There are no parasites in our society as parasitic as the obscenely rich. They are sucking the rest of us dry to pad their bank accounts while giving literally nothing back to society as a whole. Shit, even robber barons like Carnegie and Mellon knew they had to give some of their obscene wealth over to support schools, libraries and the arts. What have Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg and all the rest done in that vein?
Their stupidity is so great that they never stop to think about who's going to clean their toilets and haul away their trash after they've destroyed the plebs.
They are counting on the whites to remain cheerily assuming they are part of the club, meanwhile, they wouldn’t be allowed in while making a delivery to the back door of the carriage house.
Same way they got Caleb who cleaned up the horse shit to go get killed for the Confederacy so the layabouts at the plantation could sit around doing…whatever the fuck they did. Still haven’t seen one contribution from the Southern nobility from that period - no art, literature, no inventions, no contributions to knowledge. Just hoarding and living on top of mountains of blood soaked money they did NOT earn. These were all descendants of second and third sons, mind you - the first ones got the vast sugar plantations - and never felt, once, to contribute to humanity.
Now they want to come back, mewling and drooling like the hell-spawned monsters they were - and ever will be.
Prior to retirement, I worked as a Director of Internal Audit responsible for reviewing a state department’s programs and activities for fraud, waste, and abuse, including opportunities to improve operational effectiveness and efficiency. After in-depth review, recommendations for change were made to management, the department head, and where necessary to effect change, to our state legislature. Yes, I would have loved to impose changes myself; , that is simply not how it works. Musk is there to smash our democracy. That is the only reason he is running roughshod through our government. And he will pillage along the way.
Musk and his clique (Andreessen, Thiel, Yarvin) have made clear that they think democracy is inefficient and we must get beyond it for humanity to evolve to its destiny of colonizing space. The sooner they decamp for their offshore techno colonies the better.
"Or are they just trying to cripple government so all that’s left is a vehicle to advance the interests of people like them, while the other 99.99% of us are told to go to hell?"
That's a solid 'yes', Paul, as you know, and I agree. MuskX now has, or will have, every single bit of data that is, or was, in all those agencies' computers his hackers dove into. The info has been copied onto his personal servers, so he can do whatever he wants with it.
Be careful about what you post. I read something today on Josh Marshall's Bsky about agencies copying everything from social media in part to look for threats of violence. (Josh Marshall is a longtime editor and reporter, at TPM; he's reliable.) I'm not being scold-y; I just want everyone to be safe. Best wishes.
The Republican party decades of promoting deregulation for corporate profits at the cost to the environment, health, etc.
Their disregard of others spills over to workers (the real "Makers" to steal that idiom they using!) by dissolving Unions and Collective Bargaining. There's strong argument for having ALL STAKE-HOLDERS holding some power, to negotiate and shape solutions. (a kind of crowd-sourcing? We stronger and solve more problems with more inputs.)
AND HOW DARE DOGE ET AL CONSIDER OUR SCIENTISTS NOT MAKERS AND TOSS THEM IN THE BUCKET OF PARASITES! ok, time to cool down...I'm resorting to ALL CAPS!!
I blame Milton Friedman (in 1970) for his advocating the position that SHAREholder profits (and not STAKE-holder interests) should be the focus of corporate "responsibility." Ugh. It fit so well into the "movement conservatism" frame that it was adopted with relative swiftness -- to the detriment of all but the ultra-wealthy.
And to think I had my fill when baby Bush was elected....that looks like child's play now! In any case, a long lineage of contributors. Humans dont seem to distance ourselves from milleniums-old domination patterns. But whatya gunna do....back to hunter-gatherer? Democracy provided, provideS a beacon. On a good note: more Americans reading up on democracy and listening to our great commentators abounding on Substack (me included!)
ETA: I encourage you to read Heather Cox Richardson's Sub, if yu don't already. A basic throughline: The US has never come to terms with the act of human enslavement or its legacy, and the power of white Southern oligarchs (who want to retain control and wealth) has never been truly quelled -- it just re-emerges in new forms, among new clusters of wealthy sociopaths/psychopaths (she doesn't use those two nouns, of course, but I am comfortbale doing so).
… Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) on Musk’s DOGE cuts: "It’s notable that somehow none of Musk’s own $13 billion of government contracts has he determined to be waste, fraud, and abuse."
Reminds me of a month ago or so Bill Kristol commenting that the DOGE techno-bros could do with infusion of the Humanities into their STEM education ! (And Kristol weaved in the benefits of the Classics in the educations of our founding fathers. )
Between the parasite rhetoric and focus on gaming language, it's clear Elon missed the entire point of Andrew Ryan and Bioshock. That entire game was a massive takedown of how Objectivism philosophy would work in practice.
I believe Trump and Musk are executing (pun intended) these cuts solely for the purpose of justifying massive tax cuts for the top ten percent. They do not care if their actions will hurt real people - literally around the world. They do not care if their tax cuts add trillions to the national debt. It appears naked greed is the only motivating feature.
Not solely. They're doing so also bc a weak federal-govt infrastructure is easily taken over by autocrats (which djt clearly wants, as do all of the P2025 enthusiasts now populating this regime). And, when federal institutions break, opportunistic oligarchs will sweep in and privatize the ones they can monetize (the USPS, SocSec, Amtrak, etc.). And pretty much everything can be monetized: We already pay for water, for ex., but bc it's a public utility, we tend to pay a low price. That would change if the system were in private control -- as has happened, disastrously, in the UK.
Also, Putin wants a weakened US. Look at what djt has done in just two months: He has weakened our relationships with longtime allies and turned us into a global pariah with his assault on Zelinskyy and his offensive bluster about annexing Canada and taking Greenland by force. I can't rule out the possibility that djt is a Russian asset -- he has borrowed a ton of money from Russia, after US banks stopped doing business with him -- but even if he isn't, his adoration of bullies like Putin has made him a dangerous imitator.
The finserv people who caused the Great Recession are the biggest parasites I can think of: They were bailed out, at the expense of virtually every American, yet they weren't required to pay into a fund to help those of us they stole from. And steal they did: My profession was especially hard hit, and because of medical debt earlier in my life (god bless murka!) I had no $ to retrain for something else. When my profession finally recovered enough to start hiring at pre-GR levels, I was 53 -- not a desirable candidate. Bc of the finserv-caused GR, I began the descent into poverty.
In my 30s, I had worked 6 days a week to pay down my medical debt -- a FT job + a PT job. Because I couldn't start saving until I was 41, I never got on the property ladder. In my 40s, I had to commute 15+hrs/week bc I cdn't afford to live close to my DC workplace -- not even a small, shabby apartment. Those 6-day weeks + my long commute + my 4p-midnigh sked (required to advance in my profession) = no social life, and it frayed relationship with family and friends. I couldn't date. I never married.
In Jan. 2008, I finally got a job with a well-regarded co. that wd've made me recession-proof. It did not, however, make me Great-Recession-proof. The bros who caused the GR stole all the equity I'd invested in my career. And all of the social/personal sacrifice was for nothing.
Now I'm poor, and I have pancreatic cancer -- diagnosed 2 years late bc the US lacks universal health care (god bless murka!) -- and I need Medicaid. I am not a fkkking parasite; I am someone who has been used as a piece of kindling by wealthy psychopaths.
There are no parasites in our society as parasitic as the obscenely rich. They are sucking the rest of us dry to pad their bank accounts while giving literally nothing back to society as a whole. Shit, even robber barons like Carnegie and Mellon knew they had to give some of their obscene wealth over to support schools, libraries and the arts. What have Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg and all the rest done in that vein?
Carnegie only started building libraries after his Pinkertons slaughtered striking workers. Charity washing begins.
The oligarchs expect us to die and stop taking up resources. Oligarchs are fine with recession because it makes things cheaper for them.
Their stupidity is so great that they never stop to think about who's going to clean their toilets and haul away their trash after they've destroyed the plebs.
They are counting on the whites to remain cheerily assuming they are part of the club, meanwhile, they wouldn’t be allowed in while making a delivery to the back door of the carriage house.
Same way they got Caleb who cleaned up the horse shit to go get killed for the Confederacy so the layabouts at the plantation could sit around doing…whatever the fuck they did. Still haven’t seen one contribution from the Southern nobility from that period - no art, literature, no inventions, no contributions to knowledge. Just hoarding and living on top of mountains of blood soaked money they did NOT earn. These were all descendants of second and third sons, mind you - the first ones got the vast sugar plantations - and never felt, once, to contribute to humanity.
Now they want to come back, mewling and drooling like the hell-spawned monsters they were - and ever will be.
Prior to retirement, I worked as a Director of Internal Audit responsible for reviewing a state department’s programs and activities for fraud, waste, and abuse, including opportunities to improve operational effectiveness and efficiency. After in-depth review, recommendations for change were made to management, the department head, and where necessary to effect change, to our state legislature. Yes, I would have loved to impose changes myself; , that is simply not how it works. Musk is there to smash our democracy. That is the only reason he is running roughshod through our government. And he will pillage along the way.
Paul Ryan denied being an Ayn Rand acolyte when it was pointed out that she was an atheist who thought Christian values like altruism were evil.
As for people who are parasites, Musk’s wealth was built on our taxpayer $$$. The Trump family fortune also got a lot of federal subsidies.
Musk and his clique (Andreessen, Thiel, Yarvin) have made clear that they think democracy is inefficient and we must get beyond it for humanity to evolve to its destiny of colonizing space. The sooner they decamp for their offshore techno colonies the better.
Their neo-reactionary ideology is getting real people killed for their dreams of power.
"Or are they just trying to cripple government so all that’s left is a vehicle to advance the interests of people like them, while the other 99.99% of us are told to go to hell?"
That's a solid 'yes', Paul, as you know, and I agree. MuskX now has, or will have, every single bit of data that is, or was, in all those agencies' computers his hackers dove into. The info has been copied onto his personal servers, so he can do whatever he wants with it.
May good fortune save us.
What we need are at least 100 Luigis. Problem solved. FAFO.
Be careful about what you post. I read something today on Josh Marshall's Bsky about agencies copying everything from social media in part to look for threats of violence. (Josh Marshall is a longtime editor and reporter, at TPM; he's reliable.) I'm not being scold-y; I just want everyone to be safe. Best wishes.
This is absolutely brilliant analysis. Thank you for your clarity and insight.
In my view, no one gets obscenely rich without exploiting others and raping the environment.
The Republican party decades of promoting deregulation for corporate profits at the cost to the environment, health, etc.
Their disregard of others spills over to workers (the real "Makers" to steal that idiom they using!) by dissolving Unions and Collective Bargaining. There's strong argument for having ALL STAKE-HOLDERS holding some power, to negotiate and shape solutions. (a kind of crowd-sourcing? We stronger and solve more problems with more inputs.)
AND HOW DARE DOGE ET AL CONSIDER OUR SCIENTISTS NOT MAKERS AND TOSS THEM IN THE BUCKET OF PARASITES! ok, time to cool down...I'm resorting to ALL CAPS!!
I blame Milton Friedman (in 1970) for his advocating the position that SHAREholder profits (and not STAKE-holder interests) should be the focus of corporate "responsibility." Ugh. It fit so well into the "movement conservatism" frame that it was adopted with relative swiftness -- to the detriment of all but the ultra-wealthy.
And to think I had my fill when baby Bush was elected....that looks like child's play now! In any case, a long lineage of contributors. Humans dont seem to distance ourselves from milleniums-old domination patterns. But whatya gunna do....back to hunter-gatherer? Democracy provided, provideS a beacon. On a good note: more Americans reading up on democracy and listening to our great commentators abounding on Substack (me included!)
PS I have been thinking about dipping back into some Ursula McGuinn!
Why do we have a system that rewards sociopaths?
Because the sociopaths and psychopaths built it.
ETA: I encourage you to read Heather Cox Richardson's Sub, if yu don't already. A basic throughline: The US has never come to terms with the act of human enslavement or its legacy, and the power of white Southern oligarchs (who want to retain control and wealth) has never been truly quelled -- it just re-emerges in new forms, among new clusters of wealthy sociopaths/psychopaths (she doesn't use those two nouns, of course, but I am comfortbale doing so).
… Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) on Musk’s DOGE cuts: "It’s notable that somehow none of Musk’s own $13 billion of government contracts has he determined to be waste, fraud, and abuse."
Reminds me of a month ago or so Bill Kristol commenting that the DOGE techno-bros could do with infusion of the Humanities into their STEM education ! (And Kristol weaved in the benefits of the Classics in the educations of our founding fathers. )
Lest we forget...Trump owns the car. He gave the keys to Musk with no restrictions as to use. Responsibility is Trump's. Focus there.
Between the parasite rhetoric and focus on gaming language, it's clear Elon missed the entire point of Andrew Ryan and Bioshock. That entire game was a massive takedown of how Objectivism philosophy would work in practice.
I believe Trump and Musk are executing (pun intended) these cuts solely for the purpose of justifying massive tax cuts for the top ten percent. They do not care if their actions will hurt real people - literally around the world. They do not care if their tax cuts add trillions to the national debt. It appears naked greed is the only motivating feature.
Not solely. They're doing so also bc a weak federal-govt infrastructure is easily taken over by autocrats (which djt clearly wants, as do all of the P2025 enthusiasts now populating this regime). And, when federal institutions break, opportunistic oligarchs will sweep in and privatize the ones they can monetize (the USPS, SocSec, Amtrak, etc.). And pretty much everything can be monetized: We already pay for water, for ex., but bc it's a public utility, we tend to pay a low price. That would change if the system were in private control -- as has happened, disastrously, in the UK.
Also, Putin wants a weakened US. Look at what djt has done in just two months: He has weakened our relationships with longtime allies and turned us into a global pariah with his assault on Zelinskyy and his offensive bluster about annexing Canada and taking Greenland by force. I can't rule out the possibility that djt is a Russian asset -- he has borrowed a ton of money from Russia, after US banks stopped doing business with him -- but even if he isn't, his adoration of bullies like Putin has made him a dangerous imitator.
Thank you for this clarity. It's so terribly true.
The finserv people who caused the Great Recession are the biggest parasites I can think of: They were bailed out, at the expense of virtually every American, yet they weren't required to pay into a fund to help those of us they stole from. And steal they did: My profession was especially hard hit, and because of medical debt earlier in my life (god bless murka!) I had no $ to retrain for something else. When my profession finally recovered enough to start hiring at pre-GR levels, I was 53 -- not a desirable candidate. Bc of the finserv-caused GR, I began the descent into poverty.
In my 30s, I had worked 6 days a week to pay down my medical debt -- a FT job + a PT job. Because I couldn't start saving until I was 41, I never got on the property ladder. In my 40s, I had to commute 15+hrs/week bc I cdn't afford to live close to my DC workplace -- not even a small, shabby apartment. Those 6-day weeks + my long commute + my 4p-midnigh sked (required to advance in my profession) = no social life, and it frayed relationship with family and friends. I couldn't date. I never married.
In Jan. 2008, I finally got a job with a well-regarded co. that wd've made me recession-proof. It did not, however, make me Great-Recession-proof. The bros who caused the GR stole all the equity I'd invested in my career. And all of the social/personal sacrifice was for nothing.
Now I'm poor, and I have pancreatic cancer -- diagnosed 2 years late bc the US lacks universal health care (god bless murka!) -- and I need Medicaid. I am not a fkkking parasite; I am someone who has been used as a piece of kindling by wealthy psychopaths.