Sure, Trump is a gangster, a fascist, and an aspiring dictator. But Trump, for all is hogging of the media world, is really not the issue. It is the people around him and their plans that should really frighten us.
This is from a post by Mike Block on his Notes From the Circus website:
"Donald Trump, the supposed strongman at the heart of …
Sure, Trump is a gangster, a fascist, and an aspiring dictator. But Trump, for all is hogging of the media world, is really not the issue. It is the people around him and their plans that should really frighten us.
This is from a post by Mike Block on his Notes From the Circus website:
"Donald Trump, the supposed strongman at the heart of it all, is oblivious. He has no grand ideological project beyond his own power. He does not understand the system being built around him, nor the fact that his own presidency is merely a vehicle for forces that see him as a useful, temporary battering ram against democracy.
"But those around him? They understand perfectly.
"J.D. Vance, the Vice President in waiting, has studied Curtis Yarvin’s work. Peter Thiel, his longtime patron, has been funding this vision for over a decade. Balaji Srinivasan is writing the blueprint. Elon Musk is laying the infrastructure. And the young operatives now wiring AI models into the Treasury Department—disbanding civil service, bypassing traditional government, and replacing democratic accountability with technological sovereignty—are working toward a future that will long outlast Trump himself.
"This is not about Trump. This is about what comes after him.
"Actuarial realities do not favor an aging leader with a declining grasp on policy. But they favor the thirty- and forty-somethings laying the foundation for the post-democratic order. The men who have spent the past decade engineering an exit from democracy are no longer whispering in the dark corners of the internet. They are in power, with money, AI, and a plan. And democracy, in its current form, has never been closer to the brink.
"But in the world they are building, the people have no voice. The algorithms speak for them. The executives decide for them. The future is optimized, efficient, and entirely out of their hands."
Block has a lot more to say, but this is the part that gets to the heart of what is going on.
I would quarrel with his statement that "democracy... has never been closer to the brink." Democracy has been pushed over the cliff. It's gone. Our fight now is to create a new kind of democracy -- working class democracy.
Exactly. Trump is a gangster, but he is but the titular head of this truly dark deep state mafia, who in fact have a core philosophy, agenda and blueprint. It's a long, uncertain battle to unwind of this serpent's grip.
Though I'm reminded of a quip from the old Pogo cartoon strip -- "we have seen the enemy, and he is us."
I'm thinking of the well-known and well-regarded British biologist Richard Dawkins who's no fan to Trump, but who still accepts that Trump is right on the money when it comes to kicking transwomen out of women's sports, for defending and endorsing standard biological definitions for the sexes:
RD: "In my opinion Donald Trump is a loathsome individual, utterly unfit to be President, but his statement that 'sex is determined at conception and is based on the size of the gamete that the resulting individual will produce' is accurate in every particular, perhaps the only true statement he ever made."
Rather large number of people -- many erstwhile Democrats included -- voted for him for that alone. Trump may well be a cure worse than the "diseases" preying on the American public, that of transgenderism in particular. But still some reason to argue that since the patient was on death's doorstep, virtually anything was worth a shot.
They do have deep, sinister plans. What they don't have is the kind of mass appeal that Trump commands. Vance, Musk and others in the admin are not popular figures.
Sure, Trump is a gangster, a fascist, and an aspiring dictator. But Trump, for all is hogging of the media world, is really not the issue. It is the people around him and their plans that should really frighten us.
This is from a post by Mike Block on his Notes From the Circus website:
"Donald Trump, the supposed strongman at the heart of it all, is oblivious. He has no grand ideological project beyond his own power. He does not understand the system being built around him, nor the fact that his own presidency is merely a vehicle for forces that see him as a useful, temporary battering ram against democracy.
"But those around him? They understand perfectly.
"J.D. Vance, the Vice President in waiting, has studied Curtis Yarvin’s work. Peter Thiel, his longtime patron, has been funding this vision for over a decade. Balaji Srinivasan is writing the blueprint. Elon Musk is laying the infrastructure. And the young operatives now wiring AI models into the Treasury Department—disbanding civil service, bypassing traditional government, and replacing democratic accountability with technological sovereignty—are working toward a future that will long outlast Trump himself.
"This is not about Trump. This is about what comes after him.
"Actuarial realities do not favor an aging leader with a declining grasp on policy. But they favor the thirty- and forty-somethings laying the foundation for the post-democratic order. The men who have spent the past decade engineering an exit from democracy are no longer whispering in the dark corners of the internet. They are in power, with money, AI, and a plan. And democracy, in its current form, has never been closer to the brink.
"But in the world they are building, the people have no voice. The algorithms speak for them. The executives decide for them. The future is optimized, efficient, and entirely out of their hands."
Block has a lot more to say, but this is the part that gets to the heart of what is going on.
I would quarrel with his statement that "democracy... has never been closer to the brink." Democracy has been pushed over the cliff. It's gone. Our fight now is to create a new kind of democracy -- working class democracy.
Exactly. Trump is a gangster, but he is but the titular head of this truly dark deep state mafia, who in fact have a core philosophy, agenda and blueprint. It's a long, uncertain battle to unwind of this serpent's grip.
A Like at least for your user name ... 👍🙂
Though I'm reminded of a quip from the old Pogo cartoon strip -- "we have seen the enemy, and he is us."
I'm thinking of the well-known and well-regarded British biologist Richard Dawkins who's no fan to Trump, but who still accepts that Trump is right on the money when it comes to kicking transwomen out of women's sports, for defending and endorsing standard biological definitions for the sexes:
RD: "In my opinion Donald Trump is a loathsome individual, utterly unfit to be President, but his statement that 'sex is determined at conception and is based on the size of the gamete that the resulting individual will produce' is accurate in every particular, perhaps the only true statement he ever made."
https://richarddawkins.substack.com/p/denying-that-sex-is-binary-a-study
Rather large number of people -- many erstwhile Democrats included -- voted for him for that alone. Trump may well be a cure worse than the "diseases" preying on the American public, that of transgenderism in particular. But still some reason to argue that since the patient was on death's doorstep, virtually anything was worth a shot.
They do have deep, sinister plans. What they don't have is the kind of mass appeal that Trump commands. Vance, Musk and others in the admin are not popular figures.