Future History

This moment really does feel like I’m living through one of the many documentaries I’ve watched about World War II and other periods when countries went haywire. I much prefer watching a film or reading a book about these events after the fact, as opposed to experiencing the unraveling in real time. Now we have war in Iran (or not?) and a Supreme Court that seems fine with shipping undocumented immigrants off to random hellholes around the world without due process.

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Welcome to the US

It appears foreign nationals entering the country are increasingly having their entire online lives scrutinized and used against them if they’ve expressed the “wrong” political opinions. This is, to state the obvious, a grotesque violation of the freedom of expression as well as an obnoxiously rude thing to do to visitors from other countries who pose no actual threat.

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Wealth Hoarders

It occurred to me that the world’s richest people who seek to accumulate ever more wealth and power are not unlike the troubled souls on the reality show “Hoarders” — although I have far more compassion for regular hoarders.

The cyberlimo does not actually exist in real life as far as I know, although various people online have made efforts to design one.

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Well Excuuuse Me

There’s a whole industry of political consultants and media figures making hay by relentlessly scolding Dems (and random people online who get conflated with Dems) for causing all of this, while billionaires flagrantly destroy our institutions and Trump voters embrace ever more extreme positions. The truth is that the right has long been an engine of demonizing liberals, while simultaneously portraying liberals as the abusers. It’s the “Always Blame the Left” strategy: “We can get ever more abusive and scolding and threatening, but if you say anything bad about us at all, then you are the problem.” And so it becomes a self-defeating doom loop, this attempt to solve the problem of fascism by insulting the very people trying to fight it. The idea that if “the left” just stopped saying x, y, or z then the right would stop getting more extreme and politics would go back to normal again is just completely absurd.

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What Lives Matter?

Perhaps slightly by coincidence, this cartoon is timely in that May 25 was the fifth anniversary of George Floyd’s death. On one level, the strip is just documenting what has happened, but it also works as a moral fable: embracing bigotry ultimately hurts everyone, even the bigots.

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First (and Last) Contact

I’ve been thinking lately about the fact that if life were an alien movie, and the aliens were doing some of the things the authoritarian billionaires are doing, most people would clearly see the aliens as problematic. Hoovering up the earth’s resources while leaving the rest of us to fend off multiple catastrophes seems pretty immoral. Unfortunately, the aliens took over much of our news media and convinced millions of Americans they’re acting in their best interest.

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Feds Crack Down on Spring Migration

I’m trying to glean some humor from a serious issue here, but when you think about it, a crackdown on migrating birds isn’t all that far-fetched. The rules of reality have been tossed out completely, so why wouldn’t the government launch a massive, hysteria-inducing propaganda campaign against warblers? (Closely related: the Birds Aren’t Real site satirizing conspiracy theorists.)

They are, in fact, trying to undermine the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, with the Department of the Interior issuing an opinion that individuals and corporations should no longer be penalized for the incidental killing of protected birds (as tends to happen with oil spills and other industrial activities).

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Real Man vs. Economy

In case you missed it, there’s been a substantial propaganda campaign from MAGA elites to convince the masses that Trump’s destructive economic policies will make men more “masculine.” The dialogue coming from the TV in the first panel of this cartoon is taken directly from a Fox chyron, “TRUMP’S TARIFFS WILL MAKE YOU A MAN?”

We see a lot of talk about mining these days while Trump is actually dismantling rules that protect miners from silica exposure. Far from creating strong “alphas,” these jobs make men sick.

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The poll-driven pundit

One school of punditry seems locked into the idea that because anti-immigration positions poll well, Democrats should not waste political capital on the Trump administration’s abuses, however egregious. While polling data may be useful at times, it seems some vaunted experts are stuck in a static, outdated paradigm that completely ignores how the media landscape has changed in the 21st century. Some still seem reluctant to acknowledge that bad faith actors have been manipulating the public through propaganda, and this is why so many Americans believe what they believe. This goes against our wishful thinking about the nature of intellectual debate and what constitutes journalism. Ludicrous ideas aren’t exactly emerging organically from the cornfields. Polls are a reflection of an already deeply devolved media environment, and the more you let them dictate what is acceptable for Democratic leaders to say, the further into authoritarianism we slide. I recommend this article.

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Veneer of Normalcy

I find myself thinking a lot these days about the disconnect between normal, everyday life and the catastrophic events unfolding in the news. When I’m out running errands or grocery shopping or simply enjoying the outdoors on a sunny spring day, it’s tempting to believe things are still somewhat normal. Looking around, everyone is going about their business — working, playing, making small talk — much as they did before. Occasionally you’ll overhear a snippet of conversation in which someone sounds worried. But most people are just trying to get through the day. If you’re lucky, you can toggle back and forth between the two realities, indulging in the fantasy that maybe things aren’t so bad for a little while. Until you go back online.

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A Simple Plan

This is an excerpt from my weekly newsletter.

For decades, right-wing ideologues complained that any safety net offered by the government was a form of “social engineering” that interfered with the “natural order” of the market. Of course this is utter hogwash, given that marketplaces themselves are highly engineered systems designed to keep money flowing upward; they cannot operate without a carefully-constructed legal framework; and they largely consist of social networks of people hiring those from their demographic in-group (such as fraternity brothers) rather than being some pure and godly measure of human greatness. A lot of the “social engineering” criticism contains a subtext of preserving dominant hierarchies, to put it mildly. Also, if markets are such a perfect measure of individual abilities, why did so many of history’s most talented writers, artists, and composers die poor? After enduring years of this market fundamentalist whining, it is laughable to see radical tech libertarians destroying America so they can engage in the mother of all social engineering projects.

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