The USA’s campaign season remains a puzzling labyrinth, but one less appealing than Jim Henson’s “a ‘mazing tale of never-ending fantasy.” Cartoon for Puck magazine’s March 11, 1896 issue by Charles Jay Taylor. Public domain.
Michael Gallagher considers the relatively low inflation rates of the period “from Reagan’s second term through Trump’s” first to be “America’s amazing capitalism” (Queens Chronicle, September 5), sarcastically suggesting that “for 35 years … the robber barons of industry didn’t realize they could set their prices and gouge more money from the American people,” only getting the notion after the inauguration of noted anti-capitalist Joe Biden.
Gallagher makes no mention of Biden’s vice president, but the candidate Donald Trump dubs “Comrade Kamala Harris” will presumably carry forth such a break from said “amazing capitalism.” Meanwhile, a September 4 USA Todayheadline crows: “Goldman Sachs says Comrade Kamala is better for economy. She can’t even do communism right!”
By the standards of 2024 mud-slinging, the ranks of Reds could include even Ronald Reagan himself. When not lauding workers’ “cooperative effort aimed at sharing in the ownership of the new wealth being produced” or being photographed under a towering statue of Vladimir Lenin at Moscow State University, the Gipper occasionally paraphrased a remark by socialist intellectual George Bernard Shaw. “A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul” was Shaw’s way of explaining to readers of Everybody’s Political What’s What? how inflationary policies remained popular when inevitably “the return to normal prices rescues pensioners from destitution; but it ruins debtors, making the cure as calamitous as the disease, Paul being now robbed to pay Peter.”
That sounds more like something one might expect to hear from such a free-market advocate as Henry Hazlitt, whose The Conquest of Poverty echoes the Shaw he denounces as “shamelessly ignorant and silly” on economics in pointing out that “practically everybody concede[s] that the State does have a right to seize from Peter to pay Paul, when it levies necessary taxes, say, on Peter, a businessman, to pay Paul, a policeman” rather than asking “whether or not Paul is performing necessary and legitimate services in return for payment.”
One might expect Hazlitt to have reacted to Matthew Josephson’s The Robber Barons with Gallagher’s snideness, seeing them as unjustly unloved Ubermenschen who instead deserve to be lionized on Ayn Rand book covers. Instead, Hazlitt’s assessment for The New York Times Book Review found that by reading such surveys “we would understand our country much better than we do” than from what he quotes Progressive historians Charles and Mary Beard as calling the “shadow picture” of conventional histories that offer more on “politicians of minor rank” than business leaders. Even Rand’s tomes offer a more critical view between their covers of many malevolent magnates, whether archetypal fictional antagonists or all too real, who rely on “the power of forced, unearned, economically unjustified privileges.”
A history of actually existing capitalism that ignores the wide valleys between the highest peaks is as incomplete as an account of the Amazin’ Mets which only touches on their 1969 and 1984 World Series wins. In contrast, an economy of free exchanges between Peter and Paul (or Paulette) is a win-win for everyone involved.
New Yorker Joel Schlosberg is a senior news analyst at The William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism.
“The transgender thing is incredible,” said former president Donald Trump in late August, addressing the Moms for Liberty “Joyful Warriors” summit in late Washington. “[Y]our kid goes to school, and he comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.”
Wait … what? That’s not true. That’s not even close to true. The next time a kid comes home from school with different genitalia courtesy of government medical “generosity” at taxpayer expense, with or without express written parental consent, will be the first time.
But Trump said it, and some people no doubt believe it — because Trump said it.
The members of every audience he addresses, directly or indirectly, are the prospective mothers.
Their credulity is the birth canal.
Fear is the bouncing baby [insert random gender identity here].
Fear is also the single most effective tool in a politician’s arsenal.
Fearful people are more likely to support politicians who pose as their savior — even if their fears are completely unfounded, and even if those politicians were the ones who scared them in the first place.
Where you find fear, you’re likely to find lies as well. Why? Because lying to you is easier for a politician than discovering you’ve been lied to is for you.
Most people want to believe what they’re told, especially by those who claim to support and defend their interests.
Many of those people, once lied to, close their minds to the possibility that they HAVE been lied to, no matter the actual evidence.
And both groups, are, in different measure, more likely to support the politician who lied to them … because they’re afraid, and believe that politician can and will “save” them.
No, Donald Trump isn’t the only demagogue out there. In fact, he’s not the only demagogue in this particular presidential race. Or, probably, in whatever room he happens to occupy at the moment.
He is, however, the best EXAMPLE of a demagogue currently on offer because his fear-inspiring lies are so over the top, so hare-brained, and so easily disproven that they don’t require reams of fine print analysis to rebut. Only the naive and credulous believe them for even a moment, and only the MOST naive and credulous believe them for more than a few minutes.
Unfortunately, he tells so many whoppers that an enthusiastic, if small, constituency exists for each one. He’s building a Coalition of the Afraid.
Oh, for emergency contraception against moral panic.
Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.
How many times have you casually mentioned buying, say, new curtains to your spouse, then found yourself bombarded with ads for window treatments the next time you opened a new browser tab on your computer?
How many times has that kind of thing left you assuming that your phone, smart speaker, etc. are listening in on your conversations and adding relevant material to advertising databases?
Advertising platforms always deny it, and maybe — MAYBE — they’ve been technically honest in denying it. But there’s no doubt they track you in various ways, from browser history to phone location, and that they use the data they gather to target advertising at you.
If your phone notices you visited Home Depot or Lowe’s and your browser history shows you looking at gazebo plans, you’ll probably start seeing ads for tools and building materials shortly thereafter.
Now we have evidence of actual eavesdropping on your conversations.
Last year, Cox Media Group admitted — nay, promoted” — its “Active Listening” technology in a since-deleted blog post: “Imagine … a world where no pre-purchase murmurs go unanalyzed, and the whispers of consumers become a tool for you to target, retarget, and conquer your local market.”
Last month, 404 Media reported (in a paywalled article) on a CMG “pitch deck” further promoting the technology and claiming major partnerships with Facebook, Google, and other major firms to deploy it. The unconvincing responses from those major firms range from outright denial to promised “investigations.”
If that technology really is just now rolling out for advertisers, my only question is why it took so long.
We know, courtesy of exiled whistleblower Edward Snowden, that the US government possesses those kinds of capabilities — the NSA calls it “Google for Voice” — and has been using them on us for decades. Once the “private sector” knows a thing CAN be done, it figures out how to do that thing in profitable ways.
Here’s the part where most writers start bemoaning our loss of privacy and suggesting ways to get it back.
OK, fine … I bemoan our loss of privacy. Happy?
As for getting it back, nothing short of full global reversion to a pre-computer level of technology would suffice.
Am I happy that Bing knows I’m very interested in motorcycles at the moment and keeps showing me ads and stories about them?
Yes, kind of. It’s a little creepy, but also very useful.
Am I concerned that this level of data-gathering will produce terrible outcomes?
Absolutely.
Am I willing to cancel my Internet service, throw away my smart phone and Echo Dot, wear “facial recognition defeat” clothing everywhere I go, etc. just to keep Google from knowing I’m house-hunting?
Nope.
For better or worse, privacy is dead.
Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.
