A reminder that Elon Musk isn’t actually good at anything besides convincing people desperate to believe in technological and capitalistic messianism that he’s actually good at things.
Capitalism isn’t going to fix climate change. It’s going to deny it’s happening while profiting from it until there’s no denying it and then it’ll profit from the tragedy. None of these people are going to shove you onto a spaceship and ferry you away. It’s a con. A big fat con.
We’re trusting a bunch of people who set up payment options on the internet with a future that has nothing to do with them, all while letting them destroy the planet because they pretend they’ll save us. They won’t save you. They’ll save themselves. And that’s it.
Liking Elon Musk and worshiping him as a tech savior is a consumer identity. He’s a product surrounded by faulty luxuries that don’t work and are more likely to cook you alive than serve a purpose. You’ve been played. Find something else.
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This story that America “won the Cold War” is just that. A fiction. In battling the USSR we embraced reactionary forces, fascistic militarism, conspiracy theories that destroyed unions and reform movements.
We didn’t “win.” We only survived longer with a bleeding wound.
Because of the Cold War we let our healthcare and educational systems fall apart. Exploitation grew and grew. The GOP was able to dismantle government as a public good and sell our country off for spare parts. Now, we’re suffering the consequences.
All the corporations and cable news channels and personalities know climate change is a real and pressing problem, just like they all got vaccinated and lied about it. The whole point is there’s an opportunity for profit and power by selling denial to an audience desperate for it
The denial of unquestionable problems and realities is worth billions in advertising and products and the only means of winning elections for an antidemocratic, authoritarian movement whose only pursuit is protecting white, patriarchal, oligarchic power.
What Fox and other operations like it do is sell a fantasy reality to its consumers that they don’t actually believe. It’s make believe performance for almost all of them except for the wild-eyed true believers, and the grifters are more than happy to work with them.
The ugliness the MAGA Movement represents, a dark, twisted, disturbingly selfish view of life itself, has turned the pandemic into a political game where people's lives are happily sacrificed in the pursuit of profit and power.
The reason so much of the MAGA movement’s positions on the pandemic changes so rapidly - it’s a hoax, then it’s a bio weapon, the vaccine is a plot - is because they shift to whatever makes their “winning” more likely. It’s about a vapid pursuit of power at all costs.
Analysts spend so much time trying to understand the contradictions of MAGA like some of these things are “true” and “sincere” beliefs. They’re not. They’re political and economic calculations dressed up in the disguise of ideology. It’s about power and profit. Period.
The Manchin debacle is a stark, awful reminder that if you want change it’s going to mean getting different people in positions of power who aren’t wealthy or beholden to wealth.
That means getting money out of politics, organizing, and fundamentally changing things.
What you have now is a monopoly of power by the wealthy, who absolutely control our political processes and ensure nothing can be done to actually help anyone besides themselves.
This is an intentional and relentless strategy. And it has succeeded wildly.
You cannot expect a government populated by wealthy people to march into the legislature and vote to compromise their interests. Everything depends on completely paralyzing government as a means of public good. Everything.
All right, we need to talk about the celebration and marketing of Kyle Rittenhouse by the GOP.
Market forces have corrupted our society, dismantled our politics, and have ensured that Right Wing violence and authoritarianism will only grow with time
Since Rittenhouse's killings in Wisconsin and his acquittal, he has become one of the hottest celebrities in GOP circles.
Networks flock to him. Personalities fight over his attention. And all of this shows that the GOP is dangerous, but also exposes a massive problem.
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The commodification and marketization of this tragedy is as disgusting as it is predictable. Vigilante justice, shooting people down in cold blood, is now not only acceptable in the GOP, but celebrated and rewarded.
It means money. It means celebrity. It means power.
So much vital and important information is hidden behind paywalls. This culture of greed not only ensures a commodification of ideas but also intentionally obscures subversive notions from being widely available.
You have to have the resources or credentials.
Not only do writers and thinkers go their entire lives without necessary support, but the marketization also ensures a narrow breadth of ideas that are acceptable to the continuation of the power system.
To get in, you have to be part of that system and less likely to disturb it
In terms of something like a professorship, where you gain access to that information, your career depends largely on writing to others of the professorial class, largely cutting off populations who don’t have the expertise or even time to begin grappling with the ideas.