Imagine a world in which left-leaning institutions had coordinated for decades to spread the message that fossil fuels are bad -- they spill, they destroy ecosystems, they pollute, & they tie Americans' fate to distant events over which they have no control.
In this world, the "organic" response to yet another damaging lurch in gas prices would be, "damn, there fossil fuels go again, fucking us over here at home because of global supply chain issues we can't control."
The seemingly spontaneous, direct reaction would be anger at those politicians who continue to slow & impede America's transition to EVs run on clean, domestic renewable energy. "They're keeping us stuck on gas, and now look, this again!"
Of course I'm not saying that world was ever possible (if only). But "this is a generalized phenomenon called inflation that's caused by gov't social spending & the solution is austerity" isn't the only available response. It's not built in or inevitable!

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More from @drvolts

18 Nov
Imagine how utterly disorienting & infuriating it must be to have to *argue* to your colleagues that depictions of one colleague murdering another should be out of bounds.
"Why can't you take a joke?" is in the all-time abuser top 10. Everyone's who has ever been on the receiving end of an abusive relationship has heard it.
AOC has been physically menaced & cursed at by her own colleagues. They've organized harassment campaigns against her. They've aggressively refused to wear masks around her. They've defended an insurrectionist mob that threatened her & her colleagues' lives. None of that ...
Read 5 tweets
16 Nov
I despair of screaming this into the void, but voters are not primarily responding to inflation, they are responding to a massive, highly coordinated propaganda campaign across multiple media designed to freak them out about inflation.
Replace "inflation" in that tweet with literally anything else. The notion that voters are carefully assessing the evidence of their own local experience to draw conclusions about national affairs is a bit of folk wisdom US politics just won't let go.
It's like looking at hurricane damage & asking "how will voters respond to climate change?"

Yes, the damage is real, but what it *means* -- the emotional resonance, what it portends, who is at fault, the larger frame into which it fits -- is thoroughly mediated.
Read 19 tweets
16 Nov
To state the obvious: every day that goes by without the BBB passing makes it less likely to pass. This has been true from the very beginning.
Slowdown "looms" in the Senate. Like it's weather or something & not the deliberate choices of corporate fuckfaces. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
... aaaand voters should start experiencing benefits shortly after they elect a Republican House. politico.com/news/2021/11/1…
Read 4 tweets
15 Nov
A lot of commentary about COP26 seems to forget this basic background. COP agreements are just lists of voluntary national policies. The action is in domestic national politics. COP agreements can't make anyone do anything or punish anyone for failure. vox.com/2015/12/15/101…
There's no "breakthrough" at COP26 because that's not where policy is made -- it's made in national governments. Diplomats can only report what national governments will do, not determine it.
The best way to think about a COP is as a flash for a camera: it shines a big light that reveals where everyone is. And that's a good thing -- transparency & peer pressure can move national gov'ts sometimes. But a COP has little motive force of its own -- such is int'l politics.
Read 4 tweets
14 Nov
Zuckerburg, Jack, Musk ... they all started with mixed tendencies & over time have become utterly horrible (Jack is an inflation truther now!). IMO this has to do with the epistemic bubble that surrounds wealthy people in the US.
One of the best tools the 1% has developed is that when someone gets super-wealthy, there's a whole industry, a whole apparatus, that descends upon them to flatter them & fill their head with reactionary bullshit. Prevents any class traitors from emerging.
Adding: this also explains Joe Manchin, IMO. Sure his Dem colleagues plead w/ him, but in private, on the yacht, with his *real* buddies (other rich white guys), everybody just *knows* progressive policy is silly & unrealistic & causes "entitlement."
Read 4 tweets
14 Nov
There's really no way to exaggerate how fatalistic I feel about the next decade of US politics. nytimes.com/2021/11/12/us/…
“The prospect of being in the minority with Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House and Jason Smith as chairman of the Budget Committee — God, I could go down the list — is horrible." washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/styl…
Republicans have made Congress so viscerally unpleasant that it's making Dems want to retire, which of course is part of the point. If governing is nothing but endless reality-tv culture war, people who care about governance will flee.
Read 6 tweets

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