How ‘bout those tariffs? I’m sure the penguin delegation was instrumental in getting their implementation partially delayed. Seriously though, this is what happens when the president has no idea how anything actually works and then delegates the policy creation to AI. Yup, the whole tariff chart was likely created with AI. And if the tech bros have their way, the whole country will soon be run mostly by AI.
Capitalism, and with it modern civilization as the “developed” world has come to know it, was always going to collapse at some point because it is unsustainably predicated on perpetual growth in a finite system. This is why Musk wants to go to Mars, Bezos to the Moon, and plenty of others talk seriously about mining asteroids. Without the Sam Altmans, Peter Thiels, and Elons Musks, capitalism probably would have stumbled along for a good many years to come. However, with the tech bros at the top of the money-power pyramid, the collapse is suddenly accelerating.
Even up to a few months ago mention of collapse was not likely to appear in any kind of mainstream media, even the more liberal ones. You’d need to tune into podcasts like Crazy Town where they talk about it on the regular. But when The Guardian publishes an article about a report from Allianz SE, one of the world’s largest insurance companies, that warns climate change is on track to destroy capitalism and Scientific American publishes an article about how big banks like Morgan Stanley are quietly preparing for climate catastrophe you know things are getting serious. Of course, neither of the articles mentions how the insurance industry or the global finance industry have played significant roles in creating the conditions of collapse while they continue to find ways to profit off of it.
Meanwhile, as Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor write, we find ourselves moving ever deeper into end times fascism. The super rich are building their bunkers and walled cities while they dismantle democracy. The tech bros are forthright about capitalism and democracy being incompatible. They cannot keep making money, using resources, and immiserating you and me unless all the guardrails of democracy are removed. So they make up lies about Venezuelan gang invasions, hoards of immigrants crossing the border, and trans people. They stop funding science and education and libraries. And then they start removing information from government websites about health and climate change, and anything that can be considered DEI or DEI adjacent. Because information is dangerous. If we know how to think, we can figure out how to resist.
All of the tech bros and a good many of the people who think like Robert Kennedy, are huge supporters of eugenics. It’s why Elon Musk pays women to have his children. It’s one reason why anti-vaxxers and health influencers are so self-righteous—if you are genetically worthy, the measles/COVID/other disease won’t kill you. Viruses are just Nature’s way of editing the gene pool.
The well-off know collapse is coming and that they, and their greedy capitalist fingers, are the reason for it. But they won’t ever say that and the mainstream will avoid talking about it for as long as possible because we wouldn’t want people to panic. Except people are panicking, we just don’t know what we are really panicking about. Those who suspect are being encouraged to prepare by buying guns, gold, ready-to-eat meals, to create our own mini bunkers so capitalism can make money off our panic.
It may seem nothing but doom and gloom, but it’s not. When you live in a dying civilization there are opportunities to create what comes next. What we do now, the ideas we talk about, the communities we create, and the positive futures we imagine make a difference. It is up to us as things fall apart to create the tools and vision to build something new and better.
Surveying possibilities, I recently read The Communist Manifesto for the first time. It is a fascinating and still relevant document. The analysis of capitalism is sharp and Marx and Engels are weirdly admiring of capitalism’s adaptability. They believed that capitalism’s end would come about by the rupture of revolution. I think at this point we are well beyond that sort of end. But even as capitalism collapses beneath its own weight, I do not agree with the communist future the pair imagined.
To go along with the Manifesto, I read China Miévile’s book A Spectre, Haunting. He provided very good historical context for the whole undertaking. Miéville, who considers himself a Communist, concludes his book by talking about hate. He says that Marx and Engels were very careful in the Manifesto to make it clear that we are to hate the system of capitalism and not the people who comprise the capitalist class—the bourgeoisie. A good and important distinction.
But then Miéville goes on to say for the sake of humanity, we must “hate harder” than the Manifesto. That “class hate is constitutive with and inextricable from solidarity.” He insists that we should “hate this hateful and hating and hatemongering system of cruelty.” He does say that we cannot celebrate or trust hate, that hate can easily turn on us. He quotes Che Guevara who said that the true revolutionary is “guided by a great feeling of love.” And then he does a bit of doublespeak by concluding his book: “It’s for the sake of love that, reading it today, we must hate more and better than even The Communist Manifesto knew how.”
That scares me more than straight up hate.
I recently read another book, Restoring the Kinship Worldview by Wahinkpe Topa (Four Arrows) and Darcia Narvaez. In one of the chapters Fours Arrows comments that it isn’t “so much about resisting [or hating in Miéville’s case] those who are destroying life systems,” but about loving those life systems so much that you work to save them.
That’s what I aim to do. As capitalism and civilization collapses, I will be loving as much and as hard as I can. Hate can do nothing but destroy. But love, love saves and love creates. Let’s create a new and better world together.
@astoneintheriver.net
No contradiction. A double negative is a positive, as is a double posistive.
#HateHate
#LoveLove
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I’m definitely curious to see what comes next, because things haven’t been going right, regardless of which president is in office, for decades.
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True words Melanie! I just wish we could have a more planned transition to what’s next so people don’t suffer. I suspect it’s going to be a rough ride.
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A small update: I told you about how my mom went to a protest? Now she goes to several every single week. She feels totally reinvigorated and like she has people she can talk to and relate to. Unfortunately, that person is not me right now, but I also feel like this has been a good lesson in finding other people to put different parts of your life into.
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Oh Melanie, that’s so awesome about your mom!
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If you aren’t already following Lauren B Davis’ series “A Refuge for the Broken-Hearted”, I think you would enjoy the <a href=”https://laurenbdavis.com/2025/03/20/a-refuge-for-the-broken-hearted-laughing-at-nazis/“>piece she wrote for Ostara</a> (also about love, and about the importance of laughter as a force of change). She’s a writer very well-known in Canada who has lived for several years now in the U.S. (her novel The Stubborn Season is also a good one to read in these times, set in Toronto in the 1930s, but I know you have a LOT of other books in your stacks right now already).
That whole “Buy Now” message was pretty transparent, eh?! It’s been interesting to see how quickly the media has adapted in their reporting. At first repeating the reasons they were given by the administration, then providing other possibilities alongside those reasons, then simply saying that it’s obviously not being done for the reasons being given.
Andrew Chang quickly reported in Canadian news the formula that had been used to calculate the tariffs. It seems to me like a misdirect to suggest the fault lies with AI though (not to overlook the inherent risks with AI) in that it obscures the fact that people are making these decisions and personally gaining from them. I think it’s another way to camouflage human responsibility, and I want to see more accountability not less.
You’ve made me want to read China Mieville’s book now (I already kinda wanted to, but I was concerned it had been way too many years since I first read TCM to be able to understand what he has to say).
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I don’t know about Davis, thanks for the tip Marcie!
And now the Trump admin is mad that Amazon is displaying the added cost of tariffs on items. Sigh.
I don’t think Merchant faults AI for the tariff chart, but he suggests that AI was used in creating it. The actual chart was put together my humans making very bad decisions and the definitely need to be held accountable.
The Mieville book is really interesting. He is a very smart man. the book also contains a copy of the Manifesto in the appendix with numbered paragraphs, and in his discussion of it, Mieville goes through it and references the numbered paragraphs. It is all done very well.
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“Immiserating” is such a good word, with its connotation of eviscerating.
I like your conclusion, and would add that I think the kind of love you’re talking about is not merely conservative–not just love of what we had in the past, but love of what remains and what we could still make of it.
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Immiserating is a good word, isn’t it?
Thanks! Yes to what you say about love. There is a lot to love, a lot that remains, and a lot we can still make of it 🙂
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It makes me so happy that the Tesla stock has tanked so hard that Musk is “thinking about getting out of politics.” Yeah, butthole, FAFO. (Sorry for the language, but I loathe the man.) You are right that love creates. Love finds a way to try something new. I try to talk about nature and tell James the names of plants and trees as we walk or as I garden. I want him to have knowledge of them, because intimacy breeds caring.
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Oh my goodness Laila, I was giggling when I saw how much Tesla stock has dropped and Musk’s response. No need to apologize for the language! You are being such a good mom with James and teaching and modeling so many good things. It makes me hopeful 🙂
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My one hope is that Trump and his playmates are SO stupid that they will rapidly create more chaos than the global economy is prepared to handle. They’re playing with the big boys and they don’t have a clue. China is showing Trump exactly how much he can hurt the US should he choose to, and he won’t back down. Anyway, the point is that he may well get toppled from his phony throne. It’s so deep in his character to mess up that I can’t see how he can help himself.
Ironically, the only place of real economic growth at the moment is in green energy and alternatives to all the issues that are causing climate change.
I get anxious around hate. My reiki practitioner called it an energy that’s very hard to get back in the box, and the only sensible thing to do is not get it out in the first place. I also think that people can do some very strange things and call it love (not you, OBVS). I have my faith in reality. You can only fight the real for so long. I admit that our politicians have done it longer than you’d think possible, but it has a way of getting in your face and causing a commotion. Musk has already bowed out because of the reality of his stock prices (hahahahaha).
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Sadly I believe chaos is the whole point. But more and more people, some of them well connected conservatives, are standing up and saying they’ve had enough. It hasn’t made a difference yet, but hopefully it will soon!
I get anxious around hate too. Your reiki practitioner sounds very sensible! And i agree, people do strange things in the name of love, which sadly is not actual love in the end. Here’s to the actual positive things that real love can accomplish!
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I read that “end times fascism” article recently and thought it really hit the nail on the head. It’s amazing how the rich went from decades of climate denial to “Oh well, it’s too late now, let’s go to Mars.” Poor Trump is so out of touch that he’s still in the denial phase. “Drill, baby, drill!” may well turn out to be the epitaph of the American empire, and perhaps of capitalism itself.
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It’s a good article Andrew, isn’t it? I don’t remember if you’ve read Klein’s Doppelganger book. If you haven’t, it’s really good and I suspect you would find it interesting. As for Trump, while he isn’t all that bright, I suspect he doesn’t actually believe climate change is fake especially given his desire to own Greenland and the deal he just made with Ukraine. But he’s in the game for power and money so he just doesn’t care. Drill, baby drill is certainly tops in the running for the American empire’s epitaph!
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I haven’t read it yet, but I’ve enjoyed her other work in the past (No Logo was a real awakening for me back in the day!), so I suspect I’d like Doppelganger. Thanks for the recommendation!
I think you’re spot on about Trump. He just doesn’t care. I think that applies to a lot of leaders in the corporate and political worlds. They’ve known it’s true for a long time now but just don’t care. Which, since we’re talking about the viability of human life on Earth, is quite astonishing.
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I think Andrew that all those “leaders” who don’t care somehow think they are exempt for the consequences. Well they sure are going to be surprised one day!
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It’s interesting to see what happened in Australia in our elections last weekend, in which our more progressive party won resoundingly. Last year they were looking as if they might be on the way out but, I think, three things happened: they kept their act together, stuck to their messaging and vision (which includes acceptance that there’s a long term aspect and not a quick fix); their conservative opponents did not get their act together and confused the electorate about their policies, which they tweaked to the extent that their vision (whatever it is) got lost; and the T factor. It was reassuring to see that Australians seemed to run away from anything that seemed to smack of T and his divisiveness. It’s not all hunky dory here by any stretch, but at least we feel that there’s a general understanding of and commitment to something fair and “kind”. Time will tell.
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Same thing happened with Canadian elections WG. I’m glad some people still have some sense. No, not hunky dory, but at least there is an agreement that going in the direction of the US is a very bad idea. I wish you all well!
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