Multiplicities In Paradise

The problem with our illegitimate president is not that he is imbecilic and inept—it is that he has surrendered total power to the oligarchs. They get what they want. They do what they want. Although the president is a one-man wrecking crew aimed at democracy and institutions, and he has turned the United States into a laughingstock around the globe, our national crisis is embodied not in Trump but the corporate state’s now unfettered pillage. Trump, who has no inclination or ability to govern, has handed the machinery of government over to the bankers, corporate executives, right-wing think tanks, CEOs and generals. They are  eradicating the few regulations  and laws that inhibited a naked kleptocracy. They are dynamiting the institutions,  including the State Department , that served interests other than corporate profit and are stacking the courts with far right-wing, corporate-controlled ideologues. Trump provides the daily entertainment; the elites handle the bu...

How To Survive The Age Of Trumpistan M argret Mead once said “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has,”  I never imagined she meant alt-right extremists and neo-Nazis. (Nor did she I'd bet). But it worked for them. (It will work for us, again too, as it has in the past at times.) One thing has become apparent. Institutions will not save us. We can only save ourselves, and each other. I t took Putin one year to take over the Russian media. It took only four years to dismantle its electoral system. Russia's judiciary collapsed unnoticed. The capture of institutions in Turkey was carried out even faster, by a man once celebrated as the democratic leader who would lead Turkey into the EU. Poland, in less than a year, has undone a quarter century’s accomplishments in building a constitutional democracy. While the United States has much stronger institutions than Germany ...