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It was a rough week for the Democratic Party. But, then again, most weeks now are hard weeks for the Democrats. For awhile now there have been whispers that have grown into open rumors regarding the direction of the Democratic National Committee. Hardly a meeting or call would go by without someone mentioning “the money.” Namely, that the DNC has none. And, then, someone would say something about “Ken,” usually in reference to Chair Ken Martin needing to update his resume.

On Sunday The New York Times finally published an article a lot of us have been waiting on for some time now. In it, Martin was predictably portrayed as a sinking ship, a paranoid, failed manager reduced to screaming at employees, slinging his cell phone at their desks, and mismanaging the DNC while forcing one person after another to sign NDAs. The cash situation was finally revealed to the public and it’s bad, so bad that the DNC has taken to asking vendors to bill them after the Midterms. The money gap between the Democrats and Republicans is staggering. $2 million in debt for the former, well over $120 million for the latter. Hoping to get ahead of the whole thing, Martin started a Substack last week that has only published one sweaty and desperate excuse for the disaster.

Meanwhile, in Michigan, the scene got uglier. Rep. Haley Stevens received the endorsements of Governor Gretchen Whitmer and South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn. It’s been awkward, at best. Whitmer’s stock has collapsed and she’s currently trying to sell Michigan on data centers that no one wants. To help the situation, and to fend off challenger Abdul El-Sayed, nearly $30 million in AIPAC money has been injected into the campaign. Then, an operation to pay social media users and influencers $1,500 per post in support of Stevens was uncovered. Oh, and Stevens was forced to fire Caitlin Legacki, a consultant, when it was revealed that Legacki also counted Palantir among her clients. Not to mention that Stevens’ campaign has taken a notable and ugly turn as she works with establishment Democrats to ward off an insurgent candidate who wishes to move the party left.

The debacle in Michigan is just yet another instance in a long line of moments where the existential dilemma of the party is being exposed. And this intraparty fight is revealing something much more important than the dynamics of the Stevens / El-Sayed matchup, just like the struggles at the DNC are about more than money and Martin’s tenure.

The Bleed

Political analysis has a tendency to suffer from a lack of context and large-picture consideration. Politics tends to function as a mad scramble that moves from one election to another in two year sprints while abandoning larger trends, all while the march of history continues on and the world itself changes with every passing day. The DNC story becomes one of mismanagement. The Stevens affair just something that happened. Conversation focuses on polls and election predictions. What I’ve called “Chuck Todding” is the norm, which helps explain why the former host of Meet the Press has started paying his bills by offering viewers value bets on FanDuel’s prediction market betting. Instead of a fight for the betterment of society and a life and death struggle, it becomes sport and the human element is all but erased.

We are in the middle of a historic political realignment that goes much deeper than what happens in the November Midterms, if they are to even happen or be even remotely free and fair. Both the Democratic and Republicans parties are changing as the country changes. Continuing to treat this with stereotypical analysis is not only wrongheaded, but, with the rise of authoritarianism and worsening conditions, abjectly dangerous.

The battle between Democratic centrists and the Left, which has been intentionally characterized as being between Democrats and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), is about more than which candidates will be on the ballot in November. It is a symptom of this realignment and the large material and political change we’re experiencing.

Presently, the Democratic Party is hemorrhaging support.

The reasons are many, including a failure to properly oppose the rise of Trumpism and fascism and continued allegiance to corporate and wealthy donors over constituents, but it also boils down to the material and class changes within the United States. Rank and file members are doing their damnedest to undercut leftist challenges and, as anyone paying attention with objective perspective can tell you, it is a signifier of a problem much, much deeper than whether someone like El-Sayed wins the nomination.

We’ve entered a new chapter in our political cycle and hardly anyone wants to see it for what it is.

The Actual Political Spectrum and Party Structures

Lazy framing wins out because it’s simpler and quiets the harder and more uncomfortable aspects of politics. I can’t read an article or post about “the Left” when referring to Democrats without getting increasingly more frustrated. As I’ve said over and over, there has been no “Left” in this country for a long time as it has been undermined and destroyed, at least not in an organized fashion. That does appear to be changing, or is attempting to change. Here is what is sold to us in general discussions of politics within the media and by the political class.

In reality, the spectrum of our politics spans from the center-right to the far-right. The Democratic Party has effectively become a conservative alternative to the far-right, radicalizing nature of the GOP as it has become more and more fascistic. There is no Democratic Party agenda for large-scale change, merely a promise to preserve what remains after years of Republican dismantling. Occasionally there is discussion of infusion of wealth into the broader population (only when capitalism requires injections to stabilize its contradictions and avoid collapse), taxing the wealthy (though this rarely goes forward), or modest reform (this goes nowhere as a rule), but the general dynamic is a conservative party squaring off against a far-right party. Add to that the fact that castoff Republicans who helped create the modern GOP have left their party and joined the Democrats and they simply will not stop telling Democrats to “moderate” as they have become, inexplicably, some of the most popular and sought after commentators.

Beyond that, our actual alignment looks more like this:

The work of public-facing politics, as we have experienced, is to muddle the perception and to present to the public an “acceptable” span of political options. Stories and issues that are presented by corporate media communicate a narrative in which a host of specifically designed wedge issues give the appearance of a near 50/50 split (or, in some cases, a 45/45 split with the remaining ten being “independents” that need appealed to by the Democratic Party) while these issues, i.e. trans athletes in women’s sports, obscure a broad majority across political affiliation. Discourse is always directed away from this reality. It’s not “acceptable” to have robust and serious conversations about redistribution of wealth and resources, although that’s what voters are actually looking for. Geopolitically, there is very little distance between the parties as they are both dedicated to the pursuit of the American global project because it is, and here is the rub, serving capitalist whims. Domestically, the issues that are mostly hidden and obscured by designed wedge issues, are, once more, serving capitalist whims.

As wealth accumulation has grown, members of the Wealth Class and the eventual Oligarchical Class, which evolved from the redistribution of tens of trillions of dollars, have continually bought off politicians and eventually the parties. Each party is beholden to wealth stakeholders and corporate partners. As you can see below, most are shared.

These are very broad categories, obviously, and within each of them there are competing interests and capitalist blocs seeking to shift this policy or fine tune another to gain more an edge, but for the most part there is a virtual consensus on maintaining the status quo and present trajectory. Or, at least, the spectrum of discourse and debate that are considered “acceptable” at the legislative level and within corporate controlled media.

Here, in this example, you can see the main outlier: energy. This is why there is almost no consensus whatsoever when it comes to how our politics should move forward when it comes to climate change and why there is such a gap in worldview from the parties. The last major domestic battle, if you remember, was the introduction of the Green New Deal, which caused so much turmoil because the plan lay square in the middle of one of the dividing points between the parties. Rather than informed debate, we’re given moralistic framing that hides the material interests.

Another example: the Affordable Care Act. The fight over ACA was massive and seemed like a battle between the Democratic Party attempting to overhaul healthcare industry and the whole of the healthcare industry opposing it. However, a deeper examination finds that different factions within the industry fell on the separate sides. Massive Insurance companies, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies partnered with the Obama Administration to create the legislation (based, it should be noted, off Republican Mitt Romney’s plan in Massachusetts) because it ensured them of a flood of new customers. On the other side: smaller insurers that might not survive protections for preexisting conditions and the medical device field that was initially hit with an excise tax before the GOP repealed it in 2019. Instead of this being the focus of political discourse, specifically which interests were being served, it became a fight between “socialism and liberty.”

This set-up is why even issues with broad, super-majority consensus in opposition, like A.I. (which is despised by something like 75% of Americans), data centers (opposition hovers around 70%), and ICE (its approval rating is roughly 30%) retain support by both parties with notable exceptions. Then, something like universal healthcare, which newer polls show upwards of 70% of Americans believe would be good and necessary, is something that is conspicuously absent from the party platforms.

Below the corporate partners and stakeholders, which largely control the legislation and platforms of the parties, there is a sub donor level that looks like this:

The Democratic Party shifted in the late 1980’s and specifically in the 1990’s away from its union labor base and toward corporations and what has been called the Professional Managerial Class (PMC). This is a college-educated group that holds positions within management of corporations and institutions like higher education. The GOP is backed, at this level, by small and medium business owners who are locally or regionally powerful (think the owners of a franchise of automobile dealerships) but resent the power of national and transnational corporations. For reference purposes, we’ll refer to them here as Barons. The GOP, sometimes successfully and sometimes unsuccessfully, attempts to balance the contradiction between, in this case, the Wealth and Upper Middle Classes with the Oligarchical class, which is where you see some of the dysfunction and discord within the party.

Below the sub donor bases are the voting bases, which are extremely polarized and, it should be mentioned, are where most of the designed “wedge issues” are employed in order to obfuscate larger class-based interests.

While the Democratic Party’s voter base is much more diverse than the GOP’s, the latter has the advantage of largely having a cohesive worldview or narrative that is often strung together, and predictably radicalized, through the use of prejudices and fearmongering. While the Democratic Party, as the conservative party, intends to hold together the status quo, the Republicans tap into a deep-seated fear that the world is changing in dangerous ways. Because of this, the contradictions of the GOP, namely in how the stakeholders are always represented, the sub donors mostly represented, and the voter base largely betrayed, are navigated by continually communicating an existential crisis in which certain apocalyptic doom is inevitable if the voter base doesn’t support the party.

Of course, the Democrats have their own version of this. While promising to fight against Trumpism and fascism, they have maintained some support at the polls, but the dissonance between what the party says and what it actually does is much, much more palatable as the GOP is allowed, because of dynamics and psychology, to behave aggressively while the Democrats are kept in a conservative posture.

This, naturally, creates a tension that is wrenching the Democratic Party, and to a lesser extent the GOP, apart.

Material Conditions and the Radicalized Orphans

It is predictable when tracing the trajectory of corrupted parties that serve capitalist markets to see a point at which the public-facing structures and the internal incentives come to a boiling point. For the Democratic Party, it is untenable to serve the interests of corporate benefactors while satisfying the voter base, especially as conditions continue to deteriorate. Lacking a base-level motivator, like white, patriarchal terror, all that’s left is a recent history of disappointments, which is why the Democratic Party’s approval rating (between 36% and 40% depending on the poll) is roughly equal to the GOP’s, which is seen as historically unpopular and dangerous, even while the electoral makeup of our institutions gives the Republicans a built-in advantage.

To make matters worse, the gobbling up of resources by the wealth and oligarchical classes is being fueled by the destruction of the social safety net, plundering of public wealth, and the destruction of standard of living. While the Democratic Party depends on white collar support, the Middle Class is being effectively liquidated. Its reliance on college-educated voters is notable as enrollment drops because of affordability and the end of guaranteed employment following graduation. Fold A.I. into the mix, which has promised to eliminate upwards of half of all white collar jobs, and you’ve got a real problem.

A growing number of Americans rightfully feel unrepresented by the major parties. This is not limited to the Democratic Party as the GOP is going through its own changes even while many continue to believe it is a homogeneous body. This has created a class of voters that is going largely unseen and misunderstood. I call them the Radicalized Orphans.

Within this group are a variety of individuals and organizations that have reached a point of dissatisfaction with the parties in which they are either openly questioning them, working against them, or have given up on politics altogether. Their ideologies are disparate. Some are dedicated Leftists and Fascists and informed at varying degrees. Some are confused. Some simply don’t care.

Socialists and Leftists are defined by a desire to redistribute wealth, resources, and control to differing degrees, including some who wish to the New Deal Era (which was a capitalist fix in the shape of limited Democratic Socialism), and most to break the duopolistic, capitalist hold I have described. Fascists and White Nationalists want to change the status quo in the favor of their own defined “in groups,” including white men and Christians, and many want to see a shift in power from urban to rural and overtaking pluralistic society as a cultural revolution. Angry Liberals are angry at both the Democratic Party’s unwillingness to addressing material conditions and resist the fascist direction of the country and, increasingly, irritated by the party’s frustrated lecturing as to their reality being “imagined” or “hysterical.” Non-Voters, pictured here to the left but spanning the spectrum, have simply become so disillusioned by the entire thing and, for a variety of reasons, have stopped voting and paying attention.

Considering these groups are now either politically homeless or battling with the parties for control, the actual political spectrum looks, and yes, this is a bit rudimentary, but still, more like this:

Presently, the Leftists are attempting to drag the Democratic Party to the left and Angry Liberals, through their critique and either enthusiastic or reluctant alliance with the Leftists, are attempting to pull the party at least to the actual center. Fascists and White Nationalists, particularly those who see Donald Trump and MAGA as too moderate and as failures, seek to emphasize the authoritarian elements of the project and do away with the contradictions. Considering these Political Orphans as a collective make up a majority of the population, eventually something has to give.

Realignment

What we can be sure of is that, as long as this paradigm persists, and all financial incentives are so determined as to make this paradigm continue, more and more people will join the class of Political Orphans. This can happen through dissatisfaction and material conditions worsening, including precarity growing and with the liquidation of the Middle Class, increased pressure on the Working Class, and growing exploitation of vulnerable populations, including people of color, the poor, women, the disabled, immigrants, and the LGBTQ+ community. What you get are a lot of pissed off, dissatisfied people and an unresponsive political system and environment. This tends to get very weird and very dangerous.

Leftists and Socialists will continue challenging the Democratic Party and pulling it left unless party apparatus doubles and triples down on undercutting them, which will further alienate the organized bodies like the DSA but also supporters within the population. Angry Liberals will either become Leftists and Socialists, Fascists and White Nationalists, or will throw up their hands and become Non-Voters. The Fascists and White Nationalists, unfortunately, have an advantage in that the GOP is actively cooperating with them and are presently sliding downhill into full alliance and an embrace, and no information or data suggests that’s going to slow down. Non-Voters, depending on whether certain ideologies change the parties, or depending on conditions, could suddenly re-engage and join either the Leftists and Socialists or the Fascists and White Nationalists.

Meanwhile, the voter bases, as established, will change as well. If the Middle Class continues to be liquidated, and more than likely they will, their conditions will deteriorate and they will join these Political Orphans. An example of this, and a very telling previous cycle, is the shift in 20th century Germany from the Weimar Republic to a battle between Communists and the National Socialist Party, which won power in part because the white Middle Class that had previously found Adolf Hitler repugnant embraced him as conditions worsened. Here, in the United States, there’s still a large possibility that sections of the Middle Class we now refer to as “Centrists” though they are on the right-side of the spectrum will in fact join the Fascists and White Nationalists should conditions deteriorate.

Presently there are many large vacuums that must be filled. Trump and MAGA gained power in no small part due to a maneuver I’ve come to call the Fascist Feint, which is where an absence of leftist critiques of capitalism among conservative liberals (i.e. the Democrats) opens the left flank and allows the Right to provide a facsimile of leftist critique that people yearn for and then do the bidding of the Wealth and Oligarchical classes. That feint will only continue and strengthen, especially as the Right moves beyond Trump and uses him as an example of captured opposition while promising to actually Make American Great Again. Already we are seeing fascist job programs in the form of ICE take root. The Democratic Party is actively shedding support by Angry Liberals and Socialists and Leftists and their voter base, to a group, is experiencing worsening conditions, threatening that they might move either left, right, or join the Non-Voters.

There’s a reason the Democratic Party is broke right now. Its voters are tired of giving money with no payoff. Instead of listening to their base, the party is relying even more heavily on corporate stakeholders and mega donors to fill their coffers and operate outside the party and in the shadows, creating campaigns like Stevens’ where support and enthusiasm is having to be manufactured. Likely, we will see even more institutional maneuvers like the efforts to block Bernie Sanders from the party’s nomination in 2016 and then 2020, which will only ostracize more supporters and move them into one of the other Political Orphan camps. It is likely, if that is the case, we will also see the Centrist Democrats embrace increasing surveillance, censorship, and oppression by state power pushed by the authoritarian Right and that, it should be obvious, will also alienate supporters. When you enter this part of the cycle, self-destruction tends to become the norm.

However it plays out, the political realignment will be powerful and transformational. In the 20th century alone we saw several, including the rise of Progressivism, the New Deal, and then the Neoliberal consensus. Progressivism and the New Deal erupted from grassroots, populist organizing at the community level and eventually overtook large portions of both parties. Neoliberalism was the result of organizing by the Wealth Class. We don’t know what direction this present situation will take, but we can infer what directions are possible.

Neither party can continue with the present alignment, in part because of changing support but also because capture of politics and the economy by the Wealth and Oligarch classes means increasing precarity is essential to their stakeholders and partners. The contradictions and polarized interests between the stakeholders and then the Sub Donor and Voter Bases creates an increasing friction that must be overcome in some fashion. We will see a new consensus, whether it is a Leftist Consensus that looks more like the New Deal or something we have yet to experience and an Authoritarian Consensus that will dutifully counteract discontent by getting rid of “meddlesome” elections and constitutional protections. Add in the expected economic fallout of a coming financial crisis and the entire economy being predicated on a disruptive technology like A.I., and you can bet the change is coming sooner than later.

Watching the lead up to November’s Midterms, if they are to take place or even be free and fair, it would be useful to view events through this lens. The Democratic Party is effectively at war with its own Sub Donor and Voter Base and attempting to mitigate their influence. The Republican Party is coalescing around smash-and-grab corruption and increasing authoritarian control as its president flirts with dealing a death blow to democracy. Even MAGA castoffs, angry with Trump for Epstein and Iran and worsening conditions, are presently stewing in radicalizing media preparing them for joining the Fascist and White Nationalist movements that will succeed Trump before his body goes cold.

Change is coming. It’s necessary to recognize that and make a choice, before the change arrives, what side of the battle you want to join.

It’s been one of those weeks.

In an age of gathering authoritarianism, oftentimes the movement forward is kinetic and brutal and explosive and occasionally it’s quiet, grinding, and just out of sight. A lot of parts are moving. The illegal and disastrous war in Iran continues and seems ready to escalate, doling out more and more death and ushering in a whole host of economic consequences that have been roiling for months, even years. The American Empire’s decline worsens, leading to more panicked “fixes” that will only exacerbate the downward spiral (more on this in a bit). Schisms within the two major parties continue, setting the stage for upheaval that probably still seems unthinkable at the moment.

Presently I’m working on a larger article and analysis that will attempt to reconfigure public perception of our political spectrum, which is so aggressively misunderstood that it literally hampers our ability to address problems and move forward, but I wanted to take some time to answer questions, which is an excellent exercise every time. Today we’ll be discussing the liberal / leftist schism within the Democratic Party and its associated commentariat, why a mass protest and collective action movement has yet to materialize and what might still spur it, how the world’s economic and political paradigms are changing, and concerns regarding the recent bill to “integrate” U.S. and Israeli forces, as well as the 30 year deal between the Trump Administration and Saudi Arabia to provide access to nuclear energy and, possibly, enriched uranium.

Thank you for everyone who wrote in and please feel free to send your questions for a future edition of the Dispatches Mailbag. They help me to address your interests but also serve as jumping off points for my own analysis. This edition is for paid subscribers. I would rather leave each of these free-of-charge and publicly available, but the future of Dispatches From A Collapsing State depends on support from paid subscribers. I know we have come to expect so much content for free, but independent journalism and media is a pursuit that depends on readers. I refuse to take corporate money or under-the-table payments from political groups or parties. I know others are more than willing to do that, but personally I find it reprehensible.

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Paul: I’ve been listening to the Muckrake for going on 8 years now and I’ve heard you predicting a civil war within the Democratic Party for a long time. Now that it’s here I’m stunned by how it’s taking shape. My own political journey has gone from being politically agnostic to liberal and then progressive to now effectively radicalized by these injustices and awful behaviors. All I want is for people to live better lives and for this terrible time to turn into something better. And yet I’m being accused of being antisemitic online (I’m Jewish and have been to Israel twice and was disturbed by what I saw) and every other liberal personality is screaming at me in this never ending assault on my ears and sensibilities. How long is this going to go on? Where is this going?

First of all, I can’t imagine how maddening that must be. There’s a level of vitriol and emotional attack behind all of this that I find absolutely disgusting. I’ve had so many conversations with Jewish friends and colleagues and almost to a person they’re exhausted by this and deeply saddened that their religion and culture has been co-opted by a regime of war criminals. It’s sickening.

As for the Democratic schism, I talked a little about it on the most recent episode of The Check-In and I’ll just reiterate that it’s to be expected. Party apparatchik and associated commentators have a lot to lose if the party changes as it should. Party within the power is disastrously entrenched and the cultural apparatus around it mirrors that fact accordingly. It helps to understand the concepts of base and superstructure within Marxist analysis. So many of the personalities you’ve been plagued with your entire life (on cable news, in corporate video and print media, etc.) have their livelihoods directly tied to the Democratic Party continuing to do the same things and serve the same interests. They’ve made an incredible amount of money by steering discourse and imagination itself. If the party were to change, which would also include a change in interests and the superstructure and base itself, these people would be out of work, out of influence, and, on an individual level, they’d be faced with their own failures, which is unacceptable.

For example, if Liberal Commentator / Influencer X were to spend all their careers assuring people that “Leftists” could never win elections and that the only viable political strategy is to become more and more conservative, which serves their corporate and wealth class benefactors, and there was a major paradigm shift wherein it was shown that leftist policies and actions and reform were overwhelmingly popular, they wouldn’t just lose influence, the entire game would be exposed. That’s why you’re seeing the violent attacks and vitriol now. They’re fighting for their professional lives. The jig is up. All they can do is slander and berate people in hopes of kicking the can down the road, even if that means things will inevitably get worse.

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On Thursday night, President Donald Trump commandeered the airwaves for a prime-time address and told the American people a horror story. China had stolen voter data on over 200 million plus Americans and had been trying to coerce our corporations and journalists into smearing him in order to influence the 2020 Election and remove him from power. This insidious plot, which also included manufactured ballots for Joe Biden, had been covered up by Deep State operatives within the intelligence community, an effort an anonymous agent had characterized as a “secret government.” Prior, former president Barack Obama had hidden similar information, going so far as to distribute burn bags to members of his administration so that they might destroy the evidence. This larger scheme ran much further than the government, its leaders, and members of the economic elite and journalist class. Democratic Party operatives had been raided by the FBI because they had falsified voter registrations. To make matters worse, our voting machines are vulnerable to hacks and tampering. Trump characterized this as a “crisis” that necessitated both the passage of the SAVE Act by Congress and a flurry of investigations and prosecutions.

Of course, this horror story was fictional, a thrown-together, half-ass tapestry combining disproven claims, false leads, and held together by conspiracy theory threads long since disintegrated. But it didn’t matter because the point of the speech was never to convince critics. The point was to begin the process of weaving this alternate reality into the larger political imagination.

It’s unclear whether the SAVE Act will be passed. It seems unlikely since it lacks necessary support and the GOP isn’t interested in killing the filibuster to push it through. This is a voter suppression bill, but it’s hardly the only effort being undertaken by the Trump Administration to affect elections. The Department of Homeland Security is hard at work threatening the states over a claim that 200,000 noncitizens are registered to vote. Gerrymandering has been a consistent tool of the trade and Republicans have spent years disenfranchising Black citizens. In the 2020 Election, Trump and cronies harassed public officials to falsify reports and since returning to power they’ve raided offices and seized voting machines. Even Dominion Voting Systems has been purchased by GOP election official Scott Leiendecker. Republicans have even gone so far as to question whether they will recognize Democrats who win Midterm elections, which creates the possibility of a massive constitutional crisis. And, who can forget, the attempted coup of January 6th.

The stakes are much bigger than the SAVE Act.

It’s free and fair elections themselves.

From studying authoritarians, there are many things I can tell you to expect. Increased surveillance. Oppression and violence when facing popular opposition. Widespread corruption. Self-destructive actions. White supremacist, patriarchal ideology that leads to in groups and out groups, the former enjoying all rights and protections and the latter being targeted by the state’s institutions. Colonial adventuring and destructive, unnecessary wars. And, it should go without saying, unrivaled antipathy toward democratic governance and a desire to do away with liberal democracy and elections altogether. If they can’t dispatch with elections, they will happily control them in a system that has come to be known as illiberal democracy.

Trump has now created, to use his own word choice, a “crisis” that could trigger extraordinary acts on his part, thus capitalizing on the unitary presidency that the wealth class and judiciary has realized and Trump and company have continually expanded. Here, terms and concepts become fungible. If he can claim there is a foreign threat equivalent to a wartime action coupled with internal treason, we’re not entirely sure how far things could go. This is a backstop, an ultimate act should all other means of manipulation and rigging fail.

Could he cancel or rig an election? Possibly. Political actions are fungible as we have been learning this past decade. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a president is immune to prosecution if they’re carrying out “official acts.” And, if he were to do so, we also know now that Congress would either comply with his crimes or conspire alongside him. The Supreme Court has shown a willingness to indulge this project and, should he attempt to do this, would you feel entirely confident of what the decision would be? Would you stake everything on a 5-4 decision either way? Not to mention how many court orders the Trump Administration has already defied.

Election interference is more than just canceling or rigging. Several operations are already underway as these conspiracies are redundant in nature. Marco Rubio and others have ramped up rhetoric about declaring “socialists” and the “far left” as terrorist groups and it’s not hard to imagine, as we’ve seen in other countries, and attempts here within the U.S., such as continual pushes to outlaw communists from seeking office, a situation where the GOP will try and ban leftists identifying as socialists from power. Trump and those around him have declined to say they will not use the National Guard or ICE to intimidate voters or patrol election sites. And, before Trump’s speech on Thursday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt refused to answer whether Trump would accept the Midterm results, which shouldn’t come as a surprise as he has refused to validate every election he’s ever been a part of until he had been victorious.

Just as we’ve seen over and over, several states will likely be plunged into legal battles following November’s results, and that’s if the election happens at all. Republicans have gained invaluable knowledge and experience with election denialism following 2020 and will build off their experiences navigating courtrooms and state-level mechanics, where several election deniers have sought power following that debacle.

Predictably, analysis following the address has missed the mark. Trump has been accused of simply re-litigating his 2020 loss and being a sore loser. Others merely criticized his delivery, which was obviously terrible, but it misses the point. What happened Thursday night was an introduction to a larger operation, which begins with sowing the seeds of an alternate reality where America’s elections can be manipulated and controlled. Relying on misrepresented and possibly even fabricated “evidence,” he began the process of normalizing this radical position and worldview. Many will dismiss it, obviously, on its face, but there will certainly be corporate media outlets and figures that take this narrative and grant it undeserved legitimacy.

We’ll see this in the predictable framing we’ve all grown used to. The GOP will push some voting restriction, or Trump will float some authoritarian action, and we’ll be inundated with sanewashing articles and columns about the need for “common sense reform” that includes infuriating wording like, “while the president’s actions could be seen as extreme, election reform is an issue needing addressed.” You’ll see bits of this insane speech littered throughout, including findings from the CIA and FBI that are spurious at best and reframed for authoritarian usage.

Again, we should not expect our elections moving forward to happen uninterrupted or to be free and fair. Perhaps they will be, and if so we should be relieved, but our eyes cannot continue to be set upon some future date where our votes will “save” us. Even if elections are held and are free and fair, we have already seen that the Democratic Party, as presently constituted, is not the “resistance” party we desire them to be and even major wins have failed to produce much in the way of reform or redirection. In fact, to even have the ability to vote, we must mobilize for collective action to counteract these plans and operations, especially should they come to fruition and interfere with our elections. It will not be enough to react if and when it happens. Such a reaction would likely chaotic, scattered, unorganized, and, possibly, futile because if there’s anything authoritarians enjoy more than ending elections it’s using the power at their disposal to crack down on dissidents, and all signs point to each one of us and our organizations potentially being designated as enemies of the state.

Trump’s address can’t be ignored. Despite social media accounts saying it was “boring” or “tired” or just “more of the same,” it constituted a new chapter in this authoritarian takeover. Once more: we are granted a gift whenever an aspiring dictator makes his intentions clear. Rather than plans and intentions transpiring behind closed doors, the public airing allows us the opportunity to predict and prepare. Trump is a buffoon, an embarrassment, and yes, any speech he gives is going to be self-indulgent and an intolerable bore. But we must listen if only for our own sake.

Some have already argued that he “can’t do this.” Many are the same voices who have told us time and time again what Trump and the authoritarians can’t do and then watched as he did exactly that. I want to believe, as much as anybody, that any attempt to subvert our elections would fail, but I am not going to simply hope that our institutions or corrupted politicians will stand in his way or that precedent will simply hold because it exists. In this period, with this man, with this fascist movement, I don’t have the privilege of believing that will simply be the case.

Work to get people elected who will promise to reform the system and change the Democratic Party, but also work beyond the ballot. This is a dangerous and unpredictable situation.

We simply can’t cede any more time or ground to the fascists.

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The vibes…have been bad. The summer is hot, the war with Iran continues and all the associated crises and problems are worsening just beyond the horizon, the Democratic Party is at war with itself, and things are weird and turbulent. Naturally, people have a lot of questions.

In this edition of Dispatches Mailbag, I’m tackling four related reader questions, including some thoughts on exactly what happened with the Graham Platner debacle, why men in general are such a mess, how to navigate the ups and downs of this moment of crisis, and, finally, a question from a reader of The Midnight Kingdom: A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis about what would potentially lie on the other side of this mess if we’re not able to come together and beat back the fascists.

Again, Dispatches Mailbag is regularly a subscriber-exclusive, but I’m giving a preview so people will consider becoming subscribers. This is a reader-supported enterprise and, once again, I want to say that I desperately need your support. If this matters to you, if these articles have helped you, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. I get no corporate backing, there are no shadowy benefactors, and, unlike some other commentators and personalities, I’m not getting money under the table from any parties or political action groups. Thank you for those who do support this endeavor. I can’t tell you what a difference you make.

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Anonymous: What happened with the Graham Platner campaign? Of course I don’t mean all the scandals broke and he dropped out, but how does something this huge of a failure even take place?

I want to try and answer this question without really even engaging with Graham Platner the person because I think the reasons there are pretty self-evident and the context of why he, as a candidate, failed is more obvious with every passing day. I sincerely hope Platner takes this moment to go away and get some help. I worry that he’ll continue to seek out the public eye, likely as some kind of personality on some kind of platform, and I say that because his reaction to the accusations of sexual assault made it abundantly clear that this is a person who cannot pause and reflect out of sheer terror of what he might see or think or feel. I hope I’m wrong here, but this current environment and all the overwhelming financial incentives in this wretched economy are aimed at continuing to go and go and go and double and triple down while appealing to whatever consumer demographic is there to serve. In this case, it isn’t hard to see Platner becoming an influential personality for a group of aggrieved white men (more on that later) who aren’t won over by MAGA or the Groypers, who have socialist leanings but aren’t overly involved in politics because they’ve given up hope on changing the systems. That’s a sizable demographic without much in the way of representation and markets love filling vacuums.

Any campaign that fails, and especially any campaign that implodes this spectacularly, has several problems. Platner and his personal baggage will get the lion’s share of the blame, but he didn’t just wake up one day and throw his hat in the ring and run everything. He was recruited by Dan Moraff and Leanne Fan, who were searching for potential candidates, particularly a certain brand of potential candidates.

The intent was to find working-class, first-time politicians, but in Platner’s case the class element was aesthetic. The story was that he was a hardworking oyster farmer, but in truth he was supplying his mother’s Ironbound Restaurant in Hancock, where half a dozen oysters cost you $22. She served previously as a Democratic county chairwoman and fundraiser. His father was a real-estate attorney. His grandfather a prominent architect who worked on several notable projects. Platner cut his teeth at a pricey boarding school and then a private high school. What mattered to his recruiters was the image he presented which was, again, aesthetic. As a person who grew up impoverished and working-class, I can tell you there is no end to the people who want to portray that character through an assortment of costumes, presentations, and performances and that always sits rather unpleasantly and, in turn, often portends other problems.

Moraff, who it should be noted is both an heir to the Toys R Us fortune and was banned from Rep. Summer Lee’s campaign following multiple accusations, and Fan weren’t interested in scratching underneath the surface. They barely vetted him for the same reason they sold him as a working-class insurgent. What mattered was the presentation and the performance. The whole thing was slapdash and careless and that it was consumed by controversies and disturbing revelations they simply didn’t want to know is, in hindsight, rather inevitable.

Platner’s support grew in spite of himself and the team behind him. Voters are desperate for someone to speak in the way Platner spoke, to hear critiques of the Democratic Party and capitalism and the oligarchical class. Much like the Republicans who were willing to look past Donald Trump’s obvious faults and scandals in 2016 because he was vocalizing critiques of his party and the failures of globalism, though, again, this was all performance in and of itself, it didn’t matter who it was voicing them. The deep desire was being filled and people projected onto him both what they wanted to see and how he and the people behind him were selling him.

Over the past year I’ve had people constantly reaching out and asking whether I supported Platner and my answer was always that I didn’t know him, I am naturally suspicious of all political candidates, and that there were more than enough reasons not to trust him. This was my stance because while I desire a leftist turn in our politics, and I truly think it is necessary if we are to stave off disaster, I also recognize that all politics, no matter where it lands on the spectrum, is subject to manipulation and misplaced hope. Just because someone identifies as a Democratic, and we know this, doesn’t mean they are trustworthy. The same applies for leftists or socialists. And as more people become desirous of leftist politics, like what I said about Platner potentially becoming an influencer to fill a vacuum, the market is going to incentivize people like Platner and Moraff in presenting what the “consumer,” or voter in this case, desires.

This isn’t easy work, in any way shape or form, and all the entrenched power and all the monied interests are focused on continuing this status quo and worsening conditions. It’s a battle. We have to remain suspicious of politicians and those seeking power until they have proven themselves trustworthy. We’re all vulnerable to charismatic individuals, we can all be manipulated by well-choreographed propaganda, and, in the end, we are susceptible because we maintain hope that maybe things will change and a new class of leader will emerge. This is an awful situation, all the way around, but ideally it will serve as a reminder that these things are not easy or simple.

Todd: I appreciated The Man They Wanted Me To Be and I wanted to ask you about men. They’re not okay right now. I have a friend who is basically an ex friend now and the type of shit he’s into and he believes now is just off the charts crazy. I’ve known this guy for 34 years and he’s pretending to be someone he isn’t and I know who he has been. The conversations we used to have are gone, my friend is gone, and he’s not the only guy I know who’s like this now. What is going on and will people like this ever come back?

That book came out in 2019 and my god has a lot changed and a lot stayed the same since then. There’s a problem with writing a book like that and that’s that it has to end. What we were witnessing back then, seven years ago, was the rise of something that would eventually metastasize into a burgeoning fascism. Authoritarianism is intertwined with every type of poisonous ideology, but it is also a symptom of unchecked patriarchal aggressing, aggrievement, and hatred. You cannot understand what is going on unless you wrestle with the psychology of men, particularly white men.

I want to say, also, that I’m sorry about your friend. I’ve lost a good number of people to this and I know it hurts. There’s a frustration and a grief that is boundless. At times you can feel like you, yourself, have failed, or like maybe there’s something you could do. In that book, I talked about the need to communicate with people lost in this and to let them know they’re not alone. That helps. And it can do wonders, honestly. But sometimes there’s not much you can do.

The problem is the fantasy. Whether it’s sexism or racism or xenophobia or any related prejudice, the psychology is grounded in self-hatred and the need for a delusional worldview. As I’ve talked about prior, Right Wing reactionary worldviews begin with a self-hatred that is then projected onto others, creating a need for control and oppression and violence. The holder of the view doesn’t like themselves because they have been forced to “kill” within them anything that deviated from the tenets of their parents or families or communities or religious institutions. That dissonance, that hatred of one’s self, has to be expelled outward, creating a dangerous cycle of hatred of the other, attempts to hurt the other, and then, when the internal self-loathing doesn’t disappear, it has to then be projected onto others and on and on and on again.

The fairytale of “superiority” is what helps to soothe the pain. Racists believe they are better than others because their own self-image is so brittle that at least they have something about themselves that makes them better simply by being born into a group. Same goes with every other hatred and prejudice. In essence, we have a generation of men who live within a system that is making life hard on every one. They are then sold, by an entire world of influencers and politicians and grifters, a worldview that says they are the ones being discriminated against, that they are secretly warriors being held back by one conspiracy after another, that if only things were “fair” or “as they should be,” they would rule the world. You’ll notice in these sales jobs it’s always sprinkled with disdain and reminders of what’s “wrong” with them. You spend enough time watching someone like Andrew Tate and it becomes clear: they are both being built up and torn down simultaneously. The essence of the grift is to make them feel more and more insecure and like the next vote or next product or next seminar or next supplement will free them from the bonds that hold them back. But, like the cycle of self-hatred and projection, it always leaves them hollow and feeling the same dread and self-loathing.

I don’t know if your friend will come back. Hell, I don’t know if some of the people I’ve lost will come back. It is, in essence, an addiction spiral. You can’t make someone change, they have to reach a point where they themselves want to change. I hope, for your sake and your friend’s sake, that maybe he’ll reach a point where the whole thing is too exhausting and he wants to change. That clarity will arrive one day. But I can’t say for certain whether that will happen. Like the previous answer with Platner, you have to hope that maybe some rock bottom will arrive and that clarity will accompany it, but the need to perform some character of yourself, one that is strong and has “special knowledge” or “special skills,” is an incredibly powerful thing. It’s a shield, of sorts, to protect a vulnerable person from a possible collapse of identity. And when that’s happening, it feels like you could die or the world will fall apart. So the need to continue the performance and remain part of the scam is charged with so much meaning and importance.

I wrote about some more aspects of this in the ongoing Crisis of Meaning and Purpose mini-series. Authoritarianism existed well before the rise of the internet and social media, but the algorithmic economy has prioritized these things and reinforced them in white men to a degree that’s hard to comprehend. Millions of people are lost in a delusional fantasy about themselves and the world around them, marinating and cooking in conspiracy theories designed to prey upon their insecurities and fears, and as long as we let these oligarchs continue their agendas unchecked and unregulated it will only get worse.

Anonymous: I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I have to work four separate gig jobs to scrape together just enough money to not be able to afford my apartment and car. I don’t have the option to leave the country. What you’ve described on the Check In with the ebb and flow of the fascist moment is some of the most exhausting shit I’ve ever experienced. When does it feel better? When is life better?

That’s a hell of a question and it’s hard to answer. First of all, I’m so sorry it’s like this. It shouldn’t be. My heart breaks for everyone caught in this worsening mess. It’s wrong. It’s unfair. It’s immoral. It’s unethical. And the people who created this and benefit from it should be punished. I have to believe they will.

I think the answer begins with separating ourselves from the fate of the world. That doesn’t mean to quit caring or tune out. We can’t do that. This crisis demands that we care and that we pay attention. But we have to somehow manage to find calm during the storm. To ground and to also find joy wherever we can. Social media and newsfeeds are intentionally designed to feel overwhelming and to give us the sense that our immediate attention is required. If you look away, all hell will break loose. But if we try an experiment, if we take a day where we don’t look, we don’t read, just one day, we find that we’re okay. We can go and do things that replenish us and everything won’t fall apart. Maybe something bad will happen and maybe a crisis will worsen, but our participation or attention had nothing to do with it one way or another. We are, by design, forcefully addicted to the dopamine rush and illusion of control, and it is wearing us the fuck out while it drains our capacity.

Personally, I struggle with it. This is my job. I have to stay on top of all the bullshit, talk about it, try and educate around it, and meanwhile I have one meeting after another that is either centered on explaining it or organizing against it. As I write this, I am so close to burnout that it’s an effort not to fall completely into it. I know I need to disconnect like I just explained and, yet, I struggle with it as well. That’s the crux of this thing. You can know it, understand it, recognize full and well what will help, and still come up short a lot of the time.

As for the rest of the question, I don’t know when life will get better in general. I know this is a harrowing time that can, as I was talking about earlier, provide moments of clarity during the chaos. It’s a good thing that you can name that this isn’t all right and that things need to get better. Naming it is one of the first steps. This status quo can’t continue. It’s too much. The precarity you’re describing isn’t just wrong, it’s unsustainable. Most people can’t keep up. Most people are struggling. And even if you’re a capitalist, if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll admit that this situation is too lopsided and too top-heavy to continue.

We’ve entered into yet another chapter in this whole mess. The vast majority of people recognize the direction we’re on is wrong. A majority now believe capitalism either isn’t working or isn’t the right system. They see the Republican Party as fascist and the Democratic Party as either complicit or incapable or unwilling to provide an alternative or fight. This is hopeful and it means we’ve reached something of a tipping point.

We’re now watching an obvious battled between entrenched wealth and the rest of us. It isn’t going to be a fair fight and it isn’t going to be pleasant. But the sentiment you’ve expressed is shared by the majority of people and when that happens there will be political realignment, the question is what direction that will go in. Like the burnout I talked about, the truth at the heart of the matter is that something has to change. And it’s going to.

I hope you’re able to find some joy and replenishment. Some rest. I’m going to try and do the same.

Jon: I read The Midnight Kingdom when it came out in 2023 so I’ve been pretty prepared for the past couple of years. But like most books like that one I am always waiting for what happens on the other side of it. Can you talk a little bit about how the new world order (sorry, can’t help using the phrase) is coming together and what it will look like if we don’t make changes?

When I do an interview it’s a pretty usual thing for the person to read the subtitle of the book and then say, “Well, I guess we’re in the crisis now,” and in the interest of time I usually say, “Yeah, we are,” but the answer is deeper. Crises aren’t simple. They have chapters and escalations, moments of pause and receding, and they tend to get more complicated and uglier.

Technically, we’re in a liminal stage. The conditions that are easily traceable have deteriorated, leading to political instability and a preparation by the wealth and oligarchical classes for the next step in their takeover. The tech class has cornered our economy, corrupted the political class, and more or less shoehorned themselves into the long-form theft project known as the military-industrial complex. Presently, they’re constructing the most advanced surveillance project in history, attempting to liquidate the middle class in order to enrich themselves, and have used a system of economic and political alliances to basically evolve beyond the nation state system of the modern age.

The Midnight Kingdom got its name from a quote originating from Aleksandr Dugin, the fascist Russian ideologue whose work has influenced Vladimir Putin and the international right wing conspiracy to destroy liberal democracy. In his vision, global capitalism and the American Order would fall apart, leaving major powers like the U.S., China, and Russia to control spheres of influence. That’s what’s happening presently and every new war and collapse of alliances and destruction of load baring components like the petrodollar and free trade brings us closer to that arrangement. Within those spheres, those powers would become more and more dominant of their neighbors - the Trump Administration is already doing this - while creating a caste system that prioritizes the powerful to the detriment of everyone else.

I don’t think I need to tell you, once more, that this is already happening.

This isn’t just something that Dugin cooked up and he’s not pulling the strings on everything that’s happening. It’s the natural evolution of neoliberal capitalism and the whims of capitalism itself if left unchecked. Dugin was simply correct in recognizing what was occurring or where it might be headed. History is a relentless teacher. All you have to do to understand the future is to look at where we are and consult the past. We’ll either head backwards with new wrinkles and new technology, or we’ll move forward after we have learned those lessons. Right now, it’s the former.

More or less, what is on the other side of this crisis is a neo-feudal age wherein resources are controlled by a small collection of powerful men who also control culture, information, and the imagination. Going back to the book, if you actually learn how feudalism worked, you’ll get a glimpse of what we’re now facing. It wasn’t just kings and knights and the like, it was a complex system of control in which the average person was captured by intricate systems of manipulation that were all intended to cement fealty and labor while undermining uprisings. I say a lot, you also need to understand colonialism and how those systems of control were then expanded to other peoples, using the violence of war and oppression and mixing it with religious domination. It’s not a coincidence that we’re seeing this conglomeration once more.

I describe this often as a trap. We’re heading for it. We feel it, we see it, we know it. We have a choice and really it is no choice at all. We cannot live in that world of the authoritarian’s choosing. We shouldn’t have to and, returning to the previous question, things are intolerable as they are. We have everything to win.

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The American Revolution was both an uprising fueled by a thirst for liberty by the people and a forcible transfer of power from the monarchical class to a group of wealthy, slave-owning landholders. That the latter gets largely erased from history, or that it resides more and more within leftist circles, and that the statement of this very obvious fact has led to an aggressive, reactionary push to override our educational and cultural institutions is a damning indictment.

What is now understood to be the revolution in totality, and what you will see when you watch popular culture and mainstream narratives, was a framing created by the bourgeoisie through their control of newspapers and cultural production. Newspapers owned by that wealth class and pamphlets printed on their presses whipped the masses into a frenzy - a reminder that, depending on the scholarship, only approximately 40% of the American population supported the revolution when it happened - and, around the country, charismatic preachers riding the wave of a phenomena now referred to as “the Great Awakening,” positioned Americans to see themselves as united and called to a higher purpose. Through these means, as well as anti-colonial sentiment, created the uprising that now holds sway over our imagination and official understanding.

And then, it was a group of wealth class figures who resented British rule for its interference in their business endeavors and speculation of real-estate. Many of the Founders, including George Washington, depended on westward expansion for their wealth and the British regulation of adventuring into Native American territories and, predictably, the slaughter and eradication of those people, represented an existential threat to the Founders’ economic fortunes and futures. Faced with these restrictions, the Founders concocted one conspiracy after another - hence Thomas Jefferson’s incrimination that King George had “excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions - while stoking popular anger and placing their rebellion on the burgeoning principles of Enlightenment ideals and the idea of liberal democracy.

Now, here we are, 250 years later, watching the capitalist vultures circle the ruins of Gaza with visions of luxury resorts, a president who has used his position to both enrich himself at our expense, facing yet another capitalist collapse as contradictions strain to their breaking point, the need for more real estate speculation has created a creaking, violent, ever-expanding empire, including the recently acquired nation of Venezuela, colonized spaces now include digital and psychological realms as a class of oligarchs fights to control our behaviors and imaginations, and the descendants of the Founders are busy dismantling what remains of the liberal democracy that was erected as a veneer to hide the plunder and control.

Unfortunately, the experiment has played out as one might expect. For all of the flourishes of rhetoric, the rationalization through Enlightenment ideals, the hagiographic mythmaking, and generations’ of shameless and exhausting star-spangled propaganda, what remains is the undeniable core of what hid beneath the visage of revolution: a king was overthrown to make way for a new class of kings.

In the modern era, the relationship between the myth and the reality is permission to hurt and exploit as many people as you can, to live a life free of friction and conscious and concern. For decades we have been plagued by what I have come to call “American Stupid.” A brash, trolling abrasiveness. Unearned arrogance. Commercials talking about how American love it “big and loud” while hawking an oversized, overly-expensive truck that men can buy so they can speed down an interstate, cutting people off, driving on the shoulder, flipping off other drivers while blasting the dumbest, most pandering, unintelligible music imaginable, songs about living in a small town and working for a living and going fishing and hunting when the listener doesn’t live in a small town or work or fish or hunt. Every moment of time not spent harassing and exploiting is spent either buying the next big thing or watching overly-glitzy coverage of sporting events where more ads play after bombers and fighter jets fly over stadiums that get bigger and louder every passing year as the owners fleece their cities.

I have said before that Fascism is both theft and a collective breakdown. What we see now, as the clock ticks to 250, is the full-evolution of the material truth behind the mythology. This country, as it was founded and designed, was a machine for plunder, a fiction that allowed genocide and slavery and colonization and the stealing of resources from neighbors and employees. All that is left of the mythology and the fairytale is a group of millions dedicated religiously to the holding of the lie because the lie is what makes their barbarism possible. Hating others, seeing them as subhuman, and then stealing everything from them you can carry and setting the rest on fire is the full evolution of the material purposes of the Founding. It is your right, after all, under both the American fantasy and the operating system of capitalism, to be the worst person you can be regardless of the consequences.

It is appropriate that Donald Trump is our president. Modern America has failed to produce a more rightful avatar of its hollowness, pettiness, and brutality than this man, a charlatan who has spent his entire life, like it or not, embodying the true values of the American Dream. From the moment he was old enough, he has screwed has many people as possible while building nothing and hurting everyone he has come into contact with. That the office of the President of the United States of America is now a clearinghouse for some of the most transparent corruption and unnecessary violence imaginable is apropros. It took 250 years, but America has reached its full evolutionary state under this arrangement and between the contradictions of revolutionary fervor and class control, it is obvious which side has won.

As of present, the collective breakdown stems from the split between the realization of the reality and the angry denial. Those supporting this abysmal state are doing so because they have been given permission to become their worst selves, to effectively go on a bender of malignant narcissism that matches their beloved cult leader’s condition, to act as selfishly as him, to revel in the misery of their perceived enemies, to see threats to their power and wealth around every corner, and the “joy” of sinking deeper and deeper a toxic cocktail of self-hate and self-aggrandizement. We have seen this before, both in our lives and in our histories. The beginning of the American project sounded the starter pistol on the chauvinistic adventures against the Native Americans in search of free real-estate and the embrace of slavery as a “necessary” foundational block of the nascent country’s economy and culture. When we took as much land as possible from the indigenous, we began our wars against neighbors and foreign peoples. By the time the 21st century began, those operations were worldwide in nature.

The difference was adherence to the lie. It shown through at times. Our white, patriarchal supremacy in service of capitalist extraction outshone our supposed revolutionary principles at times, leaving the project exposed in all its shame. There was only so much propaganda, so much good will. But the controlling wealth class elites almost always managed to bring the two in balance again, usually fearmongering foreign threats like England or France or Spain or ideas like white replacement or Communist infiltration, doing their damndest to hide the material drives of the nation, but now we are left with a transparent and inarguably venal and solipsistic core. We are lucky, I suppose, that this movement that seeks full control of resources and a fascist hell that rewinds beyond the founding of liberal democracy is populated by some of the least talented individuals imaginable.

The “Great American State Fair” currently “operating” in Washington, D.C., is a perfect metaphor. Shabby. Low-rent. Slapped together and literally crumbling by the minute as unenthusiastic performers dodge pieces of the stage falling from the ceiling. AI art that was whipped together so haphazardly that it’s obvious the person producing it didn’t try past the first attempt to fine tune the images. In one of the tents sits a fitting reminder of the convergence of the myth and the reality, a baptizing pool for attendees to dedicate themselves to a God we have to assume is a MAGA fan and supporter in the Christian Nationalist vein. Trump devotees have traveled there by the dozens, found no air conditioning or support, and have been left, like the woman in the video below, on the verge of sickness before taking a quick dip in the pool and being given medical attention.

Holding onto the illusion of the myth even as it flickers and dies is an act of pure desperation. I would hope that this woman and others like her would reconsider their devotion to a man who would subject them to this kind of thing, but I also spent years attending one MAGA rally after another where people adorned in his cheap merchandise were left to cook in the heat or to walk miles and miles in uneven and uncaring terrain because Trump and his crooked allies so obviously hold disdain for anyone who would buy their grift.

Because that’s all that’s left. Finally accepting the reality means not only giving up the illusion of MAGA but also discarding the lie that has been sold to Americans now for 250 years, to one ancestor after another, to our parents, our friends, our neighbors, our communities, every single one of us. It is the type of psychic pain that we would do almost anything to avoid. Including performing belief when no belief remains.

The performance of “patriotism” is embarrassing, which makes the present liberal push to wrap our arms around the flag like Trump assaulting it for photos so galling. The Fourth of July has always been a pageantry of meaningless signifiers. Star-spangled bunting and graphics. Pictures of bald eagles. Constant reminders of the Founders who rallied to protect and grow their investments at the expense of everyone outside their class. A parade of military weaponry. Novelty products and cheaply made party favors.

What is missing is constant. The people and the groups who have fought to lift up the mythology and inject it with actual meaning and purpose. Before Trump, the Fourth of July was largely faceless, lacking humanness beyond the Founders, and even then it was a doctored and weaponized portrayal. Noble men with noble intentions. We see the same thing with Trump now but there is no doctoring his ambitions or warped desires. Still, we do not see abolitionists or the members of the slave revolts or suffragists or labor warriors or the Stonewall rioters or immigrants who organized for rights and many of whom who were arrested or deported. The closest we get to reminders of the average working person is when they’re totaling our grocery basket filled with hot dogs and red, white, and blue adorned special editions of the regular products we already have. At night, we look toward the sky for explosions rather than across our yards and streets and at one another.

This Fourth of July is special not in its significance regarding the age, but in that it stands as yet another moment to take stock and see the divide between the myth and the reality. The parade of military equipment, including a full seven hours of planned flyovers in Washington, D.C., feels not only wasteful but also a reminder of a stunning military defeat in Iran. The hot dogs cost more and cutting costs means possibly leaving the “patriotic” junk like the Red, White, and Blueberry Pop Tarts on the shelves. Worsening weather phenomena resulting from climate change has rendered outdoor activities dangerous and potentially life-threatening, leaving many of us wandering around looking for an abandoned baptism pool. The message of the mythology will be handled by a decrepit and decaying tinpot dictator who would care less whether any of it sounds even the least bit legitimate.

For all of the opposition to Trump, so many of the critiques boil down to something startling: disagreements on how exactly to “make America great again.” The argument, when laid bare, is telling. These are dueling delusions. On one side, a group that is intoxicated with the power to hurt as many people as possible while growing their own wealth and their own mythology. They believe in a mythic American past where the mythology was true and perfectly balanced with the material reality. On the other, a group that has wielded power and hurt untold numbers of people but believed they have done so for the right reasons, all while building their own wealth and maintaining their own mythology. They also believe in a mythic American past that was balanced between the mythology and reality.

And that leaves the rest of us. Caught between twin delusions and fantasies, continually crushed for our rightful critiques and understandable concerns. In this way, we have our own lineage that stretches back to the groups who, not even twenty years into the new nation, saw that the Federalists and the wealth class had engineered a system to their advantage and to our detriment, who tried to continue the supposed revolution but were stamped out by a militia led personally by President George Washington. Who later demanded an end to the barbarism of slavery. Who called the genocide of the Native American what it was. Who organized in our neighborhoods and our communities and ended child labor and established meager worker protections. Who gave rise to one social movement after another that wrestled power from the state on behalf of the people, achieving civil rights and striving for equal protection under the law. These are the real heroes of the American Revolution.

The truth is that the revolution was real. It wasn’t real because it happened, it was real because people believed in it. They saw, and we should never forget, the need to move beyond a fixed hierarchy that benefited a select few born into wealth and class privilege with only the mythology of being chosen by the universe and god to protect their status. Regardless of printed propaganda and religious evangelizing, this was a manifestation of something that isn’t uniquely American but has been found in every country and kingdom and location around the world throughout time. Monarchs and nobility and despots have always been opposed, no matter what the popular histories tell you. What rights we have enjoyed have been won through battle and sacrifice and bravery. This was yet another instance that built on a grand tradition of humanity finally standing in the face of overwhelming power and saying enough is enough.

Revolutions tend to die when they are extinguished. The American Revolution was controlled, from the beginning, by the next iteration of the nobility, only this class hid itself behind an engineered system and this weaponized framing. The words of the Declaration of Independence, or at least the remembered sections, were penned by a slaveholding rapist, but the energy is real and has inspired millions both here and abroad, even those, like the Vietnamese and Haitians who took the Declaration of Independence and its eventual response in France’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen seriously, who heeded the call for freedom and liberal democracy and were crushed by the very nations that produced them in the first place.

That Jefferson and the other Founders cribbed revolutionary spirit for their own intentions does not mean revolutionary spirit is captured. It’s borrowed. It can be twisted, juiced, abused by charlatans like Trump and his followers, but, unlike a flag that can rip or trucks that break down or mythologies that fade, the human desire for a better world is eternal and unshakeable and it does not reside solely within the United States and is not possessed by any group, regardless of how much power or wealth they enjoy.

The flame of revolution did not, despite what you might be told, ignite in 1776.

And it will not die in 2026.

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Hey, here we are, another installment of the Dispatches Mailbag, where I answer your questions. Today I wrestle with the legacy of Barack Obama, discuss the public and brutal decline of Donald Trump, talk about an issue that is of absolutely vital important that isn’t getting near enough attention, and, finally, how I would handle the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America.

I love these articles because I get to dive into issues I normally wouldn’t, but also because the questions come from my subscribers and they’re always terrific. Most of the time I post these exclusively for paid subscribers, but I wanted to give people a glimpse into what they read like. Again, and I can’t stress this enough, Dispatches From A Collapsing State depends on your support. If this matters to you, please become a paid subscriber today.

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Phillip: I’m not sure what to feel about Obama as a president and as a person and I would like to get your perspective if possible? I was quite young when he first got in and I remember the feeling that things were going to get better and America was going to turn a corner and it was going to be the leading light in the world for normal people, for the masses and that dangers in American life - the lack of healthcare, the crushing debt, the corporate greed, the human rights for black people, for black and brown migrants, for indigenous Americans, the environment, climate change would be drastically improved, that America would cease to be a bully on the world stage, that America would become honourable in the way it treated other nations, in the way it treated the people of Gaza, of Africa, of the Middle East, that there would be no more mass shootings, that the frightening military industrial complex would be broken down, that this would be a time of peace and reflection, reform and reconciliation. … and yet none of that happened…(His failures speak to me not just as a politician) but as a human being as well. How could a decent person let any of that happen. At best, the best excuse I could give him is being ridiculously naive. But I don’t think he was. Am I wrong in any of that assessment?

Oh, the question of Obama.

I think any answer regarding the question of Obama’s legacy has to be split, appropriately, between the man and the perception. We begin with the latter because the mythology of Barack Obama is still something we must reckon with if we are to move forward.

Though many are still fighting desperately to live within the mythological reality surrounding the 2008 Election, it is necessary to recognize the swell of optimism and hope that surrounded Obama’s election was an expertly crafted communication and propaganda machine involving a new generation of campaign strategists, tech-affiliated programs, and a bursting desire from the electorate to move beyond the George W. Bush presidency, as well as a historical desire to overcome the poisons of American white supremacy. Obama was, and is, one of the most gifted communicators in our history. His skills for storytelling, but also his willingness to serve as the canvas upon which Americans could project their hopes and visions for a new America, as well as a desire to recontextualize the past (it’s not a coincidence we saw the rise of Hamilton as the dominant pop culture artifact as Obama, much like Ronald Reagan had done, stood as a juncture for re-imagining America’s story after a period of tumult), created a political phenomena that changed the course of the country.

That phenomena was so powerful, and so hopeful, that the election and re-election of Donald Trump, not to mention the racist fascist movement that accompanied it, has been both correctly understood as a reaction but incorrectly framed as only being a reaction. This is where the liberal idea that Trump is an aberration rather than a symptom of a much-larger disease finds purchase, leaving people to believe if they can just weather the “Trump Years” eventually we will return to the mythical America that was created during the Obama Years. It’s difficult, after all, accepting that you have been successfully marketed to and the brain typically dispatches with cognitive dissonance as quickly as humanly possible.

We must also look briefly at the intersection between Mythical Obama and Actual Obama, because it is not as simple as black and white. A figure as influential and historical as Obama certainly stands with one foot in each of these realities. Trump, for instance, is lost to his own delusions and resides permanently within them after an entire life swimming in the lies and rationalizing. Based on Obama’s self-mythologizing, his presidential library certainly speaks to this, he rightly sees himself as a historic figure and, to an extent, the product of America’s long and arduous fight for racial equality. Though it is unclear, considering his continued control of the Democratic Party, whether he sees his presidency as the zenith and culmination of it or yet another step along the long march. He is, after all, a human, and to be given that mantle and that power, it is understandable that he might struggle with the perception.

As for Actual Obama, it’s hard to look back on those years and not recognize the failures. Personally, I have to admit bias. My road to evaluating Obama realistically has been fraught because I was personally inspired by his candidacy and wanted so badly for it to be exactly what was sold to me. I became politically active and more radicalized by the Iraq War and Democratic capitulation and was heartbroken by the 2004 Election and the collapse of the anti-war Howard Dean presidency leading to John Kerry’s abysmal run in which I watched debate after debate and speech after speech that failed to communicate my own frustrations and instead veered toward the center and the normalization of Bush and Dick Cheney and an obviously fascistic operation. And, so, it has taken years and lots of introspection to arrive where I am now.

Though Right Wing media, the GOP, and the Tea Party, which was a controlled vehicle by the Wealth Class, portrayed Obama as a socialist, he was, above all, an institutionalist and a capitalist. It is likely if John McCain had been elected, the 2008 Economic Collapse would have been handled in a similar fashion, though possibly less efficiently as Obama was an extraordinary administrator. Obama navigated the fallout exactly how the capitalist class wanted, staved off a total collapse, and left the criminals free to continue their theft. His landmark achievement, the Affordable Care Act, has helped, but it was born from Republican and future 2012 opponent Mitt Romney’s program in Massachusetts, with a few obvious differences, and was supported by major insurance companies as it protected their businesses and ensured a flood of new customers. While Obama worked to protect the status quo, in a conservative manner, the wealth class worked to create conditions in which they could further their power beyond the paradigm at the moment, playing off white supremacist paranoia and capturing populist discontent in a faux-movement that would eventually become MAGA.

Of course, no examination of Actual Obama would be complete without the more damning elements, including hypocrisy regarding the War on Terror, the drone-ification of U.S. warfare, the expansion of executive power, his disturbing push for governmental/corporate/tech surveillance (more on this later), and, under his leadership, the Democratic Party’s partnership with the tech class that saw a seemingly limitless fount of free money, free rein to increase their power and wealth and influence minus any meaningful regulation. Obviously, under Trump, we have seen these failures bloom as the executive powers cherished by Bush and Obama have led to a wrecking ball of a president dealing out mortal blow after mortal blow to rights, protections, and the social safety net, one illegal war and operation after another, the emergence of an antidemocratic and eugenicist tech oligarchical class, and, again, a burgeoning surveillance state that has been and is an existential crisis for the country.

I cannot step into the head of Barack Obama, but there are some obvious things for us to sit with. I think, if you were to have a candid, honest conversation with him, and I think his autobiography spoke to this, he sees his own presidency as a mixture of successes and jarring failures, but he attributes those failures to the limitations of power and systemic guardrails. Trump, to the detriment of Obama’s legacy, has shown that power is not limited and the guardrails have never actually existed. Obama is, however, an institutionalist, who, like Clinton before him, was forced to strive and work his way through institutions of power, earn the best grades, hold the best positions, navigate elite schools and posts, and has come to see his successes as proof that the system is inherently meritocratic as a means of maintaining his own self-image. The idea that he was going to change everything or create revolutionary reform was a byproduct of the campaign and messaging narrative, which was, admittedly, incredibly powerful and persuasive.

As to whether he is a good man or not, I don’t know. It’s hard to be a good person and become President of the United States of America. As I wrote in a column about the Epstein Scandal, power in the world is most often determined based on a proven willingness to serve a system that regularly kills and oppresses people, and Obama has blood on his hands. Taking that oath of office, and carrying out the duties of president, often means a willingness to commit war crimes, and there is certainly an argument that Obama, as commander-in-chief, committed war crimes. In his public persona, and it is so hard to judge anything by public persona as it is carefully crafted and maintained, and Obama’s public persona is one of the most aggressively controlled public personas we have ever seen. This brings us back to Mythic Obama and Obama the Man. We legitimately don’t know. And that dedication to the public persona has, in my opinion, done damage because of his picking and choosing what things he will make public statements on, when he will campaign, and what he says in opposition to ascendant fascism. There are millions of Americans who still take their cue from Obama and still frame their understanding of the political moment from him and his surrogates, and that measured approach has normalized, intentionally or not, a lot of things that do not deserve normalized.

All of this is to say, it’s incredibly complicated, but there is perhaps no better place to start with the destruction of stale analysis and the embrace of deeper politics than to wrestle with that distinction between Mythic Obama and Obama the Man. If I had to say, it’s likely the future of the Democratic Party and American liberalism will depend on that struggle, which is ironic considering Obama’s 2008 Campaign was, in and of itself, a fight to reconsider the legacy of Mythical Bill Clinton and Clinton the Man.

Becky: We all know Trump is declining and falling apart, but I don’t know if anyone ever really engages in what that means? I’ve heard you talk about it a little, but for the mailbag or an article can you talk about the implications? As someone who has had a hard time with a dying parent, I think it’s way more important than most people are really understanding.

Yeah, this is a lot and I agree. Also, I’m sorry.

The Trump-in-Decline thing gets a lot of laughs, but it’s very serious. It goes well beyond “ha, did you see the dumbshit thing he did today” and “oh my god, he’s humiliating us” that you find everywhere. It speaks to a larger dysfunction and corruption at the heart of America and the total capture of power by the wealth and oligarchical classes.

Quickly going back to Obama, his tenure as president might have been the last real example of an administrator controlling the levers of power, at least until we have some kind of resurgence or reform. Since, Trump has been a living, breathing signatory working on behalf of an agenda that is controlled and developed far from the halls of the White House. He’s not the first, but the level of control enjoyed by the wealthy is astounding. Almost everything he signs and puts into action is something he probably hasn’t read and certainly doesn’t understand. But, to make matters worse, the power of the presidency is so large and so dependent on personal whims and decisions that occasionally something fucking impetuous he cooks up in his addled brain can change the course of history.

Add to that the type of palace intrigue that was supposed to have stopped following the rise of liberal democracy and it’s a volatile situation. Trump is surrounded by ghouls and monsters like Stephen Miller, and even to a lesser extent his “Truth Social manager” and aide Natalie Harp, who take advantage of his diminished state, incurious nature, and general unfitness to enact agendas and programs that genuinely hurt and kill people. I would argue that we haven’t seen this level of control by unelected officials and personalities since Woodrow Wilson suffered a debilitating stroke in 1919 and the presidency was essentially controlled by Edith Wilson, his doctor, and a smattering of aides. Plus, you have to consider reports that have surrounded Trump’s presidency since his first term that military leaders and the like have more or less either ignored or disobeyed orders, and it starts to look a lot like a breakdown of the system altogether.

I should add, I think the denial surrounding this situation is psychological in nature. Many people, with aging partners or parents or loved ones, want to believe what they’re experiencing isn’t real until there’s no ability to deny it anymore, and, even then, the denial can continue if the psychological toll is too much. This is also, I think, why so many people find it so “funny.” We’d rather laugh than exist in horror, and this situation is extremely horrific.

Anonymous: I share your frustration with how terrible political coverage and analysis is and I know there’s only so much outrage and vigilance to go around, but what do you think is the biggest issue that’s. not getting properly covered?

Surveillance.

It’s clear what the tech oligarchical class is doing in conjunction with the Trump Administration, but, also, through their complicity, the majority of the political class in general. Earlier, we talked about Obama’s legacy and the legacy of the Democratic Party, and understanding the conditions they created is essential to get to this current environment, where the Democrats are still working with the oligarchical class it helped create, essentially because of that legacy but also because the money goes both ways. So, you don’t get much of a focus on it outside of one story after another that tells you everything you need to know.

The construction is relentless. Tech giants have worked with authoritarian regimes around the world in creating these systems and they’re presently doing the same here. For the fascists, this is necessary for realizing the type of control they desire. Their policies will continue to grow more and more unpopular, which will necessitate both the eradication of free and fair elections and surveillance. This is so obvious that you’d have to intentionally ignore it. On top of that, the type of declining material conditions and living standards capitalism now requires in this period, including exponential precarity, the ravages of climate change, and the need to liquidate the middle class and cash in on America’s remaining public services, means the need will be accompanied by developing technologies that will serve to multiply state power while marginalizing popular discontent.

On the Democratic side, the panic over Leftist candidates, an extension of the panic over popular rebuke over the genocide in Gaza, which saw Democrats cheering on the arrests of protesters and continued questioning of “where did they get these ideas,” leads to a pretty predictable track. Neoliberals, who are declining in popularity and hemorrhaging support, are so lost in their own mythology and alternate reality that they believe people are turning against them because of social media manipulation, meaning they will likely join the Right in legislation and efforts to increase censorship and surveillance. This adds to the continued cycle which I’ve been talking about for awhile in which the Neoliberals and their associated political class will find common cause with Fascists as the crisis worsens. They won’t address material conditions unless capitalism requires it, and even then it will look like the 2008 response or the COVID assistance. Only if it means keeping the system on life support rather than actual reform.

We’re in an extremely liminal space with all of this. We could still stop the construction of surveillance systems and the giant apparatus, but if we wait too long it will come online (and it could be already, we’ve seen glimpses of it here and there) and that will make future democratic and reform movements incredibly hard to coordinate and operate. The slow walk towards it, and the lack of real discussion surrounding one of the most essential topics of our time, is revealing. It’s a complicated subject, hard to frame, and it involves the actions of both parties as well as the whims of the capitalist classes. So, you don’t really get much exposure to it outside of the occasion person screaming, “Hey, this is a big fucking deal!” But it is, and has been, an existential crisis that has been building since the turn of the century. And we should have been opposing it this entire time.

Paul: I can’t believe how abysmal the 250th anniversary of the U.S. is feeling. Obviously it’s Trump but if you had control what would this landmark date and/or celebration look like?

Man, the vibes are bad. Real, real bad. In that way, I think the 250th “festivities” in Washington, D.C. serve as incredible metaphors for the whole thing. Empty fairs. The reflecting pool in disrepair. The White House torn to shreds. It makes sense because it reflects the actual state of the Union.

I’m writing a piece to commemorate Saturday’s anniversary, but I think, all in all, this Fourth of July, serving as the 250th anniversary, is pretty dead-on for how it should feel. A time of humiliation and, no pun intended, reflection. The United States of America has spent too much of its history racing from one moment to another, from one disaster to another for that matter, refusing to meditate on what it has done and how it has failed. This allergy to processing has only compounded our structural, political, economic, and cultural problems, leading us to this moment of profound crisis and danger.

In fact, if I were to have the power, we would be working on processing the very vital and very powerful grief we have repressed for so long. There are horrors spanning back to our founding which must be observed, for sure, but even the nightmares of the 21st century, including the War on Terror, the plague of wealth inequality, homelessness, the carceral state, and the ravages of COVID must be dealt with. And we most certainly have not even tried to do so. The repression of all this pain and harm and tragedy and its projection through military force, genocides, extraction and exploitation, is how you arrive at fascism, which is a collective breakdown in a society in disrepair. We need to feel the hurt and the longer we push it down and ignore it the worse it is going to be.

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If you haven’t read them already, I cannot recommend Sarah’s books highly enough of her newsletter (link above) that is one of the most necessary reads in this moment.

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Training takes time.

Anyone who has ever tried to train a pet to perform a trick or (I’m told) get a kid potty-trained knows it’s an often arduous endeavor only made possible with patience, repetition, and positive reinforcement.

Sometimes I like to watch videos of the process to see how it comes along, the starts and stops, the failures and victories. I don’t know what it is about the viewing that gets me. Maybe it’s a documenting of time mixed with observable learning.

I’ve enjoyed this for awhile, but lately there’s something…sinister that wasn’t there before. Observing the training process now is fraught with troubling new realizations that are both pertinent to the animals in question but also humans in this present environment.

Coincidentally, around the time I started thinking about this, I noticed something. Actually, no, that isn’t true. I’ve always seen it. Sensed it. But I hadn’t interrogated it before. I accepted it, or, rather, I despised it without gifting some curiosity to the matter. On YouTube, where I enjoy a great deal of essays on any number of topics, I had seen for years that all the thumbnails had begun sharing similar traits to the point of it having an unnerving energy.

These are examples of what some have come to call “YouTube face.” In most cases, it is a thumbnail prominently featuring either the producer or subject’s face, oftentimes with a bewildered or frightened affect (bonus points to the example in the lower left corner that includes the hosts and, strangely enough, Sam Altman modeling the expression in question). Below you’ll find resident monster and YouTube emperor Mr. Beast innovating in both the YouTube Face aesthetic and also the usage of AI slop.

The explanation given for this phenomena has always revolved around something like “it’s what the algorithm wants,” which is arguably one of the most 21st century sentences imaginable outside of “You gotta give ‘em that hawk tuah and spit on that thang” and “Clavicular was mid jestergooning when a group of foids came and spiked his cortisol levels.” But what exactly are we talking about here?

Obviously we all know that nearly every aspect of our lives now involves one algorithm or another and we all know, whether consciously or unconsciously, that our economic conditions are largely determined by whether or not we are, at the end of the day, giving those algorithms “what they want.” The implications though, even in a world that largely accepts these things as a given or immutable, are staggering.

Gorillas and the Invisible Hand

In the early 1950’s, long before the rise of corporate-spurred mega-blockbusters and sprawling cinematic, synergy-driven empires, DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz made a bizarre discovery. When the company published a new issue of their comics, sales would significantly increase if there was a gorilla prominent on the cover. Soon, the publisher featured as many gorillas as possible, including a new rogues gallery of supervillain primates to challenge their heroes. Batman had Gorilla Boss, a gorilla with the brain of a gangster. Giganta, an early foe of Wonder Woman, began as a gorilla transformed into a muscular woman. Despite his incredible speed, The Flash struggled to best Gorilla Grodd, who gained superhuman intelligence and psychic powers following radiation exposure.

Since the dawning of capitalism between the 16th and 18th centuries, what has long been argued is that, for all of the corruption and greed, the system’s complicated series of selfish incentives creates what Adam Smith, in Wealth of Nations, an “invisible hand” that results in favorable and beneficial outcomes for others. This, of course, is debatable, but what isn’t is that capitalism, with those interlocking incentives, has also created an invisible hand that compels and guides humans and their organizations, including governments and businesses, to often act in ways that are sometimes inscrutable and even self-destructive.

For instance, ESPN, owned and operated by Disney, has long since devolved into a series of networks dominated by some of the most unwatchable television imaginable. When not broadcasting games, the network features loud and obnoxious personalities who are all featured in disturbingly similar fashion competing over who can be the most loud and the most obnoxious. Because the network knows that segments involving a handful of teams (including the Los Angeles Lakers, Dallas Cowboys, and New York Yankees), primarily one league (the NFL), and a handful of athletes (say LeBron James or Tom Brady) drive ratings, you’re hard-pressed to find any coverage outside of these subjects. For an example, check out what Awful Announcing’s Ben Axelrod referred to as the network achieving “Peak ESPN” in June of 2024 in a segment that paired the Lakers, Cowboys, and Yankees in a debate segment over which team “feels the most pressure to win a championship.”

Here, ESPN’s attention to ratings has stifled creativity and created a stale product that is still consumed by millions of people who often have no idea why they’re being inundated with the same slop and activated by a series of emotionally-activating personalities that keep them watching because of a time-tested formula, which creates a loop of influence: the viewers keep watching and the corporation continues producing what the viewers keep watching, often increasing the very elements that degrade the quality of the product.

Prior to this current moment, we have been continually trained by market incentives and pressures to the point of becoming what some have referred to as Homo Economicus, or actors that continually behave according to rules they often do not know or understand. It has affected our lives, the culture we consume, our relationships, how we view ourselves and others, and how our politics have evolved.

The New Masters

After President Bill Clinton forwarded the Neoliberal agenda in the 1990’s, thereby deregulating mass communications and firing the starter pistol on the construction of global capitalism, a new generation of tech industrialists were prepared to create the “new” economy of the 21st century. By creating the digital infrastructure of online maneuvering and commerce, and gorging themselves on free money and endless capitulation from the Obama Administration and a Democratic Party so focused on unleashing the economic potential that they refused to so much as regulate the tech class, these new industrialists began to enjoy historic levels of wealth and power.

With this new infrastructure emerged a system of incredible control. Designers were able to create a slick corporate veneer in the shape of pleasing websites while including under-the-hood features that manipulated potential customers into making purchases they might not need or even want by subtly engaging in psychological conditioning. All along, they relied on activating phrases (“are you sure you want to miss out on a deal like this?”) borrowed from early-20th century strategies developed off the techniques of people like Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud’s nephew who leveraged the tenets of psychoanalysis in creating public relations, shaping opinion manufacturing, and redefining advertising, while adding digital surveillance and more covert forms of manipulation. Meanwhile, in the development of social media, tech giants like Facebook prioritized upsetting, controversial, and angry-making content to drive engagement and maximize user engagement.

These decisions factored into the creation of what we now refer to as “the algorithm,” an unseen and un-understood driving force that rewards and punishes our actions, leading to a system of positive and negative reinforcement. If something becomes popular, we’re more likely to do it. If something fails, the incentive is to try something else. Add in the fact that our material lives and economic fates are increasingly tied to these rewards and punishments, and you have something akin to a Skinner Box, or the device that behaviorist B.F. Skinner innovated to study conditioning behaviors in animals.

It bears repeating that these tech industrialists who now enjoy historic wealth and power have shown themselves repeatedly to be antidemocratic and disturbingly anti-human. Their capture of the economy, and the transfer of an “invisible hand” system to one that is explicitly programmed and controlled by them, that exists as their proprietary knowledge, isn’t just a byproduct of the new economy. It is the total capture of how capitalism works and functions on a day-to-day basis. It isn’t a coincidence that conditions continue to develop in which they gain more wealth and more power. It’s predetermined as long as they hold the controls.

AI and Algorithmic Life

And, so, we arrive at the subject of AI, the crowning “achievement” of the tech class that is being thrust upon us as a technology that will replace humanity in every form and every forum, serving to upend human labor, creativity, governance, education, and essentially take the baton from humans and deliver us, we are told, to a future so great it is unfathomably hard to imagine.

If it is not clear by now, what we are talking about is essentially the training of humanity through a series of tools and reinforcement, positive and negative, to behave according to the wishes of a select few wealthy individuals and immensely powered organizations. Capitalism, as an organizing influence, has carried out this process for centuries. Each new innovation has streamlined and mystified the process, moving from the simple exchange of monies for goods to the nightmare of financialization and, most recently, to the poison confluence of monopoly capitalism and tech control. In each instance, we have continually sacrificed more and more of our humanity, including who we are, what we believe, how he we live, what we create, how we dream, and how move through the world, leading us to the precipice of a development so grotesque the soul repels in revulsion.

AI, as a project, not only devours what is left of the resources of the natural world, but is the final capture of all human traits by tech oligarchs who have already monopolized control over our economy and culture. It is a quiet colonization of the mind and spirit hidden behind sycophantic language and manipulation so powerful it has already created a public health crisis. As it does this, we are told education must be integrated into the project, priming young people to outsource thought and inquiry and lash their economic futures to tech literacy and, once again, serving the “wants” of the larger algorithm. We are told constantly that economic success in the near AI-driven future relies on familiarity and talent and literacy with the technology.

In other words: those who feed the algorithm what it wants will benefit.

Positive reinforcement.

Negative reinforcement.

As this happens, people will experience what has come to be known as alienation. Human nature, including inquiry, creativity, connection, and a need for meaning, will be sublimated, leading to us feeling more and more frustrated, demoralized, unsatisfied, and isolated. We will find ourselves continuing to try and feed the algorithms, using the technology to create content designed only to further our dependence on the technology and worsening our addictions to dopamine-seeking-spurred consumption. Joylessly creating AI facsimiles of things people actually enjoy in real life but by a means that will strip all the joy and wonder from the original subject.

In the end, as has been hypothesized by several prominent futurists, the realization of this product is meant to move beyond humanity in an artificial “evolution,” leaving humans completely dependent on the technology, people more or less designated as A/B testers of technology and occasional injectors of creativity or innovation or even just aesthetic feedback as the machine takes off and the creators and developers and controllers are freed from governmental and political interference to realize their own personal projects, including an end to death for the wealthy, ridiculous notions like Elon Musk’s Mars colonization, and lives of limitless power and luxury.

Where We are Now

Occasionally you will find analysis that goes further than “hey, here’s a bad thing Meta did” or “maybe social media is bad,” but the dots are not often connected. It’s hard to communicate the full extent to which our algorithmic domestication has led to our many crises. Everyone being honest with themselves understands wealth inequality is the root of our problems. But not many want to truly wrestle with how the necessary solutions to those problems are hindered because our economic and cultural incentives are controlled by the people enjoying the inequality and powering the corruption. Add to that a complex system of social media sites that worsen mystification while providing a simulacrum of catharsis, and you’ve got a vexing situation.

I have been studying and creating strategies for what we might do and will publish some insight in the near future, but any conversation about this incredibly important topic begins with a realization that something has happened and that it is only escalating and accelerating. So much of the tech dominance of society hides behind that veneer I mentioned earlier. We are supposed to use these tools, immerse ourselves in a world of their design and under their control, while simply accepting it and acquiescing. In this way, the psychological warfare designed by Bernays and others like him has been victorious, leaving the world to continue falling under the sway of an elite that simply know “better” than us.

There are alternatives. Wrestling control of digital infrastructure from the tech fascists is not only necessary but one of the root solutions to so many of our problems. Their audacity, and buffoonery, has created opportunities for us to engage in class solidarity because to look at this is to loathe it. There is a movement waiting to be built in opposition to this.

The paranoia we feel is justified. For every kook claiming there are conspiracies and manipulations there is more than enough proof and experience to justify that there is truly a grand conspiracy afoot. Meanwhile, the very networks carrying out this project amplify the paranoia and dread, sending all of us scurrying in every direction until we forget where the actual blame lies. We must name what is happening, who has done it, and where it is leading if we are to have a choice in how the future looks and behaves.

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If you haven’t already, check out David’s invaluable contributions to understanding the mindsets and motivations of MAGA and the wealth class, as well as some of the best sports and cultural analysis out there.

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Oh, and as promised, here’s James Dolan, the billionaire owner of the New York Knicks, absolutely killing it.

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In the final chapter of the 2020 Democratic Primary for the presidential nomination, anyone with sources within the party had heard stories of how former president Barack Obama had begun pressing his thumb on the scale. As independent Bernie Sanders continued contesting and still enjoyed momentum and support, Obama wrangled the bloated field of candidates, letting contenders like Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren and others know that his former Vice President Joe Biden was the candidate the party needed to rally around. Once it became clear Biden would win the nomination, Obama continued to massage the race, pressing Sanders to “accelerate the endgame” so that Biden could build momentum heading into the general election.

Obama’s influence over the party since the end of his second term in 2017 has been elusive and, according to some of my connections within the party, somewhat vexing. Most of the time he is busied with a life of personal appearances, constructing his presidential library on the South Side of Chicago, and producing a nearly endless series of podcasts, documentaries, movies, and series with corporate partners like Netflix and Audible, but he still picks high-leverage moments to use his considerable influence and weight to direct the movement of the party. For those on the ground working to organize and elect candidates, it feels, and I paraphrase what someone has told me about the experience, like trying to build a town from the ground up only for the most ill-timed earthquakes to shake the entire project to the dirt.

Now, in the face of ascendant fascism, as the vast majority of Americans are desperate for the Democratic Party to not only represent them but to offer a strong, focused, and aggressive alternative to Trumpism and the even more dangerous movement that waits beyond him, and as approval ratings for the party in the face of their abysmal failure to do plunging numbers into the 30 percentile range, the frustration needs to be both addressed and the reasons why this has happened discussed.

The Actual Nature of Politics

Unfortunately, American education regarding the actual nature of politics has only helped to obscure the machinations of how power works and protects itself. We are given, instead, a narrative involving personalities and drama plays that are more like soap operas than examinations of incentives and actual maneuvers. This leaves us, like many who take to social media to react to every Democratic capitulation and disappointment and scream “What’re you doing???”, to exist in an environment where what is actually happening is hidden behind a veil of easily embraceable stereotypes while conditions continue to deteriorate.

With the Democratic Party, we are told it is a liberal or “leftist” party made up of mostly open-minded, educated people, and that the party itself represents the interests of a pluralistic coalition, including people of color, women, gay and trans Americans, immigrants, and working people. The party preaches tolerance and acceptance and continues to advocate for a kinder, gentler America in which progress continues. It’s easier to understand this by comparing it to a corporate brand. For example, Target, which, up until recently, portrayed itself as a bright, cheery, welcoming environment for families and even the LGBTQ+ community (before, of course, the Right attacked the corporation and then Donald Trump was elected to a second term and Target infamously pulled back from this depiction).

Behind the branding, the Democratic Party, like every party before it, exists to represent a coalition of stakeholders. Yes, the groups listed make up its “under base,” but the party itself is more beholden to a collection of wealth class donors and corporate partners who supply the capital necessary to maintain and operate a national party and an endless number of projects, including strategy, communications, and changing of the law to benefit those shareholders. The make up of both the Democratic Party and the GOP is determined, as is their agendas, by a constant struggle between the shareholders and the under base of supporters, creating an everpresent friction in interests.

This is how it has always worked in American politics. The paradigm shifts in our parties, including the creation of new parties and the destruction of others, has represented changing interests and changing capture of the parties. Sometimes the parties are more beholden to the shareholders, as they are now, and other times the under base asserts more control and/or rebels, causing the party to shift, adapt, or perish. Presently, the Democratic Party, in a time of existential crisis, is way, way more beholden to its shareholders, leaving the vast majority of Americans without effective political representation. This tends to happen, predictably, when wealth inequality reaches historic levels and corruption spreads like a cancer.

Tracing the history and direction of a party like the Democrats requires examining who the shareholders are, how they have shifted, and ultimately, what entrenched machines control the relationships and direction of the party.

How It Works

Once again, these trends have played out throughout our history. Sometimes a party (let’s just call it the Freedom Party for our purposes) is beholden to a certain group of shareholders. In this example, the Freedom Party is a 20th century political group that has a strong partnership with telecommunication corporations that gained immense power and wealth as access to telephones spread across the country. The money amassed and influence gained makes it a logical partner for a party looking for investment. Meanwhile, the Freedom Party has an under base of labor unions and rural voters. That party, through the planning and efforts of its leaders, would likely prioritize legislation that helped its telephone shareholders expand their businesses and gain more power and wealth while possibly helping its labor union and rural supporters, sometimes even synthesizing these efforts by doing things like offering more access in more rural areas to telephones. All the while, the party would do its best to arbitrate disputes between its labor union supporters and the telephone shareholders.

Eventually, however, as the telephone company gained more money and power, thanks to its party partnerships, they would use these gains to influence the party more, buy candidates, and tip the scales. The party would, if not constantly aware of the contradictions, maybe even pass legislation that would hurt rural voters and would undermine the labor unions in negotiations with the shareholders. Dissatisfaction would grow, the under base would get tired of the treatment, and, as things changed economically, they might tend to move toward another party that offered them more while also being tied to shareholders who weren’t explicitly opposed to them, or at least, seemingly so. They might abandon the party, they might struggle to change the party, and, possibly, if the paradigm shifted enough, a new party might emerge that would offer a different partnership. Say, I don’t know, a party affiliated with coal mining / energy companies, etc.

All the while, what is presented, beyond these material conditions and incentives, is a pleasing facade with speeches talking about “the American dream” and promises to make things somewhat better for the under base. Star-spangled bunting and all that. Songs. Advertisements. Figures and personalities and heroes. But, at the core, these interests are driving the show.

Shifting Machines

Prior to Bill Clinton’s election in 1992, the Democratic Party was somewhat lost. Since the collapse of the New Deal Coalition surrounding Franklin D. Roosevelt, the party had merged an under base of labor unions, people of color, women, and the working class with a series of regional powerhouse machines like the Daley political machine in Chicago. Then, Clinton and associate Al From seized national control with their work in the Democratic Leadership Council, which embraced Neoliberalism following Ronald Reagan’s landslide victories in 1980 and then 1984, proposing the party needed to move beyond pure representation of the under base and toward corporate partnership and “free market” ideology.

Clinton’s machine held the reins for roughly twenty years and saw a spate of Democratic politicians get elected following this “third way” ideology that essentially saw the party embrace Neoliberal capitalism and finish the project of global capitalism, which Clinton inherited from Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and the Neoliberal machine that controlled the GOP at that time. For someone to receive the full support of the party in a Congressional race, to get chosen and then backed by the Democrats, it meant fealty to the overall project. Meanwhile, the Clinton Machine fostered relationships with corporate shareholders like finance firms, energy powerhouses, telecommunication giants, and the type of corporations that benefited from global free trade and started to emerge as companies that existed in multiple countries. If you understand this, you understand why global free trade happened, why telecommunications was deregulated, and why the “economic boom” of the 1990’s both led to an amassing of incredible wealth and power by a select few while many Americans saw their lives turned upside down.

In 2008, Barack Obama effectively overtook the Clinton Machine when he wrested the party’s nomination from Hillary Clinton after an ugly and divisive battle. Obama was able to do this, in part because of his own personal talent, but also because the Democratic Party’s contradictions had grown so large that it was vulnerable. The agenda he ran on tirelessly critiqued the damages caused by the Clinton Machine on behalf of its shareholders, including support for the Iraq War and War on Terror, the devastation of life in Middle America, growing inequality between the under base that had been harmed and the elites that had been served by the machine, and essentially offered a shift that could address these consequences. When Obama won, he didn’t just win the nomination. With the support of his closest allies and a new set of shareholders, he installed a new machine to control the Democratic Party.

Obama’s shareholders included parts of the original Clinton Machine, which is why not all that much changed, but also counted a new generation of tech industrialists and corporations on the upswing. Obama’s Machine partnered with the exploding tech industry, creating partnerships with corporations like Google and oligarchs-in-waiting like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. The Obama Administration, and the Democrats downstream from Obama, believed these tech elements were natural partners in not just a new economy but a progressive America. The party refused to regulate big tech, shoveled as much money and as many resources as possible to these elements, and continued to shift power and wealth in the country in their direction.

This, unfortunately, is how the tech class became a class of tech oligarchs. These shareholders were never actually interested in progressive politics or moving the country forward. Predictably, they only cared about market control, consolidation of power, and the creation of a new economy under their control and a government they could increasingly buy.

Stalled Transfer

Because Obama maintained control of the party, the machine is still in place despite obvious conflicts. The tech oligarchs his machine created turned from the Democratic Party at the first moment it was convenient while maintaining enough of a financial hold over the party in order to placate any resistance. This is why, unfortunately, rank and file Democrats still can’t really critique Musk or Bezos or offer regulation of AI. Their shareholders are still, to some extent, populated by the very people and very corporations that are attempting to destroy democracy.

It’s telling that Obama personally handpicked Hillary Clinton as his successor in 2016, telling Biden it was her turn and advising him not to run, and then helped to curb Sanders’s challenge in the process. When Biden won in 2020, Obama helped facilitate it and many members of his personal braintrust continued their work in that administration. Then, Biden bowed out in 2024, and who was there to help Kamala Harris and to help direct the hastily put together operation? The Obama folks.

Meanwhile, those in Obama’s circle used their connections with the machine’s shareholders to secure lucrative jobs on the boards and within the corporate structures of the tech oligarchs they helped to create in the first place. This is why Obama stalwarts like David Plouffe and Jim Messina end up getting paid handsomely by corporations like Uber. Then, when they return to Democratic politics, their advice and strategy reflects the corporate interests of the business that actually pays them more money than the Democratic Party, because it is essentially insider-lobbying. What do you get? A Harris Campaign that never really mentioned the growing power and influence of the tech oligarchs, that never dared to challenge the worsening status quo, and a celebration of Wall Street. Because the Harris Campaign was nestled within the Obama Machine, helmed in part by Obama Machine veterans, and still dedicated to the shareholders that were actively making conditions worse.

There was no Biden Machine. There was no Harris Machine. Even as the tension between the under base and the shareholders grew, there was no political force there to represent that under base and potentially new shareholders to trouble the grip on the party and change the paradigm. Working within the Obama Machine were gatekeepers like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi (who was just honored at the Obama Presidential Library with her own garden pavilion for her role in the machine) maintained discipline in the choosing and supporting of Congressional candidates and then, by extension, their votes within the halls of power. And to do what? To advance agendas that occasionally helped the under base in marginal ways but mostly took care of shareholder interests.

In a way, the Democratic Party has suffered because of just how powerful and effective the Obama Machine has been, even as Obama has largely receded from politics, his allies have increased their links and strengthened their relationships with shareholders, his under bosses at the congressional level have been so competent at enforcing machine loyalty, leaving the party to become less popular with its under base and less attractive to potential voters looking for alternatives to the status quo.

Choices

Describing this paradigm can be paralyzing. We don’t have the money the tech oligarchs have. We don’t have that influence. The under base cannot spontaneously become more important than the shareholders, that’s simply not how this works. And, it should go without saying, we can’t just hope and pray that the party will suddenly “come to its senses” because that’s not where the incentives or influence is.

It is only through antagonism between the under base and the party regarding the shareholders that can shift a party and/or reveal the need for energy to be directed elsewhere. Projects like the Progressive Movement and the New Deal Coalition, which were so effective they took over both parties and shifted the consensus for decades apiece, didn’t emerge out of nowhere. They happened because regular people organized, antagonized, and pressured the parties to change to meet their demands. And, in both cases, these movements were subject to periods of historic inequality and unparalleled corruption, which required a changing of tactics. Eventually, the machines took over the parties, restructured their operations, forced a shift in ideological direction, and changed the course of history.

Doing this now depends on a few things. One is local and regional organizing that stresses material conditions that are not being addressed by the national parties. Luckily, that’s basically everything at this point. This means tackling poverty, social injustice, calling for expanded rights and protections, demanding larger systemic change rather than modest reform, and, perhaps most importantly, pursuing a necessary confrontation with the wealth class, oligarchs, and the collection of shareholders that control the parties. This must include dispatching of tried and true narratives and stereotypes, recognizing, like Obama did in 2008 with his own takeover, that the machine in place has made definitive mistakes that must be addressed. The Democratic Party helped create the oligarchical class, gifting burgeoning tech industrialists and their corporations too much money, too much power, and too many blank checks. This doesn’t mean you have to dismiss any good that Obama or members of his machine completed, but it does mean being clear-eyed about where they fell short and what the actual reasons are that those failures occurred.

Either the Democratic Party will change or it will give way to something else. We have seen this cycle play out so many times, and the divide between the under base and the shareholders is always a driving reason in why it happens. With each passing year, the current structure of the Democratic Party proves not only disastrous but also untenable. The under base is being targeted, betrayed, and, through the ravages of fascism, liquidated. If this continues, there won’t be an educated middle class of professional managers to rely on. There won’t be labor unions. And marginalized communities like people of color, women, gay and trans people, and immigrants will turn away from a party that doesn’t serve them like the working class already has.

Luckily, this isn’t something we simply have to sit back and watch. We can clearly see where things have gone wrong and where things need, to borrow one of Obama’s most cherished words, to change.

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