I haven’t posted here since before the election, and admittedly, it has been difficult to resist escapism and simply stop giving a damn. That the United States (and with it the democratic world) is now in jeopardy is not in doubt. Rather, the questions for the moment are the order in which institutions will begin to break and what the reactions and counter-reactions will be to the first cracks in the foundation. From there, it is possible, even likely, that we will begin to ride the volatile extremes of history to which most living Americans are unaccustomed.
Amid all the commentary on social media, including the posts of many emigrees to BlueSky, there appears to be little acknowledgement that uncertainty defies prediction, but this is only natural. Uncertainty is frightening, and prediction, analysis, and editorial offer a semblance of mental sanctuary, even if they may be illusory. But the uncomfortable truth endures—that the details about the kakistocracy being assembled to “lead” the nation barely matter. Unqualified and stupid is unqualified and stupid. And things are going to break.
Speaking of escapism, I watched the movie Twisters the other night, but unfortunately, the very Hollywood narrative still prompted thoughts about the folly of the incoming administration. The protagonist, Addy (Kiernan Shipka), is an Oklahoma native and storm chaser who has figured out a way to diffuse tornadoes and, thereby, spare lives and property. Although the science underlying the plot may be far-fetched, the subject of human intellect versus deadly nature is real, as are the thousands of civil servants who protect, rescue, and recover when nature devastates whole communities.
Trump said he would take a sledgehammer to the administrative state, and with the nomination of so many incompetent lackeys to head major departments, he is poised to make good on that promise. But because this is what Americans voted for, it is tempting to say screw ‘em. Citizens who chose, even unwittingly, to dismantle the administrative state should accept that, for instance, tornadoes are just God’s little Shop-Vacs cleaning up excess Oklahomans from time to time. That is, after all, the logical conclusion of abandoning science and competence for the religiosity and magical thinking that now underwrites the Former Republican Party (FRP). There may be few atheists in Tornado Alley, but without NOAA, FEMA, and other federal agencies, more people will die praying.
Federal agencies are manned by both extraordinary individuals and slackers. When politicians want to hype the waste in government, they overemphasize the slackers and ignore the dedicated experts who save lives (and money) every year. When political hacks and outright loons are appointed to head agencies, we can expect the attrition of the extraordinary and promotion of the slackers. Then, when critical systems begin to break, people will react, panic, and, quite often, turn violent. It could be mines collapsing, or it could be poor readiness and response to a weather event. It might be another mismanaged pandemic worse than COVID-19 or a catastrophic disruption in national security. Odds are, it will be many systems breaking at the same time, but will people blame the idiots they elected, which is tantamount to blaming themselves?
If readers wonder what any of this has to do with the usual fare on this blog, which is often focused on copyright and criticism of Big Tech, the theme is defense of democratic institutions. I have devoted over a million words to defending copyright because it is an instrument of democracy that combines the values of free expression, the free market, and permission—all of which the major tech leaders abhor. Their only interest in free expression is its usefulness as data; their conduct is monopolistic, not competitive; and they have openly advocated abandoning the notion of permission with plenty of help from “progressive” academics and organizations like the EFF.
It may be obvious to millions now that Elon Musk’s defenses of the speech right are Orwellian bullshit, but it’s the same lie that Silicon Valley leaders have been selling for more than twenty years. From Barlow’s Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (1996) to the alleged importance of generative artificial intelligence (GAI), the rhetoric remains that government institutions only stand in the way of “better living through technology.” That is the underlying, Galt-like hubris of the tech bros: they can fix or improve everything if we just abandon pesky, inefficient democracy.
The paradox of having an aversion to conspiracy theories is blindness to actual conspiracies. And unfortunately, Occam’s Razor points to the rational conclusion that tech oligarchs are the primary force behind the useful idiocy of the next administration. As discussed in an earlier post, if Peter Theil’s unvarnished scorn for democracy represents the motive for anointing J.D. Vance—and if reorganizing society into a system of corporate “patchworks” is the goal—then Trump’s job would be to wreck the administrative state, after which Vance is the putative young, energetic populist to preside over an ersatz democracy that is, in truth, some version of the corporate “patchwork” concept.
Contempt for the state is a rhetorical common ground shared by tech-utopians, Trumpians, and (frankly) so-called progressives who either don’t understand, or care, why the United States has been the most important democracy in the world. Its institutions are not perfect, but we have demonized those institutions in the patois of this era’s version of the Robber Baron—the tech oligarch. Not even the gun manufacturers can quite match Silicon Valley for conflating regulation of their industry with encroachment on our “freedoms.”
Returning to Twisters, the tech bros would have us believe that government only stifles the kind of bold innovation Addy represents. But in truth, their metaphorical avatar is Riggs (David Born), who invests in storm analysis technology to fund his scheme of scooping up property from families who are wiped out by tornadoes. So, although it is true that imperfect government oversight or regulation can yield irrational results, the absence of competent institutions will make America about as innovative and effective as the former Soviet Union. Various unpredictable events may militate against that outcome, but as the popular cliché insists, when people tell you who they are and what they intend to do, believe them.
In a bittersweet moment at a local bookstore yesterday, I saw that David Golumbia’s book Cyberlibertarians: The Right-Wing Politics of Digital Technology has been posthumously published. I was honored to have been asked by David to read the manuscript, but he passed away from cancer before I could send him complete thoughts. As the description states, “Leveraging more than a decade of research, David Golumbia traces how digital evangelism has driven the worldwide shift toward the political right, concealing inequality, xenophobia, dishonesty, and massive corporate concentrations of wealth and power beneath the utopian presumption of digital technology as an inherent social good.” Golumbia is right that digital tech is a social and political Trojan Horse, but what we do with that knowledge now that the enemy is inside the walls is anybody’s guess.
Photo by: Emagnetic
