Ep 346 Epstein, Fascism, Clickbait, Deaf President...What's Next?

Relevance Nearly all could have been recorded tomorrow . So it might pay , if you find the recent episodes inspiring or enlightening , to take a look at past ones too Up to you , but I intend to do so . The title today is Epstein . Fascism , clickbait , anti-collective individualism , galudet , social media , good trouble , and now what ? It is ? A stew .

I suppose it won't run that long , despite the humongous title . A lot of it will be unpleasant news , but it will end , as always , upbeat , because that is where we all need to get to and where we are in fact primed to go . And so okay . First topic

Epstein . What can I say ? How about nothing ? Hmm , that would make the title clickbait . So okay , how about not much ? Epstein was disgusting . Trump was and is disgusting . The current unfolding machinations is disgusting , the current unfolding machinations . If there was a devil who wanted to celebrate his own nefarious inclinations with a public display .

He might well have engineered what we are now seeing . My inclination is to look away . Even as I cautiously hope that Trump has skewered himself , though I sadly fear he may be about to skewer everyone else . Yes , the incredible truth is that this unfolding fiasco may either entrench or even end Donald Trump's reign of terror .

It is hard to imagine any contemporary society sliding into a more servile sewer than the US is now inhabiting . Do we climb out or do we pitch tents for a long stay ? Fascism is not just racist and cruel policies . It is not just misogyny-fueled sadism . It is not just repressive threats or heinous actions .

It is not just a lot of people wildly assaulting other people . It is not just a lot of hate , a lot of cowardice , a lot of hypocrisy . It isn't just books on fire . It's not just truth relegated to oblivion . Fascism is all of that and , to be sure , all of that can become a firestorm of suffering and death .

But fascism also includes not only all that , but also institutional enforcement and entrenchment of all of that . Fascism is making all of that not a violation of common sense and existing relations , but a new normal , a new common sense , the recurring , day-in , day-out , permanent product of new institutional relations .

Fascism is revamping , reordering and restructuring society's institutions to make the most extreme daily horror a natural outgrowth of those transformed institutions rather than an unnatural distortion of more sane , albeit very far from ideal , past institutions . Fascism is not just turning a political party into a cult .

It is not just bullying lawyers , threatening judges , capturing universities . It is not just disabling public education , constraining culture , defunding science . It is not just taking food from hungry children , taking medicine from vulnerable people , drilling baby drilling .

It is not just dehumanizing opponents , growing alligator alcatrazes from coast to coast , building a domestic army to round up alligator inmates . It is making all that normal . It is using fear , confusing payoffs and chaos to establish all that as our new reality , as our new life , as the way it is . Challenge it . Its message in response you can't stop the rain .

Fascism is what is unfolding all around us . Can you hear it , see it , smell it ? Do you feel it encroaching ? Are you thinking ? Will I be cowed or will I have courage ? Will I succumb or will I resist ? It isn't too late , but it is getting there . If you aren't already , it is time to resist .

Fascism is a vile , pathetic , lying , cowardly joke of a creature who captures sufficient support and clouds sufficient minds to grab the reins of current government power sufficiently to use it to assault law , knowledge , health and even human compassion and empathy into surrender , and then to literally change the shape of government , education , health care , law ,

communication , economy and culture into a repressive , perverse caricature of civility and caring . Fascism is to establish and enforce a clickbait society , an atomized society of rampant individualism of the most debilitating sort , a police state society . Individualism of the most debilitating sort , a police state society . It is Trump and Co .

If we don't stop them , can you see it unfolding

? Now what ? Let's come back to stopping them , but before we do , I mentioned clickbait , I mentioned rampant individualism . They seem a bit minor , even somewhat marginal , don't they ? They seem malicious , but no big deal alongside the rest of what I mentioned , don't they ? Well , no , I don't think so .

Clickbait is when an author or media venue offers an article , interview , video or whatever with a title that says here comes X , when there is in fact no X coming . X is promised so as to attract eyes . Eyes are attracted , but X is absent . Eyes move on .

Each clickbait instant is a perfect embodiment of two themes to seek profit before all else and to lie with total impunity , as if to lie is a virtue and to be truthful is naive stupidity .

I suppose you might even seek to unify clickbait under one theme , in which case you might call it a perfect embodiment of get what you want and celebrate the collateral damage of how you got it . And what is the collateral damage of clickbait of how you got it and what is the collateral damage of clickbait ?

Truth is the obvious one , but warranted trust dissipates too . And then there goes reason itself , since to reason about anything requires both truth and warranted trust . Reason too is crushed . Someone clicks on a lying title . They read , view or hear the titled item . The title they pursued proves to have been clickbait . They got tricked .

Now what Do they get angry ? Do they swear off the venue that tricked them ? Do they consider the author a lying manipulator ? I think all that is very rare . Instead , I think most often , indeed perhaps even nearly always , we just roll with the punch . After all , it wasn't a knockout blow , we survived . So we get back up , we get past it .

To have gotten outraged might have led to our being perpetually outraged , because clickbait , once called bait and switch , is now everywhere . So we suck it up and we move on . We employ our capacity to passively resign , that tendency gets enforced . Our tendency to honestly evaluate what we encounter declines .

Clickbait not only attracts our eyes and ears for profit , it also reduces our clinical thinking . It promotes societal cultural infantilization exactly the human trajectory that fascism needs . Am I exaggerating ? I think not . I think clickbait has spread everywhere and I think its direct and peripheral consequences are incredibly serious .

Really , I think it is everywhere and as it spreads and as each new venue rationalizes that , if we don't use clickbait , if we don't become really good at clickbaiting , we will lose audience to whoever clickbaits better . Meanwhile , to provide the truth and to expect the truth each decay on a path toward their literally dying .

To not like , much less to not accept lying becomes naivete . And though it hurts to say it , I think this form of slipside toward intellectual depravity is even spreading into the left . It is not just manipulative lying , but also passively accepting manipulative lying . It is a wicked variant on the entreaty to go along , to get along .

It is understandable why we join the slide , but it is deadly . It is yet another devastating instance of modestly self-aggrandizing , defensive individual choices that yield unmitigatedly awful collective decline . Which observation leads me to another nightmare that's now spreading all around us . Not to worry , though , good news is coming too .

Let's call the additional nightmare anti-collective individualism .

You confront a difficult situation , an urgent choice . Anti-collective individualism is the broad inclination to think only about implications for self , or maybe only about implications for some close family members or some friends . Your workplace faces those imposed job cuts . You will likely be fired . You grab your resume and you start looking for job options .

You hope to get an offered job before someone else gets it . You don't join with other workmates to sit down and collectively refuse your dismissals . Collectivity , what's that ? It doesn't arise even as a passing thought . I , me , mine . Calculus is in command . Or consider another example you are horrified by Trump .

You stew in anger , but you don't even contemplate looking for ways to work with others against Trump . To collectively resist isn't even an accessible thought pattern . It doesn't enter your consciousness . Donald threatens you pre-censor your words and actions to not anger him . You are upset , but you try not to show it , you try not to harp on it .

You might lose a friend . Better to bow and proceed obediently . Or perhaps you are in high school , or I suspect even in college , and there is no discussion of oncoming fascism and what to do about it . In your classes , none , really none , think about that .

Fascism is , on top of everything else , being oblivious to itself , and there is less discussion of what's going on than what's needed in your dorms and your dining rooms as well . But you don't initiate discussion . You don't want to offend anyone , you don't want to stand out . There is a lot of talk all around about solidarity and mutual aid .

That talk is apparently not too serious . Anti-collective individualism is its opposite . It is going it alone , another part of fascism's game plan . Or perhaps your law firm is selling out ? You are a lawyer or a paralegal or a secretary , whatever you work there . What do you do ? Or perhaps your medicine and doctor's appointments are ending .

The clinic that serves your community is closing . What do you do ? Or maybe mass marauders have come for your neighbor or for your workmate . What do you do ? The sounds of silence reverberate , the sounds of pain and violence , the cries of the bombed , the moans of the starved , echo and crescendo . The soundtrack of today . You hear it .

You yourself moan , you yourself cry . The soundtrack is you . But what do you do ? Or perhaps you don't moan ? The evil hasn't come explicitly for you , but it has come for others . What do you do ? Believe it or not ? I want to here take a brief moment to point to a film titled Deaf President .

Now , the title isn't clickbait and the film is currently on Apple TV , assuming it hasn't been removed since I saw it a few nights ago . The film recounts the 1988 struggle at Gallaudet University for the Deaf to successfully win a demand to install a deaf president who would be the first at this university since it was founded over 150 years ago .

Yes , I know , the campaign didn't win student faculty self-management , it didn't even seek it .

It wasn't anti-imperialist , it wasn't overtly feminist , it wasn't socialist , but I think this film's account of its 1988 events are nonetheless highly relevant today , precisely because it was not highly politicized students , long-time activist students who won its campaign and horribly subordinated students who got shocked by gross mistreatment , got angry at raging hypocrisy and

cowardice , got organized and strategic and won . The film shows many of the lies , fears and obstacles the students had to confront , including in their own prior commitments . The film helps reveal however unlikely as it may seem , given that it is showing on Apple TV what grassroots anti-fascism can look like , what we can look like .

Yes , we have to go further than the Gallaudet struggle went . And if you don't need the inspiration of seeing their story , great . But perhaps show it to your parents or to your children , or show it to your workmates , your schoolmates or your friends and then perhaps talk together about

it . That would be some serious socializing . And so , yes , now we come to social media , or what I guess people now call socials , as in when they refer to their socials or to posting on socials or to keeping up with socials . It seems that fiddling online while society implodes has become our socials . Amazing Words morph into their opposites .

But I do get that social media is ubiquitous . I do get that to not use it to promote what we do or to promote what we favor can self-deny there I say rather like to not use clickbait , can self-deny . But here is a self-restoring wrinkle . I bet that everyone who will hear this episode uses a bank , for that matter .

And , more analogously , I bet many who will hear this read the New York Times or some other mainstream news source . To not use banks is self-denying . To not read the New York Times or any comparable outlet can be self-denying . But while we use banks and we consult mainstream sources , we don't celebrate those choices More .

We don't mold ourselves to relate as those choices optimally intend us to relate . We do not play their games . Invest in their stocks , grow our meager money as they advise , scroll and scroll some more and then post something , but not our full views .

We know that to praise banks or mainstream media or to enter into roles that they celebrate and let doing so crowd out what matters , is a slippery slope to no longer hating banks and to no longer critiquing mainstream media and no longer doing or even remembering what matters .

So , by analogy , it is one thing to hate social media but hold our nose while we cautiously use it for positive ends .

It is another thing to get into habits that waste endless time , to get sucked into worthless gossip , to view exploitative snippets or to feel that to repost a link or a photo or whatever else , while offering nothing substantive , that we ourselves think is somehow to seriously socially interact or is even to undertake a seriously positive political act .

To my jaded but not even a little bit cynical , though undeniably old eyes , current social media isn't even social , much less a serious vehicle by which to exchange investigative and critical views .

We scroll robotically and then we post links or pictures , but we rarely , if ever , post our fully and carefully conceived and serious thoughts , much less engage with others to defend or to change our thoughts , nor do we seriously address other people's views Further .

For too many of us who develop a commercialized , surveillance , airhead warped conception of being social , our attention spans dwindle . We start to favor a paragraph over an article and then a sentence over a paragraph . Brevity becomes our Moses and the prophets . Substance gets atomized down to snippets .

For a slightly shifted and barely more subtle version of this observation , consider the difference between posting a flyer as a call to promote a demonstration or a candidate and knocking on doors to listen and talk with people about a demonstration or candidate , or , for that matter , compare it to writing to sell or preen , or writing to engage .

Posting a time and place to get together aims to mobilize , and that can be important work . Arriving to the same place at the same time matters , but to hear and convey reasons to arrive , strategic motivations , careful evaluations and serious proposals for how to improve , that's organizing , and organizing is always needed . So what about good trouble needed

. So what about good trouble ? About a month ago , a bunch of committed organizations selected July 17th for the next day of anti-Trump demonstrations around the country . This batch of demonstrations would be called good trouble to honor John Lewis , whereas last month's were called no kings to skewer Trump .

Yesterday was the 17th it is purely anecdotal but I saw almost nothing about the planned events until July 14th , and even then very little . I asked others who said the same .

Then I saw some messages indicating the time and place to come out and join the events , but the messages had nearly nothing about why to come out , about what the day's events would accomplish and particularly about how to get involved beyond the day's events .

The turnout , I am told the turnout , I'm not sure , but it seems to have been a fraction of the earlier no Kings turnout . Despite that , millions demonstrated a month ago and would hopefully have come out again . There were many less this time . Preliminary reports suggest militants may have grown and focus may have enlarged . Numbers seriously declined .

One explanation is it was a workday compared to the earlier weekend , but another may be that the no-kings demonstration didn't sufficiently convey to its participants that to succeed they needed to return and to bring others . It may have left many feeling we came out , it meant nothing , so no more of that for me .

Likewise , the call for good trouble demonstrations might not have conveyed reasons to turn out . It might not have communicated the logic of turning out the unfolding , developing trajectory to contribute to , and how demonstrating does indeed contribute . So now what ? The task remains as it has been . We need to generate understanding and commitment which fuels activism .

We need the activism that say to elites the cost to you of your agenda is growing and it will keep growing . You must give in . And we need to do it over and over until they get it . But what can convincingly convey such a message ? What comes next ? Paramount is that resistance must grow . Small is very much not a threat .

Smaller than earlier says to elites wait it out , it will dissipate . Large can be a threat . Larger than last time enlarges the threat . Momentum matters . Elites need to see that , rather than their preferred new normal taking hold , a resistance is entrenching and growing . It is not going away or even stabilizing . It is getting broader , stronger and more effective .

Elites need to see a growing threat to things that they care about . They need to see the cost to what they care about , provoked by their actions growing and growing until the threat leaves them only one option to cut back and to then stop what they are doing . This isn't complicated .

Our numbers must grow , which means we must continually reach out to new participants . Immigration tariffs , epstein , climate and war policies will upset more and more people To grow the resistance .

Our task is to address those upset people , to hear their needs and their worries , to demand changes that will matter for them , to speak with and to involve them , to be led by them .

Likewise , we also need to actively involve millions of already justifiably scared young people and , even more so , millions of already furious , outraged , scared and , in their hearts , progressive .

Not that young people who , however , exhibit all that only to a spouse over dinner or in bed , or standing in front of a mirror or cursing while taking a shower , but not yet visibly , not yet publicly , not yet on the streets or in a job action . It is critical , but it is not sufficient to mobilize folks who are already ready to turn out .

We need to reach out to folks who are not yet ready to resist , and even to folks who disagree with us . What about our movement getting broader and stronger ? We need that too . What about our movement getting broader and stronger ? We need that too .

When resistance grows against a Trumpian policy , trump backs off a bit and throws up distractions , even as he plans to come back to the first issue later . What Trump and company need to see and to seriously feel is that the resistance is getting less atomized , less issue by issue , and more generalized .

They need to see us getting more intent on stopping and reversing the whole fascist takeover of government , economics , education , health , science , culture , upbringing and even human emotion , even empathy . They need to see people who are outraged at genocide aiding people who are horrified at health cuts .

People who defend and celebrate immigrants , also defending and celebrating teachers who resist conformity and repression . People who slam Doge , also slamming Fox News and moving on to confront the New York Times and all mainstream media . People who demand an end to ecological suicide , also demanding an end to billionaire domination .

They need to hear a distant but growing ringing of revolution aroused by

their choices . They need to think to themselves oh shit , we don't want to provoke that . We need to reconsider our choices . But what , in addition to resistance growing , diversifying and unifying can send our message to their boardrooms and their gated communities ?

How about if our mass demonstrations include , for those who are ready , trips to corporate boardrooms and gated communities ? How about if the already ready , threatened employees and students don't give in or leave when ordered to , but entrench and fight . Fired employees refuse to leave , they sit down . They demand a say and changes . How about we work toward that ?

How about if outraged and threatened students lock up their campuses and demand a say and changes in curriculum and in hierarchy ? How about if our artists stand on stage and sing to fight ? They stand there and say it is time to fight and then they engage with and perform at demonstrations . How about that ?

How about we have our demonstrations , among other aims , demand a massive wealth tax ? And how about if we display signs in the crowd that say no more corporate greed , no more private ownership , and then that spin off a march to some fascist corporate boss's door that blocks the street where he lives ? The cops come . There are 2,000 of us . Picture that .

What do they do ? Tear gas , scarsdale . How about if we do that which simultaneously says to elites there are more and more of us , we are more and more unified , we are more and more energized , we do what doesn't alienate but organizes and welcomes still more growth , even as it says to elites hey look , look closely .

You see the most militant part , you see the most radical part . That is what the whole resistance is threatening to become . That is what you are provoking , is what the whole resistance is threatening to become . That is what you are provoking .

We can get more militant , diversify our demands and come directly after you and , at the same time , not alienate or repel , but instead attract , welcome and elevate potential new allies . And we will do just that . And that said , this is Michael Albert signing off for Revolution Z . Until next time .