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“Yup, sure am worried!”
02/01/25
A friend sent me this video today:
Feelings:
Who is this speaker even
This feels like the end of 2019, pre-pandemic. I heard a scientist on the radio and he sounded VERY CONCERNED about some kind of bat virus. I didn’t think anything of it at the time.
Yes! Down with the nation state. Wait no no no no no no no no no no no. I do not want to replace the nation state with an even worse system of mini corporate states where we are held hostage to ultra wealthy techno-fascists.
This country is a playground for techno-fascists. I feel very good about deleting social media from my phone. I am still very worried about a future wherein we give the rights to our data and Our Selves to corporations to sell back to us, like water and air and land.
“techno-fascists” makes me think about:
I recently saw The Order, which is based on a true story about the FBI vs. the real threat of a small, unhinged white supremacist group that followed the steps to violent revolution outlined in a racist dystopian fiction book.
The whole Project 2025 thing, Butterfly whatever, those things are very similar. They are dumb, but also real, unhinged, and followed by fanatics with resources.
Highly recommend watching The Order. I haven’t read the book it was based on.
A few years ago, a friend recommended The Old Iron Dream by David Forbes. It’s an essay about the long-lasting impact of right wing sci fi authors on western policy. Like these guys literally got pulled in by the U.S. government to help brainstorm policy and future conquests basically.
It gave me some context for the more recent history of western sci fi, which I hadn’t really read before (now I read a lot of queer and progressive sci fi, though I prefer escapism/fantasy).
I took this photo from GoodReads sorry
It would be nice if our two parties focused less on Power Over People and more on Caring Communities. I get that in a communal setting, you can’t have all the nice things and sometimes you have to actually talk with one another to work out disputes.
But I’d love to see a world where there aren’t people struggling to survive down the street while other people avoid eye contact and instead doomscroll on their $800 piece of hardware (made by other exploited people struggling to survive) that they are then forced to replace every few years by software developers.
We should always strive to be better. Right now, we’re pretty bad. We will always go through waves of weird fluctuations, some of which are worse than others.
Something else I think about often is how the world is perfectly imperfect. 🤔
But if I were to implement my vision of a perfect world, it would inherently be authoritarian. Everyone has a different idea of what is perfect. There is no way I could have my perfect world without having to oppress others. (I still say, we should bring back the tar and feather! I think we still need real consequences!)
I still haven’t figured out how to better explain this thought. It brings me peace, nonetheless. My main point is that the world is chaotic, and the best thing you can do is try your best.
One action item:
You don’t have to delete your accounts, but at least delete social media apps from your phone. I still have Messenger, but otherwise I prefer Signal, and then whatever the default Message app is. Friends will still send me links, but I’m not the one wading through eternal content.
When you get the itch to scroll, message someone. Read a book. Read an article. Draw a silly stick figure. Go outside. Talk to a neighbor. Listen to a song. There are many things to do instead of gambling for dopamine and mostly just letting the corporations who have co-opted social media make you feel bad about yourself.
Disconnecting is a powerful tool.
02/05/25
The same friend sent me this article and I finally got the time and energy to absorb it.
I don’t agree with Bannon on a lot of stuff, but his big picture view of what’s been going on in the world seems accurate in ways that I’ve never realized, and is also a little horrifying.
I watched the YouTube interview, but found that skimming through this article was more useful, as Bannon rants a lot without completing ideas, which makes it a little hard to follow.
What follows here is me trying to parse it and organize my thoughts around the key points.
I didn’t realize Bannon was anti-capitalist. In response, my partner noted another famous historical figure who was also anti-capitalist…
Bannon also doesn’t identify as a conservative… but he does identify as a right-wing populist nationalist non-transhumanist (I wouldn’t say a humanist either)…
He believes in cutting immigration entirely to raise wages for American citizens (not just white ones). I get the root idea, but I also think it’s a bad solution (especially if we’re cutting education spending, failing to uplift and shift lower wage jobs to living wage jobs… 👀).
Vocabulary
Populist: The People™️ vs. The Elite™️- someone who favors the people over the elite. Not always clear on definitions of “the elite” or “the people.” Both Trump and Sanders are populists.
Nationalist: “a person who strongly identifies with their own nation and vigorously supports its interests, especially to the exclusion or detriment of the interests of other nations.” - Oxford Languages
Not always clear on definitions of “nation” and its “citizens.”
White Nationalist: Someone who is a nationalist with a racist spin (see above bullet).
Populist Nationalists:
A vague combination of populist and nationalist.
“Populism is a political strategy built on division, pitting ‘the people’ against ‘the elite’ to consolidate power.” -Populist Nationalism Threatens Health and Human Rights in the COVID-19 Response
Globalists: Wow okay just read the wiki lol
Humanists: People who “stand for the building of a more humane, just, compassionate, and democratic society using a pragmatic ethics based on human reason, experience, and reliable knowledge - an ethics that judges the consequences of human actions by the well-being of all life on Earth.” - The American Humanist Association
Transhumanists: People who are okay with using technology to enhance humans beyond current biological constraints.
Movement conservativism => Tea Party: Cut government spending.
Capitalists: “a wealthy person who uses money to invest in trade and industry for profit in accordance with the principles of capitalism” - Oxford Languages
From Bannon’s perspective: Capitalists undercut American wages by allowing illegal immigration at the border, as well as legally bringing in indentured servants via H-1B visas. To distract progressives and traditional Democrat voters from this type of labor exploitation, the Democratic Party gave immigration policies a racial, xenophobic spin.
Republicans: Populist, nationalist
Democrats: Globalist, elitist
From Bannon’s perspective: Democrats thought that Republicans would be forced to become more liberal on social/immigration issues if they wanted the Hispanic vote. But turns out there were a lot of Hispanic voters would vote for a populist candidate, even a Republican one, if they weren’t racist.
Then there’s a capitalist or maybe just elitist part of the Republican coalition that wants to keep taxes low for the upper class by cutting Medicaid and other social welfare programs. Bannon thinks of capitalists as corporate welfare queens. He wants them to rein in their lobbyists and shareholders, and also cut defense spending. It’s unclear to me, but it sounds like he believes the populist-leaning faction of the Republican party can sway Trump’s administration towards cutting the defense budget and taxing the upper classes (I say that he’s completely delusional, as Trump and all his friends are capitalists).
American Timeline
2007 - The U.S. government pulled in right-wing sci fi authors to help brainstorm how to handle national security threats (see The Old Iron Dream by David Forbes). Who determines what or who is a threat?
2008 - The U.S. government bailed out banks (Corporations) when the housing market crashed, even though American people were the ones who suffered. Who does the government serve?
[maybe 2010 to present] - The U.S. government essentially gave the tech industry unlimited power in order to compete against other countries (China). No breaking up of monopolies, no anti-trust, no regulations, no restrictions. I didn’t realize this until Bannon said it, and it makes sense. And is horrifying. Technology is the current landscape of global warfare, as well as an essential tool in economic dominance. Who really runs the government?
Bannon refers to this bad deal and how capitalists are driving down wages via open borders and visas as technofeudalism. In technofeudalism, there is no more value in being human. I’m a little unclear on what else he means by this. Seems related to the techno-fascist landscape of mini (tech) corporation states.
Bannon states that tech “broligarchs” and other corporate oligarchs are not conservative or right-wing. Bannon thinks they are progressive leftists, which I think is inaccurate. He later “clarifies” that broligarchs are basically apolitical opportunists, which I think is accurate. They will serve whichever country gives them the greatest protections, benefits, and bailouts.
Note:
I do appreciate running into Republicans who are not all about DRILL BABY DRILL and instead are also deeply concerned about the environment. Especially the environmental impacts of tech.
Something people often don’t think about is how much their digital footprint impacts the environment. The Internet™️and The Cloud™️are literally just a series of huge physical cables running along land and on the sea floor, connecting a massive network of buildings containing servers that require a ton of energy.
Every draft Google doc we forget about, our unread emails, our 2 AM search engine queries… all of that requires data storage and processing power, which requires energy. And the generative AI movement we’re seeing now requires an even more massive amount of energy. They want to bring back coal mines!
My actual thoughts
“They will serve whichever country gives them the greatest protections, benefits, and bailouts.”
I think most millennials and younger generations think of employers as temporary.
Many of us go where the greatest benefits can be found, within certain limits (like remote work, values-aligned culture, etc.).
There is a lashback against the idea of your boss and coworkers as family. Our generations have found agency and power in cutting ties that no longer serve us, including blood ties. We are able to form and define our own families. Those close bonds do not need to include coworkers, even the ones we interact with for a majority of our waking hours (which, unfortunately for some, is more time than you get to spend with your own partners and/or children).
Trust and loyalty may have been established previously through good pension/retirement plans, living wages, work-life balance… but those days are pretty much gone.
America is like an employer.
Its citizens can leave for countries that provide better benefits (though you’ll likely never escape American taxes).
More frequently, America undercuts the wages of its own “employees” by outsourcing to other countries.
Outsourcing labor to other countries, particularly in the tech indstury, is also counterproductive when it comes to national security.
As an employer, if you hire Chinese immigrants, what stops them from taking your tech ideas back to China?
As a customer, sure, you can protect your accounts with a strong password and multi-factor authentication. But you can’t control who the provider’s system administrators and support representatives are. Are they all outsourced in other countries where there is little recourse if they happen to breach your data? What protections are in place against this type of privacy and security breach?
To me, this point speaks to Bannon’s concerns about the tech “broligarchs.” The U.S. government relies on them and has given them authority to achieve tech dominance at any cost. But without a leash or collar, the cat is free to shit in your yard and head to the house with better benefits.