mentalblog links No.2
"After Joe Biden’s defenestration..." or history as “a graveyard of aristocracies”.
What would the preeminent sage of our time, John Gray say about the Trump revolution? John Gray has spoken:
New Statesman - The counter-elite gambled on Trump and won.
The parallel with post WWI Europe is an interesting one. When the monarchy and aristocracy crumbled. Except the monarchy and aristocracy as more defined target. They are paragraphs to savor like a delicious meal:
Elon Musk’s position as co-director of a newly created Department of Government Efficiency is entirely at the president-elect’s discretion, but antagonism has already been reported between the Trump and Musk camps. A mercurial titan dedicated to interplanetary colonisation will not long be content cost-cutting for the new administration. (He may play a more lasting and consequential role in dealings with China.) The mooted trillion-dollar reduction in federal spending he is supposed to deliver will not happen. When Trump boasted during his 2016 campaign of being “the king of debt” – “I do love it. I love playing with it” – he delineated what looks like an inexorable trajectory: the US will continue its slide into deepening insolvency.
and
It is tempting to see the election as confirming the Marxian truism that politics is a shadow play in which victory goes to the dominant economic class. Certainly, a section of American capital demonstrated impressive political nous. During the neoliberal period, capital aligned itself with global free trade. At present, the most astute among the oligarchs are adapting to globalisation’s retreat. Backing AI, robotisation and the vertiginous rise of cryptocurrency, the counter-elite is aligning itself with the next stage of capitalist development. Anyone who talks of “late” capitalism has not understood its prodigious capacity for self-renewal.
PS Chabad counterrevolution
Speaking on about our favorite subject. Headless Chabad is in quest of unlimited expansion. When the world rejects globalization, they serve the deposed kings. A watered-down branch of the Christianity. The so called Kinnus is a business convention. Let’s add another ten shluhim to the absurd Dubai. Make a mockery of the original Rayatz intention. By the way, no one is a “shaliyach” now. I.e. the late Zvi Kogan was brought to the absurd Dubai to manage a store makolet. Taking my description of them as лавочники, shopkeepers too literally. This absurdity will inevitably explode.
במהרה בימינו ממש
If the Cathedral spends a decade raping the banks and productive billion dollar companies, forcing Musk to jump through endless hoops on pain of being shut down, debanking people with a phone call, well, Marxian analysis says nothing. If investors get tired of this and support Trump, Marxian analysis is triumphant-it's the shadow capital, after all! Cet animal est très méchant: Quand on l'attaque, il se défend.
When was the last time you went to the kinnus?
As a disillusioned person this years kinnus truly blew me away. Many tears were shed
Good fundraising?