Invest in belonging rather than belongings

Ari Shapiro of NPR spoke to Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist and the author of the books Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge And The Teachings of Plants and The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World. They talked about the economy of abundance. The central idea is whether an economy can be based on reciprocity rather than extraction. Capitalism is based on extraction, but that is not how natural landscapes are organized. Can human economy be circular and regenerative similar to how nature does it? Indigenous cultures widely use gift economies to distribute goods without a market. Other examples are little free libraries (I know of several within a few miles of me) on up to public libraries. Wall Kimmerer said:

So the notion is we don't all have to own everything. Abundance comes from sharing what we have.

Another example of a gift economy is ... NPR. Corporate America pushes the message that the more we consume the more successful and happier we will be. We’re even called consumers. Yet, hyper-consumption is one driver of climate change and environmental damage.

And so if we can start to put the brakes on consumption through practices like gratitude and reciprocity, we say, you know, I already have everything that I need. I really don't need to buy that next thing. Instead, I'm going to invest in relationship. I'm going to invest in belonging rather than belongings. And, you know, I think it's good for - I know it's good for the planet, but it's also good for us.

Wall Kimmerer is pleased that ecological economists are already thinking in this direction. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos noted that the nasty guy, the supposed champion of the working class, has named several billionaires to his cabinet and administration. The list: + Linda McMahon for Education. + Howard Lutnick for Commerce. + Scott Bessent for Treasury. + Steven Witkoff for Middle East Envoy, who has conflicts of interest there. + Jered Isaacman for NASA administrator – yeah, he did pay to fly twice on SpaceX, but that’s not NASA. + Warren Stephens for Ambassador to United Kingdom. + Charles Kushner for Ambassador to France, yeah, the father of the pandemic prince. + And Musk and Ramaswamy for DOGE.

Many of Trump’s rich-as-hell picks have embraced austerity policies that have already failed western democracies. Their disdain for government projects to help the non-rich is likely to lead to more boom for billionaires and more bust for the American people.

Morgan Stephens of Kos reported that Biden signed the defense funding bill. This is the one that has lots of good things in it, such as increased pay for militarily personnel. But it is also the one that bans military medical insurance from providing gender affirming care for transgender minors.

Biden "strongly opposes" the part of the bill that limits transgender health care and said it will negatively affect the military’s recruiting abilities.

Biden could have vetoed the entire bill, sending it back to Congress for revision. But there were many important things in the bill, including keeping troops paid and maintaining national security, and not any time before the end of this Congress to demand revisions. As for recruiting abilities, anyone with a transgender child won’t want to enlist and those who learn their child is transgender may get out at the first chance. Alix Breeden of Kos reported Biden withdrew a proposed regulation that ...

would have prohibited schools from enacting bans on transgender student-athletes trying to participate on the teams that align with their gender identity while allowing schools to enforce some restrictions on competitive sports.

Yet Biden’s move is being praised by “ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio, the first openly transgender lawyer to argue before the Supreme Court.” What’s going on? Strangio says the nasty guy would have withdrawn the proposal anyway and with the notice of the proposed rule in place the nasty guy could have redirected it into something worse. While Strangio praised Biden on this action, he called Biden’s signing the defense bill a “disaster.” Three weeks ago Breeden reported on the case United States v. Skrmetti before the Supreme Court challenges the Tennessee law that bans transgender minors from getting gender-affirming care. The lawyer arguing for transgender care was Strangio. The ruling may come as late as June. Gillian Branstetter, spokesperson for the ACLU’s LGBTQ Project explained why protecting the ban would be bad. She also explains Tennessee lawmakers are relying on the same logic as the Dobbs decision that took away the right to an abortion. I just saw that I have about two dozen pundit roundups in my browser tabs. I’ll try to get through some of those now. Others will have to wait for another day. And some of those tabs will just get deleted. In the comments of a roundup for December 16 Dennis Goris drew a cartoon of a mother and child talking to a doctor. The doc says, “We’re not doing polio shots anymore. But you do have iron lung coverage.” Also a cartoon by Barbara Smaller for New Yorker Humor shows a young man in a coffee shop saying, “It’s only a conspiracy theory now, but with the right marketing it could be a widely held belief.” I’m finding that some of the memes posted by exlrrp have a limited life. When I revisit some of these roundups I see a lot of broken links. From a roundup for December 13 is a cartoon posted by Dark Warlord. It shows the Muppet Grover dressed as a doctor standing in a surgery suite with the title, “I’m Sorry You Can’t Afford to Be Alive, and Other Stories From America.” In a roundup from December 17 Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times wrote about the Great Capitulation.

Displays of submission aren’t limited to tech and media. Christopher Wray, the head of the F.B.I., agreed to step aside before the end of his 10-year term rather than make Trump fire him. Several Democrats have signaled their willingness to work with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, whose so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, seems poised to hack away at our already threadbare safety net. [...] Different people have different reasons for falling in line. Some may simply lack the stomach for a fight or feel, not unreasonably, that it’s futile. Our tech overlords, however liberal they once appeared, seem to welcome the new order. Many hated wokeness, resented the demands of newly uppity employees and chafed at attempts by Joe Biden’s administration to regulate crypto and A.I., two industries with the potential to cause deep and lasting social harm. There are C.E.O.s who got where they are by riding the zeitgeist; they can pivot easily from mouthing platitudes about racial equity to slapping on a red MAGA hat.

Malcom Ferguson of The New Republic wrote about the postal service.

USPS privatization has been in the works for some time now. Trump-appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has been doing his best to corrode one of the oldest, constitutionally ensured institutions in this country. On-time delivery rates fell when DeJoy was appointed in 2020, particularly in communities of color. He facilitated the removal and destruction of mail sorting machines that were crucial to allowing USPS to function smoothly. And he has multiple questionable investments. Last week, he even covered his ears while being grilled by congressional Republicans for dismantling USPS from the inside out. “Louis DeJoy is the perfect example of a Trump nominee. After Trump appointed him, he ran USPS into the ground. Now, he claims it doesn’t work & will propose privatizing it,” one X commentator wrote. “Then, he, Trump & their cronies will steal the business, charge exorbitant amounts & rape the public.”

In a roundup from December 18 Greg Dworkin quoted The Bulwark discussing the real scandal of our media tycoons, which is the rich owners are increasingly antagonistic to their own journalism.

It’s no surprise media owners are rushing to make good with Donald Trump; they know he’s eager to hit them where it hurts. Trump hasn’t just vowed to punish media orgs that displease him, he’s also made it clear that owning such institutions is enough to earn a mogul his economic and political enmity. If you’re a newspaper owner or a corporation with a cable channel in your portfolio, the cost of subsidizing media that tells the truth about Trump has been jacked up tremendously. Say goodbye to that tariff waiver; good luck with that attempted merger.

Parker Molloy of Nieman Lab wrote on the same topic, first mentioning how Bush II treated the press after 9/11 and leading up to the Iraq War.

But this time could be worse. Media billionaires aren’t just staying quiet — they’re actively courting Trump’s favor. The coming wave of media consolidation means these owners have a vested interest in keeping Trump happy. After all, they’ll need his administration’s approval for mergers, favorable regulatory decisions, and continued tax breaks. The signs of this pre-emptive surrender are already visible in how outlets frame stories about Trump. Headlines have gotten softer. Coverage of his most extreme statements gets buried. Stories about his plans for retribution against political enemies are treated as horserace politics rather than threats to democracy.

A tweet from Shannon Watts:

I'm confused. Are Democrats fighting fascism or are we engaging in bipartisanship? Would be nice if leadership settled on a cohesive strategy and message. Either A) democracy is in danger, B) it's actually not, or C) it’s in danger but we still need to cooperate. Please advise.

And a tweet from Edward-Isaac Dovere

many things happened in the election, including an overall shift more toward Trump across a lot of demographic groups, but the difference in the election going to Trump over Harris in the Electoral College comes down to about 0.148% of the votes cast

In the comments Geo Is Pissed reproduced a child’s letter to Santa that sounds like a pretty good idea:

Dear Santa, I have a grate ideea. On Christmas when you are in every ones house you could take all of the guns and put them in your sack and hide them at the North pole and then no one could kill anyone in the world. Thank you.

And a meme that I remember but has a broken link: A family is throwing rocks. The caption says, “It’s not prejudice if you call it religion.” And the roundup for today. Dworkin quoted several pundits praising Carter. In the comments were several cartoons in honor of Jimmy Carter. I like the one showing Carter building a stairway to heaven. A meme posted by exlrrp:, “Notice how Jimmy Carter never gets condemned for mixing politics with his Christianity. That’s because he focused on living it out rather than making grand declarations about it our using it as a legislative weapon against others. Jimmy Carter just focused on loving other well!” – Rev. Benjamin Cremer, pastor and author.