The COUP IN THE US IS VERY REAL

There is no excuse for people failing to understand what is happening in the USA – substack offers many attempts at explanation with Mike Brock (who profiles himself very coherently in the link) and his Notes from the Circus perhaps being the best. His post “The Plot Against America” detailed the history of the right-wing writers who have railed against democracy, including forgotten names such as Curtis Yarvin, Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Willian Rees-Mog eg -

Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a student of Mises's protégé Murray Rothbard, took libertarian skepticism of the state to its extreme conclusion. His 2001 book “Democracy: The God That Failed” landed like a bombshell in libertarian circles. Published at a moment when many Americans still saw democracy as the “end of history,” Hoppe argued that democracy was an inherently unstable system, one that incentivized short-term decision-making and mob rule rather than rational governance. His alternative? A return to monarchy.

The Political Quarterly is one of my favourite journals – ploughing the social democratic cause since 1930 and has recently documented Trump’s travails in Venn diagrams

I am heartened by the substack just started by Adam Przewoski - perhaps the most insightful writer still alive about democracy - who has decided to give us a weekly assessment of what is going on in the US. This is his post for the 2nd week  and the most recent.

And also by the more than 100 legal challenges which have been made by US States, unions and other bodies to Trump's actions - itemised on this tracker

Other relevant articles

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets?_sp=18e4be2f-5eaa-4083-9b8c-7d5f05d2466a.1738893276242

https://medium.com/emergent-dialogue/building-my-case-for-epistemic-liberalism-and-why-the-sovereign-individual-is-epistemically-59c9201e72c6

https://www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/the-plot-against-america/comments

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/this-weeks-ten-reasons-for-modest?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=365422&post_id=158231811&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=aefb6&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Paul Krugman’s discussion with Kim Lane Scheppele https://substack.com/home/post/p-158545490

MORONIC INFERNO

Such was how Martin Amis saw the US in a collection of his essays he released in 2009. I have been trying this past year to put the finishing touches to a book about the State and about the efforts made over the past 50 years to “reform” it – both in Europe and the States where Trump, in his latest reincarnation, seems to have gone quite mad in his wanton destruction of state departments – assisted by teenage prodigies under the tutelage of Elon Musk who seems to be operating as a dictator. Indeed some analysts are claiming that what we are seeing in the US is little more than a COUP

Kurt Andersen is one of America’s most insightful analysts of its craziness – first plotting in Fantasy Land – how America went haywire (2017) and following up some three years later with Evil Geniuses – the unmaking of America; a recent history, situating both books thus

Whereas “Fantasyland” concerned Americans’ centuries-old weakness for the untrue and irrational, and its spontaneous and dangerous flowering since the 1960s, “Evil Geniuses” chronicles the quite deliberate reengineering of our economy and society since the 1960s by a highly rational confederacy of the rich, the right, and big business.

I’m surprised that the more people don’t talk about the groupthink which is permeating the US system – so well explained in Gillian Tett’s 2015 The Silo Effect and Matthew Syd’s Rebel Ideas – the power of diverse thinking (2019)

Further Reading

The Moronic Inferno and other visits to America Martin Amis

Discussion with Kurt Andersen https://www.globalplayer.com/podcasts/episodes/7DrpDUr/

What is Techno-Feudalism?

Yanis Varoufakis is not only a political activist I greatly admire – he has also a superb command of the English language to which he owes not so much his time in the UK (and US) but rather to his Greek upbringing which taught him the use of myths to help the narrative along. Most of his books – even his textbooks – are a delight to read. But I struggled with his latest book “Techno-Feudalism – what killed capitalism?” (2023) and have gone back to it thanks only to the discussion Chris Hedges had with Varoufakis on Youtube recently. Efgeny Morozov has been a critic of the internet’s effect on society for more than a decade, with his most famous book being To Save Everything, click here – the folly of technological solutionism which appeared in 2013 but if you want to get a sense of what lies behind the talk of “techno-feudalism” I strongly advise you to read Morozov’s amazing overview of the subject in a recent issue of New Left Review viz Critique of Techno-feudal Reason – an extensive article which put the use of the term in an historical context.

The French writer, Cedric Durand, published How Silican Valley unleashed Techno-feudalism in 2020 although it appeared in English only in 2024 and had this reply to Morozov’s article.

One contrary view of Varoufakis' argument is here 

Other Reading/Viewing

The Digital Citizen L Ceccarini (2021)

The Rise of Technosocialism brett king and richard perry (2021)

The Coming of Neo-Feudalism – a warning to the middle class Joel Kotkin (2020)

Varoufakis - overthrow the tech tyrants! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8xSGzqdKC8

British LIES - again

We can no longer believe anything which comes from the UK Establishment. The Metropolitan police force epitomises all that is rotten in that system and has been caught in yet another lie when it reports that Jeremy Corbyn forced his way through a police cordon during protests around the BBC for its abominable coverage of the Gaza genocide. Jonathan Cook has the full story here

Ways of Seeing

Almost 3 weeks since I last posted - I just haven’t been in the mood although I did want to recognise the sad passing of Charles Handy this month – a favourite writer of mine who inspired quite a few posts and of Johan Galtung, the great peace activist and philosopher, earlier in the year.

But I have managed to edit last year’s posts which I proudly present as Ways of Seeing – the 2024 posts. Make sure you don't miss this year's collection entitled Ways of Seeing – the 2024 posts