the core idea is that no single company — or individual billionaire — can amass too much power and control over our social networks and the conversations that happen on them.
Trump is the equivalent of political Chernobyl. Name anybody from his first administration with the exception of Ambassador Haley, who I think will be a formidable uh formidable candidate to perhaps on the Republican side, no one survives Trump. Everyone gets political leukemia if they're around him long enough.
I think in this moment we have a cabal a group of people in power who no longer have any faith in democracy and are really actively trying to destroy it and to destroy the the uh post-World War II uh rules-based international order in part so they can carve up the globe again in a way that looks very much like that late 19th, early 20th 20th century period.
It's not just being a con man, which is something else. It's I am cheating the system. And that to me, I think illuminates not only Trump, but also many of the people who follow him because they're like, "Yeah, he's just a smart businessman. This is the way you're supposed to do business." And in a way that's a real denigration and destruction of what the system is, which is the American people trying to make rules under which to govern themselves.
Trump came in and said you guys are amateurs. I'm going to make millions not thousands. And then just the brazeness of saying this is tantamount to — Republicans will always say and it's accurate that Speaker Pelosi up 600% in the past 10 years the S&P up 200% that clearly she had access to non to material non-public information but she didn't start a wire service selling her inside information.
I don't think a politician should be able to change their net worth a whole heck of a lot by getting into office. Like whatever your net worth is when you get into office, put in inflation, put in normal salary, and you should probably leave office with a similar.
A good nepo husband knows to like let his wife be a star, but so many men struggle with that and they like want a piece of the pie and then they they drown the whole pie.
This is the slow hollowing out of institutions. It happens gradually. And so I actually think even if to folks like us it was clear that there was a political crisis, it wasn't clear exactly what to do about it because the threat looks different now.
Authoritarianism doesn't look like what it used to look like. It's not your grandmother's authoritarianism. It doesn't ride into town on the back of a coup in the way that it used to, in the way that so many of us have in our imagination. This is the slow hollowing out of institutions. It happens gradually.
Any information being covered is in favor of whoever covers. What they afraid is did they do the right job or is their control legitimate? So, they have to cover up all the information.
You may think you don't do politics, but politics will do you. And so, choose to engage, use the power of your vote, the power of your voice, or you can step back, but that doesn't mean you may be opting out, but politics is not opting out of influencing your own life.
Many of them were radicalized on the campaign through the investigations and the efforts to prosecute Donald Trump. Many of them received some subpoenas themselves and viewed the stakes of the 2024 election as not so much about policy, but about staying out of prison.
When morals are put aside where ideology doesn't matter, the only thing that matters is that you support the leader, you know, so there is a breakdown in society, and and then suddenly anything goes, and I think it's a very dangerous path to take.
My country elected a man who believes in nothing but loyalty. He doesn't care what you do as long as you don't cross him. So, why fight him? Who am I to tell people they're wrong for believing in a man who makes them feel seen?
The whole world runs on documents that no one reads. Every corporation, every government, every institution has stacks of documents that theoretically govern how things work, but in practice, the actual power comes from whoever controls the interpretation of those documents.
America imagines itself at once as a beacon of freedom and as a white republic. And you can't hold those two views together without contradiction. Without depositing a kind of madness at the heart of the nation.
The best way to increase your stock price in America today isn't to improve your product or to sell more goods and services. It is to have your stock anointed by the high priest of American markets, aka the president. If you can do that, great things will occur.
Some people got in his ear and just said, "You know what you know you need to say to Donald Trump to persuade him," which is, "You will be the greatest leader since Napoleon." And painted a picture of Trump Towers being built in Shiraz and Tehran and that sort of thing.
It's not a conflict of interest. It's a business model. And essentially what you have in America is slowly but surely we're monetizing everything. We monetize healthcare. We monetize education. We monetize uh enragement online. And now the president is monetizing the full faith and credit and power of the White House.
Overnight, without you even knowing it, your own life chances, the life chances of your children, will be dependent on people continuing to prop up Musk's visions of how the world should look.
Netanyahu is constantly on a war footing and I go back to the same thing. I think the world would be a much better place once Netanyahu and Trump leave the world stage. But Netanyahu is on a war footing. He sees his political survival based on his promise to annihilate or destroy his enemies.
I saw the switch flip in their eyes. I saw that flicker of threat. The way their stances shifted into those of aggression that made the hairs on my arms stand on end. They were disgusted by me. I was no longer a friend. A peer. Someone to play with. I was an easy target. I was prey.
Somebody is getting screwed in this country and somebody is doing the screwing. It's just not immigrants and Muslims and gay kids and drag shows. It's corporations and billionaires and super PACs.
I saw the switch flip in their eyes. I saw that flicker of threat. The way their stances shifted into those of aggression that made the hairs on my arms stand on end. They were disgusted by me. I was no longer a friend, a peer, someone to play with. I was an easy target. I was prey.
The reality was that African Americans with money, African Americans exercising their own independence, especially financially, was a real threat, especially in the former Confederate South, where the Civil War was fought over the future of slavery in the nation.
It's not just being a con man, which is something else. It's I am cheating the system. And that to me, I think illuminates not only Trump, but also many of the people who follow him because they're like, 'Yeah, he's just a smart businessman. This is the way you're supposed to do business.' And in a way that's a real denigration and destruction of what the system is, which is the American people trying to make rules under which to govern themselves.
I can't figure out any strategy other than the Ellisons are either themselves very politically motivated to change the tone and tenor of CBS and 60 or they see more money incurring favor with the Trump administration who seems to be — I've heard — was incandescently enraged by the interview with Marjorie Taylor Green.
You know what binds all of them is rather their dislike of and fear of the language of the liberal world. In other words, the language of rights, the language of rule of law, the language of separation of powers. You know, all of these are states that are seeking to create a kind of total environment where the regime or the leader or the ruling party controls all media, all conversation.
On this 250th birthday of the United States, the bill that would allow Mother Randall to be compensated is languishing in some congressional committee somewhere. Bills for black reparations for slavery have sat collecting dust for decades, but people convicted for their roles in January 6 came way closer to official government sanctioned redress than anybody in those groups. So, who counts as having been harmed by the state?
As as people thought that they were doing the will of God through violence, well, suddenly there's a sanction for violence that has almost a universal adapter.
Another war in the Middle East. A retreat from the international order. A presidency built on self-dealing and arbitrary power. It's enough to make you think the U.S. is in a steep decline — but Fareed Zakaria thinks otherwise.
The word is doing a tremendous amount of work — it's marking race, it's marking power, it's marking intimacy, it's marking hatred, it's marking love. And what's extraordinary about it is that it can mark all those things simultaneously.
I have no leverage. Trump is me in the Hungarian forest right now. Because he never bothered to consult Congress and offended them. Because he never even signed up or even briefed European allies. Because he did not in any way coordinate anything around intelligence around the Straits of Hormuz, getting expats out of the Gulf, figuring out putting in place the right defense mechanisms.
There are people who don't have running water and who have live sewage in their front yards. And it was not until representation was present that those neighbors were actually able to be served. If you have no one at the table who is representing your interest and who is concerned about you, then you know that you will not be represented in the result.
The sort of closeness that we've seen between Russia and China since the Russian invasion of Ukraine is probably the most consequential geopolitical shift that we've seen in the world over the last decade.
But really, the suit seems mostly to have been about Elon Musk being mad at Sam Altman — or at OpenAI, for being successful without him — and wanting him punished in some way.
I think we now need alternative minimum taxes of 60 or 70% on anything over a billion dollars for an individual because these individuals are under the impression that they are not subject to the standards of Western society, decency or any or the law.
I would say in American society, forward momentum has always been met by retrenchment. Going all the way back to reconstruction after eight years of active effort to create full citizenship for the freed slaves, there came decades after that of retrenchment.
If you do not want everything to be owned by a tiny elite, you have to aggressively tax extremely high levels of wealth. Because otherwise, if you're Jeff Bezos, what is he worth? $300 billion, right? Even if he makes 5% a year, he's making $15 billion a year, right? And it's just going to grow, right? It's going to grow unbelievably quickly.
2mo ago
Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.
