they really don't understand what happened.
They think what happened to the old Axis won’t happen to their shiny new Axis because they wont make the old Axis’ mistakes. They’ll make a bunch of new mistakes and the whole thing will collapse even quicker.
How many times have those of us left of MAGA been accused of hyperbole in describing what Trump is doing, only to have that behavior first denied, considered, and finally embraced? A racist is a racist, a Nazi is a Nazi.
I agree completely. It's bizarre how the press, politicians, and public has normalized even the thought of taking over not just another country, but a NATO country. My mind can't understand it.
The goal of MAGA in power has been, to quote that wonderful human being, Steve Bannon, Flood the Zone with Shit. They understand viscerally that the human mind can only focus on so many things at once and, if it tries to incorporate more, it goes "TILT" and then nothing matters and MAGA can continue on its evil way.
It’s just Trump being Trump. And if he wants something, by George, those other lunatics he’s surrounded himself with will do everything in their power to make it happen, Those who are not clinically insane but still in his corner believe in him to the bottom of their bank accounts.
Watch (or rewatch) Godfather 2 and Goodfellas. Then figure out who/what are the analogs of our press public and politicians in those stories. It helps me understand this stuff anyway. YMMV but hey why not give it a try.
The “casual detachment” of most Americans is easily explainable and understandable. The MAGA fascist movement would have failed 50, 40, even 25 years ago. It required the slow deterioration of public education leading to a large swath of the population not being able to think critically and tell mis from actual information. It required the hollowing out of the middle class and people being so financially strapped that we are too busy and tired from working and stressing over bills (and outrageous healthcare costs) to have much energy left over to do anything, but it also required enough numbing content that we can all retreat to our living rooms and tune out the real world. If the majority of this country had either the intellect to realize the BS of the con men in charge, or the financial freedom to be more active and organize, then I think reactions would be more widespread. It also doesn’t help that the elites are how so rich they are super-national and as such don’t have or need to have any loyalty or love for any nation. Toss in a decade of slowly acclimating to the chaos and we are where we are. The question is, will we wake up if it gets bad enough, and if we do, will we have enough people power to actually end the dystopian tyranny?
Don't leave out willful democratic political cowardice and stupidity. Sitting by and whining "Shame on them!" or letting the GOP stack the courts because "They should be allowed to have their votes" even though the GOP suppresses theirs (Harry Reid and the first nuclear option was because of these same GOP antics). But once the insults and bullying starts, the dems go back in hiding hoping they go away. Been watching this for 40 years and I see no signs of the DNC learning any lessons.
"The moment Washington treats a sovereign border as a suggestion, the 'Full Faith and Credit' of the United States becomes a junk rating."
Perhaps, but I suspect that it depends upon how things play out. For example, does the U.S. initiate a quick and bloodless takeover of Greenland that is responded to by little more than a strongly worded letter from the rest of NATO? Or is there a protracted military conflict that results in major economic sanctions against the US?
One reason why I suspect that the dollar could potentially do better than you suggest is that, at least at this point, there arguably isn't another currency strong enough to take its place. In addition, capitalists have historically had a tendency to make their peace with authoritarian regimes.
I don't say this to make light of a Greenland invasion, but rather to suggest that we have entered uncharted waters. In such circumstances, I think it prudent to sketch out a range of scenarios rather than fixating on one extreme prediction.
You are mistaking the lack of a successor for the safety of the incumbent. That is the exact error the British made in 1956.
When Britain and France invaded the Suez Canal, they assumed their financial dominance would insulate them from the consequences of their geopolitical aggression. They were wrong. Eisenhower didn't need to fire a shot, he simply threatened to sell Sterling bonds. The pound collapsed, the invasion ended, and the British Empire effectively ceased to be a superpower in a single afternoon.
The lesson of Suez is that you cannot wage war against the global order and expect that order to finance your debt.
As for the 'bloodless takeover' scenario: Financial markets do not price based on body counts, they price based on contract law. A 'bloodless' seizure of Greenland is still a total violation of the North Atlantic Treaty. The moment Article 5 is exposed as a bluff, the risk premium on holding US debt goes vertical.
You argue that capitalists make peace with authoritarians. Correct. They invest in factories in dictatorships. They do not park their emergency reserves in the currency of a leader who lights treaties on fire. Capitalists like predictable tyranny; they despise erratic piracy.
We aren't in uncharted waters. We are back in the Suez Canal.
China, the Eurozone, and the Saudis. I'm frankly shocked the Saudis aren't already dumping US debt like crazy considering we are threatening to upend OPEC, which is most definitely their baby.
Again, China, the European Union, and the Oil nations in the middle east. The people who hold the vast proportion of US debt, who, if they sold it, immediately would spike inflation (at some cost to themselves of course) and would undermine US currency, because they'd be selling into a seller's market (people who would not want to buy currency from the United States). The only question is who gets out first, although notably, the Saudis have been "getting out" of the US reserve currency market for the past several years, diversifying from US dollars to businesses and property rights all over the world.
I feel like we are experiencing what the Russians have been experiencing under Putin: government by nationalist kleptocracy ruled by a thug, against whom the opposition has been cowed into submission. The wonder is that Trump did it all so easily--he didn't have to defenestrate a single journalist. He just had to file a few lawsuits.
You really think all those journalists and American aid workers got killed in Gaza by "accident"? Or that journalists have been assaulted and pepper sprayed by the administration due to random chance?
I just had a discussion today with a friend (didn't vote for Trump or Harris) who is a naturalized citizen from Denmark. His response to Trump's hyperbole about Greenland is that is the way Trump is. He tried to make excuses about how Denmark has mistreated the indigenous peoples (I pointed out the U.S's atrocities) but in the end his thought was if we need it they should give or sell it to us of to just take it. There is this "white male" (of which I am one) way of thinking that doesn't believe morality should be included in discussions if they think they need it more than the next person.
There are two ways to run our America. The First way is to build and implement policies through bipartisan negotiations that improve the lives of the vast majority of Americans. The Second way is to unilaterally build and implement policies that serve narrow populations in America (or attack other countries from which we can steal resources) and spend your time demeaning, demonizing and demoralizing Americans who are devoted to the first way. We have a looong battle for the soul of America ahead of us. Eventually the bad guys lose We cannot waver. Stay strong.
"Eventually the bad guys lose" only if it looks like 1945 Germany. though to be clear, I look forward to a world where the EU defense force is making sure every tree in America is decorated with its Republican.
There have been lots of examples where "bad guys" lose in our history. Start with the 1215 Magna Carta. King John lost. And King George III lost his American colonies in 1783.
"The Bulwark is just biased against the "horrors of WWII" because several writers are Jewish. They'd feel differently if they were Northern European males like me."
Literally, I heard someone make this claim recently at a party. A guy I didn't know and didn't want to get into a fight with, but felt like it. He didn't reference The Bulwark directly but said a version of this. Anything that benefits him as a red blooded white American male by taking rights away from anyone NOT like him (uppity women and minorities, Jewish people controling the media and finance and whatever else, poor people that don't feel like working) is a policy to be pursued.
I suppose I come from a different place. I grew up fairly privileged, given it was a small town. Both parents college educated (a true rarity there), new cars every 3 years, safe home, nice vacation house. But I can sympathize with those kids I grew up with that had an alcoholic single mom, maybe lived in squalor, or didn't have an adult to show them a path forward. It's not their fault that I was born into better circumstances than they. Just like I shouldn't forever be held down by the people in the world who were born truly rich and will live like kings without ever working a day in their life.
I just don't understand why people can't say "the playing field should be level: everyone gets a chance and it's up to you what you make of it". There is a fundamental concept of fairness that I always assumed everyone is born with.
I am white and breed blond, also old now. I remember the 1960s as a teenager. While I can understand (re women for example) that one might prefer a big strong man on the ladder when you need rescue from a fire, tasks like these are specialized. I worked with women for my full career (insurance) so no heavy lifting. Had a few women bosses. ....... I cannot imagine how Peter Thiel thinks we could keep women out of power. It makes no sense. Nor does the issue re minorities. The Jewish thing is really curious... I worked in NYC for most of my career and the NYC area has always had a large Jewish population. Played with Jewish kids growing up. So anti semitism is so strange.
I hear people defend male strength, and that women yearn for some bygone era of true manly men, on the grounds that we need men to use their strength to protect others. This is a laudable use of strength. The problem today, though, is male strength is being used to bully, not defend. And the only reason male strength is necessary to protect in the first place is because people need it to protect against aggressive male strength. So, in a sense, we need male strength to protect against the problem of male strength.
Well in a sane world, women appreciate male gallantry. And we appreciate their efforts to make a home. Wish it were only about that. Also if there is a fire, this 6 footer hope the person rescuing me is bigger and far stronger.
I'm a McGuinea--Irish and Italian. I grew up in a suburb that was developed by progressive Jews. Literally half of everyone was a Jew. My playmates were Jews too. At their homes were their bubbies, who spoke Yiddish. My wife an I still refer to AC as "Coldechay"--Yinglish? Learning of the Holocaust was my first hard lesson in life. At that time, I told myself that any future Holocaust would be over my dead body, and I meant it. It's stunning to hear people like Candace Owen and Nick Fuentes repeating variations of the same tired antisemitic themes. It is also stunning to hear progressives concerned about Gaza repeating Hamas propaganda as unquestionably true, propaganda that rivals the Blood Libel.
I now live in a mostly hispanic town (Dover NJ) and the younger Dems are just not familiar with the holocaust - and since many have some mixed indigenous blood, they see Israel as a colonialist outpost. In fact most harbor some resentment over mistreatment by white (so slurs etc). I don't see how they can be reached. Their from of reference is Central America and the Caribbean. So I give up. (I argued about what a genocide is but... well lost that one). My grandmother lived next to a holocaust survivor... to these people, that history sounds like when I talk about the way Ireland was oppressed by the Brits. It jsut does not sound relevant to them.
Unfortunately, it was first stated in 1905, by the philosopher George Santayana, in his book The Life of Reason: Reason in Common Sense. Since then, it seems as if every generation has forgotten (or just decided to ignore as if forgotten) significant details of their own shared past.
As time goes by we lose the people that fled that oppression before it became a full blown genocide, survived the camps, and the soldiers who liberated the camps. Not many eyewitnesses left to tell their story. Now kids just learn about it in "boring" history books. When I was a kid and learned about the Holocaust, we had survivors come in and speak to the class. When you look into their eyes as they tell you the horrors they witnessed and endured, it hits home like no textbook can. With the dismantling of the DoE, I fear that the Holocaust will no longer be taught in US schools. With this regime I wouldn't doubt that it becomes illegal.
A friend of mine from graduate school is Jewish, and he and his wife had put together a going away party after he graduated and invited friends and family, including fellow members of their synagogue. A couple of the members there were elderly, and my friend's wife had referred to them in passing as "survivors" (i.e. Holocaust survivors). To your point, I saw the same looks in their eyes as well.
McGuinea, I like that! I'm one as well. When the Irish kids and Italian kids were fighting, I would go easy on myself. LOL! My neighborhood was mostly Catholic with a handful of Protestants thrown in. At Christmas midnight mass, you could hear it in Latin, Italian, German, or Polish. All of these churches were within 6 blocks of each other. Religion wasn't our difference but the ethnicities of our neighbors was. It was wonderful to be exposed to many different cultures (especially the food!!!) as a kid. Many friends parents were first generation Americans with grandparents who immigrated to the US. The only Jewish family we knew owned a small corner grocery store. Sam, the owner survived the camps.
Christopher Walken grew up in a neighborhood like that (a lot of European immigrants) and credits it to his odd speaking cadence. It's served him well. :D
I too grew up in what was considered a "Jewish suburb". St. Louis Park MN, the setting of the Coen's A Serious Man. Tom
Friedman was my high school classmate. A smattering of Yinglish words but much Yinglish grammar and inflection among the elders. It's still Minnesota, so the majority in Park was still Lutheran by a smidge. But we all learned about the horrors of the Holocaust, and that very much framed the support for Israel (under Golda Meir at the time) which was pretty much de riguer.
Along with some of my fellow goyim, I understood our perspectives were not necessarily shared by the wider community in the Five County Mosquito Control District*, where Minnesota-nice restrained versions of anti-semitism appeared now and then at an interpersonal level, and folks didn't much give a shit about events in the Middle East either way.
The stunning revelation for me though wasn't the resurgence and expansion of anti-semitism. Since I always had Jewish friends, I'd actually been stung a bit by anti-semitism from people who thought I was Jewish, or derided me as a 'Jew lover".
What flipped my perspective on its head was the 1982 massacre of thousands of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon by Phalange militias acting as proxies for Ariel Sharon. What!? The Israelis are supposed to be the good guys, heroically holding on to Enlightenment principles and democracy under siege from bloodthirsty medieval theocrats intent on instigating a massive pogrom.
Jews (not as a conspiratorial unity, just as individuals) were not supposed to be involved in mass death of everyday people herded into camps. But, there they were. Then in the next few years I started looking closer at what was going on in the West Bank under Likud governments. Then Bibi... And see, in part because I grew up among people descended from escapees from Nazism, I knew what fascism looks and sounds like, and damn that was Bibi.
As I listened to the Likudniks and their supporters here, I came to understand that there were different versions of "never again". One was "nie wieder", we must never allow anything like this to happen again, by anyone to any one. The other was "we resolve never to be on the receiving end, and if that means dishing it out we shall not flinch in the least".
Trying to understand this, I eventually came to file it along with things I'd observed in interpersonal relationships and other areas of socio-politics into a general principle of human tendencies: Shit rolls down-hill.
Trauma causes wounds. Wounds are experienced as victimization. These feelings cripple our senses of agency. The hard, uphill path to restoring agency is fight the oppressor. The natural path of least resistance to restore agency is to subject someone weaker to dominance. Find a bully, and you usually find someone who was bullied in one way or another. Think of the famous LBJ quote. Think of how useful to Middle East despots it's been to demonize Israel as an outlet for the earned hostility of their serfs. Etc. Etc. Etc.
I don't have a magic formula to break this cycle, but it's worth considering that this might be what we need to do, instead of just beating the bully into submission and left with further punishment with the pain of all his wounds. Would 'nie wieder" have emerged in Germany without the Marshall Plan?
Do I digress? Such is life amidst our current madness.
* This was beloved Minneapolis newspaper columnist Jim
Klobuchar's term for the Twin Cities metro area in any context, with the possible exception of any actual discussions of mosquitos. See, in the land of 10,000 lakes there are like 10,000,000 little stagnant ponds in bloodsucker breeding season.
I truly think a lot of this white grievance stuff is akin to con-job, "This one trick works every time," click-bait type marketing and social engineering things.
There's a hard way to do things, which is working for change and opportunity. Maybe it takes multiple generations. Maybe you die fighting the fight that your kids continue and only your grandkids enjoy the fruit of generations of labor. Maybe you have to deal with a lot of cognitive dissonance and discomfort on the way there.
Then there's slimeballs like Miller who tell folks that white supremacy will somehow speed run opportunity, but just for the people who are smart enough to call now for this special TV offer! Time is running out! Act fast!
It wasn't a cakewalk for Northern Europeans either. They were killed in large numbers, and their countries were bombed, raided, and left as a smoldering pile of rubble during the war.
Oh yes, I know. I'm just resorting to the mindset of the knuckle dragger MAGA apologist. Even then, it's back to LBJ's famous quote: "if you can convince the worst white man he's better than the best black man, not only will he vote for you, he'll empty his wallet on your behalf".
Or the fable about how each farmer/neighbor is given one wish. The first farmer wishes for a new cow and receives it. When the second farmer's wish time comes, he wishes for his neighbor's cow to be killed. Better to inflict pain than to both benefit. The human mind is so warped.
I can imagine that the Nazis are fondly remembered because they put the "others" in their place, no matter how much they suffered. It's irrational.
A lot of them weren't very welcome here, either, especially before WWII Norwegians, Finns, Swedes, Poles--not all exactly glorified as part of a Superior Race when they arrived.
It shouldn’t surprise me that a movement interested in controlling women (from bodily autonomy to suffrage) would look at imperialism and colonization approvingly. The parallels are striking. The strong have power over the weak and therefore will take what they want. Colonization came at a great cost for the colonies, just ask the Congolese. I’m with Tim on what I would do if I was able to go back in time and meet with a young Stephen Miller.
During the holidays I listened to a few podcasts that suggested things were looking up for the US because Trump was looking very weak, both physically and politically. A lot has happened since then, which says something because much of that conversation happened…..last week. Not good.
I actually think the US is in full free fall right now. Just a few weeks ago, I would have argued that the courts were holding us together. But the DOJ’s open willingness to defy laws this administration signed just two months ago is so outrageous I cannot even begin to express anything about it beyond the standard ‘the rule of law is dead’.
And Trump is one island away from destroying the world order.
All of this is being defended by his party. So with that said, I appreciate Bill stating as clear as can be stated that the Republican Party is the party of Fascism. I would argue that the time has come for the rest of us to stop talking about what exactly we are fighting and, instead, focus on how to fight it. But, I admit, I have no clue about that. It took invading forces to rid Germany of Fascism. I don’t see that happening here. At least not for many, many years.
That's my worry, too. What cured Germany of fascism was their country being a smoldering pile of rubble and the Allies helping to rebuild their country while holding a gun to their head ("we're helping you out but don't think of starting anything"). I really hope that it doesn't become a matter of the rest of the world deciding for us that our country's MAGA fascism has to be put down for the survival of humanity.
I guess I’m making the distinction because there’s a difference between people wanting to assume power and people wanting to assume power and excluding others from the country think Germany circa 1938.
I’m gonna push back on that because in order to restore the United States I think that the next president has to adopt somewhat fascistic approach with radical change like packing the Supreme Court. I don’t see how we can fix the country without packing a corrupt Supreme Court. Is that the definition of fascism? I’m not sure. But what I’m saying is that in that case the ends justify the means. Alternatively, we can take the approach of Garland and Biden and see if we get a different result. I think the issue is that the system has been corrupted by the right with gerrymandering and voter suppression etc., etc. and not to downplay the role of Fox and the massive right propaganda machine. And Biden‘s big mistake was assuming that the institutions were healthy enough to recover when they weren’t. The guy didn’t know what time it was. And was so clueless as to the looming threats that instead of him properly exercising justice, he made the wrong political decision.
I don't think packing the supreme court is fascism. There are entirely legally ways to do that. The size of the court is set by law. Congress can simply pass a law to do it.
Fascism would be if the next Democratic president kidnapped the conservative justices and pushed them out of helicopters ala Pinochet to create judicial vacancies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_flights). Violence and arbitrary lawlessness are necessary components of fascism.
There isn't a bimodal dichotomy of either Biden-Garlandism or fascism. There are innumerable middle paths. FWIW, I agree with you in part, we will need more muscular action, almost a post-Trump reconstruction. But I don't think that need be authoritarian or fascist action.
You may very well be correct. What I’m getting to though is that fascism is the tool not the end result. And I Think that for both Bill, Kristol and JVL To state that the people want fascism doesn’t completely capture the frightening xenophobia of where we are today. I don’t know that people are looking for an almost military like structured society, but rather one free of those dirty migrants, those sneaky Jews, and those perverse LGBTQ characters. The average republican voter just once a nice white Christian country with good people.
I think we all (you, me, JVL, Bill) actually agree and any apparent disagreement comes from how we might be using the word “fascism” in different ways.
When we say, “the people want fascism,” we usually don’t mean the look or aesthetics of the uniforms, parades, or a militarized society. We mean what you said, they want a country where the “right people” are protected and the “wrong people” are pushed out, punished, or silenced.
Fascism is a political project built around fear, grievance, and identity. It defines the good guys as “us” and the bad guys as an otherized and dangerous “them.” The fascists then use this pretext to wield the power of the state to attack the out-group in the name of safety, order, or national renewal. But it's pretext, right? The fascists also tend to wind up with a lot of wealth and nice property in the process, funny that.
Meanwhile, the people don’t wake up wanting fewer rights or ask for less freedom out of nowhere. They are made afraid by fascist leaders who say the nation is under attack by the otherized bad guys. Once that fear takes hold, people accept harsher laws, less democracy, and more violence in exchange for the protection promised by the fascists. The loss of rights becomes the price of security.
That’s why the xenophobia and Christian ethno-nationalism are not separate from fascism. That hate is the fuel and permission structure of the fascist political project.
You’re right that people may not want military rule. But they do want the outcomes fascism promises because they've come to fear the otherized groups the fascists said to be afraid of. The hate is part and parcel of the project.
But it’s the outcomes that are the salient point. So for instance, imagine if the Democrats said that the Republicans want to harm democracy through fascism. With that stir the Democrats to come out and vote against it? Well, we just ran that experiment and the answer is no. Alternatively, if the Democrats came out and said that Republicans want to imprison or banish all non-white non-Christians in the United States might that actually move people to act?
There’s a comedian who does a bet on the difference between Italy and Germany. Obviously both axis powers but Germany we’ve condemned as forever bad guys while Italy we seem to give a huge break too, and his suggestion is that it’s because the food is really good. If Brett worst, we’re just a little bit tastier. Maybe the Germans would be the bad guys in almost every Indiana Jones movie. Both of those governments were fascist. But Hitler is regarded as the true evil. And that’s the argument I’m making. Mussolini is just a dude a little bit over his skis. That’s kind of the way we think about him today. Hitler on the other hand well he’s Hitler.
It’s not semantic when you consider for the German citizen it was fascism, but for the German Jew it was a death sentence. I don’t believe that all those Maga people want fascism. In fact, if you ask them, they say no. They just want a fair system that makes sense to them: Christian nationalism. I’m sure that once all the undesirable elements of society are expunged they’d be more than happy to go back to democracy as usual.
The fact that they've hitched their wagons to somebody that doesn't care about abortion (or thinks it should be legal across the board, and maybe required for some classes of people) is hilarious on some level.
Listeners and viewers of Fox and the alt right infotainment will not be aware of the changes, arrests, lack of transparency and corruption. They will assume that everyone arrested or affected deserved it. Just like they are not aware of all the undocumented without criminal histories, who are actively employed and may have been here for decades that are being arrested. If something affects them individually they will take it quietly and in shame and still find someone else to blame.
I agree 100%. In fact, I believe that we are where we are because of Fox News. And I also believe that the Bulwark should assign people to watch Fox full-time and report on their gaslighting and demagogy every day. I think that sort of information could be used by Democrats who can message. Does anybody have a list of Democrats that can message? I would put a Ocasio Cortez, Crockett, and Newsom. I heard an interesting stat today on the Bullock that illegal crossings at the end of Biden‘s term were lower that at the end of Trump‘s term. Democrats say that on TV attack attack attack.
I grew up in a confederate, white supremacist family. I am gay and left as soon as I was able. Literally the political philosophy my dad drunkenly ranted about my entire childhood is guiding the government right now. I was 8 years old and sat on my dad’s knee as he screamed about we should be ‘nuking all the sand n******’. Also, “women are too stupid to vote and that all our problems are because women are tricked into voting dem.” I thought I got away from him and now the country is run by people just like my dad!! People still don’t realize how dangerous this worldview is! I can’t escape it and I don’t know what to do
Yeah, I heard the same stuff growing up, although not the misogyny as much. But yeah, this is Drunk Dad in charge, no doubt. We keep trying to tell people there is a huge appetite among the Joe and Eileen Bailleys of the world for blood to be spilled, lots of Civil War and apocalyptic fantasies out there.
Is it Drunk Dad or is it Arrested Development man? I see a lot of juvenility in the people that hold sway in the US government now. Posturing, dominance showing, desire to get away from mom telling us what to do...
Funny thing about Trump seizing Venezuelan oil and selling it here: it stabs those oil execs who supported him further in the back. It stabs states like Texas that support him with everything they've got in the back as well. Oil was nearly $80 when he took office. It's already at $58; his plan would push it below $50. Bye bye oil production jobs in the shale patches.
MAGA, and modern 'conservatism' (their word) isn't incoherent, it's just abhorrent. It's also dumb as hell and severely factually challenged, see: Thiel and women's suffrage.
Where we'd start with a proposition like "All men are created equal," they start with a proposition like, "There is a natural hierarchy of supremacy and superior, in which we the ingroup are superior, and you the outgroups belong to us, and you are ours to boss around."
Once you understand their politics through the lens of ingroup-outgroup, it's all 100% coherent and consistent, if not immoral and deeply stupid.
It's also **exactly** why the voters are voting for face eating leopards and then are surprised when their faces or their family's or friend's faces get eaten. They think they're in the ingroup when they vote for mass deportations and to cut social services and to own the outgroup. They vote to get the good things the ingroup gets. They vote to feel the ingroup's power as they kick sand in the faces of the outgroup.
Fascism as an ideology is a pyramid ponzi-scheme of grievance politics and will to power. By necessity, there must be a small group at the top, which can only shrink over time, who are the Übermensch's who "naturally" dominate the hierarchy. There must be increasingly larger groups of lesser, excluded peoples, who are each one subsequent step removed from the top, further down the pyramid. The criteria of who is in vs out, and who is up vs down will change at the convenience of those at the top, constantly. They need to keep doing rug pulls because if the pyramid ever gets top heavy, it will fall over. So, there is no end, the violence and hate never stops, the scope of the outgroup targets just moves up to include yet another formerly superior ingroup, one step of the pyramid at a time.
Instead of "turtles all the way down," it's a single column line of spearmen all the way back to the Fascist leader. Each spearman is ordered to stab the soldier standing in front of them, starting in the front and going backwards one at a time. As each soldier stabs, they say, "Own the Libs!," and then as they get stabbed in turn, they say, "I didn't vote for this! I voted to do the stabbing!"
Fascism…ponzi scheme. Good way of framing it. At the end of the scheme Miller’s demented idea of who belongs is different from Thiel’s but they both know you have to have a gullible mass, magats, to do the dirty work. So they feed propaganda of domination & white grievances through Fox News who profits off the enterhatement. Does Kash know he doesn’t belong in Millie’s US? Does JD know Millie will like to deport his wife? Thiel & Musk will like to deport Miller? Yes, they just all think they can profit (power, gratification from hate & $) & control the scheme to their advantage.
The column of spearmen is spot on! What these magats don't understand is that their "movement" always needs an enemy. When their dear leader's enemy list grows short, they become the enemy.
Please, Bill. There's a big difference between having a narrow band of specific knowledge and "smarts" in the old noggin and being an intellectual or some kind of bona fide political theoretician. Including the words *intellectual* and *Trumpism* in the same sentence devalues the first immensely and assigns a trait to the second of which it's no more deserving than Peter Thiel.
How f**king intellectually talented does one have to be to think, "White and might make right"?
And money, of course. Lots of it. That always helps.
I'd like to ask Mr. Thiel if "capitalist democracy" is such an oxymoron and unworkable system, how did a MAGA moron like himself ascend to a position of such wealth and influence, producing the wherewithal to own exotic pets like American vice presidents?
But that's the great thing about America!!
You can be the smartest son of a bitch or the dumbest one around and still manage by hook or crook to strike it rich and possess enough wealth to spend inordinate amounts of your own time and energy playing at being aggrieved on the behalf of millions of morons other than yourself.
"how did a MAGA moron like himself ascend to a position of such wealth and influence, producing the wherewithal to own exotic pets like American Vice presidents?"
I'm sure glad I was done with my morning coffee before I read that gem of a sentence.
I'm a bit shocked that Bill didn't quote another part of Heather's letter: "...How we have to even run against these people—I won’t say cancel the election, they should cancel the election, because the fake news will say, ‘He wants the elections canceled. He’s a dictator.’ They always call me a dictator...."
Isn't this the first time he's openly toyed w/ the idea of canceling the election, albeit in the convoluted way he always starts planting his most extreme plans in people's minds? Am I the only one who thinks this is a big deal?
"and you’d rather be weaker if it means being whiter.”"
That's pretty much the whole MAGA ball game, even if my nice neighbors down the street don't see it. Of course once Thiel and Miller are done removing the various shades of non white, they will get rid of the useless old white people who are mooching off the vaunted male provider just like those various shades of non white. Uppity white women will be next in line for the removal camps and finally the vaunted male providers will turn on their lesser male providers .....and as has been true for most of human existence, the men left standing will look at the ashes of their once vibrant culture as they starve to death, and blame it all on the women.
Magats don't care if they get hurt, just as long as someone they hate gets hurt more. It's no surprise that those "good christians" complain when their minister or priest preach about the Sermon on the Mount. They get pissed that the church has the nerve to preach "that librul bullshit" .
Compare the elements of Heydrich's Final Solution program with those used at Miller's direction in our Mass Deportation program: Identification of deportees, Collection of Deportees, Transportation & Disposal of deportees.
The major difference is in how we - the U.S. - dispose of our deportees.
The Maladministration is replete with illegal acts designed and implemented by the Project 2025 fascists appointed by the Felonious Oath-Breaker to wrest us our Constitution.
Massive civil demonstrations and disobedience against MAGA fascism are key to a resistance. As well as Congressional impeachment.
Of course, MAGA will attribute all such actions to Antifa since those who participate will be demonstrably anti-fascist.
It might be helpful if Democratic Party leaders in Congress would take a stand. Sometime. Somewhere.
Enough with the D bashing. They ARE taking a stand, I see them all the time on MSNOW. But THEY ARE NOT THE MAJORITY and they can't force Fox or Sinclair or the RW media to tell the truth. If you want to change anything, VOTE them for them in November. And then PRAY that POS doesn't, after the Ds take control of Congress, do a repeat of Jan 6 with the military!
Sorry, Eva. I didn't think I bashed Democrats; I wished that Party leaders in Congress become more assertive.
Hope and prayer go only so far, and probably not so far.
The House has a 2-seat Republican "majority". That is hard to surmount, but not impossible.
I would not, if I could, attempt to force any media outlet to push any message. Let them fall under the weight of their lies.
To do otherwise would be to mimic the unconstitutional attempts made by the Maladministration to choke the press.
I've voted in every state and federal election since I turned 21 y/o, often using absentee ballots due to my assignments overseas. Don't worry that I might vote for any Republican these days.
Largely the reason why the Democratic party is rated as low as it has been is because Democratic voters and independents see the leadership (Schumer and Jeffries) as not being oppositional enough.
And yet, when asked what the leadership should be doing, I hear things that the leadership CAN'T do because they're not the majority. Or they don't hear what the leadership is doing because they're on social media that doesn't know what the F* the Ds can do or have done, or they listen to Fox or CNN or Sinclair or catch a tiny tidbit somewhere that is rebutted if they didn't have the attention span of a gnat. It drove me crazy before the election when I heard incels or farmers or others saying they didn't know what Harris wants to do to help them right after I saw a clip of her explaining what she wanted to do for THEM! Now, I hear it in a good number of comments on some liberal sites. SCREAM!!!!!!
I think the problem with the Dems is that their "elder statesmen and stateswomen" are trying to legislate and govern for a country that no longer exists. They need to let the younger Dems take the wheel.
Heydrich is a good choice. I would put Miller even higher, though, as Adolf Eichmann because he out-weasles even Trump as cold-hearted and hateful. He's whispering in Trump's ear and Trump listens. Just my opinion, of couse.
The Final Solution came about because their prior hope of sending their deportees off to a “third country” failed. We are entirely reading from the same script, just a few scenes back.
I disagree, Sumeeta, and I cite William Shirer's book, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" as a source. Shirer combed through the massive documentation left by the Third Reich after reporting on the International Military Court in 1945 in Nuremberg.
The Final Solution was always about the physical eradication of European Jews, although, after Kristallnacht, the NDSAP engaged in efforts to motivate German Jews to emigrate (leaving their property and possessions behind).
The Foreign and Propaganda Ministries worked hard to show that other countries were unwilling to accept Jewish emigres. The abhorrent tale of the SS St. Louis voyage from Hamburg to Cuba, the U.S., and return testifies to the Nazi success.
I don't think we're disagreeing. The Final Solution was devised after Earlier, Unsatisfactory Attempts At Solutions. We're currently recapitulating some of the earlier attempts, and don't know yet if they will prove satisfactory to today's fascists either.
"Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women . . . have rendered the notion of 'capitalist democracy' into an oxymoron."
Mr Thiel, w the kind of wealth and freedom that you and the other broligarchs like Musk and Bezos enjoy today you're not willing to call the US a "capitalist democracy?"
Crocodile tears for you and your fellow billionaires & trillionaires!
As a woman, I would like to throttle Thiel. As a human being I would like to state that Miller is a racist and an ahole.
As a man, I would also like to throttle Thiel. As a gentleman, however, ladies first, please!
Thank you kind dir
Thank you kind SIR!
If we had the real freedom Thiel dreams of, you guys could both get your wishes.
I’d prefer to see a simultaneous throttling.
What exactly is it that Thiel can't do because of democracy? There's really nothing worse than a whining boy billionaire lamenting the limits of his freedom because the system that allowed him to amass all that wealth is somehow in his way. Pathetic.
We gotta stop trying to explain these people. Thiel is an empty man. He only wants more, as do the rest of these people. Our job is to contain them and limit the damage they can do.
Thiel got to the end (massive wealth) and said, "Is this all? Huh. I thought it would be better."
Exactly.
Since Thiel is another fan of of Tolkien's work, let's call Thiel what he is : Saruman, a once great wizard who is lured to the dark side by his lust for power.
Saruman ended up diminished as a remnant of himself.
Thiel deserves the same fate,in real time.
Calling Thiel Saruman would be acknowledging he was once in any way great, a position for which their is no real evidence. Much like Elon Musk, one of this fanboys and proteges. If we accomplish nothing else from this period in history I hope its that we treat the Paypal Mafia with far more seriousness than we treated the Sicilian Mafia.
Point taken. Maybe Thiel is just a super Orc
I agree with you 100%! And I’m sorry that I didn’t get your name! bitchy is my nick name!
And tramp , theil nazi miller should be imprisoned! CECOT is perfect for the trampers!
WTF WHY aren’t the supposedly educated rethuglikkkrussians in congress doing their job for we the people????
202 225 3121 or 202 224 3121
Call ANY member of congress! Give a name! Give them hell! WTF are they afraid of! For some, it’s outright fing stupidity! Why the hell do they kiss is fing 🍊💩ass!??
tramp MUST BE IMPEACHED! And his people n family need to be punished n imprisoned!
I get your stance. These people want to live forever, pure and simple. They want their wealth to buy them the one thing its never been able to buy them. Godhood. They want to escape to a place where they will not only live forever, but also have complete and total dominion over that place.
The system that allowed Thiel to amass wealth is capitalism. The freedom he valorizes is not that of human individuals, but of capital to accumulate in any way it seems fit. The base of all capital accumulation is the expropriation of labor. There are more workers than captains of capital. Therefore, when government responds to the demos there is always the threat that the freedom of capital will be impinged in some way. This is why Libertarianism -- the brand name of unfettered laissez faire capitalism -- is so beloved by oligarchs. Democracy as Theil frames it is a form of government, and capital is anti-government because any government represents a potential counterforce to its rule. Robber barons by nature imagine themselves to be the meanest predator in the jungle, and thus want to erase any rule beyond the rule of the jungle, in their confidence that they will be dog that eats, and you will be the dog that gets eaten.
This, for example, is why financial deregulation always leads to a bubble followed by economic collapse. Which, btw, the advocates of capitalism take as a feature not a bug. "Creative destruction." Now, who do you think gets pinned under the rubble, and how 'free' they feel as they starve to death trapped in the darkness?
I think all those people hate the idea of being governed by anyone but themselves and their base impulses. They get to play emperor of their company or VC firm, so why shouldn’t they get to lord over us little people as well?
They rightly assume that since their is no check on their wealth, there should be no check on their freedoms. They are largely correct because their wealth has made it so that this is basically true, which is why so many of them are sex offenders and other forms of base criminal, yet they remain free and unpunished.
It always makes me question the supposed courage of the American people that they recognize that their Justice department doesn't dispense justice to anyone but the wealthy, but they continue to believe that it will protect them from the depredations of the worst people in the country, rather than recognizing that the same tool marketed as making "all men equal" will end the inequality present in the United States today.
For those unaware, "Makes all men equal" was the advertising slogan of the colt revolver.
Why can't these people like Thiel ever get sick or suffer some other tragedy?
Only the Good die young. Thus is immortality reserved for the greatest of evils.
I don't know, really. Rape is still sorta kinda maybe illegal. That's all I can think of that Thiel can't have.
He is gay. He sued Gawker out of existence because they outed him decades ago.
The self loathing is a helluva force.
He is a pathetically underdeveloped (emotionally) man that has a hero complex. Ya know, kinda like 90% of the asshats that come out of SV.
Well, that and immortality. He thinks death is not inevitable if you have enough money and the right technology. He thinks that death is and should be a choice. A choice which he rejects for himself but will gladly force on others.
Pathetic is the right word for it. What a coddled little b*tch.
Why Mark, he wants to be free to enslave us all.
His assets could be more valuable if there were no such thing as a living wage, union wages, SNAP, Medicaid….
At a certain income level, a lot of these guys think it makes them brilliant and insightful in the ways of humanity. But really they just love the smell of their own farts and think everyone else should too.
I know! He has more than God, but can't stand the thought a family might get food stamps because the job they work at dont pay enough to feed their kids. The reason some families can't afford food is because people like Theil went to war against unions that fought for living wages for workers. No he hates that they have to eat. I guess the unemployed should just die.
Thiel has been obsessing on the Anti-Christ lately. When asked by a reporter whether he himself might be the Anti-Christ, he did not have a ready answer.
South Park has taken him to town on that in this season's episodes. There is something seriously wrong with Thiel's brain
Thiel's an extreme liberatarian, which is to say an infantilist..
“🎶 Peter Thiel knows about the Antichrist, Peter Thiel knows about the Antichrist 🎶”
I now have a 6-7 like urge to break into his theme song every time I see or hear his name. Thanks, South Park!
Thanks. Now I have to drop everything and rewatch the episode.
Or take a shortcut:) https://youtu.be/HgfHt52vys8?si=8bKnfhAyUDTEmVRg
Perhaps Petey fantasizes about taking Trump's place as Satan's bed partner?
And that, in and of itself, is an answer.
Well, I think Trump is a strong contender.
He is but a puppet in PT's hands, as is his real protege, JD Vain.
I like that reporter.
As a brown woman…Actually, no, I’m trying to stay out of the concentration camps. Y’all talk, I’m just here listening quietly.
I apologize for all the cockroaches in this country with whom I share my skin color.
I disagree with Bill that Thiel is intelligent. He has a high IQ but he is not intelligent and he is so frickin weird.
A simply vile man.
As a black dude, I definitely want to throttle him. And why are we letting a dude who wasn’t even born here try to tell America when it was best and what he’s hellbent on turning it into???
Agreed!
"I no longer believe that freedom FOR ME TO DO WHATEVER I WANT and democracy are compatible." Mr. Thiel forgot the most salient (to him) part of his sentence, so I fixed it for him.
As a man, I concur, but would like the privilege of throttling Miller, since you seem to have foregone that thrill.
Isn't it interesting that 2 key members of the current administration have been disowned by their families?
I know Kennedy is one, who is the other?
Miller. Jewish kid from Santa Monica whose grandparents escaped the Holocaust.
Thank you for the info!
In an administration chock full of monsters, demons, and ghouls I find “Heinrich” Miller to be the most terrifying. A true psychopath!
Speaking of ghouls, Peter Thiel is another one of these Silicon Valley asshats who wants to live forever. If only he could get his wish and end up like Walton Goggins’ character on the “Fallout” tv show. Unlike The Ghoul, Thiel is no antihero, and never was a decent human.
I agree 100%
Get in a long line. But ladies first!
Agree 100% to both!
Accurate as hell on both counts.
I completely agree! thiel n miller should be locked up! tramp MUST BE IMPEACHED! Now! The entire tramp regime must be stopped!Wtf!!
The most horrifying aspect of the Greenland demand is not the madness of the orange pirate, but the anesthesia of the public.
We are witnessing a terminal fracture in the postwar order, yet it is being discussed like an eccentric footnote, a curiosity to be smirked at and safely ignored. Greenland is not a bauble. It is a NATO member’s sovereign territory. To threaten it is to strike the alliance at its spine. There is no rational response from NATO that does not involve classifying the United States as a hostile vector. Alliances are not poetry. They are machinery, and that machinery either responds to aggression or admits it is dead.
Once that line is crossed, the cascade is not political; it is actuarial. The United States Treasury bond and Article 5 of NATO are backed by the exact same asset:
The absolute sanctity of the American guarantee.
You cannot default on one without incinerating the value of the other. The moment Washington treats a sovereign border as a suggestion, the "Full Faith and Credit" of the United States becomes a junk rating. Global capital does not store value in the coffers of a rogue state. Central banks will not anchor their survival to a partner who behaves like a neighborhood racketeer. The dollar will not be debated out of dominance; it will be dumped in a fire sale.
What is obscene is the pretense that this is abstract. If China announced the seizure of a treaty ally's territory, headlines would be screaming about war, contagion, and collapse. Yet when Washington does it, we get historical trivia and amused detachment. We are treating a breach of contract as a quirk of personality.
This is a full-scale failure of American self-preservation. We are watching the foundation of our own wealth liquefy, and we are discussing it with the casual detachment of tourists watching a distant fire.
This is the sound of a superpower forgetting how to survive.
While I generally try to avoid the overwrought Nazi comparisons, I can’t help but see the parallels. We have a personalist regime bent on regional conquest, with the other world powers being bullied into ceding territory. The parallels between Greenland and the Sudetenland are striking. I hope that Europe does not repeat its mistake of Munich.
The parallel holds geographically, but to me the mechanism is actually quite different. Chamberlain could trade the Sudetenland for 'peace' without crashing the British economy. Europe has no such luxury with Greenland. They cannot sign away a NATO member’s territory without shattering the legal contract that underpins the entire Western order.
There is no room for appeasement when the aggressor holds the reserve currency. If they blink, the system doesn't bend, I think it completely breaks. You cannot be the world's safe deposit box and its active predator simultaneously.
"You cannot be the world's safe deposit box and its active predator simultaneously."
That's a hypothesis, not a fact.
It is a fact of risk management. The US dollar enjoys a 'safety premium' specifically because we don't act like predators. If we start seizing allied territory, that premium turns into a risk discount. Global capital doesn't operate on hope; it operates on risk assessment. You cannot ask the world to fund your debt while you are actively burning down their security architecture. That is a fact.
So if the US does invade Greenland and the dollar doesn't collapse will you reconsider your fact?
MAGA Steve, if that happens. I promise I will reconsider my fact. Have a great rest of your day my man.
This is probably a true statement. To this point, I'd say that the US Dollar was the EASY choice until now for all the reasons Patrick outlined/insinuates. If the United States becomes another shark in the water, then individual nation states will have to assess which shark is least likely to bite them and/or which shark with they have no choice but to align with because it is most likely to bite them.
This is the whole sphere's of influence thing, right? So, NA, CA, and SA all abide by the USD. SEA abides by the RMB. The EU, will follow...the Rubel? I don't think so. What about Africa? Well, this could become a bigger mess than it already is...
I think you're getting at a question that I've been pondering: if the world's reserve currency is not USD, then what? Patrick has a solid premise, but where do the capital flows go if they decide to abandon the USD? I don't think there is a simple answer. This outcome may be beyond the event horizon.
The majority of the capital in any sphere of influence will remain in the sphere of influence. Transactions across spheres will become fraught, difficult, and expensive. Oh, sure there will be random nations that pick/play favorites (Africa could become a massive economic battle zone mess.), but this is all working to take us backwards, to an isolationist world that existed in the early 1800s, you know, when moving ideas, things, etc. was actually difficult.
The idea of a reserve currency is itself a hedge against the economy of your own nation. The EU can simply use Euros, the Chinese can issue a reserve currency for private use, etc etc etc.
If the world becomes a more dangerous place, it doesn't follow that the US petrodollar can't simply cease to have value as a currency. It literally can and has happened before, and it seems very likely it will happen again, and frankly I look forward to seeing America impoverished by its own inflation as the world abandons the dollar.
Maybe a trans-national crypto currency run by our tech masters of the universe?
It's a good hypothesis. At least in the US, the outright corruption is going hand-in-hand with the predatory conduct. A lot has been written about how autocracies inevitably become incompetent and corrupt (since no dissenting voices are allowed). A corrupt regime is not predictable and is therefore a bad investment.
Europe won't. But are POS, Vance, Miller, etc. even aware of what happened after Munich? They mouth words, some of them anyway, but they really don't understand what happened.
Eva, understanding is not their MO, demanding is.
"Born to lead, not to read."
I have little doubt that Thiel and Miller learned to read, but stopped at Mein Kampf.
In ages past, reading was for the leaders. Now, it seems not reading is in vogue among the "leaders".
They think what happened to the old Axis won’t happen to their shiny new Axis because they wont make the old Axis’ mistakes. They’ll make a bunch of new mistakes and the whole thing will collapse even quicker.
How many times have those of us left of MAGA been accused of hyperbole in describing what Trump is doing, only to have that behavior first denied, considered, and finally embraced? A racist is a racist, a Nazi is a Nazi.
Perhaps Trump is creating the fourth reich ; He is our fuhrer, and maga is the new American bund.
I agree completely. It's bizarre how the press, politicians, and public has normalized even the thought of taking over not just another country, but a NATO country. My mind can't understand it.
The goal of MAGA in power has been, to quote that wonderful human being, Steve Bannon, Flood the Zone with Shit. They understand viscerally that the human mind can only focus on so many things at once and, if it tries to incorporate more, it goes "TILT" and then nothing matters and MAGA can continue on its evil way.
The press has been intimidated, the politicians corrupted and the public far too ignorant to view America as an aggressor nation.
How about the public being too ignorant and, more to the point, unwilling to see and acknowledge that they are citizens of an agressor nation?
Ignorant, obtuse, and stubborn -- sadly, the volatile combination of a citizenry ripe for fascism.
It’s just Trump being Trump. And if he wants something, by George, those other lunatics he’s surrounded himself with will do everything in their power to make it happen, Those who are not clinically insane but still in his corner believe in him to the bottom of their bank accounts.
A concurrence of psychopathy.
Who would have thought that would someday define the President's Cabinet?
Watch (or rewatch) Godfather 2 and Goodfellas. Then figure out who/what are the analogs of our press public and politicians in those stories. It helps me understand this stuff anyway. YMMV but hey why not give it a try.
The “casual detachment” of most Americans is easily explainable and understandable. The MAGA fascist movement would have failed 50, 40, even 25 years ago. It required the slow deterioration of public education leading to a large swath of the population not being able to think critically and tell mis from actual information. It required the hollowing out of the middle class and people being so financially strapped that we are too busy and tired from working and stressing over bills (and outrageous healthcare costs) to have much energy left over to do anything, but it also required enough numbing content that we can all retreat to our living rooms and tune out the real world. If the majority of this country had either the intellect to realize the BS of the con men in charge, or the financial freedom to be more active and organize, then I think reactions would be more widespread. It also doesn’t help that the elites are how so rich they are super-national and as such don’t have or need to have any loyalty or love for any nation. Toss in a decade of slowly acclimating to the chaos and we are where we are. The question is, will we wake up if it gets bad enough, and if we do, will we have enough people power to actually end the dystopian tyranny?
So spot on! This was a log term strategy by the GOP. It didn't start with trump.
Don't leave out willful democratic political cowardice and stupidity. Sitting by and whining "Shame on them!" or letting the GOP stack the courts because "They should be allowed to have their votes" even though the GOP suppresses theirs (Harry Reid and the first nuclear option was because of these same GOP antics). But once the insults and bullying starts, the dems go back in hiding hoping they go away. Been watching this for 40 years and I see no signs of the DNC learning any lessons.
"The moment Washington treats a sovereign border as a suggestion, the 'Full Faith and Credit' of the United States becomes a junk rating."
Perhaps, but I suspect that it depends upon how things play out. For example, does the U.S. initiate a quick and bloodless takeover of Greenland that is responded to by little more than a strongly worded letter from the rest of NATO? Or is there a protracted military conflict that results in major economic sanctions against the US?
One reason why I suspect that the dollar could potentially do better than you suggest is that, at least at this point, there arguably isn't another currency strong enough to take its place. In addition, capitalists have historically had a tendency to make their peace with authoritarian regimes.
I don't say this to make light of a Greenland invasion, but rather to suggest that we have entered uncharted waters. In such circumstances, I think it prudent to sketch out a range of scenarios rather than fixating on one extreme prediction.
You are mistaking the lack of a successor for the safety of the incumbent. That is the exact error the British made in 1956.
When Britain and France invaded the Suez Canal, they assumed their financial dominance would insulate them from the consequences of their geopolitical aggression. They were wrong. Eisenhower didn't need to fire a shot, he simply threatened to sell Sterling bonds. The pound collapsed, the invasion ended, and the British Empire effectively ceased to be a superpower in a single afternoon.
The lesson of Suez is that you cannot wage war against the global order and expect that order to finance your debt.
As for the 'bloodless takeover' scenario: Financial markets do not price based on body counts, they price based on contract law. A 'bloodless' seizure of Greenland is still a total violation of the North Atlantic Treaty. The moment Article 5 is exposed as a bluff, the risk premium on holding US debt goes vertical.
You argue that capitalists make peace with authoritarians. Correct. They invest in factories in dictatorships. They do not park their emergency reserves in the currency of a leader who lights treaties on fire. Capitalists like predictable tyranny; they despise erratic piracy.
We aren't in uncharted waters. We are back in the Suez Canal.
And who is Ike?
Dwight Eisenhower, the President of the US at the time
Right, but in the analogy drawn above, who play "Eisenhower"/Ike?
China, the Eurozone, and the Saudis. I'm frankly shocked the Saudis aren't already dumping US debt like crazy considering we are threatening to upend OPEC, which is most definitely their baby.
Who’s going to be the US in the present scenario?
Again, China, the European Union, and the Oil nations in the middle east. The people who hold the vast proportion of US debt, who, if they sold it, immediately would spike inflation (at some cost to themselves of course) and would undermine US currency, because they'd be selling into a seller's market (people who would not want to buy currency from the United States). The only question is who gets out first, although notably, the Saudis have been "getting out" of the US reserve currency market for the past several years, diversifying from US dollars to businesses and property rights all over the world.
Trump wants Greenland. “We can do this the easy way, or the hard way”.
Excellent point re the USD. I had not taken that into account. As I think Trump is giddy from Season 1 of the V hostile takeover. And wants Season 2.
I feel like we are experiencing what the Russians have been experiencing under Putin: government by nationalist kleptocracy ruled by a thug, against whom the opposition has been cowed into submission. The wonder is that Trump did it all so easily--he didn't have to defenestrate a single journalist. He just had to file a few lawsuits.
You really think all those journalists and American aid workers got killed in Gaza by "accident"? Or that journalists have been assaulted and pepper sprayed by the administration due to random chance?
I just had a discussion today with a friend (didn't vote for Trump or Harris) who is a naturalized citizen from Denmark. His response to Trump's hyperbole about Greenland is that is the way Trump is. He tried to make excuses about how Denmark has mistreated the indigenous peoples (I pointed out the U.S's atrocities) but in the end his thought was if we need it they should give or sell it to us of to just take it. There is this "white male" (of which I am one) way of thinking that doesn't believe morality should be included in discussions if they think they need it more than the next person.
There are two ways to run our America. The First way is to build and implement policies through bipartisan negotiations that improve the lives of the vast majority of Americans. The Second way is to unilaterally build and implement policies that serve narrow populations in America (or attack other countries from which we can steal resources) and spend your time demeaning, demonizing and demoralizing Americans who are devoted to the first way. We have a looong battle for the soul of America ahead of us. Eventually the bad guys lose We cannot waver. Stay strong.
"Eventually the bad guys lose" only if it looks like 1945 Germany. though to be clear, I look forward to a world where the EU defense force is making sure every tree in America is decorated with its Republican.
There have been lots of examples where "bad guys" lose in our history. Start with the 1215 Magna Carta. King John lost. And King George III lost his American colonies in 1783.
"The Bulwark is just biased against the "horrors of WWII" because several writers are Jewish. They'd feel differently if they were Northern European males like me."
Literally, I heard someone make this claim recently at a party. A guy I didn't know and didn't want to get into a fight with, but felt like it. He didn't reference The Bulwark directly but said a version of this. Anything that benefits him as a red blooded white American male by taking rights away from anyone NOT like him (uppity women and minorities, Jewish people controling the media and finance and whatever else, poor people that don't feel like working) is a policy to be pursued.
I suppose I come from a different place. I grew up fairly privileged, given it was a small town. Both parents college educated (a true rarity there), new cars every 3 years, safe home, nice vacation house. But I can sympathize with those kids I grew up with that had an alcoholic single mom, maybe lived in squalor, or didn't have an adult to show them a path forward. It's not their fault that I was born into better circumstances than they. Just like I shouldn't forever be held down by the people in the world who were born truly rich and will live like kings without ever working a day in their life.
I just don't understand why people can't say "the playing field should be level: everyone gets a chance and it's up to you what you make of it". There is a fundamental concept of fairness that I always assumed everyone is born with.
I am white and breed blond, also old now. I remember the 1960s as a teenager. While I can understand (re women for example) that one might prefer a big strong man on the ladder when you need rescue from a fire, tasks like these are specialized. I worked with women for my full career (insurance) so no heavy lifting. Had a few women bosses. ....... I cannot imagine how Peter Thiel thinks we could keep women out of power. It makes no sense. Nor does the issue re minorities. The Jewish thing is really curious... I worked in NYC for most of my career and the NYC area has always had a large Jewish population. Played with Jewish kids growing up. So anti semitism is so strange.
I hear people defend male strength, and that women yearn for some bygone era of true manly men, on the grounds that we need men to use their strength to protect others. This is a laudable use of strength. The problem today, though, is male strength is being used to bully, not defend. And the only reason male strength is necessary to protect in the first place is because people need it to protect against aggressive male strength. So, in a sense, we need male strength to protect against the problem of male strength.
Well in a sane world, women appreciate male gallantry. And we appreciate their efforts to make a home. Wish it were only about that. Also if there is a fire, this 6 footer hope the person rescuing me is bigger and far stronger.
I'm a McGuinea--Irish and Italian. I grew up in a suburb that was developed by progressive Jews. Literally half of everyone was a Jew. My playmates were Jews too. At their homes were their bubbies, who spoke Yiddish. My wife an I still refer to AC as "Coldechay"--Yinglish? Learning of the Holocaust was my first hard lesson in life. At that time, I told myself that any future Holocaust would be over my dead body, and I meant it. It's stunning to hear people like Candace Owen and Nick Fuentes repeating variations of the same tired antisemitic themes. It is also stunning to hear progressives concerned about Gaza repeating Hamas propaganda as unquestionably true, propaganda that rivals the Blood Libel.
I now live in a mostly hispanic town (Dover NJ) and the younger Dems are just not familiar with the holocaust - and since many have some mixed indigenous blood, they see Israel as a colonialist outpost. In fact most harbor some resentment over mistreatment by white (so slurs etc). I don't see how they can be reached. Their from of reference is Central America and the Caribbean. So I give up. (I argued about what a genocide is but... well lost that one). My grandmother lived next to a holocaust survivor... to these people, that history sounds like when I talk about the way Ireland was oppressed by the Brits. It jsut does not sound relevant to them.
"Those who can not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
George Santayana
Unfortunately, it was first stated in 1905, by the philosopher George Santayana, in his book The Life of Reason: Reason in Common Sense. Since then, it seems as if every generation has forgotten (or just decided to ignore as if forgotten) significant details of their own shared past.
As time goes by we lose the people that fled that oppression before it became a full blown genocide, survived the camps, and the soldiers who liberated the camps. Not many eyewitnesses left to tell their story. Now kids just learn about it in "boring" history books. When I was a kid and learned about the Holocaust, we had survivors come in and speak to the class. When you look into their eyes as they tell you the horrors they witnessed and endured, it hits home like no textbook can. With the dismantling of the DoE, I fear that the Holocaust will no longer be taught in US schools. With this regime I wouldn't doubt that it becomes illegal.
A friend of mine from graduate school is Jewish, and he and his wife had put together a going away party after he graduated and invited friends and family, including fellow members of their synagogue. A couple of the members there were elderly, and my friend's wife had referred to them in passing as "survivors" (i.e. Holocaust survivors). To your point, I saw the same looks in their eyes as well.
More than once I saw arms tattooed with numbers.
McGuinea, I like that! I'm one as well. When the Irish kids and Italian kids were fighting, I would go easy on myself. LOL! My neighborhood was mostly Catholic with a handful of Protestants thrown in. At Christmas midnight mass, you could hear it in Latin, Italian, German, or Polish. All of these churches were within 6 blocks of each other. Religion wasn't our difference but the ethnicities of our neighbors was. It was wonderful to be exposed to many different cultures (especially the food!!!) as a kid. Many friends parents were first generation Americans with grandparents who immigrated to the US. The only Jewish family we knew owned a small corner grocery store. Sam, the owner survived the camps.
Christopher Walken grew up in a neighborhood like that (a lot of European immigrants) and credits it to his odd speaking cadence. It's served him well. :D
I too grew up in what was considered a "Jewish suburb". St. Louis Park MN, the setting of the Coen's A Serious Man. Tom
Friedman was my high school classmate. A smattering of Yinglish words but much Yinglish grammar and inflection among the elders. It's still Minnesota, so the majority in Park was still Lutheran by a smidge. But we all learned about the horrors of the Holocaust, and that very much framed the support for Israel (under Golda Meir at the time) which was pretty much de riguer.
Along with some of my fellow goyim, I understood our perspectives were not necessarily shared by the wider community in the Five County Mosquito Control District*, where Minnesota-nice restrained versions of anti-semitism appeared now and then at an interpersonal level, and folks didn't much give a shit about events in the Middle East either way.
The stunning revelation for me though wasn't the resurgence and expansion of anti-semitism. Since I always had Jewish friends, I'd actually been stung a bit by anti-semitism from people who thought I was Jewish, or derided me as a 'Jew lover".
What flipped my perspective on its head was the 1982 massacre of thousands of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon by Phalange militias acting as proxies for Ariel Sharon. What!? The Israelis are supposed to be the good guys, heroically holding on to Enlightenment principles and democracy under siege from bloodthirsty medieval theocrats intent on instigating a massive pogrom.
Jews (not as a conspiratorial unity, just as individuals) were not supposed to be involved in mass death of everyday people herded into camps. But, there they were. Then in the next few years I started looking closer at what was going on in the West Bank under Likud governments. Then Bibi... And see, in part because I grew up among people descended from escapees from Nazism, I knew what fascism looks and sounds like, and damn that was Bibi.
As I listened to the Likudniks and their supporters here, I came to understand that there were different versions of "never again". One was "nie wieder", we must never allow anything like this to happen again, by anyone to any one. The other was "we resolve never to be on the receiving end, and if that means dishing it out we shall not flinch in the least".
Trying to understand this, I eventually came to file it along with things I'd observed in interpersonal relationships and other areas of socio-politics into a general principle of human tendencies: Shit rolls down-hill.
Trauma causes wounds. Wounds are experienced as victimization. These feelings cripple our senses of agency. The hard, uphill path to restoring agency is fight the oppressor. The natural path of least resistance to restore agency is to subject someone weaker to dominance. Find a bully, and you usually find someone who was bullied in one way or another. Think of the famous LBJ quote. Think of how useful to Middle East despots it's been to demonize Israel as an outlet for the earned hostility of their serfs. Etc. Etc. Etc.
I don't have a magic formula to break this cycle, but it's worth considering that this might be what we need to do, instead of just beating the bully into submission and left with further punishment with the pain of all his wounds. Would 'nie wieder" have emerged in Germany without the Marshall Plan?
Do I digress? Such is life amidst our current madness.
* This was beloved Minneapolis newspaper columnist Jim
Klobuchar's term for the Twin Cities metro area in any context, with the possible exception of any actual discussions of mosquitos. See, in the land of 10,000 lakes there are like 10,000,000 little stagnant ponds in bloodsucker breeding season.
I truly think a lot of this white grievance stuff is akin to con-job, "This one trick works every time," click-bait type marketing and social engineering things.
There's a hard way to do things, which is working for change and opportunity. Maybe it takes multiple generations. Maybe you die fighting the fight that your kids continue and only your grandkids enjoy the fruit of generations of labor. Maybe you have to deal with a lot of cognitive dissonance and discomfort on the way there.
Then there's slimeballs like Miller who tell folks that white supremacy will somehow speed run opportunity, but just for the people who are smart enough to call now for this special TV offer! Time is running out! Act fast!
Miller is not only a self-hating Jew — going against everything positive or hopeful about his faith (and mine) — but a self-hating human.
He is unspeakable.
It wasn't a cakewalk for Northern Europeans either. They were killed in large numbers, and their countries were bombed, raided, and left as a smoldering pile of rubble during the war.
Oh yes, I know. I'm just resorting to the mindset of the knuckle dragger MAGA apologist. Even then, it's back to LBJ's famous quote: "if you can convince the worst white man he's better than the best black man, not only will he vote for you, he'll empty his wallet on your behalf".
Or the fable about how each farmer/neighbor is given one wish. The first farmer wishes for a new cow and receives it. When the second farmer's wish time comes, he wishes for his neighbor's cow to be killed. Better to inflict pain than to both benefit. The human mind is so warped.
I can imagine that the Nazis are fondly remembered because they put the "others" in their place, no matter how much they suffered. It's irrational.
A lot of them weren't very welcome here, either, especially before WWII Norwegians, Finns, Swedes, Poles--not all exactly glorified as part of a Superior Race when they arrived.
The Master Race are people too, my friend...(I kid)
Exactly.
"Good people on both sides" but now to Thiel and The Felon, there is only one side.
As I recall, the "Good German" was a popular topic for ethics classes.
Remember when our grandparents were brave enough to defend the world against Nazis?
Its sad that we've spent so long forgetting.
It shouldn’t surprise me that a movement interested in controlling women (from bodily autonomy to suffrage) would look at imperialism and colonization approvingly. The parallels are striking. The strong have power over the weak and therefore will take what they want. Colonization came at a great cost for the colonies, just ask the Congolese. I’m with Tim on what I would do if I was able to go back in time and meet with a young Stephen Miller.
Me Tarzan! You Jane.
During the holidays I listened to a few podcasts that suggested things were looking up for the US because Trump was looking very weak, both physically and politically. A lot has happened since then, which says something because much of that conversation happened…..last week. Not good.
I actually think the US is in full free fall right now. Just a few weeks ago, I would have argued that the courts were holding us together. But the DOJ’s open willingness to defy laws this administration signed just two months ago is so outrageous I cannot even begin to express anything about it beyond the standard ‘the rule of law is dead’.
And Trump is one island away from destroying the world order.
All of this is being defended by his party. So with that said, I appreciate Bill stating as clear as can be stated that the Republican Party is the party of Fascism. I would argue that the time has come for the rest of us to stop talking about what exactly we are fighting and, instead, focus on how to fight it. But, I admit, I have no clue about that. It took invading forces to rid Germany of Fascism. I don’t see that happening here. At least not for many, many years.
That's my worry, too. What cured Germany of fascism was their country being a smoldering pile of rubble and the Allies helping to rebuild their country while holding a gun to their head ("we're helping you out but don't think of starting anything"). I really hope that it doesn't become a matter of the rest of the world deciding for us that our country's MAGA fascism has to be put down for the survival of humanity.
Is it fascism? Or is it a Christian nationalism that can be achieved most expeditiously through the use of fascism?
They are one and the same. White Nationalism is a form of fascism!..:)
I guess I’m making the distinction because there’s a difference between people wanting to assume power and people wanting to assume power and excluding others from the country think Germany circa 1938.
Agreed…:)
Or is the fascism/CN really a deeply held kernel of racism?
Potato, po-tah-to, tomato, to-mah-to
I’m gonna push back on that because in order to restore the United States I think that the next president has to adopt somewhat fascistic approach with radical change like packing the Supreme Court. I don’t see how we can fix the country without packing a corrupt Supreme Court. Is that the definition of fascism? I’m not sure. But what I’m saying is that in that case the ends justify the means. Alternatively, we can take the approach of Garland and Biden and see if we get a different result. I think the issue is that the system has been corrupted by the right with gerrymandering and voter suppression etc., etc. and not to downplay the role of Fox and the massive right propaganda machine. And Biden‘s big mistake was assuming that the institutions were healthy enough to recover when they weren’t. The guy didn’t know what time it was. And was so clueless as to the looming threats that instead of him properly exercising justice, he made the wrong political decision.
I don't think packing the supreme court is fascism. There are entirely legally ways to do that. The size of the court is set by law. Congress can simply pass a law to do it.
Fascism would be if the next Democratic president kidnapped the conservative justices and pushed them out of helicopters ala Pinochet to create judicial vacancies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_flights). Violence and arbitrary lawlessness are necessary components of fascism.
There isn't a bimodal dichotomy of either Biden-Garlandism or fascism. There are innumerable middle paths. FWIW, I agree with you in part, we will need more muscular action, almost a post-Trump reconstruction. But I don't think that need be authoritarian or fascist action.
You may very well be correct. What I’m getting to though is that fascism is the tool not the end result. And I Think that for both Bill, Kristol and JVL To state that the people want fascism doesn’t completely capture the frightening xenophobia of where we are today. I don’t know that people are looking for an almost military like structured society, but rather one free of those dirty migrants, those sneaky Jews, and those perverse LGBTQ characters. The average republican voter just once a nice white Christian country with good people.
I think we all (you, me, JVL, Bill) actually agree and any apparent disagreement comes from how we might be using the word “fascism” in different ways.
When we say, “the people want fascism,” we usually don’t mean the look or aesthetics of the uniforms, parades, or a militarized society. We mean what you said, they want a country where the “right people” are protected and the “wrong people” are pushed out, punished, or silenced.
Fascism is a political project built around fear, grievance, and identity. It defines the good guys as “us” and the bad guys as an otherized and dangerous “them.” The fascists then use this pretext to wield the power of the state to attack the out-group in the name of safety, order, or national renewal. But it's pretext, right? The fascists also tend to wind up with a lot of wealth and nice property in the process, funny that.
Meanwhile, the people don’t wake up wanting fewer rights or ask for less freedom out of nowhere. They are made afraid by fascist leaders who say the nation is under attack by the otherized bad guys. Once that fear takes hold, people accept harsher laws, less democracy, and more violence in exchange for the protection promised by the fascists. The loss of rights becomes the price of security.
That’s why the xenophobia and Christian ethno-nationalism are not separate from fascism. That hate is the fuel and permission structure of the fascist political project.
You’re right that people may not want military rule. But they do want the outcomes fascism promises because they've come to fear the otherized groups the fascists said to be afraid of. The hate is part and parcel of the project.
But it’s the outcomes that are the salient point. So for instance, imagine if the Democrats said that the Republicans want to harm democracy through fascism. With that stir the Democrats to come out and vote against it? Well, we just ran that experiment and the answer is no. Alternatively, if the Democrats came out and said that Republicans want to imprison or banish all non-white non-Christians in the United States might that actually move people to act?
There’s a comedian who does a bet on the difference between Italy and Germany. Obviously both axis powers but Germany we’ve condemned as forever bad guys while Italy we seem to give a huge break too, and his suggestion is that it’s because the food is really good. If Brett worst, we’re just a little bit tastier. Maybe the Germans would be the bad guys in almost every Indiana Jones movie. Both of those governments were fascist. But Hitler is regarded as the true evil. And that’s the argument I’m making. Mussolini is just a dude a little bit over his skis. That’s kind of the way we think about him today. Hitler on the other hand well he’s Hitler.
Semantolinguism.
It’s not semantic when you consider for the German citizen it was fascism, but for the German Jew it was a death sentence. I don’t believe that all those Maga people want fascism. In fact, if you ask them, they say no. They just want a fair system that makes sense to them: Christian nationalism. I’m sure that once all the undesirable elements of society are expunged they’d be more than happy to go back to democracy as usual.
1000 times yes. This is a religious war.
The fact that they've hitched their wagons to somebody that doesn't care about abortion (or thinks it should be legal across the board, and maybe required for some classes of people) is hilarious on some level.
But it's working. He's fading fast.
30 years of Fox News, pushing a narrative that Democrats are Satanists has its Consequences.
Listeners and viewers of Fox and the alt right infotainment will not be aware of the changes, arrests, lack of transparency and corruption. They will assume that everyone arrested or affected deserved it. Just like they are not aware of all the undocumented without criminal histories, who are actively employed and may have been here for decades that are being arrested. If something affects them individually they will take it quietly and in shame and still find someone else to blame.
I agree 100%. In fact, I believe that we are where we are because of Fox News. And I also believe that the Bulwark should assign people to watch Fox full-time and report on their gaslighting and demagogy every day. I think that sort of information could be used by Democrats who can message. Does anybody have a list of Democrats that can message? I would put a Ocasio Cortez, Crockett, and Newsom. I heard an interesting stat today on the Bullock that illegal crossings at the end of Biden‘s term were lower that at the end of Trump‘s term. Democrats say that on TV attack attack attack.
I was going to post some hopefully erudite history-informed comment, but I think I’ll just vent: these people make me sick.
I hear ya'. I think there's a lot of that going around these days.
Yeah, they're a very infectious, deadly disease.
I grew up in a confederate, white supremacist family. I am gay and left as soon as I was able. Literally the political philosophy my dad drunkenly ranted about my entire childhood is guiding the government right now. I was 8 years old and sat on my dad’s knee as he screamed about we should be ‘nuking all the sand n******’. Also, “women are too stupid to vote and that all our problems are because women are tricked into voting dem.” I thought I got away from him and now the country is run by people just like my dad!! People still don’t realize how dangerous this worldview is! I can’t escape it and I don’t know what to do
Yeah, I heard the same stuff growing up, although not the misogyny as much. But yeah, this is Drunk Dad in charge, no doubt. We keep trying to tell people there is a huge appetite among the Joe and Eileen Bailleys of the world for blood to be spilled, lots of Civil War and apocalyptic fantasies out there.
Is it Drunk Dad or is it Arrested Development man? I see a lot of juvenility in the people that hold sway in the US government now. Posturing, dominance showing, desire to get away from mom telling us what to do...
Funny thing about Trump seizing Venezuelan oil and selling it here: it stabs those oil execs who supported him further in the back. It stabs states like Texas that support him with everything they've got in the back as well. Oil was nearly $80 when he took office. It's already at $58; his plan would push it below $50. Bye bye oil production jobs in the shale patches.
MAGA, and modern 'conservatism' (their word) isn't incoherent, it's just abhorrent. It's also dumb as hell and severely factually challenged, see: Thiel and women's suffrage.
Where we'd start with a proposition like "All men are created equal," they start with a proposition like, "There is a natural hierarchy of supremacy and superior, in which we the ingroup are superior, and you the outgroups belong to us, and you are ours to boss around."
Once you understand their politics through the lens of ingroup-outgroup, it's all 100% coherent and consistent, if not immoral and deeply stupid.
It's also **exactly** why the voters are voting for face eating leopards and then are surprised when their faces or their family's or friend's faces get eaten. They think they're in the ingroup when they vote for mass deportations and to cut social services and to own the outgroup. They vote to get the good things the ingroup gets. They vote to feel the ingroup's power as they kick sand in the faces of the outgroup.
Fascism as an ideology is a pyramid ponzi-scheme of grievance politics and will to power. By necessity, there must be a small group at the top, which can only shrink over time, who are the Übermensch's who "naturally" dominate the hierarchy. There must be increasingly larger groups of lesser, excluded peoples, who are each one subsequent step removed from the top, further down the pyramid. The criteria of who is in vs out, and who is up vs down will change at the convenience of those at the top, constantly. They need to keep doing rug pulls because if the pyramid ever gets top heavy, it will fall over. So, there is no end, the violence and hate never stops, the scope of the outgroup targets just moves up to include yet another formerly superior ingroup, one step of the pyramid at a time.
Instead of "turtles all the way down," it's a single column line of spearmen all the way back to the Fascist leader. Each spearman is ordered to stab the soldier standing in front of them, starting in the front and going backwards one at a time. As each soldier stabs, they say, "Own the Libs!," and then as they get stabbed in turn, they say, "I didn't vote for this! I voted to do the stabbing!"
Fascism…ponzi scheme. Good way of framing it. At the end of the scheme Miller’s demented idea of who belongs is different from Thiel’s but they both know you have to have a gullible mass, magats, to do the dirty work. So they feed propaganda of domination & white grievances through Fox News who profits off the enterhatement. Does Kash know he doesn’t belong in Millie’s US? Does JD know Millie will like to deport his wife? Thiel & Musk will like to deport Miller? Yes, they just all think they can profit (power, gratification from hate & $) & control the scheme to their advantage.
The column of spearmen is spot on! What these magats don't understand is that their "movement" always needs an enemy. When their dear leader's enemy list grows short, they become the enemy.
Trumpism as an intellectual movement...
Please, Bill. There's a big difference between having a narrow band of specific knowledge and "smarts" in the old noggin and being an intellectual or some kind of bona fide political theoretician. Including the words *intellectual* and *Trumpism* in the same sentence devalues the first immensely and assigns a trait to the second of which it's no more deserving than Peter Thiel.
How f**king intellectually talented does one have to be to think, "White and might make right"?
And money, of course. Lots of it. That always helps.
I'd like to ask Mr. Thiel if "capitalist democracy" is such an oxymoron and unworkable system, how did a MAGA moron like himself ascend to a position of such wealth and influence, producing the wherewithal to own exotic pets like American vice presidents?
But that's the great thing about America!!
You can be the smartest son of a bitch or the dumbest one around and still manage by hook or crook to strike it rich and possess enough wealth to spend inordinate amounts of your own time and energy playing at being aggrieved on the behalf of millions of morons other than yourself.
"how did a MAGA moron like himself ascend to a position of such wealth and influence, producing the wherewithal to own exotic pets like American Vice presidents?"
I'm sure glad I was done with my morning coffee before I read that gem of a sentence.
I'm a bit shocked that Bill didn't quote another part of Heather's letter: "...How we have to even run against these people—I won’t say cancel the election, they should cancel the election, because the fake news will say, ‘He wants the elections canceled. He’s a dictator.’ They always call me a dictator...."
Isn't this the first time he's openly toyed w/ the idea of canceling the election, albeit in the convoluted way he always starts planting his most extreme plans in people's minds? Am I the only one who thinks this is a big deal?
It's a big effing deal!
Thank you.
"and you’d rather be weaker if it means being whiter.”"
That's pretty much the whole MAGA ball game, even if my nice neighbors down the street don't see it. Of course once Thiel and Miller are done removing the various shades of non white, they will get rid of the useless old white people who are mooching off the vaunted male provider just like those various shades of non white. Uppity white women will be next in line for the removal camps and finally the vaunted male providers will turn on their lesser male providers .....and as has been true for most of human existence, the men left standing will look at the ashes of their once vibrant culture as they starve to death, and blame it all on the women.
Magats don't care if they get hurt, just as long as someone they hate gets hurt more. It's no surprise that those "good christians" complain when their minister or priest preach about the Sermon on the Mount. They get pissed that the church has the nerve to preach "that librul bullshit" .
An 1/8 of an inch below the surface your nice neighbors might not be all that nice. ;)
Stephen Miller = Reinhard Heydrich.
Outlandish?
Compare the elements of Heydrich's Final Solution program with those used at Miller's direction in our Mass Deportation program: Identification of deportees, Collection of Deportees, Transportation & Disposal of deportees.
The major difference is in how we - the U.S. - dispose of our deportees.
The Maladministration is replete with illegal acts designed and implemented by the Project 2025 fascists appointed by the Felonious Oath-Breaker to wrest us our Constitution.
Massive civil demonstrations and disobedience against MAGA fascism are key to a resistance. As well as Congressional impeachment.
Of course, MAGA will attribute all such actions to Antifa since those who participate will be demonstrably anti-fascist.
It might be helpful if Democratic Party leaders in Congress would take a stand. Sometime. Somewhere.
Enough with the D bashing. They ARE taking a stand, I see them all the time on MSNOW. But THEY ARE NOT THE MAJORITY and they can't force Fox or Sinclair or the RW media to tell the truth. If you want to change anything, VOTE them for them in November. And then PRAY that POS doesn't, after the Ds take control of Congress, do a repeat of Jan 6 with the military!
Sorry, Eva. I didn't think I bashed Democrats; I wished that Party leaders in Congress become more assertive.
Hope and prayer go only so far, and probably not so far.
The House has a 2-seat Republican "majority". That is hard to surmount, but not impossible.
I would not, if I could, attempt to force any media outlet to push any message. Let them fall under the weight of their lies.
To do otherwise would be to mimic the unconstitutional attempts made by the Maladministration to choke the press.
I've voted in every state and federal election since I turned 21 y/o, often using absentee ballots due to my assignments overseas. Don't worry that I might vote for any Republican these days.
Largely the reason why the Democratic party is rated as low as it has been is because Democratic voters and independents see the leadership (Schumer and Jeffries) as not being oppositional enough.
And yet, when asked what the leadership should be doing, I hear things that the leadership CAN'T do because they're not the majority. Or they don't hear what the leadership is doing because they're on social media that doesn't know what the F* the Ds can do or have done, or they listen to Fox or CNN or Sinclair or catch a tiny tidbit somewhere that is rebutted if they didn't have the attention span of a gnat. It drove me crazy before the election when I heard incels or farmers or others saying they didn't know what Harris wants to do to help them right after I saw a clip of her explaining what she wanted to do for THEM! Now, I hear it in a good number of comments on some liberal sites. SCREAM!!!!!!
Only hope and prayer? You forgot pearl clutching and strongly worded letters!
I think the problem with the Dems is that their "elder statesmen and stateswomen" are trying to legislate and govern for a country that no longer exists. They need to let the younger Dems take the wheel.
Heydrich is a good choice. I would put Miller even higher, though, as Adolf Eichmann because he out-weasles even Trump as cold-hearted and hateful. He's whispering in Trump's ear and Trump listens. Just my opinion, of couse.
Eichmann was a subordinate of Heydrich until Heydrich was assassinated four months after the Wannsee Conference.
The Final Solution came about because their prior hope of sending their deportees off to a “third country” failed. We are entirely reading from the same script, just a few scenes back.
I disagree, Sumeeta, and I cite William Shirer's book, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" as a source. Shirer combed through the massive documentation left by the Third Reich after reporting on the International Military Court in 1945 in Nuremberg.
The Final Solution was always about the physical eradication of European Jews, although, after Kristallnacht, the NDSAP engaged in efforts to motivate German Jews to emigrate (leaving their property and possessions behind).
The Foreign and Propaganda Ministries worked hard to show that other countries were unwilling to accept Jewish emigres. The abhorrent tale of the SS St. Louis voyage from Hamburg to Cuba, the U.S., and return testifies to the Nazi success.
I don't think we're disagreeing. The Final Solution was devised after Earlier, Unsatisfactory Attempts At Solutions. We're currently recapitulating some of the earlier attempts, and don't know yet if they will prove satisfactory to today's fascists either.
"Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women . . . have rendered the notion of 'capitalist democracy' into an oxymoron."
Mr Thiel, w the kind of wealth and freedom that you and the other broligarchs like Musk and Bezos enjoy today you're not willing to call the US a "capitalist democracy?"
Crocodile tears for you and your fellow billionaires & trillionaires!