Corporate interests slowly built the “imperial” executive branch we currently have not to mention their ownership and control of the fourth estate. And it has paid off for them by leaps and bounds. A strong man of the left is not going to fix this capitalist mess - democracy might.
Ah "democracy" that thing we're told we have, but never really happened. Yea, and the vote, that's supposed to be able to change everything (never has). I believe it was IF Stone who said "if voting could change things, it would never be allowed". What many folks fail to see (apparently you do), is the whole system is bought and paid for. Any substantive attempt to actually allow a real majority of the masses to run this govt.(or bring people oriented sense to it) will be thwarted...and everyone's expendable in that process (notice the Kennedys, MlK Jr. and all the sell-outs like Bernie etc. etc.). Sure that vote is held out there to give us "hope", but as we're seeing, it's nearly futile...tho some good people still manage to get elected. The 11th monkey is "near" but the change necessary is very unlikely to happen through election and/or Democrats.(IMO)
I get your point. I’m not sure that we can vote our way out of this either anymore than we voted for real change in the past. It took/takes direct action, no doubt. It’s a constant class-conscious struggle and some savior (leftist or otherwise) is not going to save us was my point. Although it’s nothing new, you may want to pay close attention to those on the right talking lots of shit about “democracy” - pretty openly fascist stuff. And it’s increasingly among “mainstream”gop’ers (not just MAGA) too. "I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves." Che
I’ll definitely keep following once I know where to find you. Thank you for all your efforts. I’m usually a fly on the wall, but your information helps me separate speculation from reality and better understand where things are headed.
Your premise seems to be a good bully can get done what needs to be done. Your demigod is Roosevelt because “good things” were done during his time in office. Your evil opposite is Trump because he is channeling government power for personal gain and the gain of his ideological allies while ignoring the needs of the people. Both are oversimplifications. Neither can be assessed outside the circumstances that existed/exists when they were/are in office. When Roosevelt was elected there was consensus agreement between all stakeholders from main street to business owners and wealthy elites, that times were bad economically and we needed to be ready and engaged in war; if people of the time generally did not agree those things would have met enough opposition to gum up the speed and effectiveness achieved. Roosevelt’s greatest talent was perhaps using that consensus to galvanize the country around recovering from the depression and winning the war. Capitalistic profit mongering and worker exploitation did not disappear during Roosevelt’s time. Wealth inequality was on a par with as it had been since the early 20th century so not a popular issue. Trump on the other hand is operating with a colonialist’s mind set, when slavery and servitude were societal norms. That is what he means when he says, Make America Great Again. And like during those colonial days, there is a strong class and racist motivation in our county’s DNA to recreate that historical epoch with wealth inequality is as wide now as it was then. But there is no consensus on what needs to be done; not on climate, not on jobs, health care, not even on wealth inequality. Just a few wealthy individuals who have the political support to achieve their latest wet dream no matter how it impacts anyone else. With our advanced technology and Moore’s Law in full operations, inequality is more likely to widen further than shrink. We have a totally difference set of circumstances to deal with. We need more than another bully. We need a political consensus, from simple residents to high fluting elites, from local mayors and councils to federal officeholders, that the crisis is not our societal demographics or what superficial characteristics the crabs on top of the barrel should manifest, but human survival and any chance at pursuing life, liberty, peace, and happiness.
I sense maybe the implication of Mr. Trent's essay is that a charismatic, benevolent bully who understands power can marshal effective alliances against the oligarch axis, even under the current conditions.
[Whether that bully is currently in view is a question. I'm pretty sure it's not Newsome, Harris, Buttigieg or AOC, though they all have their usefulness in the fight. Maybe Jasmine Crocket, Ossoff, or some yet TBD retired military patriot??? ]
As a lifelong creative person (a builder, cabinetmaker a designer and an artist) one of the most difficult things to explain to people who do not actually make things is that you have to see the thing in your mind's eye, and believe that it can be made, before you ever pick up a tool. The default position of the vast majority of very well meaning, very intelligent people is that the question "can it be done?" has to be posed and answered before any visualizing or imagining can be allowed to begin.
Much like in the old Soviet bloc, there's been a war on anyone and everyone with imagination and vision, because those who can create are, pretty much by definition, Chaotic - hence the forces of Order keep creating hellscapes where the old is dying, but the new cannot be born.
We already have public schools, libraries, parks, old & aging public works projects, etc. just point to them when others are forgetting. Some of the most beautiful brick work I’ve ever seen are public school buildings built by the WPA.
You accurately state the biggest part of the problem: “The default position …… is that the question "can it be done?" has to be posed and answered before any visualizing or imagining can be allowed to begin.
Accidentally hit “post” too soon. That default position is the opposite of reality - you MUST be able to visualize / state the idea clearly before it can ever be manifested. Hence the adage that “once an idea is planted, it is only a matter of time before it becomes reality”. Nothing ever gets done by asking the question “can it be done” first.
Another angle that might reach a different part of the audience.... Eisenhower understood the same point. He used more of a private/public mix because the private sector was up and running thanks to FDR. Ike built lots of dams and parks, and famously the interstate highways. He halted the Korean war and refused to start three new wars that Deepstate wanted.
Both parties feared Ike because they knew what he could do. They prevented him from running in '48. After Truman jumped into Korea, the people were hungry enough for sanity and peace that Ike was able to win easily.
The fights among Dems drives me crazy! Get on with it. We must mobilize these midterm voters and not assume a “blue wave.” The administration is taking a wrecking ball to peoples’ registrations to vote right now. Check to see if you are registered and where your polling place has changed to and take a carful to the polls!!
This will be a big ship to turn around but we must mobilize voters.
The Dems won’t quit fighting amongst themselves until their voters quit voting for Dem candidates who knuckle under to Wall Street (Obama), enable genocide (Biden, Harris), or who screw the working class at every turn (both Clintons), not to mention those who support endless war (most every Dem).
Any Dem voter who thinks the GOP is the enemy is an electoral fool, because the real enemy is monied interests. Until Dem voters understand this, and quit sending moderate, pragmatic, corporate-owned candidates to general elections based on some idiotic electability fallacy, we’ll continue to circle the drain.
The system is not broken. Never has been. The voters are just idiots. Democracies are only as wise as the voters. And sadly, we have the most stupid voters on the planet, who have voted for the most stupid leader who is destroying everything that works in the country.
Inequality is the problem that makes the middle class poor. And instead of voting to fix inequality, the voerts spent the last 50 years voting for policies that are known to make it work. Because the rich told them to do, and they stupid enough to trust the rich.
The nation can't advance any faster than the voters education and intelligence advances.
Easy times create weak people. And we have had 80 years of easy times making our society stupid and ignorant, which has made it worse, and worse, and worse, little by little, for 80 years.
People who have an easy life, stop bothering to care or think about the factors that allow them to have that easy life. They see problems that aren't problems and end up destroying the very things that created an easy life for them without any awareness they are doing.
Trump actually think he's a smart man, when he actually only has the intelligence of a 5th grader bully. How did such a person be allowed to advance so far in society? Only because he grew up in the easy times of post WWII that ended the 40 years of hard times that came before.
The US is in the FAFO phase of this easy-times, hard-times cycle. The crash that we have created is going to cut America off at the knees and make everyone in the US suffer. Maybe everyone in the world if this really falls into WWIII which is possible. Then all those fools that think life is easy, will once again learn that being stupid doesn't work. And a new generation of smart people, who have seen the hard times with their own eyes, will emerge to save us again.
This would make a nice rather mild New York Times opinion piece.Do you or have you ever submitted your essays to them? They are much better written than most NYT opinion pieces.
I find that they mistreat my subscribers. They send unrequested promotional emails, make all subscriptions auto-renew, and don't bring a new audience to people that like to write long-form. Substack is going for brevity now and wants to be like Twitter, I suppose. I just don't like their business model.
I want to follow you to wherever you're going. It's probably only a matter of time before Substack ends up being a dealbreaker for me like the rest became. Once the big money showed up in ownership I figured it's going to be ruined eventually.
I came to this platform for good content and there's a lot of it, but I can't afford their model of paying imdividual subscriptions for the endless number of creators whose work I value because there are so many.
I wish there were a platform with a viable-for-creators model that was like a co-op for subscribing to different periodicals that include multiple creators who affiliate under it but without any editor running them as a boss. I would be willing to pay $300 a year for something like that.
I wish we had more progressives like you where I live. I would vote for you if you were running for office in my state for whatever level. I make a monthly donation to your AFWH People's PAC because we need this progressive energy everywhere and in public office at all levels.
Fair enough...well please keep us well informed of your changes! I do hope you still appear on Substack interviews...I really like the convos with you and Waj Ali, for one.
The problem is NOT whoever is president. The problem is THE WEALTH-FAVORING SYSTEMS that make up our political, financial, economic, and judicial systems. They were created by the wealthiest white adult male landowners, which has made it inevitable that since then, that same faction has been the majority in power in those systems, and has continued to make it ever-more favorable to their own wealthy faction.
As for FDR, he definitely did exactly what you said. However, his reasons were not necessarily unselfish and altruistic. The fact is that FDR recognized that the massive number of people who were out of work and literally starving and living in "tent cities" were going to rise up and overthrow the wealthy faction that was running the political financial, economic, and judicial systems because of the disgustingly monstrous wealth inequality they had perpetrated in the US.
FDR was one of this wealthy faction, but he could also see the handwriting on the wall. So to keep the entire network of capitalist systems running this country from being overthrown by the furious starving mobs.... he let the other powerful members of his class know that they would have to stop raking in their despicably huge profits and allow him to pass the "New Deal".
So, it was good for those poor folks who were starving, but it was bad for the future of the US because it "saved" capitalism from the well-earned consequences of its exploitation of the working class for the benefit of the already rich.
That is what always happens when you make changes that do not address the core problem (the system itself) and settle for correcting some of the worst and most obvious symptoms. It helps out TEMPORARILY, but also serves to keep the frogs inside the pot as the heat continues to slowly increase!!!
So, Corbin, you want a better Trump. Is that it? Do you like Project 2025? Its authors do understand power, and they don't care about the Constitution. Their lackeys in Congress, who call themselves Republicans, have rendered the legislative branch dysfunctional crating a pretext for the "unitary Presidency." Trump exercises the power of the executive with their consent and guidance. His blunders show the perils of unconstitutional government, something they chose to ignore. Don't you know that FDR had the full support of both houses of Congress for most of what he did?
It's not Trump who understands this; it's Project 2025 and the billionaires actually running the country.
Corporate interests slowly built the “imperial” executive branch we currently have not to mention their ownership and control of the fourth estate. And it has paid off for them by leaps and bounds. A strong man of the left is not going to fix this capitalist mess - democracy might.
Ah "democracy" that thing we're told we have, but never really happened. Yea, and the vote, that's supposed to be able to change everything (never has). I believe it was IF Stone who said "if voting could change things, it would never be allowed". What many folks fail to see (apparently you do), is the whole system is bought and paid for. Any substantive attempt to actually allow a real majority of the masses to run this govt.(or bring people oriented sense to it) will be thwarted...and everyone's expendable in that process (notice the Kennedys, MlK Jr. and all the sell-outs like Bernie etc. etc.). Sure that vote is held out there to give us "hope", but as we're seeing, it's nearly futile...tho some good people still manage to get elected. The 11th monkey is "near" but the change necessary is very unlikely to happen through election and/or Democrats.(IMO)
I get your point. I’m not sure that we can vote our way out of this either anymore than we voted for real change in the past. It took/takes direct action, no doubt. It’s a constant class-conscious struggle and some savior (leftist or otherwise) is not going to save us was my point. Although it’s nothing new, you may want to pay close attention to those on the right talking lots of shit about “democracy” - pretty openly fascist stuff. And it’s increasingly among “mainstream”gop’ers (not just MAGA) too. "I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves." Che
I’ll definitely keep following once I know where to find you. Thank you for all your efforts. I’m usually a fly on the wall, but your information helps me separate speculation from reality and better understand where things are headed.
Your premise seems to be a good bully can get done what needs to be done. Your demigod is Roosevelt because “good things” were done during his time in office. Your evil opposite is Trump because he is channeling government power for personal gain and the gain of his ideological allies while ignoring the needs of the people. Both are oversimplifications. Neither can be assessed outside the circumstances that existed/exists when they were/are in office. When Roosevelt was elected there was consensus agreement between all stakeholders from main street to business owners and wealthy elites, that times were bad economically and we needed to be ready and engaged in war; if people of the time generally did not agree those things would have met enough opposition to gum up the speed and effectiveness achieved. Roosevelt’s greatest talent was perhaps using that consensus to galvanize the country around recovering from the depression and winning the war. Capitalistic profit mongering and worker exploitation did not disappear during Roosevelt’s time. Wealth inequality was on a par with as it had been since the early 20th century so not a popular issue. Trump on the other hand is operating with a colonialist’s mind set, when slavery and servitude were societal norms. That is what he means when he says, Make America Great Again. And like during those colonial days, there is a strong class and racist motivation in our county’s DNA to recreate that historical epoch with wealth inequality is as wide now as it was then. But there is no consensus on what needs to be done; not on climate, not on jobs, health care, not even on wealth inequality. Just a few wealthy individuals who have the political support to achieve their latest wet dream no matter how it impacts anyone else. With our advanced technology and Moore’s Law in full operations, inequality is more likely to widen further than shrink. We have a totally difference set of circumstances to deal with. We need more than another bully. We need a political consensus, from simple residents to high fluting elites, from local mayors and councils to federal officeholders, that the crisis is not our societal demographics or what superficial characteristics the crabs on top of the barrel should manifest, but human survival and any chance at pursuing life, liberty, peace, and happiness.
I sense maybe the implication of Mr. Trent's essay is that a charismatic, benevolent bully who understands power can marshal effective alliances against the oligarch axis, even under the current conditions.
[Whether that bully is currently in view is a question. I'm pretty sure it's not Newsome, Harris, Buttigieg or AOC, though they all have their usefulness in the fight. Maybe Jasmine Crocket, Ossoff, or some yet TBD retired military patriot??? ]
Well, there is consensus on healthcare among people, not politicians
As a lifelong creative person (a builder, cabinetmaker a designer and an artist) one of the most difficult things to explain to people who do not actually make things is that you have to see the thing in your mind's eye, and believe that it can be made, before you ever pick up a tool. The default position of the vast majority of very well meaning, very intelligent people is that the question "can it be done?" has to be posed and answered before any visualizing or imagining can be allowed to begin.
Much like in the old Soviet bloc, there's been a war on anyone and everyone with imagination and vision, because those who can create are, pretty much by definition, Chaotic - hence the forces of Order keep creating hellscapes where the old is dying, but the new cannot be born.
Very well said – if quite dispiriting
We already have public schools, libraries, parks, old & aging public works projects, etc. just point to them when others are forgetting. Some of the most beautiful brick work I’ve ever seen are public school buildings built by the WPA.
You accurately state the biggest part of the problem: “The default position …… is that the question "can it be done?" has to be posed and answered before any visualizing or imagining can be allowed to begin.
Accidentally hit “post” too soon. That default position is the opposite of reality - you MUST be able to visualize / state the idea clearly before it can ever be manifested. Hence the adage that “once an idea is planted, it is only a matter of time before it becomes reality”. Nothing ever gets done by asking the question “can it be done” first.
Another angle that might reach a different part of the audience.... Eisenhower understood the same point. He used more of a private/public mix because the private sector was up and running thanks to FDR. Ike built lots of dams and parks, and famously the interstate highways. He halted the Korean war and refused to start three new wars that Deepstate wanted.
Both parties feared Ike because they knew what he could do. They prevented him from running in '48. After Truman jumped into Korea, the people were hungry enough for sanity and peace that Ike was able to win easily.
Corbin, your analysis and path forward is accurate. The message should be spread far and wide. Thank you and I will look for you on another platform.
The fights among Dems drives me crazy! Get on with it. We must mobilize these midterm voters and not assume a “blue wave.” The administration is taking a wrecking ball to peoples’ registrations to vote right now. Check to see if you are registered and where your polling place has changed to and take a carful to the polls!!
This will be a big ship to turn around but we must mobilize voters.
The Dems won’t quit fighting amongst themselves until their voters quit voting for Dem candidates who knuckle under to Wall Street (Obama), enable genocide (Biden, Harris), or who screw the working class at every turn (both Clintons), not to mention those who support endless war (most every Dem).
Any Dem voter who thinks the GOP is the enemy is an electoral fool, because the real enemy is monied interests. Until Dem voters understand this, and quit sending moderate, pragmatic, corporate-owned candidates to general elections based on some idiotic electability fallacy, we’ll continue to circle the drain.
❤️
The system is not broken. Never has been. The voters are just idiots. Democracies are only as wise as the voters. And sadly, we have the most stupid voters on the planet, who have voted for the most stupid leader who is destroying everything that works in the country.
Inequality is the problem that makes the middle class poor. And instead of voting to fix inequality, the voerts spent the last 50 years voting for policies that are known to make it work. Because the rich told them to do, and they stupid enough to trust the rich.
The nation can't advance any faster than the voters education and intelligence advances.
Easy times create weak people. And we have had 80 years of easy times making our society stupid and ignorant, which has made it worse, and worse, and worse, little by little, for 80 years.
People who have an easy life, stop bothering to care or think about the factors that allow them to have that easy life. They see problems that aren't problems and end up destroying the very things that created an easy life for them without any awareness they are doing.
Trump actually think he's a smart man, when he actually only has the intelligence of a 5th grader bully. How did such a person be allowed to advance so far in society? Only because he grew up in the easy times of post WWII that ended the 40 years of hard times that came before.
The US is in the FAFO phase of this easy-times, hard-times cycle. The crash that we have created is going to cut America off at the knees and make everyone in the US suffer. Maybe everyone in the world if this really falls into WWIII which is possible. Then all those fools that think life is easy, will once again learn that being stupid doesn't work. And a new generation of smart people, who have seen the hard times with their own eyes, will emerge to save us again.
Seriously. How many times, years, decades do people have to be lied to--the same lies over and over--before they stop believing the con.
This would make a nice rather mild New York Times opinion piece.Do you or have you ever submitted your essays to them? They are much better written than most NYT opinion pieces.
Bravo!
I'll look for your update - why are you leaving Substack?
I find that they mistreat my subscribers. They send unrequested promotional emails, make all subscriptions auto-renew, and don't bring a new audience to people that like to write long-form. Substack is going for brevity now and wants to be like Twitter, I suppose. I just don't like their business model.
I want to follow you to wherever you're going. It's probably only a matter of time before Substack ends up being a dealbreaker for me like the rest became. Once the big money showed up in ownership I figured it's going to be ruined eventually.
I came to this platform for good content and there's a lot of it, but I can't afford their model of paying imdividual subscriptions for the endless number of creators whose work I value because there are so many.
I wish there were a platform with a viable-for-creators model that was like a co-op for subscribing to different periodicals that include multiple creators who affiliate under it but without any editor running them as a boss. I would be willing to pay $300 a year for something like that.
I wish we had more progressives like you where I live. I would vote for you if you were running for office in my state for whatever level. I make a monthly donation to your AFWH People's PAC because we need this progressive energy everywhere and in public office at all levels.
Fair enough...well please keep us well informed of your changes! I do hope you still appear on Substack interviews...I really like the convos with you and Waj Ali, for one.
Thanks Corbin! Yes "it" truly is about power and controllllll. Emphasis on the latter!
You are So Logical and a Truth Teller!!!!!
The problem is NOT whoever is president. The problem is THE WEALTH-FAVORING SYSTEMS that make up our political, financial, economic, and judicial systems. They were created by the wealthiest white adult male landowners, which has made it inevitable that since then, that same faction has been the majority in power in those systems, and has continued to make it ever-more favorable to their own wealthy faction.
As for FDR, he definitely did exactly what you said. However, his reasons were not necessarily unselfish and altruistic. The fact is that FDR recognized that the massive number of people who were out of work and literally starving and living in "tent cities" were going to rise up and overthrow the wealthy faction that was running the political financial, economic, and judicial systems because of the disgustingly monstrous wealth inequality they had perpetrated in the US.
FDR was one of this wealthy faction, but he could also see the handwriting on the wall. So to keep the entire network of capitalist systems running this country from being overthrown by the furious starving mobs.... he let the other powerful members of his class know that they would have to stop raking in their despicably huge profits and allow him to pass the "New Deal".
So, it was good for those poor folks who were starving, but it was bad for the future of the US because it "saved" capitalism from the well-earned consequences of its exploitation of the working class for the benefit of the already rich.
That is what always happens when you make changes that do not address the core problem (the system itself) and settle for correcting some of the worst and most obvious symptoms. It helps out TEMPORARILY, but also serves to keep the frogs inside the pot as the heat continues to slowly increase!!!
why are you leaving Substack? hope I end up on whatever list is next
So, Corbin, you want a better Trump. Is that it? Do you like Project 2025? Its authors do understand power, and they don't care about the Constitution. Their lackeys in Congress, who call themselves Republicans, have rendered the legislative branch dysfunctional crating a pretext for the "unitary Presidency." Trump exercises the power of the executive with their consent and guidance. His blunders show the perils of unconstitutional government, something they chose to ignore. Don't you know that FDR had the full support of both houses of Congress for most of what he did?