Six months, and the world is rearranging itself. I had conversations with people about this, what would happen, why this is a Bad Thing. A few of them actually told me I was overreacting. My mother, who is 90, was frightened by all this. The pleasures of “I told you so” are insufficient to assuage my despair.
So much has to be rebuilt. Some of it, to be fair, could stand it. A lot of what was put in place after WWII (and yes, that is the marker, the point at which the United States stepped up and acted in the interest of the world, but more on that later) was frozen in the amber of when it was created and did not work as well as it could have. But this notion among conservatives that it had to be torn down before it could be improved, while appealing to a certain impatient mindset, has turned out to be a cover for something more sinister.
For years afterward, as an example, we had one after another Republican Mouth demanding that the Affordable Care Act be repealed. Why? So something better could be put in its place. And for years we kept asking “Like what? Show us.” And no plan was presented. “Tear it down and we’ll show you.”
And after all that time and splenetic invective and bad faith maneuvering one would have to be fool to believe anything from that side of the aisle would ever have been put forth to replace it. Because they did not intend to.
I do not understand the moral calculus, but it seems apparent now that the working thesis of the Right is, we owe nothing to anyone who cannot pony up the price of admission. I heard this often enough in the last five decades, that “people who do not work should receive no money.” And when it is asked of them, “what if there is no work?” the response is silence. Crickets at best. I suppose if they have no money, that’s a choice they made, so why should we care? “And what about those who, through no fault of their own, cannot work?” At best, I’ve received a rhetorical “how is that my fault and why should I pay for it?”
To be honest, I have never encountered this argument from anyone who had the least grasp of how economies, especially capitalism, work, and who when they hear the term socialism have only images of gulags and Soviet tanks to fill in the vast gap in their understanding of what is actually covered by that word. It’s one thing to argue in good faith with someone who, first, admits they don’t understand things, and, second, who actually cares about solutions. It’s another thing entirely to be confronted with someone who simply wants the program or whatever to end, because. Some people are indeed so twisted that anything they never had or had access to they want to deprive everyone of. This is not something on which to base policy. Nevertheless, that is what we seem to have.
As the world shrank and communities found less and less ability to stay away from each other, we collectively realized that if we did not act, war would be constant and, as our weapons grew, more and more deadly. We reached a point where we had within our grasp the ability to decimate the planet. Something had to be done.
So over decades a complex network of relationships was constructed. Awkward, not ideal, sometimes embarrassingly corrupt, it has nevertheless pulled us collectively back from the brink. Complaints about the details were not wrong, but over time the overall effect has been remarkable. We’ve had small wars, relative to the two world wars, and the Cold War was a nail-biting exercise in frustration, but we have not destroyed ourselves. Little by little progress was made and we became, here and there, better.
But while those circumstances pertained that required the output and triumph of those systems and ideals we created after WWII, the capitalists of the world gleeful gave their support. They were making money and it was the making of that money and its distribution across boundaries that eventually eroded the stark differences. Now? With success came an abandonment of community on the part of those who thought the only thing that mattered was the accrual of wealth. (Trust me, I resisted this conclusion a long time; I didn’t want to believe people who had nothing to lose could be so utterly bereft of empathy, compassion, and a sense of fairness.)
So in the name of denying that they are part of the world, that world will be torn down.
Not all of them. Philanthropists abound. But they are obviously insufficient to stop the bleeding. Because we are bleeding. And if it is not stanched, we will bleed to death.
Things are now being shut down, destroyed, and nothing is being put in their place. The implicit promise of the last four decades of Republican demagoguery has been that given the chance Something Better, That Works, will replace these broken programs the Democrats have built. Well? Now they have their chance. But nothing is replacing all those institutions. It’s just possible they’ve misidentified all those things as cosmetic but instead it turns out they’re all load-bearing walls. Oops.
But no. That’s not what’s happening. This is programmatic. It was outlined in Project 2025. Ostensibly, all this is claimed to save money, cut spending, reduce waste. But in fact, it’s all costing more. Because the money is not being returned to the people, it is being shunted to the wealthy.
I know, it gets tiresome to hear this again and again, but it’s true. The extension of the tax cuts overwhelmingly go to the top. Why people who will end up paying for that reject the numbers, I do not understand. Usually, the simplest explanations are the most likely, at least in some part. People here tend to feel that the American Dream is entirely monetary, and so they believe that when they finally “make it” and are themselves wealthy, they’d rather not have to pay taxes. I doubt any serious thought is applied to this. It’s a feeling, an amorphous dream, and wish. Class mobility in this country has never been as great as publicity claims, but it’s getting even harder for people to move from low to high. It has been largely tolerated, at least since the 1950s, because those in the lower economic classes actually had it okay. At least some of them. Not all. In fact, fewer than the popular mythology tells us. But enough to muffle the complaints and mask the real hardship a lot of people experienced. We’d rather believe the myth than try to make reality conform to the stories.
It is seeming less and less likely that such an outcome will be achieved. The systems, the networks so laboriously constructed over 70 years (or 90 is you go back to the New Deal) that so many people came to rely on without even realizing it are being dismantled. The wrecking ball is swinging through it all. It will take decades to repair, if repair is even possible.
When in November of 2024 the outcome of the election became clear, some people wondered why I was so unsettled. I tried to explain. One thing I noted is, none of them actually thought the important stuff would change. The safety net would continue, our embrace of the idea of freedom of speech would remain strong, and the concrete achievements of the past would maintain. They wanted something to be done about a variety of things, most of which I do not believe they fully understood.
They told us what they were going to do. The one time they gave us an honest answer, none of their supporters believed them. They were going to destroy the Deep State. The problem was, that Deep State was what maintained the networks of relationships that actually kept us whole and healthy, at least more so than if they were gone. Well, they’re being made gone now. People will die. The Deep State, it turns out, is SSI, FEMA, MediCare and MedicAid, the CDC, SNAP, and the dozens of other programs that did commendable work in spite of the headwinds of political resistance. Resistance to the very idea that government should help people.
And not even help people because it’s necessarily the decent thing to do, but because not helping them dumps the expense on people in ways that will tear at our communities. You do these things to keep civilization civilized.
There are, in truth, people in positions of power who really seem to believe that those with no resources—no money—have no claim on life. They may not want the poor to die but they don’t feel a smidgen of responsibility toward them. They are well buffered from the reality that the only reason they’re rich is because they’ve taken it from anyone and everyone they can. Taken. Not earned.
But. We put them in charge. We bought the bullshit. And now they really are doing what they said they would do and people will die.
I have a theory about the thinking behind this. Actual cooperation, across any boundary you can name, saps them of their power. Division is their ambrosia. Internationally, keeping countries paranoid and uncooperative benefits the currency exchange markets, but even more basic, it allows for unregulated action across borders and keeps accountability at bay. Start there and go down to the level of neighborhoods. Property values are maintained by seeing to it some neighborhoods are better than others and isolating them from each other goes toward keeping people blind to the realities. Division is profitable. We were, stumblingly and awkwardly, heading toward greater cooperation, more alignment across borders, the reduction of barriers. Which eventually would leave the pillagers nowhere to hide. The destruction of international agreements and cooperation serves basically the same purpose as neighborhood segregation and selective blighting, which benefits developers. Actually maintaining neighborhoods and aiding those under-resourced does not produce the sharp profits of new development. Keep people isolated and separated and power is maintained. Add in or aggravate latent racism and class divisions and the emotional storms obliterate reason, leaving people susceptible to manipulation.
I think it’s that simple. And too many of us bought it.
Regardless, it’s being torn apart. Rebuilding will be long and expensive. It’s possible we might build something better, but the cost in lives…
Let us not kid ourselves that we are not all somewhat responsible. We all let ourselves be made afraid and fear is, as has been said, the mind killer.
The Distal Muse
The Undoing
Six months, and the world is rearranging itself. I had conversations with people about this, what would happen, why this is a Bad Thing. A few of them actually told me I was overreacting. My mother, who is 90, was frightened by all this. The pleasures of “I told you so” are insufficient to assuage my despair.
So much has to be rebuilt. Some of it, to be fair, could stand it. A lot of what was put in place after WWII (and yes, that is the marker, the point at which the United States stepped up and acted in the interest of the world, but more on that later) was frozen in the amber of when it was created and did not work as well as it could have. But this notion among conservatives that it had to be torn down before it could be improved, while appealing to a certain impatient mindset, has turned out to be a cover for something more sinister.
For years afterward, as an example, we had one after another Republican Mouth demanding that the Affordable Care Act be repealed. Why? So something better could be put in its place. And for years we kept asking “Like what? Show us.” And no plan was presented. “Tear it down and we’ll show you.”
And after all that time and splenetic invective and bad faith maneuvering one would have to be fool to believe anything from that side of the aisle would ever have been put forth to replace it. Because they did not intend to.
I do not understand the moral calculus, but it seems apparent now that the working thesis of the Right is, we owe nothing to anyone who cannot pony up the price of admission. I heard this often enough in the last five decades, that “people who do not work should receive no money.” And when it is asked of them, “what if there is no work?” the response is silence. Crickets at best. I suppose if they have no money, that’s a choice they made, so why should we care? “And what about those who, through no fault of their own, cannot work?” At best, I’ve received a rhetorical “how is that my fault and why should I pay for it?”
To be honest, I have never encountered this argument from anyone who had the least grasp of how economies, especially capitalism, work, and who when they hear the term socialism have only images of gulags and Soviet tanks to fill in the vast gap in their understanding of what is actually covered by that word. It’s one thing to argue in good faith with someone who, first, admits they don’t understand things, and, second, who actually cares about solutions. It’s another thing entirely to be confronted with someone who simply wants the program or whatever to end, because. Some people are indeed so twisted that anything they never had or had access to they want to deprive everyone of. This is not something on which to base policy. Nevertheless, that is what we seem to have.
As the world shrank and communities found less and less ability to stay away from each other, we collectively realized that if we did not act, war would be constant and, as our weapons grew, more and more deadly. We reached a point where we had within our grasp the ability to decimate the planet. Something had to be done.
So over decades a complex network of relationships was constructed. Awkward, not ideal, sometimes embarrassingly corrupt, it has nevertheless pulled us collectively back from the brink. Complaints about the details were not wrong, but over time the overall effect has been remarkable. We’ve had small wars, relative to the two world wars, and the Cold War was a nail-biting exercise in frustration, but we have not destroyed ourselves. Little by little progress was made and we became, here and there, better.
But while those circumstances pertained that required the output and triumph of those systems and ideals we created after WWII, the capitalists of the world gleeful gave their support. They were making money and it was the making of that money and its distribution across boundaries that eventually eroded the stark differences. Now? With success came an abandonment of community on the part of those who thought the only thing that mattered was the accrual of wealth. (Trust me, I resisted this conclusion a long time; I didn’t want to believe people who had nothing to lose could be so utterly bereft of empathy, compassion, and a sense of fairness.)
So in the name of denying that they are part of the world, that world will be torn down.
Not all of them. Philanthropists abound. But they are obviously insufficient to stop the bleeding. Because we are bleeding. And if it is not stanched, we will bleed to death.
Things are now being shut down, destroyed, and nothing is being put in their place. The implicit promise of the last four decades of Republican demagoguery has been that given the chance Something Better, That Works, will replace these broken programs the Democrats have built. Well? Now they have their chance. But nothing is replacing all those institutions. It’s just possible they’ve misidentified all those things as cosmetic but instead it turns out they’re all load-bearing walls. Oops.
But no. That’s not what’s happening. This is programmatic. It was outlined in Project 2025. Ostensibly, all this is claimed to save money, cut spending, reduce waste. But in fact, it’s all costing more. Because the money is not being returned to the people, it is being shunted to the wealthy.
I know, it gets tiresome to hear this again and again, but it’s true. The extension of the tax cuts overwhelmingly go to the top. Why people who will end up paying for that reject the numbers, I do not understand. Usually, the simplest explanations are the most likely, at least in some part. People here tend to feel that the American Dream is entirely monetary, and so they believe that when they finally “make it” and are themselves wealthy, they’d rather not have to pay taxes. I doubt any serious thought is applied to this. It’s a feeling, an amorphous dream, and wish. Class mobility in this country has never been as great as publicity claims, but it’s getting even harder for people to move from low to high. It has been largely tolerated, at least since the 1950s, because those in the lower economic classes actually had it okay. At least some of them. Not all. In fact, fewer than the popular mythology tells us. But enough to muffle the complaints and mask the real hardship a lot of people experienced. We’d rather believe the myth than try to make reality conform to the stories.
It is seeming less and less likely that such an outcome will be achieved. The systems, the networks so laboriously constructed over 70 years (or 90 is you go back to the New Deal) that so many people came to rely on without even realizing it are being dismantled. The wrecking ball is swinging through it all. It will take decades to repair, if repair is even possible.
When in November of 2024 the outcome of the election became clear, some people wondered why I was so unsettled. I tried to explain. One thing I noted is, none of them actually thought the important stuff would change. The safety net would continue, our embrace of the idea of freedom of speech would remain strong, and the concrete achievements of the past would maintain. They wanted something to be done about a variety of things, most of which I do not believe they fully understood.
They told us what they were going to do. The one time they gave us an honest answer, none of their supporters believed them. They were going to destroy the Deep State. The problem was, that Deep State was what maintained the networks of relationships that actually kept us whole and healthy, at least more so than if they were gone. Well, they’re being made gone now. People will die. The Deep State, it turns out, is SSI, FEMA, MediCare and MedicAid, the CDC, SNAP, and the dozens of other programs that did commendable work in spite of the headwinds of political resistance. Resistance to the very idea that government should help people.
And not even help people because it’s necessarily the decent thing to do, but because not helping them dumps the expense on people in ways that will tear at our communities. You do these things to keep civilization civilized.
There are, in truth, people in positions of power who really seem to believe that those with no resources—no money—have no claim on life. They may not want the poor to die but they don’t feel a smidgen of responsibility toward them. They are well buffered from the reality that the only reason they’re rich is because they’ve taken it from anyone and everyone they can. Taken. Not earned.
But. We put them in charge. We bought the bullshit. And now they really are doing what they said they would do and people will die.
I have a theory about the thinking behind this. Actual cooperation, across any boundary you can name, saps them of their power. Division is their ambrosia. Internationally, keeping countries paranoid and uncooperative benefits the currency exchange markets, but even more basic, it allows for unregulated action across borders and keeps accountability at bay. Start there and go down to the level of neighborhoods. Property values are maintained by seeing to it some neighborhoods are better than others and isolating them from each other goes toward keeping people blind to the realities. Division is profitable. We were, stumblingly and awkwardly, heading toward greater cooperation, more alignment across borders, the reduction of barriers. Which eventually would leave the pillagers nowhere to hide. The destruction of international agreements and cooperation serves basically the same purpose as neighborhood segregation and selective blighting, which benefits developers. Actually maintaining neighborhoods and aiding those under-resourced does not produce the sharp profits of new development. Keep people isolated and separated and power is maintained. Add in or aggravate latent racism and class divisions and the emotional storms obliterate reason, leaving people susceptible to manipulation.
I think it’s that simple. And too many of us bought it.
Regardless, it’s being torn apart. Rebuilding will be long and expensive. It’s possible we might build something better, but the cost in lives…
Let us not kid ourselves that we are not all somewhat responsible. We all let ourselves be made afraid and fear is, as has been said, the mind killer.
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