Politics of Fear – Page 4 – The Wrongologist

Monday Wake Up Call – June 5, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Blue Ridge mountains, NC – June 2023 photo by Michele Schwartz

It’s getting to be long enough into our economic recovery that we’ve started to ignore the monthly jobs report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Luckily, Simon Rosenberg doesn’t let us forget: (brackets by Wrongo)

“The…BLS jobs report is out and it’s another good one – 339,000 net new jobs, [plus] 432,000…upward revisions from previous months. With this new data my monthly jobs tracker clocks in at:

-33.8m jobs – 16 years of Clinton, Obama

-13.1m jobs – 28 months of Biden

-1.9m jobs – 16 years of Bush, Bush and Trump

Biden’s 13.1m jobs is almost 7 times as many jobs as were created in the 16 years of the last 3 Republican Presidencies, combined.”

Since the end of the Cold War, the US has seen 49 million new jobs created. Remarkably, 47 million of those 49 million jobs were created under Democratic Presidents.

On the Democratic Party’s watch we’ve seen strong economic growth. OTOH, during the same time, Republican presidents have overseen three consecutive recessions. It’s not a stretch to say that the GOP’s economic track record over the past 30 years has been among the worst in US history.

Consider Biden’s record of economic growth:

GDP growth under Biden is 3+%, or 3 times what it was under Trump.
Almost 7 times as many Biden jobs as last 3 GOP Presidents combined.
Best post Covid economic recovery among the G7 countries.
Lowest unemployment rate in a peacetime economy since WWII.
Lowest poverty/uninsured rates ever.
Real corporate earnings up in 2022.

Despite what the GOP is saying to the press about their being deficit hawks, the federal deficit went up every year under Trump, and has come down every year under Biden. Rosenberg adds this helpful chart of GDP growth by president:

So why is it that Americans aren’t convinced that the economy has improved since the pandemic? In a new poll from the AP-NORC, asking if the nation’s economic conditions are in good shape, the percentage who agree is down from 30% last month to 24%. Only a third of Americans in the new survey approve of how Biden’s handling the economy, while two-thirds disapprove.

In the survey, Democrats were more likely than Republicans to view economic conditions favorably, but just 41% of them say the economy’s good and only 7% of Republicans agree. And both numbers are down from the previous month for both Parties.

Now this may be at least partially due to the Republicans scare tactics about the Debt Ceiling. The Hill reports that this AP-NORC poll is in line with other recent surveys that suggest most Americans think the country’s economy is in poor shape, Other polls also indicate low confidence in the economic leadership team.

Axios suggests a different way to view the economic issue. They looked at Federal Reserve survey data from 2017-2022, which shows that people think they’re personal economy is doing just fine, while they think the national economy is in terrible shape:

This is most likely because of the media’s awfulizing about our economy. Obviously, consumer prices are high, but inflation is coming down. But even if inflation went to zero, today’s prices will still be much higher than Americans were accustomed to pre-pandemic, so people will be complaining.

And we can’t discount the negative impact of Congressional dysfunction about the Debt Ceiling, or all the news bunnies crying about our unsustainable national debt.

Still, our economy continues to do better than even the economists think. The May employment report marked the 14th straight month that more jobs were created than economists expected. Our GDP continues to grow (it’s up more than 5% from its pre-pandemic peak), even after accounting for inflation.

The average US employee now makes $33.44 per hour, 17.5% more than before the pandemic. The stock market is up 10% so far this year, but still, Americans aren’t buying it. Axios’ Felix Salmon reports that while Americans say that they’re broadly happy with their personal finances (above chart), in other polls, a majority consistently think (erroneously) that we’re currently in a recession.

Time to wake up America! Things are rolling along reasonably well, even if they’re not fantastic. We have the best job market in 50 years, and there’s no recession on the horizon. As the Rolling Stones said: “You can’t always get what you want…”. Maybe it’s time to look at the glass as half full.

To help you wake up, watch and listen to Alan Jackson cover Eddie Cochran’s 1958 “Summertime Blues” in 1994. The Blue Cheer had the radio hit with it in 1968. Wrongo loves three versions of this song: Blue Cheer, the Who, and this Allen Jackson cover:

Immigration Reform Has To Happen

The Daily Escape:

Eastern Sequoia Canyon NP viewed from Mt. Whitney trail, CA – April 2017 photo by Peerman Craft Photography

The federal government is expecting a surge in migrants at the southern border after next week’s lifting of Title 42, a pandemic-era policy that has allowed the US to refuse to process asylum claims on public health grounds. In anticipation, the Biden administration is preparing to deploy an additional 1,500 troops to the southern border for 90 days.

Those troops are on top of about 2,500 who are serving there currently. None of the soldiers are armed. They are largely performing administrative tasks that free up Customs and Border Protection (CBP) staff to handle the anticipated surge of migrants.

This could be a critical political moment for Biden, who’s just launched his 2024 reelection bid. We seem to be on the verge of another potential border crisis, which brings the certainty of new attacks by Republicans. The GOP has been hammering the administration, saying Biden’s immigration plans are too little too late.

When Title 42 is lifted, CBP will rely on the existing Title 8 law, under which any individual who is deemed ineligible to be in the US faces a five-year ban on readmission – and criminal charges if found crossing illegally.

On Wednesday, US and Mexican officials agreed on new immigration policies. Under the agreement, Mexico will continue to accept up to 30,000 migrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba and Nicaragua who are turned away at the US border; and up to 100,000 individuals from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador who have family in the US will be eligible to live and work in Mexico.

The US is accepting 30,000 people per month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela for two years and offering them the ability to work legally, as long as they enter legally, have eligible sponsors and pass vetting and background checks. We’re continuing to turn away migrants from those four countries who cross the border illegally.

We’ve been following the same ad hoc approach to immigration for the past several administrations: We find a temporary solution that can handle a surge in migrants while not providing an open door for all who wish to enter the US.

We share this problem with most other rich countries. On Tuesday, the World Bank’s latest World Development Report said that about 184 million people across the world now live in countries where they’re not citizens. About 37 million of the total are refugees, a number that has tripled over the last decade.

Most of the transit happens through Central America before migrants reach the southern US border. Border security isn’t rigorous enough there to stem the northward flow. Recognizing that problem, the administration announced that it will set up regional processing centers for migrants to apply to come to the US. These centers will be located in Colombia and Guatemala, two countries migrants often pass through on their way to the US-Mexico border.

Deciding who gets to stay in the US is a bigger challenge when the migrants have few job skills and they’re not seeking asylum. We differentiate between asylum seekers and economic migrants. With a current backlog of 1.3 million asylum cases to be heard (equal to 4.25 years), the system is clearly broken.

The question is what should we do to stop/slow the flow of hundreds of thousands of migrants attempting to cross our southern border? Bloomberg shows the scale of the problem:

What’s the answer to this? Wrongo doubts that there is ONE answer.

Do we create a kind of reverse Berlin Wall like Trump tried to do? If it became a militarized border, we could surely cut down on the migration and the southern border would be controlled. This is the wet dream of the anti-immigration hawks. But the cost of building and manning the wall with soldiers would be ruinous, and to date, militarized borders aren’t who we are as a country.

Do we undertake nation building in Central and South America, hoping that those countries can become more attractive to their potential migrants? America’s track record with nation-building is terrible. And think about the cost, which could be far greater than the cost of a militarized wall. Think about how much money would be skimmed into the pockets of local politicians.

But we can’t just leave our borders open. Open borders are a sign of a government that has lost control of its geography. It would ultimately lead to a reality that no American wants. This is the specter that instills fear into most Americans about the growing migration problem.

It appears that we’re going to continue using an orderly throttling and vetting process at the southern border to decide who among this new surge of migrants is allowed into the country. The bigger question is what should our immigration policy be going forward? We haven’t had immigration reform since the 1980s. We’re unlikely to have reform any time soon.

Biden and the Democrats are vulnerable if they can’t articulate a plan (that they can back with numbers) that shows the American people what we’re doing to control immigration. Developing a clear position on immigration could draw significant public majority support.

There are plenty of Democrats and Independents who are strongly against migration. So Biden needs to show progress soon by demonstrating that we’re controlling the problem.

Saturday Soother – April 22, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Rainbow, Blue Ridge Parkway, VA – April 2023 photo by Tim Lewis

American carnage is real, my friend. Just not in the way that Trump stated in his inaugural rant. The American carnage Wrongo speaks of is the gun attacks made on others by angry or fearful lone American gunmen. From Charlie Sykes at The Bulwark:

“Ringing the wrong doorbell, making a wrong turn, getting in the wrong car, and an errant basketball. A wounded teenager, a dead young woman, cheerleaders in critical condition, and a 6-year-old girl and her father shot.”

The Indiana man who shot a 16-year-old boy for knocking on his door is described by his grandson as a conspiracy theorist and avid consumer of right-wing media: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“I feel like a lot of people of that generation are caught up in this 24 hour news cycle of fear and paranoia perpetuated by some…news stations. And he was fully into that, sitting and watching Fox News all day, every day blaring in his living room…..that doesn’t necessarily lead people to be racist, but it reinforces and galvanizes racist people. And their beliefs.”

Right wing propaganda is about fear. And some people bathe in it for hours a day. So, while the rest of us enjoy walks in the park or a trip to the market, they’re terrified of every swarthy stranger at the Publix or Home Depot.

Add this level of fear to the implicit permission given gun owners by “stand your ground” laws, and you have the elements of an environment of violence. Vox provides background:

“Some of these shootings took place in states with so-called “stand your ground” laws, which offer expansive legal protections for people who use deadly force against others out of self-defense….and experts have noted that the laws can bolster a “shoot first, ask later” mentality.”

More: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Under such laws — which exist in some form in 38 states — people can use lethal force if they reasonably believe their life is under threat, and they don’t have to take steps to retreat or avoid the confrontation first. That’s a stark change from prior laws….In the past, the “castle doctrine,” which has been adopted by most states, allowed people to use deadly force if a person entered their home.

Stand your ground laws take that idea one step further, with some making such allowances no matter where a person is, whether that’s a public place, their vehicle or their office.”

Add pervasive fear and permission to stand your ground to the proliferation of guns in America (aided by the Supreme Court’s expansive reading of the Second Amendment) and the US has come undone. From Umair Haque: (emphasis by Haque)

“Did you know that America isn’t just the most violent nation in the industrialized world — but an off the charts extreme outlier? Iceland is the world’s most peaceful society. Canada is the world’s 12th most peaceful society. America is the… 129th.”

That’s 129 out of 163 countries tracked. Further evidence is in the recent TSA statistics about intercepting guns about to be carried on to planes:

“Officers with the Transportation Security Administration confiscated more than 1,500 guns at airport security checkpoints in the US during the first quarter of the year, more than 93% of which were loaded. The 1,508 firearms equate to an average of 16.8 intercepted each day during the first three months of the year…”

The gun gives its owner the power of life and death. No training needed. The power of God right there in your hand. It’s very attractive to a certain type of person. And we cultivate that type of personality in America.

We have no safety nets, no social bonds, no norms of decency. That means we ask each other to bear the unbearable.

We don’t invest enough in safety nets, insurance, public goods, healthcare, education, and, in most states, gun laws. According to Haque, it’s all justified by politicians saying, “I can bear the unbearable — why can’t they?” But we can’t do that forever. Someone will snap, and the frustration of bearing the unbearable pours out as rage that’s visited on whomever is nearest, or easiest to hurt. That’s American Exceptionalism at work. America’s extreme violence, caused in large part by the twisted ideology that asks Americans to bear unbearable things.

Enough about guns and people snapping. It’s time for our Saturday Soother! Here on the Fields of Wrong, our crabapple trees are in bloom. They’re being visited by both birds and bees, each looking for high calorie snacks. The bees for the flowers, the birds for the buds. Our spring clean-up is lagging, so there’s still much to do.

But first, let’s relax for a few minutes. Grab a comfy chair near a big window and watch and listen to Valentina Lisitsa, a Ukrainian-American pianist, play “Rustle of Spring”, a solo piano piece written by Norwegian composer Christian Sinding in 1896:

If you are interested in amazing piano technique, watch Lisitsa perform Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2.

Can America Come Back From Our Divide?

The Daily Escape:

Easter Sunday, Great Smokey Mountains NP – April 2023 photo by Melissa Russell

We’re back from our roughly 2,200 mile journey to Gettysburg PA, St. Augustine FL, and Charleston SC. The focus of our trip was visiting with family, and it didn’t disappoint. We saw about 40 family members in the three locations. Most are healthy and thriving, and there was lots of laughter.

But we also saw slices of different cultures than what we’re used to here in Connecticut. Wrongo wonders if the US has ever been as divided as it is now?

Yes we’ve been divided in the past, most notably before and during the Civil War. American schools still teach the Civil War to our kids, although like everything else, views on what it was fought about differ largely by geography and political leaning.

Between 1861-1865, we killed our fellow Americans at a prodigious rate, with about 620,000 dying. In fact, Americans killed more other Americans in that war than all of our adversaries did in eight of our wars combined: the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Gulf Wars. The Civil War stands alone when it comes to America being divided deeply enough that we killed each other in astonishing numbers.

The Civil War was about one issue: Slavery.

In today’s America, we’re fighting about everything: Gun control, abortion, climate change, fossil fuels, drilling, the environment, immigration, refugees, diversity, voting rights, elections, women’s rights, policing, who gets tax cuts, health care, LGBTQ+ rights, health care for transgender kids, bathrooms, books, what’s taught in classrooms, COVID-19, vaccines, poverty, welfare, unions, Ukraine, Russia, Israel, student debt, Trump, the Jan. 6 insurrection, and education.

These modern divisions exist without exception in every state. They are fought over with words, and occasionally, with weapons. They are fought about in our courts. Some on the political Right call for secession. In 2021, the University of Virginia Center for Politics released the results of a poll that found the majority of the individuals who voted to reelect Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential elections hoped that their state could secede from the Union.

“Hoping” isn’t doing something to make secession happen, although it’s a first step.

What’s worrisome is that like before the Civil War, there doesn’t seem to be a pathway forward to a common cause. Wrongo has written about “The Cause, The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783” by Joseph Ellis. It says that the founders had to create a blurry vision of the revolution because colonists were suspicious of the motives of other colonies. So the founders described their fight for independence as “The Cause”, an ambiguous term that covered diverse ideas and multiple viewpoints.

It succeeded in unifying us against the British.

Maybe America’s now reached a point where it’s possible that nothing will ever unite us again. Instead, we yell at each other across a chasm of ideological and political partisanship.

Our global reputation has sunk: We’re seen as an undereducated, and unhealthy nation. Many of us want our political opponents dead, while admiring the world’s autocrats. We’re tolerant of the gun slaughter of our children, and callous about the plight of our neighbors, especially if they are poor, sick, or different.

The annual World Happiness Report, based on data from Gallup’s World Poll of 24 developed nations, shows that Americans, when asked to evaluate their current life as a whole, are less content than the citizens of 14 other wealthy countries.

It’s worth noting that most of the countries whose citizens are happier than ours have governments that provide their residents with a sense of safety and security, a foundation on which their people can build a fulfilling life and an optimistic future. They can get treated for medical problems. They can afford life-saving medicine. They don’t fall into medical bankruptcy.

Their life expectancies are longer than ours and rising; America’s is falling.

They value higher education enough to provide it for free. They value families enough that their maternal care, both before and after birth, is outstanding. The US should be ashamed of our maternal mortality rate, which is higher than almost any other country, developed or not, in the world.

We desperately need to find a new “Cause” to bind us together.

Benjamin Franklin famously remarked at the close of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 that we had formed a republic if we could keep it.

We must get prepared both mentally and in our guts, to fight to keep this country together – AND to keep it a representative democracy.

The alternative looks horrendous.

Saturday Soother – January 14, 2023

The Daily Escape:

A view from Shenandoah NP near Keezletown, VA – January 1, 2023 photo by One Man’s Outdoor Journey

Wrongo and Ms. Right live far enough out in the country that we have no city water, sewer, or gas lines. But the cooktop in our recently remodeled kitchen runs on propane while our ovens are electric. We have a well and septic. Our hot water is made by propane as well.

So what are we supposed to make of this week’s controversy over the Biden administration’s Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) possibly banning future sales of natural gas stoves and cooktops? The reason for this is that burning gas stoves put their partially burned fuel, including nitrogen dioxide (NO²) in the air, which causes asthma. And older stoves with pilot lights instead of electric igniters also push NO²into the air.

On Monday, Bloomberg reported that the CPSC was considering new regulations around gas stoves, given growing concerns over indoor pollutants. Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. said:

“Any option is on the table….Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”

The proposal by the CPSC followed a December study by scientists finding that gas ranges that burn natural gas account for almost 13% of childhood-asthma cases in the US. Advocates have long argued against gas stoves, saying the pollution they emit makes them inferior to other options, such as electric or induction ranges. But the asthma statistic breathed new life into the debate.

OK, Wrongo knows the difference between propane and natural gas, but when he first heard about the debate, it was unclear whether his gas of choice was also a health problem and had to die.

Bloomberg neglected to say that any CPSC regulations, like other proposed state and local-level bans of gas stoves, only applies to new construction. But that didn’t keep Republicans from evoking visions of a 2023 filled with government agents busting down doors and ripping out stoves. That tentative regulation conversation about how to best mitigate the health hazards of gas stoves morphed into a Right Wing campaign to convince Real Americans that the Government is coming for their gas stoves:

Rep. Ronny Jackson, (R-TX) tweeted:

“If the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold dead hands,”

From Sen. Tom Cotton,(R-AK):

“Democrats are coming for your kitchen appliances,”

From Rep. Byron Donalds, (R-FL):

“Get your hands off our gas stoves!!!!”

From Rep. Jim Jordan,(R-OH):

“God. Guns. Gas stoves.”

God, Guns, and Gas stoves! All because one appointee in the administration discussed it. But this controversy isn’t about facts; like always, it’s about feelings. Over 30 years ago, the Clean Energy Act was easily renewed on a bipartisan basis. Since then, the environment has become part of the culture wars.

The reflex to position gas stoves as the last redoubt of traditional American life threatened by big government, is just stereotypical of the American Right wing. It’s difficult to see the fight about gas stoves as something that will move the needle since gas is far more common in cities and blue states. So, let the Republicans keep on cooking up the outrage du jour. It’s doubtful that the voters will be eating it up.

Remember their past freak-outs, like when former Rep. Michele Bachmann tried to build a political career around preserving incandescent light bulbs? Another useless freak-out.

In retrospect, it’s honestly shocking we were able in 1975 to ban leaded gasoline in America, although there were lots of dissenters at the time. And now, since we’ve gotten all their guns, it only makes sense that Democrats go after their gas stoves.

Let’s leave these partisan debates in the kitchen where they belong and embrace our Saturday Soother, that special time when we stop thinking about Biden’s secret document stash, or why Jim Jordan dresses like a gym teacher, and spend a few minutes contemplating nearly nothing.

Start by brewing up a big mug of Wilton Benitez Orange Bourbon ($19.00/8 oz.) from Wisconsin’s JBC Coffee Roasters. Apparently the coffee cherries for this variant turn orange when they ripen rather than the typical red and tend to be even more fruity than their red counterparts. The roaster says it is super creamy with flavors of candied ginger, pineapple, and cream soda.

Now grab a seat by a south-facing window to watch and listen to “Fandango” from the Guitar Quintet in D-major, G.448 by Boccherini, performed live in 2015 at the Schubertiade in Hohenems, Austria. Boccherini was an Italian composer and cellist who died in 1805. A fandango is a Spanish dance:

Monday Wake Up Call – October 31, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Monument Valley rainstorm – October, 2022 photo by Martine Hubscher

Wrongo and Ms. Right are heading home to the land of disputed elections after a very fine week in London. We hadn’t been to England since 2019, and it was at least a little sad to learn that some of the local places near our hotel had succumbed to the pandemic. On the bright side, our favorite Indian place was open and thriving.

We can’t start Monday without acknowledging the death of Jerry Lee Lewis. He was the last one standing of the founding generation of rock ‘n rollers. Wrongo knows all of you are saying “But, what about Elvis”?

Early Elvis changed the world, but he died young and was already long past his peak when he did. Bill Haley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Buddy Holly all exited before the Killer. None had his longevity. And that along with his talent is why he’s a greater artist than almost anyone of that generation of the major early rock stars. Some might quibble and say what about Sam Cooke? Or Dion?

As for Jerry Lee’s personal life, you know the story and it wasn’t good. He may be the ultimate example of differentiating between the art and the artist.

One wonderful and overlooked part of the Killer’s early career was an impromptu jam session involving Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash made on December 4, 1956, at the Sun Record Studios in Memphis, Tennessee. An article about the session was published in the Memphis Press-Scimitar under the title “Million Dollar Quartet”.

A recording of the session was released in Europe in 1981 as The Million Dollar Quartet with 17 tracks. Subsequently, it inspired a musical called the “Million Dollar Quartet” that played on Broadway and in the West End. Both are closed now, but it does occasionally travel in the US. Wrongo loved it when he saw it. See it if you can.

Regarding the hammering attack on Paul Pelosi by a Right Wing MAGA fellow traveler, it should be seen as an assassination attempt on the highest ranking Democrat in Congress and the woman who is second in line of succession to the presidency.

CNN is reporting that the man who attacked Pelosi had with him a bag that contained multiple zip ties.

This is all part of a pattern. First there was the assassination plot against the Governor of Michigan. Then there was a violent insurrection on Jan. 6, the attempted coup. These were followed by assassination threats/plots against multiple Democratic members of Congress and the members of the Jan. 6 Committee.

Now, on the verge of a very important midterm election, the Speaker of the House’s husband is beaten. From Brian Kass an Atlantic contributor and an associate professor at University College London:

“This week, 3 men were convicted of trying to kidnap Gov. Whitmer, a man pleaded guilty to threatening Rep. Eric Swalwell, a right wing conspiracy theorist tried to murder Speaker Pelosi, shortly after Bannon, who called to behead Fauci, was sentenced to prison. This isn’t random.”

“There are dangerous people of all stripes. But Republicans, unlike Democrats, are actively encouraging violence, posing with guns in incendiary ads that speak of “hunting” opponents, or depict shooting actors who play Biden and Pelosi. Plus, there’s QAnon and the election lies.”

Still more: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“When a Supreme Court justice was threatened, Democrats didn’t just condemn it, they passed a law which Biden signed to give them more protection and security. This isn’t remotely a both sides thing. Which Biden adviser called to behead a public health official? Get real.”

Finally:

“Regardless, I fear that a) there will be assassinations; and b) political violence will be a routine feature of US political life, particularly around elections, for the foreseeable future. It’s a really dark place for our politics and it’s being caused, mostly, by Republicans.”

A Trump supporter attempted to assassinate a Congressional leader. That should be seismic political news. And yet, it’s just another news story. The growing awareness that we are no longer willing to settle policy disagreements with elections will dismantle the American experiment.

Time to wake up America! You only have a few days left to vote. You only have a few days to turn the tide on the MAGA movement. To help you wake up, listen to Jerry Lee do something you’ve probably haven’t heard.

Here’s “Me and Bobby McGee” a tune written by Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster. It was originally performed by Roger Miller, but we all remember Janis Joplin’s cover of the song, recorded a few days before her death in October 1970.

In 1971, Jerry Lee took Kristofferson’s song and turned it into something only Jerry Lee could do:

Monday Wake Up Call – October 3, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Baxter Lake, Baxter State Park, ME – September 2022 photo by Laura Zamfirescu Photography

“We moved to a better neighborhood”. That’s the story of millions of Americans whose lives tracked toward success. In a way, that IS the American Dream, to escape from where you are to someplace better, safer, more upscale.

That version of the American Dream dovetails with our 21^st century desire to be isolated from other people. We order dinner from Doordash. We buy housewares from Amazon. We buy automobiles online to avoid talking to the manager at the dealer.

Many of Wrongo’s grandkids say that they hate people, meaning that they only wish to speak with their friends, and not to anyone who might be their customer.

So is alone in a better neighborhood now the American Dream? What about billionaires? They already live in the best neighborhoods. They have battalions of staff insulating them from the rest of us. Have you ever had a meeting with a multi-billionaire? It isn’t an easy thing to do. Over the years, Wrongo has worked for two of them, and they were perfectly fine individuals. But they were completely insulated.

And they made their money the old-fashioned way, inheriting it from their Robber Barron parents.

Today’s mega-rich have mostly found ways to extract value from consumers and businesses via software. Take a look at Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. It’s a list dominated by people who have made money from the digital technology revolution.

And what are they doing with all this wealth? Many are quietly plotting their own survival against the world’s demise. Wrongo heard an interview with Douglas Rushkoff, author of “Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires”. Rushkoff is Professor at City University of NY, also a founder of the Laboratory for Digital Humanism, and a fellow at the Institute for the Future.

Rushkoff explained that billionaires worried about the end of the world know their money will likely be of little value. They’re thinking about political instability, social breakdown, and environmental catastrophe. A number of the world’s richest people are preparing for these events by building bunkers in New Zealand and in other remote locations. From Rushkoff:

“Most of these guys that we think are going to save us are actually wishing for the apocalypse. This is not just something that they fear. It’s something that at this point they’re ready to bring on.”

The book came from a meeting between Rushkoff and five billionaires at a desert resort. The topic? How to survive the catastrophe they know is coming. More from Rushkoff:

“And they spent the rest of the hour asking me really to…test their survival strategies…Do we go underground? Do I get an island?….What about space? And we ended up spending the majority of the hour on the single question, How do I maintain control of my security force after my money is worthless?…..because they’ve all got this money, they’ve…contracted Navy SEALs to come out to their compounds. But then they’re thinking, well, what do we do if our money’s worthless, then why are the Navy SEALs not just going to kill us and take all the stuff?”

Remember the back-yard bomb shelters of the 1950s: With that threat, how big would you want your bomb shelter to be? How luxurious and well-guarded? If the world were destroyed, you would try to live in that shelter full-time. Same thing with these billionaires.

Think about it: They want to use 21st century technology to revive a 13th century social order and impose it on the land and people who live around their protected fortresses. Missing from the plans of tech billionaires? Ideas to stop authoritarianism, decrease inequality, heal social divides, or slow climate change. Rushkoff explains:

“Even if we call them genius technologists, most of them were plucked from college when they were freshmen….They came up with some idea in their dorm room before they’d taken history, or economics, or ethics, or philosophy classes, and so they lack the wisdom needed to oversee their own perverse amounts of wealth.”

So maybe we shouldn’t rely on these guys to protect our future. In fact, Rushkoff says that these people who have the most power to change our current trajectory have no interest in doing so.

At this point in human history, making money is all that matters. In capitalist societies your worth is directly correlated to how much money you have. Everybody understands this. Billionaires are the most prominent symptom, but they aren’t the disease. Capitalism is the disease.

Time to wake up America! There is absolutely zero downside to relieving these people of a big slice of their wealth and putting it toward rehabbing our society. To help you wake up, watch, and listen to Carlos and Cindy Blackman Santana lead a Playing for Change global group of musicians in “Oye Como Va”:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – September 11, 2022

It’s 21 years since the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. As Michael de Adder says:

Twenty one years on, America is more at war with itself than with any foreign terrorists, despite having troops deployed in 80 countries. Our society and our democracy are threatened from within in a way that Osama bin Laden could never have managed. And where are we today? Cartoonist Mike Luckovich has a thought:

If ever so briefly after that fateful day. Today we face threats that might end our democracy:

We’ve nearly lost our social cohesion
We aren’t dealing with income inequality
We’re seeing racism grow
We see clear threats to the right to vote, or whether our votes will even count if we cast them

In these 21 years, Republicans have moved from being the Party of national security to the Party of grievance and anger. As Elliot Ackerman wrote last year in Foreign Affairs:

“From Caesar’s Rome to Napoleon’s France, history shows that when a republic couples a large standing military with dysfunctional domestic politics, democracy doesn’t last long. The US today meets both conditions.”

MAGA asks the wrong question:

When you have no policies, this is what you get:

Let’s close today with a song by Mary Chapin Carpenter that she wrote back on the first anniversary of 9/11. Carpenter was inspired by an interview with Jim Horch, an ironworker who was among the early responders at the WTC site. Here’s part of what Horch said:

“My responsibility at the site was to try to remove big pieces of steel. The building fell so hard there wasn’t even concrete. It was dust….I started to feel the presence of spirits…not very long after I was there. The energy that was there was absolutely incredible and…it was more than just the people that I was working with…it was energy left behind….One day when I was working, I felt this energy and it felt lost and it wanted to go home but it didn’t know how to go home and it came to me to go to Grand Central Station. When I got off the subway, I walked into the Great Room. Into where the constellation is in the ceiling. And I walked around the perimeter and…out of the building. I didn’t feel the energy anymore. I could feel it leave.”

And here’s Carpenter’s “Grand Central Station”:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – June 12, 2022

The WaPo reports that Facebook is allowing marketplace buyers and sellers to violate its ban on gun purchases 10 times before being kicked off the platform. They rep orted that Facebook’s guidelines also include a five-strikes system for gun sellers and buyers who call for violence or voice support for a “known dangerous organization” before they lose Facebook access.

Five years ago, Facebook banned the private sale of guns on its website but it hasn’t previously explained how the company enforces the ban. Apparently, they really don’t. On to cartoons.

The GOP’s #1 strategy:

GOP strategy #2:

Kids understand:

Liz Cheney, another guided missile:

Wrong argument in the wrong court:

Twisted logic by Republicans who defied the J6 committee:

FOX knows its audience:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – June 5, 2022

Since 2019, more than 4,500 children have been shot to death in the US, according to the Gun Violence Archive. That’s about the same number as US military members killed during the 17 years of the Iraq War.

The supporters of permissive gun laws say that an armed society is self-regulating. That we should be able to keep weapons out of the hands of the wrong people. And when we can’t, a law-abiding gun owner will be nearby with their gun to stop the bad guy, wherever they appear.

But life isn’t such a simple binary. And because America has allowed the unlimited proliferation of weapons, we know with certainty that when the switch flips, people will die.

If that is the cost of freedom — if our liberty demands the occasional massacre, including of innocent children — then Republican politicians need to make that case to the rest of us. On to cartoons.

Mental health is only the tip of the iceberg: