By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Thomas Frank’s The Wrecking Crew was published in 2008. It covers the ideology and praxis of post-Powell Memo conservatism, with particular attention to Bush the Younger — the “maladministration,” we used to call it — ending at the beginning of the Obama Era. Since I got on the Frank train only with 2016’s Listen, Liberal!, I hadn’t read it until I got the bright idea of writing this post.
Reviews back in the day were favorable but didn’t add a lot of value to the book itself, of which you are about to see several pages. Two caught my eye. The first is from an interview of Frank by the great Bill Moyers on PBS. In it, Frank puts the thesis of Wrecking Crew on a postcard:
You require several pages — riveting pages, I will admit — to describe a “fantastic misgovernment.” Distill the essence of it for a bumper sticker or t-shirt.
[FRANK:] Bad government is the natural product of rule by those who believe government is bad.
Or: Cynicism spawns corruption, which spawns cynicism.
Or: Bring back the regulators before the system self-destructs.
(Moyers’ “riveting” is fair, not to say “coruscating” and “corrosive”; Frank gets really ticked off about all the right things, but never loses control of his register.) But were matters in 2008 really as bad as Frank says? Michael Lind sounds a cautionary note:
Missing from “The Wrecking Crew” is any acknowledgment of what, from a left perspective, should be considered good news: the defeat of the antigovernment right in most major policy battles, from Social Security privatization to private school vouchers. Bush’s plan for Social Security was so unpopular it never came to a vote in the Republican Congress, which enacted (to be sure, with payoffs to pharmaceutical companies) the Medicare prescription drug benefit, the biggest increase in government involvement in the health care industry in the United States since Medicare’s creation. Incapable of overthrowing big government, even when they controlled all three branches, the right has been limited to tinkering with it.
Indeed, one might argue that the defeat of the attempted libertarian revolution puts the money-making schemes of Frank’s villains in a different light. Former young conservative firebrands…. settled for enriching themselves precisely because they were unable to repeal the New Deal.
Note the sting in the tail:
But “The Wrecking Crew” is a polemic, not a dissertation.
A false dichotomy. Frank has a doctorate in history from the University of Chicago, and Wrecking Crew is a fine example of the historian’s craft, albeit directed to a popular audience. But as for Lind’s “good news,” “There is a great deal of ruin in a nation,” as Adam Smith remarked, and every single institution listed by Lind has gradually withered under conservative assault.
“Review” in the headline is a bit of a misnomer. Frank is writing a history of the period, but my purpose here is not to assess his thesis or tweak his timeline. Rather, I’m going to present a series of extracts from Wrecking Crew — with the most salient parts highlighted, as is my wont — and then compare them to current events in the Trump 2.0 administration. I think you will mind much that is very familiar! My purpose is to show, as the headline says, that “we’ve been here before.”
The epigraph, page vi:
Sound familiar? This is Trump’s Gish Gallop — the rollout of the not-exactly-100 Executive Orders on the first day, for example, but in 1933. And the sense of “public despair” it is designed to engender.
Page 93:
Little to quarrel with here, and DOGE throwing MAGA under the bus over H1B in the first days of the Trump administration is a perfect example. (How the MAGA base, which IMNSHO is much more aware and self-aware than liberal Democrats suppose, reacts to “eternal frustration” is, at this point, an open question.)
Page 41:
Clearly DOGE is a “wrecking crew” operation (though carried out with more competence and panache than conservatives in DeLay’s Day possesses). However, we might remind outselves that the “Contract with America” Republicans appeared just as invincible as MAGA and DOGE do today, but blundered into an (ideologically-driven) government shutdown. (I’m not praising Clinton, here; just saying a few months is a long time in politics.)
Page 66. Below, Frank labels conservative self-perception as “outsiders” “the adversarial fantasy”:
You have only to read X posts from Trump and DOGE supporters to see that what was true then is true now. I mean, in what sense — well, I can think of several, but you know what I mean — billionaire Peter Thiel an “outsider”? And so on down the line, to local gentry like auto dealerships.
Page 70. In addition to “the adversarial fantasy” we have conservatism is a money-making machine:
Today, “conservatism-as-industry,” besides the usual entities, takes the gargantuan form of Elon Musk’s X, where Mush simultaneously acts his part as Co-President, orders civil servants about (both traffic builders), and markets his various businesses (sometimes going to far as to intervene in public policy issues that directly benefit them, e.g. Starlink but also SpaceX as a brand).
Page 115, “personnel is policy”:
Musk explicitly urged that one effect of the “fork in the road” email would be to get workers out of government into the more productive private sector, the same argument that Reagan and Blackwell make. And DOGE, by seizing control of the Office of Personnel Management, and setting up a party structure that parallels the government, adopts the Leninist paradigm that Stalin exploited, as advocated by Blackwell.
Page 117, reinforcing the points above:
Page 138:
OEO = USAID, and whatever else DOGE gets its hands on (though so far Defense and the spooks have been exempt).
Page 221:
“The end was capturing the state and using it to destroy liberalism is a practical alternative” seems to sum up Trump’s Executive Orders in one sentence.
Page 223:
Of course Co-Presidents Trump and Musk will attack Social Security; the gains are too great for them not to. That does not, however, mean they will succeed.
Page 244:
The book ends in 2008 with the conservative dreams collapsing after the Great Financial Crash. Frank writes: “Putting civilization back together again is a job [conservatives] left for the rest of us.” And we elected Obama to do it. So it goes.
The purpose of this very superficial canter through the history of conservatism — not Frank’s book, which is great, but my extracts — is to remind readers, again, that “we’ve been here before.” Those readers who were not blogging in 2003 – 2006 may find what Trump is doing new or innovative. However, as reading Frank shows, almost everything about Trumpism (at least for domestic policy) is neither, which implies to me that — for good or ill — the Triumph of Trumpism is not inevitable or pre-ordained. Some may find that re-assuring.
Reading Frank’s detailed retellings of scandals and battles past, it seems to me that the difference between the previous conservative eruptions — Reagan, Bush the Younger — and Trumpism is at least three-fold: (1) the open, daily involvement of an oligarch (Musk) in governance; (2) the feral qualities of DOGE (the Executive Orders, the Bolshevik-style capture of OPM and Treasury payment services, the firings); (3) the general administration attitude that “it is better to ask for forgiveness than permission” with regard to the law and precedent (it’s as if the entire Nixon administration was run by Howard Phillips). Each of these characteristics holds open the possibility of significant pushback, especially for an administration running on thin margins everywhere (House, Senate, polling).
I have characterized Trumpism as reactionary, as indeed it is (reactive not only to policies like DEI, to PMC hegemony generally, but retributive justice for the destruction of the Rust Belt, undertaken by many distinctly non-MAGA forces in years past). To me, the value of Trumpism is the reaction to its reaction. The Democrat leadership, so far, has reacted as if all they have to do is wait until the midterms and flip a few seats (much as all they had to do was wait for demography to save them during the heyday of Tiexiera’s “coalition of the ascendant”). Then maybe they can run near-winner Kamala again, or a greatly matured and near-gravitas-possessed Pete.
The reaction by Democrat leadership to Trump’s Thirty Four Days has seemed insufficient even to their PMC loyalists, who are, naturally, concerned with more pressing matters than the midterms: Their jobs are at stake (along with their houses, and violin lessons for little Madison, not to mention all that karma for the Rust Belt their capital, economic, social, and symbolic). Whether their demand for reaction now creates space for new leadership now is an open question (even though there’s no question that the Democrats need new leadership desperately, and that down to the precinct level). Of course, other reactions might take place: The formation of a labor party, akin to the Republicans of 1854 in its ability to address class/ownership issues that neither existing party can address, would be intriguing, especially if the unions could move up that (hypothetical?) general strike from 2028 to an earlier date. The future lies ahead!
40 comments
Comments are closed.
Between ” the Triumph of Trumpism is not inevitable or pre-ordained. Some may find that re-assuring.” and “The formation of a labor party, akin to the Republicans of 1854 in its ability to address class/ownership issues that neither existing party can address, would be intriguing, especially if the unions could move up that (hypothetical?) general strike from 2028 to an earlier date. The future lies ahead!” I am inclined to a little hopefulness.
I read the book when it came out; it’s still on my shelves. It’s good.
One important difference I note, however, is that nearly two decades ago, Frank could still write in a manner equating “liberalism” with a kind of US-version of social democracy. Today, I’m not sure that works anymore. Liberalism today is the Democratic Party and its professional-class constituencies, whose overwhelming majority (including “progressive” factions) are thoroughly neoliberal and contemptuous at best toward the lower orders. The “liberal state” that the conservative Ahabs want to destroy is now the state of affairs bequeathed us by the Clinton, Obama, and Biden administrations—not the New Deal.
Even at the time the book came out, I was slightly dubious about Frank’s defense of liberalism as manifested in the Democratic Party of the Bush years. Today, it’s futile.
Mine too. It popped into my mind the minute DOGE and Project 2025 hit the news.
I’d second this.
Liberalism is largely discredited in the public imaginary, equated with an out-of-touch PMC, itself known to be scornful of almost everyone except (when CNN has hold of some particularly awful video of police misconduct) a kind of mythically virtuous Black person who may no longer exist. Some of our local white liberals were beside themselves in the last cycle at the perceived failure of Black men to get behind Kamalot. I see the same split in a Black community, meanwhile, that I do among white progressives/liberals, between a petrified petites bourgeoisie, trying to hang onto its tiny houses, and young people who have nothing and see no future.
If you compare liberalism’s English history as obsessed with arriviste consumerism from the very start, terrified of the French Revolution, it’s easier to see how there was never much progressive about it; liberalism has embraced–if not fomented–every war and thrust of empire, including the skullduggery, start to finish. At this stage, though, it’s moribund, ideologically and historically bankrupt; the cobwebs it left are being swept out of federal buildings across the nation in favor of something a lot colder, whiter, and more ruthless.
Call me when there’s a movement for–and a party emerging out of–the demand for a house for my daughter, healthcare for her, some hope that she may be able to have a family one day, with some kind of secure retirement. Everything else is hot air.
I had been mentioning it too and Lambert’s inspired me to move up my timeline for a re-read.
Insofar as the Reactionaries wish to “drown Government in a bathtub,” they had better be careful what they wish for. One big change any successful deconstruction of the State will engender is the loss of stability, in all spheres of civil and social realms. Thus, a devolved state will remove the enforcement mechanisms for contracts. The fallback position here is brute force. As anyone who has been in a physical fight will understand, there is no guarantee of success available to any of the participants. There is always someone bigger, meaner, and more devious lurking around to hobble one’s schemes. Hence the practice among savvy businesspeople of incorporating “safety margins” in plans.
“True Believers,” and I believe that the DOGEistas qualify as such, do not admit to any limits, so, they do not plan for setbacks. This is a critical weakness. In that respect, Bureaucratic Inertia is the “liberals” friend. The DOGEista attempt to gut the bureaucracy itself is a sign that someone in the “Elite” camp realizes this. The best way to bypass bureaucratic inertia is to eliminate the bureaucracy entire. The alternate institution offered up by the “True Believers” is the Private Sphere. However, a Private Sphere absent a socially enforceable mechanism of contract enforcement becomes a classic, not Anarchy, but a Savagery. The Barbarians become the gatekeepers.
If the Trumpistas do manage to roll back the Social Security System, then we can say that the Liberal Social Contract is fully broken. Then, the former social rules that protected Capitalism and the capitalists will be moot and the ‘Popular Front’ will arise to wreak vengeance upon those that they perceive as being not only the wreckers, but the enablers of said wreckers as well.
The Elites think that one Saint Luigi is bad? Wait until we experience the tender ministrations of a multitude of acolytes of Saint Luigi.
Stay safe. Steer clear of Elite gatherings of any sort.
> Somalian warlords do Vegas
> Mad Max : Elon Road
> St. Luigi’s Army
…
> If the Trumpistas do manage to roll back the Social Security System, then we can say that the Liberal Social Contract is fully broken. Then, the former social rules that protected Capitalism and the capitalists will be moot and the ‘Popular Front’ will arise to wreak vengeance upon those that they perceive as being not only the wreckers, but the enablers of said wreckers as well.
I am reminded, again, of something I read here a long time ago, from Marriner Eccles testifying in Congress:
“It is utterly impossible, as this country has demonstrated again and again, for the rich to save as much as they have been trying to save, and save anything that is worth saving. They can save idle factories and useless railroad coaches; they can save empty office buildings and closed banks; they can save paper evidences of foreign loans; but as a class they can not save anything that is worth saving, above and beyond the amount that is made profitable by the increase of consumer buying. It is for the interests of the well to do – to protect them from the results of their own folly – that we should take from them a sufficient amount of their surplus to enable consumers to consume and business to operate at a profit. This is not “soaking the rich”; it is saving the rich. Incidentally, it is the only way to assure them the serenity and security which they do not have at the present moment.”
– https://londonbanker.blogspot.com/2011/09/testimony-of-marriner-eccles-to.html
We actually have been here before, just not where Frank assumes.
A significant portion of the contemporary MAGA populist Right of 2025 has nicely synthesized the New Left’s critique of U.S. power of the 1960s and 1970s. Listening to their present analysis of U.S. foreign policy in Ukraine is like being at an SDS anti-Vietnam War meeting in 1967.
> Listening to their present analysis of U.S. foreign policy in Ukraine is like being at an SDS anti-Vietnam War meeting in 1967
Which is a little discouraging, because after fhe helicopter lifted from the roof of the Saigon Embassy, the empire kept rollimg right along (though to be fair, MAGA probably has more working class roots/cred than SDS did).
Yes, and to your point, as recently as 2021 the helicopters were lifting from the roof of the embassy in Kabul, after $1.xxx trillion and countless lost lives and immeasurable destruction.
What followed and still sticks in my craw from that period is the Dems voting down virtually every piece of legislation they ran on, with the help of Manchin and Sinema: minimum wage, better health care, education, environment, etc. My rueful tagline in that period was “Gee, I’m impressed with how many things they are unable to pass.” This was post-Trump 1.0, and Covid was still raging. It was a prime opportunity to demonstrate some leadership. But then the kicker: after all the failings, a massive defense bill, $800 odd billion, some $60B *more* than the Pentagon asked for, and it sailed through both houses so swiftly one would miss it in a blink. Huh? Really? How is that?
Precisely! We have been here before. I was at some of those anti-Vietnam rallies and could never have imagined that it would ever be the “right” leading the way to peace.
none of this would have ever been possible, if it was not for bill clinton. he initiated the conservative wet dream, and almost pulled it all off, besides destroying the party of the new deal.
its obvious now, all discussions about economics and politics from 1993-today, should be labeled B.C.(before bill clinton) and A.C.(after bill clinton)
Thomas Frank puts the screws to the Clinton 90s with “One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy”.
But considering much of the Clinton triangulations were a response to the Reagan years…
I don’t put it at the doorstep of one party.
Poor Thomas Frank (whom I first encountered with What’s the Matter With Kansas) — he’s been dead right for 25 years now, yet like Cassandra destined to be ignored by those he vainly tried to save from themselves.
I hope he’s found a way to retain his sanity.
The man seems increasingly exasperated every year, but he has not (yet) started to scream at his latest occasional interview.
He has commented publicly about his being declared persona non grata in talking head green rooms. Outside the occasional podcast I don’t think he’s been on cable since the Obama years.
What Frank and other Americans call conservatism is called liberalism in Russia (and, I gather, in many other places as well). “Bad government is the natural product of rule by those who believe government is bad” is a very good observation (though I suppose we don’t know quite how badly anarchists would’ve ruled if ever given a chance).
Meanwhile European conservatism was historically (for much of the 19th and 20th centuries) less in thrall to business and sometimes capable of pro-worker stances, out of a mix of strategic expediency and ideology (Disraeli was an eloquent proponent of this in theory, while Bismarck achieved the best results in practice). Of course it has since been heavily Americanised.
IMHO, American conservatism has been a very strange brew of factions since the 1960s – there is an elite pseudo-intellectual avant-guard of extreme economic liberals, as described above, who publicly adhere to a cultural conservatism that they do not practice in private, but also cultural conservatives, mainly of the “evangelical” Protestant anti-liberal, racist and borderline racist variety, with the later addition of reactionary Catholics, once the Irish, Italians, and finally Latinos, were accepted as “white”. Unlike traditional European conservatives though, there is no willingness to compromise with the nominal left to do politics and advance within political structures for the sake of policy wins, but the point of getting power is rather to punish and eradicate political opponents from participation in governing. The “tolerance” inherent in cultural liberalism (progressivism) is used against it at every opportune moment.
Wow Bugs, this is spot on. I don’t think anyone living inside this mess could see what you see, and put it to words so efficiently.
Anarchy literally means “without rulers” an- without, -archy – rule.
Anarchist nations have strong leaders that are actually held accountable by the people. Every human used to live in such cultures until the last few millennia, and some still do. Societies with rulers have all the problems this website documents – racism, sexism, political corruption, pollution, and more.
Anarchist nations – what most people call indigenous or native people – don’t have these problems.
so, asking how anarchists would rule is a funny question – they wouldn’t!
Speaking as someone who loves and adores Frank and all his works . . .
The problem with The Wrecking Crew is that it assumes that the Democratic Party is a New Deal operation, slightly watered down to be a Great Society operation. Frank justifies this essentially through claiming that Clinton’s rhetoric made use of some of the imagery of the Humphrey-era Democratic Party. But almost certainly Humphrey didn’t mean what he said, and Clinton never meant a word of it.
Thus Frank in the end is attacking the Republican Party in order to replace it with a Democratic Party which he does not understand. It seems to me that he understood the Democrats better ten years earlier, in What’s The Matter With Kansas.
I agree that Trump’s Republican Party appears more politically sophisticated than the Republicans whom Frank cites. Perhaps also a bit less dilettante-ish. As a result, more frightening. And, gosh, I just used the word “sophisticated” in the same sentence as the name “Trump”. Either I’m going insane, or the world is.
I would summarize this by saying that when Frsnk wrote Wrecking Crew he had not yet written Listen, Liberal!
And the people who want to drown the Government in a bathtub had only a decade of support from Rush Limbaugh, FOX, and their minions on social media were not really a presence.
Local newspapers were already slimming down, but they existed.
Offshoring was also an attack on the New Deal.
In re: the prospects for a general strike, I can’t help thinking that Doge is creating and activating a massive cadre of the recently and unexpectedly unemployed. Thousands of unemployed federal workers plus the soon to be fired numbers of private sector employees ought to be recruitable. Probably well before 2028.
I keep reminding my husband that it was a half day general strike in Poland that brought down the regime. They couldn’t use telephones, the internet or broadcast media to organize it, it was all done person to person in union halls etc. This wasn’t a thousand years ago, it was only 40.
An effective general strike that lasted just half a day would be nice. It looks to me as if the transition which will follow the present phase of things is going to be rather rougher and longer. People are not well-organized and haven’t built up the supplies and relationships they will need to get through. Nor the experience. But maybe I’m wrong. There’s always hope, right?
I will merely quote Gramsci (to myself as much as anyone else): “Cynicism by intellect, optimistic by will”.
I don’t see how a half-day strike in the US would do any good. Capital, knowing the strike was temporary, would just wait it out.
A real general strike would have to stoke intense fear among capitalists to succeed.
Everything about American politics changed with the first election of Trump, not because Russia used the internet to get Trump elected, but because Trump did. The establishment reacted by promoting censorship on the internet both here and in Europe, all but repealing the First Amendment. Why did they throw away centuries of tradition without comment? Expediency, as Frank describes above. It’s all about business interests, e.g., replacing Russian pipeline gas to Europe with expensive LNG from the Permian Basin.
Frank’s book from 2008 is already a historical document about the distant past. It might as well be describing another country. They do things differently there.
Reminding readers of the cast of characters that might otherwise be forgotten, purposely or out of desperation. Pick your favorites and supporting random cast, Norquist, Abramoff, Rove, DeLay, toss in Rubin just because, so many others that could’ve lived in infamy.
You can fool some of the people all of the time. Those are the ones you should concentrate on.
George W Bush (2001)
It is what the new Liberalism and Washington consensus is -IMHO- fooling people by reversing the definition of classical liberalism …being done by favoring rent extraction, regressive tax and deregulation, anti labor policies and protections etc…
So it comes down to who runs the government…. the fire sector or an informed citizenry’s consent. The part that’s been distorted and manipulated for so long … information ….or in Business doctrine (knowledge is power)
Today’s politicians on both sides of the isle (hate that euphemism) are totally frightened of allowing the information to fall into the hands of the majority of the masses – frightened of losing support of the FIRE sector, frightened of oversight (cowardly – put name here -), frightened of taking responsibility for actions counter to human rights or in violation of constitutional boundaries, or in opposite to the consent they pandered for by deliberate obfuscation and lies.
All this outrage at the lead of the party – sure it is deserved – but I always remind myself that the reason their is outrage at an oligarchy is that the laws made in congress have been promulgated in such a way that (as bernie says – their shouldn’t be billionaires) they will form. Take the taxation question – again a congressional thing, Take the government can’t do anything well…… it was and is the deliberate setting up to fail or the deliberation of the congress making laws that crippled and contrived to make these ideas as truths.
Is the inaction by democrates (democrats in congress who say they are the defenders of democracy) because they are afraid their positions are at stake because they will be outspent by the corporates? are they trying to teach the deplorables a lesson because they didn’t get their vote even while both parties supported genocide??
And all this one party pointing the blame upon the other is ridiculous considering, in my view, that both parties for a long time have been in lockstep toward this privatization of the government (call it what you want corporatization, predatory, renterism, monarchial, neo-liberal, un-democratic, un-republic, fear state)
The things that bring us this grief, this feeling of loss, these great revulsions have been the result of legislative actions capitulated to the corrupting influence of big money, MIC key mouse going back more recently to Reagan but previously going back 100s or 1,000s of years.
Good thing is that people are want to get their government back into the hands of themselves as it should be – through the consent of the governed and not by the ordain of those politicians (both parties) not interested in service but, attracted by power, money, control, access to the trough through any manipulations or truthiness (like the predators attracted to the boy scouts, the churches, wall street, police departments and etc.).
It’s nothing new except, this time, both parties are on the same bi-partisan path. It like when FDR said his thing…..except their ain’t no FDR…Biden pretended to be but was no where near it and the people did not buy it —rightly …and Trump took the peace road while both Dems and Repubs were/are genocidal supporters (don’t take much political acumen to see what idiots the Dems and repubs were on this and other issues hypocritical)
“We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace–business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.
They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.
Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me–and I welcome their hatred.”
Election eve speech at Madison Square Garden (October 31, 1936)
Seems nobody is making a peep about it, so it just tell me that their is no opposition to the Washington consensus which is not to offer any struggle against the enemies of peace – business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.
And- Trump..etal do consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs.
And their can be no doubt of Trump’s mob like tendencies which leads to – “We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. ”
I have hope that this could be yet another wake up call to the country.
Thank you for bringing up Thomas Frank. Of course, in 2008 he was just as bamboozled by Kenyan Jesus as the rest of us were, but The Wrecking Crew is a terrific history of the car dealer/realtor mentality masquerading as “conservatism” in the U.S. — that as Daniil points out isn’t “conservatism” at all, but rather classical liberalism.
It is this contradiction that has hamstrung the anti-government right wing in the past — there is nothing “conservative” about greedy, self-indulgent, serial philanderers like Trump and Musk, who hijacked the GOP— or like Bill and Hill, who hijacked the DNC.
The wild-card is how will the global population bomb and climate change affect an electorate predisposed to dispensational premillennialism — the view that we are in End Times. Elon’s “Dusted Dark Goth MAGA” routine may appear even more satanic to these folks than that awful ghoul Biden did. It does to me…
> Thank you for bringing up Thomas Frank. Of course, in 2008 he was just as bamboozled by Kenyan Jesus as the rest of us were
I think he made up for that with Listen, Liberal! for which every mainstream outlet instantly ostracized him, including the WSJ. Frank paid, and is paying, a heavy personal price for telling the truth about the PMC base of the Democrat Party.
Frank really was blind to the Ds real nature at that point, but he sure had the Rs pegged. It’s all about business, or should we say profit?
I guess I don’t really see the future as being about business or labor. The new administration is flooded with Techno-Optimists (the Eco-Modemists are mostly Ds of the Pritzker flavor), and their vision would have way fewer people working than now. Flesh-and-blood dogs will be out of work too. Maybe even human girlfriends will become obsolete.
On the other side are not the labor organizers of days of yore. There will be less and less labor to organize, and what’s left will be so dispersed and temporary that the old Wagner Act model no longer makes sense. Instead, the Techno-Optimists hate (and fear) the Degrowthers, those who believe we’ve reached our limits, that it might be a good idea to avoid completely trashing the planet we’re evolved for. Degrowthers also see fewer “jobs” in the future because every job carries with it a carbon footprint. We must get by with less in the way of material goods and services, so fewer workers are needed at today’s productivity levels.
The Techno-Optimists are itching to make a “final” choice, once and for all, by attempting geoengineering, though the results are likely to be as catastrophic as Elon’s Starship flights that go BOOM. After that, people may be willing to give up giant pickup trucks and flying vacations if it’s not too late.
Reading that piece about how our genes don’t fit the “civilized” world made me wonder if those hoary genes might come in handy for the generations that follow. For example, once upon a time, we could smell the rain coming. Looks like that could be quite useful again in the Exceptional Nation.
Techno-Optimists and their Eco-Modernist Blue cousins vs. the Degrowthers. That’s how I see it.
No, Frank wasn’t blind to the D’s shenanigans:
This was written before The Wrecking Crew and is all about the folly and corporatism of the D’s. Written in 2000..
One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy (2000)
Plenty about the intersection of techno optimism and market populism…cheeleaders being Dems.
James K. Kalbraith’s book, The Predator State, which was published in 2009 also covers a lot of what this book touches upon.
Essentially he recognized to new Oligarchy of the US, tech, banking, insurance, and big pharma CEOs have lost all interest in the welfare of the country as a whole as opposed to their own gain in wealth and power.
It’s a good read with plenty of accurate references.
“(1) the open, daily involvement of an oligarch (Musk) in governance”
This is maybe not true. Matt Stroller in his Goliath volume describes very well the story of Andrew Mellon, who as Secretary of the Treasury (his signature is on some dollar bills maybe) took good care of his family businesses. I think he did some jail time…
Cognitive dissonance is becoming the new normal.
Thanks for the reminder of Thomas Frank’s intellectual courage. He was very well appreciated for his liberal critiques of republicans during the Bush presidency. But the moment he leveled the same critiques against the neoliberal policies of the so called liberal icons Clinton and Obama, he was quickly discarded and stuffed down the memory hole. His critique of the transformation of the democratic party under the Clinton and Obama regimes to the convoluted sorry mess that it is today resonates stronger than ever. Those clinging to their guns and religion (Obama) and the basket of deplorables (Hillary Clinton) became the MAGA base. Where else are they going to go? Now we know. Sadly, the corporate democrats will never admit this.