Instead of building the capacity to absorb these hits, we're privatizing away the tools we'd need to respond. This isn't about left vs. right—it's about ownership.
Good article. You left out what I think is the most important tsunami of all and that is the growing inequality of income and wealth. Over the next couple of generations if current trends continue the wealthiest 1% of the US will control virtually all of its wealth. We will look at 15th Europe when a very small number of nobles (and the church) owned virtually everything. And because we decided that anyone can spend as much as they want on elections the wealthy are going to continue to control governments for their own benefit.
The only consequential elections are primaries, so first adjust your perspective. We are not powerless, but anti-establishment progressive Democrats are disorganized. We must overcome that kind of obstacle.
Also, the Democratic Party’s embrace of donor-class servants is both a weak way to seek working-class support and a terrible way to fight a class war. Learn who is not on our side (almost every elected official) and make sure they get challengers.
As soon as I came across Klein and Thompson's Abundance I immediately thought that this was the perfect complement to the progressive economic justice message of Bernie and AOC. I was very happy to see your take on this, especially since one of my other favorite writers, Gil Duran, told me I was being naive and that this was just a way for billionaires to get Democrats on board with their agenda. Perhaps the fact that we both live in the south instead of Silicon Valley helps us understand just how broad the appeal of this message is. I'm hosting a Braver Angels event with a bipartisan group next month in Knoxville to test this theory. I think it has the potential to address most of the distaste that non-MAGA Republicans have for the idea of voting for Democrats while simultaneously energizing the left, delivering the FDR-style supermajority we need in order to accomplish anything.
This regime doesn't care about the issues or you. Plus, there's no effective opposition because pretending doesn't count.
Learn more, find help, and get working on effectuating real change. Don't get put to sleep by idiots who lost everything we need and still pretend that we don’t have an existential threat on our hands.
I used to claim: a nation at war with itself can't be innovative and move forward. They get stuck, frozen in time. The civil war is over now. Trump and MAGA have won. Their revolutionary government is implementing its far-right ideology, and the middle class, working class, and poor will pay dearly for it. Our country is still at war with itself, but it's not a civil war; it's a counter-revolutionary war, and early skirmishes can be seen on city streets across America between everyday citizens -- counter-revolution resistance forces -- and the Regime's secret police: ICE. Regardless, the "War for America" continues, and a nation at war with itself can't be innovative and move forward.
Pretending to be the loyal opposition is not the same as defending democracy and only a group of establishment Democrats funded by the same billionaires as the Trump Republicans could lose as consistently as Cory Booker and Chuck Schumer.
After Schumer's betrayal on the stopgap spending bill, Republicans (who were ready to fracture and fail) began an unbroken string of victories. The Big Billionaire Bill. Rescissions. Now Emil Bove.
Rank and file Democrats demanded action but Cory Booker turned the page by giving a pointless 25-hour speech followed by a 12-hour sit in with Hakeem Jeffries. Mollifying the masses might be entertaining but we cannot stop Trump’s tyranny by sitting around and talking. And that's not the worst of it.
The truth is, both major parties have allowed Wall Street, weapons dealers, and Big Oil to steer policy for too long. That’s why we have record inequality, endless war budgets, and a planet on fire.
I don’t believe America can survive another generation of Reaganomics — no matter which party is selling it. Scientists say the Earth is experiencing the Sixth Mass Extinction.
Imagine America as a car speeding toward the edge of a cliff.
One party—the reckless, corporate-captured GOP—is flooring the gas pedal.
The other—the comfortable, donor-driven Democratic establishment—insists on maintaining the current speed, as if cruise control will save us.
But no one in Washington is trying to slam on the brakes.
Since Cory Booker slithered into the Senate:
- Abortion rights evaporated, banned in 26 states while Booker made tearful speeches.
- Mass shooting bloodbaths tripled as children in schools were shredded by AR-15s—weapons of war his corporate donors lobbied to keep legal.
- CO2 levels rocketed from 400 ppm to 427ppm, turning oceans into acid baths.
- $27 trillion was vacuumed from working families into the accounts of tech overlords Booker calls "innovators."
- The Voting Rights Act was gutted like a fish, its carcass tossed to Jim Crow’s ghost as Booker dined with CEOs.
- The GENIUS Act a Trojan horse stuffed with crypto-loot, voted for by Booker and his GOP bedfellows.
When I say that I am doing something to save the world, that's not hyperbole or a metaphor. We have everything we need ~technology, resources~ except the political will. My plan is simple but it won’t be easy. It probably won't work but that's no reason to give up.
I am in the hospital with appendicitis. I had surgery recently but it is just going to take time for recovery because it ruptured. That's not stopping me from reaching out to you because Cory Booker just lost another valiant fight to keep a disqualified Trump Nazi off the court and soon, I expect to get an email from him expressing disgust and asking for five bucks.
As if rewarding intentional failure is the only option.
My plan is to slam on the brakes.
Lisa McCormick and I are building a grassroots movement that tells the truth, speaks for working people, and fights for real change.
It’s not enough to slow the car down. We need to slam on the brakes and start steering in a new direction.
That means:
Medicare for All, not insurance industry loopholes Teddy Roosevelt 1912
Green jobs & climate action, not fossil fuel subsidies AOC 2019
Labor rights & living wages, not gig economy exploitation FDR 1944
Peace & diplomacy, not permanent war profiteering LBJ 1965
We must Reverse Reaganomics, the disastrous economic dogma that has shifted $70 trillion in wealth upward and gutted our communities for decades.
The best way to do that is taxing billionaires, right out of existence with a $50 million cap on wealth, reviving Huey Long’s 1934 Share Our Wealth program.
If you've got a better idea, please share it with me. If not, decide if you want to save the world. If so, join us at DemocratsFor.US today
Everyone wants a hero. Save Us! We cry in despair for our children and our country. Please please let go of the super hero mentality, please please suck in and own that we created this mess with our money, our complacency and our attention. The only answer is that everyone stops wondering who will save us and instead stop buying, stop watching,l. Start creating, learning, debating and listening to each other. Act locally and globally. Other countries turn away from trump and we all do the same. Take away his power by physically standing together with immigrants, veterans, educators, and visionaries that can see a better future than our politicians or billionaire oligarchs could imagine. Admit our mistakes as s country. Seek wisdom from history and humility. Recognize the human condition of contradiction. We know all this! It just gets buried under entitlement and ignorance. Appreciate a beautiful world and neighbors that are not the same. We all have so much to learn. Be a learner
This is a good article as a description of the various problems, but it omits the major cause. That is the .001% sucking all wealth away from people and planet. Yes, we currently have 2 oligarchy parties serving them, with a few outlier politicians - e.g., Sanders, AOC - protesting & beginning to gain more audience. Meanwhile the .001%, wit Trump as ringmaster, is slicing and dicing this and other countries, + the planet, to sell for profit. Anything short of addressing that is an "if only" scenario. Yes, if only we addressed all these tsunamis. I absolutely agree. And I can also agree that this falls, partly, on us. But without addressing where the wealth and power to do these things resides, and their goals, which do not include a better world for the vast majority of us, the main point is missed. We can all pull our heads out of the sand, but when we survey the ruins where are we going to find the money and political power to build a new future? In my own world, I'm working on building local resilient, sustainable community. Because that can be done. I can't fix D.C. or the "transnational crime syndicate masquerading as gov'ts" that Sarah Kendzior describes. They have all the money and police, military and now gestapo armies to protect them. But I can help build community. My state is going broke as the GOP siphons funds away while providing less & less service (e.g. FEMA, weather, healthcare) & still demands taxes from everyone but the obscenely rich. Nationally, globally, we're at a point where a sea change is needed. I read a lot of these articles. They mostly end without solutions. Few to no one wants to say what needs to happen. I understand. We live in a surveillance state.
Excellent summation, as far as it goes. I agree we need public control and public spending. We need democratic socialism--let's call it what it is--to mitigate the greed and insanity of capitalism. Sadly, our problems go deeper than that. ICE is our gestapo, the Supreme Court is rubber stamping Trump's fascism, corporations are acceding to Trump's demands for bribes, and though a few have begun, amid the Epstein files debacle, clawing their way out, MAGA continues to swim in a cesspool of paranoid delusions. Sadly, things are even worse than you portray, and you do a damn good job of spelling out some of our core problems.
Heard a piece on MSNBC this morning about how Dems are moving to the "center" (formerly known as "right of center") to regain control of Congress in 2026. Yikes! More of the same that got us here in the first place! If they can't get past labels and Republican propaganda to propose the sorts of solutions you posit and that work, Corbin, I don't think we stand any chance at all of undoing the Trump 47 damage and moving forward in a positive and constructive way.
We just saw over 100 people, mostly children, die because Texas republicans refused to spend the money for a flood warning system. The mindset goes deep, and apparently no amount of needless deaths will change it.
Agreed. However, I wouldn't call it Head in the Sand Syndrome. I would call it a Squelched by President Business & the Drill Baby Drill Party. What is needed takes way too much vision and commitment, when there's way too many easier low-hanging and short-term profits to be generated. Who is there to lead in your excellent proposals? Because they are existential arguments as well as business endeavors. And that cast is worried about nobody but themselves.
Protests that block traffic and visits to the halls of congress both house and senate and a general strike and months long of actual boycotts and incessant phone calls and the like are ways to peacefully protest and do something that is more than just reblogging and being concerned. It’s hard when they designed the system to keep you from even being able to take a single shift off of work to survive but doing just what you’re able will be different for everyone but just as important. Thank you for writing these articles and sharing the news and creating community. I follow you and Liz Plank.
Good article. You left out what I think is the most important tsunami of all and that is the growing inequality of income and wealth. Over the next couple of generations if current trends continue the wealthiest 1% of the US will control virtually all of its wealth. We will look at 15th Europe when a very small number of nobles (and the church) owned virtually everything. And because we decided that anyone can spend as much as they want on elections the wealthy are going to continue to control governments for their own benefit.
You also left out the 40,000-man gestapo police force that is being created right now.
Thanks, I agree with most of your points but I don't know what I can do to help make this transition.
For example, I vote but we only see "lesser of two evils" options.
How can I support positive change?
The only consequential elections are primaries, so first adjust your perspective. We are not powerless, but anti-establishment progressive Democrats are disorganized. We must overcome that kind of obstacle.
Also, the Democratic Party’s embrace of donor-class servants is both a weak way to seek working-class support and a terrible way to fight a class war. Learn who is not on our side (almost every elected official) and make sure they get challengers.
In New Jersey alone you can connect with DemocratsFor.US and nationally you can check out JusticeDemocrats.com
This is not a complete list, but you're the only one who can save the world so Learn more, find help, and get going
As soon as I came across Klein and Thompson's Abundance I immediately thought that this was the perfect complement to the progressive economic justice message of Bernie and AOC. I was very happy to see your take on this, especially since one of my other favorite writers, Gil Duran, told me I was being naive and that this was just a way for billionaires to get Democrats on board with their agenda. Perhaps the fact that we both live in the south instead of Silicon Valley helps us understand just how broad the appeal of this message is. I'm hosting a Braver Angels event with a bipartisan group next month in Knoxville to test this theory. I think it has the potential to address most of the distaste that non-MAGA Republicans have for the idea of voting for Democrats while simultaneously energizing the left, delivering the FDR-style supermajority we need in order to accomplish anything.
Why aren’t we asking this administration these questions
We let his regime dictate the conversation 24/7
CNN, msnbc, BBC, AP, NPR ask the questions ! Every chance you get
Every time they are I. Front of a camera
Why isn’t this administration addressing the lack of housing? Fixing roads and bridges?
Republicans are to busy fixing stablecoin as they dub it as passing the genius act
Including Republicans who wear blue hats and pretend to be Democrats. Look at who voted for the Genius Act. They are the enemies
This regime doesn't care about the issues or you. Plus, there's no effective opposition because pretending doesn't count.
Learn more, find help, and get working on effectuating real change. Don't get put to sleep by idiots who lost everything we need and still pretend that we don’t have an existential threat on our hands.
I used to claim: a nation at war with itself can't be innovative and move forward. They get stuck, frozen in time. The civil war is over now. Trump and MAGA have won. Their revolutionary government is implementing its far-right ideology, and the middle class, working class, and poor will pay dearly for it. Our country is still at war with itself, but it's not a civil war; it's a counter-revolutionary war, and early skirmishes can be seen on city streets across America between everyday citizens -- counter-revolution resistance forces -- and the Regime's secret police: ICE. Regardless, the "War for America" continues, and a nation at war with itself can't be innovative and move forward.
Good Post Robin....
Pretending to be the loyal opposition is not the same as defending democracy and only a group of establishment Democrats funded by the same billionaires as the Trump Republicans could lose as consistently as Cory Booker and Chuck Schumer.
After Schumer's betrayal on the stopgap spending bill, Republicans (who were ready to fracture and fail) began an unbroken string of victories. The Big Billionaire Bill. Rescissions. Now Emil Bove.
Rank and file Democrats demanded action but Cory Booker turned the page by giving a pointless 25-hour speech followed by a 12-hour sit in with Hakeem Jeffries. Mollifying the masses might be entertaining but we cannot stop Trump’s tyranny by sitting around and talking. And that's not the worst of it.
The truth is, both major parties have allowed Wall Street, weapons dealers, and Big Oil to steer policy for too long. That’s why we have record inequality, endless war budgets, and a planet on fire.
I don’t believe America can survive another generation of Reaganomics — no matter which party is selling it. Scientists say the Earth is experiencing the Sixth Mass Extinction.
Imagine America as a car speeding toward the edge of a cliff.
One party—the reckless, corporate-captured GOP—is flooring the gas pedal.
The other—the comfortable, donor-driven Democratic establishment—insists on maintaining the current speed, as if cruise control will save us.
But no one in Washington is trying to slam on the brakes.
Since Cory Booker slithered into the Senate:
- Abortion rights evaporated, banned in 26 states while Booker made tearful speeches.
- Mass shooting bloodbaths tripled as children in schools were shredded by AR-15s—weapons of war his corporate donors lobbied to keep legal.
- CO2 levels rocketed from 400 ppm to 427ppm, turning oceans into acid baths.
- $27 trillion was vacuumed from working families into the accounts of tech overlords Booker calls "innovators."
- The Voting Rights Act was gutted like a fish, its carcass tossed to Jim Crow’s ghost as Booker dined with CEOs.
- The GENIUS Act a Trojan horse stuffed with crypto-loot, voted for by Booker and his GOP bedfellows.
When I say that I am doing something to save the world, that's not hyperbole or a metaphor. We have everything we need ~technology, resources~ except the political will. My plan is simple but it won’t be easy. It probably won't work but that's no reason to give up.
I am in the hospital with appendicitis. I had surgery recently but it is just going to take time for recovery because it ruptured. That's not stopping me from reaching out to you because Cory Booker just lost another valiant fight to keep a disqualified Trump Nazi off the court and soon, I expect to get an email from him expressing disgust and asking for five bucks.
As if rewarding intentional failure is the only option.
My plan is to slam on the brakes.
Lisa McCormick and I are building a grassroots movement that tells the truth, speaks for working people, and fights for real change.
It’s not enough to slow the car down. We need to slam on the brakes and start steering in a new direction.
That means:
Medicare for All, not insurance industry loopholes Teddy Roosevelt 1912
Green jobs & climate action, not fossil fuel subsidies AOC 2019
Labor rights & living wages, not gig economy exploitation FDR 1944
Peace & diplomacy, not permanent war profiteering LBJ 1965
We must Reverse Reaganomics, the disastrous economic dogma that has shifted $70 trillion in wealth upward and gutted our communities for decades.
The best way to do that is taxing billionaires, right out of existence with a $50 million cap on wealth, reviving Huey Long’s 1934 Share Our Wealth program.
If you've got a better idea, please share it with me. If not, decide if you want to save the world. If so, join us at DemocratsFor.US today
Everyone wants a hero. Save Us! We cry in despair for our children and our country. Please please let go of the super hero mentality, please please suck in and own that we created this mess with our money, our complacency and our attention. The only answer is that everyone stops wondering who will save us and instead stop buying, stop watching,l. Start creating, learning, debating and listening to each other. Act locally and globally. Other countries turn away from trump and we all do the same. Take away his power by physically standing together with immigrants, veterans, educators, and visionaries that can see a better future than our politicians or billionaire oligarchs could imagine. Admit our mistakes as s country. Seek wisdom from history and humility. Recognize the human condition of contradiction. We know all this! It just gets buried under entitlement and ignorance. Appreciate a beautiful world and neighbors that are not the same. We all have so much to learn. Be a learner
This is a good article as a description of the various problems, but it omits the major cause. That is the .001% sucking all wealth away from people and planet. Yes, we currently have 2 oligarchy parties serving them, with a few outlier politicians - e.g., Sanders, AOC - protesting & beginning to gain more audience. Meanwhile the .001%, wit Trump as ringmaster, is slicing and dicing this and other countries, + the planet, to sell for profit. Anything short of addressing that is an "if only" scenario. Yes, if only we addressed all these tsunamis. I absolutely agree. And I can also agree that this falls, partly, on us. But without addressing where the wealth and power to do these things resides, and their goals, which do not include a better world for the vast majority of us, the main point is missed. We can all pull our heads out of the sand, but when we survey the ruins where are we going to find the money and political power to build a new future? In my own world, I'm working on building local resilient, sustainable community. Because that can be done. I can't fix D.C. or the "transnational crime syndicate masquerading as gov'ts" that Sarah Kendzior describes. They have all the money and police, military and now gestapo armies to protect them. But I can help build community. My state is going broke as the GOP siphons funds away while providing less & less service (e.g. FEMA, weather, healthcare) & still demands taxes from everyone but the obscenely rich. Nationally, globally, we're at a point where a sea change is needed. I read a lot of these articles. They mostly end without solutions. Few to no one wants to say what needs to happen. I understand. We live in a surveillance state.
“Who owns the AI systems that are about to reshape our economy? Are they tools for the public good—or private empires in the making? “
You have answered your own question.
There are many intellectual, and ethical, questions about AI yet to be answered.
In the meantime, all development of AI should be suspended.
Unfortunately that probably will not happen; because the greedos have hold of AI.
They are shaking “it” like a tree, so as to make all the tree’s fruits drop into their treasure baskets.
They have not the knowledge, the sense — nor the will — to even acknowledge that these serious problems exist.
Altman and his buddies have joined with the greedos eagerly— even obsessively.
I really like your newsletters. Thanks. The Democracy Collaborative has some good solutions to the tsunamis: Community Wealth Building. https://www.democracycollaborative.org/community-wealth-building
Excellent summation, as far as it goes. I agree we need public control and public spending. We need democratic socialism--let's call it what it is--to mitigate the greed and insanity of capitalism. Sadly, our problems go deeper than that. ICE is our gestapo, the Supreme Court is rubber stamping Trump's fascism, corporations are acceding to Trump's demands for bribes, and though a few have begun, amid the Epstein files debacle, clawing their way out, MAGA continues to swim in a cesspool of paranoid delusions. Sadly, things are even worse than you portray, and you do a damn good job of spelling out some of our core problems.
Heard a piece on MSNBC this morning about how Dems are moving to the "center" (formerly known as "right of center") to regain control of Congress in 2026. Yikes! More of the same that got us here in the first place! If they can't get past labels and Republican propaganda to propose the sorts of solutions you posit and that work, Corbin, I don't think we stand any chance at all of undoing the Trump 47 damage and moving forward in a positive and constructive way.
We just saw over 100 people, mostly children, die because Texas republicans refused to spend the money for a flood warning system. The mindset goes deep, and apparently no amount of needless deaths will change it.
Agreed. However, I wouldn't call it Head in the Sand Syndrome. I would call it a Squelched by President Business & the Drill Baby Drill Party. What is needed takes way too much vision and commitment, when there's way too many easier low-hanging and short-term profits to be generated. Who is there to lead in your excellent proposals? Because they are existential arguments as well as business endeavors. And that cast is worried about nobody but themselves.
Protests that block traffic and visits to the halls of congress both house and senate and a general strike and months long of actual boycotts and incessant phone calls and the like are ways to peacefully protest and do something that is more than just reblogging and being concerned. It’s hard when they designed the system to keep you from even being able to take a single shift off of work to survive but doing just what you’re able will be different for everyone but just as important. Thank you for writing these articles and sharing the news and creating community. I follow you and Liz Plank.