There will surely be turf wars and palace intrigue within the administration, but there is little reason to think that its core figures will fracture in the pursuit of this basic goal. To say that these figures are ideologically cohesive, however, is not to say that they will be successful. The continuing fact of class dealignment means that Trump’s 77 million voters are more dependent than ever on state provision. The twentieth-century state came into being for a reason and endured, however partially, for a reason; gutting it would unleash forces that no one can predict or control. If the project of Trump’s second term fails, it will not be because its protagonists turned on one another, but rather because the ice broke beneath their feet.

From Fissures in Trumpworld?

#USPol #US #right #NewRight #USRight

It is conspicuous that the core of the tech right—Musk, Thiel, Sacks—consists of South African expats for whom skepticism about multiracial democracy was mother’s milk.

I think "skepticism" is putting it kindly.

#USPol #US #tech #dev #democracy

Patrimonialism is one answer to the devastation wrought by the antisocial state. It teaches subordinates that their only hope of security lies in the patronage of the boss or the landlord. All loyalty is funneled upwards, and all obligation reduced to the individual or familial form of household debt. This is a state form that tolerates only one type of horizonal solidarity: that between brothers vying for the goodwill of the chief executive. Trump embodies this style of power like no one else. His success in reducing the Republican Party to a swarm of warring fraternities, hanging on his every word, defies historical comparison. But Trump’s mesmerizing personalism can also obscure the vulnerability of the project. For Trumpism to sustain itself as a popular movement, patrimonial relations of hierarchy and dependence must be replicated at every level of society, from the household to the workplace.

Horizontal forms of solidarity such as workplace strikes, rent strikes, and bail funds pose an existential threat to this project because they offer safety outside the bounds of clientelism. By turning individual liability into collectivized credit, debt strikes of all kinds offer an at least temporary release from the blackmail of personal dependence. These actions are valuable not just on their own terms—as punctual efforts to raise wages and lower rents—but also as incubators of a new kind of social relation. The struggle against the far right demands nothing less.

#USPol

#Diversity is our secret weapon to deal with complexity and ambiguity. In the book Future Perfect, Steven B. Johnson discusses the work of Scott E. Page who states that, “Diversity trumps ability”.

Diversity is how we can become collectively smarter.

Now you know why the fascists are axing #DEI initiatives. It's harder to control smart groups of people.

https://jarche.com/2019/12/diversity-trumps-ability/

#USPol#CdnPoli#PKM#PKMastery

Project 2025 indulges every fantasy of Trump’s cabinet members, a coterie of private fund investors and business founders with preferential ties to the fossil fuel industry, real estate, and Silicon Valley. The manual shows how the president could open up federal lands to fossil fuel prospectors and actively obstruct any progress on climate change mitigation. It shows how the Federal Reserve could abandon its function as lender of last resort and allow for a return to free banking, with gold or some other commodity equivalent (perhaps cryptocurrency) acting as backstops to privately issued money. And it shows how the Department of Housing and Urban Development could sell off the country’s remaining public housing stock and withhold support from low-income borrowers. Meanwhile, the president is urged to dissolve the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (the independent government agency charged with preventing bank runs) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (the agency that recently extended anti-fraud regulation to the digital finance sector). Project 2025 represents the apotheosis of the antisocial state: a state form that has withdrawn from the task of social insurance and placed its entire administrative apparatus in the hands of a small group of uber-wealthy business partners.

From https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/trumps-antisocial-state/

I admire Melinda Cooper's analysis and I think she is spot on here too. People like to call what's happening in the US some variation of "fascism", but that's not what this is. This is rule by sovereign decree, a kind of monarchy or theocracy, ruled by dogma and raw power, happy to destroy knowledge and entire sectors of the economy.

#USPol #Trump #monarchy