Episode 1601
Kissinger's Killing Fields / Nick Turse
Jun 6 2023
I think we have to just really be laser focused on the pro-democratic project. That doesn't mean that we ignore the harms that this authoritarian incursion has put upon our society, our government, et cetera. I think there are many things that probably need to be unwound, right? Either fully or partially in terms of autocratic state capacity. But I also think that it is not going to be just enough to undo because the systems and the structures that we've been living in have not delivered for people for decades. We've been in a sort of cost of living crisis for decades. People have been struggling with healthcare, the cost of education, the cost of housing for decades. And so simply undoing what Trump has done is not going to be enough to actually create the society, the democracy, and the economy that we need and we deserve. And frankly, in my opinion, it's not going to be enough to win an election, right? I don't think people are looking for just the opposite of what we're experiencing right now. I think people are looking for policy makers who truly listen. Who truly understand and who truly are putting forth their best effort to address the concerns of regular people and put power back in the hands of regular people. So just as the administration and its allies have really kind of laced our political institutions with an authoritarian administration, such as retooling the IRS to be used for surveillance as opposed to in tax enforcement. A pro-democracy coalition has to do the same thing. And so a big question I think for all of us and all of your listeners is what are the different ways in which we can kind of weave in a pro-democracy bias into our state institutions? This is not to be clear about partisanship. This is about democracy. How do we make sure that our democratic institutions are sort of fundamentally oriented towards helping people, helping society, and building that trust back in the public sector?
Rakeem Mabud speaks with This Is Hell! about her new essay for Common Wealth that she co-wrote with Melanie Brusseler titled “The Power Grab: The Authoritarian Coalition’s Strategy of Power Consolidation”.
Rakeen is an expert on how economic trends impact people’s everyday lives. She was most recently the Chief Economist at Groundwork Collaborative, and has also held roles in the US Treasury Department, Roosevelt Institute and Time’s Up. She holds a PhD in Government from Harvard University, and a BA from Wellesley College.
We will have new installments of Rotten History and Hangover Cure. We will... read more
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May 24 2023
Posted by Matthew Boedy
There’s a vicious circle, or cycle, eating its own tail in the West. Here’s the mechanism: people protest, civilly disobey, subvert, argue, and generally struggle against a status quo that oppresses them. The status quo reacts, overcorrects to prevent not just the change but even the possibility to struggle for change. The resistance has to rebuild, refashion its tools, explore new options for struggle. By the time they’ve almost clawed their way back to their former visibility and power, the status quo has reiterated so many outrageous lies against the resistors’ counter-arguments that it forces them to reframe the discourse. But eventually even the reframing starts to suffer from the law of diminishing returns.
Meanwhile the status quo has pounded home the argument that “everyone’s sick of the resistance” and weaponizes whatever public opinion they can along those lines. This makes the resistance fight harder, resort to more rigidly doctrinaire arguments, harsher tactics, ad absurdum, which the status quo in its turn uses to further discredit them in the zeitgeist.
By this time, though, the status quo has divided into two sides: on one side blandly ineffectual representatives of the resistors, funded by the blandly ineffectual “reasonable” rich who water down the true resistance’s arguments, aims, and strategies; and on the other side, funded by openly undemocratic wealth hoarders and corporations, the ferocious and exciting cutting edge supercool badboy violent authoritarians who take discrediting of the resistance to utterly insane lengths. For the lulz. And money. They accuse their “enemies” of the most sexually perverse varieties of violence in order to justify the violence they themselves want to use to extinguish them.
Maybe the violence turns into a war. Or maybe it subsides for a time, though the root problems don’t get fixed, or get half-fixed at best, keeping hostilities kindled.
We’re at a moment where everybody’s just damn fed up with each other. Those in various groups on the left are fed up because they can’t believe they have to fight the same battles all over again. They shriek louder and fight harder because they want to make sure once and for all their grandchildren don’t also have to fight the same battles all over again.
Groups on the right are fed up because... read more
May 15 2023
May 10 2023