Justin Trudeau's resignation and Trump's looming return on the anniversary of January 6 mark not just the resurgence of the far-right, but perhaps final collapse of centrist delusions.

There's a bitter poetry to the timing. On January 6, 2025—exactly four years after Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in a violent attempt to overturn democracy—two events crystallized the profound failure of liberal centrism. In Ottawa, Justin Trudeau, once the global poster child for progressive liberalism, announced his resignation as Canada's Prime Minister. Meanwhile in Washington, Donald Trump prepared to return to power, having decisively defeated another supposed liberal savior in Kamala Harris.

The convergence of these events represents more than just the latest episode in the ongoing crisis of liberal democracy. It marks the definitive end of an era defined by a particular political fantasy: that charismatic centrist leaders could somehow save liberal democracy from its own contradictions while preserving the very system that produced its decay.

The Liberal Savior Myth

At the heart of contemporary liberalism lies a seductive myth: that the right combination of charismatic leadership, technocratic competence, and moderate politics can save democracy from its enemies while avoiding fundamental social transformation. This "liberal savior" narrative has dominated centrist political imagination for the past decade, manifesting in figures from Emmanuel Macron to Pete Buttigieg.

The limits of liberal centrism proved fatal. Unable to deliver material improvements in people's lives while preserving the interests of their donor class, these supposed saviors watched their support collapse.

The myth operates on two levels. First, it suggests that individual leaders—through force of personality, rhetorical skill, or managerial expertise—can resolve deep structural crises without challenging the underlying power relations that produced them. Second, and more insidiously, it promotes the idea that liberal democracy itself can be saved simply by defending existing institutions rather than radically democratizing them.

This mythology reached its apotheosis in Justin Trudeau. Young, photogenic, and armed with progressive rhetoric, he seemed to embody everything liberals believed could defeat the populist right. Here was a leader who could speak the language of social justice while reassuring financial markets, who could kneel at Black Lives Matter protests while expanding oil pipelines, who could champion feminism while maintaining corporate power structures.

The same template was later applied to figures like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, both presented as the noble defenders of democratic norms against Trumpian barbarism. Yet in each case, the fundamental contradiction remained: you cannot save democracy while preserving the very economic and political arrangements that have hollowed it out.

The Rise and Fall of Justin Trudeau

Trudeau's trajectory is especially revealing. In 2015, he rode to power on a wave of optimism, presenting himself as the progressive antidote to conservative rule. With his carefully cultivated image of youthful dynamism and performative embrace of diversity, he became the archetype of what liberals imagined could defeat the rising tide of right-wing populism. International media swooned over his "sunny ways" and apparent commitment to progressive causes.

The reality never matched the image. Behind the woke platitudes and photo ops, Trudeau's government consistently served the interests of Canadian capital. His administration expanded oil pipelines despite climate crisis rhetoric, continued selling arms to Saudi Arabia while claiming to champion human rights, and used federal power to crush labor resistance, as seen in his government's draconian response to postal worker strikes.

The contradictions only deepened over time. While Trudeau spoke eloquently about reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, his government aggressively pursued resource extraction projects on unceded territories. He campaigned on electoral reform but abandoned it when he couldn't secure a system favorable to his party. His supposed feminist credentials were exposed as hollow when he forced out strong women in his cabinet who challenged his authority during the SNC-Lavalin scandal.

The Myth of the Liberal Savior

This gap between progressive aesthetics and neoliberal governance isn't a bug but a feature of the liberal savior model. Figures like Trudeau fundamentally misunderstand democracy as a system to be preserved rather than radically expanded. Their project was always about maintaining the status quo through a kind of repressive tolerance – allowing just enough progressive window dressing to deflect demands for structural change while keeping the fundamental power relations of capitalism intact.

This gap between progressive aesthetics and neoliberal governance isn't a bug but a feature of the liberal savior model.

The same dynamic played out in the United States. After Trump's 2020 defeat, Democrats assured voters that "normalcy" would be restored under Joe Biden. When his presidency floundered, they turned to Kamala Harris as the next great hope for defending democracy against Trump's return. Yet as with Trudeau, the limits of liberal centrism proved fatal. Unable to deliver material improvements in people's lives while preserving the interests of their donor class, these supposed saviors watched their support collapse.

The liberal savior myth rests on two fundamental delusions. First, that individual leadership qualities—whether Trudeau's charisma or Biden's experience—can overcome the structural crisis of legitimacy facing liberal democratic institutions. Second, that these institutions can be preserved in their current form while addressing the deep inequalities and democratic deficits that fuel right-wing populism.

The Structural Crisis of Liberal Democracy

This approach was always doomed to fail because it refused to acknowledge that liberal democracy's crisis stems from its own internal contradictions. The same free market capitalism that centrist leaders champion has hollowed out democratic institutions, atomized communities, and created the precarious conditions that drive authoritarian appeals. No amount of symbolic progressivism or calls to preserve norms can resolve this fundamental tension.

The same free market capitalism that centrist leaders champion has hollowed out democratic institutions, atomized communities, and created the precarious conditions that drive authoritarian appeals.

The failures of figures like Trudeau reveal the bankruptcy of what have called "repressive democracy"—a system that maintains the formal structures of democratic governance while emptying them of substantive content. Under this model, democracy becomes primarily about managing dissent rather than enabling genuine popular power. Elections serve more to legitimate existing power structures than to facilitate real political transformation.

This crisis has only deepened in recent years. As economic inequality has soared and climate chaos intensifies, liberal democratic institutions have proven increasingly incapable of addressing fundamental social problems. The response from centrist leaders has been to double down on technocratic management while wrapping themselves in progressive rhetoric—a strategy that has now definitively failed.

Beyond Liberal Democracy: Building Socialist Alternatives

The real question is not how to save liberal democracy, but how to transcend it through the creation of genuine democratic alternatives. This requires moving beyond both right-wing populism's false promises and liberal centrism's managed decline. Instead, we need a democratic socialist vision that expands democracy into all spheres of life—economic, social, and political.

This means building power from below through militant labor movements, tenant organizations, and community groups that practice genuine democratic decision-making. It means fighting for universal public goods and democratic control over the economy. Most importantly, it means rejecting the liberal belief that democracy is primarily about preserving institutions, and embracing it as an ongoing project of collective liberation.

The real question is not how to save liberal democracy, but how to transcend it through the creation of genuine democratic alternatives.

Practical examples of this alternative vision are already emerging. The recent wave of labor militancy across North America shows how workers can exercise democratic power outside traditional political channels. Municipal socialist movements are experimenting with participatory budgeting and community control. Indigenous land defenders are modeling forms of democratic governance that challenge both liberal capitalism and right-wing reaction.

Trudeau's fall and Trump's return should serve as the final nail in the coffin of the liberal savior myth. The choice we face is not between liberal democracy and authoritarianism, but between the expansion of genuine democratic power or its continued erosion under the twin forces of right-wing reaction and centrist accommodation. The only way to defeat the far right is to build democratic socialist alternatives that actually address the crisis of democracy at its roots.

The future depends not on enlightened leaders preserving the status quo, but on ordinary people organizing to fundamentally transform it. The fall of figures like Trudeau should not be mourned but celebrated as an opportunity to finally move beyond the dead end of liberal centrism and begin the real work of democratic reconstruction.

As President Biden greenlights another $8 billion in weapons to Israel in his last days in office and Secretary Blinken gives a parting New York Times interview in which he denies that a genocide is taking place in Gaza, many pro-Palestine activists are anxiously counting down the days until “Genocide Joe” and his crew exit the White House. But what will activists have to contend with under the Trump presidency?

Donald Trump proved his pro-Israel agenda in his first term, by moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, supporting West Bank settlements, recognizing the Golan Heights as part of Israel, pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal and enacting the Abraham Accords to normalize relations between Israel and Arab states, while disregarding the plight of Palestinians. Recently, Trump has said that the U.S. should let Israel “finish the job,” warned that there will be “all hell to pay” if the hostages aren’t released by the time he takes office, and threatened to blow Iran to smithereens.

In the coming year, the Palestine solidarity movement must find and expand the cracks in the pro-Israel war machine.

Trump has signalled his intentions this time around by the people he has selected for key positions. Mike Huckabee, his pick for U.S. ambassador to Israel, is a religious fanatic who doesn’t think Israeli settlements are illegal and says: “There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria [the territory’s biblical name, revived in Israeli propaganda].” He even insists there is no such thing as a Palestinian. Elise Stefanik, Trump’s pick for U.S. ambassador to the UN, used her position in Congress to stifle free speech on college campuses and advocates deporting pro-Palestinian protesters who have student visas.

What about Congress? While the 118th Congress was overwhelmingly pro-Israel, the new one, with both the Senate and the House under Republican control, will be even more aggressively biased. Members want to pass a host of horrific bills that will further cement U.S. ties to the Israeli government, punish international actors that dare try to hold Israel accountable, and repress the domestic movement for Palestinian rights. This legislation includes a bill that equates criticism of Israel with anti-semitism, a bill that gives the Treasury Department the power to investigate non-profit groups for links to “terrorism” and then shut them down, a bill to sanction the International Criminal Court for issuing an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu, a bill to make permanent the U.S. ban on funding the relief agency UNRWA, and a bill to cancel trade agreements with South Africa because of its genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice.

Worldwide, more countries are not only voting for a ceasefire at the UN, but taking concrete measures to hold Israel accountable.

And of course, we can’t leave out the challenges posed by three powerful forces: AIPAC, Christian Zionists, and military contractors. Best known is the lobby group AIPAC, which used its financial muscle in the recent elections to knock out two of the most pro-Palestinian members of Congress, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman, leaving others terrified of becoming AIPAC targets. Lesser known but enormously powerful are the tens of millions of Christian Zionists, who are driven by the radical belief that Israel is key to Jesus’ return to Earth after a bloody final battle of Armageddon in which only those who accept Jesus as their savior will survive. Christian Zionists—already numerous in Congress, the White House and even the military—will be emboldened by Trump.

The third powerful lobby group are the military contractors, which has more lobbyists than members of Congress. Thanks to the $18 billion that Congress allocated for Israel in 2024, weapons stocks have soared over the past year, dramatically outperforming the major stock indexes.

But there are countervailing forces as well. The American public has become more and more sympathetic to Palestinians. A November opinion poll showed that, despite the pro-Israel bias of our government and corporate media, most Americans (63 percent) want a ceasefire and 55 percent think the U.S. should not provide unrestricted financial and military assistance to the Israeli government.

The American public has become more and more sympathetic to Palestinians.

This is especially true among young people and among Democrats. And with a Republican in the White House, more Democrats in positions of power should be willing to oppose Israel’s actions since they will no longer be defying their own party’s president. And it’s not just Democrats. Many Trump supporters oppose U.S. involvement in overseas wars, and Trump himself, on the campaign trail, repeatedly claimed that he wants to bring peace to the Middle East.

Worldwide, more countries are not only voting for a ceasefire at the UN, but taking concrete measures to hold Israel accountable. The long list of countries and parties that have either submitted or announced their intention to join South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice include Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ireland, Jordan, Libya, Maldives, Mexico, Namibia, Nicaragua, Palestine, Spain, Türkiye and the Arab League. Countries that have either banned, limited or announced their intention to embargo arms to Israel include Italy, Spain, the UK, Canada, Belgium, The Netherlands, Türkiye, Russia and China.

In the coming year, the Palestine solidarity movement must find and expand the cracks in the pro-Israel war machine. It must strengthen the spine of Democrats who live in fear of AIPAC and reach out to Republicans who oppose funding foreign conflicts. The same arguments many Republicans make about defunding Ukraine must be applied to Israel. Activists must expand campaigns against companies supporting Israel’s genocide, as well as efforts at the state, city, labor, university, faith-based and sectoral level to condemn Israel’s actions and promote divestment. The recent resolution by the American Historical Association condemning “scholasticide” is a good example.

While activists are bracing for a torrent of Trump policies that will create even more global and domestic chaos, including increased attacks on pro-Palestine organizations and individuals, the U.S. movement must be as resolute as the Palestinians themselves, who have demonstrated that, no matter what Israel does to destroy them, they remain determined to resist. The year 2025, with Donald Trump in the White House, will not be a time for despair or retreating in fear, but a time for action.

The expression “punch-drunk,” Google informs me, means “stupefied by or as if by a series of heavy blows to the head.” Google’s Oxford Language entry then offers a not-terribly-illuminating example of the term’s use: “I feel a little punch-drunk today.” Right now, a better one might be something like: “After November 5, 2024, a lot of people have been feeling more than a little punch-drunk.”

Learning on the night of November 5th that Donald Trump had probably been reelected president certainly left me feeling stupefied, with a sense that I’d somehow sustained a number of heavy blows to the head. The experience was undoubtedly amplified by the fact that I’d spent the previous three months in Reno, Nevada, as part of a seven-day-a-week political effort to prevent just such an outcome, along with a crew of valiant UNITE-HERE union members and more than 1,000 volunteer canvassers organized by Seed the Vote.

Still, I hoped that battered feeling would wear off after our campaign office was dismantled, the rental car returned, and the extended-stay hotel room vacated. Surely, once reunited with my beloved partner (and a pair of disgruntled cats), I’d find the disorienting pain of repeated shocks beginning to dissipate.

And the Hits Just Keep on Coming

In fact, it’s only gotten worse, as Trump has rolled out his picks and plans for the new administration. As old radio DJs used to shout: the hits just keep on coming! Unfortunately, these hits aren’t rock-n-roll records; they’re blows to the collective consciousness of those of us who worked to prevent Trump’s reelection, and perhaps even to a few of those who voted for him.

Ethics-deficient Matt Gaetz for attorney general? Bam! Kristi Noem, the puppy-killer, to run the Department of Homeland Security? Pow! Wait, Matt Gaetz is out! Now, it’s Pam Bondi, the woman who accepted an illegal $25,000 campaign contribution from the now-defunct Trump Foundation for attorney general. Bam! Anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to run health and human services? Bang! Convicted (and Trump-pardoned) felon Charles Kushner (Jared’s dad) for ambassador to France? Take that, Emmanuel Macron! Wham! And then there’s a double-whammy for those of us who spent a couple of decades opposing this country’s Global War on Terror, as we watch the liberal media (even the British Guardian) lionize old neocon war criminals like John Bolton and Dick Cheney for their opposition to Trump this time around. Whack! No wonder our ears are ringing!

As one uppercut after another left us reeling, a whole flurry of stiff jabs followed in the form of Trump’s announcements of new territorial ambitions for this country. He wants the Panama Canal back. And Greenland, which was never ours to begin with. As he wrote on his social media platform Truth Social, “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.” L’état, c’est Donald Trump, apparently.

O Canada! Yes, he wants that, too! “It was a pleasure to have dinner the other night with Governor Justin Trudeau of the Great State of Canada,” he wrote on Truth Social. Governor Trudeau, really? Bernie Sanders jokingly probed the possible benefits of a U.S.-Canada assimilation, asking on X, “Does that mean that we can adopt the Canadian health care system and guarantee health care to all, lower the cost of prescription drugs, and spend 50% less per capita on healthcare?”

The Referee Goes AWOL

One problem with being punch-drunk is that not only do you feel funny, but you begin to think everything else is a little funny, too. Demanding the Panama Canal and Greenland, not to mention Canada, is the kind of thing you’d expect to see in a Saturday Night Live skit. As it turns out, though, it’s neither a caricature nor a joke. In fact, Donald Trump has transformed this presidential transition period into a Theater of the Absurd performance. And while some of his most outrageous statements may indeed turn out to be mere political theater, in the post-November 5th world, we won’t be waiting for Godot, but for the other shoe to drop.

And that’s undoubtedly been part of Trump’s point with his recent flurry of absurdities. He’s already testing how far he can go without meeting any meaningful resistance. How hard can he hit (and how far below the belt) before the referee blows the whistle and stops the fight? Or is there even a referee anymore?

Our problem (and the rest of the world’s, too) is that the fight is rigged and anyone who might have refereed it is either too corrupt, too terrified, or too absent to do the job. Don’t count on the courts, not after the Supreme Court granted the soon-to-be sitting president more or less blanket immunity for anything he does on the job. Too many Republican members of Congress, never known for possessing spines of steel, now seem perfectly happy to relinquish their lawmaking powers to unelected First Buddy Elon Musk, ducking and covering when he threatens their reelection prospects with primary fights.

With Congress and the judiciary unwilling or unable to do the job, the executive branch will undoubtedly be largely left to referee itself. Foxes and hen houses, anyone? In fact, at least since Ronald Reagan, no president has sought to reduce the power of the executive, while the once-fringe theory of a “unitary executive” has increasingly come to underpin the moves of successive administrations, locating ever more power in the person of the president. That principle was fundamental to Project 2025, the transition program the Heritage Foundation prepared for the next Trump presidency. The central premise of its key document, Mandate for Leadership, is that all executive government functions belong under direct presidential control. That control would extend even to those offices Congress made independent, such as the Federal Reserve, various special prosecutors and inspectors general, and agencies like the FBI and the Environmental Protection Agency. This is the reasoning behind Project 2025’s plan to replace as many as 50,000 career civil servants with Trumpist political appointees, who will serve only at the pleasure of the president.

During his recent campaign, Trump disavowed any knowledge of Project 2025 or its architects. But today, the project and the key individuals connected to it are once again openly in his good graces. In fact, he plans to restore one of its key architects, Russell Vought, to his old job directing the Office of Management and Budget, or OMB, a low-profile agency with tremendous power. The National Archives describes it this way:

“The core mission of OMB is to serve the President of the United States in implementing his vision across the Executive Branch. OMB is the largest component of the Executive Office of the President. It reports directly to the President and helps a wide range of executive departments and agencies across the Federal Government to implement the commitments and priorities of the President.”

In other words, the head of the most powerful office in the executive branch will, under President Donald Trump, be someone whose understanding of the role of president is frankly monarchical — that is, the government of a single, all-powerful ruler.

Still Standing — and Not Standing Still

So, if we can’t count on this country’s vaunted checks and balances to either check or balance the power of an absurdist president, where else can we look?

Well, there’s the media. Its freedom is enshrined in the first article of the Bill of Rights and the rest of us must do what we can to protect journalists (whether from U.S. missiles flying in Gaza, or Trumpian threats at home). Of course, it’s also worth remembering journalist A.J. Liebling’s classic observation that “freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” Such prescient words first appeared in his 1960 New Yorker article about the disappearance of competing newspapers in various markets. I doubt he would be at all surprised, more than 60 years later, by the spectacle of the billionaire owners of the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times preventing their editorial staffs from publishing pre-election endorsements of Kamala Harris. I wonder what he would have made of ABC’s abject $15-million surrender to Donald Trump’s patently frivolous defamation lawsuit.

A free media will remain crucial in the coming period, but though it pains my writer’s soul to admit it, there are limits to the power of the written (or even the spoken) word. To check a power-mad president and his fascist handlers, those of us who are already punch-drunk but still standing in the ring will have to find new ways to amplify our commitment to freedom and human dignity through collective action.

We can undoubtedly look to existing organizations like the fighting unions of today’s reinvigorated labor movement for guidance and inspiration. We can value our own narratives in the fashion of Renee Bracey Sherman of We Testify, who creates the space for women to tell our stories in Liberating Abortion: Claiming Our History, Sharing Our Stories, and Building the Reproductive Future We Deserve. We can work with any number of national progressive electoral organizations like Seed the Vote, Swing Left, or Indivisible. We can support organizations dedicated to defending the groups that even many mainstream Democrats are ready to blame for their loss of the White House — among them undocumented immigrants and transgender folks.

Seeing Negative Spaces

I really do believe what I just wrote. We must continue learning and practicing the skills, discipline, and joys of collective action. However, I wonder whether there’s something else we — each of us individually — need to do as well in the new age of Trump.

Over the last year, I’ve been trying to learn to draw. As I struggle with line and value, and my never-very-impressive hand-eye coordination, I remember how my father, a painter and illustrator, used to say that he could teach anyone the basic skills. He’s been gone for more than a decade now and, though I’m glad he didn’t live to see Donald Trump in the White House, I’m sad that I never asked him to teach me to draw. So, I’ve turned elsewhere.

For all its horrors, the Internet contains wonderful resources when it comes to learning anything — from how to knit to how to interpret that annoying little illuminated wrench on your car’s dashboard. Hundreds of thousands of generous people freely share their hard-won knowledge there with strangers around the world. One of them is Julia Bausenhardt, a German artist and illustrator. I’ve learned so much from her many video lessons on sketching the natural world. Above all, I’ve learned that drawing is as much about what you do with your eyes as with your hands. It’s about learning to look.

Like most drawing teachers, Julia emphasizes the value of observing “negative space.” If you want to understand, for example, how a tangle of overlapping leaves and blossoms relate to each other, take a look at what isn’t there. Consider the negative spaces around the shapes you’re drawing.

I wonder whether those of us seeking to forestall an autocratic takeover of this country would benefit from focusing on the negative spaces around the Trump phenomenon, looking for what isn’t there as much as what is. I suspect that’s what the historian Timothy Snyder is doing when he counsels those resisting Trump not to “obey in advance.” There’s no reason to fill in the space around the future autocrat with our own obedience before it’s even demanded. Let’s decorate it with resistance instead.

Similarly, in the spaces around the program Trump’s handlers have devised (most explicitly, Project 2025), we can discern what’s missing from it. Surrounding its blueprints for destroying public education (the foundation of democratic life), decimating labor unions, and resurrecting long-buried regimes of child labor, forced marriage, and childbearing we can discern negative space.

What’s missing from the Trumpian program is something human beings require as much as we need food to eat and air to breathe: respect for human dignity. Don’t mistake my meaning. Respect is not acquiescence to another person’s racism or woman-hatred. Respect for human dignity requires evoking — calling out — what’s best in ourselves and each other. That means avoiding both cowardice in the face of conflict and any kind of arrogant belief in our own superiority.

In some ways, this fight is about who our society counts as human, who deserves dignity. Over seven decades, I’ve fought alongside millions of other people to widen that circle — reducing the negative space around it — to include, among others, myself, as a woman, a lesbian, and a working person. Now, we have to figure out how to hold — and expand — the perimeter of that circle of personhood.

We must do this work collectively in organized ways, but we can also do it individually in small ways. As I contemplate another four horrific years of Donald Trump, I’m also thinking about the negative spaces of daily life. I’m thinking about small daily interactions with strangers and acquaintances. I’m thinking about the in-between times that surround the events of our lives — “negative time,” if you will. In the era of Trump 2.0, I hope to fill my negative time waiting in lines or sitting in yet another endless meeting with small acts of attention and respect. Those, too, can be acts of resistance.

After every big election, there’s a spotlight on the candidates that came out on top: Who’s in and who’s out, talk about mandates, seat margins, and the First 100 days.

There’s plenty of policy previews about next year.

But one issue will have a starring role both in Washington, D.C. and in states across the country—taxes.

We know Republicans in Washington are writing a play to extend and even expand President-elect Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts. And nearly every state will have to adapt to additional fiscal pressures while also finding ways to pay for the things our families and communities need.

We know the vast majority of Americans want the rich to pay more, not less, in taxes—at both the state and federal level. It’s time for elected officials to give the people what they want after years of disappointing performances.

Past sessions foreshadow how anti-tax elected officials around the country will act on behalf of their donors: Each time Republicans have held a trifecta in Washington this century, they’ve demanded tax cuts for the rich. During Covid-19, 26 states cut taxes, often targeting top earners, which will cost $124 billion by 2028.

We’ve seen this show before and it stinks.

The plot is tired, unbelievable, and relegates voters to a bit part, when it’s our communities that should be the lead. How many times do we have to listen to the same trickle-down economic nonsense? It’s getting old.

Polling shows that voters would rather politicians play it straight and raise revenue from big business and the wealthy rather than feel the squeeze as tax cuts lead to budget cuts to the programs and services our kids and communities need most.

Flipping the script on tax cuts for the wealthy is a core reason the State Revenue Alliance was created. Voters feel the economy isn’t working for them and want corporations and billionaire CEOs to pay their fair share. Ultimately in 2025, it’s the people who’ve too often been shut out of policy debates who will fight for tax justice and change the trajectory of tax policy in this country.

Knowing that 2025 would see a confluence of tax fights at the state and federal level, state-based advocates have spent years building coalitions of pro-revenue champions committed to working together and will have the resources to fight for good schools, housing affordability, and accessible healthcare in legislatures around the country.

Together, we’ve made real, tangible, and, yes, sustainable progress in our collective efforts to win pro-revenue policies. In 2024 alone, state-based grassroots organizations, labor groups, policy shops, and legislators supported 35 tax justice bills in state capitols. Six of those bills passed and were signed into law. Those bills included wealth taxes; corporate tax reform; reinstatement or creation of capital gains taxes; repealing certain tax breaks, which too often allowed the wealthiest to shield their assets; and more.

In anticipation of this year, we are already tracking nearly 50 tax justice bills filed in state capitols. When legislative sessions open early next year, our allies will be ready, putting forth a compelling case for ensuring the wealthiest and big corporations pay their fair share at the state level so everyone has a fair shot to survive and thrive.

Rather than divide us, taxes will be an issue that unites community voices across the country in 2025. In addition to our focus on tax justice in states, we will join hundreds of national organizations to demand Congress forgo any additional tax cuts for the wealthy and advocate for new revenue.

An extension of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) will further reward the wealthiest individuals and big corporations with myriad tax breaks and benefits. We know it will come at the expense of working and middle-class families, costing us an estimated $4.6 trillion over the next 10 years. Extending the TCJA also puts additional strains on states and localities to make up potential funding gaps, as they rely on federal dollars for everything from schools to healthcare, critical infrastructure, and more.

We know the vast majority of Americans want the rich to pay more, not less, in taxes—at both the state and federal level. It’s time for elected officials to give the people what they want after years of disappointing performances.

As storylines develop following the 2024 election, progressives should consider the action in the states around taxes—who pays what they owe, who benefits from them, and whether or not they raise the revenue to fully fund our futures—as the biggest and most unifying fight on the horizon.

If we are successful, 2025 will reveal a more just, equitable, and sustainable tax code that helps build the future our communities deserve.

Virtually everybody with an opinion judges Jimmy Carter to have been a decent man. He was certainly as good an ex-president as we’ve ever had. But what about his legacy as a then-president? That assessment is murkier.

A common refrain holds that Carter was a good man but a weak president, that he was not wise to the ways of Washington, that he was naïve in his belief that pure motives could win over champions of impure schemes.

It is impossible to fairly weigh Carter’s success or failure without understanding the context in which he served. That context was some of the greatest institutional tumult the U.S. has ever seen.

First, was Vietnam. The U.S. had just limped, still bleeding, out of the Vietnam War. It was the first war America had ever lost. The trauma of that loss (to say nothing of the trauma of having tried to prevent it) cannot be overstated.

Carter was the first elected president to have to deal with the shock, the disbelief, the grief, the shame, and the anger from the loss. There wasn’t a person in America who knew how to deal with that rat’s nest of conflicting, disorienting emotions and make the country whole again.

After Vietnam (and, especially, immediately after) the U.S. was not the swaggering hegemon it had been for the 30 years since 1945. But what could it be? That Delphic divination was only the first of Carter’s monumental challenges. There was equal upheaval, economically.

In 1971, Richard Nixon had removed the dollar’s coupling to gold. That left Arab oil sheikdoms receiving paper for their once-ever patrimony. They responded by tripling the price of oil, sending both inflationary and recessionary shocks through the world’s economy.

Theory held that stagnation and inflation couldn’t exist at the same time. But there it was: stagflation. The remedy for stagnation was to lower interest rates and increase the money supply. The remedy for inflation was to raise interest rates and reduce the money supply.

Clearly, you couldn’t do both at the same time. The Keynesian framework for managing the economy, operative since the Great Depression, no longer worked. So, in 1979, Carter hired Paul Volcker to try to fix it.

Volcker jacked up interest rates to record levels, inducing an immediate recession. It was the right thing to do, but it killed Carter’s chances in the 1980 election, as he knew it would. It gave Ronald Reagan his now-famous question: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”

Finally, on top of the ferocious ferment roiling international and economic affairs, there was Watergate. Richard Nixon was caught trying to break into the offices of whistleblower Daniel Elsberg’s psychiatrist and also the Democratic National Committee headquarters. The crime seems petty today, especially compared to launching a mob on the Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power, but it was monumental, then.

Probably no event in modern history had so shattered the public’s faith in the integrity of its national institutions and actors. Nixon resigned in disgrace. All political acts—and all political actors—were suddenly suspected of being nefarious and self-dealing.

Carter was both, but he was also neither. That is, yes, he was a politician, carrying out political acts. But he was neither nefarious nor self-dealing. He was as honest and selfless a politician as we’ve ever known. But, that was the tar with which all politics, and politicians, were smeared by Nixon’s sordid bequest.

Simply put, the intellectual and institutional moorings that had anchored the country for the prior 40 years—from the New Deal consensus to the post-World War II international order—were coming unglued. That was the tectonically-shifting world that Carter inherited. Nobody had ever dealt with anything like it.

So, how did he do? In truth, he did pretty well. First, the negatives.

In 1979, Iranian revolutionaries overthrew their government and took 66 Americans hostage. They held them for 444 days, dealing a severe humiliation to the U.S. That was probably Carter’s greatest public defeat.

But the underlying grievance had started in 1953, when the U.S. overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, and installed the brutal Shah Reza Pahlavi, a reliable U.S. sycophant but a ruthless enemy of his own people. The boil of that festering resentment popped in 1979, on Carter’s watch.

Also, the Reagan campaign had cut a back-door deal with the revolutionaries to not release the hostages until after the election, thereby depriving Carter of a win in the matter. It was one of the most perfidious deeds ever to degrade American politics. Most people didn’t know that then, and don’t know it, still, today, so mistakenly blame Carter for the entire ordeal.

Later in 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Carter had provoked the invasion. Six months before, he had begun supplying arms to the opponents of the Soviet-leaning Afghan government. The Soviets invaded to prop up their ally which was under attack by U.S.-supported terrorists, including the later-to-become-infamous Osama bin Laden.

Ironically, Afghanistan proved to be the Soviet Union’s Vietnam, draining it of treasure, manpower, and willpower. It is widely regarded to have been the single greatest cause of the Soviet collapse, in 1991. Carter’s critics who condemn his actions at the time always seem to forget that they eventuated in the defeat of the U.S.’ greatest adversary of the twentieth century.

Carter’s solutions to economic woes leaned conservative, or even further. It was he who began the Neoliberal regime we often associate with Ronald Reagan.

He deregulated the airline, trucking, and railroad industries. He reduced spending on welfare much more than either Nixon or Reagan ever did. Fearing inflation, he fought the United Mine Workers in their 1978 national coal strike, alienating one of his—and the Democratic party’s—most important bases.

But what of the good things that Carter delivered?

For all of the upheaval, he actually delivered better economic performance than did Ronald Reagan. That meant faster GDP growth and higher levels of business investment. He delivered the last balance of payments surplus the country has ever known. And he did this without the budget busting deficits that followed him.

When Carter left office, in January, 1981, the national debt—the cumulation of all federal borrowing over 204 years—stood at just under $1 trillion. Reagan tripled that debt in only eight years, an ominous portent of things to come. It is $36 trillion, today.

Carter placed more women and minorities in the federal judiciary—40 and 87, respectively—than all of his predecessors, combined. Ruth Bader Ginsburg attributed her decision to become a judge to Carter’s initiative. He literally actualized the centuries-long-delayed intent embodied in the Civil Rights revolution of the 1960s.

Carter established the Department of Energy, an essential move, given the way the country and the world were being whipsawed by Arab oil producers. It has been a huge contributor to the U.S.’ being one of the world’s top energy producers still, today.

He started the Department of Education. An educated work force is probably the most valuable social asset a society can produce. But before Carter, it was left to the scattered machinations of 50 different state bureaucracies, a guarantee for national failure.

Carter engineered the Camp David Accords, bringing Israel and Egypt together to bury at least part of the hostility that has afflicted the Middle East since Israel’s founding in 1948. He proved prescient on the Israelis, predicting that they would not honor their promises to cede greater autonomy to the Palestinians.

Finally, Carter introduced Human Rights into U.S. foreign policy considerations. Even if done badly, it signaled an aspiration for what the U.S. stood for in its desire to be “the leader of the free world.”

The sum of this amounts to as adroit (though not flawless) an adaptation to the challenges of the time as could be conceived.

Besides considering the context and weighing the balance on Carter, there is one more lens through which we can, and should, judge him. That is, “Who would you rather have at the helm, today, steering the country through waters that are at least as perilous as those Carter faced?”

The U.S. is going through similar—or even greater—dislocations, today, as it was in Carter’s time. Its status in the world is plummeting as it has done everything it possibly could to bolster Israel’s heinous genocide of the Palestinians, and as China has blown by it in manufacturing, commerce, and in many areas of technology.

It has suffered withering military defeats, in Iraq, Afghanistan, and, now, Ukraine. The majority of the world’s nations—led by Russia and China—are aligning against it as a Global South. Its economy, too, is much worse today than it was in Carter’s time.

In 1980, the U.S. had not begun hollowing out its economy with 40 years of de-industrialization. It had not begun the psychotic debt binge it has taken, borrowing $35 trillion dollars to try to mask the rot and keep the lights on. It was not hazarding the onset of actuarial bankruptcy, as it is, today.

These are not the signifiers of a healthy global leader. They are the signs of a wounded, faltering behemoth struggling to find a way to regain its once-heralded, even respected, primacy.

So, where does all of this leave us with Jimmy Carter?

Everybody agrees that Carter was an honest, decent, dignified, intelligent, hard-working, selfless public servant who never used his office for personal gain. It’s the things he wasn’t, though, that makes the things he was stand out in such dazzling, admirable, relief.

He wasn’t a pathological liar. He wasn’t a serial sexual abuser. He didn’t consort with porn stars and Playboy bunnies. In fact, he was married to the same woman for 77 years. His daddy didn’t leave him $413 million, so he wasn’t a phony put-up as a self-made man. He wasn’t a five-time draft dodger. He was a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis and served seven honorable years in active duty.

He wasn’t a tax cheat or a convicted felon—probably didn’t even have traffic tickets, he was such a Boy Scout. He didn’t use his office to boost his own personal wealth. He didn’t sell access to billionaires. He didn’t foment racial hatred for electoral gain. He wasn’t a bully. He didn’t threaten to send journalists and political foes to jail, in order to silence them. He didn’t steal state secrets on his way out of the presidency. And he certainly never tried to overthrow the government to keep himself in power.

It’s amazing how far our putative standards have fallen, and how we can so readily, fatuously, condemn a good man who, facing the greatest task of many decades, gave our country his very best, and, in fact, healed so many of the wounds of distrust and division that he and we had inherited.

Smug, supercilious condescension about Jimmy Carter is precisely the sign of our own inadequacy to judge him. We insist of him, even in his death, that he be some kind of incongruous super-human avatar: both chaste and worldly-wise; honest and wily; simple, but savvy; idealistic, yet pragmatic; compassionate, yet ruthless.

Would that we could apply such standards in our own time, to wildly, egregiously inferior human beings, repulsive, amoral self-dealers, setting out to loot the country for their own vanity and personal gain, again.

The most meaningful measure we can make of Jimmy Carter is whether we would prefer an imperfect, yet noble man like him at the helm of the country, today. I would. You? There you go.

Democrats and Republicans may be polarized along tribal lines. But they share common ground on their feelings about the media, big business and the government. We hate them.

The post All We Need Is Hate first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post All We Need Is Hate appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Donald Trump, who takes office in a matter of days, defeated Kamala Harris in large part because of voter dissatisfaction over the economy. But what will his economy look like?

In many ways, this is a tale of two economies. The stock market, tech and the wealthy are doing better than ever. The working class and manufacturing are struggling. Can Trump reconcile his populist and billionaire bases? Can he keep inflation under control? Might he consider expanding the social safety net, especially for healthcare, or increase the minimum wage? What will he do as A.I. continues to kill jobs?

“The TMI Show” tries to predict the state of the US economy in the coming year. Co-hosts Ted Rall and Manila Chan is joined by Aquiles Larrea, CEO and Founder of Larrea Wealth Management.

The post TMI Show Ep 51: “What Next for the Economy?” first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post TMI Show Ep 51: “What Next for the Economy?” appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Elon Musk repeatedly asserts, without evidence, that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer covered up the abuses of young girls by gangs comprised largely of British Pakistani men, in cases that date back to before 2010 when Starmer was head of Britain’s public prosecutions.

“Starmer was complicit in the RAPE OF BRITAIN when he was head of Crown Prosecution for six years,” Musk posted to the top of his account on Friday. “Starmer must go, and he must face charges for his complicity in the worst mass crime in the history of Britain.”

In fact, Starmer, who heads the Labour government, did not cover up abuses. Instead, he brought the first case against an Asian grooming gang and drafted new guidelines for how the Crown Prosecution Service should deal with cases of sexual exploitation of children, including the mandatory reporting of child sex offenses.

But Musk’s real power these days comes from his proximity to and presumed influence over Donald Trump, soon to be President of the United States.

Musk also calls Jess Phillips, the Labour government’s under secretary for safeguarding and violence against women and girls, a “rape genocide apologist” because she pushed back on calls for a national inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Oldham, a town near Manchester.

In fact, Phillips, who has long campaigned for women’s rights, has called for a local investigation by Oldham authorities rather than the central government. Women’s rights supporters say Musk’s labeling Phillips a “rape genocide apologist” is threatening her safety.

Yesterday, Starmer warned publicly that Musk’s baseless accusations “crossed a line,” adding that “once we lose the anchor that truth matters, in the robust debate that we must have, then we are on a very slippery slope.”

Musk’s Global Reach

Musk’s lies about the left-wing British government and his support for far-right groups are parts of an emerging pattern. Musk is also:

• Boosting the far-right party in Germany with neo-Nazi ties, known as Alternative for Germany (AfD), before elections early next month. Musk signaled his support for AfD in mid-December, writing in a post on X that “only the AfD can save Germany.” He also penned an op-ed in a German newspaper recently, describing the party as the “last spark of hope” for the country. Musk is planning an online “discussion” on X with the AfD’s leader and candidate for chancellor, Alice Weidel, amplifying the party’s neo-Nazi ideology.
• Attacking the Italian judiciary for curbing Italian Prime Giorgia Meloni’s hardline anti-asylum immigration policies. Musk has met regularly with Meloni, who has called him a friend, and appeared at a youth event for Meloni’s party.
• Urging support for Britain’s far-right MP Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration Reform U.K. Party. Musk says he might donate upward of 100 million pounds ($127 million) to Farage’s group.
• Demanding Britain “free Tommy Robinson,” the far-right founder of the English Defence League—an Islamophobic nationalist group—and anti-immigrant agitator who, Musk charges, is in jail for “telling the truth.” In fact, Robinson is in jail because he was found to have defamed a teenage Syrian refugee and then defied a British court order by repeating the false claims. (Robinson has been previously jailed for assault, mortgage fraud, and traveling on a false passport to the United States, where he has sought to establish ties with right-wing groups.)
• Allowing on X inflammatory lies of a kind that incited anti-immigrant riots in Britain last July, following the killing of three girls in a mass stabbing in the town of Southport. After Britain arrested more than 30 people, Musk condemned the government for what he called an attack on free speech.
• Calling Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau an “insufferable tool” over comments Trudeau made in support of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, and predicted he “won’t be in power for much longer.” (Yesterday, Trudeau announced he will resign.)

Where Musk Is Getting This Power

As the richest person in the world, politicians everywhere now recognize his capacity to pour money into their parties and political campaigns, as he did by investing a quarter of a billion dollars to get Trump elected.

He also owns X, formerly Twitter, which (as of December 2024) has 619 million monthly active users. He has manipulated X’s algorithm to boost his own posts, which now reach 210 million.

But Musk’s real power these days comes from his proximity to and presumed influence over Donald Trump, soon to be President of the United States.

Musk has hardly left Trump’s side since the election, meaning that Musks’s opinions (amplified by his social media platform) cannot be ignored by politicians around the world who are trying to decipher Trump’s opinions.

One prominent member of Germany’s center-left Social Democratic Party is asking that Germany determine “whether [Musk’s] repeated disrespect, defamation, and interference in the election campaign were also expressed in the name of the new U.S. government.”

This combination—the richest person in the world, owner and manipulator of the biggest political messaging platform in the world, with direct influence over Trump—puts Musk in the position of being able to move other nations toward the neo-fascist right.

Why Musk Is Doing This

Not for money. As it is, he has far more than any human can utilize.

Partly, it’s ideological. He calls himself a “free speech absolutist,” which puts him at odds with Europe’s and Canada’s aggressive responses to hate speech online. (Britain, Musk says, “is turning into a police state.”)

But the roots of Musk’s neo-fascism probably go deeper.

I am no psychoanalyst, but I imagine that as an immigrant from South Africa, Musk is especially triggered by poor people of color moving into white nations. His father smuggled raw emeralds and had them cut in Johannesburg.

Part of his shift to the radical right also comes from Musk’s transgender child. As Musk told conservative commentator Jordan Peterson, “I lost my son, essentially,” claiming she was “dead, killed by the woke mind virus. I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that.” (Musk’s daughter, Vivian Jenna Wilson, now 20, told NBC News that Musk was an absent father who was cruel to her as a child for being queer and feminine.)

On X, Musk continuously criticizes transgender rights, including medical treatments for trans-identifying minors, and the use of pronouns if they are different from what would be used at birth. He has promoted anti-trans content and called for arresting people who provide trans care to minors. Last July, Musk said he was pulling his businesses out of California to protest a new state law that bars schools from requiring that trans kids be outed to their parents. After Musk bought X, then known as Twitter, in 2022, he rolled back the app’s protections for trans people, including a ban on using birth names (known as “deadnames” for transgender people).

Perhaps the major reason for Musk’s recent effort to push other nations to the neo-fascist right is his newfound thirst for right-wing global politics. After effectively (at least in Musk’s mind) winning the presidency for Trump by spending more than $250 million and unleashing a maelstrom of pro-Trump and anti-Harris lies over X, he now seeks even more of an authoritarian rush.

It will not be the first time in history that someone is seduced by the thrill of unconstrained power, although it may be the first time that so much of it is concentrated in one unelected megalomaniac.

What Should Be Done About Musk?

For the time being, particularly under Trump, there is little that we in America can do to constrain Musk except by boycotting Tesla and X.

Canada and Britain and other European nations, meanwhile, should, at the very least:

• Enact laws and regulations to prohibit non-citizens (like Musk) from financing activities that could affect their elections.
• Maintain, if not strengthen, laws and rules against hate speech, and ensure that they are applied to social media companies, such as Musk’s X.
• Refuse to contract with Musk’s Space X and its Starlink satellite division, or with Musk’s other corporations (Tesla and the Boring Company).
• Disengage from any joint ventures or technology transfers involving Musk, including xAI, his artificial intelligence company.

As Jimmy Carter is laid to rest this week, I think it’s worth paying attention to just exactly how out front he was on solar energy.

Driven by both the upheaval of the OPEC embargoes and the lingering echoes of Earth Day at the start of the 1970s, and with “Limits to Growth” and “Small is Beautiful” as two of the decade’s big bestsellers (Carter had a reception for E.F. Schumacher at the White House!), the administration decided that solar was the way out. (The idea of the greenhouse effect was beginning to be talked about in these circles too, but it wasn’t yet a public idea, and it wasn’t driving policy).

Everyone knows about the solar panels on the White House roof, but that was the least of it. Jimmy Carter, in his 1980 budget, pledged truly serious cash for solar research, and for building out panels on roofs across America. “Nobody can embargo sunlight,” he said in his most important speech, from the government’s mountaintop solar energy lab in Golden, Colorado. “No cartel controls the sun. Its energy will not run out. It will not pollute the air; it will not poison our waters.” Carter—with characteristic bad luck—was giving this speech outside in a driving rainstorm, not the backdrop his handlers had hoped for. But he was resolute. “The question is no longer whether solar energy works,” he said. “We know it works. The only question is how to cut costs.”

Reagan took the solar panels off the White House, but again that was the least of it.

His goal, he said, was to have America getting a quarter of its power from the sun by the year 2000. And that was almost certainly an achievable goal—the history of it is that when you pour money on panels, they get better and cheaper fast. The money finally came from Germany, with its feed-in tariffs, which subsidized the development of low-cost Chinese panel manufacturing beginning around 2005. But that was a quarter century after what might have been, had we listened to Carter.

Just for kicks, here’s John Hall and Carly Simon singing about the “warm power of the sun” outside the Capitol in 1979. (If you look really closely, you can’t see me, but I was there). I think the movement probably made a mistake spending as much time opposing nuclear as backing solar—but opposing is easier, it must be said.

"Power-No Nukes" concert with Carly Simon

Anyway, of course, we listened to Reagan, with his siren song about ‘morning in America,’ and his version of ‘drill baby drill,’ and we went ever deeper down into the hydrocarbon hell we now inhabit. Reagan took the solar panels off the White House, but again that was the least of it. The real problem was that he slashed federal research funding to the bone. Tens of thousands of people in the nascent solar industry lost their jobs; a generation disappeared.

In fact, it’s only now that we’re getting back to where we were. The Inflation Reduction Act will forever be Biden’s signal achievement, even if he and Harris never figured out how to talk about it (and didn’t even really try during the fall campaign). But it’s done what Carter envisioned—jumpstarted the future. And if you want a musical tribute (not quite John Hall and Carly Simon, but pretty good anyway), check out this video about the DOE’s Loan Program Office, which—under the inspired leadership of Jigar Shah—has been at the absolute center of the IRA rollout:

LPO song on IRA rollout

Now, of course, the Trump administration is going to try and do what the Reagan administration did in the 1980s—slow down the transition to clean energy, at the behest of their friends in Big Oil. Trump’s a true believer—he told the British government last week that they should take down the wind turbines in the North Sea and drill for more oil instead. Biden got the final word here, though—in one of his last acts, he put an awful lot of the U.S. coast off-limits to drilling and in ways that won’t be easy for the next guys to undo.

The administration will still do serious damage, of course, but it’s possible that it won’t be as fatal as the last time around. For one, the energy revolution is now global, and so even if the U.S. lags, China will drive the planet forward. For another, the IRA has two years under its belt already, and so there’s lots of money already out there, lots of it in unusual places. (The biggest solar panel factory in the western hemisphere is in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s district). The GOP has announced they’d like to cut $700 billion in clean energy funding to help pay for a $5 trillion tax cut—we’ll see how the politics shakes out.

The GOP has announced they’d like to cut $700 billion in clean energy funding to help pay for a $5 trillion tax cut—we’ll see how the politics shakes out.

But the biggest reason is that the movement of people who care about the future know what happened last time, and we will do our best. Some of that will mean trying to keep IRA money funding through the Republican Congress; much of it will mean figuring out how to celebrate sun and windpower, and make them ever easier to install at the state, local, and street level. That’s much of what we’ll be working on at this newsletter in the year ahead—for now, I’ll just tell you to keep the weekend of the autumnal equinox (Sept 21) free on your calendar.

And also just a reminder, as the press reports on the funeral of the pious and extremely good Baptist peanut farmer (all of which is true) that the 70s were also kind of cool. I mean, Carly Simon! And that White House roof, where the solar panels were? That’s where Willie Nelson smoked a large joint after an Oval Office visit. Jimmy, we will miss you—you were a great ex-president, but a great president too. If only we’d listened.

By virtue of luck or just being in the right place at the right time, I was the first journalist to report on the advent of the public internet.

In the early 1990s, I was editor-in-chief of a trade magazine called Telecommunications. Vinton Cerf, widely considered to be “father of the internet,” was on our editorial advisory board. Once Sunday afternoon, Vint contacted me to let me know that the federal government was going to make its military communication system, ARPANET, available to the general public. After reading his email, I more or less shrugged it off. I didn’t think much of it until I started investigating what that would really mean. After weeks of research and further discussions, I finally realized the import of what Vint had told me with its deeper implications for politics, society, culture, and commerce.

As the internet grew in size and scope, I started having some serious concerns. And there was a cadre of other researchers and writers who, like myself, wrote books and articles offering warnings about how this powerful and incredible new tool for human communications might go off the rails. These included Sven Birkerts, Clifford Stoll, and others. My own book Digital Mythologies was dedicated to such explorations.

By default, and without due process of democratic participation or consent, these services are rapidly becoming a de facto necessity for participation in modern life.

While we all saw the tremendous potential that this new communications breakthrough had for academia, science, culture, and many other fields of endeavor, many of us were concerned about its future direction. One concern was how the internet could conceivably be used as a mechanism of social control—an issue closely tied to the possibility that corporate entities might actually come to “own” the internet, unable to resist the temptation to shape it for their own advantage.

The beginning of the “free service” model augured a long slow downward slide in personal privacy—a kind of Faustian bargain that involved yielding personal control and autonomy to Big Tech in exchange for these services. Over time, this model also opened the door to Big Tech sharing information with the NSA and many businesses mining and selling our very personal data. The temptation to use free services became the flypaper that would trap unsuspecting end users into a kind of lifelong dependency. But as the old adage goes: “There is no free lunch.”

Since that time, the internet and the related technology it spawned such as search engines, texting, and social media, have become all-pervasive, creeping into every corner of our lives. By default, and without due process of democratic participation or consent, these services are rapidly becoming a de facto necessity for participation in modern life. Smartphones have become essential tools that mediate these amazing capabilities and are now often essential tools for navigating both government services and commercial transactions.

Besides the giveaway of our personal privacy, the problems with technology dependence are now becoming all too apparent. Placing our financial assets and deeply personal information online creates significant stress and insecurity about being hacked or tricked. Tech-based problems then require more tech-based solutions in a kind of endless cycle. Clever scams are increasing and becoming more sophisticated. Further, given the global CrowdStrike outage, it sometimes seems like we’re building this new world of AI-driven digital-first infrastructure on a foundation of sand. And then there’s the internet’s role in aggravating income and social inequality. Unfortunately, this technology is inherently discriminatory, leaving seniors and many middle- and lower-income citizens in the dust. To offer a minor example, in some of the wealthier towns in Massachusetts, you can’t park your car in public lots without a smartphone.

Will AI Wreck the Internet?

Ironically, the Big Tech companies working on AI seem oblivious to the notion that this technology has the potential to be a wrecking ball. Conceivably, it could diminish everything that’s been good and useful about the internet while creating unprecedented levels of geopolitical chaos and destabilization. Recent trends with search engines offer a good example. Not terribly long ago, search results yielded a variety of opinions and useful content on any given topic. The searcher could then decide for her or himself what was true or not true by making an informed judgment.

With the advent of AI, this has now changed dramatically. Some widely used search engines are herding us toward specific “truths” as if every complex question had a simple multiple-choice answer. Google, for example, now offers an AI-assisted summary when a search is made. This becomes tempting to use because manual search now yields an annoying truckload of sponsored ad results. These items then need to be systematically ploughed through rendering the search process difficult and unpleasant.

We need to radically reassess the role of the internet and associated technologies going forward and not abandon this responsibility to the corporations that provide these services.

This shift in the search process appears to be by design in order to steer users towards habitually using AI for search. The implicit assumption that AI will provide the “correct” answer however nullifies the whole point of a having a user-empowered search experience. It also radically reverses the original proposition of the internet i.e. to become a freewheeling tool for inquiry and personal empowerment, threatening to turn the internet into little more than a high-level interactive online encyclopedia.

Ordinary citizens and users of the internet will be powerless to resist the AI onslaught. The four largest internet and software companies Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Google are projected to invest well over $200 billion this year on AI development. Then there’s the possibility that AI might become a kind of “chaos agent” mucking around with our sense of what’s true and what’s not true—an inherently dangerous situation for any society to be in. Hannah Arendt, who wrote extensively about the dangers of authoritarian thinking, gave us this warning: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”

Summing up, we need to radically reassess the role of the internet and associated technologies going forward and not abandon this responsibility to the corporations that provide these services. If not, we risk ending up with a world we won’t recognize—a landscape of dehumanizing interaction, even more isolated human relationships, and jobs that have been blithely handed over to AI and robotics with no democratic or regulatory oversight.

In 1961, then FCC Chairman Newton Minow spoke at a meeting of the National Association of Broadcasters. He observed that television had a lot of work to do to better uphold public interest and famously described it as a “vast wasteland.” While that description is hardly apt for the current status of the internet and social media, its future status may come to resemble a “black forest” of chaos, confusion, misinformation, and disinformation with AI only aggravating, not solving, this problem.

What then are some possible solutions? And what can our legislators do to ameliorate these problems and take control of the runaway freight train of technological dependence? One of the more obvious actions would be to reinstate funding for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. This agency was established in 1974 to provide Congress with reasonably objective analysis of complex technological trends. Inexplicably, the office was defunded in 1995 just as the internet was gaining strong momentum. Providing this kind of high-level research to educate and inform members of Congress about key technology issues has never been more important than it is now.

Over the past 14 months, I have received hundreds of messages from family members throughout the Gaza Strip. The nature of the messages often conveyed a sense of urgency and panic but, at times, contentment in God's will.

Some of those who wrote these notes have been killed in Israeli strikes, like my sister, Dr. Soma Baroud; others lost children, siblings, cousins, neighbors, and friends. It may seem strange that none of those who communicated with me throughout the war have ever questioned their faith, and have often, if not always, begun their messages by checking on me, and my children.

The samples of the messages below have been edited for length and clarity.

Ibrahim:

"How are you? We are all fine. We had to leave Shati [refugee camp]. The Israelis arrived at the camp yesterday. Our whole neighborhood has been destroyed. Our home, too, was destroyed. Alhamdulillah—praise be to God."

Soma:

"How are you? And how are the kids? Times like these make me realize that no material wealth matters. Only the love of one's family and community matters most. We had to flee Qarara [east of Khan Younis, in southern Gaza]; the boys fled further south, and I am in Deir Al-Balah with my daughter and grandson. I don't know what happened to H [her husband]. The army bulldozers began destroying the neighborhood while we were still inside. We ran away in the middle of the night."

I wanted to help, but I could do nothing. I kept walking from one body to the next, holding hands and looking into dying eyes.

A'esha:

"E [her husband] was killed on the first day of the invasion. A [her son] disappeared after he learned that his father was killed. He said he wanted to avenge his father. I am worried. I don't know what to do."

Salwa:

"Cousin, A'esha's son, A, was killed [he was 19]. He was fighting in Jabaliya. She is somewhere in Rafah with her surviving kids. Her newborn has a congenital heart defect. Do you know of any charity that can help her? She lives in a tent without food or water."

Ibrahim:

"We escaped to al-Shifa [hospital in Gaza City]. Then, the Israelis invaded. They took all the men outside and had us stand in line. They spared me. I don't know why. All the men were executed. Nasser's son [his nephew] was killed in front of me. We are still trapped at al-Shifa."

Soma:

"My husband was killed, brother. That poor soul had no chance. His illness had prevented him from running away on time. Someone says he saw his body after he was shot by a drone. He was hit in the head. But when we went back to the place, we couldn't find him. There was a massive heap of rubble and garbage. We dug and dug day and night, to no avail. I just want to give him a proper burial."

A'esha:

"Did Salwa message you about the charity? My baby is dying. I named her Wafa' after her auntie [26, who was killed in the first few weeks of the war along with her son Zaid, five, and husband, Mohammed, in Gaza City]. She can barely breathe. Some people are allowed to leave Gaza through Rafah. They say the UAE accepts some of the wounded and sick. Please help me."

Walid:

"Have you heard anything about the cease-fire? We ran away back to the center of Gaza, after we were forced to flee south. They [the Israeli army] said 'Go to the safe zones.' Then, they killed the displaced inside their tents. I saw my neighbors burning alive. I am too old [he is 75]. Please tell me that the war is about to end."

Ibrahim:

"How are you, cousin? I just wanted to tell you that Nasser [his brother] was killed. He was standing in line waiting for a loaf of bread in Zeitoun. After the martyrdom of his sons, he became responsible for the grandchildren as well. They [the Israelis] bombed the crowd as they waited for the aid trucks. The explosion severed his arm. He bled to death."

Soma:

"I was in Nuseirat when the massacre happened [278 people were killed and over 800 wounded on June 8]. I walked through the area not knowing the extent of the bloodbath. I was on my way back to Qarara to check on the kids. Bodies were strewn everywhere. They were mostly mutilated, though some were still groaning, desperately grasping onto life. I wanted to help, but I could do nothing. I kept walking from one body to the next, holding hands and looking into dying eyes. I worked in the emergency room for many years. But at that moment I felt helpless. I felt that I, too, had died on that day."

[Dr. Soma was killed in an Israeli strike targeting her car on October 9. She had just left the hospital, where she worked, to check on her sons.]

Ibrahim:

"My condolences, cousin, for the martyrdom of your sister. She will always remain the pride of our family."

A'esha:

"Wafa' died this morning in our tent in Al-Musawi. There was no medicine. No food. No milk. My only solace is that she is now an angel in Paradise."

Walid:

"How are you, cousin? We are okay. We lost everything, but we are still standing. Alhamdulillah. Do you know when the war will be over? Maybe another week, or two? I am just too old, and so, so tired."

When Katharine Tito approached the vintage typewriter at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, New Jersey, skepticism was written across her face. Though she'd spotted typewriters in thrift stores, she'd never actually used one. As a graphic design student immersed in digital tools, the mechanical contraption before her seemed like a relic. But as she began typing people's messages to the President of the United States for my "I Wish to Say" project, something shifted. Her fingers found their rhythm on the keys, and her expression transformed.

"It's different from anything I've experienced," she told me. "Each keystroke feels weighty, permanent. You can't just delete and start over. You have to think about every word. Sometimes people would talk too fast, and I'd have to tell them, 'You've got to slow down because I can only go so quickly.'" As I watched students gather around her desk, drawn by the hypnotic clacking of keys, I witnessed a revelation I've seen countless times: the moment people discover the power of slowing down to truly engage with their thoughts and words.

This transformation isn't happening in isolation. On the eve of World Typing Day tomorrow, we're witnessing a typewriter renaissance. Taylor Swift captures the romance and allure of typewriters in her songs and videos. Retro typewriter fonts dominate Instagram. Tom Hanks is showcasing vintage typewriters from his personal collection at a New York exhibition, while customers flock to specialty shops like Philly Typewriter, craving something more real than pixels.

The 2024 presidential election laid bare what my typewriter has shown me all along—beneath the predictions of seismic political shifts, we remain a nation divided by the thinnest of margins.

This resurgence reflects a more profound cultural shift. In an era of rapid-fire texts and tweets, hot takes on social media, and barking demands at Siri and Alexa, people are yearning for more deliberate forms of communication and connection. I've seen this hunger grow over two decades of "I Wish to Say," as I set up my pop-up desk in libraries, schools, and town squares across America. From the presidency of George W. Bush through Joe Biden's term, I've invited people to dictate their hopes and fears, their dreams and demands. The experience transforms both me and the speaker. As words are deliberately pressed into paper, I watch people pause, reconsider their phrasing, and weigh the permanence of their message. The steady rhythm of metal striking paper—that distinctive clack-clack-ding—seems to create a space for reflection that our digital devices rarely allow.

This practice of what I call "radical listening"—deeply engaging with another person's words as you type them—offers a powerful antidote to our current political polarization. When someone participates in "I Wish to Say," I absorb everything: their words, their body language, the way they prepare themselves before beginning to dictate. The typewriter creates a unique space of trust—as they watch and hear their words being struck into paper, one letter at a time, they know they're truly being heard. Some have likened it to therapy, this experience of having someone listen with such complete attention.

I've seen its particular relevance on college campuses. One week after the 2024 election, I set up my typewriter at Scripps College in Southern California. The campus was tense, emotions raw. Student after student approached my desk, their concerns for the future were palpable. But something transformed as they watched their words appear on paper. One student reflected on the catharsis of the experience."I feel something," she said. "I can't quite tell you what it is, but I feel good."

What I've learned through thousands of these exchanges is acute: You never really know what someone thinks until you sit down and truly listen. In our era of instant reactions and digital silos, this kind of deep listening has become increasingly rare—and increasingly vital.

The typewriter renaissance isn't an isolated phenomenon—it's part of a broader return to real-world connections. Across the country, young people are seeking alternatives to the exhausting cycle of social media discourse and genuine bonding. Running groups are replacing swipe-right romance. Reading parties in public spaces are drawing crowds. Gen Z players are flocking to old-school chess, mahjong, and backgammon clubs, drawn to the thrill of face-to-face competition. Screen-free cafes are becoming sanctuaries of uninterrupted conversation and deep thought. These shifts speak to something we all know deep down: IRL moments beat scrolling every time.

Two decades of typing other people's words have revealed a fundamental truth about communication—and democracy. The 2024 presidential election laid bare what my typewriter has shown me all along—beneath the predictions of seismic political shifts, we remain a nation divided by the thinnest of margins. The historically narrow House majority and razor-thin popular vote aren't just statistics. They reflect a nation that desperately needs new ways to bridge its differences. The typewriter, with its demanding presence and unforgiving permanence, shows us a new way forward: Slow down before you speak, choose your words with care, and embrace the transformative power of truly listening to another person's perspective.

These lessons extend far beyond the typewriter itself. In our civic discourse, our professional lives, and our personal relationships, we're all searching for ways to break free from the reactive and often toxic impulses of communication through our screens. Sometimes the most radical act is simply to pause, to consider our words carefully, and to create space for genuine dialogue—one metaphorical keystroke at a time.

The new year has begun with old news: The world is continuing to become colossally more unequal — with the United States leading the way.

In 2024, wealth trackers at Bloomberg have just reported in a year-end review, “the world’s 500 richest people got vastly richer.”

Of the world’s 15 richest individuals, the Bloomberg data show, 14 call the United States home. The richest of these rich: Elon Musk. He started 2024 with a personal fortune worth a mere $229 billion. He ended it with a net worth of $442 billion, the largest personal fortune the world has ever seen.

Overall, the world’s 500 richest ended 2024 worth a combined $9.8 trillion. Some 34 percent of the $1.5 trillion they gained over the course of the year came in the five weeks after Donald Trump’s election.

Trump himself enjoyed quite a rewarding 2024. His personal net worth last year nearly doubled, to a bit over $7 billion. The president-elect now holds a fortune over 137,000 times greater than the average household wealth of a family in America’s poorest 50 percent.

A little humbling context for Trump: His new $7-billion fortune amounts to less than 2 percent of the personal wealth his new good pal Elon is now holding.

Musk does, to be sure, have ample American company in the exclusive 12-digit personal wealth club. Fifteen American deep pockets now boast fortunes worth over $100 billion.

More context: Back in 1982, the year Forbes magazine began publishing its annual list of America’s richest, only 13 of the nation’s 400 wealthiest held as much as a single billion in net worth. To rate inclusion in the latest annual Forbes 400 list, the Institute for Policy Studies analyst Chuck Collins points out, an American of means needed a fortune of at least $3.2 billion.

The enormous global surge in the wealth of the wealthy — a surge that Americans of means have now been driving for nearly a half-century — has wealth industry professionals rethinking just who really rates as truly super rich. These investment pros, for many years now, have been defining an “ultra-high-net worth individual” as anyone worth at least $30 million.

That $30 million, the Gulf Analytica consultancy president David Gibson-Moore recently related, used to be comfortably enough to allow for “significant investments across multiple asset classes” — everything from stocks and bonds to real estate and private equity — and still have plenty left over for luxuries like private-jet travel.

These days, says Gibson-Moore, many analysts have upped the “ultra” ante. They’re now considering $100 million as “the new yardstick for anyone who wants to keep their head held high at private equity parties.”

That makes some luxury sense. Simply maintaining a 100-foot-long private yacht today, for instance, can now run as much as $2 million a year.

But relief for the rich feeling this yacht-maintenance squeeze appears to be on the way. Leaders in the new Republican-majority Congress, Politico reports, are already busily debating just how they can most expeditiously lower the already low taxes the richest among us need to pay. Their goal: to at least extend the expiring Trump tax cut originally enacted in 2017.

In 2025, households in America’s top 1 percent will save an average $61,090 thanks to that 2017 tax cut. Households in the top 0.1 percent will pocket even more, with an average savings of $252,300. And households in the bottom 60 percent? They’ll on average save less than $500 each.

“Extending the Trump tax cuts that expire at the end of 2025 — namely, the law’s individual income and estate tax provisions — would provide further windfall benefits to high-income households,” conclude Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysts Chuck Marr, Samantha Jacoby, and George Fenton.

To make matters worse, Marr and his colleagues add, those windfall benefits “would come on top of the large benefits they would continue to receive from the 2017 tax law’s permanent provisions.”

“Tax cuts for people making over $400,000,” the Center analysts conclude, “should end on schedule.”

Keeping to that schedule — given the new Republican control over the House, the Senate, and the White House — will be exceedingly difficult. Welcome to Trump II.

The passing of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has been duly noted in ubiquitous remembrances and commentaries on his four-year presidency from 1977-1981. Carter is lauded more for his post-presidential humanitarian projects, while his presidency is deemed a mixed bag by left and right alike. For many Vietnam War resisters—myself included, it is more personal. Jimmy Carter’s first act as president was to pardon draft resisters. He then established a program for military deserters like me, who were able to return from exile or up from “underground” without going to prison.

President Carter’s pardon took a certain amount of courage and compassion, and for that we remember him fondly. To say that “Jimmy Carter pardoned war resisters,” however, is a bit like saying that “Abe Lincoln freed the slaves.” Both presidential decrees were the culmination of years of determined resistance and organizing—by the war resisters and the slaves—and by their many valuable allies. Grassroots people’s movements laid the table.

Over 1 Million People Needed Amnesty

Resistance to the U.S. War on Vietnam was widespread throughout the late 60s and early 70s. Over 1 million young men found themselves in legal jeopardy—an estimated 300,000 draft resisters, as many as 500,000 deserters, and another 500,000 veterans who were discharged from the military with “less-than-honorable” discharges—life sentences of discrimination, particularly by employers. There were also thousands of women and men who had been prosecuted for their antiwar protests.

Somewhere between 60,000 and 100,000 Vietnam War resisters emigrated to Canada—the majority being draft resisters, often accompanied by girlfriends and spouses. Thirty thousand became Canadian citizens. Another 800 U.S. war resisters—mostly deserters—fled to Sweden, the only country to officially grant asylum to Vietnam War resisters. (Canada’s immigration policy was wide open at the time, unlike today, and did not care about the military obligations of other countries).

In 1972, AMEX-Canada, a Toronto-based collective of U.S. deserters and draft resisters, of which I was part, took the lead in calling for unconditional amnesty for all war resisters and veterans with less-than-honorable discharges. (AMEX = American Exile.) We fought hard for this position within the broad-based National Council for Universal, Unconditional Amnesty (NCUUA), which included the National Council of Churches, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), War Resisters League (WRL), Women Strike for Peace, Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), and many local peace groups. The initial instinct of some of the church groups was to call for amnesty only for draft resisters, who were mostly white and middle-class, and not for deserters, who were largely working class, and were wanted by the military.

It was a bigger struggle yet to include veterans with less-than-honorable discharges, who were often people-of-color who had resisted racism within the military. But AMEX-Canada, the only organized group of war resisters within the amnesty coalition, along with WRL and VVAW, prevailed, as evidenced by the awkward but specific name, National Council for Universal, Unconditional Amnesty.

AMEX-Canada always called for the U.S. to end its “illegal, immoral” war in Vietnam, which killed over 3 million Vietnamese, mostly civilians. AMEX’s Jack Colhoun, an Army deserter and historian, chronicled the progress of the Vietnam War in the pages of AMEX-Canada magazine. By demanding amnesty, war resisters had opened an antiwar front that outlasted the antiwar movement, which waned after U.S. troops were withdrawn from Vietnam in 1972-73.

In September 1974, AMEX-Canada hosted an international conference in Toronto, with exiled U.S. war resisters from Canada, Sweden, France, and the U.K., who were joined by Vietnam Veterans Against the War and other U.S. peace activists. Several days before the long-planned conference, President Gerald Ford announced that he was granting an unconditional pardon to his disgraced predecessor, Richard Nixon, along with a very limited and conditional “earned re-entry” program for Vietnam War resisters. Returning resisters would have to sign loyalty oaths, to perform alternative service, and—if they were deserters—accept a new kind of “less-than-honorable” discharge that would mark them for life.

Resisters Demanded Total Amnesty, Not “Shamnesty”

The U.S. media flocked to Toronto to hear U.S. war resisters’ response. We totally rejected Ford’s so-called “clemency” program and unanimously demanded an unconditional amnesty for all Vietnam War resisters. “It is right to resist an unjust war,” we exclaimed. We called on our fellow war resisters to boycott Ford’s punitive program, and we vowed to continue our struggle for total amnesty

In order to raise the temperature, we sent a draft resister, Steve Grossman, back to the U.S. to challenge the program. And then a deserter, yours truly. Grossman’s draft charges were dropped, as was my jail sentence, after a 50-city speaking tour that put the government on the defensive. Although some war resisters were able to take advantage of Ford’s “earned re-entry” program, relatively few did. The program was scheduled to end on January 31, 1975. The White House extended it twice—for a total of two months—in the hopes of gaining greater numbers. But to no avail. The media declared Ford’s program a resounding failure. We kept pushing for real amnesty, not “shamnesty.”

The Democratic National Convention in New York City in July 1976 provided us with a great stage. That was the convention that nominated Jimmy Carter for president. Carter had campaigned on a pledge to pardon draft resisters. Little did he know that a draft resister and a Vietnam veteran would steal the show at his convention. Fritz Efaw, who was living in England after refusing draft orders, managed to get himself elected as an Alternate Delegate from Democrats Abroad, and flew into New York’s Kennedy Airport. Lawyers for the amnesty coalition (NCUUA) negotiated a deal with authorities that delayed Efaw’s arrest to allow him to participate in the convention.

By 1976, the mood of the country had changed. Most people agreed that the Vietnam War had been—at the very least—a terrible mistake. A majority of grassroots Democrats supported an amnesty for Vietnam War resisters. That probably included a majority of the 2,100 or so delegates to the Democratic National Convention. But it took only 300 of their signatures to nominate Fritz Efaw to be the next vice president of the United States.

Draft Resister and Paralyzed Vietnam Veteran Take the Podium at Democratic Convention

And so it was that a wanted draft resister grabbed a precious 15 minutes of prime time TV before a very large audience. First, Efaw had to literally draw straws with the other three VP candidates to determine the order of their nominating speeches. The other three were progressive African American Rep. Ron Dellums (with whom the amnesty activists had coordinated), an anti-abortion advocate whose name has long been forgotten, and the “other Fritz”—Fritz Mondale, who would become Carter’s running mate. Fritz Efaw won the most desirable primetime spot.

Next came the battle with the Democratic National Committee (DNC) over who could speak on Efaw’s behalf. The established format was for a nominating speech, a seconding speech, and an acceptance speech. NCUUA had chosen Gold Star mother Louise Ransom, a leading advocate for amnesty, to make the nominating speech. Her son had been killed in Vietnam. But it was the seconding speaker, paraplegic Vietnam veteran and fiery antiwar activist Ron Kovic, who ran into resistance.

The DNC did everything in their power to keep Ron Kovic off the podium. They even claimed that the Democratic Party—the party of Roosevelt—did not have insurance to cover a wheelchair on the podium. The diverse team of amnesty advocates, including former exiled war resisters Dee Knight, Steve Grossman, and Gerry Condon (that’s me), would not take no for an answer. Eventually Ron Kovic was allowed to make what many observers agreed was the most powerful speech of the convention. He began with these words:

I am the living death
the memorial day on wheels
I am your yankee doodle dandy
your john wayne come home
your fourth of july firecracker
exploding in the grave

These words are also how Ron Kovic begins his remarkable autobiography, Born on the Fourth of July (his birthday), later memorialized in Oliver Stone’s marvelous 1989 film by the same name. Tom Cruise did an amazing job portraying Ron Kovic, and was nominated for Best Actor at the 62nd Academy Awards. The last scene in the film dramatizes Ron Kovic’s triumphant appearance at the 1976 Democratic Convention.

The team of amnesty organizers at the convention was exuberant after the powerful presentations by Louise Ransom, Ron Kovic, and Fritz Efaw. And rightly so. We had won 15 minutes of primetime TV proclaiming that Vietnam War resisters were heroes for resisting an unjust war, and should not be punished. What a triumph!

True to his word, once elected and inaugurated, Jimmy Carter wasted no time—his very first act as president was to pardon draft resisters. He also ordered the military to establish a case-by-case program for returning deserters. In a nod to the amnesty movement’s demand for a Single Type Discharge, Carter even set up a program for case-by-case review of less-than-honorable discharges.

This was not quite the “universal, unconditional” amnesty that we had fought so hard for. But it was quite an achievement. Many war resisters were able to resume normal lives without fear of arrest and imprisonment. Even those who chose to remain in Canada, Sweden, and other havens were able to legalize their status so they could return to the U.S. for family visits—a welcome departure from the days when the FBI would haunt their parents’ funerals looking to make arrests.

President Nixon had ended the draft in 1973, in part to defuse the antiwar movement, but six years later in 1979, during the Iran hostage crisis and increasing tensions with the Soviet Union, President Carter resumed draft registration, sparking another era of draft resistance. Young men are legally required to register for the draft when they turn 18, but millions have failed to do so. Fast forward to 2025: The Congress is haltingly considering several bills that would extend draft registration to women, and the debate about resuming the draft continues.

U.S. Is Immersed in War and Genocide Today

The terrain for GI resisters is arguably more difficult today. Soldiers who refused to deploy—or re-deploy—to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had a really hard time fighting for refuge in Canada, whose immigration policy has tightened considerably since the Vietnam era. Some were able to remain in Canada while others were forced to return to the U.S. and face military court martial. Sweden offered no refuge to Iraq and Afghanistan war resisters, and recently abandoned its neutrality in favor of joining U.S.-dominated NATO.

A 14-month-long Israeli campaign of daily horror and genocide against the Palestinian people—especially children—is being actively facilitated by the United States. U.S. troops remain in Syria, after helping to overthrow the Syrian government and replace it with an al Qaeda offshoot. The U.S. is escalating the war in Ukraine by facilitating the firing of U.S. missiles into nuclear-armed Russia. And the notorious Neocons who inhabit both Democratic and Republican administrations are pushing for wars against Iran and China. People across the political spectrum worry aloud about the looming threat of a civilization-ending nuclear war, while war planners insist they can fight and win a nuclear war. When will they ever learn?

It Is Right To Resist an Unjust War

Veterans For Peace (VFP), which includes Vietnam combat veterans as well as former GI resisters, has issued a statement applauding those Israeli soldiers who are refusing to fight in Gaza. Aaron Bushnell, an active-duty U.S. Airman, self-immolated in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington to protest the U.S.-Israeli genocide. Another active-duty Airman, Larry Hebert, then fasted against genocide in front of the White House and Congress. Many active duty personnel are expressing concern that they will be ordered to fight or facilitate illegal wars and genocide.

Veterans For Peace has joined with About Face—Veterans Against the War, the Center for Conscience and War, and the Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild to promote the Appeal for Redress (v.2), an opportunity for active-duty GI’s to legally present their concerns about war and genocide to their congressional representatives. The veterans also refer GI’s who are thinking about becoming Conscientious Objectors to the Center on Conscience and War, and to the GI Rights Hotline, 1-877-447-4487. If needed, the 40-year-old veterans’ organization can put people in touch with lawyers experienced in military law.

Harkening back to the Vietnam era amnesty movement, the VFP statement concludes with: “Remember, it is right to resist unjust wars and illegal orders.” These words will become all the more important in the dangerous days ahead, as will increasing support for military personnel who refuse to be part of unjust wars of empire and genocide.

America’s ultra-rich today love to play tax-avoidance games. One of their favorites goes by the tag “buy-borrow-die,” a neat set of tricks that lets billionaire households avoid any taxes on the gains they make from their investments.

The simple rules of the buy-borrow-die game: buy an asset—with your millions or billions—and watch it grow. If you have a hankering to pocket some of that gain, don’t sell the asset. Any sale would trigger a capital gains tax. Just borrow against that asset instead, a simple move that lets you avoid capital gains levies so long as you live.

And what happens when you die? Nothing! Your asset’s untaxed gains vanish for income tax purposes under a tax code provision known as “stepped-up basis.”

Thanks to this buy-hold for decades-sell, the effective tax rate on the multi-billion dollar gains of America’s Bezoses, Gateses, and Buffetts, even when they do sell assets before they die, approaches zero.

This buy-borrow-die, progressive lawmakers like U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden from Oregon believe, amounts to a game plan for creating dynastic fortunes. Wyden has proposed an antidote, dubbed the “Billionaires Income Tax,” which would require billionaires to pay tax annually on the gains they make from tradable assets like the corporate shares that list on stock exchanges.

Gains from non-tradable assets would go untaxed, under Wyden’s proposal, but only until the assets get sold, at which point the tax rate would be increased to account for the tax-free compounding of annual gains. And those who inherit millions and billions from billionaires would no longer, under Wyden’s bill, be able to benefit from our current tax code’s magical stepped-up basis.

Closing the buy-borrow-die loophole would, all by itself, be reason enough for passing Wyden’s Billionaires Income Tax bill. But buy-borrow-die may only be the second leakiest loophole Wyden’s proposal would close. His Billionaires Income Tax proposal would also shut down a far less well-known loophole I like to call “Buy-Hold for Decades-Sell.”

How does this loophole work? Consider two rich taxpayers, Jack and Jill. Each invests $10 million in a stock they hope will grow at a 10% annual long-term rate, a good but not great return for a rich investor. Investors in Berkshire Hathaway, for example, have seen average annual returns of about 20%.

Our Jack goes on to hold his stock for 30 years and realizes exactly the 10% annual return he hoped to achieve.

Jill opts for a more aggressive investment strategy. After holding her stock for just over one-year, long enough to qualify her profits for the preferential tax rate available to long-term capital gains, Jill then sells at an 11% gain, pays tax on the gain, and invests the remaining proceeds in a stock she believes has more potential going forward. She successfully repeats this strategy each year for 30 years.

You might guess that Jill’s eventual nest egg at the end of 30 years, after paying federal income tax at the current long-term gains rate of 23.8%, would be larger than Jack’s. But, despite Jill’s superior investment acumen, Jack’s $135 million nest egg turns out to be 20% larger than Jill’s $112 million nest egg.

How could that be? Jack, to be sure, does pay the same 23.8% tax on his capital gain as Jill. But Jack’s money has had the benefit of 30 years of compounding before Jack has to pay that tax. That benefit far outweighs Jack’s lower annual investment return.

Jack’s whopping tax benefit from holding an appreciating asset for several decades should give us pause. After all, we want investors to seek the highest yielding investments, not the ones that get the best tax treatment. We don’t want developers of promising new technologies, for example, struggling to raise capital because our tax law confers higher returns on investors who just keep on holding old, under-performing investments.

In our example, Jill’s annual tax of 23.8% on her gains reduces Jill’s 11% pre-tax rate of return to an after-tax return of 8.38%. But Jack, because he gets to defer the tax on his 10% annual gains for 30 years, sees the after-tax return on his investment reduced by only 0.93 percentage points, to 9.07%.

As a result, Jack, a poorer investor than Jill, has millions more wealth on hand at the end of 30 years.

What tax rate would Jack have to pay annually on the growth in his stock value to place him in the same position at the end of 30 years as a one-time tax of 23.8% upon the sale of that stock? He’d only have to pay tax at a 9.3% annual rate. That 9.3% would actually run lower than the 10% income tax rate that our federal tax code currently expects Americans with incomes barely above the poverty level to pay.

In some extreme cases today, our super rich can enjoy an effective annual tax rate on their investments far lower than Jack’s.

Consider a lucky Berkshire Hathaway investor who bought 100 shares back in 1979 at $260 per share, a $26,000 investment. That investor’s shares would be worth about $70 million today. The annual pre-tax return on those shares would be 19.19%. If the investor sold the shares and paid tax at 23.8% on the long-term gain, the investor would be left with about $53.35 million.

The investor’s annual rate of return after-tax would be 18.47%, a trifling 0.72 percentage point reduction from this investor’s pre-tax rate of return. The effective annual rate of tax on the growth in the investor’s stock value would be 3.75%, less than one-sixth the 23.8% one-time rate on the investor’s compounded gains.

That about sums up perfectly the magic of buy-hold for decades-sell, the loophole that causes the effective annual tax rate on the growth in the value of investments to decline as the rate of return and length of holding period increase. Thanks to this buy-hold for decades-sell, the effective tax rate on the multi-billion dollar gains of America’s Bezoses, Gateses, and Buffetts, even when they do sell assets before they die, approaches zero.

We don’t need to just close the buy-borrow-die loophole. We desperately need to shut the buy-hold for decades-sell loophole just as firmly.

For more than 44 hours Koreans have braved freezing snowstorms to demand the arrest of the elusive Yoon Suk Yeol, who has barricaded himself inside his official residence in defiance of constitutional and legal authority. Yoon, extolled by Washington as a “champion of democracy,” has vanished from public view behind hastily erected barricades manned by security and military personnel while ignoring repeated summons from both the anti-corruption and prosecution services.

Capping a monthlong standoff with the National Assembly and the Korean public over his brazen attempted coup, Washington’s “perfect partner” has spent the past week deploying the armed military and security services at his disposal to physically prevent police from serving him with an arrest warrant for insurrectionism and abuse of authority. Investigators from the Corruption Investigation Office attempting to execute the warrant—the first against a sitting president—were forced to withdraw from the presidential compound after a five-hour standoff with the over 200 armed men deployed by Yoon.

This unprecedented drama began unfolding on the night of December 3, 2024. Amid over 250 days of intentionally destabilizing U.S.-led war games and months of massive citizen protests demanding his resignation, the deeply unpopular president put his nation under martial law for the first time since 1979, dispatching armed troops with the orders to “shoot to kill” if necessary to surround the National Assembly and prevent lawmakers from convening to rescind the order.

How can the world support Korea’s quest for democracy, peace, and true sovereignty?

By the following night, some 2 million Koreans bearing light sticks, candles, and beacons formed a luminous sea around the National Assembly to demand the impeachment of Yoon Suk Yeol, while lawmakers clambered over fences and security barriers to gain access to the chambers. With a vote of 204 to 85, which included 12 lawmakers from the ruling People’s Power Party (PPP), the National Assembly impeached Yoon, with Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung declaring, “The people have proved that they are the owners of this country.”

While the Constitutional Court has 180 days to render a judgment on whether the impeachment motion is constitutional, Yoon’s rogue insurrectionism and contemptuous defiance of the rule of law is continuing, escalating tensions and instability.

Yoon’s motivation for his failed insurrection lies in the ongoing crisis of legitimacy facing his puppet government, which has eagerly acquiesced to every demand made by its American and Japanese “allies” while making a hollow mockery of Korean self-determination and ignoring the interests of the nation he swore to defend. Since assuming power in 2022 after winning the presidency by a razor-thin margin of 0.7%, Yoon has actively worked to undermine the very basis of Korean independence and democracy back to its roots during the brutal period of Japanese colonization in WWII.

Moreover, Washington’s unquenchable geopolitical ambitions, couched behind its so-called “ironclad commitment to Korea,” mandates the continuation of its policy of preferring right-wing governments at the expense of Korea’s sovereignty. This has overtly empowered and legitimized Yoon’s autocratic pursuit of power against the interests of the Korean people.

Thus, Yoon—who represented his country by sycophantically singing “American Pie” during a state dinner at the White House—has dutifully promoted the U.S.-led trilateral “Axis of War”, facilitating non-stop U.S.-led war games, and escalating tensions with Pyongyang while persecuting his domestic critics as “communists” and “anti-state forces.” His ongoing rogue behavior of defiance of the rule of law is directly related to the strong support he has received from Washington as “Biden’s man” in Seoul.

With the president suspended from power, what’s next for Korea’s “Revolution of Lights”? How can the world support Korea’s quest for democracy, peace, and true sovereignty? Demand accountability for Yoon’s legacy of authoritarianism, his continuing assault on democracy and the rule of law, and his betrayal of Korean sovereignty in service of Washington’s geopolitical ambitions. Call for a final end to Washington’s shameful history of subverting South Korean politics by abetting dangerous far-right forces that take Korea’s democracy and sovereignty hostage.

There’s no two ways about it, the Arab East is a mess. It is weak, divided, directionless, locked in multiple conflicts, and not in control of its own destiny. This isn’t new. It’s been this way for a century, with non-Arab powers preying off the region in pursuit of their own aspirations. This has been playing out in four major periods that define the Arab East’s plight during the last century. While the players dominating Arab history have changed over time, the constant is that Arabs have been the victims of manipulation by others.

One century ago, the Arab East was caught between the colonial designs and greed of the British and French. At stake was control of oil, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Suez Canal. These colonial powers carved up the region creating states out of whole cloth with imposed forms of governance, planting the seeds of conflict that have born bitter fruit since that time. Palestinians were dispossessed and dispersed to make way for a Western client-state in Israel. The Kurds were cut off from one another under the control of four rival states. The French ushered in a sectarian state in Lebanon with their favored sects in control, while Syria and Iraq had imposed monarchies which ultimately gave way to ideological military coups that masked sectarianism.

During the Cold War, the Arab East became one of many platforms worldwide for competition between the US and the Soviet Union. While the Soviets were the patron of the region’s “revolution movements” and “anti-imperialist” military regimes, the US cultivated its client-state Israel, allies among the monarchies wanting stability, and sectarian groups seeking to preserve their positions of influence.

At the Cold War’s end, and especially after 9/11, the US seriously overplayed its hand with its invasion and occupation of Iraq, ideology-driven advocacy of democratization, and total embrace and empowerment of Israeli ambitions. The result was two-fold: the diminished role of the US, which lost treasure, troops, and prestige while on this fool’s errand to create a client-state in Iraq; and the emboldening of non-Arab regional powers who saw an opportunity to expand their influence over this region.

And so here we are today in the wake of wars in Gaza and Lebanon and the fall of the Assad regime in Syria. While the Russians and the US still have their hands in the pot, it’s clear that the region’s newly emergent overseers are now, to different degrees, the non-Arab states of Israel, Iran, and Turkey.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sounds megalomaniacal in describing his country’s dominant regional role, while ignoring the reality that Israel is only in its position because of massive supplies of US weapons, back-up military assets, and political support. He claims to be fighting and winning on seven fronts, saving the West from the scourge of Islamic extremism. He is operating without restraint, genocidally transforming much of Gaza into a no-man’s land, with permanent bases as signs of permanent conquest. Israeli forces are doing much the same in Syria and, despite an internationally accepted ceasefire with Lebanon, Israel has already made clear that it will violate the terms of the agreement by retaining a presence in the south of Lebanon.

Iran, undoubtedly weakened by its losses, especially in Lebanon and Syria, may be down, but it’s not out. It retains the support of significant groups in Lebanon and some in Syria, not to mention its deep penetration into Iraq and Yemen.

Iran may have lost its lynchpin, Syria, and with that a weakening of its axis of resistance, but Turkey and its support for the region’s Islamic movements has emerged as the new factor in that country’s and the Arab East’s political equation. The impact of this development on empowering or emboldening ideological Muslim affiliates in neighboring states is not yet clear. Nor do we know how religious or ethnic minority communities will be impacted by or react. But it’s not unreasonable for them to be wary of what some fear are Turkey’s Ottoman Empire-like ambitions.

At the same time, the fate of the two major victims of the British/French machinations, the Palestinians and the Kurds, remain both unresolved and impossible to ignore.

The Kurdish nation was forcibly separated into four portions and incorporated into Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Today’s major flashpoint is between the Kurdish region of Syria, backed by the US, facing resistance by Turkey who sees its independence as threatening their continued control of the Kurdish community in Turkey. It’s a flare-up waiting to happen.

Meanwhile, Israel’s projection of regional power remains challenged by their continuing genocide in Gaza and intensified oppression of Palestinians in Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank. This situation not only fuels greater Palestinian resistance, but also contributes to Israel’s isolation among Arabs and much of the rest of the world.

Some continue to blame the Arabs of the East for this sorry state of affairs, finding fault with their sectarianism or absence of leadership. This, however, is akin to blaming the victims. The divisions that exist are the result of external manipulation. And in the past, when movements emerged to create broadly-based unity based on a non-sectarian identity, external forces moved to crush or exploit them.

It's high time for the Arabs to take control of their destiny. The Arab East must no longer be a playground for non-Arabs to compete for their own ends. One place to start would be for the Gulf Arab states, the apparent locus of Arab strength these days, to convene a summit and lay out a vision for the future coupled with demands:

- a hands off policy for non-Arab states, with the threat that future relations will depend on adherence to this goal;

- a vision of non-sectarian Arab unity within each of the Mashreq’s states;

- an end to Israeli occupation, expansionism, and aggression against multiple Arab states;

- full self-determination for the Palestinian people and an end of the regional countries’ denial of the rights of the Kurdish people; and

- the creation of working groups to study the steps necessary to make these goals possible.

Some may dismiss this as a pipe dream. It won’t happen overnight because much accrued damage must be undone. But if a new vision isn’t developed, backed up by steps to translate it into reality, the region will continue to hobble along crippled by division and external manipulation.

We’ve been talking about the H1B visa controversy and how it may be affecting tech workers in the US, where the H1B program has prompted a 5% decline in computer science majors. Today we’re flipping the script to consider the issue from the other side: India, which supplies the vast majority of H1B visa workers to the US. Indian tech sector leaders are concerned that the program is poaching some of their best coders and developers, creating a neo-imperialist brain drain from India and other tech centers.

“The TMI Show” explores the other side of the H1B visa issue from the other side of the world with co-hosts Ted Rall and Manila Chan and guest V K Samhith, independent game developer and the founder of BornMonkie.

The post TMI Show Ep 50: “How H1Bs Are Screwing India Too” first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post TMI Show Ep 50: “How H1Bs Are Screwing India Too” appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Honestly, as 2025 begins, isn’t it finally time to reimagine American history? So, what do you think of this: George Trump, Abraham Trump, Ulysses S. Trump, Franklin D. Trump, Dwight D. Trump, John F. Trump, Lyndon B. Trump, and even Richard M. and George W. Trump. And yes, of course, on January 20th, Donald J. Trump (of all people) will once again be president of these distinctly (dis-)United States of America.

As Joe Biden hobbles into… well, if not the future, then some unknown past, HE looms over us, the political equivalent of a giant armed drone about to be back in the skies of our lives. Of all the Americans whom, once upon a time, I couldn’t have dreamed of being in the White House, Donald J. Trump would have been at the top of my list. No longer, of course. Sometimes I even imagine calling my parents back from the dead and trying to explain President Trump (twice!) to them. They would be… well, flabbergasted is far too modest a word for it, even if, to put him in a context they would have understood, I had compared him to a nightmarish figure of their own time: Wisconsin Senator Joseph R. McCarthy.

My mother was a political and theatrical caricaturist in the 1950s. Of all the drawings of hers I still have, the one that, grimly enough, I keep propped up near my desk in the room where I work — call me a masochist, if you will — is a caricature she did for the New York Post (in the pre-Murdoch days when it was still a liberal publication) of that grimmest of senators of her era, Joe McCarthy. He was the fellow who claimed that the State Department contained hundreds — yes, hundreds! — of communists. She drew that eerily smiling portrait in the spring of 1954 at the time of the Army-McCarthy hearings when he insisted that the U.S. military, too, was filled with commies and, in the process, essentially took himself down.

I was then nine years old and Senator McCarthy’s face was quite literally the first one I ever saw on a black-and-white TV in my house after the Post hired my mom to draw those televised congressional hearings. On opening our front door and walking in from school on whatever spring day that was, the face on that new TV screen was… well, the political precursor to D.J.T., although McCarthy looked far more like the evil monster he was than The Donald does. (No yellow hair and burnished red face for him.)

And yes, he was indeed a monster (and not just an anti-communist maniac, but an antisemitic one, too). Here’s the difference, though: he could indeed wound officials in Washington, as well as figures in the entertainment industry and elsewhere, destroying careers, but he was a senator and no more than that. In other words, he never truly entered the ultimate realms of American, not to speak of global, power.

Unlike Donald Trump, he was never chosen to be president, no less reelected to that powerful position in an era when, thanks in part to this country’s Global War on Terror, whoever holds that office has become a far more powerful figure in the American political landscape. Senator McCarthy never had a significant hand in creating the national budget. He undoubtedly couldn’t have imagined taking stances like insisting that this country should possess Greenland or repossess the Panama Canal, no less referring to Canada as “the 51st state” and its leader as “Governor Justin Trudeau,” as You Know Who did only recently. He could never have ordered the U.S. military to do anything, no less potentially round up and deport masses of immigrants (though, had he been alive in 2017, he might at least have agreed with Donald Trump that a group of neo-Nazi and white nationalist protestors in Charlottesville, Virginia, included some “very fine people”).

Strangely enough, however, they had more in common than just a certain grim similarity in style, belligerence, and subject matter. The two of them were also linked by a single adviser, one Roy Cohn, who helped them both find their all-too-aggressive footing in this ever stranger world of ours.

A New “Golden” Age

Now, of course, we’re about to face the modern Joe McCarthy the third time around (counting, of course, his loss in 2020 that he’s never stopped disputing). He will return to the White House on a planet that, in more than one sense, is all too literally going to hell in a handbasket. I mean, just imagine this: in the last election, 49.7% of American voters and a striking number of energy industry funders decided to send back to the Oval Office a man whose tagline was, above all else, “drill, baby, drill” — a phrase that, in reality, should have been “heat, baby, heat,” or “destroy, baby, destroy,” in a world that’s already been warming to the boiling point, with year after year of unprecedented high temperatures even when he wasn’t in office. We’re talking about a candidate who has openly sworn that, on Day One back in the White House, he will direct his government to do everything in its power to turn this planet into an all-too-literal hothouse.

So, expect a presidency focused — to the extent that Donald Trump can truly focus on anything (except, of course, himself) — on drilling, drilling, drilling for oil and natural gas, and so adding significantly more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere (and waters) of Planet Earth. Which means more wildfires, droughts, unprecedented storms, you name it. And that, of course, is just to begin to lay out the nightmare to come. And don’t forget that, at least until (as predictably will happen) Trump turns on him, it looks like we’ll have as co-president the richest person on earth, that potential future first trillionaire Elon Musk. We’re talking, of course, about the fellow who only recently and all too symbolically gave his support to Germany’s rising anti-immigrant neo-Nazi party, the Alternative für Deutschland. (“Only the AfD can save Germany.”)

Yes, Donald Trump is guaranteed to make this not only the hottest planet around but a planet of billionaires living in a new golden age (both of their wealth and of a world in flames).

When you think about it (as so many American voters obviously didn’t) on this ever hotter, more arid, more wildly stormy planet of ours, we (and I think under the circumstances I should put that in quotes) — “we” voted back into office someone who will leave Senator Joe McCarthy in the dust of history when it comes to utter malevolence and destructiveness. Consider it guaranteed that he will go a long way toward tearing both this country and this world apart. Indeed, he truly does give the all-American decline of the United States and this planet wild new meaning.

Unlike Senator McCarthy, he won’t just malignantly take out a few imagined bad guys, but potentially all of us. In such a context, four years of (or do I mean in?) hell will have a new, anything but metaphorical meaning in the wake (not an inappropriate word under the circumstances) of the year that will undoubtedly prove to have been the hottest ever and which, in the years to come, will undoubtedly be left in — once again! — the dustbin of history. Oh, and with the help of Elon Musk (or as Bernie Sanders calls him “President Elon Musk”), he only recently tried (and failed) to ensure that Americans who were recently clobbered by two horrific hurricanes that had been fed mightily by the ever more severely overheated waters of the Gulf of Mexico would not get any further government help in the recovery process.

Consider it no small thing that, 70 years after Senator Joe McCarthy went down in flames (and then essentially drank himself to death), an all-too-fierce update of him (and what an update he is!) will once again be in the White House, backed — imagine this, Joe! — by the richest man on Planet Earth, a possible future speaker of the House of Representatives, Trump’s ultimate attack dog — or do I mean (thanks to Space X) the commander in chief of outer space? — Elon R. Musk, who controls a world of commentary, communication, and entertainment that would have been inconceivable on the planet where black-and-white TVs were a wonder to behold.

Make America Gross Again

Imagining the future has never been among humanity’s greatest skills. With that in mind let me nonetheless suggest that Donald Trump’s return to the all-too-grimly Grayer House is a sign of how this country and this planet are preparing to go down big time. The second time around, consider him the functional definition of decline — even if the U.S. does get Greenland and the Panama Canal in the bargain. (Okay, I’m just joking or do I mean Donalding?) In fact, think of MAGA the second time around as Make America Gross Again.

There have, of course, been distinctly bad times in this country before. Consider, for instance, 1968, the year of the assassinations of both Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy, of rioting and destruction in American cities, and of the horror of the ongoing war in Vietnam and the election of — god save us! — Richard M. Nixon as president. Still, it remains hard to face the second round (or is it the 102nd round?) of Donald J. Trump.

Yes, starting on January 20th, you can plan on watching the country that, in the years after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, American officials came to think of as “the sole superpower” on planet Earth, begin to come apart at the seams on a planet that, unfortunately, is now doing the same. After all, a Europe increasingly threatened by rightist regimes seems itself at the edge of a similar reality (while, of course, Donald Trump functionally dismisses the NATO alliance), even as the nightmarish war in Ukraine spins on (and on and on), while the Middle East seems to be in a stunning process of disintegration.

It’s important, in fact, to put Donald Trump in a global context since he was anything but solely responsible for either the climate or war chaos that’s been increasing for all too long with or without him. What he represents, however, is the coming apart at the seams of that once-upon-a-time sole superpower and that’s no small thing in what still passes for human (or perhaps I mean inhuman) history.

And don’t expect any better when he takes on what passes (even if not very well these days) for the rising superpower on Planet Earth, China, tariff by tariff. Believe me, it won’t be pretty, economically, politically, or even potentially militarily to see who trumps whom in that global showdown between the two powers now putting more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than any other countries on this planet.

In short, we’re living in a world of increasingly human-made chaos (with a distinct helping hand from nature) that’s about to experience an occupant of the White House who should be considered President Chaos. You know, the man who won the 2024 election by “a landslide” (or so he claims) and is, as Senator Bernie Sanders has suggested, moving us ever closer to oligarchy and authoritarianism. Under the circumstances, don’t be surprised if, in our future, lurks an even more devastating set of landslides due to… yes, among other things, climate change.

So, thank you, President Chaos (and, for the time being, Elon) for offering such a helping hand in putting us on the path to an all too literal hell on Earth.

When news broke over the weekend that President Biden just approved an $8 billion deal for shipping weapons to Israel, a nameless official vowed that “we will continue to provide the capabilities necessary for Israel's defense.” Following the reports last month from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch concluding that Israeli actions in Gaza are genocide, Biden’s decision was a new low for his presidency.

It’s logical to focus on Biden as an individual. His choices to keep sending huge quantities of weaponry to Israel have been pivotal and calamitous. But the presidential genocide and the active acquiescence of the vast majority of Congress are matched by the dominant media and overall politics of the United States.

Forty days after the Gaza war began, Anne Boyer announced her resignation as poetry editor of the New York Times Magazine. More than a year later, her statement illuminates why the moral credibility of so many liberal institutions has collapsed in the wake of Gaza’s destruction.

While Boyer denounced “the Israeli state’s U.S.-backed war against the people of Gaza,” she emphatically chose to disassociate herself from the nation’s leading liberal news organization: “I can’t write about poetry amidst the ‘reasonable’ tones of those who aim to acclimatize us to this unreasonable suffering. No more ghoulish euphemisms. No more verbally sanitized hellscapes. No more warmongering lies.”

The conformist media climate smoothed the way for Biden and his prominent rationalizers to slide off the hook and shape the narrative, disguising complicity as evenhanded policy.

The acclimatizing process soon became routine. It was most crucially abetted by President Biden and his loyalists, who were especially motivated to pretend that he wasn’t really doing what he was really doing.

For mainline journalists, the process required the willing suspension of belief in a consistent standard of language and humanity. When Boyer acutely grasped the dire significance of its Gaza coverage, she withdrew from “the newspaper of record.”

Content analysis of the war’s first six weeks found that coverage by the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times had a steeply dehumanizing slant toward Palestinians. The three papers “disproportionately emphasized Israeli deaths in the conflict” and “used emotive language to describe the killings of Israelis, but not Palestinians,” a study by The Intercept showed. “The term ‘slaughter’ was used by editors and reporters to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 60 to 1, and ‘massacre’ was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 125 to 2. ‘Horrific’ was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 36 to 4.”

After a year of the Gaza war, Arab-American historian Rashid Khalidi said: “My objection to organs of opinion like the New York Times is that they see absolutely everything from an Israeli perspective. ‘How does it affect Israel, how do the Israelis see it?’ Israel is at the center of their worldview, and that’s true of our elites generally, all over the West. The Israelis have very shrewdly, by preventing direct reportage from Gaza, further enabled that Israelocentric perspective.”

Khalidi summed up: “The mainstream media is as blind as it ever was, as willing to shill for any monstrous Israeli lie, to act as stenographers for power, repeating what is said in Washington.”

The conformist media climate smoothed the way for Biden and his prominent rationalizers to slide off the hook and shape the narrative, disguising complicity as evenhanded policy. Meanwhile, mighty boosts of Israel’s weapons and ammunition were coming from the United States. Nearly half of the Palestinians they killed were children.

For those children and their families, the road to hell was paved with good doublethink. So, for instance, while the Gaza horrors went on, no journalist would confront Biden with what he’d said at the time of the widely decried school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, when the president had quickly gone on live television. “There are parents who will never see their child again,” he said, adding: “To lose a child is like having a piece of your soul ripped away. . . . It’s a feeling shared by the siblings, and the grandparents, and their family members, and the community that’s left behind.” And he asked plaintively, “Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep letting this happen?”

The massacre in Uvalde killed 19 children. The daily massacre in Gaza has taken the lives of that many Palestinian kids in a matter of hours.

While Biden refused to acknowledge the ethnic cleansing and mass murder that he kept making possible, Democrats in his orbit cooperated with silence or other types of evasion. A longstanding maneuver amounts to checking the box for a requisite platitude by affirming support for a “two-state solution.”

Dominating Capitol Hill, an unspoken precept has held that Palestinian people are expendable as a practical political matter. Party leaders like Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries did virtually nothing to indicate otherwise. Nor did they exert themselves to defend incumbent House Democrats Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, defeated in summer primaries with an unprecedented deluge of multimillion-dollar ad campaigns funded by AIPAC and Republican donors.

The overall media environment was a bit more varied but no less lethal for Palestinian civilians. During its first several months, the Gaza war received huge quantities of mainstream media coverage, which thinned over time; the effects were largely to normalize the continual slaughter. Some exceptional reporting existed about the suffering, but the journalism gradually took on a media ambience akin to background noise, while credulously hyping Biden’s weak ceasefire efforts as determined quests.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came in for increasing amounts of criticism. But the prevalent U.S. media coverage and political rhetoric—unwilling to expose the Israeli mission to destroy Palestinians en masse—rarely went beyond portraying Israel’s leaders as insufficiently concerned with protecting Palestinian civilians.

Instead of candor about horrific truths, the usual tales of U.S. media and politics have offered euphemisms and evasions.

When she resigned as the New York Times Magazine poetry editor in mid-November 2023, Anne Boyer condemned what she called “an ongoing war against the people of Palestine, people who have resisted through decades of occupation, forced dislocation, deprivation, surveillance, siege, imprisonment, and torture.” Another poet, William Stafford, wrote decades ago:

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.