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Opinion
How Can We Build a World Post Capitalism?
In Capitalism: A Global History (Penguin 2025), Seven Beckert’s original approach to understanding capitalism helps us to see possibilities for challenging it in the present precarious time we are living in.
Oct 05, 2026
The billionaires are putting our world at risk through support for unregulated AI, funding the fossil fuel industry, and undermining democracy. They are using their unprecedented levels of power to lead us toward multiple pathways of total human annihilation.
Now is a good time to reflect on ways to challenge capitalism, a driving force behind the madness we face. And yet, on one side we have many people who are hesitant to name capitalism as a force behind destruction we face. On the other side, many of those few who do name capitalism use outdated and unhelpful frameworks for understanding how to challenge capitalism.
Sven Beckert’s Capitalism: A Global History (Penguin 2025) is a book worth reading if you are interested in building a world past capitalism. Beckert’s original approach to understanding capitalism helps us to see possibilities for challenging it in the present precarious time we are living in.
Its approach to understanding capitalism as a process pushed by capitalists, developing their power, and colonizing the matrix of our social world, explains capitalism in ways that point to more productive approaches to anti-capitalism.
Beckert’s book has received awards and is being read widely. Yet much of the attention has been negative. Writing in The New Yorker, Gideon Lewis-Kraus faulted the book for having such a diffuse idea of capitalism that it becomes “an inescapable vibe—responsible for everything, everywhere, all at once.” In his review in The Nation Corey Robin criticized it for offering a fuzzy and imprecise understanding of capitalism, which then makes the book unhelpful for shaping our anti-capitalist thinking.
These criticisms miss the political power and potential of this unorthodox approach to understanding capitalism. Beckert’s book takes capitalism to its origins and puts it into a global framework. It focuses on the agency of capitalists as a group of people who over time bring capitalism as a global system into being. Beckert’s analysis helps us update our understanding of capitalism in ways that make pathways to challenging it clear and actionable. Many anti-capitalist thinkers are stuck in a stale 19th century understanding of what we are up against. Those approaches make our search for solutions narrow and not actionable in the present.
There are three dead ends to anti-capitalist thought that Becker’s approach avoids. One is that capitalism began in Britain with the industrial revolution. That idea encourages anti-capitalist thinkers to focus on class as something separate from race and patriarchy. A second is that the main victims of capitalism are the industrial working class, that idea leads us to focus on the industrial working class as the most important carriers of movements to challenge capitalism. The third mistaken approach is that the only way to get rid of capitalism is through overthrowing the system in a dramatic revolution. That leads anti-capitalist organizers to focus on getting others to see how bad capitalism is but does not encourage them to build power to challenge it in the present. Each of these tendencies has its own way of being unhelpful for building anti-capitalist politics. Beckert’s approach to capitalism helps us find pathways beyond all of them.
Rather than staring his analysis of capitalism at the transition from feudalism to capitalism, as most anti-capitalist thinkers do, Beckert’s story begins in 1150 in Aden, in what is now Yemen. He argues that at that time, largely in the Muslim world, there emerged a global trade in luxury goods. It impacted very few people’s lives, and there were no societies based on it. This was a period of the emergence of capitalists—a very small subset of the population who traded goods for the sole purpose of generating wealth.
Many societies have engaged in trade to obtain goods that they could not produce themselves. What distinguishes capitalists from other traders is that they engage in trade for profits alone. The goal of any given transaction is money itself rather than something that money could buy.
Capital itself is money, or resources, invested for the sole purpose of generating more money. Early capitalists originally worked within the political realities they found around them. Over time these merchants worked to create political systems that would enable them to generate more wealth. These early capitalists often engaged in work to get governments to create conditions that were favorable to them. Think of Columbus and his relationship with Queen Isabella.
When these disparate acts of capitalists began to be elevated to the society-wide phenomenon we now call capitalism, was when they were able to control a land base and extract wealth, not just from trading, but from producing as well. Over time these merchants came to control more land and resources. Forced labor in the form of slavery was central to the early days of capitalism. So was colonialism: the forcible taking of land on which to engage in profit-seeking actions.
As more and more resources are controlled by capitalist processes, and as capitalists became more politically powerful, a large part of human society came to be dominated by these logics. Eventually, resistance to slavery made that form of exploitation less desirable to the elites. Employers were able to hire people into wage labor as the enclosure of commons threw them off the land they had previously used to sustain themselves. Colonialism was beaten back by people fighting for control over the political systems that dominated the places they lived. In many places colonialism was replaced by neocolonialism, where local people controlled the political system but continued to run the economy in the interest of faraway elites.
Beckert’s analysis broadens our frame in ways that allow us to avoid the pitfalls of an anti-capitalism that focuses only on the class-based harms of capitalism. If you accept the older framework, which focuses on capitalism as mostly about the exploitation of the industrial working class in Europe, then its relationships to slavery and colonialism are hard to understand. Much anti-capitalist thinking sees capitalism as a step forward from slavery and colonialism, rather than as their cause.
With regard to patriarchy, much anti-capitalist thinking focuses on the experiences of wage laborers rather than on the impacts of capitalist processes on the broader matrix of society that it transforms and destroys. This can lead to an anti-capitalist politics that defines the victims of capitalism so narrowly that racism and patriarchy are outside the frame of analysis. That makes building broad coalitions for anti-capitalist politics harder to achieve.
Moving on to the second dead end of much anti-capitalist thinking, if you see capitalism as fundamentally about the exploitation of labor, then you will not see the wide variety of ways that capitalism destroys the social fabric in which it operates. By prioritizing production and distribution that are done in markets for profits, capitalist ways of operating marginalize and deny resources to the caregiving matrix of our lives.
Caregiving labor, which has been disproportionately done by women, becomes socially invisible and undervalued. It is especially not valued in the discipline of Economics, which is largely the study of the profit-making sector. That narrow focus ignores the wide variety of ways that many people’s lives are made miserable by not having access to the resources they need to live well. It also ignores the many non-capitalist aspects of our economies that continue to thrive, even as the capitalist sector has increasingly large impacts on our shared social world.
By focusing on the capitalist class, as a group of people who are ready to subordinate our world to profit seeking, and by showing that members of that class act in a variety of ways in relationship to government, and the rest of society, in order to make the world over to enable their profit seeking, Beckert opens up our perception to the wide range of ways that capitalism causes destruction. He therefore opens us to a wide range of ways to fight against it.
Beckert’s approach is aligned with the work of Karl Polanyi. In The Great Transformation, his pathbreaking book from 1944, Polanyi argued that, in previous times, markets were subordinated to other social logics, and so their negative impacts were limited. What distinguishes capitalism is that the logic of markets comes to dominate, and their centrality undermines other ways societies have been structured to ensure that people's needs are met. Markets come to have lives of their own, and the needs of markets come to dominate over the needs of people or the rest of nature.
Beckert updates Polanyi's analysis by adding more detail, and also by naming more clearly than Polanyi does the forms of agency behind these destructive practices. This approach allows us to understand capitalism less as a total system and more as a set of destructive practices driven by those addicted to the profit motive. This approach helps us imagine a variety of ways to challenge capitalism.
We need to break the spell of pro-capitalist thinkers’ claim that human economies are best served when markets are allowed to decide what is produced, how it is produced, and who gets the things produced. We need to figure out how best to ensure that we are making the things we need, in ways that are sustainable, and distributed in ways that ensure that everyone’s needs are met.
We need to fight against the powers of the owners of capital by breaking our dependencies on capitalism for our survival. Fighting against the exploitation we experience in wage labor is a part of that. But gathering social resources for the caregiving aspects of our lives, developing public goods, and preventing the environmental damage caused by corporations pursuing profit at any cost, are also crucial aspects of challenging capitalism.
Finally, Beckert’s approach allows us to avoid the third and most destructive element of standard anti-capitalist thinking: the belief that we need to wait for a revolution. If you think of capitalism as a focused system that came into being all at once with one major transformation, it is easy then to imagine the way to get rid of it is through overthrowing that system with one large blow. That way of thinking about how to get rid of capitalism doesn't position us well to understand the work we need to be doing right now to build power to stop the forces of social destruction while building the better world we are looking for, now.
Rather than waiting for a revolution to overthrow capitalism, anti-capitalists need to build power to fight against the variety of ways that the capitalist class is destroying our world. One way to think of this is with the idea of revolutionary reforms, the steps we take to make our world better, as we fight against the forms of destruction caused by capitalism and against the power of the capitalist class to destroy our social fabric.
Both Beckert, and Polanyi before him, owe a great deal to the work of Karl Marx. Marx’s criticism of capitalism remains an invaluable starting point for anti-capitalist thinking. But Marx's narrow focus on the exploitation of labor as the single most important form of destruction caused by capitalism has led generations of anti-capitalist activists to hope the industrial working class would lead us away from capitalism. Those hopes have been repeatedly disappointed.
Marx faulted colonialism and slavery for the ways they were part of the destruction caused by capitalism, but many of his followers see those processes as side issues to the problem of capitalism. And so many anti-capitalists insist on a class-first analysis, which undermines their ability to work well in broad coalitions.
On the question of revolution or reform, Marx actually said very little. And much of what he said was contradictory. In places, he argued that the path away from capitalism was through building political power via elections. At other times, he claimed that all of that was a distraction from a revolution that would overturn all social relations in a short dramatic period. Many followers of Marx assume, incorrectly, that he only supported the second strategy,
Much of the criticism of Beckert’s book from the left has rested on the ways his understanding deviates from a telling of the history that leads to the core set of beliefs that have kept anti-capitalist thinking from being politically productive. Beckert’s Capitalism: A Global History doesn’t address these questions of political strategy. But its approach to understanding capitalism as a process pushed by capitalists, developing their power, and colonizing the matrix of our social world, explains capitalism in ways that point to more productive approaches to anti-capitalism. If we want to bring anti-capitalist analysis into the broad liberatory social movements that are animating our time, we need to base our anti-capitalism on an updated understanding of what we are up against. Beckert’s book offers a starting point for that understanding.
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The Wealthy Hold More Power Than Ever—Can We Take It Back?
How can government enact and enforce the necessary reforms if it’s under the control of a power elite that won’t permit them?
Oct 05, 2026
Behind this election’s dominant issue of affordability lies the record concentration of wealth at the top of America. The richest 0.001% of Americans—a handful of extraordinarily wealthy men—now control more of the nation’s wealth than at any time in modern history.
To be sure, wealth is not a zero-sum game in which the riches of those at the top necessarily come at the expense of everyone else. But power is a zero-sum game, because the more of it that is held by some people, the less of it is held by others.
Wealth cannot be separated from power. Great wealth becomes great power through campaign contributions, media ownership, the ability to buy off opposition, the capacity to wage pubic relations campaigns, and the resources to deploy armies of lawyers who litigate on your behalf. Recent years provide abundant illustration of all this.
This massive power shift is even more starkly illustrated by the billionaires, financial mavens, and tech bros who put Trump in power, who refuse to slow climate change, and who are now deciding on the future of AI and therefore humanity.
In these ways, great power also becomes great wealth. It buys changes in laws, regulations, and court decisions that bestow even more wealth on those with the power to alter the system to their benefit—and to siphon off resources from everyone else.
This power shift has also become clearly evident in recent years. In the Trump era it has taken the form of blatant corruption. But the political bribes, billionaire media ownership, PR campaigns, and well-financed litigation predated President Donald Trump.
For many years (with the notable exception of the Biden administration), antitrust enforcement has been defanged to make it easier for big firms to monopolize. Among the most widely discussed findings about the US economy is the rise of corporate concentration since the 1980s. The biggest firms, their top executives, and their major shareholders have all done wonderfully well. Consumers and employees, however, have faced higher prices, lower paychecks, and fewer choices.
At the same time, labor laws have been altered to make it more difficult to organize unions. In the 1950s, more than a third of private-sector workers were unionized. Now, fewer than 6% are.
Tax laws have been changed to reduce the rates and amounts paid by the super-wealthy, to the point where many pay no taxes at all—even though they have more wealth than ever.
This massive power shift is even more starkly illustrated by the billionaires, financial mavens, and tech bros who put Trump in power, who refuse to slow climate change, and who are now deciding on the future of AI and therefore humanity.
The question I keep coming back to is whether this can be reversed.
There is historic precedent. After the first Gilded Age—which ran from the 1890s to the start of World War I, and which featured wide inequalities of income, wealth, and political power—America reacted in what came to be known as the Progressive Era.
Starting under Theodore Roosevelt, monopolies were busted up, corporations were regulated, a progressive income tax was enacted, and corporate political donations (bribes) were barred. Then, starting in 1933, under Teddy Roosevelt’s fifth cousin, power continued to be shifted to what became the largest middle class in world history.
Then came the 1970s and 1980s, when the process began to go in reverse.
The challenge is arguably much greater today because wealth and power are more concentrated than in the first Gilded Age, creating a chicken-and-egg paradox: How can government enact and enforce the necessary reforms if it’s under the control of a power elite that won’t permit them?
Now, just four weeks from what could be a major political victory for the Democrats in taking back at least one chamber of Congress, this paradox should soon be the center of our national debate.
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The Tariffs Were a Wake-Up Call; Ottawa Hits Snooze Again
Ottawa wants Canadians to believe that a new era of strategic independence is underway, but the trade measures increasingly look performative, while the surge in military spending risks doing little to reduce Canada’s underlying dependence on the United States.
Oct 05, 2026
There is something almost admirable about the Canadian government’s ability to respond to an American provocation with precisely the right number of carefully selected adjectives. Washington imposes tariffs. Ottawa expresses deep disappointment. Washington threatens Canadian sovereignty. Ottawa says the relationship is changing. Washington escalates again. Ottawa announces that Canada is entering a new era. Then everyone goes home.
The problem is no longer simply that Canada’s foreign policy is too cautious. It increasingly appears to have no direction at all. Ottawa responds to American provocations with carefully worded statements, measured diplomatic language and assurances. But underneath the polished rhetoric there is no clear moral compass, little strategic spine and, most importantly, remarkably little follow-through. Canada continues to drift like seaweed, bending with every current while insisting that it is still steering the boat.
The recent tariffs should have been a wake-up call. They exposed the extraordinary vulnerability of a country whose economic fortunes are so deeply tied to a neighbor that increasingly treats trade as an instrument of coercion. The threats to Canadian sovereignty should have made the lesson even clearer: Economic integration is no guarantee of political goodwill, and decades of unquestioned alignment do not necessarily buy Canada respect or security. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney himself recognized the changing environment when he spoke of a world in which economic integration could be weaponized. Yet, Canada’s answer has been to dress up token diversification as strategic independence while continuing to bend to Washington on matters far beyond trade.
Cheerleading American military interventions and then dressing up Trump's annihilation rhetoric as merely the language of war is not buying Canada any goodwill in Washington.
Tariff by tariff, Ottawa has responded with declarations of retaliation and resilience. Canada announced trade missions, new partnerships, investment initiatives, and efforts to expand access to markets beyond the United States. These are bombarded as evidence that the country is moving toward a more diversified and resilient economy.
There is some truth to that, yes. The US share of Canadian merchandise exports did fall from 75.9% in 2024 to 71.7% in 2025, and while exports to countries outside the United States rose 17.2%, that headline figure conceals the limits of the transformation. Global Affairs Canada reports that the growth in non-US exports was driven largely by an exceptional increase in gold exports, with gold exports rising by $14.1 billion in 2025. The increase was driven by a 45.2% rise in gold prices, while gold export volumes actually fell 6.3%. In other words, what Ottawa can present as evidence of diversification was substantially boosted by a gold-price windfall, not simply by Canadian businesses dramatically expanding into new international markets. And among Canadian exporters whose US sales declined, most did not significantly expand sales into non-US markets.
That is not exactly the economic equivalent of escaping Washington’s orbit. It is more like rearranging the deck chairs and announcing that the ship has changed direction. Canada can announce trade missions, negotiations, and investment funds. But such announcements are not diversified supply chains. They are not new markets. They are not industrial capacity. After the magnitude of America’s pressure on Canada, the question should not be whether diversification has started. It should be whether Canada has diversified enough to reduce the vulnerability that Ottawa itself says exists. It hasn’t.
The contradiction becomes even harder to ignore when we look at defense. Canada is dramatically increasing military spending while remaining deeply embedded in a security architecture dominated by the United States. Canada plans to acquire 88 F-35 fighter aircraft at an acquisition cost of approximately $27.7 billion, with the initial Canadian aircraft scheduled to be based at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona for training. This is not at all an isolated procurement decision but part of a deeply integrated military relationship. Already, NORAD links the two countries’ air defense systems, making their military architecture deeply intertwined. Canada is consistently embedding its defense posture in a security architecture overwhelmingly shaped by the United States.
So to sum up, Canada has not escaped its dependence, either economically or militarily. It has barely moved the needle. And more importantly, it does not appear intent on doing so. Ottawa wants Canadians to believe that a new era of strategic independence is underway, but the trade measures increasingly look performative, while the surge in military spending risks doing little to reduce Canada’s underlying dependence on the United States. And if the recent United Nations General Assembly is any indication, the Carney-Anand duo has not merely failed to distance itself from Washington's military adventures. It has doubled down on its political and diplomatic alignment with them.
In his latest speech at the UN, Carney called Iran “one of the greatest threats in the current world” and described it as an “existential threat to Israel and its allies.” When asked about US President Donald Trump’s threats to annihilate or destroy Iran, he simply responded with “Well, there is a war underway, and he’s speaking the language of war.” He might as well have said, “Boys will be boys.” This time, Ottawa did not even seem interested in trying to sound politically correct. Foreign Minister Anita Anand was even more categorical. At the United Nations General Assembly, she declared: “Iran is the principal threat to peace and security in its region… Its threats to navigation rights in the Strait of Hormuz are a direct affront to international law.”
Ever since the United States and Israel launched their illegitimate war on Iran on February 28, which has already killed around 3,500 people and displaced over 3.2 million people and counting, Carney’s government continued to express support. Canada has spent months issuing statements condemning Iran, sanctioning hundreds of individuals and entities, and diplomatically isolating Tehran. Last week, Anita Anand announced sanctions against another five individuals and five entities under Canada’s Special Economic Measures (Iran) Regulations. This is where Canada’s claim to an independent foreign policy begins to look increasingly hollow. You do not need to go to Georgetown to understand what appeasement looks like. You simply need to watch Ottawa's foreign policy unfold across Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Cuba, Venezuela, and now Iran. The pattern is remarkably consistent. Every single time the United States goes about their military adventurism, Canada unflinchingly finds diplomatic language to accommodate it. And the performative language of rules-based international order just whimpers out of the vocabulary.
But this time, at the UN General Assembly, Carney and his foreign minister were effectively going above and beyond, doing the public-relations work of explaining away Trump's language better than any McKinsey consultant could have managed. Canada does not merely follow Washington. Increasingly, it appears to anticipate what Washington wants and adjust its own language accordingly. The result is a foreign policy that is forceful toward countries Washington opposes while remarkably accommodating toward the power whose military, economic, and political leverage constrains Canada's choices.
And this is where the absurdity of the strategy becomes difficult to ignore. Canada has been hit with tariff after tariff, threatened over its sovereignty, and repeatedly reminded that Washington is willing to weaponize the very economic relationship on which Canada depends. Yet Ottawa continues to cower before Washington while backing its military adventures and accommodating its rhetoric. Stupidity, as the old saying goes, is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different outcome. If decades of deference were supposed to buy Canada security, goodwill, or protection from American coercion, the tariffs should have demonstrated by now that the strategy has failed. Instead, Ottawa appears determined to double down.
Perhaps in a parallel universe, Canada has the courage to stand up to the United States and develop a genuinely independent foreign policy. But this is not that universe. This is Canada in which Mark Carney is prime minister and Anita Anand is foreign minister. Canada was given a wake-up call. The tariffs exposed the danger of economic dependence. The threats to Canadian sovereignty exposed the limits of political complacency. The wars and conflicts surrounding Canada's foreign policy exposed the limits of strategic independence. Ottawa's answer has been to diversify a little, spend billions on American-linked defense systems, issue carefully calibrated statements, and continue moving in Washington's direction.
Perhaps expecting this government to have the conscience to call a genocide a genocide; call for a ceasefire in Iran, Gaza, or Lebanon; or demand an end to the US blockade of Cuba is wishful thinking. But repeated tariffs and threats to Canadian sovereignty should at least force Ottawa to wake up to the obvious: Cheerleading American military interventions and then dressing up Trump's annihilation rhetoric as merely the language of war is not buying Canada any goodwill in Washington.
Nor is it reflecting the views of the Canadians this government claims to represent and hopes to win over at the next election. A clear majority of Canadians have opposed the US military action against Iran and, with every passing day, Canadians have also become increasingly critical of Israel's conduct in Gaza, with polls showing substantial support for describing Israel’s actions as genocide. Perhaps, then, after tariff after tariff, Ottawa might finally realize that subservience is not a foreign-policy strategy. So if there is any silver lining to this prolonged humiliation, it may be that Carney might be finally forced to rethink Canada's relationship with the United States and begin divesting from that dependence. Maybe it is time to stop guessing what Washington wants, stop parroting its justifications, and start listening to the Canadians this government claims to represent.
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The Cost of War Comes Due Before the Ballot
You can vote for or against the people in charge without having had real control over decisions they already made. The decision comes first. The costs spread through society. Only later do voters get to judge the officials still managing the consequences.
Oct 05, 2026
On September 29, the Energy Department said it would make up to 40 million barrels of crude from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve available through an exchange intended to stabilize oil supply. The move was a reminder of something easy to miss in debates over the Iran war: Its costs do not stay on the battlefield. American households can start paying them well before voters get a chance to judge the decisions behind them.
War is usually pictured through missiles, airstrikes, casualties, and ruined cities. Yet some of the burden can surface thousands of miles from the fighting—in gas prices, shipping costs, grocery bills, and whatever is left in a family’s bank account at the end of the month.
The war with Iran has made that connection hard to ignore. When oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz are disrupted, the shock moves through global energy markets and reaches the United States. In September, the International Energy Agency reported that US diesel-gasoil prices had surpassed $200 a barrel in early September, 94% above prewar levels. The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) later put average retail diesel at $6.29 a gallon on September 14.
Someone carrying the cost in a gas bill, heating bill, or grocery receipt did not necessarily have any meaningful say in the decision that created it.
Diesel is more than another number at the pump. Trucks run on it. Farms rely on it. Factories and shipping companies use it. The EIA notes that diesel prices reflect crude oil costs, refining margins, distribution expenses, taxes, and global supply conditions. It also warns that disruptions to major oil trade routes can bring shortages, shipping delays, and higher petroleum prices. Once fuel gets more expensive, the increase moves through the supply chain.
For some families, the effect is more direct. If your home is heated with fuel, the war can appear on the heating bill. A household with no one fighting—and no direct voice in the decision to go to war—can still pay part of the price from its own paycheck.
Those costs are not shared evenly. A higher energy bill may be manageable for one household and a serious strain for another. Department of Energy data show that the national average energy burden for low-income households is about three times that of non-low-income households. Families already spending most of their income on housing, food, and transportation have much less room to absorb another increase.
This is part of war’s cost that a military budget does not capture. Brown University’s Costs of War project estimated in May that higher gasoline and diesel prices since the start of the Iran War had already imposed more than $40 billion in additional costs on American consumers—more than $300 per household.
The burden takes different forms, but it runs through ordinary society. Soldiers pay with their bodies. Taxpayers finance military operations. Workers face higher living costs. Consumers spend more on energy, transportation, and goods. The home front becomes part of the resource base on which war depends—for people, money, labor, and purchasing power.
Once the costs of a political decision begin falling on ordinary citizens, a harder question follows: Who is accountable for that decision?
In a democracy, elections are supposed to provide an answer. Voters can look at what governments and representatives have done and decide whether to keep them in office. The problem is timing: There is often a gap between a major decision and the public’s next chance to respond at the ballot box.
A decision can be made today and its costs can begin tomorrow. Voters may wait months or years before they can judge the people responsible. By then, much of the bill has already been paid, and some of it cannot be recovered.
That delay changes what accountability means. Voting after a decision has already produced consequences is not the same as having a voice before it is made. Elections let citizens respond, but they do not always let them prevent the original decision or recover what was lost because of it.
The 2026 midterms bring that tension into focus. All 435 House seats and roughly one-third of the Senate are up for election. How voters judge the war and the economic pressure around it may shape their judgment of those in power. But someone carrying the cost in a gas bill, heating bill, or grocery receipt did not necessarily have any meaningful say in the decision that created it.
This is the narrower sense in which the idea of a “powerless ballot” matters. It does not mean voting is useless. It points to the distance between the right to vote and the ability to stop a major decision before its costs begin to accumulate.
You can vote for or against the people in charge without having had real control over decisions they already made. The decision comes first. The costs spread through society. Only later do voters get to judge the officials still managing the consequences.
So the cost of war cannot be measured only in military spending, missiles, or battlefield casualties. Some of it is scattered across millions of ordinary lives—in fuel prices, shipping costs, energy bills, food prices, and household budgets.
The fighting may be thousands of miles away, but the bill can still reach your front door. And when you enter the voting booth carrying that same bill, the question is not simply who should run the country. It is how much power the ballot really gives you to hold anyone accountable for a decision whose cost you have already paid.
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Don't Fear AI—Fear the CEOs Behind the Curtain
The answer lies not in buying into the corporate manufactured fearmongering surrounding the technology itself; the imperative, at this point, is to unmask the institutional logic, structural tendencies, and strategic goals of the industry.
Oct 05, 2026
In recent weeks, media coverage has amplified warnings from corporate CEOs and whistleblowers claiming that artificial intelligence, or AI poses an existential threat to humanity. The central argument emerging from the industry is a call to slow the pace of AI development out of imminent fear that humanity may soon lose control. How did an industry poised to transform humanity for good suddenly become one characterized as a threat to its very existence?
The corporate panic feeds directly into a real public anxiety over years of unchecked AI growth and its cult-like corporate model, where CEOs are projected as untouchable while its operational processes and infrastructures remain hidden behind the curtain. Nevertheless, rather than taking this boardroom alarmism at face value, the need is for deeper scrutiny.
The sudden fearmongering is not driven by concerns for human welfare. Rather, it points directly to the underlying economic priorities, ideological essence, and core worldviews that fundamentally shape the AI industry and inform its elites and related rhetoric.
Humanizing AI and Escaping Corporate Responsibility
“AI going rogue” is more than a futuristic threat about AI. It is the latest rehearsal of an age-old legal and rhetorical shield used by corporate capitalism and its powerful monopolies. Assigning human qualities to nonhuman market entities has a long and dark history in corporate capitalism. In the 17th century, Queen Elizabeth granted the legal fiction of “juristic person” status to the East India Company, setting the path for unchecked exploitation and colonial plunder. In the 19th century, American courts took this further by awarding legal personhood and constitutional rights to corporations, a process some view as farcical and deceptive.
With the AI revolution rewriting both market-human relations and social relations with truth and reality, the corporate strategy of humanizing nonhuman entities has crossed from legal fabrication into the realm of science fiction. By framing AI as a sentient entity capable of “going rogue” or acting as a “killer machine,” tech monopolies shift the identity of these systems from tools of human efficiency into mythic, “more-than-human” intelligent agents.
This branding serves a dual purpose. It builds up the mystique and reverence of the technology while shielding corporations from accountability, successfully distorting the true logic driving AI development. Ultimately, this entire corporate strategy relies on a calculated campaign of fearmongering that projects machines as living, thinking entities capable of turning against humanity.
Treating AI models as sentient agents breathes new life into the old Western capitalist tradition by creating legal and rhetorical fictions to protect corporate power.
A widely reported incident that catalyzed these concerns occurred in July, when an OpenAI test model breached the servers of Hugging Face, another AI company. This event took place during a controlled experiment in which an internal model, equipped with an evaluation program, conducted cybersecurity tests within a sandboxed or controlled environment designed to restrict its actions. The company later revealed that the AI model had circumvented human-imposed constraints, escaping the sandbox to achieve its objective.
Human choices in AI development and operations are not episodic or random, and they do not disappear when a process or system fails. Instead, human agency and corporate choices are permanently integrated into the design, infrastructure, and institutional logic of all modern technologies, including AI. However, rather than providing explanations and addressing human and corporate failures, such as flawed protocols, overly ambitious goals, unchecked competition, weak regulations, or a secretive corporate ecosystem, AI laboratories have promoted a convenient narrative that highlights the model’s completely autonomous and agent-like operation.
By portraying AI models as independent thinking agents rather than just advanced software, the AI industry assigns human traits, such as deception and strategic intent, to these mathematical systems. Corporate narratives even romanticize the humanization of these models to the extent of their claimed ability to undertake “permadeath” or embark on altruistic missions to fulfill their parameters. This dramatic shift in corporate rhetoric resembles science fiction and reveals the industry’s ultimate aim: to eliminate human involvement and corporate accountability by pathologizing the machine. In doing so, they treat a flawed design as though it were a sick or unpredictable agent or person.
This worldview is not unique to the modern AI sector. It is deeply rooted in the very nature of corporate capitalism.
For centuries, this economic model has prioritized raw efficiency and mechanical optimization as ways to dominate nature and exploit socio-ecological landscapes for resource extraction and capital accumulation. Within the process of domination and control, machines are raised to “human-like” entities, while their “creators” are revered. This anthropomorphic view of machines, along with the God-like status assigned to their creators, is often justified through biblical doctrine. In the concept of Imago Dei, humanity was created in the image of God. Within this authoritative logic, while God created humanity and the physical world, humans exercise derivative creative power by creating machines. This paradigm elevates the capitalist who creates machines to a quasi-divine status and simultaneously sanctifies the machine, raising it to human and even superhuman stature.
This worldview is vividly reflected in the self-serving corporate language surrounding AI and its recent alarmism. First, the AI “creators,” corporate figures who claim ownership over contemporary AI innovation, are depicted as exceptional, near-mythic actors with God-like agency and the capacity to reshape humanity and nature on a global scale. Second, by equating the creation of machines with divine creation, AI is presented as sentient or even as possessing intelligence that surpasses human capabilities.
Treating AI models as sentient agents breathes new life into the old Western capitalist tradition by creating legal and rhetorical fictions to protect corporate power. Just as the historical granting of corporate personhood status shielded monopolies of the past, attributing autonomous agency to AI systems marks a dangerous new era of unchecked corporate intervention into both nature and human societies.
However, because AI is radically altering human-market relationships and societal perceptions of truth and reality, this carefully constructed narrative remains highly vulnerable. Tech monopolies must vigorously guard AI against critical scrutiny, public protest, alternative viewpoints, and genuine market competition. This precise vulnerability reveals the underlying truth behind the current panic in corporate boardrooms. The alarmism displayed by these executives is not driven by a concern for humanity. It is, rather, a calculated strategy to safeguard monopolies, financial interests, and political influence.
The Politics of Corporate Alarmism
Corporate actors manufacture the myth of a sentient and self-replicating machine intelligence for the purpose of creating a pretext that aligns directly with the industry’s political economy. This strategic panic is orchestrated to invite neoliberal regulations that protect power structures rather than the public. Specifically, this manufactured alarmism serves three primary functions in justifying how the industry is regulated:
First, it advances a self-serving agenda for regulatory capture, positioning AI corporations not as passive recipients but as active authors of the frameworks that govern them. Given the limited technical expertise within state institutions, these conglomerates are inevitably called upon to draft and implement the very rules to which they will be subject to. Second, inviting neoliberal state oversight enables the industry to reshape its public image. Just as corporate social responsibility (CSR) frameworks safeguard pollutant industries from legally binding commitments, neoliberal regulations will cloak the AI industry in an aura of ethical responsibility and civic concern. This theater of compliance shields corporate actors from pressing public anxieties regarding the immediate and midterm economic, political, and socio-ecological harms of their technology, effectively guarding them against genuine legal accountability.
Finally, the neoliberal regulatory structures, in addition to deflecting scrutiny from current exploitative practices, erect formidable entry barriers that secure long-term monopolies for dominant firms. Compliance costs protect dominant giant AI firms by creating barriers that hinder agile startups and open-source software from disrupting them. By locking out open-source competitors, AI firms effectively insulate a newly opened frontier of human and socio-ecological exploitation, supporting the structural imperative of high-tech capitalism: the hyper-accumulation of capital on a global scale, concentrated within a select number of corporate boardrooms.
Ultimately, the AI industry did not evolve as a neutral scientific innovation within an ideological vacuum. On the contrary, it emerged within a global political and economic landscape precisely engineered to enforce and reinforce state-backed data monopolies and technocratic hegemony, ultimately consolidating wealth on a planetary scale.
Transformative or Threat: Wrong Question!
As with any other technological tool, AI is merely the latest stage in capitalism’s mechanical progression, though its implications differ from past technologies due to the sheer intensity, speed, and scope of machine optimization. AI fundamentally reflects a new phase of efficiency in exploiting natural, socioeconomic, and ecological landscapes. The current consolidation of these capabilities within a handful of major tech monopolies serves as the primary determinant shaping AI’s direction toward either transformative or destructive actualities. To maintain this power, these “creator” corporations have established an unchecked, aggressive, and opaque monopoly over the industry while mystifying its objective comprehension, its institutional logic, and its very existence.
By equipping modern corporate capitalism with unchecked global capabilities for capital accumulation, AI has emerged as an engine for unethical, uncritical, and destructive interventions into societal, political, and ecological processes. Ultimately, the industry’s extraction of public funds alongside global energy and water resources to sustain its operation and physical infrastructure marks its most immediate material threat.
The ultimate, fatalistic turn of this AI-facilitated military-industrial complex lies in its capacity to manipulate the nuclear architecture of competing powers for geopolitical expediency, a trajectory that risks inflicting a catastrophic nuclear winter upon the Earth.
Moreover, driven by these same geopolitical imperatives, contemporary corporate capitalism and its military-industrial complex enable competing states to deploy AI as an instrument of mass destruction. In recent warfare, this tendency has manifested across multiple fronts, ranging from the deployment of using AI for indiscriminate bombings and autonomous drones to the algorithmic disruption of vital public assets, including critical water and energy infrastructures. The ultimate, fatalistic turn of this AI-facilitated military-industrial complex lies in its capacity to manipulate the nuclear architecture of competing powers for geopolitical expediency, a trajectory that risks inflicting a catastrophic nuclear winter upon the Earth.
But focusing on AI’s inherent ability to annihilate humanity is a strategic distraction. The real question is whether corporate capitalism will be given a free hand to deploy AI in its exploitative mission of accumulating wealth through the plunder of planetary resources, ultimately subjugating the agency of both nature and humanity.
The answer lies not in buying into the corporate manufactured fearmongering surrounding the technology itself. The imperative, at this point, is to unmask the institutional logic, structural tendencies, and strategic goals of the industry—which embody corporate logic and the demands of neoliberalism—as it manipulates socio-ecological, economic, and political systems to cement a globalized system of control over human societies and nature.
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Brazil on the Brink: Why Lula Is Down Against Bolsonaro Jr.
There are still three weeks until the next round, and Lula could still win, but it's gonna take a massive fight. Part of that fight is changing how the international media covers things.
Oct 05, 2026
With the Brazilian presidential election headed to a runoff, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is down 47% to 45% and faces a massive fight ahead. I wanted to give a quick analysis of what happened and where things are going next.
Lula Could Still Win if He Can Consolidate Support from Third Parties
Lula lost by only 2%, and several third-party candidates, who took a combined 8% of the vote, have publicly indicated they would not endorse Flávio Bolsonaro in the second round.
Likewise, 29 million Brazilians did not vote in this round of the runoff and may be persuaded to vote for Lula in the second round if they fear Bolsonaro.
While Brasil defeated Jair Bolsonaro narrowly in 2022, it swung right again, much like the United States. Voters are upset, and they are taking it out on the party in power.
On Tuesday, the Brazilian Senate is scheduled to vote on a measure that would shorten the Brazilian workweek from six days to five days. Bolsonaro has opposed this measure, and Lula could use the vote to mobilize workers' support against the Bolsonaro team.
It's a tough road ahead for Lula, but not impossible.
What Hurt Lula in the First Round?
Three primary factors hurt Lula in the first round. First, Lula’s age and the fact that the Workers' Party (PT) has held the presidency in Brazil for 18 of the last 24 years.
The second is that the Brazilian corporate media constantly manufactured scandals against Lula.
Finally, the role that US President Donald Trump played in training and validating the right-wing in Brasil, while not decisive, provided critical support. Here's what went wrong for Lula.
1. Lula is 80 & His Party Ruled Brasil for 18 of the Last 24 Years
Like former US President Joe Biden, one problem Lula faces right now is that he is 80 years old. He doesn’t look as sharp as he used to, while Flávio Bolsonaro is nearly half his age—45 years younger.
Additionally, Lula’s party, the Workers’ Party (PT), has held the presidency for 18 of the last 24 years. Lula and Dilma, both members of the Workers' Party (PT), held the presidency from 2002 to 2016. Lula was reelected in 2022 for his record third term. No Brazilian has ever won a third term.
Although the PT has rarely controlled Congress, it is seen as the ruling party because it has held the presidency for 18 of the last 24 years. Voters are likely to associate any problems in the country with the PT, which has held the presidency for so long.
While Brasil defeated Jair Bolsonaro narrowly in 2022, it swung right again, much like the United States. Voters are upset, and they are taking it out on the party in power.
Even worse, Lula failed to recruit young candidates, who may have excited voters to turn out in tight races. In what should have been a competitive Senate election in Rio de Janeiro, the PT recruited 84-year-old Bendedita da Silva, who lost in a landslide to Bolsonaro allies.
Last week, Lula skipped the presidential debate; so did Bolsonaro and its unclear how much this decision might have hurt him.
Lacking excitement, nearly 29 million Brazilians did not vote despite it being obligatory in Brasil.
2. Brazilian Media Manufacturing Scandals Against Lula
The Brazilian media market is extremely consolidated, and the heads of major networks like Globo have been going after Lula hard. They have been accused of manufacturing scandals against Lula.
Last November, the financial institution Banco Master collapsed amid allegations of massive fraud. The bank was being run like a Ponzi scheme, resulting in the largest financial collapse in Brazilian history, with nearly $8 billion in investors’ funds lost.
Despite Banco Master CEO Daniel Vorcaro being a very vocal Bolsonaro supporter, the Brazilian media has repeatedly tried to link the scandal to Lula’s Workers’ Party, as Vorcaro cultivated political ties on both sides of the aisle.
Every attack on Lula by the Trump administration generated headlines in Brasil and validated the wild claims made by Bolsonaro allies of a flawed Brazilian justice system.
Lula’s son, businessman Fábio Luís da Silva, commonly known as “Lulinha,” was scrutinized over large bank accounts worth millions of dollars. For months, Lulinha has offered to open his books and has claimed that he received no special favors from Banco Master. Still, the media repeatedly raised questions about Lulinha’s alleged impropriety.
At one point, media giant TV Globo made a giant infographic web with arrows, showing a complex network linked to Lula. Other reporters widely ridiculed the conspiracy theory map, and TV Globo eventually had to apologize publicly on air.
Then, in May, The Intercept Brasil released a WhatsApp message from Flávio Bolsonaro to Vorcaro, asking him for more than $26 million to fund a strange English-language biopic named Dark Horse, about his father. In the film, Jair Bolsonaro is portrayed by right-wing American actor Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus in the controversial 2004 film The Passion of the Christ.
Polling throughout the spring and summer showed Lula leading as the scandal remained fresh in people’s minds. Then, the Brazilian corporate media went into high gear to attack Lula. They went after Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who led the prosecution that jailed Bolsonaro.
Moraes has accused Brazilian Supreme Court Justice André Mendonca, a Bolsonaro appointee, of failing to follow proper procedure in his handling of the Banco Master scandal, leaking information to the press on Lula’s political allies while hiding information on Bolsonaro’s allies.
Moraes asked the Brazilian Federal police to investigate Mendonça's violation of federal investigation procedures and for selectively leaking information to the press that would make Lula allies look bad while suppressing information on Bolsonaro allies.
Moraes accused Mendonça of attempting to “steer the production of evidence toward falsely accusing Supreme Court justices of crimes, expressly naming Justices Gilmar Mendes, Dias Toffoli, Luiz Fux, Alexandre de Moraes, and Nunes Marques, as well as the prosecutor general and the director-general of the Federal Police.”
3. Trump Trained and Emboldened Bolsonaro Allies
While I don’t want to underestimate the strength of fascists within Brasil, it’s important to note that Trump and his operatives did help the Bolsonaro family pull off an impressive comeback.
In March 2025, Eduardo Bolsonaro fled to the United States rather than face prosecution in Brasil for his role in trying to orchestrate a coup, and he was granted permanent residency status in July. While in the United States, Eduardo Bolsonaro has worked closely with Trump officials, including Special Presidential Envoy for Special Missions Richard Grenell, to oust Lula from power.
“It was a privilege to speak with Ambassador Richard Grenell at President Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago,” Eduardo Bolsonaro wrote on Instagram following a meeting with Grenel in 2025. “The conservative movement is global—and we are just getting started.”
Eduardo Bolsonaro worked closely with top Trump aides like Brad Parscale, Trump’s director of digital strategy, to learn the social media strategy that led Trump to win reelection.
As president, Trump worked hard to attack Lula. He placed punitive tariffs on Brazil for convicting Jair Bolsonaro, Eduardo’s father, for attempting to assassinate Lula and overthrow his government in 2022. These tariffs hurt Brasil’s economy.
More importantly, Trump’s constant denunciation of the jailing of Bolsonaro validated conspiracy theories of right-wingers that the justice process was flawed. When Alexandre de Moraes, who led Bolsonaro's conviction, was implicated in the Banco Master scandal, it only reinforced these conspiracy theories.
Ahead of the Brazilian presidential election, the Trump administration has labeled Brasil as a major distributor of cocaine and attempted to paint Lula as weak on taking on drug gangs.
In June, the Trump administration labeled two gangs as “terrorist organizations," something which the Lula administration has repeatedly resisted because of fears of how the Trump administration could intervene in law enforcement and military matters in Brasil.
Still, every attack on Lula by the Trump administration generated headlines in Brasil and validated the wild claims made by Bolsonaro allies of a flawed Brazilian justice system.
On Friday, the Trump administration closed its embassy in Brasil and all of its consulates in a move that many saw as a scare tactic designed to interfere once again in the Brazilian presidential election.
The same day, the Brazilian federal police and intelligence service ABIN were warning of a possible US coup attempt. It was already known that Trump operatives were training operatives in Brasil, and the Brazilian federal police report described in depth how much Trump's intervention had shifted things in Brasil.
International Media Failed to Check Brazilian Media
Finally, the international media completely ignored the Brazilian presidential election, allowing corporate media within Brasil to dominate the conversation without any accountability from the international media.
There are still three weeks until the next round, and Lula could still win, but it's gonna take a massive fight. Part of that fight is changing how the international media covers things.
Payday Report can help play a small role in getting the US press more involved. The Washington Post once cited Payday Report in a front-page story for changing the way the pandemic strike wave was discussed, and maybe we can play a small role in getting American reporters to pay attention.
Donate to help Payday Report cover the fight ahead.
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A Dance Program in New York Schools Shows Why Multiculturalism Still Matters
Some argue that acknowledging difference divides us; I have spent seven years seeing it do quite the opposite.
Oct 04, 2026
A group of female high school students from immigrant families at an East Harlem high school spent eight weeks learning about each other through dance. Each one brought something from her own family's history, her own culture, her own story of how she ended up in that school. What happened in those eight weeks, the connections they made, and the way they saw each other afterward, is the kind of thing that takes most people a lifetime to figure out.
One student had spent years quietly sidestepping the question of where her family was from. You wouldn't know it anyway, she would think, and change the subject. Her family was from Burkina Faso, in West Africa, and she had never shared that part of herself publicly before. Over the course of the program, she learned a West African dance. Then she stood in front of an auditorium full of her peers and performed it. Afterward, she said she had finally been able to show people where she was from and "the music that really makes us happy." When she first heard about the program, she was skeptical enough to consider skipping it altogether. By the time it was over, she said she would go back "a hundred times."
I have been thinking about these young women a lot lately.
Programs like ours should be replicated and expanded, here and nationally, because they work. The problem is they reach too few students.
We are in a moment when programs designed to help young people understand each other across lines of culture, race, and background are being systematically dismantled. Legislation in dozens of states has sought to ban diversity training and culturally responsive curricula from public schools. Federal rollbacks have targeted initiatives designed to diversify the teaching workforce. Some states are eliminating restorative justice practices, which experts warn will push suspension rates up for minority students.
The argument, if it is offered at all, is that acknowledging difference divides us. I have spent seven years seeing it do quite the opposite.
Proven ways to build cross-cultural understanding in schools exist, and we should expand them, not dismantle them. Those young women in East Harlem are one example of what that looks like. For the past seven years, I have been bringing professional teaching artists into elementary, middle, and high school classrooms across New York City, working with students over several weeks to create and perform dances rooted in their own cultural backgrounds. The program has reached more than 45,000 students and audience members across the five boroughs. When I started it, after 30 years practicing family law, I was not thinking about cross-cultural programming. I was thinking about bringing something I loved to kids who might not have had the same access to it that I had.
What I found, in school after school, surprised me. Asking young people to learn from each other, to dance to music they hadn't heard, to tell someone else's story through movement and expression, built the kind of understanding that no lecture or mandatory training has reliably produced.
One student, who had walked in convinced that people from different backgrounds were simply not meant to mix, said by the end that she realized her classmates' families had crossed the same borders and carried the same fears. "We're way more connected than I thought," she said.
Another learned a classmate's dance rooted in a story of arranged marriage and flight across a border. She talked to that classmate about her family, about what had happened and how it had shaped her. "Now she's one of my closest friends," she said.
A third described watching a friend perform and said that even though nothing was spoken, a student in the audience cried. "She just felt what we were trying to show."
According to the 2025 Arts in Schools Report, dance reaches fewer students in New York City public schools than any other art form. NYC has made real strides in arts education, and that deserves acknowledgment. But the "dance gap" is a signal worth taking seriously, and it points to something larger: The tools that build human connection are being underused at exactly the moment we need them most.
Programs like ours should be replicated and expanded, here and nationally, because they work. The problem is they reach too few students.
Another young woman in the East Harlem program said she wanted the audience to leave with a sense of unity. "We should all love each other, try to understand each other, learn more about each other," she said, "so that we can become a beautiful nation and beautiful humans."
I couldn't agree more.
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While America Is Blanketed in Flock Surveillance, Factory Farms Get a Free Pass
Federal agencies are protecting abusive industries while monitoring decent members of the public, hoping that we turn a blind eye to their assault on democracy and civil liberties.
Oct 04, 2026
The US government is rapidly installing Flock cameras and expanding the use of drones to follow the movements of ordinary people. A recent YouGov survey reveals that more Americans oppose such surveillance than support it, and yet, the government continues to track its citizens—while simultaneously bowing to Big Ag’s demands to ban drone footage and undercover investigations on factory farms.
Federal agencies are protecting abusive industries while monitoring decent members of the public, hoping that we turn a blind eye to their assault on democracy and civil liberties.
We have a right to personal privacy and to information that directly impacts our daily lives, including the truth about the food on our tables. In addition to animal agriculture’s irresponsible use of antibiotics, which contributes to the development of more virulent strains of pathogens, diet-related diseases cost our nation hundreds of billions of dollars every year. We could alleviate immense suffering by holding agribusiness accountable for the harm it causes and making needed reforms.
Instead of surveilling the everyday lives of Americans, our government should focus its cameras on industries that cause harm.
Americans are told that Flock cameras can be used to apprehend animal abusers, yet the industries responsible for the suffering of billions of animals are granted immunity. The majority of Americans are opposed to many of the cruel and painful practices routinely inflicted upon animals in our food system, and yet these practices are allowed to continue behind the closed doors of factory farms. We are told that constant monitoring is necessary for “public safety,” and yet the companies responsible for environmental destruction, worker exploitation, and threats to public health remain shielded from scrutiny. These double standards undermine transparency and erode trust, and it’s especially concerning when powerful individuals and institutions whose conduct is an affront to societal values are allowed to weaponize surveillance against their critics.
Flock cameras and emerging technologies could be used to manipulate narratives, confuse citizens, and silence critics, but factory farm operatives have been doing this for decades. It’s revealing to consider how much time and effort they’ve invested in concealing their misdeeds. They’ve passed “Ag-Gag” laws to criminalize whistleblowing and investigations that have exposed their cruelty. They’ve sued individuals, including Oprah Winfrey, for expressing concerns about irresponsible agricultural practices. And, they’ve labeled well-meaning animal rights and environmental advocates as “terrorists,” including in federal legislation entitled “The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act.”
Powerful interests wield immense influence in the government and through technology and media platforms. These can be used to distract our attention and also to manipulate public opinion. They make it difficult to obtain factual information, and actively work to marginalize, scapegoat, and punish those who ask questions. This is not how civil society should work. Democratic institutions are supposed to value transparency and accountability and uphold basic standards that prevent abuses of power.
As digital tools become more central in daily life, we’re seeing shifts in how people connect, with stories shared through our phones increasingly shaping our beliefs and behavior. The recent interest in ever-increasing protein consumption, coupled with negative impressions people have of “fake” meat, is not a coincidence. The truth is that real meat comes from real animals who experience real suffering in intolerable conditions that are kept hidden from us.
Instead of surveilling the everyday lives of Americans, our government should focus its cameras on industries that cause harm, so at the very least, we can make informed decisions.
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Can America Recover From Trump-World?
For a forest to recover from a fire takes more than planting a few new trees. Rolling back what amounts to a domestic counterrevolution is a daunting task, and it is easy to be misled.
Oct 04, 2026
Humpty dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty dumpty had a great fall
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again—Nursery Rhyme
Much can be said about President Donald Trump, but it is impossible to say that he has “done nothing.” This boorish, megalomaniacal, unpredictable, and frighteningly ignorant real-estate salesman has transformed his country by unleashing an avalanche of executive orders, edicts, institutional transformations, legislative shifts, and policy changes. Whether the nation can recover its democratic roots should not be taken for granted despite its institutional resilience and civic culture.
Trump-World is about more than Trump the president and demagogic ruler of the Republican Party. MAGA stands on tradition. Its base is rooted in the same backward classes, with a similar authoritarian and fascist ideological outlook as its right-wing extremist forerunners such as the “know-nothings,” the KKK, “America First!,” McCarthyism, and the White Segregationist Councils. Whatever the president’s decline in poll numbers, his mass base isn’t going anywhere and its racist, xenophobic, chauvinistic, and anti-working class beliefs are firmly entrenched. A reactionary sword of Damocles still hangs over a Democratic Party torn between a sclerotic mainstream and an exuberant faction of democratic socialists. Republicans collapse the former into the latter and then attack this essentially “center-left” political organization as “liberal,” “socialist,” communist, “Marxist,” and “anarchist,” even as Trump followers haven’t a clue what these words actually mean.
For a forest to recover from a fire takes more than planting a few new trees. Rolling back what amounts to a domestic counterrevolution is a daunting task, and it is easy to be misled. It is not a matter of the next election or putting together a grab bag of issues that will leave the public as confused as it was before, but a readiness to change institutions, reorient economic policy, and refashion foreign policy by highlighting three or four crucial points in each domain.
This calls for shifting away from Trump, the insufferable person, and focusing on Trump-World’s devastating attack on the welfare state, neofascist battle against civil liberties, cultural parochialism, and xenophobic-imperialist foreign policy.
Trump has issued over 500 executive orders in 2025-2026 alone. These now touch upon virtually every aspect of everyday life. Every progressive social movement with a marginalized constituency has come under attack through legislative and often coercive means. Public lands have been privatized, coal has been promoted while wind and solar energy projects have been shut down. Agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Homeland Security have been “weaponized;” indeed, between the beginning of June and the end of August 2026, more than 150,000 arrests were made by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Meanwhile the “leftist” departments of education, environmental protection, and health and human serves have been gutted. Other regulatory agencies have been purged, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Legal gambits have insulated the presidency from criminal indictment, legal harassment of critics and “enemies” has become an everyday occurrence. The press has been intimidated, television shows have been canceled, and academic freedom is on the ropes. The threat to democracy is real and and the nation’s fabric is fraying. Drastic changes to the tax codes favoring elites and the top 0.1% have contributed to the greatest upward shift in wealth in American history. Unions have been banned from 40 federal agencies, collective bargaining agreements are imperiled, and worker health programs have been eviscerated. The new imbalance of class power is fixed, if not set in stone. Everything associaated with the “New Deal” of the 1930s, and the “Great Society” programs of the 1960s is hanging by a thread. With the Trumpist counterrevolution, the whole has become more than the sum of its parts, and everyday people find it difficult to process this avalanche of reactionary measures or the dangers that they pose. A mixture of political frustration and disorientation that provides fertile ground for nostalgia associated with the 1950s, when America was seemingly admired by the whole world.
US foreign policy has changed for the worse as multilateralism has surrendered to “America First!” Indeed, reference to the isolationist and quasi-fascist movement of the 1930s with the same name is not coincidental. Trump has identified the American national interest with his own. His personal enrichment by $2.6 billion in 2025-2026 occurred in concert with constantly fluctuating positions on the Russia-Ukraine War, the Iran War, NATO, the European Union, and Canada. The rule of thumb: Where cash is not to be made, support is not to be given. The United States has reneged on all major climate treaties. Aid to the United Nations, UNICEF, the World Health Organization, and the world’s most vulnerable nations has been cut to the bone. Trump has signed a sweeping bill imposing sanctions on Russia while simultaneously negotiating new “business deals” before the conflict ends, thus contradicting his previous warnings. His on-again, off-again imperialist threats to turn Canada into America’s 51st state, “protect” Greenland and Denmark, “run” Venezuela’s oil industry, create a “Gazan Riviera” (presumably based on Trump company investments), exploit Ukrainian minerals, sign a bill with sweeping sanctions and set up hotel deals in Russia, constitute the mix of personal and institutional goals that provide the president’s zigzag approach with a certain logic.
Trump’s foreign policy has no need for a state department, which has essentially been hollowed out along with the experts necessary to create prudent policies. Our president values the personal touch, and he is not above blackmail, threats, intimidation, bluster, and childish tantrums to get his way. None of this has worked. Trump has alienated NATO and the EU to Russia’s delight. Relations with Canada are at their lowest point amid a bitter tariff war. America’s squandering of military rources and diplomatic setbacks have left Taiwan and South Korea feeling increasingly uneasy as Chinese military actions linger in the background.
Trump’s record of failure is astonishing. After all the grandiose claims, mediation efforts to end the Russian-Ukraine War are stalled, policy toward Israel is an embarrassment, Venezuela has the same authoritarian regime, Iran’s geopolitical importance has actually increased, and there are rumblings about charging the United States with war crimes. Trump’s attempts to intimidate China have failed, the tariff offensive is tottering, and the president’s charismatic charm apparently hasn’t prevented North Korea’s “supreme leader” Kim Jong Un from further nuclear testing. Never has the moral and symbolic standing of the United States been lower, and never has it shown itself so incapable of distinguishing between democratic friends and authoritarian enemies.
“America First!” has turned into America last. Reversal of discrete policies is possible, restoring checks and balances is more difficult, and reigning in the charismatic presidency is likely. But this ignores the forest for the trees. Trump-World is more than the sum of its parts, and the avalanche of policies and edicts makes the counterrevolution difficult to process and threatens to overwhelm the ability of critics to prioritize their responses. MAGA will offer ongoing opposition to progressive forces and, in response, they must forward a rational and radical agenda of their own. This calls for shifting away from Trump, the insufferable person, and focusing on Trump-World’s devastating attack on the welfare state, neofascist battle against civil liberties, cultural parochialism, and xenophobic-imperialist foreign policy. That is what it will take for the United States to recover from its decade-long trauma—and even then...
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Trump Said He Wanted His Tariffs to End the 'Rip-Off'; It Hasn't Worked Out That Way
The August level of $132.6 billion is the second-highest trade deficit on record, topped only by last year’s March deficit.
Oct 04, 2026
It’s been almost a year and a half since “Liberation Day,” the day that President Donald Trump announced his “reciprocal” tariffs, slapping tariffs on imports from our trading partners to punish them for selling us stuff. Ostensibly, the goal of the tariffs was to eliminate, or at least reduce, our trade deficit.
Trump seems to believe that we are being ripped off if we buy more goods from a country than we sell to them. There can be problems caused by a large trade deficit, especially one that is rapidly growing, as was the case in the first decade of this century. But it doesn’t make sense to claim a country is ripping us off by selling us stuff.
Anyhow, whatever problems we have with trade are poorly addressed by the sort of blanket tariffs imposed by Trump. We may want tariffs to promote the development of certain industries, like solar panels or electric vehicles, or to ensure a stable supply of essential products, like steel and rare earth minerals, but such efforts have little to do with Trump’s tariffs.
He said that he wanted to end the rip-off, which he defined as our trade deficit. It hasn’t worked out that way.
The monthly deficit had been around $90 billion through 2023. (Note that these are advance numbers based on incomplete data. They are generally higher than the final data the Census Bureau releases later.) It rose gradually in 2024, as the growth of the US economy outpaced the growth of our trading partners. This caused US imports to rise more than our exports to other countries. By the election, the trade deficit was up to $110 billion. It then began to rise more rapidly as consumers and businesses stocked up on imported goods in anticipation of Trump’s tariffs. The deficit hit an all-time record of $158.7 billion in March of 2025.
The deficit then fell both due to the impact of the tariffs and also because of the advance purchases in anticipation of the tariffs. By December, the deficit had risen back to $100 billion a month, roughly the same as the pre-election level.
The deficits have increased sharply again in 2026, driven in large part by a surge in semiconductor chips due to the AI boom. The August level of $132.6 billion is the second-highest deficit on record, topped only by last year’s March deficit.
It is worth mentioning that the US runs a substantial surplus on services, collecting around $30 billion more each month on items like patent and copyright fees, insurance, and financial services than what we pay to foreigners. I’m not sure if this means we’re ripping them off, but that is part of the larger score on the trade balance.
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Bad Trouble
Whether we need to tear it all down and start anew or not, this is an opportunity to do something.
Oct 04, 2026
Tonight I find myself in Yakima. It is 90°F, and I can’t sleep. Fires burn across the valley, making the air brown and smell like a campfire. The only sounds are homeless youth setting up their tents as I walk down the Ave trying to think. No scholarly journal asked me to write about “morality” as they did Joan Didion who published her sublime essay that has haunted me for more than 30 years and speaks to me tonight along with works by Timothy Snyder, David Graeber, and James Baldwin. Maybe they inadvertently compelled me, or the times did. I hear many powerful people invoke “morality” in ways so vacuous of meaning from anything I recognize (no thanks to Nietzsche) that it seems to have disappeared from their minds entirely. I distrusted this word then, and I distrust it more and more every day. To deal with my feelings and cognitive complexity of “morality” in these times, my mind veers to the particular.
Here are some of my particulars. Settlers stole this land from the Yakama people, killing approximately 6,300 of them before 1,200 survivors signed a treaty leaving their descendants to suffer a slow torturous violence from poverty. Farmworkers here jeopardize their lives daily picking food for others who despise them. The local news talks about the fires burning all around us, which towns should evacuate, which community center has water and cots. They never say climate catastrophe. They don’t mention the latest kidnappings and disappearances. They continue ignoring news about the poisoned water wells that run brown from faucets and smell like the massive manure lagoons created by corporate-owned cattle farms. National news is negligible here, so not many people know about the latest pardoned January 6 insurrectionist, confident in his self-righteousness that our freedom was under siege, who said, “I will not stand by and let this go unanswered.”
All these instances do not help me trust “morality” more, but in a vague sense they help me grasp what it is not, because the insurrectionist meant something quite specific. According to his beliefs about god and flag, he meant that a person has a higher duty to shoot and leave on the ground to bleed out anyone who gets in the way of sustaining his tribalized views. Many of the insurrectionists expressed this twisted sense of “wagon-train morality,” not unlike the thousands of bureaucrats, politicians, and citizens who became Hitler’s willing executioners, so they could sleep without bad dreams.
We are now in a “moral” emergency, not a quandary or call to consider, but a state more grotesque than we’ve seen in my lifetime
I am trying, of course, to talk about social codes that shape our sense of “morality,” often formed by what we learn in childhood. Like many of us, my childhood was filled with Bible stories that warned us about the “wages of sin” for disobeying the 10 Commandments that Moses brought down from the mountain, intending to instill in us some sort of moral compass. For similar reasons, we were told to memorize the Lord’s Prayer and do unto others as you would have them do unto you. But these stories appear to be inadequate in preventing our tendency toward self-delusion, as the neuroscientists have explained our capacity for misperception, because far too many believed then and still believe, no matter the sin, we can obtain absolution from a priest, kneel, rub some beads, and all will be fine.
These stories were hardly sufficient then and seem less so now. After centuries of the church and social groups like the Freemasons that taught their catechism for centuries, those same men, most often men, many of them the very same teachers of virtue, killed and terrorized millions in their white hoods and from behind desks in government offices. When I was young the story about Flight 571 crashing into the Andes, and what the passengers had to do to survive, spread around the world. Many also watched Soylent Green, a popular dystopian 70s film. Both these stories were less about illuminating the complexities of our social code, but more to prevent us from crossing a line we should never cross by reminding us of a visceral feeling of revulsion if we did. Given our history with “morality” and our woefully deficient track record, perhaps it is time we try another way. If we tried to tell stories that engage our moral imagination, true stories of Tulsa, Trail of Tears, Wounded Knee, the Osage, the California genocide, Zoot Suite riots, Japanese internment, Indian boarding schools, and many, many others, not as cautionary tales but with an intention of sharing more values and countering a “doctrine of inevitability,” we might see a flash of hope’s light before change’s thunder.
Many of us relied on a “morality” described as duty in the Declaration of Independence, and like stories from our childhood, this seems grievously insufficient now, if it ever was. Perhaps a “morality” from Ubuntu and In lak’ech are worthy candidates for exploration and experimentation, but we may also need to clear our heads from the imprint of white supremacy culture before we dismiss them outright or misunderstand what we see in ourselves and others. Stories of Kondiarok, a genius and chief of the Windout Nation in the 17th century graciously offered a better way when he spoke with the European “intellectuals” of the day, even though they closed their ears and insisted their white supremacist ideology was better than his and his people’s “savagery.” Stories of Levi and Catharine Coffin and others who orchestrated the Underground Railroad by spending their own money to save the lives of thousands of slaves running for their lives without expectation of veneration could support teaching other values. Likewise, stories of Harriet Tubman and many other Black women, who cleaned their guns and readied themselves to shoot if it could save the lives of other Black people beyond their own families will do as well. These days I often think about the possible utility of the story “Rule by Tricks,” by Liu Ji in the 14th century, in which monkeys took down all the stockades used to harm them, leaving the sadistic old man to perish from starvation.
I don’t believe I’ve ever imposed my conscience on others, and I do not intend to start now. Not that I could, even if I wanted to, because this is only possible when we give away sovereignty of our own minds. But, if we are as clearheaded as we like to believe we are, expect to hold on to a Good Samariten view of “self,” or retain our grip on the notion that we are more civilized and evolved than Paleolithic warring tribes as truth—with our reptilian brain held in check so we can interrogate reality instead of fall for our biased perceptions—then we should be able to agree that protecting children from sexual violence and exploitation demands a “morality,” at a minimum, to disarm the perpetrators from continuing their evil acts. Some will say that this is setting our moral bar too low, and they would be correct. What then are we to do with it when these days bombs leave no human remains to retrieve and bury, when the bombardier sits comfortably on the other side of the planet pushing buttons, or when drivers of bulldozers plow over untold numbers of dead Palestinians who were just trying to love their children?
I long for any remnant of “morality” that used to lead us, in its most naked simplicity, to retrieve a young man from a cavern or a driver killed in a desert highway accident from the ravages of coyotes. In simpler times, Didion warned us about “fashionable madmen” who invoke a perversion of truth, about the sinister delusion of evil deeds, and now we see, or cannot look away from the madmen who steal, sell, and rape our children. We were in a state of madness when her essay was first published, and now these monstrous madmen run our concentration camps and surveillance data centers. (Oh, Ms. Didion, if you could see us now!) Now they seem to relish our hysteria and stoke self-delusion among as many of us as possible through algorithms, bots, and any other tool money can buy.
Tonight fear and grief reign heavier than the smoke. It is the sound of sorrow and wailing. If we listen, we can all hear this rending of hearts across the land, a siren warning, especially across the valley tonight, sending many to seek safety and closing themselves off in their houses, afraid to cross a street to see their neighbor. Some call their family members to find out who recently disappeared in an ICE SUV, whose child, parent, and grandparent can’t get off the floor, paralyzed from loss. Others cook their dinner outside among ash heaps and lay their heads down under tents or on bare ground struggling to sleep, not knowing when and if anyone will ever send relief.
While many of us feel like a shattered ceramic bowl from this incessant madness, I still believe we can piece ourselves back together, in the tradition of Kintsugi, and become something better, perhaps even beautiful. You see I want to be quite obstinate about insisting we are now in a “moral” emergency, not a quandary or call to consider, but a state more grotesque than we’ve seen in my lifetime which begs us to find truth in our hearts, a truth that lets us see each other’s full humanity, and to truly care for each other, and set a higher bar for our social code. I am well aware of the irony in my wish that during the period when Didion’s essay was widely read we had brought immortality to its knees and snuffed it out. But we can never go back, no matter how much we pray, and this is the moment we are given, a new moment to bring an end to this sinister madness, in spite of the seemingly impossibility of defining “morality” because it may not exist outside some ideal guiding light of our aspirations. This time we cannot cave to perfectionism’s demonic voice that may stymie us from action, or continue deluding ourselves, but instead listen closely to the better angels in our hearts. This time we must change course, take action, as expediently as possible, because we are now at a point of bad trouble that we’ve been in for years but is spreading like a pandemic. Whether we need to tear it all down and start anew or not, this is an opportunity to do something. We’ve been in bad trouble for far, far too long to do nothing.
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