Trump 2025

[leticia]

Uderzo skrev (2 minutter siden):

Selv om muren ble revet så fortsatte Tyskland å være delt. Selv 35 år senere så har ikke øst klart å ta igjen vest med tanke på økonomi osv. Så at AfD har nesten alle sine velgere i øst er ikke overraskende.
Tyskland er et dypt splittet land, på alle mulige måter.

Ja jeg var på tur der altså i både vest og i øst ikke mange årene etter muren ble revet. Det var helt syke forskjeller med tanke på fattigdom.

Men at det skulle være såpass delt fremdeles var litt rart å se.

[xRun]

obygda skrev (1 time siden):

Det burde vært laget film om dette.

Kommer nok. 

[Mbappe09]

Pete Hegseth sliter med å svare på spørsmål fra tidligere kollega.
 

 

[Samms]

2 hours ago, obygda said:

Ser at AfD i praksis er øst Tyskland...

Muskegutten og Trump har vel vennene sine der - nærmere Russland.....

 

Det kan og være at mange i øst etter kvart vart skuffa over det dei fekk frå vest. Samanslåing av Tyskland gav dei mykje friheit i øst, men garantert jobb og leiligheit (og bil etter år i kø) forsvant.

[Delvis]

Mbappe09 skrev (15 minutter siden):

Pete Hegseth sliter med å svare på spørsmål fra tidligere kollega.
 

 

Hørtes ikke ut til å bli målbundet iallfall. "Blablablablablablablabla.."

[Samms]

3 hours ago, JK22 said:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/trump-doesn-t-believe-in-much-historian-dissects-maga-schism-and-says-musk-will-win/ar-AA1zBYTF?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=c01260ee01bb424f92b89cbef50b2d54&ei=11

Historian Quinn Slobodian says three strains of conservatism have converged to form the second Trump administration’s anti-democratic coalition:

finance-backed corporate interests previously friendly to the Democratic Party

Christian conservative think tanks who have long advocated for the end of the administrative state

online-driven movement of reactionary extremists who traffic in white supremacist and neo-Nazi rhetoric.

Jeg tror ikke det er penger som driver Trump. 

" - The first one is the idea that the government should be run like a corporation, right? There’s a kind of a core Clintonite notion here that we should treat citizens like consumers, we should, you know, expose bureaucracy to the same kind of competitive pressures and kind of hallmarking and benchmarking that private companies are, and then you have to go in and sort of act like an asset-stripping private equity firm and peel out all the waste and abuse and put back in sort of more efficient processes - "

Det lyder så skremmende kjent for oss her i Norge... skal vedde på at de norske politikerne som lese dette, helt sikkert vil bleke litt. 

" - And the second, I think, strain of politics that’s plugged in here is closer to that of Russell Vought at the Office of Management and Budget, one of the people who was critical to the Project 2025 document. And that is a more often Christian conservative sort of think tank vision of deconstructing the administrative state, not to make it more efficient and to cost cut to get to more efficiency and sort of productivity, but because you think certain things that the government has been doing are fundamentally illegitimate - "

Dette er statsfiendtligheten som republikanerne hadde fremmet i flere tiår, men saken med USAID og DEI har avslørt at det lot til å være meget avgrunnsdype misforståelser mellom de faktiske kristenfascistene av evangelikale identitet og de konservative "falsk-kristenfascister" som Vought representert. Dette er i praksis en fortsettelse av kanselleringsideologien fra slutten på 1950-tallet under det som jeg kaller "falsk konservativisme". 

" - The third strain, though, that sort of gets to some of the more extreme dynamics that people have been picking up on is what I think you can call right-wing accelerationism. So, this is a kind of very online ideology, often associated with people like Curtis Yarvin and Nick Land. And there, the idea is that you don’t just sort of trim the state or kind of streamline it, but you shatter it altogether. And so, there’s a vision of total decentralization of sovereignty, back to smaller kind of fortified private enclaves, turning the United States into a kind of a patchwork of fiefdoms, or “sovcorps,” as Yarvin calls them, where people are sort of, you know, opting in, paying to get into gated communities, and then sort of in zero-sum social Darwinist competition with the world beyond them - "

Dette er litt vanskelig å forstå, betyr det i praksis at disse online aktivistene er selvmordskandidater? Det er kjent at Thiels og hans folk vil ha neoføydalistiske tilstander, men her ser det ut at man vil i sannheten ha en anarkistisk verdensorden i sosialdarwinistisk ånd uten å skjønne hva det mene. 

Vitenskapsmenn som spesialisert seg i studier av mennesket vil si at dette er akutt stupiditet. Slobodin antyder at dette skyldes informasjonsoverflod som fikk disse "representantene" til å tørne helt da disse arbeidet innenfor techindustrien fordi disse ikke maktet å takle de sosialhierarkiske realitetene innenfor et aktivt sosialt liv der likhet er et ideal å ettertrakte, ikke et mål. Det hadde i tjue år vært observert voksende urovekkende tendenser innenfor det som defineres som isolerte gutteklubber. 

Slobodin mente disse vil ødelegge nasjonalstatene over hele verden for å presse gjennom en globalisering på libertarianske prinsipper - uten å fatte at hele 90 % av verden vil aldri akseptere disses ideer. 

Mange MSN henvisninger, men utplukket du har funne her er viktig for forståelse av kva som skjer i USA. Når det kjem til "gated comunities" så finnes dei i USA og med stor misstru til offentleg styre velger dei som bur der å betale for eit privat styre. I ein del tilfeller med konsekvens at kontrakta overstyrer offentleg lov og rett.

Alle tre punkta passer også dei store selskapa "corporations" godt, det blir då dei som i praksis styrer landet. Og ideen om at private styrer betre enn staten har dei marknadsført lenge.

[Rune_says]

Musk satser store penger på å få en Trump-lojal høyesterettsdommer, Brad Schimel,  i Wisconsin.  Musk er fra tidligere i krangel med Wisconsin's lovgivning ( https://www.wpr.org/news/tesla-wisconsin-court-blocking-opening-dealerships )

Musk betaler $1 mill for valgkampanje og $1,6 mill for video til sverte-kampanje (med bl.a. manipulert bilde av Crawford)

Brad Schimel er på sin side kjent for støtte til Big Pharma, ytre høyre etc...

https://wisdems.org/wisdems-news/brad-schimels-love-affair-with-the-far-right/

Sitat

As attorney general, Brad Schimel bent the knee to Big Pharma and led a lawsuit to overturn the Affordable Care Act and rip away health care from hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites. Schimel called the ACA a “train wreck.”

En liten detalj er at sverte-videoen om Crawford ikke har riktige fakta.  Aktor ba om 10 år (ikke 100) men dommen ble noe mildere utifra sakens fakta og overgriperen er under utvidet oppsikt fram til 2030 :

https://wisconsinwatch.org/2025/02/wisconsin-supreme-court-crawford-child-sex-offender-sentence-schimel/

Sitat

Crawford said the crimes occurring years apart made Welton a repeat offender, requiring prison, but were less serious than other sexual assaults, and 10 years was longer than needed for rehabilitation.

Welton’s appeals failed. Released in January 2024, he is on extended supervision until 2030.

 

 

Endret 2 timer siden av Rune_says

[JK22]

Samms skrev (2 timer siden):

Og ideen om at private styrer betre enn staten har dei marknadsført lenge.

Dette er neoføydalisme i praksis. Føydalismen startet i senantikken da slavemarkedet begynte å kollapse fordi det ikke lenge kom inn slaver fra fiendeland etter de romerske keiserne skiftet til et defensivt forsvar mot tynne befolkede land i nord og fjerntliggende imperier i øst, slik at prisen på slavene steg til uante høyder. Samtidig begynte den romerske administrasjonen å falle fra hverandre, staten mer og mer utebli mens privateiere som besitter de største eiendommene og dermed de lokaløkonomiske sentre, etter hvert omgjort sine slaver til leilendinger og skaffe seg makt slik at de kunne tjene på statens tap.

De private makthaverne deretter begynte å overta ansvaret for lov og orden, og senere beskatningspliktene. Det er hvordan de mange føydale småfyrster oppsto da Romerriket kollapset. Så begynte de å føre krig mot hverandre. De mange kongene som overtok restene av det store imperiet, måtte støtte seg på den meget desentraliserte maktstrukturen ved å gi de private makthaverne fullmakter i bytte mot lojalitet - disse ble lensherrer i egenskap av å eie deres len, som helt og fullstendig var underlagt disses autoritet. Sentralmakten hadde forsvunnet, all forvaltning hadde blitt oppstykket. 

En retur av føydalstyre som kan munne ut i en gjentagelse av de mørke tradisjonene fra middelalderen vil i praksis betyr en katastrofe for folk flest. 

Endret 24 minutter siden av JK22

[Mbappe09]

Interessant for europeisk sikkerhet 

[Rune_says]

Grei oppsummering av MSNBC om Trump sin støtte til Russland og ikke minst Musk's siste epost til alle offentlig ansatte "Svar innen Mandag kl 11:59 EST ellers mister du jobben"  (selv om de evt ikke har tilgang til epost akkurat da...)   Snakk om "poor performance" sjef !

 

 

Endret 1 time siden av Rune_says

[Samms]

46 minutes ago, JK22 said:

Dette er neoføydalisme i praksis. Føydalismen startet i senantikken da slavemarkedet begynte å kollapse fordi det ikke lenge kom inn slaver fra fiendeland etter de romerske keiserne skiftet til et defensivt forsvar mot tynne befolkede land i vest og fjerntliggende imperier i øst, slik at prisen på slavene steg til uante høyder. Samtidig begynte den romerske administrasjonen å falle fra hverandre, staten mer og mer utebli mens privateiere som besitter de største eiendommene og dermed de lokaløkonomiske sentre, etter hvert omgjort sine slaver til leilendinger og skaffe seg makt slik at de kunne tjene på statens tap.

De private makthaverne deretter begynte å overta ansvaret for lov og orden, og senere beskatningspliktene. Det er hvordan de mange føydale småfyrster oppsto da Romerriket kollapset. Så begynte de å føre krig mot hverandre. De mange kongene som overtok restene av det store imperiet, måtte støtte seg på den meget desentraliserte maktstrukturen ved å gi de private makthaverne fullmakter i bytte mot lojalitet - disse ble lensherrer i egenskap av å eie deres len, som helt og fullstendig var underlagt disses autoritet. Sentralmakten hadde forsvunnet, all forvaltning hadde blitt oppstykket. 

En retur av føydalstyre som kan munne ut i en gjentagelse av de mørke tradisjonene fra middelalderen vil i praksis betyr en katastrofe for folk flest. 

Om utviklinga i USA går i denne retning er det ikkje sikkert resultatet blir det same. Teknologi og eigerstrukturer tillater geografisk mykje større einingar i dag. Store aksjeselskap er i dag multinasjonale, dei strekker seg over mange land. 

[JK22]

https://www.populismstudies.org/trump-and-the-new-capitalism-old-wine-in-new-bottle/

Veldig interessant, men grufull artikkel som gjør det klart at om utviklingen ikke stanses, kan det få Vesten til å gå under.

Conclusion

In our age of multipolarity, global capitalism is no longer a cohesive system under US hegemony. There are now competing forms of capitalism with different norms and values. There are three notable issues to underline here in terms of understanding the nature of rising capitalism under Trump 2.0. 

First, despite its contradictions, Trumpism exposes fundamental flaws in post-WWII economic orthodoxy—particularly its failures to address inequality, identity, and the unintended consequences of globalization. Therefore, the strength of Trump’s approach lies in its emotional resonance with voters who feel marginalized by globalization. Trumpism thrives not on traditional economic logic but on perceptions of cultural and economic displacement. 

Second, the fact that politicians come to power using right-wing populist rhetoric and then cede substantial control to capital rather than monitoring, directing, and engaging it in government for the benefit of the people underscores the volatile, elusive, and inherently dangerous nature of populist discourse. Trump’s apparent shift toward oligarchic capitalism (techno-feudalism) through his explicit favoritism toward specific billionaires signals a transition from "neutral" state capitalism to a system where the government actively serves dominant private entities. This shift undermines market competition, reduces economic democracy, and fosters monopolistic tendencies.

Third, rather than adhering to the principle of reforming the existing US system and global multilateral organizations, as Yuen Yuen Ang argues, Trump intends to export or externalize significant problems of the US economy, such as the ever-rising income inequality, chronic and systemic corruption caused by the rise of robber barons, and financial risks, to the “rest” of the world via “beggar thy neighbor policies.”

In this emerging conflict, the digital economy, technology wars, and financial sanctions have become key instruments. However, under Trump’s approach, the current global fragmentation and the new Cold War environment have evolved beyond a simple polarization between the West and the China-Russia axis. The struggle is no longer just between the center (West) and the periphery (Global South) but also within the Global South and the West.

That fragmentation might also lead to: (i) The breakdown of global supply chains as the West tries to reduce its dependence on China, shifting toward a "friendshoring" trade model. As a reaction, expanding BRICS nations are advancing de-dollarization and constructing alternatives to the Western financial system. (ii) A possible economic bloc formation against Western dominance reminiscent of the 1930s increases the risk of economic stagnation and geopolitical conflict. The US and the EU are implementing "Green Protectionism" via carbon tariffs. If these trends persist, the global economy may enter an era of trade wars, financial decoupling, and economic fragmentation. 

Finally, economists must grapple with the systemic issues that enabled its rise rather than dismissing it as an aberration. Until mainstream economics confronts these shortcomings, the populist movement it fuels is unlikely to fade.

Så selv om Trump fjernes, er det meget klart at noe må gjøres med globaliseringsutviklingen som hadde gått i feil retning ved å bli for liberalt og for kortsiktig i de siste tretti år, spesielt siden finanskrisen. 

https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/02/13/high-tech-capitalism-and-neo-feudalism/

En forferdelig artikkel som må leses av alle - spesielt amerikanere selv!

Trumpism is the new, populist, post-postmodern form of a “non-ideological ideology” redefining the relations between the State and Capitalism.

A new iteration of an oligarchy who, after shifting their political allegiance from the Democrat Party to the Republican Party, formed themselves around President Trump and his hubs of power in Mar-a-Lago, Trump Tower, and the Oval Office, in addition to the Web, as Zuckerberg and Musk as the two-popes of the digital age, where Donald Trump reigns as the “Great Twitter Communicator.”

If there were 12 of them, with a pure heart, and a pure mind bent on self-sacrificing, and Christian compassion, they could be compared to Camelot’s Knights of the Round Table, made famous by the 12th century Arthur-Lancelot-Graal cycle of the French-Breton Romance. But since they are filthy rich and self-centered, materialist and opportunist, with a tainted heart and mind, they function more like an ideological Pretorian guard supporting and defending the new Presidential Monarch.

This oligarchy/plutocracy constitutes 0.1% of the American population. It owns 14% of the nation’s wealth, $22 trillion in stocks, bonds and real estate, while 50% of Americans own 2.4% of the national wealth ($4 trillion). These ultra rich individuals contributed to the super PACs in favor of Trump’s candidacy. Elon Musk spent more than $200 million of his personal wealth on Donald Trump’s campaign; OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Jeff Bezos, (Amazon) and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook and Meta) each gave $1 million to the Inauguration Fund of President Trump.

The Super PACs form an unholy alliance between Big Money and Big Politics. In more ways than one, it can be said that MAGA was funded by GAFA—the European acronym to loop together the American multinationals shaping global consumerism (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple). A majority of the American electorate was persuaded that what is good for the ultra-rich entrepreneurs of these multinationals is good for them.[1]

This new configuration took the institution of the State by surprise. It comes as close as possible to a political coup, bypassing the law in many instances. This unconstitutional power grab by the tandem Trump-Musk, took most by surprise, barreling along, as it is, like a runaway train with loose cannons on board. It unwittingly and thoughtlessly imposes what it considers to be the cure to a “rotten,” “lunatic,” “Marxist,” “leftist” state of things existing within many departments of the Federal Government. The Federal agencies Donald Trump accused of harboring (without proof) rampant “abuse, waste, fraud” are gutted or suppressed.

Diktats (250 Presidential decrees the first two weeks), the creation of DOGE (Department of Governmental Efficiency), the orders of an unelected, “unofficially official” oligarch (Elon Musk), were used or created ad hoc to clean and wipe-out those agencies deemed by the new political and ideological “system” to draining the Government Treasury, and/or propagating “Anti-American values.” By the same token, Trump holds in suspicion all the intellectuals and academics, lawyers and journalists, artists and Hollywood stars who profess or advertise in public liberal, democratic, or socialist ideas. He believes that, at best, their ideas of control and regulation of capitalism hold the country back, impoverishing the middle- and working-classes; at worst, they are the “inside enemy,” a 5th column helping the “outside enemy” by subverting the unity of the country, and demoralizing America by propagating anti-American values.

Elon Musk and his bevy of cost-cutters were given carte blanche, firing US federal employees, forcing them to retire, resign, or accept a buyout. Musk and his henchmen (are there any women?) work beyond governmental legality. On the one hand, what they are doing to Washington is an overhaul of the Federal Government by planning to replace many career-civil servants at mid- and top-level with new loyal employees, partisan sycophants, and political buddies, or making the old ones take an oath of obedience. On the other hand, they want to put the Government out of business, by “un-governing,” by making the big machinery of the Federal State obsolete.

The best way to get rid of a dog is to scream that it is rabid. One does not have to prove it.

Since mid-January 2025, the American people have beenexperiencing a mild foretaste of what the Russian people experienced when they were hit by the Easterly, socio-economic Shock-Therapy inflicted by the Chicago School of Economy’s Boys just after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. in 1991. If one thinks that this vengeful, punitive, cruel, and ultimately idiotic socio-economic “Shock and Awe” treatment of the ex- Soviet Union did not have any bearing on what happened in Russia afterwards, one is clueless. Putin’s imperialist revenge is the by-product of this historic, American-made humiliation and destruction of the economy of what was, for better or worse, a country—something the Chinese government was able to avoid.

So, these politicians for a new socio-economic policy and these megalomaniac plutocrats have to convince the American people that this huge Washingtonian apparatus is worthless, corrupt, and sinful, that the taxpayers’ money spent to run it would be better spent somewhere else. In this battle for the minds of the American electorate, all tricks are justified, even the senseless is forced to make sense. The politics of the sledgehammer is used to squash flies. These “grand liquidators” feel empowered and self-justified by decades of Republican anti-Federalist rhetoric. As Donald Trump constantly repeats, they are only doing what the American voters-taxpayers elected them to do. They are just accomplishing their mandate. The only thing they won’t touch, reform, or diminish is the military, for obvious reasons.

Their principal goal is to free as much Capital as possible from the State Ideological Apparatuses (Althusser), by suppressing and privatizing as much as possible the Government’s functions and services—even if this means destroying what the Government used to positively stand for in the minds of a large majority of the people. They want to maximize the availability of Capital for Big Tech, Big Business ventures and tax breaks for corporations and wealthy entrepreneurs, since the Reaganian trickle-down theory stands paramount in the ideology of these self-declared “benefactors” of humanity. The future development of AI, cybernetics, and space travel will necessitate huge investments, although the Chinese DeepSeek didn’t cost that much. It developed a world-class model of AI app for $5 million. If those oligarchs could, they would totally privatize Health Care and even Social Security.

In order to convince the maximum number of voters, that this “grand deconstruction” of Government and realignment of priorities is for their own good, this new ideology of entanglement of “anarchic populism” (American Libertarianism influence) with Big Money has to conceal its ideological biases. That is to say that the new post-postmodern political discourse had to change.

Giving the word “gaslighting” a new life, Donald Trump and his political cohort started to make of denial and fantasy, the two key ingredients of their representation of reality. Associated to a perverse manipulation of what constitutes “normative reality,” gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse where a manipulator incites or induces someone to question his/her sanity, memories, or perception of reality. Gaslighted people feel confused, anxious, and unable to trust their own judgment.[2]

The 2023/24 Presidential Campaign was full of air and gaz. Donald Trump was the Great Manipulator, igniting people’s passions, fueling their volcanic anger, setting their resentment on fire.

It was marked by a shameless and total reversal of the paradigms of the Symbolic system establishing a basic sense of shared reality, keeping the Imaginary in its place, without which a society cannot function in relative harmony: the false became the true, the lie was the prevailing discourse putting to shame all the others (fake news), the metonymic contamination of the larger picture by the manipulative aggrandizement of a minor detail became the real picture, etc. Authenticity, reality, veracity, accuracy, actuality, testimony, genuineness…, became the victimized signifiers of a perverse, and ultimately schizophrenic reversal of our psychic sanity.

Since this reversal is systemic and systematic, it generated like in a self-fulfilling prophecy, an accepted repetitive recourse to the political discourse of “commonsensical slogans” which then passed as “truisms”: statism means economic stagnation (decreasing citizens’ standard of living); rule of law means regulations (impeding creativity, innovation, and development);governmental authority means tyranny; immigration means joblessness and insecurity; diminishing federal and state taxation means income gain; freedom means free enterprise, freedom to choose the type of education for one’s children, or choosing one’s doctor; socialism means loss of freedom, higher taxes, statist regulations, government inefficiency and corruption; etc.

The national indicators for physical and mental health, suicide rates, drug addiction, longevity, child mortality, violent death, etc., showing that the American approach to social problems is very problematic, are denounced by Trump’s Republicans as nasty, lying, liberal, or socialist anti-American propaganda.

This radical re-alignment between Political Power, Big Tech, and Big Government is re-defining the political relationship between the State and Capitalism—high-tech capitalism that is. It subordinates the State to its vision, interests and benefits. Already, in 1994, Esther Dyson, George Gebele, George Keyworth, and Alvin Toffler mapped the future along those same lines with Cyberspace & the American Dream.

What President Trump and his cronies are doing is following the blueprint of Ayn Rand’s libertarian philosophy based on an objectivist “State,” whereby the Federal Government becomes a genuine marketplace institution governed by the invisible hand, à la Adam Smith, and not at all a genuine “Government for all.” It would be an anti-Federalist, anti-state made up of competing agencies for protection, defense, surveillance, and retaliation – in short, a “free-market anarchism” based on a strange alliance between populist leaders and the Big CEOS supposed to take care of the livelihood (consumption, jobs, etc.) of people turned into mere consumer-producers.

Making use of an ideology passing as an anti-ideology, magnified by algorithms (AI), this vindictive and activist anti-statism is streamlining the Government, controlling its administrative apparatus. The goal of this “anti-ideological ideology” is to make sure that what’s left of the regulations and restraints imposed by labor laws and environmental sustainability goals, of the constraints put on digital technology (limits put on AI’s development), and of what’s left of the restrictions put on the speculative dimension of financial capitalism are lifted and made inoperative.

What was left of the surveillance dimension of the State in regard to the excess of capitalism is turned around and directed against the State itself.

In fact, what is deemed reactive or oppositional to this unprecedented “governmental grand liquidation,” or critical of the mere unabashed development of a free techno-capitalism and the way it wants to conduct business, quickly receives the accusatory label of being “Anti-American.” Since, for these pundits and deciders (President W. Busch called himself The Decider) of this new state of things, the ends justify the means: dis-information, fake news, the gross manipulation of facts, outright lies, insults and defamation, the false elevated to the level of the “truth,” all constitute the daily staple fed to a credulous, ignorant, indifferent, disoriented crowd, or worse, a public getting off on the spectacle of abjection.

The “ends” here are the colonization and reduction of the economy and its people by the logic and effects of algorithmic digitalization, which, as in a feed-back loop, will guarantee the accumulation of power and capital within the companies of these digital masters, while assuring the future development of the digitalized economy and its people. Marcuse’ One Dimensional Man will then become a concrete reality.

Tim Cook (Apple), Sam Altman (Open AI), Shou Zi Chen (Tik Tok), Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Sundar Pichau (Google), Elon Musk (Telsa, X) are the feudal lords of this neo-feudalism. This alliance between Big Power, Big Money, and Big Tech forms a new techno-fascism, whose roots have been resting dormant in Silicon Valley for years. Since the 1960s, Ayn Rand’s objectivist philosophy and conception of pure capitalism have been working their way throughout the social body. They heavily influenced the economic and political philosophy of Silicone Valley’s entrepreneurs, techno-geeks and digital gurus. The by-products of this ultra-capitalist ideology also tainted the preconceptions and prejudices of these tech-influencers:

Cult of the performance and of competition, leading logically to the idealization of the winner, the hero, the strong; the one who has the will-power and the intelligence to make things happen, who leads society ahead economically and technologically.

Disdain for the weak, the “feminized” under-achiever, and despising the deviant, the poor, the loser, the dummy; the one unable to adapt or transform himself according the laws of survival of the fittest.

Capitalism is life. It is Nature’s vital force. There’s no Yin and Yang here. This force is masculinist—which prompted Zuckerberg to genuinely and naively declare that America and capitalism need more “masculine energy.” Reminiscent of the 1960s’ ideological strong man, à la Mike Hammer:

“If he’s anathema out of the past, then it’s our fault. We brought a man back who should have died a long time ago. The present can’t stand a man like that anymore. Now they want indecision and compromise and reluctance and fear… and we’ve dropped a hot iron in society’s lap… he’s always been in the special-privilege class… [someone who is] a threat to a different world.”[3]

Only the strong should lead. Wealth is their just reward. This is the American Dream à la Trusk (characterial alloy of Trump and Musk).

This nexus of techno-capitalists shares the same unapologetic belief in merit and elitism, entrepreneurial savvy and savoir-faire, opening the doors to a return to the 19th century Western ideology of Anglo-Saxon obedience wrapped up in Ayn Rand’s so-called “objectivism.” The Russian-Jewish-American intellectual emigree’s novels The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957) directly inspired Kevin Roberts, head of the ultra-conservative think-tank, the Heritage Foundation. Its more directly activist branch, aptly named Heritage Action, gave birth to the (in)famous “Project 2025” in case the Republicans won the 2024 elections. “Project 2025” is a literal blueprint for the take-over, reduction, and privatization of the Federal Government, while weaponizing its Executive Branch in order to enforce the transformation of society into a genuine capitalist society.

In her writings, Rand sold the virtues of rational self-interest and individual freedom which, very naturally, would express themselves into a pure, laissez-faire-laissez-passer capitalist economy with a government whose only raison d’être would be the defense and expansion of capitalism with a population able and entitled to make free choices according to their personal interests. Although in Thoreau’s Walden have the freedom to live the way they chose, they exist in a de-institutionalized state, where the government does “govern not at all.”

Nurtured by the same nexus of cognitivism, evolutionary anthropology, behaviorism, sociobiology, and the scientific, physical materialist explanations of Nature and man (genetics, electro-chemistry of the brain, etc.) the American society is witnessing a return of Spenserian socio-Darwinism, of the survival of the fittest-type of ideology, of eugenics (with its racialism–and racism for the most extreme advocates of this populist-capitalist alliance). Perhaps, when students, they read, uncritically, Plato’s Republic promoting a society directed by an aristocracy based on intellectual and ethical merit and governing over a population divided, according to the ability of its members, into carefully designed and permanent classes, where marriages would be arranged genetically.

Elon Musk (a South African) and Paul Thiel (who spent time in South Africa) at one point or the other have expressed their belief in the genetic (?) inadequacy of Black Africans for capitalism. Donald Trump himself has been known to make crude, racist statements, as well as dismissing many African countries as “shithole countries.” Trump has even proposed the idea of taking in White South Africans “suffering from discrimination,” while deporting illegal Latino immigrants supposed to be rapist, criminals, drug-addicts, mentally ill– all animals unworthy of being called humans and of becoming Americans.

This ideological behavior and discourse announces the return of a certain form of the “Master/Slave dialectic” without dialectics.

A new form of feudalism is therefore shaping itself; a techno-feudalism using populism as a prop. It claims to be anti-ideological or non-ideological, when in fact Trumpism is very ideological. President Trump hides the ideological side of his political movement by claiming that its ingredients are common sense, traditional American values, liberty and nativism.

Big Tech, Big Money, Big power.

This techno-capitalist neo-feudalism, like the Medieval form of feudalism, will be based on allegiance streamlining a social pyramid. Oaths, vows, and troths of faithful obedience and loyalty by technocrats, devoted work by a subservient and obedient workforce of engineers and technicians, and a de-unionized or un-unionized labor, etc. will form the new social order. No wonder the Presidential candidate expressed his desire to be surrounded by obedient and faithful German army generals, the way Hitler was. If, per chance, the chosen peer fails to his or her mandate (the conservative journalist Megyn Kelly, Vice-President Mike Pence…) the “wrath of God” descends upon the poor recalcitrant.

Religion is no longer the unifying glue of this new form of feudalism.

The amalgamating force of society is now constituted, on one hand, by a nexus of consumerism, high-tech, digitalized communication, artificial intelligence, Meta verse and hyper-real or hyper-virtual spectacles, and, in the near future, cybernetics (robots and androids). On the other hand, on the affective side, the new social order is cemented by nativism and a fear/hatred or mistrust of the foreign other (immigrants or foreign countries), since the other’s jouissance is threatening to undermine the jouissance of the nativist citizen-producer-consumer.

“Truskist” (Trump/Musk) Republican’s post-postmodern brand of neo-conservatism corresponds to the abandonment of the neo-liberal type of democracy which has fulfilled its function since WWII. It accompanied the transformation of capital from an extractive and agrarian-type of economy into an industrial, and then, in the 1980s into a globally consumerist and financial type of capitalism with a welfare state as a buffer against the negative spin-offs of capitalism’s contradictions.

Whereas capitalism used to plug its machinery into human desires, now capitalism has become desire itself. The French/Continental Theory so many neo-positivists and cognitivists passionately dislike offers crucial analysis of what is going on today with the uncanny alliance capitalism- high-technology-populism.

“Capitalism is an unmediated desire, or abstract machine. A society actualizing that desire can be conceptualized as a particular mix between fascism-paranoia and anarchy-schizophrenia (tending strongly toward the latter)… It is the coming out of capital, a new golden age of greed that dares to say its name. Without a wince, Capitalism no longer has to justify itself. It no longer has to hide behind fascist-paranoid quasicauses and argue that it serves the common good. It can dispense with belief in and good sense, because it is now stronger than molarity, and stronger than the ideologies that help to reproduce it. The men who personify it—the Donad Trumps and Michael Milkens of the world—do not so much represent an ideological cause as embody a desire. An abstract desire, a mania for accumulating numerical quantities. Possessing things is understandable from the moral-molar point of view, as is wanting to accumulate capital for what it can buy in the way of time, things, and activities. But to accumulate more than anyone could ever spend? And then keep on accumulating greater and greater sums, with no other interest or aim in life? That is beyond good and evil. The neoconservative capitalist is defined less by what he possesses than by what possesses him. He is the personification of a mode of irrationality… It is superabstract.”[4]

The coming-out of post-postmodern capital “surfaces as a fatal attractor whose operational arena is immediately coextensive with the social field.”[5]

The sky’s the limit of this grand, new re-ordering of things. There used to be a “catch-sentence” symbolizing the expansion of America: “Go West! Young Man!” Elon Musk has changed it into “Let’s Go to Mars!” Perhaps these oligarchs should follow his injunction and build their Xanadu on the Red Planet.

Dette er komplett sinnssykt! Disse gærningene klarer ikke å innse at dette er det glade vanviddet! I mange årtusener hadde de individuelle makthaverne - kanskje helt siden våre foreldre var primater for flere millioner år siden - vært meget smertelig klart over hva som ligger i den kollektive kraften som finnes i en flokk, senere et folk. Disse idiotene klarer ikke å fatte at de risikere å få et folkeopprør om de får fortsette i mange år eller lykte med å fullføre sine ambisjoner, slik at de risikere å bli jagd ned, slaktet og regelrett spist av folk som mistet all menneskelig sans. Tror de i virkeligheten at de kan lett undertvinge seg et folk, langt mindre en verden, ved å satse på misinformasjon og makt? Så snart den første trekke ut strømkontakten vil det være over - om de ikke ved vanvare utløse enorme katastrofer som en atomkrig. 

Her sies det rett ut at de vil ikke bare skape en tech-føydal verdensorden, men også omgjøre befolkningen til lydige slaver - forstår nå hvorfor Musk bablet hele tiden om å sette databrikker i hodet på mennesker - han aktet å robotifisere dem a la den fiktive dr. Robotnik fra Sonic-spillene, og dermed vil ha en lojal og underkastet arbeidsstokk underlagt egen makt, virkeliggjøre en kapitalistisk versjon av Orwells 1984-samfunnet. Dette er en virkeliggjøring av 1984-samfunnet, bare under forskjellige kriterier. 

Trump og hans gjeng.... de er rablende gal. De kommer til å oppleve at alt vil eksplodere rett for ansiktet på dem, allerede nå er det meget mange som har begynte å forstå hva som står på spill, og selv om de lykte med å undertrykke all motstand vil det bare være som å holde ned kokelokket når det true med å koke over. Så vil det eksplodere, folkeraseriet vil være total, et fryktelig blodbad vil skje inntil de ansvarlige har blitt innhentet. Dette kan sette menneskesivilisasjonen tilbake i flere tiår. 

Trump vil virkeliggjøre hans drøm om all makt, og er villig til å la techoligarkene og Prosjekt 2025-folka overta alt i bytte mot all makt. De første som vil tape på det, vil være MAGA-tilhengerne. 

Borgerkrig er nå GARANTERT. 

[JK22]

Samms skrev (3 minutter siden):

Om utviklinga i USA går i denne retning er det ikkje sikkert resultatet blir det same. Teknologi og eigerstrukturer tillater geografisk mykje større einingar i dag. Store aksjeselskap er i dag multinasjonale, dei strekker seg over mange land. 

Har du ikke fått med seg at disse kreftene bak Trump sikter mot mye mer enn bare USA og at disse ikke er ordinære industriselskaper? Les veldig godt det siste innlegget som gjør det klart at vi ALLE er i sterk fare, også her i Norge. 

[Simen1]

@JK22 Jeg skal prøve å få lest de to artiklene senere, men skumlesingen av utsnittene virker interessante. Hva tror du Europa og Norge kan gjøre for å påvirke de resterende Maga-supporterne til å vende mot han? Jeg vet de er ganske sensitive for nedgang på wallstreet og andre økonomiske indikatorer. Kan et samlet Europa sette en støkk i økonomien som er stor nok til å få han avsatt? F.eks offisielle tollmurer + omfattende forbrukermakt / boikott av amerikanske selskaper og produkter.

Jeg kan ikke forstå at folk på noen side av Atlanteren skal klare å holde ut i 3 år og 11 måneder til. Det føles uendelig lenge til litt lys i tunellen.

[JK22]

Simen1 skrev (Akkurat nå):

@JK22 Jeg skal prøve å få lest de to artiklene senere, men skumlesingen av utsnittene virker interessante. Hva tror du Europa og Norge kan gjøre for å påvirke de resterende Maga-supporterne til å vende mot han? Jeg vet de er ganske sensitive for nedgang på wallstreet og andre økonomiske indikatorer. Kan et samlet Europa sette en støkk i økonomien som er stor nok til å få han avsatt? F.eks offisielle tollmurer + omfattende forbrukermakt / boikott av amerikanske selskaper og produkter.

Jeg kan ikke forstå at folk på noen side av Atlanteren skal klare å holde ut i 3 år og 11 måneder til. Det føles uendelig lenge til litt lys i tunellen.

Det går meget raskt for tiden; det er som hvis en råkjører skulle kjøre nedover Trollstigen i hans Ferrari i full fart. Det er altfor stor potensialitet for at det vil gå meget galt. For det er ikke "Maga-supporterne" som vil vende seg mot dem, det er ordinære folk som vil ta støyen for et meget forutsett krasj. 

Trumpadministrasjonen blir meget raskt upopulært, mens de demokratiske politikerne i Kongressen mistet all heder og ære i øyne på sine velgerne som vil de skulle gjør det som er deres jobb, å protestere, skrike ut og skape opptøy. Alt ser ut til å komme helt utenfor stupet i ekspresshastighet.