Americans believe what the current administration works very hard and spends us bankrupt to make us believe. Conservatives are the ones afraid of change because the way things are works just fine for them.
Our 2 party political choice is which group do we want to be the ones who screw us; Exxon, Amazon, SpaceX, Trump on one side, Goldman Sachs, Chase bank, Merck, United Health on the other.
I’d rephrase “works just fine” to “not bad enough yet” to throw the dice.
But that might be coming sooner than we think: even Trump, at the G7, said world oil/LNG supply will hit an economic cliff in weeks. Expect that’s why he reversed the planned attack on Iran in less than 24 hours. He’s on a knife edge, and his ability to cope is failing.
Anecdote: Other day, overheard religious MAGA neighbors say “Trump’s crazy.” Haven’t heard anything like that in ten years: eye-rolling level of disgruntled.
Registering as an Independent and working to support the candidates running through a party whose operatives don't want to elect people required to make survival possible puts one in very good company.
There are too many "liberal" democrats that are afraid of change. All those liberals that are actually moderates and thing the DSA is the boogy man. Pe,rfect example is the primary race is MIchigan, it shouldn't be this close.
Those so called liberals are DINOs. Almost as scared of rocking the boat as republicans therefore conservative to the core. Conservative is not a healthy thing.
It’s the Dems, especially since 1980, that have allowed the ‘repukes’ to flourish. Corporatism is a big piece of fascism, and most Dems, at present, are corporatists to the core.
If you have an argument that the Democratic Party, reacting to the Reagan landslide in 1980, didn’t actually, through the DLC and its Clinton acolytes, turn its back on the working class by prioritizing corporate donors over labor, and acquiescing to, if not embracing, much of the neoliberal economic lunacy being pushed by the GOP in the form of tax cuts, deregulation, and budgetary austerity outside of the MIC, you are welcome make that case here in response to my comment.
Name for me the Dems, at either the congressional or presidential level, since 1980, who have not, through word or action, caved to corporate donor pressure when voting for/supporting meaningful legislation that would help workers and hurt monied interests. Voting for legislation that helps certain workers, but helps corporate donors more, like the ACA, which only pushed more people into the arms of the health insurers and Big Pharma, only proves my point.
And yet they constantly bitch and whine about all the things that are wrong with everybody else, and how the wrong ethnicity, religion, education, lifestyle or region of the country that others experience is ruining their lives. I grew up in that environment, and it is so prejudicial and knee-jerk it makes Oz look good.
Not just conservatives. All the moderate DEMS are having heart attacks over progressives in the party who dare to offer the idea that we can have a government that works for the people.
Great essay. As a society, Americans have a poor grasp of risk. The story of the boys trapped in the cave highlights very well the perils of making difficult decisions.
In the US, we have spent decades teaching people what to think instead of how to think, while much of today's media profits more from creating consumers than informed citizens. As a result, Americans don't always understand the complexities of decision-making and that progress involves risk. We haven't yet learned to say, "It might not work—and that's okay. We'll learn, adapt, and move forward."
There is nothing pragmatic about incremental solutions to catastrophic problems. Anyone who uses the phrase ‘the perfect is the enemy of the good’ is firmly inside the status quo camp.
The Iran War fiasco might be the thing that finally breaks the back of American hegemony and empire. If so, we’d best be ready with a plan to kill the MIC, and actually fund the things Corbin writes about on the domestic front. We’ll likely have only one bite at the apple.
Corbin, you are consistently the BEST political analyst out there in a world of too much pontificating and too few solutions. Thank you for your insights.
What a wonderful essay; you truly have a gift. (And hair on fire.) I loved how you used an unrelated event in another country to reframe and provide focus. Our general population does seem to have difficulty evaluating the risk/reward calculus for change, and overall seem to have limited ability to imagine more than a couple months into the future. Btw, extra kudos for your ultra appropriate use of expletives!
Being stuck in the cave has the silver lining of forcing a change. When I voted for Bernie in the 2016 primary everyone I knew thought I was very misguided and delusional. Look at him now! People have no choice but to pay attention at this point...
Excellent essay!! The Thai cave rescue captivated me. Love the way you tie that in. If I were running a campaign you would be my first choice for building a team.
It's not just change vs status quo. We're always willing to make DRASTIC changes, provided that the changes enrich the richest and kill everyone else. Obamacare was a DRASTIC change, adding lots of new and untried mechanisms. Medicare for All would have simply expanded an existing and thoroughly functional machine. Data centers are a DRASTIC change, using up the same resources that could have been used for real factories making real things and employing real men.
Amen. Not a religious word. These are not changes. They are demands, forceful impositions on the masses to feed the coffers and egos of the few, who are indeed very lazy. Talking on the phone all day or flying around in jets is very hard lazy work. It is the hoarder mental illness of those whose lack of inner strength that is so massive the only strength they can muster is to destroy those with strength, not via one to one struggle, but via gangster mentality. The society is led by the sickest and weakest and most amoral of fools who sincerely believe they are superior due to their abandonment of principle.
Thank you for sharing the story about the rescue of the THAI boys and coach. I had not known how it turned out. And thanks for your on-point tie in to our current political situation. I wish to someday travel to Lenoir City, TN and have a pleasant lunch & chat with you. But we have a fight on our hands (an immediate one leading up to Nov 3rd), and I'm busy doing the various things I can do to further the cause for so much needed change. So, until we have the luxury of time to indulge interesting chats I say THANK YOU for your essays Corbin. And Bless you.
Yes, fear is part of the reason we keep avoiding change. But a large part of why we're frozen in place is because vested interests have spent many years and huge sums of money to skew the debate. They've made bogeymen out of the obvious solutions.
Not enough houses? Just keep pouring more money into the pockets of the real estate interests. The result is not more houses; it's increasing cost for the limited supply and increasing profits for the developers!
No universal healthcare in a system that limits the number of hospitals and doctors? Just keep pouring more money into the pockets of those hiospitals, providers, and the insurance companies that make it all possible. The result is not more and better healthcare for all; it's increasing cost for less healthcare for fewer people. And, of course, more profits for the hospital chains and insurance companies!
Higher education out of reach of more and more people, at costs which impoverish greater and greater numbers? Just keep pouring more money into a system which isn't working very well. The result is colleges and universities that have grown more and more expensive over time, with endowments that continue to swell, while millions of people spend a lifetime unable to repay the costs of their educations!
Stop the kneejerk reflex to fear of communism and socialism! We've been trained to think those labels mean something awful. Start instead to talk about the real problems: lack of reasonable and affordable housing for millions of people, lack of available and affordable healthcare for all our citizens, lack of education for students instead of profits for the universities. If we can get past meaningless labels and instead get down to real problems with real solutions, we can finally move forward.
It always astounds me that so many people do not appreciate the socialism that they already have and love! Through taxation (at least before Trump) the people have police, fire departments, roads, old age security, clean water, safe food, basic education, libraries. . . We also have some very nice free enterprise, where things not essential to survival can be created and perfected. Democratic Socialism works! The people own things, pay for them through taxes, and can use them when they need to. Conservatives just don't 'get it'.
Start a substack focusing on the good things government already does for us! I plan to focus all my substack posts on this in the fall, leading up to the election. use AI if you must; it can gather an enormous amount of powerful info (but don't let AI write it for you!)
I avoid AI entirely. It keeps trying to show me dumb stuff like how to write a letter, and Geez! I've got 19 years of education and practiced law. I don't need a pseudo babysitter! One thing lawyers do learn: How To Find Out.
On healthcare I am beginning to believe that a "single payer" system may be a significant part of the solution. Health Insurance companies could play a role in assuring quality of healthcare but instead seem to simply be fighting for a piece of the dollar pie. Any retired person with one of those "supplemental insurance" plans will quickly recognize this from the fancy monthly benefit summaries they receive, e.g. "Smart Summary" wherein the insurance company seems to be rewarded by the pound of paper they produce to say nothing, e.g. provider billed zero, insurer paid zero, patient owes zero repeated for multiple pages. "Smart" in what world.
From my standpoint here in Mexico City, as a retired newspaper reporter, my native country looks a mess.
So-called "budget hawks" look for ways to cut "entitlements," a pejorative term, while continuing to shovel colossal sums of money to the Pentagon, which can't pass an audit.
Forget about false "threats" like Iran, Russia, China, whatever. The real threat to be confronted is the military-industrial- Congressional complex.
Yes. We rank 61 in the world for longevity. Healthcare is indeed emblematic of across-the-board problems. I touch on many of them here. The fascists have to go. Then we MUST tackle climate change with all of our strength. The hour grows late with so much of the world on fire and suffering extreme heat deaths.
Americans believe what the current administration works very hard and spends us bankrupt to make us believe. Conservatives are the ones afraid of change because the way things are works just fine for them.
Our 2 party political choice is which group do we want to be the ones who screw us; Exxon, Amazon, SpaceX, Trump on one side, Goldman Sachs, Chase bank, Merck, United Health on the other.
Isn’t that a fine kettle of fish!
(Oops, this was for Clair; sorry, Ed.)
I’d rephrase “works just fine” to “not bad enough yet” to throw the dice.
But that might be coming sooner than we think: even Trump, at the G7, said world oil/LNG supply will hit an economic cliff in weeks. Expect that’s why he reversed the planned attack on Iran in less than 24 hours. He’s on a knife edge, and his ability to cope is failing.
Anecdote: Other day, overheard religious MAGA neighbors say “Trump’s crazy.” Haven’t heard anything like that in ten years: eye-rolling level of disgruntled.
Am I still allowed to read it?
Registering as an Independent and working to support the candidates running through a party whose operatives don't want to elect people required to make survival possible puts one in very good company.
There are too many "liberal" democrats that are afraid of change. All those liberals that are actually moderates and thing the DSA is the boogy man. Pe,rfect example is the primary race is MIchigan, it shouldn't be this close.
Those so called liberals are DINOs. Almost as scared of rocking the boat as republicans therefore conservative to the core. Conservative is not a healthy thing.
It’s the repukes that have gotten us in this mess. Fascism.
It’s the Dems, especially since 1980, that have allowed the ‘repukes’ to flourish. Corporatism is a big piece of fascism, and most Dems, at present, are corporatists to the core.
In truth, it's neither. Greed and ego are equal opportunity destroyers.
Don’t agree
If you have an argument that the Democratic Party, reacting to the Reagan landslide in 1980, didn’t actually, through the DLC and its Clinton acolytes, turn its back on the working class by prioritizing corporate donors over labor, and acquiescing to, if not embracing, much of the neoliberal economic lunacy being pushed by the GOP in the form of tax cuts, deregulation, and budgetary austerity outside of the MIC, you are welcome make that case here in response to my comment.
Name for me the Dems, at either the congressional or presidential level, since 1980, who have not, through word or action, caved to corporate donor pressure when voting for/supporting meaningful legislation that would help workers and hurt monied interests. Voting for legislation that helps certain workers, but helps corporate donors more, like the ACA, which only pushed more people into the arms of the health insurers and Big Pharma, only proves my point.
My popcorn is popped, and I have receipts.
And yet they constantly bitch and whine about all the things that are wrong with everybody else, and how the wrong ethnicity, religion, education, lifestyle or region of the country that others experience is ruining their lives. I grew up in that environment, and it is so prejudicial and knee-jerk it makes Oz look good.
The only change they want is for everyone else to become exactly like them.
Not just conservatives. All the moderate DEMS are having heart attacks over progressives in the party who dare to offer the idea that we can have a government that works for the people.
Great essay. As a society, Americans have a poor grasp of risk. The story of the boys trapped in the cave highlights very well the perils of making difficult decisions.
In the US, we have spent decades teaching people what to think instead of how to think, while much of today's media profits more from creating consumers than informed citizens. As a result, Americans don't always understand the complexities of decision-making and that progress involves risk. We haven't yet learned to say, "It might not work—and that's okay. We'll learn, adapt, and move forward."
Again, great essay.
There is nothing pragmatic about incremental solutions to catastrophic problems. Anyone who uses the phrase ‘the perfect is the enemy of the good’ is firmly inside the status quo camp.
The Iran War fiasco might be the thing that finally breaks the back of American hegemony and empire. If so, we’d best be ready with a plan to kill the MIC, and actually fund the things Corbin writes about on the domestic front. We’ll likely have only one bite at the apple.
Maybe one of the very best, moving, and accurate articles Corbin has provided.
When Substack fixes the "auto renew" subscription issue, this old fart will definitely subscribe.
Corbin, you are consistently the BEST political analyst out there in a world of too much pontificating and too few solutions. Thank you for your insights.
I LOVE this piece. I don't know about your hair specifically, but YOU are on fire.
Exactly! Keep it up, Corbin!!!
🙌🏼🔥🙌🏼 So good it brought tears to my eyes. FEAR EATS THE SOUL
What a wonderful essay; you truly have a gift. (And hair on fire.) I loved how you used an unrelated event in another country to reframe and provide focus. Our general population does seem to have difficulty evaluating the risk/reward calculus for change, and overall seem to have limited ability to imagine more than a couple months into the future. Btw, extra kudos for your ultra appropriate use of expletives!
Being stuck in the cave has the silver lining of forcing a change. When I voted for Bernie in the 2016 primary everyone I knew thought I was very misguided and delusional. Look at him now! People have no choice but to pay attention at this point...
Excellent essay!! The Thai cave rescue captivated me. Love the way you tie that in. If I were running a campaign you would be my first choice for building a team.
Let's start swimming!
It's not just change vs status quo. We're always willing to make DRASTIC changes, provided that the changes enrich the richest and kill everyone else. Obamacare was a DRASTIC change, adding lots of new and untried mechanisms. Medicare for All would have simply expanded an existing and thoroughly functional machine. Data centers are a DRASTIC change, using up the same resources that could have been used for real factories making real things and employing real men.
Amen. Not a religious word. These are not changes. They are demands, forceful impositions on the masses to feed the coffers and egos of the few, who are indeed very lazy. Talking on the phone all day or flying around in jets is very hard lazy work. It is the hoarder mental illness of those whose lack of inner strength that is so massive the only strength they can muster is to destroy those with strength, not via one to one struggle, but via gangster mentality. The society is led by the sickest and weakest and most amoral of fools who sincerely believe they are superior due to their abandonment of principle.
Thank you for sharing the story about the rescue of the THAI boys and coach. I had not known how it turned out. And thanks for your on-point tie in to our current political situation. I wish to someday travel to Lenoir City, TN and have a pleasant lunch & chat with you. But we have a fight on our hands (an immediate one leading up to Nov 3rd), and I'm busy doing the various things I can do to further the cause for so much needed change. So, until we have the luxury of time to indulge interesting chats I say THANK YOU for your essays Corbin. And Bless you.
Yes, fear is part of the reason we keep avoiding change. But a large part of why we're frozen in place is because vested interests have spent many years and huge sums of money to skew the debate. They've made bogeymen out of the obvious solutions.
Not enough houses? Just keep pouring more money into the pockets of the real estate interests. The result is not more houses; it's increasing cost for the limited supply and increasing profits for the developers!
No universal healthcare in a system that limits the number of hospitals and doctors? Just keep pouring more money into the pockets of those hiospitals, providers, and the insurance companies that make it all possible. The result is not more and better healthcare for all; it's increasing cost for less healthcare for fewer people. And, of course, more profits for the hospital chains and insurance companies!
Higher education out of reach of more and more people, at costs which impoverish greater and greater numbers? Just keep pouring more money into a system which isn't working very well. The result is colleges and universities that have grown more and more expensive over time, with endowments that continue to swell, while millions of people spend a lifetime unable to repay the costs of their educations!
Stop the kneejerk reflex to fear of communism and socialism! We've been trained to think those labels mean something awful. Start instead to talk about the real problems: lack of reasonable and affordable housing for millions of people, lack of available and affordable healthcare for all our citizens, lack of education for students instead of profits for the universities. If we can get past meaningless labels and instead get down to real problems with real solutions, we can finally move forward.
It always astounds me that so many people do not appreciate the socialism that they already have and love! Through taxation (at least before Trump) the people have police, fire departments, roads, old age security, clean water, safe food, basic education, libraries. . . We also have some very nice free enterprise, where things not essential to survival can be created and perfected. Democratic Socialism works! The people own things, pay for them through taxes, and can use them when they need to. Conservatives just don't 'get it'.
Start a substack focusing on the good things government already does for us! I plan to focus all my substack posts on this in the fall, leading up to the election. use AI if you must; it can gather an enormous amount of powerful info (but don't let AI write it for you!)
I avoid AI entirely. It keeps trying to show me dumb stuff like how to write a letter, and Geez! I've got 19 years of education and practiced law. I don't need a pseudo babysitter! One thing lawyers do learn: How To Find Out.
On healthcare I am beginning to believe that a "single payer" system may be a significant part of the solution. Health Insurance companies could play a role in assuring quality of healthcare but instead seem to simply be fighting for a piece of the dollar pie. Any retired person with one of those "supplemental insurance" plans will quickly recognize this from the fancy monthly benefit summaries they receive, e.g. "Smart Summary" wherein the insurance company seems to be rewarded by the pound of paper they produce to say nothing, e.g. provider billed zero, insurer paid zero, patient owes zero repeated for multiple pages. "Smart" in what world.
I sure wish they would save the trees (paper, ink, stamps, fuel) and use all the labor and the money to make the other services more affordable!
Abba Eban (also attributed to Winston Churchill but later) had it right (could be a paraphrase):
"You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, but only after they've exhausted all other possibilities."
From my standpoint here in Mexico City, as a retired newspaper reporter, my native country looks a mess.
So-called "budget hawks" look for ways to cut "entitlements," a pejorative term, while continuing to shovel colossal sums of money to the Pentagon, which can't pass an audit.
Forget about false "threats" like Iran, Russia, China, whatever. The real threat to be confronted is the military-industrial- Congressional complex.
Yes. We rank 61 in the world for longevity. Healthcare is indeed emblematic of across-the-board problems. I touch on many of them here. The fascists have to go. Then we MUST tackle climate change with all of our strength. The hour grows late with so much of the world on fire and suffering extreme heat deaths.
https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/trump-destroys-america