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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: The tech oligarchy and a slight rant [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-01-21
We begin today with Sherilynn Ifill writing at her “Sherilynn’s Newsletter” Substack about dreams and realities.
The dream of the historic inauguration so many of us imagined today would have truly been a dream. But dreams are for those who have the luxury of sound sleep. The work of democracy building is fueled by snatches of rest and oblivion. We must be ever watchful. The dream we imagined for this day might have lulled our country into a deeper slumber. It may have encouraged us to believe that the disease so deeply encoded in America’s DNA could be overcome without the kind of reckoning and confrontation with truth that Dr. King so powerfully demanded of this country more than 50 years ago. We might have lied to ourselves and allowed too many of our allies – those who insist that it is not “strategic” to talk about racism and misogyny too much, those who continue to insist that it is really “class not race” despite all evidence to the contrary[1](and as though the two are not fundamentally entwined)[2] - to dominate public discourse with a watered-down narrative of reconciliation. Those who are always anxious to absolve our country of a past it has never truly confronted, and those who refuse to accept that the work of holding at bay the dangers of white supremacy lies at the core of democracy work in this country, might have guided our country away from seeing that any victory would be short-lived. We would have heard encomiums to “Dr. King’s dream” on that day and consistently throughout the Harris presidency. His work – devoted to the transformation of this country – would have been pronounced as completed by far too many, even as racism and sexism would be on full display on Capitol Hill, online, in our streets, in newsrooms, and in pulpits across America, to block the first woman and first Black woman president from implementing her agenda. And all of this would have been minimized in favor of a narrative that President Harris’ election shows that we have “overcome” race, just as Barack Obama’s presidency was foolishly said by some to demonstrate that we are “post-racial.” Maybe this terrible thing that has befallen this country, this descent into fascism and oligarchy invites us to a more honest confrontation with the truth about the state of our democracy. Dr. King warned us. He feared that Black Americans were seeking to “integrate into a burning house.” Had President Harris been inaugurated, we would we have been lulled into believing that the house of our democracy was safe? Would we have imagined that we could fix what ails our country without the painful process of confrontation and repair to which Dr. King called us?
Michael Scherer and Ashley Parker write for The Atlantic about our tech oligarchy overlords.
Eight years ago, Trump landed in Washington in a fit of defiance, denouncing in his inaugural address “the American carnage” wrought by “a small group in our nation’s capital.” Four years later, he left as an outcast, judged responsible for the U.S. Capitol riot and a haphazard attempt to undo the constitutional order. He returns this week with a clean sweep of swing states and the national popular vote, the loyal support of Republicans in Congress, and the financial backing of corporate donors who are expected to help the inaugural committee raise twice what it did in 2017. Organizers of the Women’s March, which stomped on Trump’s 2017 inauguration by sending hundreds of thousands of protesters to the streets, settled for a series of unremarkable Saturday gatherings. The Democratic opposition, which treated Trump’s first term as an existential threat, now lacks an evident strategy or leader. Like nearly every entity that has tried and failed to bend Trump to its will—his party, his former rivals, his partners in Congress, and his former aides among them—the tech elites largely seem to have decided that they’re better off seeking Trump’s favor. [...] The sheer quantity of money flowing to, and surrounding, Trump has increased. In his first term, he assembled the wealthiest Cabinet in history; this time, his would-be Cabinet includes more than a dozen billionaires. Sixteen of his appointees come not just from the top one percent, but from the top one-ten-thousandth percent, according to the Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer-advocacy organization. Democrats, too, have long kept their wealthiest donors close, inviting them in on policy discussions and providing special access, but never before have the nation’s wealthiest played such a central role in the formation of a new administration.
David Gilbert of Wired chronicles the infinite size of the Trump 2.0 grifts.
At the time he was sworn in as president on Monday, the $TRUMP memecoin was worth just shy of $50 billion, with Trump retaining 80 percent of the coins. The coin, which is built on the Solana blockchain, allows anyone anywhere in the world to funnel money directly to the US president. First Lady Melania Trump also launched her own memecoin on Sunday, and while it hasn’t reached the level of Trump’s memecoin, the $MELANIA coinwas worth almost $8 billion on Monday. The president and first lady were far from the only ones seeking to cash in on the buzz around Trump’s second term, and the inauguration weekend in particular. Since his first term in office, Trump has been a magnet for all types of grifts and cash grabs, many of them endorsed by the president himself, and including everything from guitars and shoes to trading cards and coins. Religion has also been on the table. Lee Greenwood, a country singer, said on Sunday that Trump could use a special edition of the “God Bless The USA” bible for his swearing in—the same bible the singer has been selling with Trump since last March.
Martin Pengelly of Guardian sums up the flurry of executive orders signed by Trump yesterday.
Trump and his allies had long promised a “shock and awe” approach. They did not hold back. The first round of orders were signed on stage at the Capital One Arena in downtown Washington, where the inaugural parade was moved to avoid freezing temperatures outside. Many more orders were signed in the Oval Office. Among measures signed on stage to cheers from a raucous crowd was an order for the US to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, a step Trump took in his first term before Joe Biden recommitted the US to that attempt to tackle the climate crisis. [...] From the White House, Trump gave what he called “full, complete and unconditional” pardons to around 1,500 people convicted of crimes over the deadly January 6 attack on Congress he incited by telling supporters to “fight like hell” in support of his lie about electoral fraud in his 2020 defeat by Biden.
Megan Messerly of POLITICO sums up some of the topics that the tacky shoe salesman did not discuss in his inaugural address.
..Trump avoided topics that were staples on the campaign trail and may help determine the success of his second presidency. These unmentioned areas included the war in Ukraine, which he said he would end within 24 hours of taking office, and tariffs, which he pledged to implement on day one. The avoidance of these complex topics suggests that the new administration must still navigate competing interests as the president fields counsel from people with divergent views on trade, foreign affairs and aspects of domestic policy such as abortion. [...] Trump spent much of the first year of his term trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, an effort that famously ended in part with a “thumbs down” on the Senate floor from the late Arizona Sen. John McCain. House Speaker Mike Johnson, back in October, promised “massive” reform to the sweeping federal health program if Trump won the election — but the topic was notably absent from Trump’s Monday address. Instead, he proclaimed a much broader health agenda, one that mirrors a key focus of his Health and Human Services Secretary pick Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — ending the “chronic disease epidemic,” which he said would “keep our children safe, healthy and disease-free.”
Finally today, I found this (apparently) months-long conversation between Michael Sandel and Thomas Piketty on The New York Times opinion page to be interesting, some of it wrong-headed.
Sandel: [...] What you say reminds me of an experience I had this winter. My family and I were vacationing in Florida, and I got into an elevator in the place where we were staying. An older woman who was in the elevator asked me, “Where are you from?” And I said, “Boston.” That’s all I said. She replied, “I’m from Iowa.” And then she added, “And we know how to read in Iowa.” I didn’t know what to reply. I hadn’t said I was from Harvard. All I said was Boston. Then, as she got out of the elevator, she said, “We don’t much like people on the coasts.” This, in a way, is a politics of identity. It’s not about immigration, but it’s about feeling looked down upon. It’s about recognition. It’s about dignity. [...] Sandel: A progressive economic agenda is an important step in the right direction. But as Donald Trump returns to the White House, Democrats need a broader project of civic renewal. They need to affirm the dignity of work, especially for those without college degrees; rein in the power of Big Tech and give citizens a voice in shaping technologies, so that A.I. enhances work rather than replaces it. Citizens should also have a hand in shaping the transition to a green economy, rather than being forced to accept whatever top-down solutions technocratic elites impose. Mistrust of experts now runs deep. It feeds the resentment and sense of disempowerment that Donald Trump exploits. Democrats (and, it seems to me, social democrats in Europe) need a new governing project — one that strengthens the bonds of community and gives people a say in directing the forces that govern their lives.
First of all, to the lady from Iowa...I may not know much but I have been long aware that, while deteriorating, Iowa has always scored near the top in terms of standardized test scores and high-school graduation rates.
Neither I nor (I suspect) Mr. Sandel would assume otherwise.
Hmph...I suspect that the woman from Iowa would assume that I got my college degree because of DEI or something. And I know full well how someone with this attitude would think about that big city near the southern end of Lake Michigan’s coast.
Are there elitists that would look down on someone like this woman from Iowa? Sure. And I suspect that a lot of those elitists would be those in her own (assumed) political party.
I’m so tired of this shit.
And...I do believe that a majority of American voters voted for the Big Tech oligarchy. They imposed a solution and all for the price of eggs, apparently. Now a majority of American voters will have to live with their decision. I’m not optimistic that this ends well for them.
I’m out!
[END]
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