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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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Thank you, as always for your support. If you’d like to support The Muckrake and gain access to a bonus episode every Friday, as well as join the Discord where the community lives, head over to Patreon and become a patron. Thank you so much for the support here. I can’t tell you what a difference it makes.

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Hey everybody. We’re back with another installment of Dispatches Mailbag, where I answer subscriber questions and get into some things that I’m maybe not writing a full article about. I’ve been experimenting with doing these things on a live feed and have enjoyed it, but unfortunately this is also one of the ways I support myself and am able to do this work.

I want to level with people. This project only works with your support and your backing. I refuse to take corporate funding as it means censorship. I received a cancellation notice from a paid subscriber just yesterday with feedback reading “love your work but I get all the content for free!” There was a smiley face and, to be honest, it was infuriating. Some accounts are able to continue without paywalls due to their large subscriber bases or because monetary support comes from elsewhere, including corporate backing. Mine is decent, but I need to offer subscriber incentives to make ends meet. So we’re here.

As I’ve talked about in my analysis, the economy is in real trouble. I know some people can’t afford to support a project like this, so I am asking, humbly, if you can, and if this matters to you, please help. I don’t want to talk about this, I don’t want to make this appeal, but here we are.

In this edition of the mailbag of your questions, we get into the infiltration of the Democratic Party and liberal influencer ecosystem by former Republicans and other questionable individuals, a follow-up on my article about Tucker Carlson and some of his, uh, stranger lies, a question regarding my recent white paper and the world of non-profits and think-tanks, exactly why the Right Wing is so aggressively stupid, and a pretty large and important question about class politics, atomization, and how we can finally come together against the wealth and oligarchical classes.

Thank you for the questions. They’re always so good. And, again, thank you for your support. I can’t tell you what a difference it makes.

Kevin: You were posting on Bluesky about liberal influencers being GOP strategists, guys who crimed for Trump, and ex FBI/CIA people. I’ve been really uneasy about all this for awhile now and until recently I assumed it was an accident. I’m not sure anymore. Was this an op? Tell me I’m crazy.

I don’t think it’s completely an op, but it isn’t isn’t an op and you’re also most definitely not crazy. The political shift that came into full view in 2016 reorganized American politics in really fascinating and strange ways. Donald Trump’s takeover the Republican Party signaled a new overtly authoritarian era and it was cemented, in part, due to an expressly anti-Neoconservative platform and the same kind of fascist feint I described in the Tucker Carlson article. The fallout from that has been wild.

The people who make up things like the Lincoln Project had long and lucrative careers guiding the GOP before Trump, serving to make ads and strategize for the Neoconservatives and Neoliberals from Ronald Reagan on. When Trump built part of his base by criticizing George W. Bush, the Iraq War, and, in a roundabout way, Neoliberalism, his victory left these people politically homeless. Trump’s Neoliberal critique, again, was predicated on that fascist feint and redirected anger toward the wealth class that caused the problem and redirecting it to vulnerable communities. The people who helped him “crime,” including individuals who served jail time or became somewhat notorious when these crimes were exposed, were abandoned by Trump and many began speaking in liberal circles about him and found an audience. The Democratic Party, and liberal ecosystems, has been very eager to run candidates who served in the CIA and FBI and these people, touting themselves as experts, have also become popular as it appears the system is resisting Trump’s corruption.

This shift has paralleled the Democratic Party following the GOP to the right on the Overton Window, leaving Democrats as the conservative party in our duopoly. The Dems “big tent” began to include one Republican castoff after another, and saw such abhorrent sights as Kamala Harris, the party’s nominee, campaign in 2024 with Liz Cheney and thanking her father Dick for his “service to the country.” This is realignment and very common in fascist / authoritarian cycles. The Democrats have been becoming more and more conservative since the 1980’s and now we’re seeing it come into full fruition. Meanwhile, the same assholes who helped make the modern fascist GOP are continually advising the Democrats on what path they should take, and, surprise surprise, it’s to become more conservative!

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In my work with The Change Campaign, an organization dedicated to a fairer future, I have been providing analysis through the associated think-tank the American Institute For Change (AIFC) that is attempting to forecast where conditions are heading in order to strategize how we might create a democratic movement to defeat fascism and construct something beyond this crisis.

Today I’m releasing my newest white paper entitled THE WORSENING CRISIS: THE GROWING ENERGY AND ECONOMIC CRISES AND PREPARING FOR A BETTER FUTURE. This paper analyzes the economic and political fallout resulting from the disastrous war in Iran, detailing what we have already seen as well as synthesizing the elements in play and where they might lead. I wanted to make this widely available as we have, here at Dispatches From A Collapsing State, been attempting to keep people aware of the looming crisis so that people can prepare accordingly. This analysis examines what is likely to be the chain of events as our economy weakens, the energy crises continues, and as the political class scrambles to provide solutions and, of course, makes them worse because of corruption and growing fascism. There is also a look at what opportunities are presenting themselves as the old American Empire dies, fossil fuel loses its stranglehold over our society, and the desire for change grows among the populace. Please share with anyone who would benefit with this information.

I appreciate, as always, the support you give me. I wouldn’t be able to do any of this work without you and your subscriptions. As always, if this work resonates with you, I deeply need your support. Become a subscriber today to keep this project going and please take some time to familiarize yourself with The Change Campaign and the American Institute For Change.

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This article is free for educational and organizing purposes. Dispatches From A Collapsing State, however, is extremely dependent on your support. If this work resonates with you, please become a paid subscriber. This project needs that support more than ever.

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Tucker Carlson has spent his abysmal and turbulent career preening in front of cameras and wearing every costume at his disposal. He came to prominence as a bow-tie wearing prep twerp who spouted standard, generic free market drivel and has transformed into a “rugged, self-determined” man camping out in his multi-million dollar cabin in Maine. His is the story of an opportunistic chameleon and his current iteration is a cautionary tale about the capability for the American public to be shamelessly manipulated.

As the MAGA coalition is torn asunder by its own internal contradictions - driven by differing incentives regarding isolationism and Neoconservative/fascist plundering, the worsening stain of the Epstein scandal, the abhorrent crimes and enabling of Israel, and worsening material conditions - a significant portions of Donald Trump’s supporters are flocking to a developing side prominently featuring Carlson. This isn’t surprising. From Trump’s emergence in 2016, there has been a collection of supporters who appreciate his casual and enduring racism, embrace of patriarchal misogyny, and an expressed preference for nationalistic realignment. The latter follows decades of American hegemonic expansion in accordance with capitalism’s ceaseless desire for hoarding of resources and power, during which the lives of both people around the world and American citizens were tragically impacted and degraded (for more of this see my book American Rule: How A Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People). The white nationalists have long been conditional supporters of Trump but simultaneously suspicious of him as they’ve been aware of his self-dealing and existence as an instinctual fascist versus a practicing, theory bound fascist.

As I have been saying, the end of MAGA or Trumpism will not be the end of the fascist push in the United States of America. The collapse of his personality cult will not just simply open the door for a moderating conservative rebirth within the Republican Party but, if material conditions continue to deteriorate, if the Democratic Party does not change and insist upon reform and redistribution, and there is every reason to believe both of these things are already overdetermined to worsen, the fascists will welcome disillusioned MAGA voters and supporters into their growing coalition.

Carlson is a fascist. What he preaches is a streamlined and laundered fascist ideology that has, for years now, communicated a vibrant and understandable American authoritarianism that creates in groups and out groups, prioritizes heroic misogyny, Christian Nationalism, and the type of sneering cruelty that undergirds fascist projects. His conspiracy theories are tinged with observable antisemitic tropes we should all recognize by now. He has worked, hand in glove, with dictators like Vladimir Putin and illiberal authoritarians like Viktor Orbán. And, for those of us who monitor him closely, all that has happened in recent months is an increased emphasis on taking these extreme views and filtering them for a growing and desperate audience.

You might have noticed, as the disaster in Iran has escalated, conditions deteriorate, and the Epstein scandal continues to fester, that Carlson, along with Republicans like Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene, have been gaining traction. The schism within MAGA has played upon the partisan desires of mainstream and corporate liberals, leaving them to share clips of these Republican castoffs with captions like “Why is TUCKER CARLSON making sense all of a sudden?”

The answer to that rhetorical question is that he’s not making sense. None of them are.

The answer is that we exist within a duopolistic system that hides a monopoly power of wealth and oligarchical interests. The fact that the vast majority of Americans are not represented by one of the major parties, because there is no means of redress, they are desperate for even a semblance of recognition or communication that reflects their own frustrations and desires.

To put it simply and historically: when capitalist conditions become unbearable and there is no Leftist representation or influence, the Far Right will inevitably adopt a faux-leftist critique in order to recruit regular people and then use that recruitment to build their own antidemocratic project.

On paper, Carlson’s critiques have merit. He is opposed to the Iran War, vocally opposed to Israel’s apartheid state and influence over American politics, he sees the Epstein scandal as indicative of guilt among Trump and other powerful people, and he regularly states that wealth inequality and corruption are antithetical to a working society. Carlson also takes position that could be misconstrued as “leftist,” such as recently when he said, “I think people should stop paying their credit. I know no one else agrees with me and, oh, ‘you have a moral obligation.’ Really, well, you have a moral obligation to not send credit card applications to kids in college.”

In one video after another, Carlson is engaging in conversations with guests who are critical of Trump, publicly opposed to apartheid and this ongoing war, and warning of economic and political consequences if inequality continues. But, nestled into these interviews, are some of the most antidemocratic, homo/transphobic, misogynistic, racist, and classist views imaginable. Not to mention more and more laundering of authoritarian figures and systems. Lurking behind his valid criticisms of Israel and Zionism are quiet but recognizable antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Carlson, Taylor Greene, and others like them are not your allies. They are, have been, and will continue to be, your adversaries. It just so happens that they are forging their own path to influence by coopting the language and stances of a nonexistent, fractured Left in order to create that road to power.

Historically, it isn’t a coincidence that their forebears in the Italian Fascists and German Nazis paved a similar path. Benito Mussolini was a socialist prior to a Fascist. The National Socialist Party, during the financial tumult of the 1920’s, built a base by supplying a critique on the failures of capitalism in opposition to the rudderless Weimar Republic parties they opposed. The crisis of capitalism during the Great Depression left the masses desperate for change and the battle lines were drawn between an emerging socialist energy and the fascists who paid lipservice to actual reform while consolidating power with the consent and support of the capitalists who created the crisis in the first place. Rather than allowing the socialists to blame those capitalists, the fascists worked in concert with them to redirect the blame to vulnerable groups, thereby allowing them to concentrate more wealth and power while overcoming the impediments of liberal democracy, pushing conditions to the point where slave labor under the punishing fist of authoritarianism allowed consolidation to continue and expedite.

We’re entering another stage just like that. It’s unclear when this shift will take place, but it’s already underway. It’s uncertain who will lead this new coalition, but we have the historical information to know how it will be communicated. And the Democratic Party’s unwillingness to even allow so much as an actual Leftist critique, even if it was mitigated by other party orthodoxy or its own conservative ideology, makes it even more likely that Carlson and others like him will carve out more influence and exposure. Because they’ll fill that vacuum and lead everyone they can convince, which will be many, right into the waiting hands of an authoritarian who will, like Carlson, ally themselves with the wealth and oligarchical classes while speaking faux-leftist propaganda.

The solution here is quite simple. People are desperate to be represented and heard and to hear leaders give voice to what they already know and understand and feel. It is on us, if the Democratic Party refuses, to have those conversations, to find common ground and build the necessary bridges. To do so, we’ll also need to provide the antidote to this faux-leftism and faux-populism. We cannot let Carlson and others use this tactic, especially as we know exactly what it is that they’re trying to accomplish. In all of our battles, and there are many, and of all the tasks that seem so large, and there are also many of those, the least we can do is counteract this bullshit wherever we encounter it.

Here Jon and I discuss, first, our thoughts on the disturbing experience of acts like Fallon, who are so thoroughly corporatized, and who play jester inside a studio as the world burns outside, as to radiate an energy that repels the soul. From there, we discuss the secret horrors of capitalism that have always been just below the surface and hidden from full view, but the feeling of how they are bursting from the seams now as class consciousness and precarity grow. We turn to popular pieces of horror that voice a lingering sense of dread and horror and how they are often reflections, intentionally or not, of the unconscious guilt and trauma we all carry as capitalism manipulates and exploits us. I can’t recommend this conversation enough.

Jon is over at and the podcast is Horror Vanguard. Give Jon and his work a look. You won’t regret it.

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In the mainstream narrative about the fall of the Soviet Union, most people begin the story with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The wall fell on November 9th, 1989. Just, fell. Unexpectedly. The German people made that happen by pressing the issue and taking advantage of a sclerotic, failing system. They exposed its frailty and seized opportunity. On December 26th, 1991, the USSR ceased to exist. Between these two years there were many signs of collapse that can be weaved together in an effort to understand, but you would also need to go back further, to the formation of the Soviet Union itself and the betrayal of the people and the perversion of revolution. All that being said, popular imagination remembers the wall falling and the Kremlin lowering the hammer and the sickle.

In 2021, on this very site, I argued that nobody won the Cold War and that both the USSR and U.S. suffered mortal blows. The Soviets collapsed first, but the U.S. was left bleeding as it strode forward. Everyone lost. The USSR, the U.S., and the rest of us who were forced to live through the Cold War and its consequences. I could write about this all day and all night and, but we aren’t here for that. We’re here to talk about the death of the American Post-World War II order. The death of empire.

Yesterday, President Donald Trump landed in China ahead of his summit with dictator Xi Xinping. He was greeted with crowds waving flags on his way to the presidential limo. He looked sullen, exhausted, decaying. The Chinese officials who escorted him could hardly hide their jubilation. China, after all, holds all the leverage. In later meetings, Trump continually referred to the children. I cannot tell you how elementary the staging was. It’s State Visit 101. We’ll be lucky if Trump hasn’t sacrificed the people of Taiwan before he returns to Air Force One, and who even knows if he’ll get so much as a concession on Iran.

Following the disastrous, criminal attack on Iran, Trump finds himself cornered. Iran masterfully countered the most powerful military in the history of the world and outmaneuvered them. Our Middle Eastern bases are practically in ruins. The Strait of Hormuz is closed and choking the global economy to death. A ground invasion of Iran would result in casualties America isn’t willing to suffer. There is no reason under the sun why Iran would want to sue for peace. Trump and his entourage, including oligarchs Elon Musk and Tim Cook, are there in hopes that maybe Xi would take pity on the Americans in exchange for ascendant power and the gift of expanded resources. Even if Xi grants that mercy and convinces Iran to end the war, the American Post-War order has effectively died.

This, of course, has been a long time coming. The post-war project of American hegemony has been an utter disaster for humanity. The Cold War was a battle for resource dominance spearheaded by two behemoths that used the conflict to expand their empires, overthrow governments, force people into systems of control of their choosing, and America, in its supposed “victory,” was able to create a global capitalist system that mixed the veneer of liberal democracy with pockets of “friendly” authoritarianism that kept people enslaved, forced into arduous and backbreaking labor, that stole their resources, and relied on the combination of puppet dictators and economic terrorism to keep the project going and expanding.

While the U.S. preached benevolent hegemony and the spread of “freedom,” it continually relied on antidemocratic elements to make the wealth class richer and more powerful. The CIA laid beyond democratic oversight or control as it undermined elections and assassinated leaders deemed “too far left.” Non-representative intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization were created to force so-called “second and third world” countries into financial servitude, which ensured that, even if their leaders were not killed, discipline would be maintained. If that wasn’t enough, the U.S. could sanction rogue countries into submission or unleash military force.

That military, which remained mobilized following the end of World War II, powered a war economy that birthed the infamous military-industrial complex. Tens of trillions of our dollars were siphoned in this effort and redistributed into the pockets of some of the wealthiest individuals who have ever existed. In turn, they used that wealth and influence to further corrupt our political system and further rig our economy in their favor. While other countries in the post-war environment took the chance to give their populations healthcare and assistance, both of which are presently being dismantled as conditions worsen, life in the U.S. moved through a briefly prosperous era and into out and out austerity as the rich got richer and the crime escalated. The promise of “the American Dream,” a brief illusion some still believe, kept many placated, but the people at the margins struggled terribly. In response, a little bit of the spoils were transferred to law enforcement until they became an occupying army replete with weapons of war. Mass incarceration, or the political imprisonment of preyed upon and forgotten subjects, served as a disgusting answer to this suffering. With each passing year, life became harder for everyday Americans until there was a disturbingly small minority of wealth and oligarchical figures and a small grouping of corporations that controlled power while living handsomely and then, well, everyone else.

The deterioration mirrored what the American order had done to citizens around the world and as the mirroring grew the violence and oppression we had reserved for people elsewhere was increasingly utilized on the homefront. This, in case you weren’t aware, is always the case with authoritarianism. It was inevitable, absent redistribution and reform, that the American order’s foreign authoritarianism would turn to domestic and open hard authoritarianism. All the while, America’s order continued to decline.

That we find ourselves here isn’t surprising if you’d been paying attention. The necessities of global capitalism, including the need to continue warring for resource hoarding and extraction, would always eventually stretch our empire thin and deplete any soft power remaining. We’ve been alienating our allies, our partners in the American order, for decades now. You can only lie so much and disappoint so much. If we had been smart, we might have been more peaceful, more magnanimous, but we were not. Because capitalism does not incentivize these behaviors. And, as the U.S.’s responsibilities as the spearhead of global capitalism grew darker and darker, it was predictable that our actions would disturb and alienate others and, in turn, hasten our downfall.

As I’ve often said, capitalism is a parasite that travels from host to host. We inherited the mantle of host from the United Kingdom following the war. It took seventy-odd years for the sucking of our blood and the controlling of our faculties to bring us here, but it would always bring us here. Aiding and enabling it was multiple generations of the political and wealth classes who believed they were doing what was best for business and the country. Some might have been aware, many were not. What was best for business and what was best for country were, in the end, almost exclusively diametric things.

China is ascendant and is surpassing the U.S. for a number of reasons. It’s strategic manipulation of free trade has been masterful. China used our addiction to consumption against us and wagered that we would brook dictatorial violence in return for access to cheap goods. In this, they were correct. Their creation of a communist/authoritarian/capitalist state was what capitalism required for its next evolution. Like water always searching for an opening, their repellent innovations have offered that opening. Their willingness to oppress their people without hesitance was important, as was their state of the art surveillance and technological motivators. And, because China was not lashed to fossil fuel as the foundation of their own empire, and because its ascendance meant its ruling class accurately diagnosed the moment and the future, they are prepared to take the lead from an America that has lived in constant denial of climate change and whose meritocracy stands in stark opposition to our crooked kakistocracy, their innovations have increased as ours have all but disappeared.

Trump touched down in China this morning a beaten man in charge of a beaten nation. The fact that a man so uniquely unqualified and disastrous is in charge at this moment makes for bitter poetic irony. I do not believe in fate, but it is an overdetermined bit of business. Like the man, the U.S. has behaved stubbornly, in bad faith, ignorantly, and, certainly, stupidly. Like the man, the U.S. has left in its wake broken and battered bodies it refuses to repent for. Like the man, the U.S. is a shambling, embarrassing fraud still living on its past glories, which were always abominations in truth. Like the man, the U.S. is, and has always been, prisoner to its own lies and awful illusions. And, like the man, the American order belongs to the walking dead.

I would be remiss if I did not mention Gaza and the U.S.’s most recent enabled genocide. To live in a time where so few with power were so unwilling to speak truth on behalf of the innocent is obscene. Those who watch have known what blood runs beneath the foundation of the American order, but it takes an atrocity like this to fully comprehend how sullied and offensive the acts are necessary to fill that goresomely river. There was so much evidence, through the years, that our claims of benevolence were fraudulent. Wars. Coups. Financial and military terrorism. The way we treat our own children and people. But it felt as if something shifted or broke loose during the destruction of Gaza. The lie became clearer. It was no longer possible to listen to some doltish politician wax on about “the American character” or our allegiance to human dignity anymore. It was a long, hard, haunting glimpse behind the veneer and what we saw was what was always there: death’s head.

This is a most uncertain time. In searching through history for guidance, I have found so many accounts of fear and terror in the face of the death of empire. That is natural. The American order has been the tectonic plate upon we have rested and built our lives. It isn’t irrational to worry its breaking might leave us swallowed up. But there is reason to hope here, much like the death of a tyrant of a parent, that there might be freedom and agency on the other side of the dread. Ours was a cage, a silken and appropriated cage with all the trapping of consumer bliss, but a cage all the same. Some of us struggled and suffered like those people around the world. Some of us did not. But the existence of the cage of the American order limited our movement and our imagination and, ultimately, the trajectories of our lives and the lives of the people we loved. The door is opening. I don’t know when it will fly open, when the supplicating at the feet of Chinese power will turn to our very own lowering of the flag at the Kremlin, or if it will look similarly or take its own course, but we are in the winnowing moment now.

We should not lie to ourselves. Capitalism’s inevitable jumping to a new host should not be accepted or revered. China, should it take the helm, will not carry out the wishes of capitalism with any increased humanity or mercy. What is required now, should capitalism be allowed to evolve, is dehumanizing violence and inescapable control. China will not moderate and the U.S. will only become more like its eclipsing rival. This, I hate to tell you, is already happening. The major powers have already been changed, mutated, poisoned by their own authoritarianism and their partnerships with open authoritarians.

This is the fight of our lives and what we do now and in the very near future, as that cell flings open, will determine not just our fates but likely the fates of future generations. Watching this moment, we must understand, is like the starting pistol of a much larger, longer race. All of the elements are coming together. Freedom is before us. A better life is before us. If only we choose to seize them.

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Well, I watched the New York Times interview with Tucker Carlson. You shouldn’t unless it’s what you do for a living or you get some joy out of witnessing grotesqueries. Unfortunately, this is my beat and it’s what I do. So. I watched. And it was exactly what I expected because of course it was. When you’re awake and you pay attention, you start to notice these things are all alike.

Carlson, who has spent the past decade becoming increasingly more radicalized and has trafficked in explicitly white supremacist conspiracy theories, normalized the most influential fascist ideologues, and preached the necessity of antidemocratic movements to preserve “western civilization,” was given the full corporate media treatment as he sat at his kitchen table across from Lulu Garcia-Navarro and, later, as they prepared their typical, dramatic cover photo.

The conversation was drivel. They touched on some of the better known Carlson quotes and tropes, including his schism with Donald Trump on Iran, and Garcia-Navarro pushed back lightly, usually when the subject of Israel was broached. What was produced was basically a portrait of someone we’re supposed to believe is a principled right-leaning conservative who carries legitimate concerns about economic inequality and who is moving away from MAGA in ways that should be lauded or, at the very least, respected.

And, yet again, we are treated to one of the main purposes for corporate media: manufacturing of consent. Our entire lives we have been subjected to stories and framing intended to communicate the positions of the wealth class, and now the oligarchical class, in such a way as to influence our own perception, behaviors, and political actions. The political paradigm that we currently reside in is a gilded cage that has been painstakingly constructed, often through unconscious and unaware actions by the many people who work for these institutions, and is meant to keep us from questioning and escaping from this capitalist hell of intentional precarity and scarcity.

There is a reason for all of the articles and features you’ve seen quoted on social media with people screaming at, wondering why these places “don’t understand” or “get it wrong.” They assume, because they have been told their entire lives, that all these media platforms and publishers and channels are “leftist” and, so, surely, it’s all a mistake. Meanwhile, anti-trans trash is proliferated. The political spectrum runs from centrist to the far right. Passive language gets used for genocide and war crimes and authoritarian oppression. The “far left” is continually equated with the far right.

But what all of this really hides is the true nature of how politics within a capitalist system works and that always heads in the same direction. The wealth class and its various political and cultural organs are split between moderate and right wing ideologies that express themselves through accepted avenues, in our case the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Moderates openly espouse their belief in liberal ideas such as representative government, pluralism, and tolerance. The Right emphasizes the need for in-group / out-group oppression and violence, using conspiracy theories and deep-seated racial, patriarchal, xenophobic, and sexual hatred and paranoia to steer anger at the wealthy toward their political enemies and vulnerable populations. The battleground, as determined by corporate media on behalf of the wealth class, is a spate of flashpoint cultural issues that have been designed by the think-tanks and institutes the wealth class also funds behind the scenes to divide a public among strategic lines and obscure a super-majority that would, if allowed to be understood and realized, threaten the grip of power by the wealth and oligarchical classes. Under no circumstances can capitalism, as a system, be allowed to come into actual question.

Eventually, as the two parties have so successfully rigged politics and economics on behalf of the wealthy, and capitalism enters a stage of super-monopolies and such high extraction and exploitation that there isn’t enough consumption or money to keep the economy afloat, and as the larger population moves beyond the flashpoint issues and realizes they encompass that super-majority, the wealth class that has preached the values of liberalism and pluralism and tolerance begins their inevitable swing to cast aside their moral and ethical performances and make alliance with the Right in order to protect their property and their power.

What we have been subjected to for years now is the corporate moderate flirting with authoritarianism and preparing themselves to side with the fascists against us. This is why we have been subjected to one insulting piece after another of them going out into “real America” to talk to Trump supporters. Why we have be swamped with anti-trans, anti-science, anti-democratic, and racist opinion after another that fails to call out the obvious wrongness and dangerousness of it all. Why we’re given “all sides” for stories but those sides almost never involve anyone even remotely left of center or vulnerable people who are being hurt by the march toward fascism. It is, and has always been, propaganda.

It is telling that within a relatively short time span we have been treated to an endless number of articles debating the “rising influence” of Hasan Piker over Democrats, including a New York Times podcast / short article that had him discuss the ethics of shoplifting, and, predictably, tons of articles and fake outrage from corporate platforms and stooges criticizing and demonizing that original piece, and then this Tucker Carlson bullshit. Nearly two hours of refusing to ask the tough questions and, with the Israel pushback, almost begging him to at least moderate the language so they can do business, exactly how everyone does with Nick Fuentes, including Tucker Carlson.

Again, there are no meetings about this. No memos. No demands from on high. Even someone like the interviewer here is only doing the job they were hired to do and has no real desire to make this happen. The servants of capitalism are shaped and directed by incentives and unconscious motivations. Capitalists, including the supposedly liberal members in the wealth class and in the media and political class, trend in this direction out of self-preservation and as the political environment shifts. They prefer to stay moderate and balance the equation because it is more comfortable and what their fragile self-perception wants. They want to be seen as virtual and moral and ethical, as compassionate and empathic. They will virtue signal as long as they can. But, as they do so, their offerings are manipulative. They would LOVE to expand social services and rights, but right now just isn’t the time. They preach pragmatism as they reach across the aisle to the Right and make compromises. Never to the Left, of course. The Left, as much as it still exists, is too dangerous and unreasonable. They’re only compromising with the Right out of necessity, you see. They wish it wasn’t this way, but it just is.

Never mind that it isn’t. That for all of the polling and studies they always point to and the political reality they portray are all manufactured and hide the larger super-majority. They hide behind bullshit phrases like “popularism” or “third way.” They’ll peddle giant projects like Abundance that has all the wealth class backing imaginable but absolutely no one is interested in. They’ll just continue downplaying the threat of fascist authoritarianism and spend every waking second screaming about the dangers of an “emergent Left.” They’ll happily sanitize genocide and blame its countless victims and then pump out bogus stories about “rising crime” and “threats to the rights of property.” When an illegal and disastrous war starts in Iran, they’ll express an iota of distrust in Trump but gleefully imagine “remaking the Middle East” and praise “the role of American leadership in the world.”

Their interests, unless you are also a member of the wealth class or one of their many, many stooges in corporate circles or within one of the two parties, are not compatible with yours. If and when the bottom falls out of this fraudulent economy, they will cheer on the police who crack your skull. If and when we create a movement, they’ll be paid handsomely to churn out more drivel about “concerning trends” and screeds about how the Democratic Party has to reject us, even as the Democrats quickly distance themselves. And, if the Tucker Carlsons of the world are willing to modulate their public statements just enough, they’ll continue legitimizing them even as they’ve show themselves continually to be fascists and Nazis and dedicated to the destruction of liberal democracy.

Like The Times of old, they will greet the new fascists by downplaying the hatred and violence they spread, promising readers they don’t mean what they say and much of it was for effect. Like they said of Hitler, they’ll praise them for “rousing a new spirit.” They might, as they did with Mussolini, call their leader the “man of tomorrow” and characterize him as an ideal executive and visionary.

The rosters of these corporate media institutions have turned over, changed hands, evolved in some ways and devolved in others, but the material incentives remain. All that’s left is for the dance to continue and for the servants of capital to realize the difference between what they thought they were and who they always actually were.

In fact, as they finally move past their trepidation and embrace the darkness, they’ll likely be surprised by how easy it all was in the end.

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Appreciate everyone who asked questions and who tuned in. Hang in there.

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