Here’s the Article in full with my comments in Italics and bold:
Ian Bremmer
Sat, January 16, 2021, 8:30 AM
Pro-Trump protesters and police clash on top of the Capitol
WASHINGTON DC, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, UNITED STATES – 2021/01/06: Pro-Trump protesters and police clash on top of the Capitol building. Rioters broke windows and breached the Capitol building in an attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election. Let’s start by stating that the attempt was simply to protest and a crazy fringe, some evidence now that BLM and Antifa participants had planned. Why the rush to impeach? Because they don’t want evidence of this riot or what happened to get out. The riot, not who actually started it. Just blame Trump even though Trump is only guilty of saying “peacefully” go the Capitol and protest. Yes, Trump supporters wanted a FAIR audit of the election results. But rioters are universally just an angry mob. And this mob was not just Trump supporters. More needs to be investigated, but don’t expect it from a Biden Justice Dept or a Pelosi House of Liars. Police used batons and tear gas grenades to eventually disperse the crowd. Rioters used metal bars and tear gas as well against the police.
There is no advanced industrial democracy in the world more politically divided, or politically dysfunctional, than the United States today. Well, that’s not actually the case. Most of Europe and England are divided in a similar manner – it’s just that America is so much larger. If you compare the EU (with England) v. America – well, I’d say the division between Socialist/Globalist and those who believe in individual freedom – the divide is probably pretty close. How did the world’s most powerful country get to this point? To paraphrase a great American writer—slowly, then suddenly. The Capitol riot was not just years in the making, but decades. That is true. That’s because of three distinct features of American society that have been ignored by U.S. politicians for far too long: the enduring legacy of race, the changing nature of capitalism, and the fracturing of our collective media landscape. Media, Social Media has definitely been a force to create this great divide. Race relations and identity politics is a cornerstone of the Democrats and Socialists. But the issue of Capitalism is problematic because the term is so misused by the illiberal socialist left. For example, there is no such thing as “crony” capitalism, but there definitely is Crony Socialism – Crony Globalism – driven by power hungry Monopolists and Oligarchs. Once that is better understood, the notion of what’s wrong with Capitalism becomes clearer. Capitalism in America has been replaced by Tech Tyrants – companies like Google, Amazon, and Twitter literally did not exist 20 years ago. Oligarchs from the PC world, Microsoft and Apple are less than 40 years old. So yes, this Tyranny of Tech has taken about two generations to do its ultimate damage in essentially controlling the narrative of the 2020 election.
Begin with race; the U.S. is far from unique in having a troubled history with race relations. But it has been particularly slow to address the structural legacy of that racism—it took nearly a century following the end of the Civil War for the 1964 Civil Rights Act to get passed, to cite just one example. Steps have been taken in recent decades to begin addressing this legacy in earnest, from anti-discrimination laws to affirmative action efforts. It has worked to bring Black Americans toward a more even footing, even paving the way for the U.S. to elect its first Black president. But did Obama do much to unify? No, as an Alinsky-ite Community Organizer, Obama used his Rules for Radicals tactics and identity politics to take every opportunity to paint the police as the enemy – and the Marxist led BLM is the logical culmination of that racial divide. But as the Black Lives Matter protests this past summer made all too clear there is still much work left unfinished. BLM has very little to do with race, but everything to do with Marxist redistribution of wealth. Most people in America are NOT racists, but the Democrat party has made a living sowing racial discord. When the Socialists or Democrats can’t win an argument, their fallback is to call someone on the other side a racist. For example, Trump prior to becoming a “Republican” president, was good friends with virtually all the black race baiters like Jesse Jackson.
During his presidency, he won a larger share of black votes than any Republican in recent history. Why? He built economic zones. He pushed through prison reform specifically helping blacks. He pardoned Jack Johnson after nearly 100 years. He made sure black colleges were funded indefinitely. None of these things were done by the previous administration with a “Black” President. But the Media Oligarchs – Trump calls fake news – in collusion with Tech Tyrants in Social media CENSORED all the good, and pushed the big lie that he is a racist.
And that’s only part of the story. The other part is the backlash, as a group of white Americans—many of them white rural—are seeing their status in society threatened as a result of demographics and the recent racial reckoning. This has some truth to it. As China pours drugs like Fentanyl into our country, most hard hit has been lower income whites who have been harmed by a flood of illegal immigration from the previous two administrations – and let’s not forget the harm done to the melanin challenged due to affirmative action.
That has manifested itself both in politics—see redistricting and voter suppression schemes—as well as the violence we witnessed at the Capitol. Voter Suppression schemes? Like requiring an ID? Like having a valid signature? Those kinds of schemes? While this anxiety has economic elements (more about that in a bit), it is best understood in terms of broader identity (and if you haven’t read Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, you should). Years in the making, these feelings of resentment hit a fever pitch in the Trump years, culminating in last week’s deadly riot. From the Conservative POV, at least 2 generations of school children have been brainwashed with the culmination that most recent graduates preferring Socialism to Capitalism. On the Capitalism front, let us be clear that Oligarchs that run the 6 Major Media Conglomerates, and the Tech Tyrants who align with them are NOT, I repeat, NOT Capitalists. Monopolists and Oligarchs – as my former boss John Chambers at Cisco repeatedly said at Company meetings – “WE just want our UNFAIR share”. That’s what Capitalism is to an Oligarch or Monopolist. To be clear, the U.S. is not the only country that has to deal with elements of racism in their populist movements—plenty of European countries can attest to that. As I said, compare Apples to Apples – EU to America and it’s probably about even. But given the structural way racism has been woven into the country’s fabric combined with years of neglecting the problem, race relations have contributed mightily to the current state of U.S. political affairs. Structural Racism? You mean the failed War on Poverty where the black family has disintegrated – where 3 of 4 black babies are brought up by single mothers in poverty – which leaves black boys to be raised by pimps and drug dealers in the inner city streets – you mean that kind of structural racism?
Then there is the evolving nature of capitalism. Capitalism and the economic growth it drove is what made the U.S. the world’s preeminent superpower in the latter half of the 20th century. The entrepreneurial spirit of American-style capitalism in particular generated the kinds of innovations and growth that were exported around the world, helped along by globalization. America’s enduring faith in capitalism, and specifically the power of the individual, is the reason generations of immigrants made their way to the U.S., to give their dreams the best chance of succeeding. It’s also why the country today is home to the companies—especially technology companies—that power our modern world (at least in the West).To repeat, Capitalism is not what you have when Tech Tyrants and Media conglomerates are monopolists and oligarchs – and now just a few billionaires are running companies with Market Caps greater than 1 Trillion Dollars – the kind of Monopoly status that JD Rockefeller had during the late 19th and early 20th Century with Standard Oil. It took decades and Teddy Roosevelt to finally bust that Trust and more or less save Capitalism in America from one man controlling everything! Apple, Amazon, Google all have a Market Cap greater than $1 Trillion! Of the 180 or so countries on the planet, only 16 have a GDP greater than a $1 Trillion! Yes, these Monopolists and Oligarchs have proven that they are not only richer than most countries, they have enough clout to control the outcome of this last Presidential election – making them MORE POWERFUL than the man who was supposedly the most powerful man in the world.
But there’s the flip side to U.S.-style capitalism—this capitalist, individualist economic system generates tremendous amounts of wealth, but it has also resulted in an average American worker with less of a social safety net (especially compared to European counterparts), What he means here is that Europe is OK with 10% or more of their country unemployed and they are OK with their managed socialism – but maybe that could account for why innovators run to America – not Europe – not to mention a political system more prone to capture by moneyed special interests. Both the EU and America are bought and paid for by special interests – so I don’t see a big distinction here – Again, this is not something new that suddenly appeared with Trump’s arrival at the White House. But you wouldn’t know that if you listened to most so-called News outlets and social media sites. Yet while U.S. capitalism has long allowed for inequality of outcomes Love this term – as opposed to Socialist tyrannical system where OUTCOMES are dictated by the Ruling Class – rather than the market, in the last thirty years we’ve increasingly seen the rise of inequality of opportunity as well Absolutely true – but it’s not Freedom and Free Enterprise – it has been the rise of Monopolies and Oligarchs in America. And this latter form is more devastating—when people feel that they never even got a shot to compete, let alone to succeed, they get angry. And it’s accelerating. 30 years ago, when we spoke about those who lost out from capitalism Again the fundamental lie of the left – Monopolists and Oligarchists are NOT Capitalists, we usually referred to a specific set of blue-collar workers left behind by free trade (in a globalized world, U.S. workers that earn more than the global average are less attractive to hire). But Oligarchs like my pals in the Silicon Valley import H-1B visa workers at relative slave wages – and because they leave their poor country – they are essentially held hostage by these companies – who threaten to cancel their visas if they don’t work for less and work longer hours. They can’t blackmail American workers, so that is why not just Blue Collar (impacted by unfettered illegal immigration) but White-Collar workers are hurt and angry – But now we are getting to the point where automation and AI are slowly looking to displace a far wider set of workers, and across socio-economic classes. As the rise of politicians like Bernie Sanders shows, this is as much a concern for voters on the left side of the political spectrum as it is on the right. The end result is a more divided electorate, fueled by fear about how they are going to survive in an American future that gives the have’s more and the have-not’s less, with less prospect of moving from one group to the other. Until the Media Oligarchs and Tech Tyrants are broken up and brought to justice, the divide will grow with the inevitable result of more riots, more armed insurrection.
Which brings us to the media. The same tech companies that power our modern world have also brought a revolution in our media consumption. Plenty are quick to point their fingers at the tech companies for fracturing our media landscape, but in hindsight the evolution of social media has followed a familiar path—talk radio, cable news and blogs were all once mass media ways of communicating that over time fragmented into more and more niche offerings until consumers could “enjoy” only those viewpoints that reinforced their own. The speed of technology is such that we’ve seen the fracturing happen much quicker with social media, but the truly disruptive element tech companies have introduced is algorithms—actively designed to capture more ad revenues and attention, often achieved by promoting extremist and misleading content. And it has come at the cost of a healthy and informed citizenry. True, but there is a simple solution – a Modern Teddy Roosevelt – the great Trust Buster of Standard Oil – that is the solution for Tech and Media.
Compared to countries in Europe where tech platforms face more severe government regulation and must take more responsibility for content posted, the U.S. has a particular problem given its inclination to go lighter on private sector regulation. This is absolutely the case. The American Tech Tyrants don’t have quite the pull in the EU – so there is more regulation in EU countries. The GOP is definitely the party of Stupid. They couldn’t get Sec 230 eliminated to put Social Media on the same playing field for censorship as the Mainstream Media – couldn’t even do that. Ultimately, these Oligarchs and Monopolists must be held to account…not holding my breath though – but the anger and the potential for violence and rebellion only grows as the Nerds and petty Tyrants that run these Monopolies continue to put the screws to their opposition – which by the last election is about 75 million Americans – and perhaps a few million more who didn’t vote or didn’t vote for Trump. But the U.S. government won’t be able to sit on the sidelines much longer given recent developments—while plenty cheered at Twitter and Facebook’s decision to de-platform Trump in the wake of the Capitol riot, it opens serious questions about who has the democratic right to limit others’ speech. U.S. politicians will have to wade in lest they effectively cede that power to unelected tech CEOs, a recipe for a disaster of a whole other sort. Good luck with that – I think even the lefty Intellectual who wrote this can see the disaster looming if the Nerd Class is allowed to continue unfettered down this path.
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There are other contributing factors to today’s U.S. political divisions, but for me, these three are the most structural, and the most crucial. Even more worrying, no matter what happens with recent impeachment efforts, all three of these trends are set to grow stronger over the near-term. Absent more earnest efforts across the political spectrum to deal with these issues—and make the political compromises necessary to truly address them—these are problems that will grow worse.
Bremmer had an interesting twitter exchange and it is documented on Wiki pee dee ya – less than reliable source, but this sounds interesting, and Bremmer, rightly coined one of Trump’s favorite sayings summing up his philosophy as “America First” – an anathema to the Globalist Elitists who though having started their high flying Tech Companies in America, do not consider themselves Americans but rather citizens of the World, perhaps the Universe, if you are Gates or Bezos:
“In 2019, Donald Trump issued a Tweet that appeared to praise North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un for criticizing rival Joe Biden: “I have confidence that Chairman Kim will keep his promise to me, & also smiled when he called Swampman Joe Biden a low IQ individual, & worse.”[33] In reaction, Bremmer Tweeted: “President Trump in Tokyo: ‘Kim Jong Un is smarter and would make a better President than Sleepy Joe Biden.'”[34] After he was criticized on Twitter for appearing to falsely quote Trump, Bremmer acknowledged that President Trump did not in fact say that quote and suggested that it was facetious, calling it “objectively a completely ludicrous quote.”[34][35] President Trump used the incident to call for stronger libel laws.[36]“
Joe Biden faces numerous challenges when he takes office. And while tackling the pandemic may be his most immediate challenge, it isn’t his more daunting. Vaccines can end pandemics after all, but we don’t have a vaccine for our political divisions. Does this guy really think senile Joe and Willie Brown’s Ho will actually be running this country? Their marching orders will be coming from advisors that are either Obama retreads or Media or Silicon Valley socialist globalist nerds. And not one mention of the real existential enemy that has infiltrated our Congress, Schools, Media, and Tech – Communist China. Only the big lie about Russia. Putin must be laughing his ass off watching America self-destruct. Actually, we do have a “vaccine” for our political divisions – the US Constitution and real honestly regulated Capitalism we have a chance to be united again – but with 2 generations of Americans brainwashed to hate our Founding, most of elected and unelected officials bought off by special interests or China – and so many of our History challenged youth believing the lie that all white Americans are racist (except the Democrats or Socialists that is) – it is going to take more than a vaccine to cure what ails America – perhaps our next Civil War or Revolution.