Right, Kelly. In Clinton's lame duck days, his ego kept him from Giving Al Gore the baton to show his abilities on the way into the future. Assuming Al would have done a good job, we'd be on our way.
Corbin, please contact Michigan Rep. Elissa Slotkin. You and she have a great deal to share with us voters. Her dynamic talk on You Tube a few nights ago was amazingly well thought-out and delivered.
Agreed! Not only are we not doomed, it is in fact the opposite. This is endgame capitalism - unmitigated greed and selfishness. It was always and only going to come to this unless we had stopped it sooner. We didn't so here we are. The chaos the thieving billionaires are causing is a golden opportunity to reset our social structures and institutions to be more equitable, free and fair. It's actually fun fighting the fascist assholes, it's being one that sucks!
If enuf Cultural Creative progressives stop complaining, step up, DO WHAT THEY CAN TO HELP and run for office, we can and we will recapture a kinder-gentler, fairer democratic culture.
Corbin, congratulations on an excellent article and heroic attempt to wake up our country. We are lost because of poor leadership on both sides but as you said, it’s not too late to course correct if we can focus and find our way back to being the nation that builds and leads in industry and green energy. Although it may sound corny, we are Americans. United, we can do anything we put our minds to and the entire world knows that. Thank you for shining a light on what should be obvious and thank you for your optimism. With more people like you, we definitely have a fighting chance for a better future! Don’t stop sharing your message.
While I agree we need to build and our tax dollars need to be invested into new factories those factories can no longer be privately or investment owned. They and the raw materials taken out of the earth must be owned by the American Citizen. We need a new economic structure that rewards entrepreneurs while giving labor a vested interest in their work. I say it this way unions are not good on industry scale but very important at the size of the company. With employees seeing the condition of the company they work for they can determine for themselves what their value is and the value of the leadership team… a matter of fact they will see the value of their co workers down to the gal or guy who cleans up etc…
On the other hand we must re-engage in the world and must fight for democracy against authoritarian regimes. But that means supporting labor in those countries…
We are going to quickly find our food sources diminished because migrant farm workers are being kidnapped by ICE, this regime’s most revered thugs because they fill the profitable prisons…
I’m sitting here along the I-5 corridor, looking at the Columbia River and the BNSF railroad. There’s a million square foot warehouse/logistics center six miles up the road. It’s complete and empty. Our ports are developing properties that can be used for trade. Our community college is building a tech center to create opportunities for the folks whose relatives worked for years in the timber industry. We fought a coal export terminal and the environmental groups killed off a methanol refinery. Where’s the national strategic plan that recognizes and supports the assets we are building largely on our own dime and initiative? We have a workforce that wants to work.
They always want to find love, start families, buy a home, get their kids educated, have health care and be able to live, just flat out live. We need courageous people to lead the way. We have to figure this out. Maybe, just maybe, we’ve reached the tipping point that will open the way for a new generation. At 70, I’m ready for it.
📢 Grandparents, We Must Sound the Alarm: Our Tax Dollars Are Funding a Police State
Dear Beloved Grandparents,
It’s time we speak plainly.
As we sit around our kitchen tables, our children and grandchildren are being forced to grow up in a country that is sliding closer and closer to authoritarian rule — and we are being made to fund it.
⚠️ The Senate’s version of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Reconciliation Bill” includes massive ICE funding — funneling billions of our tax dollars into:
Masked federal agents in unmarked vans
Coordinated, abusive raids in communities across the country
The kidnapping of long-time residents — including legal immigrants — under vague suspicions
A growing federal police force operating with no transparency or civil rights oversight
This is not border security. This is state-sponsored terror, paid for by working Americans like you and me.
And it gets worse.
During a recent visit with El Salvador’s president, Trump boasted about plans to deport “homegrown” people — a chilling phrase that should strike fear in any true patriot. It implies citizens — born and raised here — could be targeted for political reasons, ethnicity, activism, or simple dissent.
Let us be clear: this is the language of fascism.
We’ve read about this in history books. Hitler’s party didn’t start with death camps. It started by vilifying immigrants, imprisoning critics, and passing laws that funded paramilitary forces while silencing opposition — all under the guise of “order.”
That is the road we are now on.
🛑 But we can still turn around — if we act now.
✅ Call your U.S. Senators and Representatives. Demand they vote no on this ICE expansion buried in Trump’s reconciliation bill.
✅ Support independent media — they are uncovering what corporate outlets are ignoring. Share, subscribe, and spread the truth.
✅ Educate your family and neighbors — especially young voters and those raised on right-wing news.
✅ Remind your communities: We’ve seen this before. We must never be silent again.
📣 Grandparents — we are the protectors of memory and the guardians of democracy.
Let us honor that duty now.
🇺🇸 Peaceful resistance. Public truth. People before power.
Well, this is a very astute analysis, for the most part. The shift in CONTROL of manufacturing as well as technical capacity is crucial for how it all plays out.
However, there is a big gaping hole, or, should I say, contradiction. We have become passive, ignorant consumers, but of what? We don't need to just recapture our capacity for production and then "build, baby, build!" Build what? Centralized privately controlled capital markets will never be able to answer that question. Taking control of a failing global political economy is not the answer.
We (or they) have already built far too much of the wrong stuff. The context of this insightful article is a global political economy at the precipice of collapse into an anthropic chaos "made in China" for the US market--none of it is viable as the Earth System spins out of control.
Ever hear of an industrial policy? The idea is that a society should shape its configuration of industries and and their production in line with the nation's needs. "Ew, socialism. Oh, heavens! What about our wonderful free markets?" Sorry, but while we could find some examples of markets in history that were relatively free, our modern political economy is oligarchic, driven by plutocrats whose only interest is to use their extreme economic and political power to accumulate more capital at the expense of the very society they claim to serve best, driving society to the tipping point where pushed too far, it always reaches a crisis, a revolution, or a simple collapse.
So, what we need is NOT to build, build, build, but to very carefully figure out exactly what we need most to produce, redesign, restore, and regenerate in order to create an economic order that serves the interest of society in its own well being while regenerating the ecological systems that support us all. It would be an example of "creative destruction" the likes of which Schumpeter could never have imagined. We are in for some very big change, so let's make it a new Great Transformation to a wellbeing based ecological civilization. We can choose if we conjure up the vision to look past the old economisms. To fail to choose is to choose to fail.
I'm starting to see a pattern: US tax dollars funded every new pharmaceutical in the last decade (Institute for New Econimic Thinking), but the pharmeceuticals decide the prices and pay their CEO's millions annually. Government subsidies (aka US taxpayer dollars) have given people like Bezos the chance to pay zero in taxes on his billions due to tax credits and subsidies (same for Zuckerberg and other billionaires), but those who are marginalized--for their color, age, religion, gender, economic standing as 40/hr week workers--and need help are LAZY and milking the system?!? And when people talk about wanting to level the playing field by taxing the rich who have made sure the middle class wages stagnate (for the last 50 years) and those at the bottom suffer the most as they rake in the money those people could have earned, the rich scream "Communism," "Nanny State," or "That's not fair!" They need to look in the mirror.
A visiting sociology professor in my University of AR class in 1967 gave a lecture with the warning that this was going to be the case if the direction didn't change. We were on the downhill slide then!! We had some improvement inbetween, but not enough to counteract the trend. As the prof stated, we had to PRODUCE goods and not just be a "service economy". Some people would have to make goods for everyone to have adequate income. The cash flow is finally dwindling in the U.S. due to so many "service" people and making purchases of goods from other countries. We got used to cheap prices on goods from China -- does anyone remember when WalMart had sign in the stores of "MADE in America".... that's quite different than Make America Great Again!!!
China prioritizes common interests of Chinese people while allowing some to get rich from what they do. We prioritize interests of the very few, mainly rich Wall Street bankers and those that serve them, while keeping the rest of us struggling to meet ends explaining us that that is how the free market works. Our prosperity is still to come, all we need is to obey and be patient!
History shows us every empire comes to its end at some point. Ours is coming to its end. Trump may want to make America great again (through fascism), and even Democrats may want to return to their Party’s heyday, with FDR, or JFK, or maybe Clinton, but either way, it’s a pipe dream. It’s China’s turn…again; and once they catch up to us militarily, our goose is cooked.
Well, China made a comeback. It took 1000 years, but I don’t think that we’ve lost so much of our capacity that I come back for us is impossible. I think we’re a few election cycles away from a comeback. The question is will we look towards the future and the possibilities or will we all Sit around and lament what we’ve lost we just need to know what we’ve lost so we know we need to get it back.
I’m surprised you think the regime will permit free and fair elections, but I’m glad you’re staying positive and think we can reconstruct our system for the better. I don’t think either is the case, but maybe I’m just having the July 4th blues.
Thanks for sharing, Bruce! Yes, "worker-owned companies" are a foundational principle of socialism (not communism, which is where the state owns companies). When I see memes on social media representing fire departments and libraries as examples of socialism, I just shake my head. They're better examples of communism than socialism. The Right sure as hell doesn't know what socialism is...but neither does much of the Left. We have much work to do!
We should have had Al Gore leading the way oh so many years ago, but instead we got George and here be are today, wrong path chosen.
Hello Kelley... I agree Whole-Heartily... That was the Tipping Point....
Right, Kelly. In Clinton's lame duck days, his ego kept him from Giving Al Gore the baton to show his abilities on the way into the future. Assuming Al would have done a good job, we'd be on our way.
We are now a shit hole country with a pussy grabber in chief as dear leader.
He leads us right into more shit. His ignorant worshippers believe whatever that fucking liar says.
WE ARE DOOMED
We are not doomed. We are poised to recapture our nation.
Corbin, please contact Michigan Rep. Elissa Slotkin. You and she have a great deal to share with us voters. Her dynamic talk on You Tube a few nights ago was amazingly well thought-out and delivered.
Agreed! Not only are we not doomed, it is in fact the opposite. This is endgame capitalism - unmitigated greed and selfishness. It was always and only going to come to this unless we had stopped it sooner. We didn't so here we are. The chaos the thieving billionaires are causing is a golden opportunity to reset our social structures and institutions to be more equitable, free and fair. It's actually fun fighting the fascist assholes, it's being one that sucks!
If enuf Cultural Creative progressives stop complaining, step up, DO WHAT THEY CAN TO HELP and run for office, we can and we will recapture a kinder-gentler, fairer democratic culture.
Hello Corbin... I Hope That You Are Right...
Corbin, congratulations on an excellent article and heroic attempt to wake up our country. We are lost because of poor leadership on both sides but as you said, it’s not too late to course correct if we can focus and find our way back to being the nation that builds and leads in industry and green energy. Although it may sound corny, we are Americans. United, we can do anything we put our minds to and the entire world knows that. Thank you for shining a light on what should be obvious and thank you for your optimism. With more people like you, we definitely have a fighting chance for a better future! Don’t stop sharing your message.
Thanks for this refreshing, large scale view! This is my first reading of America's Undoing, and it's just the beginning.
Check out americas undoing.com and you can see a lot of the other posts and articles
Corbin, I just used the link and what came up was that the domain is up for sale. ??
Corbin knows his shit!
Oh my God, Corbin, I could not love this article more! Such great work. Thank you.
I am so happy to hear that you liked it
While I agree we need to build and our tax dollars need to be invested into new factories those factories can no longer be privately or investment owned. They and the raw materials taken out of the earth must be owned by the American Citizen. We need a new economic structure that rewards entrepreneurs while giving labor a vested interest in their work. I say it this way unions are not good on industry scale but very important at the size of the company. With employees seeing the condition of the company they work for they can determine for themselves what their value is and the value of the leadership team… a matter of fact they will see the value of their co workers down to the gal or guy who cleans up etc…
On the other hand we must re-engage in the world and must fight for democracy against authoritarian regimes. But that means supporting labor in those countries…
Curtis, do you know about worker-owned, worker-run businesses?
Why WORKERS should OWN companies (25 minute Scandanavian explainer in English). The best way to exit from corrupt Capitalism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSc6OqSPq2E
We are going to quickly find our food sources diminished because migrant farm workers are being kidnapped by ICE, this regime’s most revered thugs because they fill the profitable prisons…
You left that out of your analysis
100%
I’m sitting here along the I-5 corridor, looking at the Columbia River and the BNSF railroad. There’s a million square foot warehouse/logistics center six miles up the road. It’s complete and empty. Our ports are developing properties that can be used for trade. Our community college is building a tech center to create opportunities for the folks whose relatives worked for years in the timber industry. We fought a coal export terminal and the environmental groups killed off a methanol refinery. Where’s the national strategic plan that recognizes and supports the assets we are building largely on our own dime and initiative? We have a workforce that wants to work.
They always want to find love, start families, buy a home, get their kids educated, have health care and be able to live, just flat out live. We need courageous people to lead the way. We have to figure this out. Maybe, just maybe, we’ve reached the tipping point that will open the way for a new generation. At 70, I’m ready for it.
Rosemary, do you know about this?
Why WORKERS should OWN companies (25 minute Scandanavian explainer in English). The best way to exit from corrupt Capitalism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSc6OqSPq2E
👆🏼👀🇺🇸📣
📢 Grandparents, We Must Sound the Alarm: Our Tax Dollars Are Funding a Police State
Dear Beloved Grandparents,
It’s time we speak plainly.
As we sit around our kitchen tables, our children and grandchildren are being forced to grow up in a country that is sliding closer and closer to authoritarian rule — and we are being made to fund it.
⚠️ The Senate’s version of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Reconciliation Bill” includes massive ICE funding — funneling billions of our tax dollars into:
Masked federal agents in unmarked vans
Coordinated, abusive raids in communities across the country
The kidnapping of long-time residents — including legal immigrants — under vague suspicions
A growing federal police force operating with no transparency or civil rights oversight
This is not border security. This is state-sponsored terror, paid for by working Americans like you and me.
And it gets worse.
During a recent visit with El Salvador’s president, Trump boasted about plans to deport “homegrown” people — a chilling phrase that should strike fear in any true patriot. It implies citizens — born and raised here — could be targeted for political reasons, ethnicity, activism, or simple dissent.
Let us be clear: this is the language of fascism.
We’ve read about this in history books. Hitler’s party didn’t start with death camps. It started by vilifying immigrants, imprisoning critics, and passing laws that funded paramilitary forces while silencing opposition — all under the guise of “order.”
That is the road we are now on.
🛑 But we can still turn around — if we act now.
✅ Call your U.S. Senators and Representatives. Demand they vote no on this ICE expansion buried in Trump’s reconciliation bill.
✅ Support independent media — they are uncovering what corporate outlets are ignoring. Share, subscribe, and spread the truth.
✅ Educate your family and neighbors — especially young voters and those raised on right-wing news.
✅ Remind your communities: We’ve seen this before. We must never be silent again.
📣 Grandparents — we are the protectors of memory and the guardians of democracy.
Let us honor that duty now.
🇺🇸 Peaceful resistance. Public truth. People before power.
In Solidarity,
Clarissa Sr, an American Grandma
#GrandparentsForDemocracy #IndependentMediaMatters #DefundICE #StopThePoliceState #GoodTrouble #ProtectOurFuture
Well, this is a very astute analysis, for the most part. The shift in CONTROL of manufacturing as well as technical capacity is crucial for how it all plays out.
However, there is a big gaping hole, or, should I say, contradiction. We have become passive, ignorant consumers, but of what? We don't need to just recapture our capacity for production and then "build, baby, build!" Build what? Centralized privately controlled capital markets will never be able to answer that question. Taking control of a failing global political economy is not the answer.
We (or they) have already built far too much of the wrong stuff. The context of this insightful article is a global political economy at the precipice of collapse into an anthropic chaos "made in China" for the US market--none of it is viable as the Earth System spins out of control.
Ever hear of an industrial policy? The idea is that a society should shape its configuration of industries and and their production in line with the nation's needs. "Ew, socialism. Oh, heavens! What about our wonderful free markets?" Sorry, but while we could find some examples of markets in history that were relatively free, our modern political economy is oligarchic, driven by plutocrats whose only interest is to use their extreme economic and political power to accumulate more capital at the expense of the very society they claim to serve best, driving society to the tipping point where pushed too far, it always reaches a crisis, a revolution, or a simple collapse.
So, what we need is NOT to build, build, build, but to very carefully figure out exactly what we need most to produce, redesign, restore, and regenerate in order to create an economic order that serves the interest of society in its own well being while regenerating the ecological systems that support us all. It would be an example of "creative destruction" the likes of which Schumpeter could never have imagined. We are in for some very big change, so let's make it a new Great Transformation to a wellbeing based ecological civilization. We can choose if we conjure up the vision to look past the old economisms. To fail to choose is to choose to fail.
Robert, do you know about this?
Why WORKERS should OWN companies (25 minute Scandanavian explainer in English). The best way to exit from corrupt Capitalism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSc6OqSPq2E
I'm starting to see a pattern: US tax dollars funded every new pharmaceutical in the last decade (Institute for New Econimic Thinking), but the pharmeceuticals decide the prices and pay their CEO's millions annually. Government subsidies (aka US taxpayer dollars) have given people like Bezos the chance to pay zero in taxes on his billions due to tax credits and subsidies (same for Zuckerberg and other billionaires), but those who are marginalized--for their color, age, religion, gender, economic standing as 40/hr week workers--and need help are LAZY and milking the system?!? And when people talk about wanting to level the playing field by taxing the rich who have made sure the middle class wages stagnate (for the last 50 years) and those at the bottom suffer the most as they rake in the money those people could have earned, the rich scream "Communism," "Nanny State," or "That's not fair!" They need to look in the mirror.
Debra, do you know about this?
Why WORKERS should OWN companies (25 minute Scandanavian explainer in English). The best way to exit from corrupt Capitalism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSc6OqSPq2E
Thank you!
A visiting sociology professor in my University of AR class in 1967 gave a lecture with the warning that this was going to be the case if the direction didn't change. We were on the downhill slide then!! We had some improvement inbetween, but not enough to counteract the trend. As the prof stated, we had to PRODUCE goods and not just be a "service economy". Some people would have to make goods for everyone to have adequate income. The cash flow is finally dwindling in the U.S. due to so many "service" people and making purchases of goods from other countries. We got used to cheap prices on goods from China -- does anyone remember when WalMart had sign in the stores of "MADE in America".... that's quite different than Make America Great Again!!!
Jo, do you know about this?
Why WORKERS should OWN companies (25 minute Scandanavian explainer in English). The best way to exit from corrupt Capitalism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSc6OqSPq2E
China prioritizes common interests of Chinese people while allowing some to get rich from what they do. We prioritize interests of the very few, mainly rich Wall Street bankers and those that serve them, while keeping the rest of us struggling to meet ends explaining us that that is how the free market works. Our prosperity is still to come, all we need is to obey and be patient!
Goran, do you know about this?
Why WORKERS should OWN companies (25 minute Scandanavian explainer in English). The best way to exit from corrupt Capitalism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSc6OqSPq2E
History shows us every empire comes to its end at some point. Ours is coming to its end. Trump may want to make America great again (through fascism), and even Democrats may want to return to their Party’s heyday, with FDR, or JFK, or maybe Clinton, but either way, it’s a pipe dream. It’s China’s turn…again; and once they catch up to us militarily, our goose is cooked.
Well, China made a comeback. It took 1000 years, but I don’t think that we’ve lost so much of our capacity that I come back for us is impossible. I think we’re a few election cycles away from a comeback. The question is will we look towards the future and the possibilities or will we all Sit around and lament what we’ve lost we just need to know what we’ve lost so we know we need to get it back.
I’m surprised you think the regime will permit free and fair elections, but I’m glad you’re staying positive and think we can reconstruct our system for the better. I don’t think either is the case, but maybe I’m just having the July 4th blues.
I reckon we shall see. Hope it's just the blues.
Keep an eye on voting rights so that we have fair elections.
Robin, do you know about this?
Why WORKERS should OWN companies (25 minute Scandanavian explainer in English). The best way to exit from corrupt Capitalism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSc6OqSPq2E
Thanks for sharing, Bruce! Yes, "worker-owned companies" are a foundational principle of socialism (not communism, which is where the state owns companies). When I see memes on social media representing fire departments and libraries as examples of socialism, I just shake my head. They're better examples of communism than socialism. The Right sure as hell doesn't know what socialism is...but neither does much of the Left. We have much work to do!
Thank you so much for this data!
… hit send by accident! … Pittsburgh 1978. No jobs. All steel went abroad. I think you nailed the clean energy on the nose. Thanks