Miscellaneous material to start your week.
- Carole Cadwalladr highlights the Elon Musk-led coup against democratic governance in the U.S., while Sarah Kendzior discusses how Musk and the rest of his toxic techbros are best described as strip-mining the future of humanity. Brian Barrett points out the obvious dangers of treating the civil service underpinning a functional society as a startup where "breaking things" is the primary objective. And Jonathan Martin notes that many American lives are at risk (along with far more from people in affected countries) due to the Trump administration's obliteration of USAID.
- Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Timothy Geithner, Jacob Lew and Janet Yellenall offer their warning that American democracy is in grave danger. Brian Beutler writes that U.S. Democrats have just enough levarage to face the choice between either standing up for representative institutions by insisting that government funding be conditioned on their effectiveness, or enabling Trump to take unfettered control. Jared Yates Sexton writes that it will ultimately take concerted collective action to win the existential fight against a Trump autocracy. And Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor points out how the fascist right's attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion have gained ground primarily because of policies which have fallen far short of their billing.
- Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood offers a reminder of the need for Canada to fight back against economic warfare (among other attacks) from Trump. Dan Gardner writes about what might happen as historic alliances crumble - though I'd question his doomerist assumptions that Canada willl inevitably give in to Trump's demands and other countries will have no interest in developing alternative alliances. Charlie Angus points out that boycotts are already having a massive impact on U.S. tourism and other industries, while Anthony Rosborough discusses how a strengthened right to repair can help us break free of corporate shackles which could all too easily be commandeered by the Trump regime. And Steven High argues that we need to work on reversing the deindustrialization of Canada, while Ricardo Tranjan makes the case that we need a stronger safety net (similar to what we had with the CERB just a few years ago) to ensure people aren't cowed into submission by a risk of deep poverty.
- Finally, David Moscrop argues that Ontario voters shouldn't reward Doug Ford for his combination of blatant corruption and implausible posturing against a regime for whom he's long proclaimed his unwavering support. And Carolina Aragao notes that Ford's track record also includes the lowest levels of well-being of any province.
On the USAID thing, I think we have to keep in mind that what that guy in the article was talking about was, building up political groups in countries to destabilize or overthrow governments. A significant portion of USAID is like a sister organization to the NED. He considered this a good and important thing, but it obviously is not. The US goes ballistic when Russia does foreign influence in far less dangerous ways.
ReplyDeleteSo when it comes to USAID, sure, there's probably some actual good being done by some branches of the agency, but Musk shutting it down draws my mind irresistibly to a line from The Lord of the Rings, when the bad guys did a bit of an own goal and king Theoden says "Oft evil will shall evil mar". Musk's will is evil, and he has marred the evil the United States was already doing.