Our Failing Institutions

Why have so many of our institutions have become so dysfunctional? Further, many of them have become Orwellian, which you can see when you compare their official mission statements with what they actually do. Dylan Ratigan offers this thoughtful analysis:

The Billionaires Are Not Victims

One of the great distortions in American political discourse is the idea that populist anger emerges from nowhere — as if millions of people simultaneously became irrational, tribal, or extreme for no reason at all.

I don’t believe that.

I think what we are witnessing across the United States — on both the political right and the political left — is the consequence of a society that increasingly understands, correctly, that its governing institutions are not primarily organized around the public interest.

They are organized around capital concentration.

And until that changes, populism will continue to grow.

Not because people are stupid.

[More ...}

Continue ReadingOur Failing Institutions

Today’s Predominant Political Category Error

If only I could conjure up a sprawling, complex, monied and politically-interconnected system of prophylactic gaslighting in order to protect me from any criticism at all for my own egregious misconduct. I don't have those resources.

I would need a very powerful social and economic system, indeed, to sell "logic" as idiotic as this: Whenever you criticize me for despicable things I actually did, you are criticizing my puppy, the Apple tree in my backyard and my second grade music teacher. That sad state of affair is where we currently are, as Glenn Greenwald describes.

Truly, it would take an immensely powerful political/economic force to sell that level of bullshit on a nationwide basis. It would take the kind of overwhelming power capable purchasing CBS and TikTok, as well as purchasing hundreds of members of Congress through AIPAC. With that kind of power and money and reach, we now see that one could even incentivize (or frighten) a college president to implore to her college students that 2 + 2 = 5.

What we are seeing in these modern times is that sufficient money and power can dispense with the simple logic and clear meaning of this Venn diagram:

Continue ReadingToday’s Predominant Political Category Error

Democrats No Longer the Party of the Working Class

Used to claim that they were the party of the working class. That is not true anymore based on the following graph.

But to be fair, I'm not sure that either party is the party of the working class. I would think that virtually all of the issues that the working class would vote for overwhelmingly are being resoundingly rejected by both parties, Democrats and Republicans. As George Carlin noted, they don't care about us at all.

Continue ReadingDemocrats No Longer the Party of the Working Class

Democracy for Democrats, Corruption for All

"Democracy" for Democrats, confirmed by court filings by attorneys for the DNC. Kamala Harris was appointed to be the Dems' candidate. There was no vote to install her as the nominee. BTW, this is not a clever way for me to suggest that Republicans are any better. They are corrupt too. Many of the Founders correctly warned of the grave dangers of political parties. Almost all national politicians are thoroughly corrupted by a thoroughly corrupt system that specializes in theater, part of a vast system of kayfabe. As George Carlin claimed, politicians don't care about you. At all. It's not a flaw in the system. It's the design of the system itself, to further countless ways to extract wealth from ordinary people so that elites of both parties can live in physical comfort. I wish I didn't see things this way, but I have repeatedly failed to convince myself to believe otherwise.

Continue ReadingDemocracy for Democrats, Corruption for All