This is what should be on every front page in 150 point banner headlines. All I have is this Substack but I lay it beneath your feet and pray to a higher power that I'm wrong.
Apols all, I accidentally set the comments to 'paid subscribers' only. All welcome! The cognitive dissonance between listening to the experts and looking at mainstream media feels so extreme right now. I don't know if the pre-pandemic comparison struck a chord with anyone else but it's so visceral to me...
You have several relevant links, but many are behind paywalls.
Perhaps hinting at what they contain might help the argument since many (or maybe just me) are not fond of subscribing to multiple sources. You know, say what the news item is, and then offer the link to support having said it.
I have this weird idea that if someone has something they want me to read, making me pay for it isn't going to work.
Hi there, I usually try and archive them to be able to share them more freely, so apologies. I agree. It's why this isn't paywalled and I want to keep it that way. Thanks for reading.
The access is appreciated, Carole. To me, this is high level quality output. The right people being asked the right questions, and the shared visibility (and... er... hearability?) is particularly important. There's something about not taking it to final perfect polish that means we know we're engaging with information no editor has hacked or removed key bits of, and the generosity of interviewees allowing sections to be voicenotes - it's like having access to raw data no one has mangled or tampered with beforehand. Unexpectedly, I am now wary of polished 'tight' output from glossy sources. Ai Carole can disagree all she likes, this way is better.
Not a big problem, but if trying to convince someone on the fence, a bit more information might help.
Overall, it is a well-thought-out argument. However, from my recent interaction on the comment boards of various TFP articles, I'm becoming convinced there's nothing that will sway someone from their positions.
I fear these types of posts are mostly preaching to an audience already predisposed to agree. At least they provide fresh ammunition for those who are stup . . . er . . . brave enough to tackle the arguments of the other side directly.
If you are on Bluesky, there's a Gift Links/Gift Articles section, you can take the titles of the articles that are behind paywall, then do a search for them in that section. It's been very helpful for me to read a ton of articles that have been gifted by other subscribers.
Or use the Archive (I'm always ambivalent about this because if the paywallers get resentful they might somehow block it! -- ie when it gets too popular) but in a good cause, this.... https://archive.ph
Hmm . . . does that work for Substack as well? Would blorigarchy be happy about that? I mean, I'm not a paying subscriber now, but it sounds like I don't have to be.
Yes, I'm asking in jest because I won't be doing that.
When I share a link from a site I subscribe to, I clarify that it's a subscription-based site and provide a brief summary of the content (usually to make a point). Anyone who wants to check out the veracity of what I say is welcome to follow whatever path they want.
. . . but I don't provide a link without saying what it is.
Bottom line, thank you for the suggestion, but I don't circumvent paywalls — but that's just me.
I am at a loss to find a way around this coup because that is what it is. It is the result of our whole western democratic system, fuelled by the obscene amount of money behind it. If we run democracy as we do, without any guard rails, this eventually becomes inevitable.
The Romans, who were the first to run a formal democracy, limited the political power to 100 fixed-term individuals ( or men, as women were excluded). That worked for a while, but then money from the rich rode roughshod over the guardrails. The rich could buy the best politicians.
I used to think that Denmark had the optimum system. They had a number of parties and a number of ministries and the parties had control of one or more parties - but they were limited in the number of ministries a party could manage - but that turned out to be susceptible to the same problem that all democracies suffer from - the people with the most money because money is power and the people with money always have the most power.
And it is always the same. Vast fortunes hold the most power; underneath them are politicians who are the public face of democracy, and underneath them are the electorate/workers/drones who do the work.
And the PBJ ( poor, bloody, journalists ) try to get the drones to see what is going on; the politicians are spread between those that have a social conscience and those who are rich wannabes and the top layer are the rich.
Special thanks to this platform, and greetings people.
Looking from over here in the South Pacific, you Americans have something special in the Constitution of your colonial settler state: the Constition and the Republic included at least was an attempt to contain shit happening, followed by the federal state system. The cancer is now evident as the system coughs up blood, so it's the opportunity in emergency now.The people that Paul Robeson sung about are all around, and if enough of them can "flood the zone" as activated citizens in the in-boxes of Representatives - and a festival of creative street theater celebrating liberty and freedom for "life in its fullness" (Jn 10:10), with a proactive goals in mutual aid consolidated in the process, then the Spring will not be silenced.
Here the state of New Zealand is administratively centralized and vulnerable, but we also have a constitutional treasure: the 1840 Treaty of thd British Crown with the federated Māori tribal peoples. Recently confronted with the existential threat to this Treaty Maori rose up and lead a Hikoi (long walk) from the edge to the centre. My point is that while this started as outrage and reactive protest it ended up as a celebration of collective Māori values demonstrated by its discipline peace snd goid order, and inclusion of non-indigenous like me.
I'm reading:
• Timothy Snyder (2024) "On Freedom"
• Dean Spade (2020)
"Mutual Aid" - Building Solidarity During This Crisis (And The Next)
• Vanessa Machado de Oliveira (2021) "Hospicing Modernity" Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism.
• Max Rashbrooke (2018) "Government for the Public Good" The Surprising Science of Large-Scale Collective Action . Americans: See the p.196 section headed, ironically, "American exceptionalism", on the facts of the world-class failure of the market-led American public health system. Max is a leading NZ academic in governance, policy and inequality, now on the I.D.E.A. platform.
Thank you for this, Alistair. It's a tremendous insight from another angle, which I think has high value. Some might not be considering several steps ahead yet, but I suspect your perspective will be an important part of what we need to do, perhaps even in a wider picture. There are many great ideas, thinking and solutions - too often overlooked - from your beautiful part of this planet we all share. Belong to?
Last week I watched 2073 (DVD) and want to again soon, but although of course I thought it was brilliant and was moved -- and quite shattered -- by it, it left me with a feeling of political paralysis. This band of quite sociopathic criminals, the multibillionaire class now running much of the world, I mean, where do you even start when they've bought the judges, the mainstream media and much (if not most) of the political class?
We seem to have now gone way past the Snowden revelations, the Wikileaks exposés, the analyses of Chomsky, Chris Hedges and the rest. Besides, it's one thing to know (as we must) about all this, another to know what to do about it.
I make an analogy from medicine. The specialists in pathology are great at finding what's wrong with the patient but can have nothing to say about the cure, which is up to the clinicians -- physicians, surgeons, therapists of all kinds, not to dwell on the often more important environment, physical, mental and spiritual in which a patient is embedded.
We have quite a fair number of bloggers, professional columnists, even a few honest mainstream journalists, all wonderful political pathologists, great diagnosticians or would-be prognosticators. We have rather fewer experts offering cures, and even then quite a lot of them latter-day snake-oil salespersons.
When Chomsky was asked this question he used to tell people to mobilise, to group together, to form alliances. But even that, especially in Britain now governed by the increasingly authoritarian Starmer, so heavily armour-plated and impervious to reasoned challenge, is getting more difficult by the day -- one has only to consider the numbers of peaceful activists against fossil fuel depredation, against weapons sales to rogue states to realise that.
I remember being told, back in the heady 80s days of CND that we activists needed to develop something of the medieval cathedral-building mentality: everyone starting to build one knew they weren't going to be around to witness its consecration, and the same went for those participating many years later. We would work away, the idea went, over the years singing We Shall Overcome and Kumbaya.
Well, it's too late for that. And there are *so many* synergistic things going on right now, environmental pollution, renewed nuclear weapons threat, climate catastrophe boiling up, gross inequality, patriarchal misogyny, a sense of global loss of direction, even of meaninglessness, the digitisation of everything as well as its monetisation.
The late visionary writer and critic John Berger wrote that humans invent things and then turn themselves into imitations and versions of what they invent. Think of the last time you have a telephone conversation with a fellow human who insisted on following the algorithm they're compelled to follow whatever broader context you want to bring in.
Way time, I often think, to revive Gian-Carlo Menotti's great opera, The Consul. In the consul's outer office the fraught heroine, wife of a freedom fighter on the run, is desperately trying to tell the obstructive secretary her story. The latter in gatekeeper mode keeps repeating, "But what is your story, what is your name, your name is a number, your story a case, your hopes will be filed, come back next week."
I've gone on far too long, sorry. I'm an old guy now (Hey, I remember Churchill's wartime radio broadcasts, so that tells you -- well, rather I remember my parents' mounting anticipation of the broadcasts, I wasn't that savvy!) but I haven't quite given up. It's just that I don't know what to do.
So I'm hanging on Carole's lips and words -- so to speak! To go medical again, thanks Carole for one of medicine's best therapeutic offerings, a dose of hope.
I hope I am wrong, but I lived in the resisting underworld of an authoritarian state for a long time, and, in my experience, next, in the progression of fascism, as the power of the state is turned against the populace, the facade of legality and constitutional propriety and state ceremony are discarded and them come the house arrests and bannings of the opposers and the brutality and jackboot authority and then the quiet and surgical removal of one's family, friends, acquaintances and life models into the terminal night of the disappeared.
This time, perhaps because of the information aspect, it seems that the facade has been discarded even before the consolidation of power is complete, but I am sure the rest will follow. It always does.
While of course it's important to report on the people helping Musk perpetrate this coup, can we stop it with the "dweebs and nerds" language? As the mother of two young boys who may one day identify as dweebs and nerds, I hope that they do not feel their choices in life limited to coup assistance and Thiel fellowships. Backsliding to 1980s stereotypes doesn't help us parse the very real problem of the tech worldview, value system, and our need to raise better humans (because if they are "boy-men" and not full adults, then we adults can feel parental responsibility towards them) wreaking havoc on our democracy.
I’m baffled by the state of the Guardian right now. They seem to be fixated on comparing electric clothes airers and wittering on about wellness trends. The comparison with the days after the Brexit vote is chilling. What has happened to them? I think my £11.99 a month could be better spent.
Hi Miranda, there's a fair few of us who withdrew our voluntary contributions and subscriptions because we felt we were funding the Scott Trust Ltd and the Guardian Media Group and their atrocious mistreatment of their journalists. The offloading of the Observer for nothing has been described as spluttering incomprehension. Many of us have chosen to divert our financial support to extraordinary journalists like Carole here on Substack and others elsewhere.
I stopped paying the G a couple of yrs ago. Talking of the Observer I was recalling just a few days ago that in the early 50s it printed the WHOLE of Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood one Sunday! Would it do something similar today? Would a swim duck! They had serious ethical debates with top notch intellectuals of the day. AND they roundly opposed Eden's illjudged Suez adventure. It had real class. Now? With a handful of exceptions (Hello Carole!) it's a pale shadow of its illustrious past.
Indeed, Brian. It's all so very dismaying. Heartbreaking for some. The Observer's illustrious history - as you point out so well - and good name (at least for a greater part of those 233 years) is being flushed down the toilet for nothing.
But it is much worse than that, and let me be clear that these are my own views expressed here, and I take full responsibility for them. The hierarchy entrusted to protect the Guardian and Observer have exposed themselves for what they are. They are destroying both titles from within, from the top. Due to a previous entity change, they are irremovable and are enacting whatever suits their own agendas. To me, it is absolutely clear, and I'm gutted for the good journalists I value so highly who are still at both titles. And suppressed from relaying any of this.
Offloading The Observer for nothing to whom they have (dismissing due and diligent consideration of significant other offers) allows it to become a false reporting right-wing/oligarchic interest mouthpiece. Perhaps a more subtle one at first, but enabling a shift from scientific rigour and integrity to, say, fossil fuel greenwashing. Maybe even without some readers noticing. Maybe even worse, as the financial structure behind the new owners has links to individuals and entire states which pose serious security threats.
Then there's a next level worse. The Observer fiasco, which already weakens and undermines The Guardian, will be used to further undermine the Guardian from 'outside', while physically remaining in place in terms of the current workforce. What an absolute omnishambles.
Two of the last internationally recognised bastions of journalism will, one way or another be oligarchicly captured. They get what they want once more, and the rest of us? 'Then they came for the journalists. We don't know what happened after that.'
On a brighter note, *parp* aren't furry little yellow ducklings lovely?
You see, Puppet Trump makes idiotic statements that capture the media's attention while President Musk executes the coup.
It's impressive, really. The only hope I see is to keep referring to Trump as Puppet and Musk as President.
It will not entirely solve the problem, but it is sure to create some friction and maybe give institutions a breather so they can gather their senses and take action.
Uncertainty, fear and the absence of opposing authority. Resistance would have required the department leaders to know that they could call in a cavalry that would oppose the instructions of the president, legal or otherwise, and there is no discernible cavalry yet.
OTOH unlike the US, you’ve got five years (four and a half now, anyway). The UK was fortunate (though it sure didn’t look that way) to have the bad guys in charge during the pandemic, making it easier to eject them when the time came for a general election.
Firstly, thank you to all of the great contributors for providing their knowledge and insights into what is occurring on the inside, partly hidden from the rest of us by the distractions. And for giving their time to Carole to enable her to pass all of this on to us.
Secondly, the voicenotes are a triumph once again. What Mark Bergman says is a different level. I would like to receive his weekly "purges, paybacks, disruptions and powergrabs", but a quick couple of online searches gave me nothing back. If any of you kind souls could point me in the right direction - a link or something - I would be much obliged.
Thirdly, it seems to me that what is happening in the US in these passing moments is part of a wider plot in time to bring this filth to the shores of the English speaking world, minimum. I believe it is better to stifle at source as early as possible, rather than to attempt to resist when it becomes more established and powerful. We should and we must assist those resisting t-rump, mooskrat and the rest of them in the US right now. As Mark Bergman points out, a future move could well be to renege on international agreements between states. Their actions and behaviours point towards this. This coup, this hijacking of the American system must be thwarted at external national levels, intentional levels, and by us - individuals - acting collectively in any effective way we can before America becomes a rogue state. Mark Bergman says there are only two guard rails left: the law and the markets. Maybe we can take collective global action against mooskrat revenue streams? Hurt him that way? Leave X for sure, but also boycotting Tesla products, terminating all investments we have in companies he owns (through mixed funds as well) and encourage others to do so?
Those are all great ideas. Here in the States, we are in dire distress and hope our allies will somehow come to our aid. It's a long shot, but if we go down, we end up taking down a heck of a lot of alliances.
Hi Cole, you have my backing, support, and whatever else I can think of to actually do, and so do all decent Americans resisting what is going on. It has always been clear to me that the people, the individuals, are not the State - especially if they detach themselves from their atrocious 'leaders' - and should not be treated as such. Sure, many voted for Trump, but many more Americans did not. It might not seem like much, but you and all like you have my solidarity from afar. There are others from other countries like me too. Thanks to the right information being available through people like Carole, we are growing in number, and realising we have a duty to do what we can to help right now. Beyond duty, the t-rumps and moosks of this world are coming for us too: the harder we all resist together, the better it will be for the world.
I do have to correct one thing though - the "move fast and break things" slogan at Facebook. I was an engineer there 2013-17. The slogan was repeatedly brought up in employee training. It referred to being unafraid to take risks, to launch new features quickly and not worry about whether it led to bugs in the system, these could always be fixed later. They didn't want engineers moving too slowly, making sure nothing broke before launching anything. It wasn't about the law. (Whereas Uber, in that period, really did break the law without qualm.)
And in fact, by 2017 they were no longer featuring the slogan as much, sometimes even changing it to simply "move fast"; realizing that embarrassing bugs in new features weren't always worth it.
Internally, Facebook was more rattled by the 2016 election than it let on publicly. And they did put in an effort, at first. You didn't hear that much about Facebook misinformation affecting elections after that, even in 2024. But misinformation simply moved elsewhere. And now, after the Trump victory, Meta has indeed been radicalised and joined the right.
Even inside tech though there’s interesting dynamics around move fast and break things. SRE emerges partly to address this. So the fixing is second order work and less respected ime. Look which teams are being laid off. Glue, ops, people skills. It would not therefore surprise me to see the dismantling of norms pitched as necessary progress and as long as the popular groups get what they want who cares about the mess?
Between this essay and the new one from Sarah Kendzior I am feeling rather helpless. Calling congress seems pointless. I live in a rather Trumpy area of eastern washington. We have democrats here but no progressive ones .
I’m inclined to agree with you. It was obvious what would happen - where were the Dems then? We voted for them and they did pretty much nothing to stop the takeover before the election.
Excellent Substack, I just subscribed. Like you, all I have is my Substack to fight. I fear that at some point if Trump gets his way he destroys ways to communicate. We won't have a free press, including Substack & BlueSky. Here's what I wrote on Substack today: https://halbrown.substack.com/p/three-weeks-in-and-we-have-fort-sumter
Republicans want to keep their power so the more they hear from their constituents that they are pissed off, the more pressure for them to actually act on behalf of their constituents. Otherwise, if they think their constituents don’t care then they don’t have to care. (Or pretend to care)
Chuck Schumer initially wasn’t going to delay confirmations until there was pressure to do so.
Pressurizing our congressional representatives can feel pointless but that’s what they want us to feel. Don’t give them permission in advance! Especially if your representative is Republican and completely reneging their Constitutional duty.
Apols all, I accidentally set the comments to 'paid subscribers' only. All welcome! The cognitive dissonance between listening to the experts and looking at mainstream media feels so extreme right now. I don't know if the pre-pandemic comparison struck a chord with anyone else but it's so visceral to me...
Cheers, Carole. I find this particular piece of yours to be the most essential reading there is at this moment.
Thanks Carole; beautiful, if horrifying, piece of writing.
You have several relevant links, but many are behind paywalls.
Perhaps hinting at what they contain might help the argument since many (or maybe just me) are not fond of subscribing to multiple sources. You know, say what the news item is, and then offer the link to support having said it.
I have this weird idea that if someone has something they want me to read, making me pay for it isn't going to work.
Anyway, thanks for this informative piece.
Hi there, I usually try and archive them to be able to share them more freely, so apologies. I agree. It's why this isn't paywalled and I want to keep it that way. Thanks for reading.
The access is appreciated, Carole. To me, this is high level quality output. The right people being asked the right questions, and the shared visibility (and... er... hearability?) is particularly important. There's something about not taking it to final perfect polish that means we know we're engaging with information no editor has hacked or removed key bits of, and the generosity of interviewees allowing sections to be voicenotes - it's like having access to raw data no one has mangled or tampered with beforehand. Unexpectedly, I am now wary of polished 'tight' output from glossy sources. Ai Carole can disagree all she likes, this way is better.
Not a big problem, but if trying to convince someone on the fence, a bit more information might help.
Overall, it is a well-thought-out argument. However, from my recent interaction on the comment boards of various TFP articles, I'm becoming convinced there's nothing that will sway someone from their positions.
I fear these types of posts are mostly preaching to an audience already predisposed to agree. At least they provide fresh ammunition for those who are stup . . . er . . . brave enough to tackle the arguments of the other side directly.
If you are on Bluesky, there's a Gift Links/Gift Articles section, you can take the titles of the articles that are behind paywall, then do a search for them in that section. It's been very helpful for me to read a ton of articles that have been gifted by other subscribers.
Yes, tho as above I use the archive (reply to Emilio earlier)
Or use the Archive (I'm always ambivalent about this because if the paywallers get resentful they might somehow block it! -- ie when it gets too popular) but in a good cause, this.... https://archive.ph
Hmm . . . does that work for Substack as well? Would blorigarchy be happy about that? I mean, I'm not a paying subscriber now, but it sounds like I don't have to be.
Yes, I'm asking in jest because I won't be doing that.
When I share a link from a site I subscribe to, I clarify that it's a subscription-based site and provide a brief summary of the content (usually to make a point). Anyone who wants to check out the veracity of what I say is welcome to follow whatever path they want.
. . . but I don't provide a link without saying what it is.
Bottom line, thank you for the suggestion, but I don't circumvent paywalls — but that's just me.
Wow! 🙏 Carroll! Your work is so valuable and critical to Democracy!
yes that’s as a good comparison , catch up world !
I am at a loss to find a way around this coup because that is what it is. It is the result of our whole western democratic system, fuelled by the obscene amount of money behind it. If we run democracy as we do, without any guard rails, this eventually becomes inevitable.
The Romans, who were the first to run a formal democracy, limited the political power to 100 fixed-term individuals ( or men, as women were excluded). That worked for a while, but then money from the rich rode roughshod over the guardrails. The rich could buy the best politicians.
I used to think that Denmark had the optimum system. They had a number of parties and a number of ministries and the parties had control of one or more parties - but they were limited in the number of ministries a party could manage - but that turned out to be susceptible to the same problem that all democracies suffer from - the people with the most money because money is power and the people with money always have the most power.
And it is always the same. Vast fortunes hold the most power; underneath them are politicians who are the public face of democracy, and underneath them are the electorate/workers/drones who do the work.
And the PBJ ( poor, bloody, journalists ) try to get the drones to see what is going on; the politicians are spread between those that have a social conscience and those who are rich wannabes and the top layer are the rich.
"t'was ever so"
Special thanks to this platform, and greetings people.
Looking from over here in the South Pacific, you Americans have something special in the Constitution of your colonial settler state: the Constition and the Republic included at least was an attempt to contain shit happening, followed by the federal state system. The cancer is now evident as the system coughs up blood, so it's the opportunity in emergency now.The people that Paul Robeson sung about are all around, and if enough of them can "flood the zone" as activated citizens in the in-boxes of Representatives - and a festival of creative street theater celebrating liberty and freedom for "life in its fullness" (Jn 10:10), with a proactive goals in mutual aid consolidated in the process, then the Spring will not be silenced.
Here the state of New Zealand is administratively centralized and vulnerable, but we also have a constitutional treasure: the 1840 Treaty of thd British Crown with the federated Māori tribal peoples. Recently confronted with the existential threat to this Treaty Maori rose up and lead a Hikoi (long walk) from the edge to the centre. My point is that while this started as outrage and reactive protest it ended up as a celebration of collective Māori values demonstrated by its discipline peace snd goid order, and inclusion of non-indigenous like me.
I'm reading:
• Timothy Snyder (2024) "On Freedom"
• Dean Spade (2020)
"Mutual Aid" - Building Solidarity During This Crisis (And The Next)
• Vanessa Machado de Oliveira (2021) "Hospicing Modernity" Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism.
• Max Rashbrooke (2018) "Government for the Public Good" The Surprising Science of Large-Scale Collective Action . Americans: See the p.196 section headed, ironically, "American exceptionalism", on the facts of the world-class failure of the market-led American public health system. Max is a leading NZ academic in governance, policy and inequality, now on the I.D.E.A. platform.
Thank you for this, Alistair. It's a tremendous insight from another angle, which I think has high value. Some might not be considering several steps ahead yet, but I suspect your perspective will be an important part of what we need to do, perhaps even in a wider picture. There are many great ideas, thinking and solutions - too often overlooked - from your beautiful part of this planet we all share. Belong to?
Last week I watched 2073 (DVD) and want to again soon, but although of course I thought it was brilliant and was moved -- and quite shattered -- by it, it left me with a feeling of political paralysis. This band of quite sociopathic criminals, the multibillionaire class now running much of the world, I mean, where do you even start when they've bought the judges, the mainstream media and much (if not most) of the political class?
We seem to have now gone way past the Snowden revelations, the Wikileaks exposés, the analyses of Chomsky, Chris Hedges and the rest. Besides, it's one thing to know (as we must) about all this, another to know what to do about it.
I make an analogy from medicine. The specialists in pathology are great at finding what's wrong with the patient but can have nothing to say about the cure, which is up to the clinicians -- physicians, surgeons, therapists of all kinds, not to dwell on the often more important environment, physical, mental and spiritual in which a patient is embedded.
We have quite a fair number of bloggers, professional columnists, even a few honest mainstream journalists, all wonderful political pathologists, great diagnosticians or would-be prognosticators. We have rather fewer experts offering cures, and even then quite a lot of them latter-day snake-oil salespersons.
When Chomsky was asked this question he used to tell people to mobilise, to group together, to form alliances. But even that, especially in Britain now governed by the increasingly authoritarian Starmer, so heavily armour-plated and impervious to reasoned challenge, is getting more difficult by the day -- one has only to consider the numbers of peaceful activists against fossil fuel depredation, against weapons sales to rogue states to realise that.
I remember being told, back in the heady 80s days of CND that we activists needed to develop something of the medieval cathedral-building mentality: everyone starting to build one knew they weren't going to be around to witness its consecration, and the same went for those participating many years later. We would work away, the idea went, over the years singing We Shall Overcome and Kumbaya.
Well, it's too late for that. And there are *so many* synergistic things going on right now, environmental pollution, renewed nuclear weapons threat, climate catastrophe boiling up, gross inequality, patriarchal misogyny, a sense of global loss of direction, even of meaninglessness, the digitisation of everything as well as its monetisation.
The late visionary writer and critic John Berger wrote that humans invent things and then turn themselves into imitations and versions of what they invent. Think of the last time you have a telephone conversation with a fellow human who insisted on following the algorithm they're compelled to follow whatever broader context you want to bring in.
Way time, I often think, to revive Gian-Carlo Menotti's great opera, The Consul. In the consul's outer office the fraught heroine, wife of a freedom fighter on the run, is desperately trying to tell the obstructive secretary her story. The latter in gatekeeper mode keeps repeating, "But what is your story, what is your name, your name is a number, your story a case, your hopes will be filed, come back next week."
I've gone on far too long, sorry. I'm an old guy now (Hey, I remember Churchill's wartime radio broadcasts, so that tells you -- well, rather I remember my parents' mounting anticipation of the broadcasts, I wasn't that savvy!) but I haven't quite given up. It's just that I don't know what to do.
So I'm hanging on Carole's lips and words -- so to speak! To go medical again, thanks Carole for one of medicine's best therapeutic offerings, a dose of hope.
I hope I am wrong, but I lived in the resisting underworld of an authoritarian state for a long time, and, in my experience, next, in the progression of fascism, as the power of the state is turned against the populace, the facade of legality and constitutional propriety and state ceremony are discarded and them come the house arrests and bannings of the opposers and the brutality and jackboot authority and then the quiet and surgical removal of one's family, friends, acquaintances and life models into the terminal night of the disappeared.
This time, perhaps because of the information aspect, it seems that the facade has been discarded even before the consolidation of power is complete, but I am sure the rest will follow. It always does.
It is a time to be very afraid.
That’s why he is currently trying to make gun law restrictions at the state level illegal. The plan includes civil unrest, with military intervention.
While of course it's important to report on the people helping Musk perpetrate this coup, can we stop it with the "dweebs and nerds" language? As the mother of two young boys who may one day identify as dweebs and nerds, I hope that they do not feel their choices in life limited to coup assistance and Thiel fellowships. Backsliding to 1980s stereotypes doesn't help us parse the very real problem of the tech worldview, value system, and our need to raise better humans (because if they are "boy-men" and not full adults, then we adults can feel parental responsibility towards them) wreaking havoc on our democracy.
I’m baffled by the state of the Guardian right now. They seem to be fixated on comparing electric clothes airers and wittering on about wellness trends. The comparison with the days after the Brexit vote is chilling. What has happened to them? I think my £11.99 a month could be better spent.
Hi Miranda, there's a fair few of us who withdrew our voluntary contributions and subscriptions because we felt we were funding the Scott Trust Ltd and the Guardian Media Group and their atrocious mistreatment of their journalists. The offloading of the Observer for nothing has been described as spluttering incomprehension. Many of us have chosen to divert our financial support to extraordinary journalists like Carole here on Substack and others elsewhere.
I stopped paying the G a couple of yrs ago. Talking of the Observer I was recalling just a few days ago that in the early 50s it printed the WHOLE of Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood one Sunday! Would it do something similar today? Would a swim duck! They had serious ethical debates with top notch intellectuals of the day. AND they roundly opposed Eden's illjudged Suez adventure. It had real class. Now? With a handful of exceptions (Hello Carole!) it's a pale shadow of its illustrious past.
Indeed, Brian. It's all so very dismaying. Heartbreaking for some. The Observer's illustrious history - as you point out so well - and good name (at least for a greater part of those 233 years) is being flushed down the toilet for nothing.
But it is much worse than that, and let me be clear that these are my own views expressed here, and I take full responsibility for them. The hierarchy entrusted to protect the Guardian and Observer have exposed themselves for what they are. They are destroying both titles from within, from the top. Due to a previous entity change, they are irremovable and are enacting whatever suits their own agendas. To me, it is absolutely clear, and I'm gutted for the good journalists I value so highly who are still at both titles. And suppressed from relaying any of this.
Offloading The Observer for nothing to whom they have (dismissing due and diligent consideration of significant other offers) allows it to become a false reporting right-wing/oligarchic interest mouthpiece. Perhaps a more subtle one at first, but enabling a shift from scientific rigour and integrity to, say, fossil fuel greenwashing. Maybe even without some readers noticing. Maybe even worse, as the financial structure behind the new owners has links to individuals and entire states which pose serious security threats.
Then there's a next level worse. The Observer fiasco, which already weakens and undermines The Guardian, will be used to further undermine the Guardian from 'outside', while physically remaining in place in terms of the current workforce. What an absolute omnishambles.
Two of the last internationally recognised bastions of journalism will, one way or another be oligarchicly captured. They get what they want once more, and the rest of us? 'Then they came for the journalists. We don't know what happened after that.'
On a brighter note, *parp* aren't furry little yellow ducklings lovely?
Carole, thank you for your courageous reporting.
Well, they've hit on a brilliant strategy.
You see, Puppet Trump makes idiotic statements that capture the media's attention while President Musk executes the coup.
It's impressive, really. The only hope I see is to keep referring to Trump as Puppet and Musk as President.
It will not entirely solve the problem, but it is sure to create some friction and maybe give institutions a breather so they can gather their senses and take action.
Why did the raided departments comply so easily?
Uncertainty, fear and the absence of opposing authority. Resistance would have required the department leaders to know that they could call in a cavalry that would oppose the instructions of the president, legal or otherwise, and there is no discernible cavalry yet.
It’s clear that the US is now a dictatorship. And if we’re not careful, the same thing will be coming to the UK.
This Labour Govt is our Biden presidency. Normal service will be resumed by Farage and Reform shortly.
OTOH unlike the US, you’ve got five years (four and a half now, anyway). The UK was fortunate (though it sure didn’t look that way) to have the bad guys in charge during the pandemic, making it easier to eject them when the time came for a general election.
Firstly, thank you to all of the great contributors for providing their knowledge and insights into what is occurring on the inside, partly hidden from the rest of us by the distractions. And for giving their time to Carole to enable her to pass all of this on to us.
Secondly, the voicenotes are a triumph once again. What Mark Bergman says is a different level. I would like to receive his weekly "purges, paybacks, disruptions and powergrabs", but a quick couple of online searches gave me nothing back. If any of you kind souls could point me in the right direction - a link or something - I would be much obliged.
Thirdly, it seems to me that what is happening in the US in these passing moments is part of a wider plot in time to bring this filth to the shores of the English speaking world, minimum. I believe it is better to stifle at source as early as possible, rather than to attempt to resist when it becomes more established and powerful. We should and we must assist those resisting t-rump, mooskrat and the rest of them in the US right now. As Mark Bergman points out, a future move could well be to renege on international agreements between states. Their actions and behaviours point towards this. This coup, this hijacking of the American system must be thwarted at external national levels, intentional levels, and by us - individuals - acting collectively in any effective way we can before America becomes a rogue state. Mark Bergman says there are only two guard rails left: the law and the markets. Maybe we can take collective global action against mooskrat revenue streams? Hurt him that way? Leave X for sure, but also boycotting Tesla products, terminating all investments we have in companies he owns (through mixed funds as well) and encourage others to do so?
Those are all great ideas. Here in the States, we are in dire distress and hope our allies will somehow come to our aid. It's a long shot, but if we go down, we end up taking down a heck of a lot of alliances.
Hi Cole, you have my backing, support, and whatever else I can think of to actually do, and so do all decent Americans resisting what is going on. It has always been clear to me that the people, the individuals, are not the State - especially if they detach themselves from their atrocious 'leaders' - and should not be treated as such. Sure, many voted for Trump, but many more Americans did not. It might not seem like much, but you and all like you have my solidarity from afar. There are others from other countries like me too. Thanks to the right information being available through people like Carole, we are growing in number, and realising we have a duty to do what we can to help right now. Beyond duty, the t-rumps and moosks of this world are coming for us too: the harder we all resist together, the better it will be for the world.
Big love to you Carole, we are indeed the spring.
I am in agreement with your article.
I do have to correct one thing though - the "move fast and break things" slogan at Facebook. I was an engineer there 2013-17. The slogan was repeatedly brought up in employee training. It referred to being unafraid to take risks, to launch new features quickly and not worry about whether it led to bugs in the system, these could always be fixed later. They didn't want engineers moving too slowly, making sure nothing broke before launching anything. It wasn't about the law. (Whereas Uber, in that period, really did break the law without qualm.)
And in fact, by 2017 they were no longer featuring the slogan as much, sometimes even changing it to simply "move fast"; realizing that embarrassing bugs in new features weren't always worth it.
Internally, Facebook was more rattled by the 2016 election than it let on publicly. And they did put in an effort, at first. You didn't hear that much about Facebook misinformation affecting elections after that, even in 2024. But misinformation simply moved elsewhere. And now, after the Trump victory, Meta has indeed been radicalised and joined the right.
Even inside tech though there’s interesting dynamics around move fast and break things. SRE emerges partly to address this. So the fixing is second order work and less respected ime. Look which teams are being laid off. Glue, ops, people skills. It would not therefore surprise me to see the dismantling of norms pitched as necessary progress and as long as the popular groups get what they want who cares about the mess?
Between this essay and the new one from Sarah Kendzior I am feeling rather helpless. Calling congress seems pointless. I live in a rather Trumpy area of eastern washington. We have democrats here but no progressive ones .
I’m inclined to agree with you. It was obvious what would happen - where were the Dems then? We voted for them and they did pretty much nothing to stop the takeover before the election.
Excellent Substack, I just subscribed. Like you, all I have is my Substack to fight. I fear that at some point if Trump gets his way he destroys ways to communicate. We won't have a free press, including Substack & BlueSky. Here's what I wrote on Substack today: https://halbrown.substack.com/p/three-weeks-in-and-we-have-fort-sumter
Republicans want to keep their power so the more they hear from their constituents that they are pissed off, the more pressure for them to actually act on behalf of their constituents. Otherwise, if they think their constituents don’t care then they don’t have to care. (Or pretend to care)
Chuck Schumer initially wasn’t going to delay confirmations until there was pressure to do so.
Pressurizing our congressional representatives can feel pointless but that’s what they want us to feel. Don’t give them permission in advance! Especially if your representative is Republican and completely reneging their Constitutional duty.
Fantastic article. Keep fighting the good fight