In October last year, Drop Site News published an essay by Sam Butler which outlined the "Dark Enlightenment" philosophy behind Musk's embrace of Trump. Ryan has completely ignored all of that context in his portrait of Trump 2.0. There is nothing anti-imperialist in what Musk and Trump are doing. They are attempting to destroy the last …
In October last year, Drop Site News published an essay by Sam Butler which outlined the "Dark Enlightenment" philosophy behind Musk's embrace of Trump. Ryan has completely ignored all of that context in his portrait of Trump 2.0. There is nothing anti-imperialist in what Musk and Trump are doing. They are attempting to destroy the last vestiges of popular sovereignty that exist in the state and replace it with a government owned by (wealthy) shareholders. As Butler writes at the end of his essay, quoting from Nick Land's playbook of how to implement just such a transformation:
"If anyone were in position to see that “the entire social landscape of political [lobbying] is exactly mapped, and the administrative, legislative, judicial, media, and academic privileges accessed by such bribes are converted into fungible shares,” it would be person in charge of “a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government.”"
Musk's DOGE is the first step, mapping the entire social landscape of political lobbying, and his dismantling of USAID is the second, converting the privileges accessed through such lobbying into fungible shares. The fact that commentators like Ryan, Greenwald and Taibbi could confuse this with anti-imperialism, and worse, obfuscate on behalf of these elites as they destroy the last vestiges of democracy, shows the extent to which the populist rhetoric of libertarianism has poisoned their brains.
In October last year, Drop Site News published an essay by Sam Butler which outlined the "Dark Enlightenment" philosophy behind Musk's embrace of Trump. Ryan has completely ignored all of that context in his portrait of Trump 2.0. There is nothing anti-imperialist in what Musk and Trump are doing. They are attempting to destroy the last vestiges of popular sovereignty that exist in the state and replace it with a government owned by (wealthy) shareholders. As Butler writes at the end of his essay, quoting from Nick Land's playbook of how to implement just such a transformation:
"If anyone were in position to see that “the entire social landscape of political [lobbying] is exactly mapped, and the administrative, legislative, judicial, media, and academic privileges accessed by such bribes are converted into fungible shares,” it would be person in charge of “a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government.”"
Musk's DOGE is the first step, mapping the entire social landscape of political lobbying, and his dismantling of USAID is the second, converting the privileges accessed through such lobbying into fungible shares. The fact that commentators like Ryan, Greenwald and Taibbi could confuse this with anti-imperialism, and worse, obfuscate on behalf of these elites as they destroy the last vestiges of democracy, shows the extent to which the populist rhetoric of libertarianism has poisoned their brains.