Thank you, Sam. Let’s hope the rubber meets the road while he is still in office, or the democrats will be blamed for his sins once again as he reaps the fruit of their labour while in office. Inertia of political and social change makes consequences almost impossible for people to understand 😭
According to Sam there are no fruits for Trump to reap, since the Dems are totally ineffectual and also annoying and sorta worse than Trump who’s admittedly not so hot. Anyway it’s all kind of a clown show — just like the nonsense with Hamas and Israel.
"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." Politics, by nature, seduces people who love power, limelight, celebrity, and control. Leadership, like everything in US lately, becomes self-interest and image, so there is no true leadership. In walks a "savior"; out walks a multimillion dollar book deal, a country still crying in hope for a messiah, and the press creating our history.
Interesting your take on Afghanistan is exactly the same as many others on Central and South America for the last sixty years. I would agree with both but with the proviso - Afghanistan was a Pentagon grift that, had it worked, they would have been paid twice. Once for the twenty plus year grift of invasion and control and then again with the opium trade in their full control (if the country succumbed) to fund more and more black ops in other countries. Looking at the Pentagon as having any other agenda than this is just like Trump. An eight year old kid. Dual use baby! US’hey where’s mine - is the grift that keeps on griving.
It’s a pretty easy extrapolation to make outward from there back to the Monroe Doctrine. The great thing about Trump is his verbal autism. His one true gift is saying all the ugly American tropes out loud. A true window into the hegemonic soul.
Lots to digest here. This is chilling: "And then there will be the moment when the rubber meets the road — when there’s some crisis, whether it’s a pandemic-type situation or a financial crash along the lines of 2008 — and everyone will look to a functioning state to take control and the question will be how gutted the state is by that time."
There is so much gutting going on. I thought 2020 marked an institutional reshuffling, but what's happening to K-12 and higher ed just keeps getting worse. Can any of us in our 40s and 50s look to retirement with any assurance of Social Security and Medicare? That is part of what the Trump faction is toying with -- precarity even for those who thought themselves upper middle class. For instance, I depend on the public option for health insurance. But those premiums went up almost $150/month compared to last year. If I can't count on a public option, can I continue as a small business owner?
On a separate note, I do not feel sorry for Zuckerberg, and while I have no wish to revive the Substack Nazi flap, I think the comparisons are inevitable. When you launch a platform with considerable reach and power, you have a responsibility to curate. That is precisely what legacy media did for at least a few generations, before cable TV destroyed that model. Whatever good faith you expected from human beings is not excusable for harm done from misinformation, particularly when you're pocketing profits either way. I've been trying to articulate the problem with the very utopian idea of everyone just hanging out their own shingle and dispensing with institutions altogether. Part of it is that for writers of a certain age, their command of craft, their ethical sensibility, and all the rest was forged in traditional institutions. So they can be trusted, more or less, to stay true to that training even while flying solo. But if there is no institutional center, no shared definition of ethics, how does the next generation hone their sensibility in ways that earn the trust of strangers? If we are all increasingly writing to small coteries rather than sharing in a common trust, that might have some financial benefits, but creates some very serious social costs.
Very interesting Josh. We really should do an exchange - maybe on Inner Life? - about why I'm relatively optimistic on Substack and you're relatively pessimistic (which gets into these content moderation questions). I do think something important that's happening is the collapse of a shared national cultural center - and I think that's to the good actually (or, maybe better to say, an inevitability given growth in population and shifts in technology).
Yeah, I think Trump II is going to be really, really bad news, even if it will take a while to happen. Everything seemed to be sort of ok until Covid the first time around, and I suspect that sort of pattern will repeat itself here.
I'd love to do an exchange on this. I think it's probably true that I'm still in denial about how little my PhD means as a marker of achievement and authority, perhaps how little it meant even when I was a professor. But as I've written about recently, some of my scholarly training has only grown more germane to our cultural and political moment.
I see much of what trends well on a platform like Substack as akin to Beat Poetry or Kerouac or Ferlinghetti. Extremely hip for a minute and then just kind of ridiculous.
There are some home truths in this piece, for instance, and I've shared it widely because it's a chilling reminder of how much the job "market" is just a smokescreen for power, privilege, and nepotism. But I am also mindful that a writer like this is pulling a stunt by lapsing abruptly into profane all-caps rant mode. It feels fresh and energizing, but isn't it just a kind of cheap plastic toy stylistically? Maybe I'm growing stodgy in my old age (not yet 50!), but I still think that writing ought to aim at a higher mark. People who were trained by the old institutions are doing that capably on their own. But I think we get a lot more of this in a world without legacy media. It's like a Gusher -- quick sugar fix -- instead of a gourmet macaroon.
Thanks Tarik!
Thank you, Sam. Let’s hope the rubber meets the road while he is still in office, or the democrats will be blamed for his sins once again as he reaps the fruit of their labour while in office. Inertia of political and social change makes consequences almost impossible for people to understand 😭
According to Sam there are no fruits for Trump to reap, since the Dems are totally ineffectual and also annoying and sorta worse than Trump who’s admittedly not so hot. Anyway it’s all kind of a clown show — just like the nonsense with Hamas and Israel.
Well, I think it's possible to criticize both sides! Because one is bad doesn't mean we give the other a free pass.
Thank you Ani!
"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." Politics, by nature, seduces people who love power, limelight, celebrity, and control. Leadership, like everything in US lately, becomes self-interest and image, so there is no true leadership. In walks a "savior"; out walks a multimillion dollar book deal, a country still crying in hope for a messiah, and the press creating our history.
Nicely put Cathy. It's such a dirty business, politics. There really seems to be no end to it.
Interesting your take on Afghanistan is exactly the same as many others on Central and South America for the last sixty years. I would agree with both but with the proviso - Afghanistan was a Pentagon grift that, had it worked, they would have been paid twice. Once for the twenty plus year grift of invasion and control and then again with the opium trade in their full control (if the country succumbed) to fund more and more black ops in other countries. Looking at the Pentagon as having any other agenda than this is just like Trump. An eight year old kid. Dual use baby! US’hey where’s mine - is the grift that keeps on griving.
Yeah, Afghanistan seems to have been a really cynical operation. Certainly a point for your critique of US imperialism.
It’s a pretty easy extrapolation to make outward from there back to the Monroe Doctrine. The great thing about Trump is his verbal autism. His one true gift is saying all the ugly American tropes out loud. A true window into the hegemonic soul.
Lots to digest here. This is chilling: "And then there will be the moment when the rubber meets the road — when there’s some crisis, whether it’s a pandemic-type situation or a financial crash along the lines of 2008 — and everyone will look to a functioning state to take control and the question will be how gutted the state is by that time."
There is so much gutting going on. I thought 2020 marked an institutional reshuffling, but what's happening to K-12 and higher ed just keeps getting worse. Can any of us in our 40s and 50s look to retirement with any assurance of Social Security and Medicare? That is part of what the Trump faction is toying with -- precarity even for those who thought themselves upper middle class. For instance, I depend on the public option for health insurance. But those premiums went up almost $150/month compared to last year. If I can't count on a public option, can I continue as a small business owner?
On a separate note, I do not feel sorry for Zuckerberg, and while I have no wish to revive the Substack Nazi flap, I think the comparisons are inevitable. When you launch a platform with considerable reach and power, you have a responsibility to curate. That is precisely what legacy media did for at least a few generations, before cable TV destroyed that model. Whatever good faith you expected from human beings is not excusable for harm done from misinformation, particularly when you're pocketing profits either way. I've been trying to articulate the problem with the very utopian idea of everyone just hanging out their own shingle and dispensing with institutions altogether. Part of it is that for writers of a certain age, their command of craft, their ethical sensibility, and all the rest was forged in traditional institutions. So they can be trusted, more or less, to stay true to that training even while flying solo. But if there is no institutional center, no shared definition of ethics, how does the next generation hone their sensibility in ways that earn the trust of strangers? If we are all increasingly writing to small coteries rather than sharing in a common trust, that might have some financial benefits, but creates some very serious social costs.
Very interesting Josh. We really should do an exchange - maybe on Inner Life? - about why I'm relatively optimistic on Substack and you're relatively pessimistic (which gets into these content moderation questions). I do think something important that's happening is the collapse of a shared national cultural center - and I think that's to the good actually (or, maybe better to say, an inevitability given growth in population and shifts in technology).
Yeah, I think Trump II is going to be really, really bad news, even if it will take a while to happen. Everything seemed to be sort of ok until Covid the first time around, and I suspect that sort of pattern will repeat itself here.
I'd love to do an exchange on this. I think it's probably true that I'm still in denial about how little my PhD means as a marker of achievement and authority, perhaps how little it meant even when I was a professor. But as I've written about recently, some of my scholarly training has only grown more germane to our cultural and political moment.
I see much of what trends well on a platform like Substack as akin to Beat Poetry or Kerouac or Ferlinghetti. Extremely hip for a minute and then just kind of ridiculous.
There are some home truths in this piece, for instance, and I've shared it widely because it's a chilling reminder of how much the job "market" is just a smokescreen for power, privilege, and nepotism. But I am also mindful that a writer like this is pulling a stunt by lapsing abruptly into profane all-caps rant mode. It feels fresh and energizing, but isn't it just a kind of cheap plastic toy stylistically? Maybe I'm growing stodgy in my old age (not yet 50!), but I still think that writing ought to aim at a higher mark. People who were trained by the old institutions are doing that capably on their own. But I think we get a lot more of this in a world without legacy media. It's like a Gusher -- quick sugar fix -- instead of a gourmet macaroon.
https://femcel1836.substack.com/p/why-are-there-no-fucking-jobs