A nation of private opulence and public squalor

I finished the book To Be Taught, if Fortunate by Becky Chambers. I’ve read several of Chambers’ other science fiction books and enjoyed and wrote about them. This one is a novella, only 140 pages. The title comes from words by UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim that went on the Voyager Golden Record in 1977 saying that humanity (or at least its artifacts) leave the solar system...

to teach, if we are called upon; to be taught, if we are fortunate.

The story is of four astrobiologists who go to another solar system to study four planets that might have life. That is wrapped up in a report they send back to earth. The story isn’t so much conflict and resolution, but a description of what an astrobiologist might do in their setting and how they would go about doing it. I enjoyed the story and if this kind of science fiction is your thing, you might enjoy it too. A week ago Oliver Willis of Daily Kos reported that Democrats in New York have reached an agreement to tax multimillion-dollar second homes. The money raised, perhaps up to a half billion will help pay for the affordability issues Mayor Mamdani wants to address. He announced the plans for the tax in front of the $238 million penthouse owned by billionaire Ken Griffin. Of course, Griffin and other billionaires had a few things to say. They described Mamdani’s words as “Just as hateful as some disgusting racial slurs.” That it’s a message to “resent success rather than trying to emulate it.” They called Mamdani a communist and un-American. I see that phrase “resent success” and think Mamdani isn’t resenting success as he is opposing the oppression that billionaires do to get that much money, then refusing to support the society that helped them get it. This past Monday Willis reported on words by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the response by Jeff Bezos, the guy made rich by Amazon. AOC had said:

You can abuse labor laws. You can pay people less than what they’re worth. But you can’t earn that.

Bezos replied through the editorial board of the Washington Post, the paper he owns and has bent to his will.

If someone becomes a billionaire selling expensive shoes, it’s because people want and are willing to pay for them. That’s something to celebrate, not admonish. ... To say that it’s impossible to legitimately earn a billion dollars is to put an arbitrary limit on human potential.

I’m amused that the Post editorial board included the word “legitimately.” Bezos certainly got his billions legally. But he did it by overworking and underpaying the people who work for him. That’s ethically wrong. Also, the editorial board sidestepped the possibility that a company can sell shoes, even expensive ones that people will pay for, and then make sure all the employees and suppliers are paid well, even if the CEO doesn’t reach the billion dollar level. Every Thursday Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quotes a bit from the late columnist Molly Ivins. Today, Bill posted:

The conservatives have been preaching this Me First stuff as though life were a race to the finish and the only object is to pick up as much money as you can. It doesn’t work—not even if you wind up with a lot of toys. As another noted economist said, we are becoming a nation of private opulence and public squalor. Look, we all do better when we all do better. You raise the minimum wage, it works for everyone. —May, 2006

In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Bob Flaherty of The Bulwark. The topic is the “autopsy” of the 2024 campaign that the Democratic National Committee shelved. It was said to be a detailed assessment of the Harris campaign. Flaherty wrote:

My understanding—based on Dem-world hearsay—is that the truth is stupider than the fiction: No autopsy was released because there is no actual autopsy. The members of the “autopsy team” were in over their heads and struggled to put the thing together.

Flaherty added that he wonders what an actual 2024 autopsy would have said. Yes, 2024 was the year that incumbents around the world were thrown out of office.

We underestimated then—and are underestimating now—just how disillusioned people are. There was and is a pervasive sense that nothing works and the institutions holding us up have failed. Media, government, business—no one trusts anyone anymore. For reasons both of Democrats’ own making and from simply being incumbents, the Democratic brand sucked.

I think people are disillusioned because Democrats seem to be beholden to billionaires as much as Republicans are. Historian Timothy Snyder, in his “Thinking about...” Substack discussed Superpower Suicide. The war with Iran, which is utterly unethical and utterly self-destructive, suggests the nasty guy’s foreign policy is superpower suicide. I think Snyder came up with the term and readers asked him to spell it out.

Empires have risen and failed before, but to my knowledge no state has ever chosen to kill its own power, and succeeded with such rapidity.

To explain Snyder listed thirteen traditional bases of state power and what the nasty guy has done with them. Here are some of them. Of course, Snyder has a much fuller explanation. 1. A superpower must be a state. It has institutions of law and other things. But the nasty guy sees it as a commercial opportunity. (Or a grifting opportunity.) 2. The power must be used for the good of the people. The nasty guy sees the power to be used for the good of himself. 3. The state must be able to maintain itself, to have a line of succession. Democracy can provide that. The nasty guy has declared he wants to stay in power indefinitely. 4. The right people have to be in charge. There is a tension because those who gain authority want to pass it to their children, which is why Roman Catholic priests are celibate. The source of qualified people is usually civil service or the military. The nasty guy gutted the first and is firing the competent ones of the second. 5. Education is the way to refresh society and help citizens understand the challenges of the world. The nasty guy is attacking them. 6. A great power forges an alliance with science. The nasty guy is shutting down research. 9. A great power practices diplomacy to understand other countries. The nasty guy trashes it. 10. A great power has allies. They may change as national interest changes. But the nasty guy damages alliances based on personal whim. 12. A superpower tends to win confrontations. The nasty guy loses a lot and others see his actions as loss (see: TACO and then Iran).

After a year of Trump, we face a situation where reform and repair are not the relevant categories. And, in a certain sense, this is useful. The fact that we reached this point, the fact that just a year of Trump could bring superpower suicide, shows us that the prior status quo was unsustainable. The systems that made the United States a superpower cannot be rebuilt as they were, nor should they be: they involved structural injustices that made the present attempt at self-annihilation possible. From where we stand now there are two ways forward: one is the self-induced downfall of the American republic; the other is to reconsider American ideals and to restructure American politics so as to bring the people greater power over a more just future.

In Sunday’s pundit roundup Kev quoted Michael McFaul, writing for his own Substack, about the growing cracks in Valdimir Putin’s rule of Russia. The top reason is his failure in Ukraine. That war has now lasted longer than the Soviet’s war against Nazi Germany. I hear he’s losing ground. He hasn’t achieved regime change. Instead of stopping NATO expansion he hastened it. The Russian economy is stagnating, a combination of recession, inflation, and budget crisis. The lifting of oil sanctions in response to the closed Strait of Hormuz won’t produce enough cash to make enough of a difference. The military is eating too many resources. Demographic challenges are worse because so many young people have fled or have died in the war. How long until this might remove Putin from power is not discussed.

Living a life void of love and compassion is not a happy life

My Sunday movie was Project Hail Mary and I went to an actual movie theater this afternoon to see it. This is a movie for the big screen. The story, adapted from the book by Andy Weir, is about Ryland Grace (which means actor Ryan Gosling is in every scene) solving a science fiction problem. A microbe is nibbling on the sun (yeah, that’s a scientific stretch, but let’s go with it) and the decreasing heat and light will cause the death of humanity in thirty years. Scientists determined a lot of nearby stars are also dimming. But one, Tau Ceti, isn’t. So the scientists of the world want to send a crew there to figure out why that star is spared. Grace is a middle school science teacher. In his past he wrote a paper proposing life could exist in other forms that don’t need water. It got a cool reception in the scientific community. But now his way of thinking might be a help, so he is forcefully recruited for the project. At Tau Ceti he wakes up from a coma on the spaceship, quite disoriented (of course) and finds the rest of the crew is dead. He doesn’t seem to know how to run the ship and I wondered why they would send a man into space without thorough training. The reason is eventually explained. He sees another ship nearby, a being from another affected star also looking for a solution. But this being appears to be made of rocks, confirming the paper other scientists rejected. That turns the story into a first contact story, then into a buddy movie as Rocky (what else are you going to name it?) helps Grace in trying to find the solution. The spaceship is, of course, named Hail Mary. IMDb tells me that gives us “Hail Mary, full of Grace.” Overall, I enjoyed it. It’s a fun story, though one must let the problematic science slide on by. The filmscore by Daniel Pemberton (who I hadn’t heard of before) is pretty good too. So are the special effects. The film deserves its box office take (close to $328 million so far). Even seven weeks since it opened the theater was reasonably full. Before seeing the movie I saw there are related videos on YouTube. First is 19 minutes of behind the scenes, how they did the stunts and special effects. This included exploring the puppetry of Rocky, the large array of sounds used in the score, and the wire work to simulate weightlessness. It is pretty good (not great). One person wondered isn’t Ryan Gosling old enough to be Ryan Goose? Second is a 27 minute video of the science mistakes in the film. This is by Hank Green, who apparently has done a lot of these sorts of videos. He asked his subscribers for science problems that pulled them out of the movie. Green begins by saying he very much enjoyed the film. He sees it as hopeful that so many diverse people came together to solve a problem and that some people were willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of humanity. Also, if the film was extra careful to get the science exactly right it would likely be unwatchable as a story. That’s important in an Andy Weir story where science plays an integral part in the story. The thing that got most of the attention was Grace uses a centrifuge and puts two vials in adjacent spots, which could introduce a wobble into the machine. Grace, a scientist, should know to put the vials on opposite sides. Related, Grace rarely uses an isolation chamber when dealing with the microbes. That’s dangerous when he’s the only human on board and if the microbes sicken him there goes the chance to save humanity. There are scenes where Grace is weightless and others where spins up the ship to get gravity. But exactly which plane of rotation is used isn’t consistent. But Green wasn’t all that concerned about it. Green thought Weir having the bad guys, the microbes eating the sun, also serving as fuel for the spaceship was a pretty cool idea. There was one aspect of the science not being right that I caught and Green didn’t mention. That is ships in space move differently than they do on earth. In space once the rockets stop thrusting the ship doesn’t stop, it keeps going at a constant speed. And some of Grace’s maneuvering (he wasn’t trained as the pilot) didn’t move as a spaceship should. It’s a highly enjoyable film, even if the science isn’t quite right. Grace and Rocky are great buddies. D’Anne Witkowski, in her Creep of the Week column for Pridesource, discussed toxic masculinity. Her discussion was brought on by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signing an anti-DEI bill and claiming that white males are discriminated against. Witkowski wonders why white male politicians keep seeing white males as victims even while they say it’s weak to be a victim. But the oppression isn’t coming from DEI, but from white dudes telling other white dudes (like her son)...

they have a god-given duty to be violent and misogynistic and dismissive of anyone who doesn’t look like them. Toxic masculinity is at the helm in this country, and we’re headed straight for a tiny fishing vessel that we’re going to blow up just for fun because we think it’s cool to kill people.

She is teaching her son “Cruelty is not strength. Empathy is not weakness.”

As any human with a heart and soul knows, living a life void of love, compassion and care for others is not a happy life. Yet the message in this country being fed to white, heterosexual, cisgender men is that the key to a good life is seizing power from wherever you can get it, especially from people who have less power than you. Fuck love and other sissy s---. Unsurprisingly, this makes these men very unhappy. And their unhappiness is blamed on immigrants and drag queens and women who wear pants and complain about being called “honey” in the workplace. And so they must oppress them. It’s literally a cycle of abuse.

I can hear a lot of men feeling “I’m not happy.” They may not know themselves well enough to recognize they aren’t happy because the manosphere doesn’t talk about happiness or feelings. Instead of trying to find things that make them happy they lash out at the things the manosphere tells them are the cause of their unhappiness. They don’t see the cause of their unhappiness is what the manosphere is telling them.

The entire Trump administration is the perfect encapsulation of this. A collection of mediocre, mostly white males engaged in a never-ending dick measuring contest. That’s literally all they know how to do.

Last Friday Lisa Needham of Daily Kos commented on the recent Callais decision by the Supreme Court that gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. She wrote the decision was based on a statistical error, which is an alarming thing to base such a sweeping and harmful decision on. But Justice Alito, the decision author, doesn’t care about such things as truth when destroying democracy. The statistical error was fed to Alito by the Department of Justice. What they said in their brief on the case was: “Black voter turnout in Louisiana surpassed that of white voters in two of the last five presidential elections,” as Needham phrased it. I won’t go into Needham’s details of the flaws that went into that statement. But this is an example of Alito taking anything he can get to claim that racism is totally fixed so the VRA is no longer necessary. I think Justice Roberts made that claim when they first started gutting the VRA, prompting a strong rebuke in Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s dissent. But even if the DOJ statement were true, that does not imply that black people are not an oppressed minority in Louisiana and thus don’t need protections when districts are drawn. Alas, Alito has shown us many times who he is. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Nicholas Grossman of Arc Digital. Grossman provided links to articles that show “the judges denied facts, distorted law, and contradicted themselves” in crafting the Callais decision. I haven’t followed the links. He then wrote:

Republican partisans on the Supreme Court created a pretext to gut the Voting Rights Act so the former Confederate/Jim Crow states, and red states more broadly, could manipulate maps to lock Black Americans and other minorities out of government representation. After the decision, multiple Republican-controlled states rushed to do exactly that. Then Republican partisans on the Virginia state supreme court created a pretext to prevent Virginia Democrats from responding in kind.

Many months ago I wrote that it seemed like Alligator Alcatraz was going away. That’s the deportation detention center built in the Florida Everglades in eight days. Alas, my reading of whatever I read, was not correct. The facility is still there. Needham reports that it may really be dismantled now. After it was built there were lawsuits saying the environmental reviews were not done. The federal government sidestepped the issue saying it was a Florida facility, not one of the feds. But to make that statement stick in court the feds could not contribute to running it. Say goodbye to $600 million. Which means Florida has to pay for it with a cost of $1 million a day. And Gov. DeSantis is resenting the expense. Needham discussed what $1 million a day, well, just $1 or $2 million (a piddling amount), could do for many other programs in Florida, but DeSantis wasn’t going to direct money to such things as food banks.

DeSantis’s ongoing quest to either impress Trump, be Trump, or both has jammed him up here. His unique combination of malice and incompetence meant that the Trump administration could always fake him out, and now the state is left holding this very expensive bag.

In Monday’s roundup Dworkin quoted Robert Kagan of The Atlantic. Kagan noted that previous military failures – early WWII, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq – didn’t prevent the US from keeping its dominance.

Defeat in the present confrontation with Iran will be of an entirely different character. It can neither be repaired nor ignored. There will be no return to the status quo ante, no ultimate American triumph that will undo or overcome the harm done. The Strait of Hormuz will not be “open,” as it once was. With control of the strait, Iran emerges as the key player in the region and one of the key players in the world. The roles of China and Russia, as Iran’s allies, are strengthened; the role of the United States, substantially diminished. Far from demonstrating American prowess, as supporters of the war have repeatedly claimed, the conflict has revealed an America that is unreliable and incapable of finishing what it started. That is going to set off a chain reaction around the world as friends and foes adjust to America’s failure.

Systems designed to funnel wealth upward

I finished the book The Brightness Between Us by Eliot Schrefer. It is described as the sequel to The Darkness Outside Us (my discussion of that book is here), but it actually alternates between sequel and prequel. I’ll start by saying I enjoyed the book and find it a fitting continuation of the story of the love between Ambrose and Kodiak that developed on a spaceship. I start with that because I really can’t describe this book without including things I refused to say about the first book, not wanting to spoil it. So much of my discussion must be a spoiler alert. The true mission of the first book, not revealed until well into it, is that Ambrose and Kodiak are to settle a new planet. The spaceship is staffed by a series of clones of the two men, each new pair having to relearn the mission they thought they were on was a lie. Once on the planet they activate the gestation devices and start creating a family. Yeah, this contrasts with my discussion of the book A City on Mars, which I discussed last month. That book considers a minimum number of people to make an outpost of humanity viable. And, yeah, that number is a great deal larger than two. In the sequel side of this story the two children created by the gestation devices are coming up to their 16th birthdays. The devices were used more than twice, but these two are the only ones still alive. The family is getting by, but discovering the planet gets hit by comets a lot more frequently than earth does. One of the children is beginning to have mental health issues, which they’re not equipped to deal with. That is another issue A City on Mars considered. In the prequel side the original Ambrose learns the true mission of the spaceship – and why he’s not on it and his clones are. Ambrose is the scion of the hugely powerful corporation that built the ship and plays a giant role in global politics. Of course, he rebels. He goes off to find the original Kodiak, also bumped from the flight. They worry a war might finish off humanity. There is an interesting interplay between the prequel and sequel parts of the story. The originals discover things that are playing out on the new planet. The author says he consulted people at NASA. Even so, I found some aspects of the science a bit dubious. For example, as one more comet approaches (and we knew there would be) one of the children is told to limit outside exposure due to the comet’s radiation. That word implies nuclear fission, and I’m pretty sure comets have very little of that, certainly none that would affect the surface of a planet while it is still in space. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported that Tennessee Republicans redrew Congressional districts in the Memphis area to eliminate a Democratic seat. The entire Tennessee delegation will now be Republicans. This redistricting effort is directly a result from last week’s Supreme Court decision to gut Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Since Memphis is majority black its district was protected by Section 2. With that gone so is the district.

While GOP state Rep. Todd Warner entered the House chamber wearing a Trump 2024 flag as a cape—and was roundly booed by protesters—Democratic state Rep. Gloria Johnson called the legislative session a “white power rally, and a white power grab.” The measure passed along party lines [in the House], 64 to 25, as protesters blared alarms and chanted “shame,” a sentiment that followed the all-white Republican lawmakers as they left. ... Democratic state Rep. Justin Pearson, who represents the predominantly Black Memphis, spoke before the vote, invoking Tennessee’s history of slavery, lynchings, and mass incarceration. “I want you to know—and I want my nephews, sons, and the future to know—no matter what you do,” Pearson said. “No matter how much you try and break us and make us bend and make us quit, we will still be here!”

This action is “absolutely racist and regressive.” Emily Singer of Kos reports that Chief Justice John Roberts is pouting.

“I think at a very basic level, people think we’re making policy decisions, [that] we’re saying we think this is what things should be as opposed to this is what the law provides,” Chief Justice John Roberts complained Wednesday. “I think they view us as truly political actors, which I don’t think is an accurate understanding of what we do. I would say that’s the main difficulty.” Yes, darn those “people” who think that you put your finger on the scale for President Donald Trump and Republicans when you declare him to be above the law and tear up settled cases to take away Americans’ rights and stack the deck for Republicans!

An Associated Press article posted on Kos begins:

The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday struck down a voter-approved Democratic congressional redistricting plan, delivering another major setback to the party in a nationwide battle against Republicans for an edge in this year’s midterm elections. The court ruled that the state’s Democratic-led legislature violated procedural requirements when it placed the constitutional amendment on the ballot to authorize the mid-decade redistricting. Voters narrowly approved the amendment April 21, but the court’s ruling renders the results of that vote meaningless.

This is a part of the redistricting wars and Democrats had hoped to gain 4 seats in Virginia. Voters had previously approved an amendment to the state Constitution to have a redistricting commission draw districts rather than the legislature. That means an effort to override the commission must also be in the form of an amendment to the Constitution. To get an amendment before the voters the legislature must approve it twice, with a statewide election in between. And this is where the justices got picky. The first approval was in October. But early voting for the November election was already underway. So does an “election” mean the one day, or the entire time that citizens are voting? Back in January a lower court ruled an election is the entire time citizens are voting. The Supremes let the vote proceed before hearing the case. Then they ruled against the vote. The court is not obviously liberal or conservative. In Friday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Jill Lawrence of the Los Angeles Times:

I’m not alone in hoping for a tough and confrontational 2028 nominee, someone who is aggressive, persistent and, when necessary, as ruthless as the forces on the opposite side. This person also must have the energy to undertake the mammoth task of repairing the institutional wreckage of Trumpism. Which suggests Democrats should be checking out younger nominees. Fortunately, newer generations of leaders are emerging. Those who “get it,” in my view, include Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut.

There are a few others mentioned, some better known, but Lawrence questions whether they would “prioritize thinking big and fighting hard for the fundamental changes we need.” In today’s roundup Dworkin included a series of tweets on the fallout of gutting Section 2. In response to the possibility that these redistricting efforts allow Republicans to keep the US House Brian Rosenwald tweeted:

And let me tell you something, this is going to compel even the most reticent Democrats like me to support drastic changes to the courts. I’ve resisted for years. But this just shows that Republican judges are anti-small d democratic forces in the worst way.

Another from Rosenwald referring to Democratic candidates for president.

You’re not going to be able to win the 2028 primary without being for Court packing. I have misgivings, but a bunch of judges wholly lacking in common sense have made their own bed.

Lakshya Jain tweeted:

More broadly, the House is not a tossup for 2026, even after the current set of redraws. Our surveys consistently show a pretty blue environment (a bit bluer than 2018). Dems are still in position to get ~225 seats — and maybe more — even after redistricting AL/LA/TN.

A majority is 218 seats. Election Enjoyer tweeted:

This is one of the most overlooked pieces of the redistricting war. Several states could flip to Democratic trifectas this November, and that alone opens the door for more Dem-friendly map redraws before 2028.

Egberto Willies of Kos summarized an exchange between Katy Tur of MSNOW and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, with AOC saying billionaire wealth is unearned. From the summary:

The commentary challenged the mythology surrounding extreme wealth accumulation and exposed how billionaires often profit not through individual brilliance alone, but through public investments, labor exploitation, market manipulation, and systems designed to funnel wealth upward. Katy Tur’s reaction appeared awkward and uncertain, reflecting the discomfort the establishment media often displays when foundational assumptions about capitalism are questioned publicly. The discussion expanded by revisiting Tony Dokoupil’s comments on billionaire philanthropy, arguing that charitable giving by ultra-rich elites does not replace democratic decision-making. Instead, the segment asserted that workers, taxpayers, engineers, educators, and government-funded researchers collectively create the wealth that billionaires later claim as personal achievement. ... The conversation exposed a truth many Americans increasingly recognize: extreme wealth concentration is not the natural outcome of hard work alone. It is the product of systems designed to privilege capital over labor. As inequality widens, more people are questioning why a handful of billionaires wield more economic power than entire communities. Progressive movements continue pushing Americans to rethink wealth, democracy, labor, and the role government should play in creating an economy that works for everyone—not just the chosen few.

Thom Hartmann of the Kos community and an independent pundit wrote about how billionaires are stealing from the rest of us. Many people, including myself, have known this is going on, though not knowing the details. This is confirmed by Ashley St. Clair, former brand ambassador and mother to one of Elon Musks’ 14 kids. She created a series of TikTok videos and did a feature for The Washington Post describing the conservative influencer economy. She estimates “roughly 99 percent” of the largest influencers are compensated in some form with the amount locked behind nondisclosure agreements. And that doesn’t need to be disclosed because the content is “political” and not “commercial.” Thanks, Supreme Court! When a point is pushed by a few big influencers it is picked up and echoed by the smaller ones, adding to the echo chamber. Yeah, this is similar to a 2024 case of Putin funneling almost $10 million to influencers that promoted Kremlin interests. Hartmann noted that there is so much conservative money going to influencers Putin could plug into it with no one noticing. The effort started with the Powell Memorandum of 1971, which I’ve mentioned a few times. It suggests that American business “had to build a permanent infrastructure of think tanks, media operations, scholars-on-call, colleges, and legal foundations to destroy New Deal programs like Social Security and union rights.” And rich people responded, creating the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, the CATO Institute, ALEC, Turning Point USA, Hillsdale College, and more. And these groups fund the influencers. The money pays for a constant flow of messages saying such things as: + Working class white people should be afraid of Black and Hispanic people. + Women are stealing their jobs. + Gay and trans people are coming after their kids. + The “trickle down” theory really works, despite 45 years to the contrary. + Deregulation lowers prices. + Fossil fuels are essential and climate science is a hoax. + Russia and Israel are friends; Canada, Germany, and France are enemies.

It’s a deliberately constructed fog of lies and grievance, and it has one purpose: to keep us screaming at each other about bathrooms and brown-skinned invaders while the people writing the checks rob us blind.

One estimate is that since 1975 “$79 trillion has been ‘redistributed upward’ from the bottom 90 percent of Americans to the top 1 percent.” And in 2023 alone that was “$3.9 trillion, enough to give every working American a $32,000/year raise.” That’s while we don’t have a national health care system, going to college means a lifetime of debt, our infrastructure is crumbling, and the climate crisis gets worse. The rich and Republicans rely on this because if their actual policies, which caused all these problems and are widely unpopular, were known the political landscape would dramatically shift overnight. It should be a scandal.

And the next time somebody in your life forwards you a piece of viral right-wing outrage, ask them one simple question: who paid for that post? The answer, more often than not, will be a rightwing billionaire or the fossil fuel, pharma, insurance, tech, or banking industry that made them rich. And once people know that, the spell starts to break.