For context, I’d like to point out that what most Americans today would view as democracy probably only started in the U.S. in the early 1970s. You know, the idea of one person one vote, all people created equal with a right to life, liberty and happiness, and all that jazz. That only became possible for enough citizens after the 1965 Voting Rights Act, one of the major achievements of the Civil Rights Movement and what brought us closer to Democracy than ever before. Until then, we were some flavor of Oligarchy—but always inching toward a democracy. And after the Voting Rights Act went into effect the illiberal forces amongst us quickly began working on shutting it down. First came State and Federal laws that weeded out millions of predominantly black and brown people from the voter rolls, as well documented in Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. And then with the rise of money in our politics, which really took off when the effect of Reaganism dramatically increased our wealth disparity. One person one vote didn’t stand a chance against billions of dollars of dark money washing through our system. So by 2010, with the Citizens United ruling, we likely fell out of being what most of us would consider an actual Democracy. And good riddance, what a nuisance. Oh, sorry, I was just channeling Peter Thiel or Elon (I caught a rocket with chopsticks) Musk, or any of our modern industrialists there for a moment. They don’t like Democracy anymore, they have a new dream, and it looks a lot like what came before the Civil Rights Movement, or even the Suffrage Movement, the Labor Movement, and the New Deal.
So what we’re seeing now is not us sliding into Oligarchy, it’s more akin to our existing Oligarchy solidifying itself into a more autocratic state. We’ve been battling the industrialists or oligarchs, or whatever you want to call them, for well over a century, and for a while, it looked like we had the upper hand. But that’s over now, it looks like we have lost, at least for the foreseeable future. And if they succeed in this moment at what they have set out to do, there won’t be an easy return to what we would call normal. Many on the right are arguing that this is for the best, and it seems that 77 million Americans agree. Personally, I think that’s the result of effective disinformation, but people keep telling me that I’m wrong. That many people prefer the allure of living in an authoritarian state and therefore Americans knew what they were voting for. That’s a terrifying notion.
So what happens now when Trump takes office? I have nothing new to report, it’s all been laid out. His cabinet are the sycophants we expected. Project 2025 is still the blueprint for rolling back the social safety net and the administrative state created by the New Deal. Immigration raids are scheduled to begin this week. It’s reported that Trump will sign hundreds of executive orders in the first days. Sham investigations of Democrats, or perceived political enemies, have already started in the House. Thousands of loyalists vetted by Project 2025 are waiting in the wings to take government jobs. Plans to purge the military and DOJ of non-loyalists have already been drafted. The legitimate press is already capitulating to threats and intimidation. Our wealthiest industrialists will be paraded through the inauguration in a show of support for the coming regime. And of course, the disinformation apparatus is stronger than ever and has been joined by the likes of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos.
So yeah, if you’re one of those who wanted to burn down the system, well you’re about to get your wish, as there’s not much standing in the way of this administration anymore. I know people are still saying, c’mon, they can’t really do all of this stuff. To which I have to say, why not? Has everyone been listening to the Republicans over the past decade? There is no norm, no law, no standard, that they are interested in preserving. So in the coming months, we’ll see if the era of the New Deal can survive, if it doesn’t then if we get something like it again it’ll be drafted from the ground up sometime in the future by people who are hopefully smarter people than us.
So besides trying to roll back the New Deal and all of the protections of the 20th century what else can we expect? Well, two things that unfortunately are a giant double whammy. AI and Climate Change. And since AI takes an unbelievable amount of energy, I mean you can power your house for 24 hours with the energy it takes to make even one of those stupid images of say the Pope in a big white coat, or Trump being arrested. So yes, AI is going to be one the biggest contributors to Climate Change, contrary to the delusional belief that somehow it’s going to save the environment. That is some next-level newspeak, I’ve heard a lot of people buy into that one.
In reality world, we’re going to miss protecting the future, and that’s why these guys always implode, they just can’t get a grip on themselves even when imminent disaster is staring them in the face. We just bolted past the 1.5°C of average warming above pre-industrial measures as outlined in the Paris Agreement. And America, under this new regime, is not going to slow down the burning of fossil fuels, in fact, we’re about to burn more than ever, and if they get their way we’ll even open up the National Parks for oil and gas exploration. So any contribution by the U.S. in curbing climate change is over. And likely we’ll spur on a new energy race because our Oligarchs are obsessed with AI and AI requires massive amounts of new energy that most likely will not be from renewables. As climate scientist Peter Kalmus recently wrote in an op-ed, calling our increasing environmental chaos our new normal is not the right way to look at it. It’s more like a staircase to a hotter more unstable planet. What’s happening now will dramatically increase, and it will likely trigger massive waves of migrations as people flee coastlines and areas experiencing unliveable weather conditions. And with that often comes conflict. You can go back thirty years and see what climate scientists were predicting then and we’re basically living in the world that they described. So I’m pretty confident that what they’re telling us now is what’s going to happen. And probably faster than any of us expect, even those of us that expect it.
I was hoping we’d be collectively smart enough to understand what the New Deal did for America and leave in place the administrative state we had created and the safeguards it provided. But we weren’t. Millions of Americans are foolishly calling it the deep state now and gleefully calling for it to be destroyed. And with the worst of all timing, it might be dismantled just as we need it most. Our current industrialists, or oligarchs, or whatever you want to call them, are bent on living in a world free of regulations, or anything that gets in the way of their profits. They claim to be people who believe in science, yet all they seem to want to do is play with fire. So while the world is burning the U.S. government is on the verge of abandoning all environmental protections, labor protections, human rights protections, and all of the stuff we created after WWII.
This is bigger than just the end of our American Democracy. I mean, we only had it for about 45 years, and given all of the forces within our country working against it, it’s a miracle it lasted as long as it did. But now, the United States, the country with the most influence over global environmental protections and policy, with a military the size of the moon, with more nukes than anyone else, is going to be headed by a bunch of lunatics with no constraints. All at the worst possible inflection point for mankind.
Well, for those who wanted blood, you’ve got it, you probably just didn’t think it would be your own.