Yves here. Tom Neuburger discusses how the US is in the midst of a regime change, which has precedents in US history. The most obvious manifestation is how Trump is trying to cut back Constitutional and legal protections. Where might this go? He acknowledges that one possibility is a popular revolt, but despite the US being full of guns, both the atomization of what once were communities and the fact that many of the opponents are professional in blue city islands dependent of the red heartlands for supplies does not bode well for organized resistance. Then again, one of the newly downtrodden groups is vets, and they do know a thing or two about taking terrain.
By Thomas Neuburger. Originally published at God’s Spies
Before we get started…
The following represents notes toward something much larger. Where are we headed? That’s not certain, though there aren’t many choices, given what’s happened and what we know of the players.
Though there’s so much more going on in the world, what we’re seeing here is a massive paradigm shift in how Americans are governed and what they’ll do about it. As do others, I have thoughts. Stay tuned.
The Next American Constitution
I once began work on a book with the working title, The Fourth American Constitution. The San Francisco Chronicle published an introduction to the idea in their Fourth of July issue. The main point is this:
Each year on this day, Americans celebrate our founding principles and the birth of our nation, but in these chaotic and polarized days, it is also important to remember that the United States was born from a crisis of unity and has experienced two more at roughly 70-year intervals — the Civil War and the Great Depression.
Both nearly tore us apart, yet each sparked a civic rebirth. After each great rupture, the government was restructured; each took the nation closer to its founding ideals; each brought greater liberty, justice and opportunity to expanding groups of Americans; each changed forever and for the better the relationship between government and the people.
We’re now in the midst of a fourth crisis, from which will emerge the next agreement about how and for whom our government operates. Will it produce a constitution that once again advances our founding principles and expands opportunities, or will this be the first American crisis that institutionalizes a stripping of rights, freedom and wealth?
Though much work was done, the book was never completed, since each new month seemed to offer a new direction — light from a different dawn — none of which seemed reliable.
The years since then have been iffy, to say the least. Where were we going? Who knew? Then the Trump-Musk regime arrived and things clarified.
What If the Right Wins Absolutely?
One of the puzzles I wanted to solve in the book was this: What if the Right wins absolutely? What would we be as a country under full right-wing rule?
That’s been hard to determine, though there were clear indications. I decided the Right was factious, and a lot depended on which group would end up on top. If the Christian Nationalists, the God-bothering absolutists, or groups of that stripe should win out, we’d have one kind of place. God before gold, God with list of demands.
Or what if Charles Koch won out? America would be slightly different — a terrible place, but not the same hell hole as the New Apostolic Reform people would create. God as a cover story, gold calling the shots.
A Techno-Fascist Takeover
So who actually won? That’s been answered. Thanks to Trump’s love of revenge — if you try to remove the king, it’s best to succeed — and his bromance with a man he’s decided swings admirable pipe, the group on the Right we can safely call techno-fascists has come out ahead.
They’ve captured a man who thinks like a mafia boss, and that man has captured the crown — meaning, both houses of Congress, the Court (for now), and the throne, something we once called a Presidency, then inflated to king.
Where Are We Headed?
Where are we headed? There aren’t many alternatives. In 2028, Trump may step down or not. In 2028, the country elects a Democrat or it doesn’t. In 2028, the Musk revolution is ended or it’s not.
1. Trump Doesn’t Leave in 2028
I originally thought that of course Trump would leave office when his term expires.
Can you really see Trump wanting to be president forever? That’s work. His goals today are revenge, glory and golf. And money. Maybe still sex. I sure don’t see him signing for any job he’s stuck in forever. We wants to murder his enemies, bask and get out. At least as I see it.
But consider the people behind him, who feed on his fury: Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and their ilk; Russ Vought, a primary author of Project 2025; the whole of the Heritage crowd; the people who created John Roberts to be who he is, who financed his Court. Crazed billionaires, bankers and moguls of every stripe. They have transformational dreams that don’t end with Trump. Why not press on?
They may need Trump to remain, but he can step back, play golf, be a figurehead president while his friends carry on.
Think of it from their standpoint, these Friends of Trump. Once Social Security is gone, it won’t be rebuilt. The same with the rest of the changes. What remains won’t be America in the modern sense. Why not stay and write the new rules, our Fourth Constitution?
2. A Democrat Wins in 2028
What if Trump leaves and a Democrat’s elected? The result is anyone’s guess, but I don’t see the national party defying its donors. The donors are key. I don’t see state parties, good as a few may become, having national clout. And I fear the surrender I saw from Sanders last time will be reenacted by others. Seems they all back down when they have to, even Dennis Kucinich.
3. A Popular Revolt
That leaves a popular revolt. If the people rebel — what does that even look like? A million marched against the Bush-Cheney Middle East War. What good did it do? What good did the George Floyd protests do, after all’s said and done? Raise consciousness? Keep a single person safe from murdering cops? Are cops really less deadly these days?
It will take a Mario Savio “shut it down” fight, one where
you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop.
It would have to last until Trump was forced to resign. It would have to persist in the face of murdering cops. It would have to last through endless media opposition (because real revolution is a threat to everyone’s order). It would have to have critical mass.
The revolt would have to persist despite everything lined up against it. If it wins, rejoice, though the nation would tear apart (I’ll expand on that later). If it fails, our next Constitution is the Trumpian one.
For Now Trump Has All the Power
We can hope for good things, and maybe we’ll get them. Who knows? But the fact is, right now Trump has all the power.
If he wants to defy the courts, what then? If he wants to use NatSec force to attack opposition, what then? If he punishes states’ defiance, what then? He’s defying the court today. He’s already used goons to hand people to foreign torturers. He’s successfully blackmailed Maine into compliance. Which state is next? There’s nothing Trump has to fear if wants to press on.
Avenues Out
As to avenues out of this mess, I see three:
• Trump’s loss of reputation is a possible lever. Would he want to die hated? Not sure.
• The security apparatus may tire of him, or tire of those behind him. By “tire” I mean see them as threats to their own sense of order. In that case, good-bye Trump. But what would remain?
• At some point, Trump and his friends may say “we’ve done enough.” That would stop the assault … for a while. But if those wins include destroying the whole New Deal, I’m not sure that counts as “out” for the rest of us.
What to Watch Next
Three things to watch for, ways to judge your next move:
• What will the Roberts Court do as cases come up? Acquiesce, split the baby, or pull the king off of his throne? If the third, what will Trump do? Ignore them or change course?
• If his friends wants to break Social Security — make sure checks don’t go out — they’re well on their way. If they do that, how will they deal with the fury that follows? They can respond “So what?” — invoke the No one can stop meAmendment — but will they?
• Finally, will they treat citizens like alien others? Remember, Obama set precedent on that. Will Trump go that far: use AI to find his enemies, then “deal with” the ones he thinks he can safely destroy? Or will he stop short of that?
The answers will tell you what’s coming. The Roberts Court; Social Security; stripping citizens of rights. We’ll soon see how this plays out.
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Minor quibble: the author should have given proper credit to G.W. Bush for pioneering the treatment of citizens as alien others. See, Jose Padilla, a.k.a. the dirty bomber. A US citizen held in military brig without due process or habeas corpus.
Obama was just a copycat. Or took Bush as inspiration. But, he certainly did nothing to protect and defend the Constitution.
The biggest threat I see is these illegal seizures of legally present students here on visas due to their political views. I can easily foresee that expanding to include citizens. Freedom of expression is under attack, again.
More “credit” needs to go to Obama, who rallied people and ran in opposition to Bush’s policies, but institutionalized them instead.
Yeah the poor author is going to be really shook up when he finds out that US Presidents have been using goons to hand people to torturers for a very long time!
No. Obama took it further. Killing a US citizen without habeas corpus, if deemed a terrorist byPOTUS. I believe he had this sanctioned at the time, by Harold Koh, legal adviser to State Dept and Dean of Yale Law Scool. Rule of law you know
This is a great link about Obama continuing Bush Policies:
https://www.obamatheconservative.com/
Somewhat concerned they will be able to blame this on the Biden Crime family and the Dems destroying the system with massive fraud. The ground work for “his is why we can’t have nice things” has been laid, with purpose.
The average bear, and certainly the lumpen on the right, seem to be entirely convinced that the US is about to run out of money (because Dems!!!) and SS was run into the ground by “fraud” of some nature.
Grown people who should be a bit more thoughtful are swallowing the lie that it’s too bad we’re here, but adjustments are needed and it may be rough. The Commerce Sec says only fraudsters would complain if they didn’t get a check, and instead of everyone in the USA of a calling for his head on a pike, my relatives are taking this as a much needed dose of common sense.
>>>The average bear, and certainly the lumpen on the right, seem to be entirely convinced that the US is about to run out of money (because Dems!!!) and SS was run into the ground by “fraud” of some nature.
If I did my numbers right, a fifth of the nation depends on Social Security with a greater number depending on Medicare and Medicaid. Then there is the VA and the poor treatment of the veterans. At a minimum, this is a third of the country with a majority being red.
I can see the Trump Administration pushing through all the changes that they want, but I just don’t see it surviving in the longer term unless it truly does massive repressions on the level of the Jakarta Method. That would mean a true civil war and not some civil unrest.
And after all, the ports are in the blue areas as well as many of the choke points. Unlike the Great Depression, every area of the country depends on other places for something to survive. It is just that the blue areas that are more dependent.
California is actually more independent than people realize. The oil and gas offsore is controlled onshore by the state. There is plenty of food gown in the state and much of what is imported arrives via the Pacific ocean and the Port of Long Beach.
As for federal funds: Californian’a send more federal tax to Washington than any other state, by FAR! Stop paying and send those funds to state coffers and the schools and highways will be able to function just fine.
If nothing else, the Forever Wars have shown most of us that overwhelming firepower does not result in success. Many of the men in Blue may support Trump, but they are easily eliminated one by one. “Bradley’s without butt-holes are useless.”
I agree that atomization of American society is an impediment to group action. But research has shown that only 25% of the population has to get involved in “change actions” to make Tomorrow look very different than Today.
“California is actually more independent than people realize.”
Actually, this is a serious Achillies heal for the Billionaire class. Not just California, but many states from a resource and production sense look pretty good on paper.
If you destroy all the federal government transfer payment programs and you’ve already upended the concept of American’s being a unified people, what’s to prevent someone or a state party or group from declaring independence. ½ of the work will already have been done.
And so many of our billionaires are all “financialized” billionaires… if you rip apart America you basically also end up dismantling the dollar system which will vaporize or seriously impair most financialized US dollar assets.
But before I get ahead of myself, and as Yves would point out, even California isn’t all blue. That said I foresee a sea of something other than red or blue in our not so distant future.
There is a bigger issue at play – the west coast, despite difference between states, will most likely be anti-Trump where it counts – the western half of each state. Where the ports are. And good luck getting help from Canada or Mexico.
A united Pacific coast creates massive issues for the rest of the US. Our masters wanted a global economy. Now reap the whirlwind. This is the real Achilles heel if the US goes down this dark road.
True, but at least half the area and about one-third of the population of each state is red and the state governments are all corrupt as anywhere else in the country. I do not see a successful succession from the rest of the United States without major violence and chaos.
the goal maybe to break up the united states.
NOLA could serve as a port for Red America. if the Billionaire class loses money to achieve unlimited political power, they may go for it.
The Gulf of America!
I never understood why California didn’t secede years ago.
Please tell me how many submarines California has in its navy.
California does not control its grid. Only Texas has an independent electric system.
California is drought-prone and depends on out of state water for its agriculture.
True, but that’s Southern California and Imperial Valley, which is a desert. They get the water from the Colorado River (out of state). So Cal also gets large amounts of water from NorCal. (Should be at least two states instead of one) They gotta have lots of golf courses and swimming pools in the desert as well.
The Central Valley, where the vast majority of ag occurs, uses huge amounts of ground water, which is causing the land to sink. Also, they depend on Sierra snow melt, but as you say, we see droughts are common. The Colorado is drying up, and SoCal wants even MORE water from the north.
On the north coast of Cal, (The Lost Coast area, Shelter Cove) where I live, we have had over 53 inches of rain since Oct. 1st. this climate in The Redwood Empire is quite different. The tallest trees on earth require lots of water. More rain expected tomorrow.
But to the point, suggesting CA secede is a pipe dream, that won’t happen unless the USA collapses. Who knows?
“If his friends wants to break Social Security — make sure checks don’t go out — they’re well on their way. If they do that, how will they deal with the fury that follows?”
“If I did my numbers right, a fifth of the nation depends on Social Security with a greater number depending on Medicare and Medicaid.”
Musk has always wanted a financial do-everything payments app, eventual plans for X-Twitter.
The checks will go out if he is the one sending them.
The thing to watch for is if Trump calls for a Constitutional Convention. If he does, you can bet that it will be rigged and it may feature a lot of billionaires there just to make it blatant about their control.
> 2. A Democrat Wins in 2028
2028?
Yves: This threat confirms my worry that the plan is not to have elections in 2026.
Gödel: Gödel must have discovered that the same problem of self-reference is inherent to all constitutions with amending power statements… Article V does not prevent any change or amendment to Article V itself.
Bannon: They’re [Silicon Valley people who support Donald Trump] oligarchs. It’s an oligarch. They’re 100 percent oligarchs. They believe in technofeudalism.
I just thought the mention of the 2028 election and not 2026 was the usual focus on the executive branch.
While I’m sure this is someone’s dream it really could be just what those same billionaires don’t need. Photo-Op proof that everything’s all been a sham to give them what they want. Now lets recalculate the populations resentment and revolt levels. Their new constitution should have a preamble that starts, “Let them eat cake…”
The Koch Brothers family of sockpuppets and ALEC have their New Libertarian Constitution all ready to go and just needing a Constitutional Convention to get it imposed.
https://billmoyers.com/story/kochs-to-rewrite-constitution/
Here’s a treasure trove of Koch Brothers ideological documents. A painstaking iron-butt search and perusal may reveal some of the particulars of the Koch constitutional vision.
https://kochdocs.org/collection-index/
#TYVM
Bill Moyers, trusted lackey of LBJ, probably doesn’t tell anyone on his page that the Koch Brothers were founding members of the DLC, which was the main group the neoliberal oligarchs used to kick the working class out of the Democratic party once and for all.
The Kochs dont need to change the government they and their ilk have been buying the politicians running it for a long time.
#TIL
Wow (via prospect.org)
The nearly unknown danger of a Constitutional Convention actually convening is the fact that no matter what particular ‘problem‘ is used to stir up enough angst to get the convention called, once opened, all topics are open for discussion, any change can be proposed and will get a vote.
There is a strong chance people end up screaming;
“They said they’d fix the *****, but I never expected them to ****!”
There is also the problem that by the time any amendments have been added to the Constitution, there had been years of debate before the changes. If massive American libertarian style changes were rammed through a convention without at least some public debate, it would get ugly, leaving the Constitution with much less authority.
Well I see two great unknowns with the convention route:
First, there’s not real process laid out on how a convention is organized. Assume Congress would have to pass a joint resolution with the call to convention, that would lay out how delegates are apportioned and how delegates get credentialed. I assume a quorum (of total credentialed delegates?) would be adequate to conduct business? The first order of business would be to pass a rules motion. I assume the Congress would have drafted a set of rules to include in the call.
Second, Congress is given the power to determine mode of ratification. It could propose state conventions which opens another can of worms.
I see us going full course from an economy based 100% on specie in the 1790’s, to endless amounts of money conjured out of thin air as has been the custom as of late, to the almighty buck being debauched and then the principal owners (evangs) of precious metals in the country being 1-eyed kings in a country where the only thing left not ruined will be the 400 million guns & ammo-also skewed heavily to the hard right.
Think Rwanda (94% Christian), with the Donkey Show side filling in for Tutsi props.
W W J C ? What would Jesus carry?
I believe our major private and public institutions are corrupt, therefore I don’t hold much faith in them to ameliorate the situation. Democracy Theater in the US offers a lot of drama and entertainment/distraction but no significant choice. There will be no way to vote our way out of this, unless something radical changes.
All three branches of govt. are directly, or indirectly bribed, and crudely put, the oligarchy are in charge. This has been the case for some time but now the DT2 regime draws the thin curtain and we see oligarchs like Thiel, Musk, Bezos, Zuck and the rest presented front and center for everyone to see. It’s getting Neo-Medieval in a way: like peasants, we are supposed to bow down and worship the new aristocracy as if they were ordained by god to rule over us. They are the masters of the universe.
Since most of the plebs are conditioned, distracted, divided and sent tilting at windmills, I don’t think an organized popular rebellion is likely either. The recipe for violence is here, but more likely the working class will be busy shooting at each other, as they are directed to do. Would the “guardian class” (state and local police forces, judges, military etc.) rebel?
Based on the blind-allegiance and religious-like zealotry of the DT followers, even if their checks are cut, and their resources stolen by the oligarchy, they just make excuses and believe in their “savior” is infallible and cares about them. Already I hear pathetic excuses from the faithful that they are willing to suffer from the DT2 regime’s policies because everything will be rainbows and cotton candy later.
I have lived abroad before, and if it were not for elderly parents, I would be living abroad right now. One thing is almost certain: material conditions and quality of life will continue to decline for the average US dweller, just a matter of how much and how fast.
Don’t cry for me Argentina! Milie was just a test run for what the us is going through now. Perhaps one should look there to see the lack of response from the Argentine populace. They seem to be a couple head of years ahead of the US timeline
You nailed it!
> I believe our major private and public institutions are corrupt
Concur. The question from me is: when does a critical mass of American citizenry start to “get this”? And will it be too late when they do. #WeShallSee
> All three branches of govt. are directly, or indirectly bribed, and crudely put, the oligarchy are in charge. This has been the case for some time but now the DT2 regime draws the thin curtain and we see oligarchs like Thiel, Musk, Bezos, Zuck and the rest presented front and center for everyone to see.
Yes, Trump terms are really a lifting of the veil(s) … what was implicit – plutocrats buying politicians (kleptocrats), and then dictating policy from the shadows – is now explicit, with Musk standing behind Trump like some kind of economic violence translator.
> Would the “guardian class” (state and local police forces, judges, military etc.) rebel?
Very interesting question. One assumes they care about the cost of eggs, gasoline, cars and safe air travel. #WeShallSee
“The question from me is: when does a critical mass of American citizenry start to “get this”?”
Never … just like they never understood WMD was nothing but gaslighting and then cheered whilst sitting at an upscale or lower eatery with a wide screen with CNN/Wolf program talking about, showing, all the dramas in the world was because ***other people*** were jealous of the life Americans had and wanted to destroy it.
Just look at how the whole west is behind Israel, dead non combatants aside, UKN, LatAm, etc. The Western oligarchs want to own everything, will grind everyone down, so the natural order is maintained – old school.
History sounds like a rhyme: we have a Euro-Zionist Crusader State in “the Holy Land” and we must protect ourselves from the backward, “autocratic”, violent hordes from the east. They might be (Orthodox) Christian, but they are “heretics” for not bowing down to the west.
And then we have the “godless communists” in China – the Yellow Peril! The Asiatic hordes are coming to take over the world and enslave god-fearing Christians. The Politics of Fear is a very effective tool.
All I know is: any revolution that ends up with a new set of decision-makers, who, going forward, still swear fealty to a certain foreign country in West Asia and prioritize its desires even above the urgent needs of their own citizens, is no revolution at all.
That’s why I seriously consider that we will see the return of pogroms. One religiously centred group trying to destroy another religiously centred group. Actually, this has already begun. What else is the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians but a pogrom?
The “Red Heifer Evangelicals” are a small minority in the galaxy of Christianist Denominations. If it comes down to it, the “Red Heifer” crowd can be ‘chastised’ just as easily as their ‘Abrahamic’ fellow travelers. (Truth be known, all three versions of the Middle Eastern monotheism are “children of Abraham.”)
An ‘Irony Curtain’ has descended upon the continent… (with apologies to Winston)
Winston C or Winston S? [Asking for someone in the Ministry of Truth.]
They saw what you did there…..
Trump is simply saying the quiet part out loud. He is but a symptom, not the disease. We got here because the enablers of those dishonorable grifters Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich dismantled the New Deal and the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection of due process of law and universal rights during the 1990’s.
An entire generation had understood that FDR saved the country from the collapse of capitalism and from the Bolshevik, Nazi, and Shōwa militarism hoping to replace it. Not Eisenhower, nor Nixon, nor even Reagan dared do more than nibble around the edges of the edifice that FDR built to save capitalism. It was Slick Willie who cemented the foundation of our Inverted Totalitarian billionaire-factory that was designed to subvert democracy and loot the planet for the benefit of a few hundred greedy psychopaths (Donors!).
Shrub, Obama, and Biden all trashed the constitution by conducting endless foreign wars under an ever-expanding AUMF that wasn’t ever a proper declaration of war. It is their amorphous endless National Security Emergency that Trump, a gluttonously self-indulgent draft-dodger, has used to crown himself king.
As due process and individual rights collapse I only see anarchy and chaos, not revolution. Television and social media have atomized American society into a vicious rabble of vandals, shoplifters, and road-ragers who will enthusiastically engage in cannibalism when the checks stop coming and the rest of the world turns their backs on us.
There’s no way out. Chief Justice John Roberts isn’t going to save the constitution. It’s going to be the return of the Dark Ages.
“…Trump, a gluttonously self-indulgent draft-dodger, has used to crown himself king.”
You left out 34 time convicted felon who should not be president in the first place.
Convicted of 34 felonies and sentenced as if it was 34 counts of jaywalking. Whose idea was that?
The laws protect our elites but do not bind them; the same laws bind the rest of us but do not protect us. Rules for thee but not for me. The courts aren’t going to save us…
The problem is that those charges were the equivalent of charging Hitler with jaywalking, and the #McResistance’s magical thinking (a continuation of it’s Russiagate dementia) allowed them to convince themselves that their morally vain harrumphing through the courts had merit or meaning, let alone the political mojo to enforce of state power. It illustrated their weakness, not their strength.
I know it’s a minor thing, but I also need to point out the hypocrisy of #McResistance Democrats obsessively harping on how Trump’s 34 felony convictions – essentially one for each check to Stormy Daniels ie, pretty small beer – was a 180 degree about-face from what many of them were saying about prosecutorial overreach during the kente cloth kneeling spree of a just few years prior. That sort of thing led many people to heavily discount anything the D’s said about Trump.
Every single thing they did made Trump stronger; maybe they should have bought more Robert Mueller votive candles.
Thank you, Michael, and yes, the Democrats made Trump by their feckless approach to Russia-gate and Lawfare, instead or pushing for policies to provide “Concrete Material Benefits” to the working class.
The Democrats are no longer a viable opposition party, as they too, have been bought off by the same interests as the Republicans: Wall Street, the MIC, Big Pharma, Big Tech, and the Israel lobby. Sticking with Biden until it was way too late and then putting Kamala on the ticket without her getting a single vote. And now the sad and pathetic spectacle of Bernie Sanders trying, once more, to sheepdog people back into the same Democratic Party that opposes everything he claims to stand for.
While I agree that Russiagate was a bad-faith hoax, I think that political hush-money shenanigans are legitimate violations of the law.
However, Alvin Bragg only showed-up to file charges after Merrick Garland failed to act because the Democrats had too much of their own filthy laundry, dating back to Slick Willie’s own grifting and philandering, Hillary’s blatantly illegal Westchester basement server and destruction of public records, and the Biden Crime Family’s “Ukraine” gravy-train. I do blame the Democrats for Trump but the voters were right not to trust them.
If Bernie had been allowed a fair shot at the 2016 nomination none of this would be happening. The New Deal may have kept capitalism on life-support, but the alternative was murderous Bolshevik/Nazi/Shōwa militarism. Capitalism is working just fine for the average person in China and Bernie might well have prevented it from eating-up the commons as is now happening here. The Fighting Oligarchy Tour isn’t sheep-dogging for the Dems. They’re encouraging down-ballot independents to take out the duopoly (although the oligarchy may already be too entrenched for this to succeed).
Where does climate change fit into all of this?
Let the fantasy-based denialists deny it. Let the reality-based accepters of it accept it.
Let the denialists refuse to take steps to get ready for it. Let the accepters take steps to get ready for it. And let them withhold those steps and any information about those steps from the denialists who did their part to make this all happen.
If only it were so simple. Who exactly are “the denialists”? Perhaps not who one might think?
War is always bad for the environment. Israel’s one-sided attacks on civilian targets, universally supported by the West, are bad for the environment. NATO, the EU, and now the new German government coalition’s spending trillions of euros on armaments going forward will be bad for the environment.
Blowing up Nordstream 2 released a huge amount of methane into the atmosphere.
Blowing up stuff (and people!) in general is bad for the environment — even if the killers and their leaders treat it as something glorious, worthy of celebration on social media.
People (for instance, in Germany, AfD voters) see all this and rightfully ask, if the Powers That Be who profess to accept climate change in theory evidently don’t care in practice, why should we?
“We’re supposed to sort our trash, struggle with rising taxes and cost of living, and accept more and more limits and restrictions — including censorship, watching what we say, even in private chat — go back to life as it was in East Germany, basically — while they’re jetting off to the latest G-7 summit of whatever, trying to start World War 3?
“What kind of fools do they take us for?”
It ensures that any attempt to stabilize the political situation will fail.
From a human ecology perspective, massive migrations.
Douthat: What is the concrete deliverable for those voters out of the deconstruction of the administrative state?
Bannon: The concrete deliverable first is the deportation.
Climate change is precisely the issue here.
A few years ago I attended a presentation by Prof. emeritus Ram Ramanathan of the Scripps Institute — the climatologist who discovered the Ozone Hole, now an adviser on climate change to Pope Francis.
Prof. Ramanathan estimates that beginning in 2050 between 1 and 2 billion people will be displaced from their homes because their regions have been rendered uninhabitable by rising temperatures. Those people will have to go somewhere. Prof. Ramanathan has been working with the R.C. church to come up with a strategy to de-escalate the conflicts that will ensue from a mass migration of this magnitude.
Of course, there’s another option to de-escalation. I suspect that Our Billionaire Overlords are using Gaza and mass deportations as a training exercise for the now inevitable climate migrations. As always, the cruelty is the point.
The New Deal kept capitalism on life support long enough for the true left to be eradicated. It put us on an inexorable and unavoidable path to exactly where we are now. The New Deal is part of the problem.
There’s almost a undercurrent of passive or learned helplessnes to the piece, it seems anti-revolutionary, reading of tea leaves to predict the future rather than owning and making the future.
Es s Ce Tera: Indeed. There is class-based learned helplessness because the author proposes a solution and then continues as if it is no longer viable:
It will take a Mario Savio “shut it down” fight, one where
you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop.
Not “a” Mario Savio. Stop looking for a new Winnie Churchill or a new Hillary Clinton. Liberals bet the farm on Hillary Clinton — and voilà, poof!, a twist of smoke and grilling.
Nor does struggle consist of one single action, as a demonstration of fecklessness: There has to be more than a one-day boycott of Lowe’s.
Yet the movement cannot be leaderless. The reason the Bernie-AOC tournée is so insidious is that they don’t want to lead a movement. They want to be memes.
Americans still have plenty of economic power. But Americans are being eaten alive by their own so-called individualism. (I’m always amused when people write about Trump as a narcissist — ah, Americans writing about narcissism, isn’t that something?)
It’s the economy, stupid. Tell AOC and a committee of organisations to organize a boycott of some companies and bring them down. Are we to believe that Martin Luther King wanted a one-day boycott of the Montgomery bus system? He was ready to take it down.
Suggested companies to sacrifice: Tesla, Uber (see Hubert Horan’s articles here at Naked Capitalism), Starbucks (oh-so-easily replaced by real coffeehouses), and Amazon (the on-line equivalent of meth).
Then, regional and general strikes. Shut down the airports. Shut down the railroads. Universities on strike. And people who have money in the bank can contribute to strike funds.
Ahh, but that would entail solidarity. Not crossing picket lines. Willingness to be inconvenienced.
Whatever happened to solidarity?
Whatever happened to solidarity?
Facebook and Twitter.
Good point about the SCLC and Dr. King’s Montgomery bus boycott. With Trump threatening 20 years in a Salvadoran prison for boycotting Tesla, you’d better believe that they understand Dr. King’s incredible power…
Especially powerful since PMC Democrats are Tesla’s core customer. I happily drive a Mexican-made VW Golf and a UAW-built Chevy pickup, both 8 years old and still going strong.
Well . . . it was attempted during Occupy, and broken very much up by the Obama-Democratic Mayors-Police Departments alliance.
Also, a reason that AOC and Bernie want to be memes instead of leaders is that leaders of the non-fascist non-right get assassinated. And they know it.
How would a movement-load of people create, support and follow so many tens of thousands of micro-leaders that the authorities could not assassinate/arrest/etc. them all?
Repeal the provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act that make sympathy strikes illegal. Could have / should have been done a long time ago.
Workers walking off their jobs or refusing to load and unload ships in support of unjustly-treated students, intellectuals, and workers at other firms and in other industries — that would give some real power back to organized labor.
Back to a time when no one messed with the ILA or the ILWU!
caucus99percenter:
I slipped up: You are 100 percent right.
But the issue, as a post here at Naked Capitalism pointed out — I bet it was by Rob Urie, is that labor law follows and codifies the status of management-labor relations.
I agree on the repeal of Taft-Hartley, yet labor is going to have the lead the way and take down one or more major U.S. businesses. To show who is boss.
Instead of “back to,” it has to be framed as something overdue and suitable to the present: “Let’s take out the trash, fellow workers.”
There is already efforts to build capacity to conduct a general strike. The call for unions to align their contracts to expire on May Day 2028 by the United Autoworkers Union (UAW) is a start. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) have already jumped on board.
This is not a silver bullet. Many complain of the 2028 date as being “too late.” But in my experience as a union organizer, this is a realistic if tight time line. The problem has been that most unions and working class people have not been doing the disciplined structure-based organizing at scale for a long time (since Taft-Hartley). So it will take time to relearn what just about every worker knew in the 1930s and 40s.
And it will take time for workers to reclaim their unions from career-oriented leadership who have so far been adept at maintaining their rice bowl while cutting off any meaningful development of power outside of the Democratic Party.
If these organizing methods are widely practiced, as the workers at the Amazon warehouse on Staten Island used more or less, it is a resilient power based on the importance of each individual working collectively. And if Erica Chenowith’s research is anywhere near accurate, 3.5% of a population engaged in persistent, crisis-inducing action can force elites to negotiate. That’s a lot of people, but much less than “everyone.”
One last note, as an illegally striking teacher in West Virginia said a few years ago, there is no such thing as an illegal strike, only an unsuccessful one.
And even the title, “The Next American Constitution”, highlights a potential path. Yes, why not rewrite the Constitution? Propose an alternative form of government? Begin an obviously needed movement to separate corporation and money from state and politics, starting with your suggestions. Or how about a no-president-at-all movement, how about true participary democracy? eDemocracy? So many possibilities! Each setback on the political front is an opportunity, it just needs to be seen as such, but the piece deflates rather than inspires.
I could have sworn back in the anti-war days….oh wait, the left is pro-war, pro-genocide now… So that would probably be the priority, to get it back to its first principles. Can’t fight the pro-war far right from the same side.
2xJACOBIN
This Is America
By Daniel Bessner
Donald Trump’s authoritarian second term has led critics to describe him as a fascist in the mold of Adolf Hitler. But Trump’s reactionary politics are all-American — and the path to defeating him runs through reform of America’s antidemocratic institutions.
https://jacobin.com/2025/03/trump-fascism-antidemocratic-american-history
Democrats Have Learned Absolutely Nothing From Defeat
By Ben Burgis
Rather than focusing on the actual harms Republicans are inflicting on the American working class, Democrats are using the Signal group chat leak to obsess over violations of norms and protocols. This strategy is doomed to fail.
https://jacobin.com/2025/03/signal-group-chat-yemen-democrats
p.s. As to the post – I would assume the biggest threat will initially be regarded/painted as “less political”, i.e. economic change via use of A.I.. Used against the workforce, against social security, against healthcare, used for surveillance by law enforcement.
The allegedly “a-political” as the back door. Sold on the premise “its technological progress, dude. You can´t be smashing machines again.”
And you won´t have meaningful pushback against any of this. Where should it come from? The media? The unions? Church?
Just as Norman Finkelstein put it: SCOTUS won´t act because for all parties the system works.
So the Constitutional change won´t concern the Constitution itself on a widely debated level. Its gonna be the underlying economic realities that will suffer and be transformed.
Just look at Taibbi/Kirn – as much as they love their capitalist economy so do Americans agree on that.
And everyone opposing is a Marxist even for many who would not vote for Trump. And Marxism means Stalin.
So we are back in the 1950s again but with much less resistance by labour and academia both being much less educated on the history of the Left.
Good Night, and Good Luck, America.
To weigh in and comment:
1) Trump has, say, a statistically 33% chance of dying in office. ( 20%, historically because he is a POTUS and 50% , year to year , because of his age).
2) First, the outliers will throw ‘wrenches into the machinery’, e.g torching Teslas. Tesla is overvalued and over leveraged. Musk might find fianancial difficulties, but this won’t change Project 25.
3) There is a possibility that the splits in the House may reach parity. This is the exercise of the 1stt Amendment via vote. Trump’s best strategy would be to get peace somewhere and step down while he has Congress. Vance would become POTUS and pardon Trump. Note: Biden should have done this when he had his chance to leave a ‘legacy’.
4) The Democrats have to resolve the issue of being loyal to their donor class or to popular aspirations. This would take new leadership. One conflict is that the younger generation doesn’t realize that its members are being made into indebted wage serfs while, at the same time, they aspire to join the 1% via speculation in bitcoin.
5) Two events could casuse a ‘Constitutional Crisis’. Mass protests and Trump defying the Judicial system. E.G. If the Court called the US Marshalls and Bondi said No Go; then what? Would the military, independently step in to defend the Constitution. If mass protests and Trump called in the IDF, Consigliere Prince with a Private Praetorian Guard, or the Army to use live rounds to dispel the crowd, then what. This could lead to organzied rebellion. Does Trump ‘have’ the Generals and does he have the ‘enlisted’ soldier? (Both of whom have sworn to uphold the Constitution). Note: the legal dispute , Succession, in the Civil War was settled on the battlefield and not in court.
Maybe the first pre-qualification for leadership should be a willingness to take and live by the no-crypto pledge.
I pledge on my honor that I will not use crypto and that I will not tolerate those who do.
If google numbers are right, there are over 120 million registered voters who did not vote for Trump. Some 50 million of which did not vote for either party (rough rounding up of figures).
So, if the assault on SocSec, Medicare, and other federal programs/agencies continue, will there not be a Trumpian shellacking of sorts in the midterms at least?
(Situation fluid, I know, anything will be quantumly determined).
My opinion is that the Constitution and Federal laws won’t be changed or suspended, they will just be re-interpreted and selectively enforced.
Lots of historical examples. The president can now wage war without congressional oversight or approval.
The Snowden revelations resulted in no pushback from Congress whatsoever. They wouldn’t even prosecute Clapper for lying right to their faces.
The government censored Facebook and Twitter, but the Supreme court case to challenge it (Murtha v Missouri) was thrown out on a technicality.
Trump is just continuing this pattern.
I think there will be elections in 2026 and 2028, simply because elections don’t matter anymore.
The Onion Article dated 2018 reminds me that Democrats have been crying “wolf” for a long time when it comes to Trump. Is the wolf really at the door this time?
I think people should admit to themselves that the Right Wing Revolutionaries from Reagan onward have been making the Revolution and advancing it step by step. Now under Trump it is in its visible Final Stages.
Trump is the Revolution Figurehead. The Revolution is the Triple Nazi Revolution ( Christianazi, White Power Republicanazi, Biznazi).
People against all that should drop their romantic attachment to the Revolutionary pose ( ” Its the Revolution, Man!” ) and get comfortable with being the New CounterRevolution. Because after all, they want to counter and reverse and ideally destroy the Triple Nazi Revolution, going all the way back to its Thatcher-Reagan Revolutionary roots. And then institute a pure New Deal Reaction. Back to the Future.
” We are the Counter Revolution”.
Who’s the contra now, eh?
This will not be pretty. Remember that Reagan “secretly” defied Congress to fund and arm the original ‘Contras’ of Nicaragua. Look up Oliver North, or, for a cautionary tale, the story of his secretary, Fawn Hall.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_North
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fawn_Hall
As folks like Lenin, Trotsky, Mao and others taught; when you revolt, give it all, blood, toil, tears and sweat.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood,_toil,_tears_and_sweat
The American Constitution is overestimated. It failed not so long after its implementation with the Civil War. The nation’s flourishing after that conflict has less to do with the Constitution and more to do with the vast, vast frontier–conquered and expropriated–that allowed for colonization as a replacement for real politics, much as in the ancient world and in Great Britain with Australia: when the prols get uppity, send them to the “empty” reaches to settle the land and act as a garrison against the indigenous people living there. A pressure release valve.
America has reached the stage where there’s no appropriate land left for colonization, and even if there were, its people are not conducive to the highly skilled labor necessary to live off it, having been over-specialized in some narrow economic–often time service-oriented–field with expectations of a high standard of living, not that of the toiling, desperate frontiersman. I sometimes think that the Trump-wing of the bourgeoisie, taking its lessons (like Trump himself) from the 19th Century, see Canada and Greenland as the new frontiers that they can garrison with America’s angsty surplus population.
The next “American Idol”-type entertainment phenomenon might be “Greenland Acres!” where disaffected American youth, living in coffin apartments, complete for free homesteads in our new “Golden Territories,” as Trump will probably brand them.
And what becomes of the natives? Off to the “rez?” Or simply exterminated?
In Trump’s mind, if Greenlanders don’t surrender, they can join the Palestinians in the international bantustan the West’s setting up for all the world’s exiled rabble-rousers. Think El Salvador meets Liberia meets Gaza.
I’m kinda on same page. I think that with rights come responsibilities. You MUST vote but have a “none of the above” option.
As alternative the group in mainland Europe who took the work I and collaborators did and translated it to voting might be worth investigating (most least voting). NB I had no input to that work…..I just read about it and thought it sounded like an interesting application of our work.
But I definitely think neither the UK nor USA has constitution/conventions fit for purpose.
If “none of the above” wins, the election should be re-run with the previous candidates barred.
Will they be under the Golden Dome?
Your “Greenland Acres” made me laugh so hard, I had to link a clip of the show that inspired it. It kinda fits anyway. (Were the writers trying an “Alice’s Restaurant” takedown of the draft that could pass on a network sitcom?)
Interesting if troubling “what if” reflection. Back in the states, as the result of the Trump/ Musk wrecking ball, more and more public protests have been forming in red sates, as reported by local press, never mind blue states. Social Security is a lifeline that has no political affiliation, thereby creating the probability of huge protest coalitions. It’s the reason why GOP leadership has “recommended” GOP Congress members not to hold in-person constituent meetings. So far, those that have been held have been chaotic for those Rep.s.
If all was going according to plan, Rep. Stefanik’s nomination as UN Ambassador wouldn’t have been pulled down. The fear is that her Congressional seat would go Democratic, as other local elections have in the last few weeks. SCOTUS seems to have the weakling, though real, disposition to stop Trump’s attempt to dismantle the Judicial branch. Moreover, with massive protests that would likely follow any future nuclear attacks on the country’s institutions, the military would have to intervene. Would they feel comfortable supporting an autocratic system? No.
N.Y. Republican Elise Stefanik withdraws nomination for U.S. ambassador to the U.N.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uSPf4QEHOI
Veterans
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQ1ywzize94
Sample of recent public protests
• Washington State: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMTl2Xlm36o
• Tallahassee: https://www.wctv.tv/video/2025/03/27/tallahassee-seniors-protest-outside-congressman-neal-dunns-office-over-social-security-concerns/
• Kalamazoo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFT-ojUg3cg
• Wilkes-Barre, PA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwTq9inw7ck
• Wisconsin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3sO3q-QFB0
• Saginaw: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcRPK5F3770
• Pennsylvania Capitol: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=jd66DnhgBQs
• Louisville, KT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZqoS1Tv8Cc
• Nashville TN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqgX1x5sxgs
There is no way the Repugs will lose Stefanik’s district, whether she stays or goes, and thinking otherwise is the kind of magical thinking that gave us Robert Mueller votive candles and Pennsylvania state senate elections as national bell-weathers.
Try again, D’s, and maybe try a some actual politics, instead of declarations of moral superiority, for once.
The problem is team blue has had some success in the past running on “Orange Man bad”. The optics around social security are so bad they might indeed flip Stefanik”s district. Who knows and does it really matter at this point?
“Orange Man Bad” optics last for 3 hot seconds at best, a basic lesson from 2020 that Democrats somehow still refuse to acknowledge (assuming good faith). The only thing that would work is concrete promises that are then duly delivered, not whatever the hell Senator Chuck E. Cheese thinks he’s doing now.
Oh, and as for the luxurious quality politicians that ooze out of anti-Orange politics, look no further than Pennsylvania’s cave gremlin, Fetterman. Man, I really do wonder what horrendous blackmail the Mossad has on him.
The long and short of it is that the only thing to which you Americans can positively contribute is somehow heckling America’s insane war plans for the coming decade. Those won’t change even if Trump 2.0 goes down in flames. President Ocasio-Cortez is still going to bomb Iran. I don’t envy you guys.
If American voters decided to pre-forgive every officeseeker for every blackmailable thing, then those officeseekers would no longer be blackmailable, even if winning office.
” I did this, this, and this. If you vote for me anyway, I can’t be blackmailed over this, this and this because you all already know all about this, this and this. Because I just told you.”
I don’t envy you guys, thanks, the absurdity of my surroundings and my lack of agency are a drag, but there are others worse off I guess.
If you hail from a place where leadership is competent I do envy you. It’s been a stretch since we’ve had such.
Nope, no competent leadership here either, I’m an Arab. I too am commenting here as a coping mechanism for the absurdity of my surroundings and my lack of agency. And now with Trump’s dick-waving about Iran, we’re really in for it this time. I’m just wondering how far our “leadership” will bend for the American war effort.
When I read or hear people say, or ask “What if the Right wins absolutely” I stop them and ask “What do you mean, Right?”. That term as well as left wing, conspiracy theory, communist, centrist – they just don’t function anymore. I’ve been as “liberal” as one could imagine my whole life, yet now, many friends accuse me of being “right Wing” or “Trump lover”. Way too simplistic and ill defined. Now what can replace those terms is debatable, but they just don’t work anymore. This author needs to define his (I’m assuming they are a him) terms, especially ones that form the basis of the argument.
I can’t get over how MSN calls Glenn Greenwald “Right Wing”. Give me a break!
I agree, all terms need working definitions. Political terms can be conceptualized with an x and y axis: we have the left/right axis and the authoritarian/libertarian axis. https://www.politicalcompass.org/
The new “left” in the USA (like the UK) is anti-labor, anti-working class, pro-war, pro-oligarchy, and hard authoritarian. They also use superficial “identity politics” to virtue signal that they are somehow different than the right-wing authoritarians.
This is just political theater and distraction: there is no choice, the oligarchy (aka “donor class” “ruling class”) fund and control the parties and bribe politicians and judges.
The Political Compass is a hilarious scam that only exists to promote the idea of the “authoritarian/libertarian axis”, something which definitively doesn’t exist in real-life politics. Libertarianism isn’t real. You need state authority to enact “libertarian” policies, as seen right now with Musk and DOGE (and Milei). Libertarianism cannot survive the collision with the material realities of politics. Might as well advocate for the abolishing of Earth’s gravity, make up a “gravitationalist/floatationist axis” and accuse those evil gravitationists of supporting the idea of granny falling down the stairs. Oh, you know what, I’ll take a moderate position. Let’s cut Earth’s gravitational constant only by half. That should spare granny a few bones.
I think you got lost somewhere and purposely twisted my comment and purposely miss the point. – simply offering some clarification of vocabulary and terms cannot be harmful. We can think for ourselves. But it seems like you just showed up out of nowhere to shit on everyone. Maybe cut down on the laxatives and offer something helpful instead.
Laxatives notwithstanding, my point is that politics cannot exist on simplistic linear axes, and certainly not on two of them, and absolutely not on that one made-up axis. You’ll need to keep adding more dimensions to your model, or even bending and twisting the axes (literally, that’s what they do when they talk about “horseshoe theory”. Real-life politics exceed the capability of the axis model. It goes all non-euclidian).
Of course. But you still missed the point.
At the moment, I’d bet on Vance as the future come 2028. The question of whether Trump would dump Musk at some point of disagreement is I think backward. It’s more likely Musk and the technofascists will drop Trump and go with a more stable on-of-them guy in Vance.
If I had my druthers and could be history’s showrunner for a day, disillusioned MAGA would go with maverick Thomas Massie — one of the rare GOPers who can stand on principle and oppose Trump & Co. on important issues, without going in for the idpol and gaslighting the Democrats can’t seem to cure themselves of.
The American populace is too distracted, too specialized, and too atomized to mount any meaningful revolt. The traditional structures necessary for cultivating what Ibn Khaldun termed asabiyyah—group solidarity, a prerequisite for revolution—have been systematically dismantled. The left-liberal assault on religion, marriage, and kinship has eroded communal bonds, while the right’s reactive culture wars have created a negative feedback loop of alienation. The result is a society where individuals lack not only the means but also the purpose to revolt.
Social media has filled this void, producing generations of apathetic, disillusioned people who exhibit little concern for their own survival, much less collective action. The U.S. government, in alliance with oligarchic power, has achieved near-total subjugation—physically, mentally, spiritually, and politically. There will be no revolution, no reform, only a protracted and uneventful decline.
Demographic collapse only accelerates this trajectory. Plummeting birth rates (particularly among the historic majority population) have rendered mass immigration an economic necessity, further destabilizing any lingering sense of shared identity. There is no historical parallel for this situation: a settler-colonial state, built on unstable foundations, cannot endure indefinitely. The American experiment, already in its senescence, will not be renewed—only managed into obsolescence.
If current trends continue, the U.S. may regress into a neo-antebellum model—a system where racial and class hierarchies harden under the veneer of liberal capitalism. The white working and middle classes, already experiencing declining life expectancy and economic precarity, could see further immiseration as automation and offshoring erode stable employment. Meanwhile, mass incarceration—functionally a system of racialized penal labor—would persist, ensuring that Black and brown populations remain trapped in a cycle of state-controlled exploitation.
At the top, the oligarchy would continue importing highly skilled foreign labor (primarily from Europe and Asia) to maintain technical industries, while suppressing domestic wage growth. This mirrors the antebellum South’s reliance on immigrant artisans and engineers (often German or Irish) to manage infrastructure that enslaved Africans were deliberately excluded from mastering. The difference today is that the new “slave” class isn’t legally owned—it’s indebted, incarcerated, or algorithmically managed.
Good analysis if we were living in an otherwise stable global environment. “Protracted and uneventful” not going to happen, because a hungry mob is an angry mob. I imagine the shared experience of children who are starving will quickly patch up an otherwise “too distracted, too specialized, and too atomized” populace, although I have my doubts if this even matters.
The way I see it, time is short for a fourth constitution. An open ended “state of emergency” will substitute nicely, see “war on terrorism”.
Again I ask, how will your county Sheriff’s Department go when the chips are down? Will they enforce the will of robber Barrons in the next wave of bankruptcies and foreclosures, or will they see to the defense of their neighbors?
Regarding that last bit, I’m thinking of trying to organize a friendly softball game, Sheriff’s Dept vs local high school girls team to be held at the local fair. This would be disguised as a fund raiser, the true intent is to remind the local deputies that the people they serve might be worth defending from higher order predators.
Nicely put: “indebted, incarcerated, and algorithmically managed” That’s what we call “freedom and democracy” eh.
That is very well put indeed.
But I’m not sure that this decline will be “uneventful”.
Eventually there will be starvation, epidemics, mass violence, mass arrests etc.
And every event like that will have consequences and impacts.
Ooooo . . . here’s a cynical life tip: ” If you are at the Courthouse, always check behind the toilets for bribe
money that hasn’t been collected yet.”
https://www.reddit.com/r/meirl/comments/1jm28rg/meirl/
Yves, thanks for posting this. My one view is to start building a people’s party right now. We have several years but we can get there. In the meantime, boycott elections as long as only R’s run against the D’s. Of course you’ll see some calling themselves “independent” but that just for show. Once elected, they’ll join one of the two parties. We have to get a party that has 25% or more.
Of course there’s always the chance that one can bail and go outside the country but where?
Here’s a Gizmodo rewrite of a paywalled Wired article about how Musk and DOGE plan to write up a whole new computer system or something and migrate the whole entire Social Security Administration’s database-programbase-everything base from its original COBOL to some newer DOGEbag system in “just a few months”. It may not be Musk’s secret plan to destroy Social Security by destroying the entire everything-base in the process of migrating over, but that will be the result. And of course they will burn the COBOL original with fire to make sure it is vaporised and ashed.
I saw the link to the original Wired article on a reddit, and someone in the comments thread said that “everyone who happens to learn about this” should get the hardest of possible hard copies of their social security documents, receipts, etc. and store them in a physically safe place, so as to be able to contest for your Social Security when the Department of DOGEbag tells you that your records burned up in a Courthouse Fire, they don’t exist, they never existed, etc.
The only way to prevent this would be for thousands of heavily armed senior and near-senior combat veterans who know how to kill to surround and fill the SSA building before the DOGEbags get there . . . so many heavily armed Sinister Seniors that the Army, Federal Marshalls, would not even dare to try removing them.
Here is the link.
https://gizmodo.com/doge-plans-to-rewrite-entire-social-security-codebase-in-just-a-few-months-report-2000582062
Based on what we know about the DOGEjugend geniuses and the available time frame, what percentage of the new codebase will be ChatGPT vibe-code?
My best guess is that there will be a huge and perhaps quite bloody political street-fight over the type of State power that will exist in the U.S. in the coming decades.
This will take place within the legal framework of an extremely ambiguous constitution in which key concepts like the separation of powers, checks and balances and federalism are nowhere explicitly stated. In addition, “legislative,” “executive, and “judicial,” power clauses are also not clearly defined.
It was probably the genius of James Madison to purposely shy away from any overt statements about any of these key constitutional concepts–allowing maximum fluidity of interpretation about the exact degree of authority and power inherent in any of them.
Maybe it is this very absence and emptiness of our constitution that has, so far, enabled it and us to negotiate effective transitions from generation to generation–even with swords drawn and sometimes used.
I’ve leaned into the camp of a future America, absent another yet possibly worse Pandemic, a full on economic upheaval* or revolution in the lower 48 begins to resemble the Hunger Games and or possibly the film series The Purge. Hinting that today the Purge has more of a highest value property dwellers not only live in gated communities but they afford all the best in security and home surveillance. If you’re outside the gate then you’re just a second rate loser in life ( sarcasm ). My opinion in summary, this is shorthand for “Americans you’re on your own !”.
The Republican party of Reagan, for all those ills included a very skilled senior person like James Baker, who trained as a lawyer in Houston and served in several key roles in the Reagan and Bush administrations. I can’t say just off top of my head who is close to that ilk in the current environment or in this administration. If they are there it’s probably in a lower position.
Democrats on the other hand seem to be in a real state of flux. Broadly, most of leadership roles at the national level are all just not very young and the talented risers ( where they might or do exist ) currently run state governments. But keep tight with all the “good and like minded” billionaires or your aspirations will not last for long.
Under this scenario, the High Gaters would have enough armed force to keep us American losers from getting past their High Gates. But would they have enough armed force to stop us American losers from welding their High Gates shut so that they could not get out? Would they have enough armed force to keep us from killing every one of them who comes out the gate or outside of their walls? If so many American losers filled all the supply roads into the High Gated Communities with so many IEDs that no supplies could get past the gates, how long would the High Gated Americans survive?
Or what if some American losers could finagle their way into supply-chain companies getting goods and services past the High Gates? What if those American losers started sending in poisoned food? Or even better, time-delay poisoned food?
Democrats always claim to be about “lifting up” people who suffer from injustice. Yet as Neuberger himself makes very clear — Democrats are nothing but closet homophobes.
I don’t forget what Elizabeth Warren did to Alex Morse. Neuberger often has good insights. He ruins this piece by giving his own prejudice free rein.
Lordie, this is projection, big time. You owe Tom an apology.
First, Neuburger is gay.
Second, IM Doc has told me far more than I would like to know about billionaires’ plastic surgeries. Straight men get operated to have big penises and balls. So yes, they compete on dick size.
Are you saying that gay people can’t be or hold internal homophobia, or voice those thoughts? My own experience tells me otherwise.
As for the slur, I’m referring to the “bromance” memes consistently propagated by Democrats since at least 2016: Trump and Putin, now Trump and Musk. These have absolutely ZERO basis in substance. Zero. And everyone who spreads these knows that. Then why are they doing it? It’s a smear or slur. Thee technique was used to ugly perfection in Alex Morse’s primary race against Richard Neal.
Lambert himself railed against the homophobia in these slurs frequently in his own posts, including (as I recall) one of his last, where he excoriated (correctly) the AI-faked video of Trump sucking Musk’s toes.
No she is not. Plus I know about the surgeries a bunch of men get to do to make themselves larger. Look up my 1990s publications and posts in last 2 days.
There is an absolutely infamous study done before ethics committees were a thing. They claimed the study was about one thing but actually was assessing if homophobes were often closet cases. They actually (truly) got to put electrodes on men’s members when presented with pictures.
The guys from the first round of questions who were most homophobic exhibited the most tumescence when seeing gay pornographic pics. Very famous study.
As a gay man whose first professional project was 1997 I know there are things here that don’t add up. I don’t profess to know exactly what….. but unless you actually know what meds Elon is on or what surgery he may have had then maybe we should all pipe down.
I suppose in my original comment I should only have bolded the word bromance, which is the homophobic element here.
We all can read. I have doubts as to whether you can. I told you to apologize to Neuburger.
This is the last comment you make here if you do not.
I do not tolerate cheap attacks on site authors, which you doubled down on after being told he was gay. Had you bothered investigating, you would know he published for many years as Gaius Publius.
That is a stupid and cheap slur. It’s of the same level of patent bogosity of saying that anti-Zionist Jews are secretly self-loathing.
You need to apologize to Neuburger or you are no longer welcome here.
You really need to get over your misplaced moralizing. The fawning-over-Obama Dem media referred to a bromance between Obama and Tim Geithner. Geithner even though he looks like a indie movie star is straight (or mainly so, see below); I saw how he reacted to women when I met him. It was too reflexive to be an act.
Tons of nominally straight men have sex occasionally or more than occasionally with men. If you don’t know that, you need to get out more. Gay men tell me it is so common as to commonplace, particularly among married men.
It sounds like you can’t handle that reality and are attacking messengers who notice male-male attraction that looks to have some juice to it, even if it never gets sexual, and are also comfortable enough with homosexuality to banter about it.
No she is not. Plus I know about the surgeries a bunch of men get to do to make themselves larger. Look up my 1990s publications and posts in last 2 days.
There is an absolutely infamous study done before ethics committees were a thing. They claimed the study was about one thing but actually was assessing if homophobes were often closet cases. They actually (truly) got to put electrodes on men’s members when presented with pictures.
The guys from the first round of questions who were most homophobic exhibited the most tumescence when seeing gay pornographic pics. Very famous study.
As a gay man whose first professional project was 1997 I know there are things here that don’t add up. I don’t profess to know exactly what….. but unless you actually know what meds Elon is on or what surgery he may have had then maybe we should all pipe down.
What might happen is that rather than a new Constitution, the elites that run our country will continue to ignore it, and eventually, it will just be regarded as a quaint and obsolete document that has little relevance to the modern oligarchy. Why should the aristocrats and corporate lords make a different Constitution that lets them do whatever they want when they can just continue on the path of plutocratic inertia that we are on which largely lets them do what they want, anyway?
In terms of the hypothetical future of the US, perhaps Margaret Atwood was not far off the mark in the book Oryx and Crake which featured the US broken up into different corporate fiefdoms that acted like independent nation-states within their own borders who could do whatever they wanted to their “employees” that they legally owned within their territories.
In any case, I do not see any sort of mass, organized uprising happening in the US no matter how much the wealthy drives most of the population into poverty. This is because the FIRE sector also runs people’s banking systems and there are only four main payment processing companies. Upstarts can easily be debanked and blacklisted by payment processors, forcing defacto obedience without a single shot being fired and I expect the war on cash to continue at full-tilt.
You might get a few outbreaks of disorganized violence here and there, but it will mostly be unruly mobs with no goal or purpose venting at random bystanders. I doubt that police or military personnel would join in any sort of meaningful resistance when this happens because I am sure that new ideologies will be formulated to drill into the heads of recruits about just how much distance there is between them and civilians and how it will be their civic duty to violently put down any ungrateful rabble as we live in the “Best country on Earth”.
The American population will continue getting used to living in a post-empire corpro-kleptostate as we have been on this path for decades and the New Deal era will be regarded as some sort of fantasy as the generations that were around during that time die off. Trump is just the latest milestone we have reached as things came back down from the New Deal high which seems to be a one-off freak historical event in retrospect and something like it is unlikely to ever happen again in US history as our elites have put new measures in place from what they have learned since then.
I’ve been very dispirited following the increasing severity of COVID.
People engaging in behaviour they’d never do 10 years ago. I funded NC in practically first fund raise. That’s how long I’ve been here.
I’m sick of one or two troublemakers. “get” the views of Yves et al.
Ports on the west coast, ports on the east coast, NOLA, the food producing heartland, are all moot issues…there is a wild card in the deck no one talks about – the surface of the earth’s inability to sustain life regardless of politics.
The looming climate catastrophe is not a question of if, but when it will strike – flood, burn, blow, not to mention the bacteria and viruses rising out of melting ice that have been trapped for thousands of years.
Forget about politics, we are in the 11th hour on this place we call home and have systematically destroyed for profit.
Human life has jumped out of a plane without a parachute and is falling to earth. we’re gonna hit, we just don’t know when, but it’s not far off.