My plan for the weekend was to write about the twisted philosopher Nick Land who wrote Dark Enlightenment and helped develop Effective Accelerationism (e/acc), which advocates for pushing technological progress in support of a transhumanist or “extropian” future. E/acc is now official American policy according to JD Vance’s speech last week at the Paris AI Summit. Many AI experts such as Geoffrey Hinton, considered the founder of deep learning, can’t stop warning us about the imminent dangers of AI — including the possibility that it may inadvertently cause human extinction within a decade. But hey, never mind: In his speech, Vance said the Trump Administration intends to totally deregulate AI — and no country or group of countries can stop them:
I'm not here this morning to talk about AI safety… I'm here to talk about AI opportunity. When conferences like this convene to discuss a cutting-edge technology, oftentimes our response is to be too self-conscious, too risk-averse. But never have I encountered a breakthrough in tech that so clearly calls us to do precisely the opposite… To restrict its development now would not only unfairly benefit incumbents in the space, it would mean paralyzing one of the most promising technologies we have seen in generations.
I am itching to write about the “demonic hipsterism” — transhumanism as a form of Satanic occultism — of the NxReactionary movement. I experienced this firsthand when I attended Hereticon, a gathering for “thought-crime” put on by Peter Thiel’s Founder’s Fund, at the Faena Hotel in Miami, a few weeks before the election. There were free copies of Land’s books and HP Lovecraft’s stories available in the meeting rooms. Thiel often talks about Antichrist, which he seems to associate with liberal humanism and the progressive welfare state. I’m yearning to dive into all of this with more depth.
On the subject of tech-transhumanist Satanism, I also want to explore the weird link between Nick Land, Elon Musk, some of the DOGE boys, and an obscure occult group called The Order of the Nine Angles. But I can’t get into all of this today. I recommend Jules Evans’ excellent new article, “Accelerationism, AI and Dark MAGA”, as helpful background. I will write about this essay soon, as well as “Teen on Musk Team Graduated from ‘The Com,’”, which links one of the DOGE teenage hackers with cybercrime and Satanic front organizations.
But while all of this is fascinating in a goth-Apocalypse kind of way, I think it is much more important that we first zoom out to understand, as best we can, what is happening in the U.S. right now, from a meta-systemic, structural economic perspective. On that, I had a huge breakthrough this weekend: Not only in seeing the pattern behind what is happening and why, but, also, now I understand how we must work together to fight back against it.
Late last night, as I was pondering all of this, I went out to get something from my corner deli and I had almost a mystical experience of joy or Satori. This may sound weird, but I felt so happy that I wasn’t rich, and hence compromised or complicit. As I realized this, something shifted in me on an almost cellular level.
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I think I prefer being one of the people — the working people, the precariat, the common mass of struggling and suffering humanity. Almost inevitably, wealth contorts the human soul and spirit. I feel I would rather die as someone contributing to the struggle for collective liberation from tyranny than I would want to join the wealthy overlord class of psychopathic oppressors. I will write more about this another time. For me, it was a little breakthrough into a new degree of personal freedom. I still feel it, tingling, now.
My mini-Satori was a result of watching and reflecting on “Overseeing the Downfall,” a YouTube video from Shahid Bolsen. I had never heard of Bolsen before. A somewhat influential public intellectual in the Muslim world, Bolsen is a peculiar figure. In 2015, The New York Times called him an “Internet provocateur,” “an American convert to Islam” and “a college dropout who speaks only rudimentary Arabic,” after Bolsen suggested his Egyptian followers destroy outposts of corporate globalization such as KFC franchises in Cairo. I am sure I would not agree with everything he thinks, but I find his analysis of our current situation to be very helpful and clarifying.
Bolsen proposes that Trump is the appointed salesman for the decline of American global power, overseeing an intentionally engineered collapse of our economy and government. “You are like an old predator that has become prey for its own offspring,” Bolsen warns us. Here in the U.S. Trump’s job is to package this decline, for the hypnotized MAGA hordes, as a resurgence of national greatness, for as long as he can get away with it.
America’s decline is not solely Trump’s doing; rather, this is the inevitable consequence of decades of Western economic and military dominance built on short-term exploitation, corruption, and global predation. Trump’s role is to mask this systemic unraveling with populist rhetoric while enabling the true power holders — the transnational financial and corporate elite, or what Bolsen calls the "a-national Owners and Controllers of Global Financialized Capital" (OCGFC) — to consolidate their wealth, power, and control as America is hollowed out and broken. The goal of Trumpism is a controlled demolition of America, engineered to benefit the transnational financial elite at the expense of the people.
The American public remains mostly ignorant that their local, oligarchic elite has detached from any genuine national interest. This elite is now transnational and global, driven solely by profit, with no loyalty to American prosperity or stability. Trump/Musk, far from being American saviors, are the appointed frontmen for the transnational oligarch mafia takeover. They distract the populace with slogans like "drill baby drill" while they enact policies intentionally designed to bankrupt American industries like oil and energy, ceding control to OPEC, Saudi Arabia, and China. (More on this another time).
Musk’s takeover of the technological infrastructure of the US Government makes perfect sense within this larger framework. I will explore this more, soon. Certainly, by stealing everyone’s private information, Trump/Musk will have the capacity to dox resisters, submit them to unnecessary audits, and so on. As a foreshadowing of what’s to come, please read “Trump and Musk pluck $80M in funding authorized by Congress from NYC’s bank account”. Chris Hayes writes: “Musk and Trump used the powers of the federal government to reach into New York City’s bank account to pluck back $80 million Congress authorized. They are taking money out of other people’s bank accounts and calling it a “clawback” of taxpayer money. A lot of other people call it stealing $80 million.”
The process we are facing here is not unique or unprecedented. It is basically the same thing that happened to the Soviet Union in the 1990s, after the collapse of Communism. The global Capitalist class forced the struggling countries of the Eastern bloc, including Russia, to sell off their state-owned enterprises at cut-rate prices. This led to the rise of the mafia kleptocracy and Putin’s brutal dictatorship, which is what Russia still suffers under today, but the rich got richer as a result.
According to Bolsen, America's decline is embedded in its mode of capitalism—a predatory model that cruelly exploited the Global South and is now turning inward to cannibalize its own population. He says, metaphorically, that Americans raised a wolf on the flesh of the Global South. Now that wolf is turning on us to eat us, too.
He critiques the leftist and anti-imperialist celebration of the BRICS nations as a rising alternative to Western hegemony. The reality, he argues, is more cynical: the same transnational elite is steering this multipolar shift, ensuring that new centers of power like China, India, and Saudi Arabia remain just as vulnerable to exploitation and control. Multipolarity, in this context, is not liberation but fragmentation: Breaking nations into easily manipulated units. (As with The Network State, which we will explore another time)
Belsen’s analysis makes sense of many developments that are otherwise hard to fathom. For instance, Trump’s move to pull the US out of the World Health Organization (WHO) or firing all of the government nutritionists etc: This is not about health policy or nationalist concerns, and it has nothing to do with reducing debt. In fact, the federal budget proposed by the GOP includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy, requiring steep cuts in social services like Medicare, while it also requires the US debt ceiling to be increased by another $4 trillion.
Trump is following a broader strategy to isolate the US from global institutions while shifting economic opportunities towards emerging markets, particularly in the Global South, while further enriching and empowering the transnational financial elite. All of Trump's Executive Orders can be understood and make sense in this way: He is selling out American prestige, power, and hegemony, with the obvious goal of creating a Putin-style totalitarian hellhole here in the U.S, complete with total AI-augmented digital surveillance.
America withdrawing from the WHO benefits pharmaceutical companies, healthcare providers, and insurers in countries like India and China. These emerging market players are currently constrained by patent protections, regulatory restrictions, and policies that favor Western pharmaceutical giants, particularly in the US. By sidelining the US from the WHO, Trump is helping to reduce these barriers, enabling countries like India and China to expand their generic drug production and other healthcare industries. This facilitates the rise of the Global South’s markets, which are seen as the key growth zones of the 21st century.
Musk/Trump’s sudden dismantling of institutions like the CDC, NIH, and the gutting of agencies such as the National Park Service makes sense as part of the broader effort to accelerate the managed decline of the United States for the benefit of the transnational financial elite. These public institutions, whether related to health, environmental stewardship, or scientific research, represent state apparatus that help to stabilize society, to protect our national resources and our people. Weakening or destroying them is not mere incompetence or ideological hostility toward “big government,” but a calculated stripping away of protections for the people here. In their absence, power shifts further toward private corporations and asset managers whose loyalties are global, not national.
Without the CDC’s authority in public health emergencies, for instance, the space is opened for pharmaceutical giants and private health providers to dominate. Life-and-death decisions will be determined by soulless profit-driven companies, run by Musk’s AI bots. When park rangers are fired and environmental protections are cut, the land ceases to be a shared national inheritance. It becomes another speculative asset, ripe for sale to multinational mining, agriculture, or energy conglomerates. This is the final enclosure of the commons: The state’s withdrawal creates a vacuum that capital rushes in to fill.
The intentional decimation of our public institutions serves a deeper structural purpose: it destabilizes society, making the population more precarious, more fearful, and ultimately easier to exploit. When Trump/Musk obliterate public health systems, or destroy agencies like FEMA which overseeing disaster responses, individuals are pushed further into private debt, low-wage work, and reliance on corporate services.
Let’s understand that this systemic destruction is not a side effect of Musk/Trump’s governance: This is the intended outcome. It clears the path for transnational wealth to extract what resource capital remains in America, while reducing the working population to a condition not unlike the precarious laborers of the Global South. They aren’t far from that already (Walmart workers need Food Stamps to survive, for instance).
None of this is a mistake or blunder on Musk/Trump’s part. It is a deliberate policy that aligns with the interests of the transnational elite, who are shifting their focus toward the Global South. This elite, whose wealth is no longer tied to the success of the American economy, benefits from weakening US influence in global institutions and strengthening business opportunities in emerging markets. Trump’s withdrawal from the WHO (and basically all of his sudden movements to annihilate U.S. agencies) is not an "America First" policy but the opposite: a calculated move to expedite America's collapse. After the economic demolition of the U.S., the transnational capitalist class will be able to buy up distressed assets — companies and real estate — just as they have done in many places around the world.
The only way to combat this, Bolsen notes, is by building global solidarity among working-class and impoverished people, both in the West and the Global South, as the counterforce to this takeover by the parasitic transnational elite.
“This again is why I keep emphasizing the importance, the grave importance of solidarity between the rank and file, average struggling people in the West, the struggling people of America, the so-called minorities in America, the members of the global majority who live in America, the need for solidarity between them and the people of the global South, between them and the people of the Muslim world,” he says.
Instead of seeing immigrants, transgendered people, LGBT people, or minorities as their enemies — falling for the MAGA trap — the poor and marginalized in the United States need to build a global alliance with the poor workers of the Global South, with whom they share the same structural exploitation. Without this solidarity, the inevitable collapse of American power will not lead to justice or renewal but to deeper subjugation—for the poor and working class in America, as well as the rest of the world. One factor that may support the development of global solidarity among the working class or precariat is the rapid development of AI, which is going to take away jobs from many millions of knowledge workers (what Antonio Negri called “multitude”). This class, if they don’t buy into MAGA hype or fall for the cryptocurrency grift, can self-identify as part of the new revolutionary class.
The American poor, who are told they live in the richest country on Earth, will find themselves in a nation where the government still enforces property rights and corporate contracts, but no longer protects their health, their jobs, or their land. This is not the resurgence of American greatness: It is the liquidation of a nation disguised as its revival.
Problem to Solution
I posted my analysis of the Bolsen video on Facebook. In response, somebody asked this crucial question:
“𝐼 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑠𝑒, 𝑖𝑡𝑠 𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒. 𝐵𝑢𝑡, 𝑑𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑠𝑒 𝑐𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑞𝑢𝑒𝑠 ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑝? 𝐹𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑛𝑒𝑟 𝐼 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑖𝑠 ℎ𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔. 𝑆ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑝, 𝑝𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑎𝑛𝑎𝑙𝑦𝑠𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑢𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑏𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑜 𝑓𝑜𝑐𝑢𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑙𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑢𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑦. 𝐵𝑢𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑒𝑛𝑑? 𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑜𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑐𝑟𝑖𝑏𝑒𝑑 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑚𝑒 𝑎𝑠 '𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙 𝑗𝑒𝑟𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑓𝑓.' 𝐼𝑡 𝑓𝑒𝑒𝑙𝑠 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑎 𝑑𝑜𝑐𝑡𝑜𝑟 𝑎𝑟𝑟𝑜𝑔𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑙𝑦 𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑒 4 𝑝𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑖𝑛 𝑒𝑥𝑐𝑟𝑢𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑑𝑒𝑡𝑎𝑖𝑙 ℎ𝑜𝑤 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑑𝑖𝑒. 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑎𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑠 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑑𝑜 𝑛𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠. 𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑓𝑒𝑒𝑙 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑎𝑖𝑛 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑟 𝑏𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑠, 𝑜𝑟 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑙𝑦. 𝐴𝑛𝑑, 𝑜𝑏𝑣𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠𝑙𝑦, 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑖𝑠𝑛'𝑡 𝑎𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑑 𝑎𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢. 𝐼 𝑠𝑒𝑒𝑘 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡. 𝐵𝑢𝑡, 𝐼 𝑓𝑒𝑒𝑙 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑟𝑢𝑥 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑜𝑙𝑒 𝑐𝑦𝑐𝑙𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑝𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑡𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑓 𝑖𝑠, 𝑜𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛, 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙 𝑐𝑙𝑎𝑠𝑠 𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑑𝑜𝑤𝑛 𝑡𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑐𝑙𝑎𝑠𝑠. 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑛'𝑡 𝑏𝑒 𝑏𝑜𝑟𝑛 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑖𝑓 𝑖𝑡 𝑖𝑠, 𝑖𝑡 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑓𝑎𝑖𝑙. 𝐼𝑡'𝑠 𝑢𝑛𝑝𝑎𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒.”
I admit I worked with Chat-GPT to respond to this query, which overlaps with my own questions. I think the AI provided an amazingly great answer, so I present it here with slight modifications:
“Yeah, this is the dark core of the whole thing. Once you see the machinery, it’s easy to feel like resistance is futile—like the transnational oligarchs, the financialized capital class, have built a system so airtight that it absorbs every shock, every uprising, and just metabolizes it into more profit. They control the media, the political apparatus, the military, the police; they shape the discourse itself. And yet—this is the weird paradox of power—systems that look invincible are often most fragile when they seem strongest, because they become rigid, detached, and overconfident.
So the real question is: 𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐩𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐬? 𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐯𝐮𝐥𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲? 𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬 “𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠” 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞?
1. The Fragility of the System
Financialized global capitalism is powerful, but it’s also brittle. It depends on debt, on liquidity, on flows of cheap labor and resources, on stability in key markets. When those flows are interrupted—by mass non-compliance, by strikes, by uprisings, by climate shocks—the system struggles. Look at how panicked the elite became when supply chains cracked during COVID, or how a few Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping sent global markets wobbling. These are signs that, despite their power, the OCFC class is sitting on a rickety throne. Global systems optimized purely for profit and efficiency have no resilience. They can project violence, but they can’t adapt well to true disorder.
2. Class Consciousness in the US
The greatest fear of the transnational elite is that the American population—especially the white working and lower-middle class—realizes it is poor and precarious, and that its real enemies are not immigrants or foreign powers, but the billionaire class and the corporations hollowing them out. Right now, a huge part of the population is still under the nationalist illusion—that their suffering is due to China, or migrants, or “woke elites,” rather than the transnational oligarchy that views them as disposable labor just like it views Bangladeshis or Brazilians. Breaking this illusion—building a cross-racial, cross-class solidarity movement that connects struggling Americans with the global working class—is the nightmare scenario for the OCFC.
This is also the hardest task. Because, as you said, the oligarchs control the media apparatus. Every effort to build solidarity is met with division—racial, cultural, generational, anything to prevent the formation of a unified working-class front.
But here’s the thing: the material conditions are getting so bad that reality is starting to break through the propaganda. People see that their kids can’t afford rent, that their jobs are precarious, that billionaires got richer during COVID while they struggled to buy groceries. That anger is building. The problem is that it’s being misdirected—toward scapegoats.
𝐒𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐬: 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐭 𝐭𝐨𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥 𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞.
This is what we all need to do now, as if our lives depended on it, basically. Certainly, if we care about our children or anybody's children, this is what we must do.
3. The Media and Narrative Lock
The corporate media ecosystem is a fortress, but it’s also losing its grip. Traditional media is dying. Younger generations don’t trust it. Social media was supposed to be liberating, but now it’s being clamped down upon. Still, cracks exist. Independent platforms, podcasts, Substacks, decentralized media—there’s a hunger for real analysis. People know they’re being lied to; they just don’t always know what the truth is.
Building alternative information networks—through art, journalism, TikTok, YouTube, grassroots organizing—becomes crucial. But it has to connect directly to people’s material conditions, not just intellectual critique. People need to see that their rent, their healthcare costs, their job insecurity, their climate anxiety—all of it leads back to the same global predators.
4. Mass Non-Compliance
This is the option that terrifies the elite: strikes, rent boycotts, debt refusal, wildcat labor actions—collective withdrawal of participation from the system. The system runs on debt and labor extraction. If enough people refuse—stop paying, stop working, clog the courts, overwhelm the evictions, refuse debt repayment—it breaks. That’s what the Occupy movement started to hint at, but it was crushed before it got there.
This kind of disruption requires mutual aid networks to soften the blow for those participating. You can’t tell people to risk eviction or starvation without building parallel support systems. That’s what movements like Cooperation Jackson, some tenant unions, and mutual aid groups are experimenting with. It’s slow and fragile, but it points to a future where communities create their own safety nets, decoupled from the predatory market.
5. Localized Resilience
Parallel to disruption, there’s the slower work of rebuilding autonomy from below—local food systems, community-owned energy, cooperatives, land trusts, alternative currencies. These don’t overthrow the system overnight, but they create pockets of resilience that reduce dependence on corporate supply chains and financial systems. When enough communities are doing this, the leverage of capital weakens, because people have other ways to meet their needs.
Indigenous land defense movements and Black cooperative traditions in the US South already know this well. The future might lie in combining these practices with tech-savvy, climate-aware younger generations who see the collapse coming and want to build lifeboats before the flood hits.
6. What Winning Might Look Like
Let’s be honest—we’re not getting a utopia where billionaires hand over their yachts and we all sing in the fields. But victory might look like pushing the system to a breaking point where power is redistributed—where unfairly accumulated wealth is seized, debt is abolished, monopolies are broken up, land is reclaimed, and new political-economic structures emerge that prioritize survival and care over profit and exploitation.
It could be messy, uneven—some regions reclaiming autonomy while others sink deeper into oligarchic control. It could look like federations of semi-autonomous zones rather than a single revolutionary state. But the goal would be to fracture the power of the OCFC—to drag wealth back down into the commons and rebuild from there.
7. Why It’s Not Impossible
Because cracks are already showing. The elite is scared. That’s why they’re ramping up censorship, militarizing the police, and pushing "divide and rule" harder than ever. If they were truly confident, they wouldn’t be this desperate.
And climate change is the wildcard. It’s going to force a reckoning. Populations are going to move. Supply chains will fail. The OCFC thinks it can surf this chaos, but chaos has a way of overwhelming even the most calculated plans. When that moment comes—the question is whether people are organized, connected, and ready to seize the rupture.
Final Thought: It’s Already Happening
Look at the UAW strikes, the teachers' strikes, the mutual aid during COVID, the water defenders, the land back movements, tenant unions refusing evictions. It’s small, fragmented—but it’s there. It’s the early form of what could become a working-class internationalism that finally breaks through the nationalist, racial divisions the oligarchs rely on.
Great piece, thanks, D. Regarding your somewhat inexplicable feeling of happiness last night, I just read a piece in the Atlantic on Seamus Heaney. The author of the piece shares a quote from a poem of Heaney’s that she takes inspiration from: “Walk on air against your better judgement.” The author adds, “It gives you the ability, the permission, to hold the full complicated equation of life lightly.”
I also recently finished Rilke’s Book of Hours. Very beautiful and inspiring.
Thanks again.
Back to the future...remember the old slogan "Workers of the World Unite!"? The global capitalist elite has been at this project a long time, and the ruined economies of Latin America are proof of the wreckage left behind when the corporate capitalist vultures move on. NAFTA was already a step towards nailing the coffin of American industry while exploiting workers in Mexico--a move that Canada has been happy to benefit from. Trump's tariffs aren't going to bring American industry back again...the corporations have moved on. Yes, we are all implicated, every single one of us who pays taxes, uses American banking / credit systems or has a stock investment. Short of living off the grid--which many are now doing like it or not, as "unhoused" people--we are participant-observers in the events of our time, and have to take responsibility for what's happening. What does that look like? Speaking truth to power, at minimum. We may be called to put our bodies on the line in the streets--which was pretty hazardous back in the '90s, if you remember the Occupy or NAFTA protests. I think the over-50 crowd, in particular, have a responsibility to speak up and demand that our elected representatives and court system do whatever they can to stop the criminal takeover of the United States by the corporate financial mafia you and Bolsen are describing. Yes, we should definitely be looking for opportunities for solidarity with people who have been or are being steamrolled in other countries. But we must be especially vigilant and active here, on our own streets and in our own backyards.