Thanks for putting up with my kids-book cartooning for several weeks. All I can say is that my grandkids like it. Target audience, don’t you know.

Speaking of target audience, that’s you, dear Rant Reader. And I’m turning my full attention back to you now after my furlough from writing Rants.

Actually, my time off was more of a busman’s holiday. Most of it was spent preparing for the launch of my novel, Western Living. While I got a lot of prep work done, there’s a lot more that needs doing. As I mentioned before I went on break, publication is some tricky shit (to channel Thelma now instead of Samwise). Complexity upon complexity, with many niggling details to deal with every step of the way.

Here’s a bit of an update.

1) A Publishing Imprint & Logo in Development

I’ve selected a name for my Publishing Imprint. I commissioned the fabulous artist Hannah to design the logo. Behold a working draft:

Look on her Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

2) A Cover Design is Drawing Nigh

There has been much work, a number of preliminary versions, and a lot of consultation with my Board of Directors (i.e. family members putting up with my constant pestering) to settle upon a perfect front cover for my novel.

And an amazing cover has been selected!

But you don’t get to see it yet...

There will be a BIG REVEAL sometime in the not-too-distant future. (Can you feel the marketing suspense building???)

Besides, there’s still the spine and the back cover to design. So, Board of Directors, gird thy loins.

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3) Author Pages Popping Up Online

I’ve spent more time than I care to admit designing online Author Pages for myself. You know, narcissistic nattering about what an all-out bloody wonder I am. (But, golly gee, you already know that...)

It’s not just that I find narcissistic nattering taxingly disconcerting. It’s also been no small task struggling to manipulate the different platforms I’ve had to use to build these Author Pages.

There’s creating, entering, and editing self-serving bios and glowing descriptions of my own works. There’s selecting, downloading, and cropping spiffy and evocative photos and images that wholly relate my genius and grandeur.

Hype is exhausting.

Let me tell you, the Goodreads author portal is one big clunk-fest. I don’t think it’s been upgraded since it first appeared online in 1842.

And the #1 concern of the Amazon Author Page is to make sure users never click away from The Great and Powerful Amazon. When constructing my page, I wasn’t allowed to enter any relevant outside links. Even mentioning anything too specific that might tempt customers to stray off to other websites seemed out of bounds.

Yes, Amazon be weird. But it’s where the most books get sold. So there I be. Marketing is an exercise in compromising your ethics. In that spirit, here are the links to my Author Page on those two sites:

Kirk Combe on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/1550016.Kirk_Combe

Kirk Combe on Amazon Authors: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Kirk-Combe/author/B001HOOQLM?spcref=AUTHOR_CENTRAL_VANITY_URL_LIVE&shoppingPortalEnabled=true&ccs_id=5ac6d66f-c796-490b-a7e0-ecf68eab6fc7

(Try to keep the laughter down.)

And, if you care to get the fuller story of, well, ME, please peruse my Academic website: https://sites.google.com/a/denison.edu/kirk-combe/home?pli=1

4) The BIG PLEA on https://kirkcombe.com/

Lastly, please visit my very own personally designed Author Page at:

https://kirkcombe.com/

It’s not half-bad, if I do say so myself.

And please please please on my Author Page subscribe to My Mailing List.

That will give me the welcome illusion of headway. Even...success.

(Illusion is important when you’re cranking out hype.)

I pinky promise I won’t inundate you with stupid emails. I’ll just keep you informed about the publication date of my book, any readings and promotional events I do, and—maybe just maybe—any FREE GIVEAWAYS of my book that might be coming your way...

(Can you feel the marketing suspense building???)

I’m also going to give a quick shoutout to the platform I used to design this Author Page. Namely, BookBub. Unlike the other platforms, BookBub is a model of clear instructions and easy-to-use features. If you’re ever faced with building an author page of your own, I highly recommend it.

Again, please go take a look at the utterly magnificent and stunningly pleasing site I constructed. And, never fear, I’ll continue to improve my Author Page as I get expert feedback from my Board of Directors. (Heh-heh.)

And, it goes without saying, I’ll finish with yet more hype:

Go to: https://kirkcombe.com/ !!!

Subscribe to: My Mailing List!!!

So what?

So what does all this mean?

Well, aside from the shameless neoliberal self-promotion above, it means that Rants are going to start coming your way again. Regularly.

In fact, next week you’ll be getting another Rant. And then we’re back on the normal schedule of a Rant appearing in your email box (thank you) every other Wednesday.

I hope you continue to read and to enjoy. I can’t thank you enough for being here.

COMING NEXT WEEK: an audio Rant!!! Oh, joy!!!

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Four novels of science fiction driven by political fact(ion).

By Kirk Combe

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SoldierGirl

All things military by someone who has been an Army Brat, an active-duty Army officer, and a scholar of military culture

By Brenda M. Boyle

GET ON THE EDGE OF YOUR SEATS, FOLKS!!!

JUST WHO IS THIS MYSTERIOUS “K.H.” FELLER???

Will we ever find out???

Well, folks, let’s see exactly what them Trolls do get up to…

OH WHAT ARE OUR HEROES COOKING UP???

To be concluded next week…

OH I CAN’T WAIT FOR NEXT WEEK TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT!!!

To Be Continued…

OMG WOW!!!

Coming Next Week:

THE SAGA OF YOSEMITE SADIE

SUPER GASP!!!

To Be Continued…

THE ADVENTURES OF SHORTY BEAR

Who is Shorty Bear? Just about the best durn bear that ever padded about the forest, that’s who! Who’s this guy Pop that writes and illustrates these sensational sagas? Well, shucks folks, that’s me—Pop being my nom de grandpa.

Yep, that’s right. When I’m not rantin’ and fumin’ mad about the socio-economic fix we’ve got ourselves into, well, I’m writing a few books for my grandkids. (Which is probably a whole lot healthier than rantin’ about stuff.)

So here’s what you’re gonna get over the next few weeks. Rip-roarin’ installments of The Adventures of Shorty Bear. So sit back, grab some popcorn, and enjoy the hell out of the thrills-n-spills coming your way!

Here goes nothin’:

Gasp!!!

To Be Continued…

I promised you that a BIG ANNOUNCEMENT was on its way. Well, it’s here.

I’m publishing a novel titled Western Living.

My novel is a sequence of interrelated stories that follow the troubles of two families in the stark landscape—and culture—of southeastern Idaho during the middle of the 20^th century. More precisely, Western Living is a coming-of-age story focusing on the childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood of two people—Bettie Clayton and Jean-André Clucas, Jr.

Bettie grows up an only child in a working class, Jack Mormon family in the small city of Pocatello—a life and locality she longs to escape. Jean-André grows up in an extended immigrant clan of subsistence ranchers in the isolated agricultural town of Arco—a life and locality he desperately needs to escape.

Their paths cross as they attempt their breakaways.

The backdrop of this multigenerational family saga is America during a crucial period of transformation—the Great Depression and World War II. Pivotal issues of class, race, and gender were recast during those decades in the social forge of economic upheaval and global combat. As a novel, then, Western Living tells a story as well of the shaping of the America we live in today.

As of now, I don’t have an official release date for my novel. I’ll update you as soon as I can. I also hope to share with you soon the book cover for Western Living—which will be fearsome.

For now, please stay tuned!

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So what?

For the next month or two, I’ll be taking a break from writing and sending out Rants. It takes a lot of work to prepare a book manuscript for publication. I’ll be wholly occupied with that task.

However, as I say above, I will be keeping you informed about the progress of my novel as the publication date approaches. I’ll also try to post an audio Rant or two in the coming weeks—and maybe even a quick mini-Rant here and there.

After all, my job is to keep you analytically entertained!

AND DON’T FORGET...

Read some provocative fiction. Check out and subscribe to my other Substack newsletter, 2084 Quartet at:

2084 Quartet

Four novels of science fiction driven by political fact(ion).

By Kirk Combe

While you’re at it, read some provocative social commentary. Check out and subscribe to this absolute Substack gem as well:

SoldierGirl

All things military by someone who has been an Army Brat, an active-duty Army officer, and a scholar of military culture

By Brenda M. Boyle

Just believe in It.

(You can feel the body relaxing already...)

You’re also always going to be in the Right. How delicious is that? Everyone else—meaning non-Believers—by definition will be some mixture of dumb, misguided, wicked, and probably criminal.

That’s certainly something The Righteous can work with.

(Fund-raising against evil morons is a piece of cake...)

Human history is a chronicle of contending Absolute Truth(s). Religions. Cultures. Tribes. Kingdoms. Nations. Political Factions. Economic Systems. Races. Genders. The only way to construe Hamlet.

The list of Absolute Truth Clashes—time and again leading to violence if not full-scale warfare—is endless.

(Should this plethora of Absolute Truth give us pause as to the feasibility of the concept?)

I certainly long for the comfort of Absolute Truth. Mine is that the 3-point shot has ruined the game of basketball. Vanished is the high-speed chess match of an athletic competition founded on sharing the ball versus off-side help. Replacing it is the cheap thrill of a circus shot founded on four players spaced motionless around the arc like they’re waiting for a lollipop.

(For readers less familiar with Hoops, just tune into five minutes of any NBA game and you’ll see exactly what I mean. Yawn.)

More troubling, though, is that the pursuit of Absolute Truth brings about detrimental social effects.

For example, as I write this Rant, Trump is starting to yammer hard about the need for America “to return to Christianity.” Yes, his approval ratings are just that dismal and the midterms are looming just that large. When western dictators get truly desperate, they resort to the “C” word (always in tandem with increased funding for their thugs).

Trump traffics hard in Absolute Truth. He sells all manner of It. From a bygone “Great” America, to the notion that all melanated Immigrants are the spawn of Satan, to pretending that he has any familiarity—let alone respect—for the messages of Jesus. (Hell, I’m a better Christian than Trump—and I’m not a theist.)

The primary assertion of this Rant, then, is that Absolute Truth is hazardous to human social and political wellbeing.

To explore my shocking claim, we’ll look no further than the last 50 years of American political wrangling.

American Seesaw Politics

As a voter since 1972, I’ve experienced little more than a stomach-churning political seesaw ride that pits two rival macroeconomic theories against one another. In particular, starting in 1980 with the election of our Neoliberal Poster-Boy, Little Ronnie Reagan, the American presidency has bounced giddily between the supply-side economics of Republican conservatism versus the demand-side economics of Democratic liberalism.

This endless up-and-down is enough to make a voter puke.

To make sure we’re all on the same page, here are nutshell definitions of these two models:

Supply-side economics. The basic principles: 1) give Tax Cuts to the Wealthiest Folk and to Large Corporations so they can invest more; 2) De-Regulate industry and business so they can produce cheaper and faster; 3) promote Free Trade to allow easy access to cheap raw materials, cheap labor, and to broader markets. The basic theory: Cutting taxes and regulations for corporations and wealthy investors will encourage them to produce more goods and create more jobs, resulting in increased economic growth that will benefit everyone. The motto: “A rising tide floats all boats.”

Demand-side economics. The basic principles: 1) focus Government Spending on infrastructure, education, and social safety nets to create jobs, enable small businesses, and put more money in people’s pockets; 2) give Tax Cuts to the Middle and Lower Classes to encourage spending and economic growth; 3) enact Regulations and Consumer Protections that support minimum wage increases, protect the environment, and ensure the public has steady, reliable purchasing power. The basic theory: Putting money directly into the hands of ordinary consumers will inject cash into the economy, creating more demand, more jobs, and increased growth. The motto: “Grow the economy from the bottom up.”

Of course, the details and nuances of these two broad economic visions, when enacted by specific presidential administrations, are far more complex than these thumbnail sketches allow. Moreover, American economic policy always occurs within the wider jumble and churn of global economics—that is, of fiscal and political circumstances beyond any president’s control. All manner of global variables can derail even the best-laid plans of domestic economic policy. In short, nothing is simple about constructing a political economy.

However, by and large, the two horses in any presidential race for the past half century have been either Demand Side or Supply Side. And here’s a list of our winners.

Jimmy Carter (1977–1981), Democratic

Ronald Reagan (1981–1989), Republican

George H.W. Bush (1989–1993), Republican

Bill Clinton (1993–2001), Democratic

George W. Bush (2001–2009), Republican

Barack Obama (2009–2017), Democratic

Donald Trump (2017–2021), Republican

Joe Biden (2021–2025), Democratic

Donald Trump (2025–?), Republican

What is more, supply-side economics—also known as neoliberalism—does not work, has never worked, and by now has a proven and woeful half-century track record of not working.

By way of its combined policies of slashing top marginal tax rates, weakening labor unions, deregulating corporations, and allowing financial markets to run wild, the only financial benefit neoliberal supply-side economics has produced is allowing productivity gains to be captured almost exclusively by executive compensation (salaries, bonuses, and stock options) and capital owners (the super-wealthy top 1% of Americans), rather than being distributed via rising wages to the broader workforce.

In plain talk: shoveling money upward to a tiny minority of increasingly very rich people.

Highly reliable, verifiable sources report that, since 1980, the shift in cumulative income alone falls somewhere in the range of $50 trillion to $79 trillion taken away from the bottom 90% of Americans and given to the top 1% of Americans. At this point, roughly 32-35% of the national wealth is owned by this top 1% of Americans; meanwhile, the bottom 50% of Americans possess around 1.5% to 2% of total national wealth. (See: “Measuring the Income Gap from 1975 to 2023”; World Inequity Database; “Distributional Financial Accounts.”)

In short, if you’re not super-rich in today’s America, it sucks to be you.

And who do 99% of Americans have to thank for this situation? Easy. The Republicans in their bloody-minded, decades-long, billionaire-driven pursuit of neoliberal supply-side economics.

[A necessary and contextualizing caveat: But let’s be fair. There are plenty of what’s come to be called “Corporate Democrats” to blame as well. That is, “moderate,” corporate-friendly Democrats who happily feed at the neoliberal trough by favoring supply-side equivocations over demand-side solutions when it comes to addressing the slow economic downslide of the American middle and working classes. Clinton notoriously cozied up to Wall Street (see here). And corporate-backed Democrats now use slick branding—such as “Supply-Side Progressivism” or “the Abundance Agenda”—to continue favoring the supply side over the demand side (see here). However, while we should not lose sight of these DINOs (Democrats In Name Only), my focus here is to inspect the behavior of the primary architects of our current neoliberal nightmare—namely, Republicans.]

SO HERE’S MY BIG QUESTION: If Republican fiscal policies have been sucking the marrow out of the bones of the American public for 50+ years, why the hell does a good portion of that American public vote for these Robber Baron bastards? And in particular electing—TWICE—a smirky blowhard grifter like Trump?

HERE’S MY BIG ANSWER: Because since Reagan, the Republicans have masked their shitty supply-side economic policies by selling voters, instead, on the seductive bauble of Absolute Truth.

The umbrella term for this Grand Old Party deceptive strategy is, of course, Culture Wars.

Starting with Reagan, Republicans have been thumping hard the Bible, waving feverishly the Flag, and vilifying zealously any and every Other in sight (immigrants, gays, women who refuse to be doormats, anyone daring not to be white, those who fail to believe that Christ intends to kill and send straight to Hell everyone except White Christian Nationalists, libs, foreigners, climate scientists, medical professionals, Trans folk, Colbert fans, Californians...well, you can keep filling in the blanks).

Instead of proposing fiscal policies designed to promote the general welfare, Republicans spout shrill accusations about America “turning its back” on “our most cherished beliefs and traditions”—meaning, really, various Absolute Truth thingamajigs. Invariably, their gaslighting takes the form of beating voters over the head with various versions of the greatest whitebread hits: love of God, Country, and Country Club.

Maybe the oldest political trick in the book is that when all you’re got to offer, governing-wise, is low-grade horseshit, you need to peddle, instead, high-sounding bullshit. Telling cultural fairy tales is likely the best way to motivate citizens to self-sabotage.

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Back-and-Forth We Go

If we look at some measurable economic data from 1980 to the present, distinct patterns emerge showing this economic seesaw ride described above. Here are four such indicators from “The Bartels Effect” (named after political scientist Larry Bartels). That is, a methodology used by economists to track the social phenomenon where different income groups thrive under different political parties.

Indicator 1: “Middle-Out” versus “Top-Down” Growth

The most measurable indicator of economic health is the Real Income Growth by Quintile. Since 1980, data from the Census Bureau and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) show that under Democratic administrations, income growth not only is more balanced among all groups, but that low- and middle-income families (the bottom 80% of Americans) see faster real income growth when a Democrat is in the White House.

By contrast, under Republican administrations, data shows that income growth is significantly more top-heavy. That is, when a Republican is in the White House, the 95^th percentile and the top 1% of Americans typically see their incomes rise much faster than the middle class.

Indicator 2: Tax Policy as a Tool of Wealth Distribution

Tax legislation is the most direct measurable indicator of which group a presidential administration prioritizes. Without question, Republican tax policies favor the rich, while Democratic tax policies favor the middle and working class. To wit:

Reagan Tax Cuts (1981): benefited top earners and corporations by dropping the top tax rate from 70% to 28%; as a result, wealth inequality began to spike.

Clinton Tax Hike (1993): benefited low-income Americans by both raising the top tax rates and expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC); as a result, Americans enjoyed the only period of “shared prosperity” (income growth for all groups) in the past 50 years.

Bush Tax Cuts (2001/2003): benefited top 1% and investors by reducing capital gains and estate taxes; as a result, the federal surplus amassed under Clinton turned into a deficit.

Obama Affordable Care Act (ACA or “Obama Care”; 2010): benefited low- and middle-income Americans by funding healthcare via taxes on higher earners; as a result, substantial economic gains were shifted to the bottom 40% of Americans.

Trump Tax Cuts (2017): benefited corporations and the wealthy by slashing corporate tax rates from 35% to 21%; as a result, stock buybacks reached record highs, enriching executives at the expense of workers.

Biden American Rescue Plan (2021) and Inflation Reduction Act (2022): benefited middle-class and working-class Americans by raising taxes on larger corporations and high earners; as a result, as opposed to sweeping tax reforms that would have been impossible to get approved by Congress, targeted tax credits and various cost-reductions were embedded into major pieces of legislation.

Trump One Big Beautiful Bill Act (2025): benefites high-income households and corporations by extending permanently the many tax breaks given to them in Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts; as a result, low- and middle-income Americans will experience sweeping reductions to financial assistance provided by Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

Indicator 3: Labor and Union Strength

One of the strongest predictors of a healthy working and middle class is participation in Labor Unions. Typically, Republicans support so-called “Right to Work” laws that, in fact, undermine trade unions. Republicans also appoint conservative members to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) who routinely favor management in labor disputes.

By contrast, Democrats historically push for higher minimum wages and use the NLRB to make it easier for workers to unionize. Notably, under Biden, unions saw a surge in membership and activity.

Indicator 4: The “GDP versus Median Income” Gap

One final indicator of financial wellbeing is to look at how much of America’s overall economic growth reaches the average person. Comparing the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country with the Median Household Income for its citizens reveals this important measure.

Unfortunately, since 1980, the numbers show that while the GDP has grown significantly, the Median Household Income often has stagnated. What this means is that while productivity and corporate profits have increased over the past five decades, the paychecks and benefit packages taken home by workers have not.

Thus, even though supply-side economics promises that a rising GDP tide will float all household boats, this shared fiscal boon simply is not the case. From the very start, critics of supply-side Reaganomics dubbed it “trickle-down economics”—meaning that, in practice, such monetary policies would result in mere dribs-and-drabs of financial benefit leaching their way down to ordinary Americans. And such has been the reality.

Decidedly, all this new wealth generated by neoliberal schemes is NOT tricking down.

Within this ominous overall trend, data shows that Democratic administrations nonetheless generally succeed in narrowing the gap between GDP and Median Income. Republican administrations, on the other hand, typically widen this gap—that is to say, under GOP government, wealth stays with corporations and shareholders rather than flowing into middle- and working-class wages.

But What About Our Big Beautiful Stock Market?

Trump loves to tout the booming U.S. Stock Market (whenever it booms, that is). That’s because Trump only cares about keeping wealthy stockholders happy. Everyone else—to include all the MAGA unwashed masses—can go to hell.

Besides, the Stock Market is no measure of public financial wellbeing. (It’s Las Vegas on steroids.) The inequality gap in stock ownership in America is staggering.

By income, among households earning $100,000 or more, 87% own stock. For households earning less than $50,000, that number drops to just 28% (see here).

By value, according to Federal Reserve data, the top 1% of Americans own roughly 50% of all corporate equities and mutual fund shares. The top 10% (to include that 1%) own almost 90% of all stocks (see here).

Meantime, the bottom 50% of the American population combined own just 1% of the nation’s total stock market wealth (see here).

As you can see, even though the majority of Americans technically own at least a bit of stock, for most of the population that investment represents a relatively small retirement nest egg. By no stretch of the imagination are great numbers of Americans playing the market as a major driver of their personal wealth.

That privileged, high-stakes game is reserved for the super-wealthy very few who sit atop the current American neoliberal supply-side pyramid.

So what?

In my previous two Rants, “Radical and Plural Democracy, Part 1” and “Part 2,” I discussed—at length—the concept of a radical and plural democracy. That’s a post-Marxist approach to modern western democracy that fights for social and economic justice by way of adhering to the two basic principles signified by the words “radical” and “plural.”

To review:

Plural: Uniting the plurality—meaning the majority—of the citizenry to resist exploitation at the hands of a moneyed and powerful minority. That is, a small group of plutocratic elites who have rigged the political, economic, and legal systems of the nation for their express gain.

In other words, opposing the current state of America in 2026 under the neoliberal thumb of Republicans and Corporate Democrats.

Radical: Acknowledging that any political settlement or solution to social problems is always provisional—meaning temporary and bound to the particular circumstances of the social moment. By understanding that any “Truth” is momentary and makeshift—NOT forever and universal—one faction of a society will have less opportunity to use “Absolute Truth” as a ploy to grow into an exploitative plutocratic minority.

In other words, democracy is a project perpetually under negotiation, refinement, and construction. Any “ideal” or “end of history” scenario is a ruse of the powerful.

What is more, in those previous two Rants, to designate the kinds of oppressive ideologies capitalist elites deploy, I used the term “bourgeois Absolute Truth.”

To be crystal clear, what I meant by “bourgeois Absolute Truth” in those Rants is exactly what I mean by “Absolute Truth” in this Rant.

That is to say, the bourgeois-Absolute-Truth-ploy currently being foisted on the American public is the range of Culture War hot-button issues the Republican Party has been feeding voters for the past fifty or sixty years. Most prominent among these faux-Truths, perhaps, is the infallible supremacy of a Christian God, the American Dream, and the White Man.

What’s my grand, final point about this ginormous mess?

Well, just two thoughts come to mind.

First, what a waste of time, money, energy, and promise is this inane seesawing back-and-forth between Republican and Democratic administrations. In my view, for the last half-century, all that’s really been happening politically is that a Democratic president will come in to eke out a smidgeon of progress on the social-justice front, only to be derailed by a Republican president getting voted in by a duped, under-informed, and impatient electorate clamoring for “change.” That Republican president then will make a fiscal and social mess of things (always by way of tax cuts), which triggers the election of the next Democratic president who has to come in to clean up the mess.

Not only is this cycle futile and exhausting, but round-and-round we’ve gone—all while the rich get richer—until we end up with the complete disaster of Trump.

Second, hey, I know it will be hard, but let’s lighten up a bit on our obsession for “Absolute Truth.” Okay? I know that it’s a lovely pipedream to imagine that we can have The Answer. But, come on, when have you ever really run across The Answer? I know we all think we have. (I will forever maintain that the 3-point shot sucks—even though I’m quite happy whenever any team I’m rooting for hits one.) But, if you actually think about it, a bona fide The Answer would mean that EVERYBODY agrees it is The Answer.

Universal Truth requires Universal Accord.

And that ain’t never gonna happen.

So, how about we give the humility and open-mindedness of provisional truth a try?

COMING SOON: an Astounding, Wholly Positive, and—I hope—most Welcome Announcement for you to contemplate!!!

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All things military by someone who has been an Army Brat, an active-duty Army officer, and a scholar of military culture

By Brenda M. Boyle

Radical and Plural Democracy (continued...)

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t update and augment Marx’s social theories. (What else are theories for?) And a renewal of traditional Marxism is what Laclau and Mouffe undertake. In fact, in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, they effectively flip the script on orthodox Marxist theory, turning it on its head. If old-school Marxism declares that the economic base of a society controls its ideological superstructure, first and foremost, Laclau and Mouffe reverse that dynamic.

Laclau and Mouffe declare that the ideological superstructure of a society controls its economic base.

Building on the earlier work of Marxist theorists Antonio Gramsci and Louis Althusser, Laclau and Mouffe contend that ideology isn’t a reflection of reality; ideology creates reality for us. What and how we think about the world determines the kind of society we build. The real source of social power, then, is not the material (monetary clout and military muscle), but the mental (perceptions and beliefs).

Actual hegemony comes from controlling the master narrative.

More social power is maintained through consent than through police batons. If socialists want the benefits of capitalist productive power to be shared more fairly, they must first and foremost battle against the current master narrative: bourgeois Absolute Truth. After all, such an ideological battle is how the bourgeoisie gradually came into dominance—by attacking the aristocratic Absolute Truth of the medieval worldview.

People act in the way they talk about and understand their situation. Everything is discursive. Telling a compelling story is the foundation of political power, of hegemonic control. Contrary to traditional Marxism, then, ideology is the primary spark of social change, not a secondary byproduct of the established order. Ideology doesn’t just support a revolution; it assembles the revolutionaries. “The People” do not exist until they are spoken into existence.

Here’s a quick and unfortunate example of an ideology that runs contrary to socialist objectives: MAGA. Each word is a battleground. (Make: shape or compel? America: defined as what? Great: defined how? Again: nostalgia over vision?) And, for the past decade or so, it’s proving to be an ideology alarmingly successful at materially replacing the old Liberal Democratic hegemony with a new hegemonic order: Authoritarian Plutocracy.

A second reversal of classical Marxist thought carried out by Laclau and Mouffe is that of contesting the idea of the inevitable collapse of capitalism. Nothing guarantees that the capitalistic system will self-destruct at some point down the road. If anything, capitalism is showing itself to be distressingly nimble as it adapts to new technologies and exploits labor in ever novel ways. (Even to the point of replacing human labor with far more cost-efficient AI.)

For Laclau and Mouffe, everything is contingent. Society is conditional, not fixed or fated. Instead of the scientific “certainty” of old-school “historical inevitability,” they make a case for society being held together—or torn apart—by the hegemonic power of ideas and ideology. Of course, capitalism can change or even disintegrate completely. But that event will be the result of a hands-on political project, not the mechanical breakdown of a mystical economic engine.

Politics is a constant battle for hegemony. Social change is a matter of struggle—not waiting for the clock of history to run out.

A third major rebuttal of Marxist orthodoxy undertaken by Laclau and Mouffe is to challenge the primacy of “the worker” as the “universal class”—that is, as our one and only revolutionary hope and savior from the clutches of capitalism. First of all, there’s no guarantee that a “worker” is going to be revolutionarily minded in a socialistic way. Indeed, many working people are quite conservative in their politics, often to the point of voting for politicians who decidedly do not have the best economic interests of the working class in mind. (We’re back to MAGA here.)

Second of all, “workers” are not the only people in a capitalistic society who have a beef with the current hegemonic order. All sorts of folk suffer at the hands of bourgeois Absolute Truth. Laclau and Mouffe point out that, in fact, many of the most radical social reforms of the 20^th century have come about not from walkouts by labor unions, but from the campaigns of organizations fighting for women’s rights, racial equality, LGBTQ+ rights, environmentalism, and others. Laclau and Mouffe do not disparage or dismiss the importance of the industrial worker. Far from it. But they argue that it is a mistake to think that only the worker can mount a successful challenge to capitalistic power.

And here is where we reach—finally—their core idea: radical and plural democracy.

The idea is simple.

The more people (pluralism) fighting for social justice, the more sweeping and uncompromising (radicalism) will be their push for equality (democratic principles and procedures).

Laclau and Mouffe believe that the “worker-only” approach to social change is too narrow for the world of the late 20^th-century and beyond. The battle for justice and equality takes place not only on the factory floor, but in the streets, in the courtrooms, in the media, in the town hall, in the classroom, in the marketplace, in popular culture—in short, throughout society. By focusing only on workers, argue Laclau and Mouffe, traditional Marxists miss out on the diverse and potent energies of many groups seeking to oppose systems of oppression.

Auto workers or Amazon workers or Starbuck workers or public school teachers striking for better pay and benefits. Street protesters marching against the lawless brutality of ICE. College students demonstrating against free-speech limitations or tuition hikes. Survivors of sexual violence fighting for justice and accountability against the child rapists enabled by Jeffrey Epstein.

These—and so many other—acts of political resistance are all linked to the realization and expansion of democratic rights and principles.

Therefore, instead of a “vanguard” of industrial workers leading the way, Laclau and Mouffe propose a “chain of equivalence” (xviii) of people and groups engaged in various revolutionary struggles all aiming at the same result: not just economic justice, but liberty and equality for all in every aspect of life.

That’s what they mean by “radical and plural democracy.”

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Are ALL of these Postmodern Troublemakers Named Jaques?

No, not all of them. But the two troublemakers Laclau and Mouffe call upon in their postmodern revitalization of Marxism are: Jaques Derrida and Jaques Lacan. I won’t get too deep into the theoretical weeds here, but it’s important to understand the underlying principles of Laclau and Mouffe’s post-Marxism.

From the psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Jaques Lacan, Laclau and Mouffe borrow a key theory: point de capiton. Literally meaning “quilting stitch” or “upholstery stitch” in French, this is a stitching technique where the fabric is firmly and finally sewn together in an unbreakable anchor point. Lacan uses the term to denote how, in language, the signifier (a spoken or written word) and the signified (a meaning) are pinned together, likewise in a seemingly unbreakable way.

Lacan uses this quilting and upholstering metaphor to describe how language functions. More specifically, how we stop words from sliding around in endlessly fluid and unstable meanings to fix them at a certain point into one permanent meaning. Such a “permanent” meaning is, of course, arbitrary and not a fixed point at all. Words are always sliding around. But in order to make something approaching sense out of language, we do need to slow words down into relatively stable meanings that we can all—more or less—agree upon. For a while, anyway. (If you need to brush up on basic semiology, see my Rants “What’s in a Word? Two Things” and “Signs, Structures, and Myths.”)

Laclau and Mouffe use Lacan’s theory of point de capiton to describe how, in politics, certain words such as “democracy” or “order” or “patriotism” act as anchor points of pseudo-fixed political meaning. They use the term “nodal point” to indicate how a partisan “master-signifier” can assume “a ‘universal’ structuring function within a certain discursive field” (xi). What they’re talking about is ideology. In particular, capitalist ideology—what I’ve termed above as bourgeois Absolute Truth. The wealthy and the powerful of capitalism use any number and all kinds of politicized nodal points—Truth, Justice, the American Way, MAGA—to convince us that we’re living in the best of all possible social worlds. Laclau and Mouffe set out to unknot these false and biased nodal points.

Laclau and Mouffe’s post-Marxist political project, then, is the linguistic deconstruction of the master narrative—that is, the oppressive lies—of bourgeois hegemonic ideology.

To engage in this ideological showdown with the bourgeoisie, Laclau and Mouffe call upon the Prince of Postmodern Darkness himself: philosopher and linguist Jaques Derrida. Foremost in their polemic arsenal is Derrida’s notion of undecidability. (If you care to review some of the basic linguistic theories of Derrida, see my post “The Devil is in the Derrida” Part 1 and Part 2.)

In the Preface to the second edition of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (2001), Laclau and Mouffe explain:

If, as shown in the work of Derrida, undecidables permeate the field which had previously been seen as governed by structural determination, one can see hegemony as a theory of the decision taken in an undecidable terrain. (xi)

Translated into more readable English: If Derrida shows us how no word can ever arrive at a final and definitive and ever-lasting meaning, then the concept of “hegemony” can never arrive at a final and definitive and ever-lasting form in the real world of politics. In short, political power is always up for debate. Always fluctuating. And anybody who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you something.

Laclau and Mouffe use the term social antagonism when applying Derrida’s concept of undecidability to statecraft. By this they mean that conflicting political ideas and adversarial power struggles are inevitable in society and that these battles never come to a nodal point of final resolution. There is no perfect social organization ever to be attained. We must accept “the ineradicability of antagonism” (xvii) as our social reality.

For Laclau and Mouffe, “any form of consensus is the result of a hegemonic articulation, and that it always has an ‘outside’ that impedes its full realization” (xviii). That is to say, any “system of power” will exclude—put on the “outside”—someone and some groups. Inevitably, that someone and those groups then will fight for inclusion into the empowered circle. While these ideas might seem a disturbing view of human social interaction, Laclau and Mouffe see them as realistic.

The central role that the notion of antagonism plays in our work forecloses any possibility of a final reconciliation, of any kind of rational consensus, of a fully inclusive ‘we’. For us, a non-exclusive public sphere of rational argument is a conceptual impossibility. (xvii)

More than just realistic, Laclau and Mouffe see this ongoing social antagonism as a source of hope. Far from shutting down the democratic project, it enables the expansion of democracy.

Indeed, we maintain that without conflict and division, a pluralist democratic politics would be impossible. (xvii)

The practice of a radical and plural democracy, as defined above, will serve as the political engine always propelling us closer and closer to the—albeit unreachable—goal of a fully just and fair society.

Right now, at the hands of the current neoliberal hegemonic order, we are experiencing the global impoverishment of billions, the unfolding of global environmental disaster, and the formation of a handful of bully superstates beginning their violent and suicidal scrapping over dwindling natural resources.

Certainly, expanding the wealth and opportunity—and thus the political influence and voice—of more and more people is superior to this miserable nodal point of cut-throat capitalism.

So what?

I promise you, when I sit down to write a Rant, I’m hoping to produce a pithy 1,000 words or so. Something short and snappy.

I never get there.

As a recovering academic, I can’t seem to shake the habit of the only plausible argument being a substantial one. So you get more detail than you need—and likely want.

Sorry about that.

But herein lies a bigger issue and problem. One that troubled me as a teacher. One that troubles me as I write my Rants. One that, on a much larger scale, plagues our national politics.

Useful ideas require explaining.

I could be churning out any number of smart-sounding socialistic sound bites and grandiose existential pronouncements. I’m full of them. They’re fun and easy. You’d probably enjoy them more, too. (For example: Trump’s real coalition should be called GRUMPY—Greedy Rich & Uninformed Middling Poor Yahoos.)

But that wouldn’t really be getting us anywhere.

As is the case with the idea of a radical and plural democracy, once you arrive at it, you’re able to nod and say, “Oh, sure, I get it.” But, as you’ve just seen, that ready understanding is founded on lots of cogitation and context. And that takes time and effort—on the part of both the presenter and the listener.

There’s the rub.

In my upper-level college seminar, I could take a class period or two to explain and to have students discuss all of Laclau and Mouffe’s difficult ideas. (The same ones, by the way, that I’ve related to you in this two-part Rant.) But that’s what a college course is for: deep dives into demanding cogitation and context. And even if students don’t always like what they’re diving into, they know that’s what they signed up for.

So, in college, useful idea explaining and exploration can happen.

With my Rants, however, I’m not at all certain even that modest benchmark is being achieved. I’m undertaking the quixotic quest of popularizing cultural theory—a ridiculous endeavor that’s likely dead-on-arrival. And I know it. Yet I can’t seem to help myself. I just keep writing long, complex Rants. All in a foolhardy attempt to deliver a crystalized, insightful idea or two for your genuine consideration, dear reader.

Many thanks to those who bear with me.

But if I’m in a tight spot when it comes to offering ideas, think of the plight of American politicians. How do they break through the inane clutter of outright lies, outrageously silly conspiracy theories, and heaps of tantalizing media and social media bullshit? It takes a lot of explanation and contextualization to get across serious, detailed facts about the world and to propose authentic, viable ideas for sound governance within that world.

However.

By and large, I fear, most Americans simply don’t want to take the time to understand such complicated shit. Thus our current moron-driven politics.

But that’s for my next overly long Rant...

COMING IN TWO WEEKS: the political blunder of Absolute Truth...

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SoldierGirl

All things military by someone who has been an Army Brat, an active-duty Army officer, and a scholar of military culture

By Brenda M. Boyle

Below is a link to an interview of SoldierGirl (aka Brenda Boyle) being interviewed on New Books Network by John Armenta. The subject is Brenda’s most recent book, American War Stories (Rutgers University Press, 2021).

Weapons-grade smart stuff here.

Give this interview a listen if you want to understand more about how much we, as Americans, don’t understand about why we’re so in love with all things militaristic.

Here’s the link:

https://newbooksnetwork.com/american-war-stories-2

Give it a listen.

You’re welcome!

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In 1985, Laclau and Mouffe published an important book titled Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. On two separate occasions, I tried to teach this book as part of an upper-level seminar titled “The Literature of Work.” Both semesters, the reading went over like a lead balloon. Why?

Because the prose is too dense and the barrage of ideas too dizzying. Here’s a random sentence from page 30 of the second edition (published in 2001):

The main point of divergence was that, whereas orthodoxy considered that the fragmentation and division characteristic of the new stage of capitalism would be overcome through changes in the infrastructure, revisionism held that this was to be achieved through autonomous political intervention.

Um, yeah, I wouldn’t have wanted to be faced with that as an undergraduate.

The intended audience of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy is, of course, specialists in the fields of Political Theory generally and Marxist Theory specifically. That is to say: not undergraduate students. But that doesn’t mean the cultural viewpoints put forward in the book shouldn’t be presented to undergraduates for their consideration. So, in subsequent seminars, I incorporated several of Laclau and Mouffe’s core concepts into the course by way of summary and explanation and discussion. Why?

Because I wanted students to wrestle with these ideas. I also wanted students to have available to them in their Critical Tool Box as many different provocative cultural theories as possible.

One theory in particular I wanted students to wrestle with is the cornerstone of Laclau and Mouffe’s political project. That theory is: radical and plural democracy.

The basic concept is fairly straightforward and down-to-earth—once you grasp it. The journey to arriving at an understanding of what Laclau and Mouffe mean, exactly, by “radical and plural democracy” is, however, a tad convoluted. But well worth the effort.

Below I offer you a shortcut on that journey, starting with a bit of background information.

A bit of background information

Hegemony and Socialist Strategy is considered to be the foundational text of a theory called post-Marxism. In a nutshell, post-Marxism moves beyond (the meaning of post) classical Marxism by way of bringing into that 19^th-century body of social-economic theory a variety of innovative 20^th-century ideas about the mutability—as opposed to the stability—of language, identity, and culture. Rather than the fixed truths of nature, post-Marxism sees these things as being the arbitrary constructions of power.

In other words, post-Marxism deconstructs Marxism.

In particular, Laclau and Mouffe brought the 20^th-century post-structuralist practices of Derrida, Foucault, and Lacan to bear on the 19^th-century essentialist social analyses of Marx. And, as you might imagine, this ideation update pissed off mightily the old-school Marxist theorists of the day.

What Laclau and Mouffe argue is that traditional Marxism is no longer viable as a way to challenge the oppression of capitalism. Traditional Marxists contend that economic determinism (the notion that the economy dictates everything else) and class essentialism (that the working class is the sole agent of revolution) are the central concerns of socialist resistance. Laclau and Mouffe bring to the struggle as well the idea that political power (hegemony) is a discursive process—that is, a construct of language and culture—that must be scrutinized to be confronted effectively.

Equally, Laclau and Mouffe reject the idea that only the working class has a role and a stake in social rebellion. They propose that an array of oppressed groups—often overlapping with workers—have skin in the game of fighting for social and economic justice. Here identity politics comes into play. A variety of different struggles—feminism, anti-racism, environmentalism, LGBTQ+ rights, anti-ableism, anti-colonialism, religious freedom, and more—can link together with the labor union movement to defy and overturn dominant power structures.

For Laclau and Mouffe, there is no single, stable Marxist revolution afoot that involves only worker-versus-owner. Rather, the fight against the capitalistic powers that be is an ever-shifting, fiery alliance of anyone and everyone who decides it’s time to break free of their societal chains. Post-Marxism fundamentally reshapes how political theorists conceive of power, personal identity, and social movements.

Although orthodox Marxists didn’t appreciate this new wave of ideas invading their conceptual space, political activists and left-of-center politicians readily embraced the inclusivity of Laclau and Mouffe’s political theories. What’s come to be called Left-Populism directly employs the “agonistic politics” of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. This new socialist movement has been and continues to be influential in Latin America, Europe, and North America as a means to do battle with the neoliberal billionaire-Epstein class.

If you’re in the mood for a bit of non-undergraduate reading, see The Populist Explosion by John B. Judis (2016), For a Left Populism by Chantal Mouffe (2018), and On Populist Reason by Ernesto Laclau (2005).

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Radical and Plural Democracy

The first thing to point out about Laclau and Mouffe is that, like Marx, they don’t want to do away with the productive power of capitalism; they want its benefits to be shared fairly with everyone in society. I’ll risk some quotes from Hegemony and Socialist Strategy.

In our view, the problem with ‘actually existing’ liberal democracies is not with their constitutive values crystallized in the principles of liberty and equality for all, but with the system of power which redefines and limits the operation of those values. (xv)

In other words, liberal democratic states talk a big game about freedom and equal opportunity, but when it comes to devising their power structures, a dominant group of rich and influential people always situate themselves at top of the pyramid. (For example, in practical terms, the “founding fathers” of the United States only created liberty and equality for themselves—that is, for land-owning white men.) As socialists, Laclau and Mouffe want to counteract such systemic inequality. They declare:

The task of the Left therefore cannot be to renounce liberal-democratic ideology, but on the contrary, to deepen and expand it in the direction of a radical and plural democracy. (176)

And here is their key concept: radical and plural democracy. So what is that, exactly? Basically, it’s the opposite of what all states (liberal-democratic or otherwise) are at pains to establish: Absolute Truth. That is, what Laclau and Mouffe term above (in the quote from page xv) “the system of power” that controls the state.

To explain.

Consciously and unconsciously, the richer and more powerful folk of a society—as they dominate and run that society due to their wealth and power—also formulate some manner of grandiose, supposedly self-evident collective belief system that serves as an axiomatic truth justifying their social dominance. In conjunction with this belief system, the rich and powerful set in place all manner of social systems—political, economic, legal, civic, moral, racial, gendered, scientific, religious, educational, linguistic, and so on—that not only paint them in a good light, that not only guarantee the perpetuation of their wealth and power, but that aim to attain the status, in the mind of the populace, of irrefutable reality.

“Universal” truth. The “natural” state of humanity. “Normal.” “Right.” “Good.”

More often than not, as icing on the cake, these fabrications of Absolute Truth claim to be divinely ordained. Some manner of “God” put the whole works in motion—usually for conveniently unknowable reasons. Thus the rich and powerful position themselves to be The Crown of Creation.

Does any of this sound familiar as it might pertain to the democracy, monarchy, theocracy, or dictatorship near you?

In terms of Political Theory, what we’re talking about here is both ideology (the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence) and hegemony (the means by which some people hold power over other people). Importantly, these two concepts are at the heart of Laclau and Mouffe’s analysis of late 20^th-century capitalism. They are also at the heart of their dispute with old-school Marxists.

Traditional Marxists insist that the dominant group in a capitalistic society—the bourgeoisie—maintains its hegemony not only because it controls the wealth and productive output of that society (what Marx calls the base), but because it has a stranglehold on the ideology of that society (what Marx call the superstructure). That is, ideology is a one-way street of bourgeois Absolute Truth imposed on and regulating society. If the economic base of a society isn’t changed, there is no way to change the cultural superstructure of that society.

In the orthodox Marxist view, therefore, ideology alone is not enough to spark revolution. Political dissent and unrest is regarded as more smoke than fire, shadow rather than body. The great majority of citizens succumb to the fog of ruling-class ideology, developing—to use Marx’s famous phrase—a false consciousness that prevents them from seeing their own exploitation. For this reason, only a material jolt—not a mere mental one—will snap people out of their fog and cause them to rise up against their capitalist oppressors. Moreover, such a material jolt can only be carried out by industrial workers.

And here is where classical Marxism gets particularly essentialist and confined within its 19^th-century European bubble.

Marx believed that the downfall of capitalism was hard-baked into its system and therefore inevitable. The further capitalism advanced and spread globally, the more populations would be thrown into poverty and misery—finally reaching a breaking point at some uncertain time in the future. When that time comes, however, only industrial workers will be in a position to carry out the revolution and overthrow capitalism. This is because workers are the essential cog in the capitalist system. Without workers, the capitalist means of production cannot function. Workers, then, by being central to the system, are in a unique position to paralyze the system.

Because of their shared motivation (they have nothing to lose but their chains) and their close proximity (laboring together in factories, mines, warehouses, transportation networks, and so on), workers will be able to organize into unions and trigger the magnitude of work stoppages necessary to bring owners—and the entire bourgeoisie—to their knees. What will follow the revolt is some manner of social organization (Marx never goes into specifics) not founded on the exploitation of labor and stark inequities in wealth.

This hopeful prognostication is why Marx regarded industrial workers as the “universal class.” Because they would be abolishing the class system that oppresses all of society, workers would be liberating not only themselves but all of humanity. (If you’re interested in adding detail to this thumbnail sketch of Marx’s basic concepts, see Marx.)

From his vantage point within the brutality of early industrialization in Europe, Marx is razor-sharp in his analysis of capitalism. While some of his ideas and predictions have fallen by the wayside, his breakdown of the fundamental workings of capitalism not only remains valid, but offers the most powerful critique and challenge to modernity we have. As capitalism now conquers the globe—as Marx forecasted—his social theories are more pertinent than ever.

Do not diss Marx.

END OF PART 1

COMING IN TWO WEEKS: the exciting conclusion of Radical and Plural Democracy!...

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All things military by someone who has been an Army Brat, an active-duty Army officer, and a scholar of military culture

By Brenda M. Boyle

In Part 2, we look more closely at Trump’s ideological twist on this kind of scam.

Spotting a Ponzi Scheme

Spotting a Ponzi Scheme requires seeing past the charming personality of the scammer to focus instead on the underlying mechanics of the “investment.” A set of specific structural red flags always appear because these schemes are based in deception. Here are the ones that pertain to Trump’s ideological Ponzi Scheme.

1) High Returns with Little to No Risk: Risk and return are intrinsically linked in the financial world. To get higher potential returns, you must accept higher potential loss. An investment strategy that promises guaranteed high returns is a huge red flag. The same can be said for political investments. Politics (and history) is a chronicle of things going other than planned. In Trump World, however, nothing can or ever has gone wrong. Trump (according to Trump) has never failed at anything. Nor will any of his innumerable pie-in-the-sky promises ever not come to full fruition. There will be so much winning that we won’t know what to do with all that winning.

Even better, in the political investment deal that Trump offers Americans, all we have to do, to obtain all of our hopes and dreams, is nothing. Nothing but pledge undying blind loyalty to Trump. (No doubt “In Trump We Trust” will be stamped on our national crypto-currency.) Trump has even promised us that things will be so Great Again that we’ll never have to vote again. That’s how amazingly high-return, no-risk the new MAGA America will be.

2) Overly Consistent Returns: This second red flag works in conjunction with the first red flag. Both signal that the scam simply isn’t operating within the realm of reality. Financial markets are volatile, constantly going up and down. A legitimate investment will fluctuate over time. If, however, an investment provides steady positive returns every single month regardless of overall market conditions (as Bernie Madoff’s did), it’s likely that the “returns” are being fabricated to keep investors calm.

The same can be said about voter investments in potential political outcomes. Ideological returns are always on the rise in Trump’s political rhetoric. Everything is always working exactly as he planned—so there’s never any need to change course or even question his political strategies. It’s always sunny in MAGA Land.

3) Secretive or Complex Strategies: When asked how the money is being made, the financial scammer will answer something like “It’s a proprietary algorithm” or “The investment tool is too complex to explain” or “This is a secret trade craft that can’t be shared.” Big red flag. If an investment process cannot be explained to you, for whatever reason, you should not put your money into it. The same goes for politics. When politicians promise results without setting out a solid plan to get there, walk away. Trump excels at having—let alone stating—no plans at all.

Under Trump, the Republican Party has failed to set out a serious, detailed Political Platform in its past two Presidential Conventions. With Trump, all voters get in the way of policy discussion is the vague, meandering bluster of Trump saying whatever lie pops into his head at the moment. His jabbering often includes claims that he has “a fantastic plan for healthcare” that he’ll reveal sometime down the road or “very smart people working on stuff” that will solve every problem that’s ever been. Really stupid, obvious, and hollow ploys of obfuscation. All smoke and mirrors.

4) Issues with Paperwork and Withdrawals: A Ponzi Scheme thrives by keeping money inside the system. Administrative warning signs to watch for, then, include frequent “clerical errors” or unprofessional-looking account statements. Investors also often have trouble withdrawing their principle from the scam; the scammer will suddenly offer higher returns or claim that “temporary liquidity delays” prevent reimbursement. Trump’s political Ponzi Scheme has its equivalents to these runarounds.

Bogus proof of return on political investments from Trump include: Executive Orders and legislative proposals that sound great but never become law; legal challenges to election results or prosecutions of political enemies that seem hard-hitting but, in fact, have no legal legs to stand on and get thrown out of Court; big agenda proclamations to rightwing media and on social media that sound tough and can-do but are just more hot Trumpian air; and so on and on.

As far as stalling political principle being withdrawn from his ideological scam, Trump habitually resorts to whining to his followers about “the looney left” or “the fake news of the radical marxist media” or “the deep state” or “the Biden crime family” unfairly getting in the way of his marvelous MAGA agenda. Trump always keeps an “Enemy of the People” handy so he can deflect blame away from himself. Another of his favorite moves is to feign ignorance when something goes wrong, shrugging as he says something stupid like, “I don’t know anything about that” or “That wasn’t my decision.” Then he throws one of his bootlickers under the bus.

5) “Exclusivity” and Pressure: Scammers often use the in-group tactic of “affinity fraud” to target members of a specific group. They claim that the remarkable investment strategy is a “special favor” only for an “inner circle” of members. This fiction creates a psychological barrier that prevents victims from seeking outside professional advice. Trump’s carefully defining the elements of MAGA as a movement and then courting very specific groups to bring into that ideology smacks very much of this tactic.

Trump (and his rightwing media) meticulously creates a powerful US-versus-THEM mentality for his supporters to embrace. That way, not only can any negative assessments of Trump quickly be dismissed, but he can pretend to be working exclusively for the good of his loyal base. You know, lowering gas and food prices, restoring White Christian Nationalism, making everything Great Again for the select and smart-money few. As a result of this rhetoric, once someone has sunk political capital into Trump, it’s very difficult to extricate yourself from the con.

In fact, the actual members of a special group Trump has targeted is the Epstein Class billionaire bunch. And in particular Big Oil and Big Tech. Trump really is working to rig the system—even more—for these folks. So why would they ever consider getting off of Trump’s Gravy Train?

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So what?

Fair warning here. The closing remarks of this two-part Rant are going to get pretty dark.

But what else are Rants for?

In the world of finance, Ponzi Schemes eventually collapse. These schemes require a constant and exponential flow of new money coming in. Things go south for the scammer when enough new investors/suckers can’t be lured in or when too many investors try to withdraw their funds at once—often prompted by a broader economic downturn. That’s what brought to light Madoff’s long-running Ponzi Scheme—the crash of 2008.

One would hope that the same principle applies to Trump’s political Ponzi Scheme. That its eventual collapse will come about when Trump can’t lure in enough new voters/suckers or when a downturn in his political fortunes prompts enough of his ideological investors to withdraw their political capital from his scam. That’s what more than half of Americans have been hoping and counting on for years now.

That this shit-tsunami of Trumpism will eventually wash over us and recede into the cesspool of American political misadventure.

After the January 6 riot at the Capitol, it looked like Trump was done-for. And he should have been. But, with a characteristic combo of no-spine and all-self-interest, Mitch McConnell and Congressional Republicans refused to convict Trump and impeach him for good. Flushing him down the political crapper.

So here we still are—hoping.

As I write this Rant in late March 2026, hope is running high again that such a long-overdue crash of Trump’s ideological Ponzi Scheme is at last taking place. His popularity has tanked. His followers are angry about his Epstein Files coverup. Americans hate ICE and everything its thugs are doing. His tariffs have backfired. Inflation is going up and up—“affordability” becoming the political watchword of the day. Tech Bro AI is on the verge of putting millions of Americans out of work. And then Trump decides it’s time to do the one thing he absolutely campaign-promised not to do: get us entangled in foreign wars of regime change. First in push-over Venezuela. Then in non-push-over Iran. A domestic and geopolitical blunder of epic proportions that has skyrocketed gas prices to boot.

As a scammer running a Ponzi Scheme, how stupid can Trump get?

But Trump is no longer running a Ponzi Scheme. He’s conducting a coup.

An international coup of billionaires from around the world. Putin and Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) foremost among them (both of these autocrats no doubt encouraged Trump’s war on Iran and now both are raking in big oil bucks because of the spike in oil prices). Our own American Tech Bros and Oil Execs happily along for the Big Bucks Anti-Democracy Joy Ride. In short, Trump no longer cares about attracting or keeping “investors.”

Trump had to run his Ponzi Scheme up through his 2024 re-election and the passing of his Big Beautiful Bill—which was rammed through Congress as quickly as the Republican majority possibly could. Once that bill was passed into law—and the Big Beautiful Tax Cuts for Billionaires was in place AND his private ICE army was bountifully funded—Trump could drop all pretensions of giving a shit about his voters or governing a democratic republic.

Trump isn’t wooing supporters anymore for his MAGA scam. Just the opposite. He’s looking to shut down voting completely for the upcoming 2026 midterm elections.

And beyond.

Trump’s endgame now is power consolidation, shrinking our three co-equal branches of government down to just one imperial branch: Trump. He’s already captured the Congress. He has a majority on the Supreme Court more-often-than-not in his back pocket. He’s strangling the Universities and the Free Press. The big money billionaires are solidly behind him.

All that wants doing now to solidify this coup is for Trump to be able to deploy—with impunity and without limitations—our own military on our own streets across our own country.

He’s been dabbling hard with doing just that. Calling up National Guards from Red states to plop down provocatively in Blue cities. Unleashing ICE and Border Patrol goons to intimidate, to batter, and to shoot-to-kill civilians. Describing legitimate protests as acts of “domestic terrorism.”

Trump wants riots. He wants not only civilians to be killed by ICE, but a few ICE agents to be killed in turn. To foment such popular unrest, Trump keeps turning up the heat. Now he’s putting ICE into airports around the country so that they can be really high-profile assholes in front of even more Americans. And no doubt Trump would love for a NO KINGS rally somewhere to get completely out of hand. Meaning bloodshed.

Why?

So he can impose The Insurrection Act of 1807, which authorizes the President to deploy military forces domestically to suppress insurrections, rebellion, or civil disorder. This act is a statutory exception to the Posse Comitatus Act, which limits the use of the federal military to enforce domestic law enforcement.

To understand this situation fully, read this razor-sharp post from SoldierGirl: The Story of how the Commander-in-Chief uses the US Military.

In other words, Trump would like nothing better than to give a free rein to Pistol Pete Hegseth and his “Department of War” to wage he-manly, warrior, unfettered-by-pussy-Geneva-Convention warfare on the American public.

How come?

Because even better than having a batch of Ponzi Scheme suckers stupidly playing along in their own financial ruin is a populace of brutalized supplicants trembling at the feet of The Emperor.

COMING IN TWO WEEKS: really not sure yet...

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All things military by someone who has been an Army Brat, an active-duty Army officer, and a scholar of military culture

By Brenda M. Boyle

Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.

— Louis Althusser (1970).

To accept Althusser’s characterization of ideology means, maybe, that all ideologies are a form of Ponzi Scheme. And that might well be the case. I’m convinced that the way Trump peddles his MAGA ideology is nothing but a Ponzi Scheme. And a highly effective scam at that.

Trump has convinced a lot of Americans—poor and rich, uninformed and informed—to start walking down the pathway of MAGA stupid. And for a variety of reasons—and despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary—they either can’t or don’t want to get off that path.

Why? How? Just WTF is going on?

The Great and Powerful Ponzi

Charles Ponzi (1882-1949) was an Italian immigrant turned con-man who came to America to ply his trade (just like Trump’s grandfather deported from Germany and his mother immigrating from Scotland). The namesake scam he ran was basically the zero-sum game of robbing Peter to pay Paul. That is, a form of fraud where investors (Paul, as it were) are lured in, then the supposed return on their investment is paid not from actual profits, but from the funds of subsequent investors (Peter). No real money is being made. The scammer simply scrambles to keep the flow of suckers—and their money—coming in while he pockets a good deal of these “investments” (more details about this swindle below).

The famous fraud Ponzi ran in 1920 involved International Reply Coupons, which at the time were postal stamps used for international mail. By claiming to be exploiting a loophole in the postal system, Ponzi promised investors a 50% return in 45 days and a 100% return in 90 days. The strategy he purported was to buy these Coupons cheaply in one country and then redeem them at a higher value in another country.

While indeed such a loophole existed, the reality was that Ponzi would have to move millions of physical stamps in this way to make any genuine profit. Not only was this an impossible logistical task; it was nothing Ponzi even remotely intended doing. Instead, he simply used the money he collected from new investors to pay off the debt he owed to old investors. With, of course, lots of extra money left over for himself. And his con worked like a charm. In less than a year, Ponzi collected about $15 million (around $220 million today).

When Ponzi’s scheme collapsed, the fallout was so high-profile that his name has been associated with this type of fraud ever since. For his crimes, Ponzi wound up on a legal odyssey where he served about 13 years in American prisons before being deported back to Italy. He persisted in his duplicitous ways and died penniless, in 1949, in a charity hospital in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Rest assured, though, that this type of fraud—a Ponzi Scheme—has been run many times since 1920.

The biggest Ponzi Scheme in history was pulled off by Bernie Madoff (1938-2021). His scam finally came crashing down in 2008, but it may have been running for as many as 30 or 40 years. Madoff was a former chairperson of the NASDAQ and a respected figure on Wall Street. The investment strategy he claimed to be using was something called a “split-strike conversion.” This is a complicated three-part “financial sandwich” that Madoff told investors guaranteed a steady 10%-20% per year return on investment no matter if the Stock Market went up or down.

While a legitimate investment strategy, the split-strike conversion in fact cannot perform anything like that kind of financial magic. But for Madoff it was merely a smoke screen. Not only did the tactic sound safe—foolproof even—but its complicated concepts and language intimidated investors, making them too embarrassed to ask questions. As it turned out, Madoff wasn’t placing any trades whatsoever for his investment clients. Instead, he simply deposited all their money into a single bank account. Then he fabricated thousands of pages of fake trade confirmations and account statements to send to his investors and to attract new clients.

And, like Ponzi’s 1920 fraud scheme, Madoff’s con worked like a charm.

Madoff generated approximately $64.8 billion in fabricated paper wealth. He raked in at least $17.5 billion in actual cash losses from investors. For his crimes, Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison, where he died in 2021.

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The MAGA Ponzi Scheme

Unlike Ponzi’s and Madoff’s financial swindles, Trump’s con is ideological. That is, Trump’s endgame is to rake in political capital instead of money. Make no mistake, Trump and his family then use that political capital to rake in plenty of fiscal capital. Their corruption and greed are bottomless.

But Trump’s MAGA Ponzi Scheme is first and foremost one of convincing American voters to imagine their real conditions of existence to be, instead, how Trump describes and defines them.

What we need to investigate, then, is the psychology of the Ponzi Scheme. How is this kind of fraud so devastatingly effective? Why are our brains seemingly wired to fall for them?

The Basic Mechanics:

Whether luring investors into an outlandish ruse to pay profits with the funds of other investors or enticing voters into believing that America must be made great again, the cognitive mechanics of the Ponzi Scheme work the same. Here are four primary tricks.

1) The Illusion of Legitimacy: The scammer claims to have some kind of proprietary “secret” or high-performing strategy on offer to explain why his plan is going to outperform everyone else’s plan. Trump deals in nothing but big promises and undisclosed policies that he claims will solve every problem and correct all social ills in America. From exorbitant tariffs on international trade to big tax breaks for billionaires, Trump always tells his MAGA faithful to just wait and see what a Golden Age is right around the corner for them...eventually.

2) Initial Returns: To build trust, the schemer pays out “dividends” early on. In his first term, the first (and only real) thing Trump did was pass a massive tax-cut for the wealthy. In his second term, Trump immediately rammed through the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that doled out an even bigger and more butt-ugly tax-cuts for the wealthy—while cutting all kinds of social programs. (Anyone picking up yet on who Trump is really catering to?) As for the middle- and low-income MAGA faithful, the bone Trump throws them is his constant stream of racist and sexist and homophobic and you-name-it lies and insults and Executive Orders. Somehow, sadly, these shenanigans convince the lowbrow true-believers that they are now “owning the libs.”

3) The Positive Feedback Loop: Early dupes, thrilled by their “profits,” often reinvest their loyalty and tell their friends and family to join in on the bonanza. Such a boost provides the scheme with the organic growth and new capital—political and fiscal—it needs to stay afloat. In Trump’s case, it sure helps that he has Fox News and a myriad of other rightwing media outlets repeating and amplifying his lies 24/7/365 inside a news/information/filter bubble inhabited by his followers.

4) Minimal Documentation: Victims often receive sophisticated-looking but fake statements or “official” records that seek to project authenticity for the scammer. For Trump, such forgeries come as grand-sounding Executive Orders or important-seeming social media posts or announcements of big policy ideas (that never go anywhere) or answers to softball questions posed to him by handpicked rightwing media lackies. In fact, Trump Administrations accomplish very little real legislative change. However, because MAGA devotees see their ideological balance growing in these bogus documents, they rarely ask to withdraw their political principal.

The Psychology of the Victim:

Falling for a Ponzi Scheme isn’t necessarily a sign of low intelligence. Rather, getting suckered in is often a result of the schemer being particularly adept at exploiting human cognitive biases. Here are five common shortcomings in our thinking that can make us vulnerable to scams.

1) Social Proof and “In-Group” Trust: Many schemes target specific communities (churches, ethnic groups, or professional circles). When someone you trust says they’ve stumbled onto something that’s really working wonders for them, your natural skepticism drops because you trust the messenger more than the facts. Trump’s wooing of Evangelical Christians has proved to be a target-rich environment for his gaining unthinking followers—which are, of course, the best kind. The same can be said of White Nationalist groups, paramilitary thugs, frat bros, and others among the reality-impaired.

By far, however, Trump’s most consequential target community has been the billionaire/Epstein class and, even more specifically now, the ultrawealthy Tech Bros. These guys aren’t dumb. After a decade or so of watching a master grifter like Trump at work, they see big $ signs at the end of an unimpeded AI arms race. Something Trump has promised them he’ll allow. The billionaire Tech Bros want to make sure they’re belly-up to the trough.

2) The FOMO Factor (Fear Of Missing Out): Schemers work to create a sense of urgency and exclusivity. Other people look to be cashing in on something too good to be true, so you want to get in on the action. You start to feel like a chump for sitting on the sidelines while a golden “opportunity” passes you by.

In his constant efforts to get suckers aboard his MAGA bandwagon, Trump routinely and inordinately lies and inflates everything about his political success: the fabulous bounty of his tariffs; how great the economy is doing under his policies; the number of immigrant rapists and murderers ICE is rounding up; the number of wars he’s brought to an end; the number of enemies he’s killed, the stuff he’s blown up, the bombs he’s dropped and missiles he’s launched in the wars he’s started; his popularity polling numbers...you go ahead and add more to this list of bullshit. It’s inexhaustible.

Trump’s carefully orchestrated campaign rallies are maybe the best indicator of the FOMO he looks to procure. Look at all these True Americans on their way backward to a New American Golden Age! Nobody wants to miss out on the prospect of a white-man-wet-dream like that.

3) Authority Bias: Working hand-in-hand with FOMO, scammers do all they can to cultivate an image of extreme wealth, success, and genius. Modern humans seem to be conditioned to trust and follow people who appear to be high-status experts. And, needless to say, Trump’s native genius—according to Trump—is unsurpassed in human history. Starting with that braindead show, The Apprentice, Trump has been relentless in concocting a public image of himself as tycoon mastermind and negotiator par excellence.

Nobody but him can bring America back from the brink of WOKE ruin. Nobody but him can stick coal miners happily back down in the death-trap coal mines. Nobody but him can bring back American manufacturing jobs. Nobody but him can stop the war in Ukraine with a single phone call on day-one of his new administration. Nobody but him can reduce inflation and bring down the cost of everyday living. Nobody but him knows that climate change is a hoax. Nobody but him can end all the futile regime-change wars in the Middle East. Nobody but him can solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Nobody but him...

4) Sunk Cost Fallacy: Once an investor has put a significant amount of capital into a scheme, that dupe becomes psychologically invested in the success of the scheme. Admitting it’s a fraud means admitting you’ve been conned. That’s a painful blow to the ego. People are hard-pressed to acknowledge such a grievous misstep. No one wants to be known as the gull of a Ponzi Scheme. Many people would rather invest more trust and resources into that scheme than face the hard truth of its duplicity. Of course, many complex political and social factors figured into Trump’s 2024 re-election to the presidency. But without a huge Sunk Cost Fallacy at work in the minds of many voters, Trump’s re-election would have been impossible.

5) Cognitive Dissonance: When red flags emerge, victims of scams often rationalize them away. They want their investment to be real so badly that they ignore obvious evidence of fraud. Like the Sunk Cost Fallacy, the mental discomfort of realizing you’ve been made a fool is too harsh to face. You’d rather feel good about yourself as a chump than bad about yourself as a chump. Such is the power of seeing what you believe rather than believing what you see.

Trump told folks to drink bleach to cure COVID—and still folks voted for him again. Trump promised to release all the Epstein Files but now has his Department of Justice covering up those files—and still there are staunch MAGA supporters. Trump campaign-promised America First and no more foreign wars—and, well, yeah.

You get the drift of this cognitive glitch.

END OF PART 1

COMING IN TWO WEEKS: Part 2—spotting a Ponzi Scheme...

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SoldierGirl

All things military by someone who has been an Army Brat, an active-duty Army officer, and a scholar of military culture

By Brenda M. Boyle

But what made all those jobs, for me, farcical comedies rather than cruel tragedies is the fact that I could walk away from them all. I could give each one the old: “You can take this job and shove it.”

There is no sweeter feeling in the modern working world.

What’s more, I could afford to walk away from those jobs not because of any special fortitude or remarkable genius native to me. Not even close. I could walk away only because a great stroke of luck had fallen my way.

I was born into an amazing support system in the form of my parents.

My parents had done the heavy lifting of being first-generation college graduates and forging their way up into the middle class. (Aided, yes, by the post-World War II economic boom and by being white—and my Dad male. But still, no mean feat.) All I had to do was not screw it up.

In short, Bettie and Lou provided the economic cushion that allowed me to dink around until I decided to get serious about employment. Until it dawned on me that I needed to find a job—more, a career—that wasn’t odious to me.

Maybe in our modern world there is no greater stroke of luck to have.

Bootstraps or Safety Net?

In One Lucky Idiot #4, I described my parental support system as a protective shield around me against the basic mechanism of capitalism—exploiting workers for profit. I characterized my fortuitous safety net as an antidote to this structural abuse. I noted, as well, that having such a support system is a golden opportunity not enough people in the world are lucky enough to have. And I promised that, in due course, we would dive into that Big Idea.

Well, due course is here. It’s time to dive into that Big Idea.

One of the chief lies of capitalism can be expressed by this binary opposition:

Hard-working US / Lazy THEM

People of sufficient means love to self-adore. We love to harbor the notion that we’ve earned our way to the top. That, single-handedly, we’ve clawed a path to the pinnacle of the economic pyramid (or close enough). Needless to say, these same people of sufficient means love to imagine that we’ve accomplished this commendable deed all on our own. By virtue of our inborn genius and unflinching grit. And, undoubtedly in the economic history of the world, there are people who have.

But I’d hazard a guess that, statistically speaking, such wholly self-made individuals are the exception, not the rule. I’d bet that most of us who come to enjoy being people of sufficient means start off on a pretty solid social-economic footing. That is to say, as opposed to pulling ourselves up by those fabled bootstraps.

Along with the worship of Hard-working US, people of sufficient means likewise love to pit our heroic selves against a ghastly villain: Lazy THEM. Such is how binary opposition works. Typically, our vile enemy comes in the form of slothful scoundrels seeking handouts from the Welfare State. Moochers and idle bums looking to finagle Big Government in order to live the carefree life of Riley off of our hard-working largesse.

There’s another term for these heinous reprobates: poor people.

And if there’s one thing Hard-working US loathes most, it’s providing Lazy THEM with any kind of social safety net.

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What a waste of our taxpayer dollars! (Runs our logic of disdain.) Have these bums no pride, no get-up-and-go? (Runs our self-righteousness indignation.) Even worse than these moral failings by poor people is their insidious drain on the economy. How can we Intrepid Job Creators create more wealth if these indolent cheats are disincentivized to work? (Runs our acquisitive outrage.) All social safety nets do is hinder growth and limit profit! Handouts only make our economy less dynamic! (Holler we well-heeled.)

All of this bellyaching is, upon inspection, self-serving horseshit (see, for example, here). Moreover, actual economic investigation shows that well-planned Big Government safety nets make people more open to change, more willing and able to take risks, more able to obtain education and retraining, and, as a result, more capable of contributing to a dynamic economy (see Chang’s Thing 21).

My support system gave all of these advantages and opportunities to me—even though my safety net was not provided by Big Government but by Big Parents.

What somehow escapes the minds of people of sufficient means is that modern bankruptcy laws and the invention of the limited liability corporation in the 19^th century have given them the very kinds of social safety nets that they so boisterously deny to workers. The fact is, government policies such as direct subsidies and grants, targeted tax breaks and loopholes, trade barriers and protections, and bailouts create what’s commonly known as corporate welfare. That is to say, the hypocrisy of a gross double standard for rich versus poor.

While social programs for the poor routinely come with strict eligibility requirements, drug testing, and work mandates, the handouts of corporate welfare come with few strings attached and are subject to far less public scrutiny (see, for example, here and here).

In fact, then, what we experience in America is socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor. The poor are expected to pull themselves up by their bootstraps—or die. The affluent are afforded safety nets that enable them to experiment, to grow, to risk failure without serious consequence, and, as a result, to have a much better chance to succeed and to thrive.

Again, that was my experience growing up lucky.

Thus, the real issue for Americans is not whether you heroically bootstrap your way to economic security or cowardly safety net your way to welfare queen. The real issue is how good of a safety net do you have access to.

That is to say, how lucky were you born, raised, and educated?

But wait...US is THEM!

For good measure, here’s one more piece of stark economic reality to wrap our heads around. Namely: Hard-working US is being turned into Lazy THEM.

Recent U.S. Census Bureau data shows that about 36 million Americans currently live below the official government poverty line. That’s 10.6% of the population. If you add those Americans who live below what’s called the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM)—that is, people receiving non-cash benefits like SNAP and housing subsides—those numbers grow to 43.7 million people and, thus, almost 13% of the population.

A whole lot of these Americans are children, seniors, and ethnic minorities.

Also, the current official government poverty line is absurdly low. For a single person, $15,960 a year. For a family of four, $33,000 a year. If you have any life experience at all of trying to make ends meet in America today, you know these amounts are stupidly inadequate and simply don’t reflect our current economic reality.

And why does that matter?

It matters because this low-ball poverty line doesn’t tell the whole American economic story. It matters because a whole lot more Americans—who don’t fall below the official poverty line—are having trouble making ends meet nowadays.

One measure of this more widespread financial stress is called the ALICE Threshold (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed). Known as the “Struggling” measure, it takes into account America households that make too much money to be considered “poor” by government standards, but not enough money actually to live securely.

What this threshold measures is all those Americans who cannot afford a basic “Household Survival Budget”—that is, housing, childcare, food, transportation, health care, and a cell phone plan. The most recent comprehensive reports show that about 29% of U.S. households are ALICE. Combine that figure with the 13% of Americans living below the official poverty line, and you get 42% of American households (about 55 million families) struggling to make ends meet.

In practical terms, one car breakdown or one medical bill will send these households into financial ruin.

Another indicator of money woes is the “Paycheck to Paycheck” measure (see here and here). This metric tracks immediate cash flow rather than long-term income. It reflects a feeling of “scrambling” whether or not someone technically is “low income.” The 2025-2026 data shows that 60% to 65% of Americans report living paycheck-to-paycheck. Remarkably, close to half of those reporting earn over $100,000 a year. A primary culprit for this financial crunch is what’s called the “cost-of-living creep”—that is, high rents, insurance spikes, and debt service.

Two more measures of economic wellbeing need mentioning. Both of them pertain primarily to the middle class.

One is the “Financial Resilience” Gap. This marker tracks how many people can handle a sudden monetary shock, specifically the “$5,000 Test.” In early 2026, research found that 42% of middle-class households could not pay an unexpected $5,000 expense and bounce back. In other words, a major car repair or a steep medical bill can derail your American Dream.

The other measure is a “Basic Necessities” yardstick. That is, can a family comfortably afford the cost of basic necessities in the city where they live. In 2025, the Brooking Institution found that one-third of the American middle class cannot.

To be blunt, what these research numbers show is that more and more Americans are landing on the Lazy THEM side of that capitalistic binary. Lots of folks who hitherto have categorized themselves as Hard-working US are falling behind the economic 8 Ball.

How? Why?

Because a gigantic middle-class squeeze since the 1980s has sent trillions of dollars trickling up to the 1%. As things stand now, upwards to 90% of Americans are expected to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps—or die.

So what?

How does all of the above relate to One Lucky Idiot me? Easy. I was lucky enough to grow up during a time when the American middle class expanded and thrived.

In other words, my social support system was simply a living wage earned by my parents.

Who needs “welfare” if you can earn a living wage? Who needs a “hand up” if you can get the education you need to lift yourself? I’m not talking about charity or handouts here. I’m talking about a genuine fair shot.

I’m talking about the kinds of corporate welfare socialism granted to the well-to-do being extended to us all.

All of us should have the benefit of growing up inside a middle class “safety net.” That’s all the support a lucky idiot like me needed.

COMING IN TWO WEEKS: Ponzi meets Trump…

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All things military by someone who has been an Army Brat, an active-duty Army officer, and a scholar of military culture

By Brenda M. Boyle

In this fourth installment, I consider how I’ve labored lucky.

By “labored,” I mean worked a job because I had to. Not because I wanted to. You know what I mean: Make that money. You don’t work, you don’t eat. Few people are lucky enough never to have to labor at work they don’t want to do. I certainly wasn’t raised rich enough never to have to do such labor.

But I was lucky enough to be able to prepare myself to get work, eventually, that I did want to do. And not enough people are lucky enough to have that golden opportunity.

We’ll dive into that Big Idea in due course. First, we’ll stroll through a bit of my labor history.

Welcome to Capitalism

For some reason, at age 10, I decided to get a job as a paperboy. All I can say is that it seemed like a good idea at the time.

For all you non-antediluvian readers out there, a paperboy was a stupid kid who delivered an actual, physical, made-out-of-many-sheets-of-paper newspaper to your house every day. (Yeah, I know. Dodging all the dinosaurs as we did.) Maybe you’ve seen this quaint 20^th-century ritual reproduced in movies and on TV. The stupid kid, often on a bike, zooms by and throws the paper into the bushes or breaks the front window—hitting anything but the front porch as planned.

Well, I had a good arm, so I always hit the front porch as I zoomed by on my bike. That was the fun part of the job. For me, the delivery system of paperboying wasn’t the problem.

The problem was the payment system of paperboying. And here’s where I got introduced—rudely—to the system we like to call capitalism.

The newspaper I worked for was The Bridgeport Post. (My family had just moved from Pocatello, Idaho to Westport, Connecticut—so, in effect, I’d just fallen off the potato truck.) Every afternoon, a big bundle of Bridgeport Posts was dropped off at a corner for me to pick up, fold each one into a projectile with a rubber band wrapped around it, and ride around the neighborhood delivering to all the subscribers on my route.

Sounds easy enough.

Except that, technically, the moment I picked up those papers, I just bought them. Yup, that’s right. I—a mere 10-year-old, recent Idaho refugee, babe-in-the-woods paperboy—was on the hook for paying for all that greasy newsprint. And while, in theory, that arrangement shouldn’t present much of a problem, in practice, it turned into a nightmare.

I soon discovered that a lot of Bridgeport Post readers really didn’t want to pay for the luxury of me plunking their newspaper perfectly on their doorsteps each and every afternoon and on Sundays. As it turned out, many folks on my route thought it was perfectly fine to stiff the paperboy.

I was, after all, just a stupid kid on a bike.

You wouldn’t believe how many people aren’t home when a paperboy knocks at the door to collect. And we’re not talking about a ton of money here. For the good folks who did pay me regularly and on time, all it took was a handful of loose change poured into a small envelop. That was it. Couldn’t be easier.

But, long story short, because of all the folks who didn’t pay me at all, soon I was in significant 10-year-old-kid debt to The Bridgeport Post.

I started spending more time going around to the delinquent subscribers on my route—who seemed never to be home—than I spent time delivering the newspapers themselves. Nor could I cancel these wayward subscriptions for non-payment. Only subscribers could cancel. And The Bridgeport Post wasn’t about to cut their number of paying subscribers—whether those subscribers were paying their subscription fees to me or not.

As far as The Bridgeport Post was concerned, it wasn’t their problem if I was having trouble collecting. No, this was a paperboy problem. The Post dropped off the same number of newspapers at the corner each day. And each day it was the paperboy was on the hook to pay for them.

I scrambled for a couple of weeks trying to collect payments and pay what I owed to the Post. (Forget about me making any money.) Of course, the supervisor started to breathe down my neck. Then he started making threats about me getting into trouble with the law. Finally, the supervisor called my house to have a stern talk with my parents. And this really pissed my parents off.

Not at me.

At the asshole supervisor.

Although I didn’t hear the exact words, my Dad told the supervisor to fuck off. My parents paid the paltry debt, and so my first venture into the working world came to an abrupt end. Even though I was too young to know it at the time, that’s the moment I discovered just how incredibly lucky I was. That’s the moment I found out that I had a protective shield around me against capitalism. An antidote, so to speak, to the exploitation of my labor.

I had a support system.

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Summer Jobs

Like most college students, every summer I got a job to pay for educational expenses. I worked in my grandparents’ auto repair service, sweeping floors and chasing parts. I worked in the Shipping & Receiving Department of a research lab, delivering weird chemicals to guys in lab coats. I worked in the Mail Room (another quaint, old-timey practice) of a huge office building in a sprawling research park.

Each summer I appreciated more and more what my support system was doing for me. If I played my cards right, it was saving me from having to do any of these jobs for the rest of my life.

The summer before my senior year of college, my Dad got me an extremely well-paying job working on an exploratory drilling rig in the high desert of western Wyoming. My actual job title was Roughneck. How cool was that? I enjoyed the work. It was hard physical labor—often a bit on the dangerous side—interspersed with long periods of inactivity while we waited for the drill to bore down deep enough to collect a core sample. We worked 12-hour shifts for two weeks straight, then got five days off before starting the next two-week stint. The Wyoming night sky was amazing. The Milky Way a crystalline haze. Once I watched the sun rise directly beneath the Big Dipper as it set like a saucepan on the eastern horizon.

But I knew full well that my job satisfaction was based on this labor being temporary. That near the end of August I’d be heading back to school. Novel as this work experience was, I sure didn’t want to do it forever. The guys I worked with were great, only giving me mild shit for being a College Boy. But none of them were in love with the job. The pay, while bounteous for a College Boy earning for tuition, wasn’t great as a living wage for a family. And the older guys on the crew complained about how tough the job was getting to be on them year after year.

They knew, without being able to articulate it exactly, that they were slowly sliding down into what Jack London described as “the Social Pit.”

Meanwhile, one lucky idiot me was grateful for my support system.

Dogsbody Jobs

After college, I worked my share of dead-end jobs while, I guess, I “found myself.” None of this was on my parents’ dime, but they were always there in case I needed them. And now I had my bachelor’s degree in hand. In English. Whatever good that might turn out to be.

A real plus for me was being good at living lean. I didn’t mind a diet of pasta and oatmeal. I imagined myself a lone wolf out in the wild. Fancy-free and partaking of Hemingway-like adventures.

A support system can really go to your head.

While living in that hardscrabble and squalid nation of Switzerland, I worked several jobs to augment my scrimpy salary as a “professional” basketball player. My favorite was the night shift in a Swiss bakery where I could eat my weight in cinnamon rolls. For a while I flung about thick red ceramic tiles as a roofer on steep Swiss rooftops. I did 12-hour shifts in a Swiss machinist shop for about a week and a half until, on my half-hour lunch break, instead of crossing the street to go get something to eat I stuck out my thumb and hitch-hiked home—thus tendering my resignation in style.

I could play about at all this because I knew I’d be fine.

When I returned stateside, I bounced among a number of crap jobs for a while. One was working for a Podunk trucking company, driving a big single-frame around town picking up and making deliveries. All the cargo loading and unloading I did single-handed. I remember one warehouse supervisor in particular who was always hurrying everybody. He’d prowl his loading dock shouting, “Let’s get this shit done pronto! I wanna see nuthin’ but assholes and elbows!”

There’s the title of a motivational seminar for you.

For a time I bartended at a sleazy disco call The Roxy. A bottle of Heineken back then cost the princely sum of $1. The major draws were the Wet-T-Shirt Contest on Tuesdays and something called “Nighty Night” on Thursdays (any woman showing up in sleepwear got in free of cover charge). Am I painting a picture? I also worked for a fly-by-night little franchise that installed woodburning stoves. I became their leading installation guy—without training of any kind—because I could read the directions. In truth, the franchise owners were a couple of harmless pot dealers just trying to launder their drug money.

Ah, America.

My employment pièce de résistance, though, was as an Encyclopedia Britanica salesman—record-setting, no doubt, for its brevity. After two hours of “training” in duplicitous sales techniques, I pulled up to my first “sales lead” to see a house and a neighborhood where I knew the inhabitants could not afford what I was supposed to talk them into buying. The promise of a free gift had lured these folks into sending a card to Britanica requesting a sales visit. I was there to close the deal.

I drove away without ever getting out of my car.

All of these dogsbody jobs paid under the table. None brought a whiff of healthcare benefits or retirement plans. The one great service they did for me, however, was wear gossamer thin my lone-wolf fantasy.

Yep. No doubt about it. High time to find the work I did want to do. And I was lucky enough to have that chance.

COMING IN TWO WEEKS: the next installment of One Lucky Idiot—to include that Big Idea I promised we’d dive into...

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SoldierGirl

All things military by someone who has been an Army Brat, an active-duty Army officer, and a scholar of military culture

By Brenda M. Boyle

But no.

In turns out that Trump wants to put us (kicking and screaming) into Mister Peabody and Sherman’s Wayback Machine (yeah, you’re really going to have to Google that) and transport us all the way back to those Halcyon Days of the Middle Ages. You know, when famine and plague and ravenous armies roved the land. When sanitation and medical knowledge was zero. When the blue-blooded few banqueted on peacock while everyone else wallowed in pig shit.

Oh, those were the days.

For all you Eurocentric history buffs out there, here’s some context. What’s labeled the Medieval Period is a 1,000-year bridge (hence the term “Middle Ages”) between the collapse of the Roman Empire and the beginnings of our modern world. That is, roughly 500-1500 CE. The very big picture is European societies moving from a centralized imperial system (Roman) to a decentralized system of small landed estates (feudalism, explained below) to, eventually, the rise of modern nation-states (various forms of republics). By all accounts, the transition was a slow, brutal, and messy process.

Fun sidebar: while Europe was wallowing its way through the muck of these “Dark Ages,” other parts of the world—the Islamic Caliphates, the Tang Dynasty in China, the Maya civilization—were enjoying Golden Ages of science and culture.

Why do Trump and Friends want to Make America Medieval Again? The usual. Money and Power. Not surprisingly, their vision of Trumptopia and the medieval social order are a match made in Authoritarian Heaven.

We’ll run through a few examples.

Spectacle

Modern power hinges on the State being able to hatch and cultivate citizens who believe in and devote their lives to the workings of capitalism. Throw in, for yucks, some talk about “democracy” and—hey presto!—you got yourself “freedom.” By contrast, medieval power worked primarily by way of overawing display. That is, by public spectacles of raw power.

Back in the medieval day, there were only two power players: the King and the Church. Both institutions enjoyed a Monopoly on Truth and used it to put on a great show.

The King had palaces, coronations, royal processions, birth celebrations, wedding ceremonies, funeral cavalcades, grand banquets, martial tournaments, royal courts, crowns, robes, jewels, weaponry, knight-retainers, castles, courtiers, banners and crests and emblems and badges and insignia ad nauseam, art, music, poetry, and—most important of all—the fairy tale that God Himself had put the King’s butt in the Throne.

The Church had cathedrals, Mass, Holy Days out the wazoo, fancy robes, tall pointy hats, popes and bishops and archbishops and cardinals and abbots and priors and clerics and priests and nuns and monks and holy sisters of great variety serving within a dizzying hierarchy, confession, penance, rosary, indulgences, transubstantial hors d’oeuvres, bejeweled incense burners to spin about on gold chains (typically frying up frankincense and myrrh), Holy Water, a power language all their own (Latin), literacy, and—most important of all—the fairy tale that the Church was in direct and exclusive radio contact with God Himself.

More than merely to impress everyone, these great displays were designed to scare the living shit out of subjects and believers alike (who were one and the same). Medieval society operated on the premise that God placed each person into a specific role—a specific social ranking—as part of His Eternal Plan (a plan called Providence, which we, as finite morons, could never possibly understand). Therefore, the one thing you had to do in medieval life was, absolutely, stay in your fucking place. Stay where God put you.

A popular phrase back then for adhering to this politically and religiously correct directive was to be “lowly wise.” The MAMA movement sure seems to want to instill the same spectacular imperative into us.

Trump mimics most of these Kingly and Churchly big production numbers: state dinners, military parades, Rose Garden ceremonies, holding up a Bible after brutalizing protesters, carefully scripted rallies, demolishing the East Wing of the White House to build himself a private Ballroom funded by sycophants, snoozing through the occasional church service so that Evangelicals and White Christian Nationalists (mostly one and the same) can believe that he gives two shits about Jesus, lavish estates, fancy jet and helicopter, royal processions to golf courses around the world, lots of hangers-on, and—at least in his bathroom—sitting on a Throne made of gold.

A pair of internet memes, posted by his administration bootlickers, speak a thousand words for Trump’s pronounced medieval proclivities.

Public Executions

While we’re on the subject of intimidation-via-spectacle, the medieval authorities loved to kill wrongdoers gruesomely and publicly.

To our horror, so does Trump.

Watch the video analysis of ICE agents murdering Renée Good.

Watch the video analysis of ICE agents murdering Alex Pretti.

Strong attempts at medieval persuasion for us to stay in our place.

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Social Structure

At the macro level, medieval society functioned generally by way of two distinct but overlapping systems. One was feudalism, which handled the political and military side of things. The other was manorialism, which provided the socio-economic organization to everyday life. MAMA looks to be charging America backward in the direction of re-establishing both.

Feudalism

Feudalism was less of a formal governmental organization than it was a network of personal loyalties. These loyalties were founded on the exchange of land for service. Important to remember about this period of European history is that the social hierarchy was based on land ownership. Land was everything.

In medieval political theory, the King was God’s steward on Earth; therefore, the King owned all the land within his kingdom. But he lacked the bureaucracy to manage it all. So he granted tracts of land, called fiefs (hence the word feudalism) to members of the nobility. In exchange for these lands, the nobles (called vassals) provided military service and civic counsel to the King. In practical terms, however, this decentralized system often resulted in the more powerful members of the vassalage wielding greater sway than the monarch—which could cause a spot of strife.

As for military muscle, the noble lords retained professional warriors (knights) who formed the backbone of any martial force. These militaries were not highly organized, standing armies in our modern sense; rather, they were hodgepodge militias raised for specific occasions. Formed locally, such units could keep order within a fiefdom, defend a fiefdom against raiders, or go raid a neighboring fiefdom. It all depended on the needs and wants of the vassal.

When the King required an army, vassals from around the kingdom sent their private forces to be merged into a single, grand force. Perhaps the realm needed defense against attack. Perhaps the King had decided to attack a neighboring kingdom. Sometimes, when things got really slow, these royal armies trooped off to the Holy Land for a tad of Crusade. While the nobility and their knights commanded these irregular militaries, the rank-and-file soldiery were comprised of commoners pressed into military service. (What Falstaff refers to as “food for powder”; Google it.) Most of these men went against their will. Some went for adventure and the promise of plunder.

Needless to say, these medieval mercenaries only and always did the bidding of their highborn overlords. MAMA proudly continues this tradition of chaotic violence carried out in the name of public order.

Last and least in the feudal food chain were these commoners, also known as peasants or serfs. By virtue of God’s all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good Providence, these folks were born holding the shit end of the stick. In exchange for protection (in the Mafia sense of exploitation), serfs worked the land of a noble vassal. (More about these poor bastards below.) Suffice it to say that serfdom was not a sweet gig, and you could forget about getting decent healthcare.

As for MAMA neo-feudalism, that’s simple. Currently, Trump and cronies are ass-deep in dismantling the federal government. Who needs democratic checks-and-balances, three branches of government, let alone a functioning bureaucracy when Trump can rule simply by royal edict in the form of Executive Order? With regard to loyalty based on exchange for service, nowadays not land but money is everything. So Trump secures loyalty from his modern-day vassalage—that is, billionaires—by handing out various forms of fiscal goodies.

The deal could not be more straightforward.

Trump doles out favors, influence, access, jobs, titles, lack of government oversight or regulations, tax breaks, monopolies, sweetheart deals, insider trading, and all manner of other capital-based scams (see here, here, and here). As ever, the primary aim of the King is to fill his own coffers—which Trump and family are doing hand-over-fist.

Manorialism

While the feudal system managed the elites, manorialism governed the medieval masses. A manor was the fundamental economic unit of the day. It was a self-sufficient landed estate (fief) run by a vassal as granted to him by the King. Because trade routes back then tended to be unstable, manors operated as localized, closed economies. They produced their own food, clothing, and tools. On such estates lived the majority of the medieval population—that is, all those poor slobs in serfdom.

Unlike slaves, serfs were bound to the land, not to a person. (Something of a hairsplitting, don’t you think?) So serfs—oh lucky day!—could not be sold away from their homes; however, neither could they leave the manor without permission. And such permission was rarely given by a vassal. Vassals needed all the cheap labor they could get. As mentioned above, serfs did all the grunt work of farming the fields. (The nobility never did a damn thing for themselves—as God intended.) In return for their labor, serfs had the right to farm a small plot of land for their own meager subsistence.

As you can well imagine, the manorial system was rife with abuses endured by serfs. If you’d like to get a discerning and historically accurate picture of the tensions characteristic to this medieval social configuration, see this clip from the 1975 documentary film, Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

As for MAMA neo-manorialism, in true aristocratic fashion, Trump and pals want to create a neo-serfdom herded onto what might be called neoliberal manors. Apparently, it’s not enough for the billionaire-ocrats to have the great majority of the American population boxed into the capitalistic double-bind of wage-slave and debt-slave. Now these noble cash-vassals are looking to corral us in their own private fiefdoms.

When a libertarian tech-thug such as Peter Thiel declares that he “no longer believes that freedom and democracy are compatible,” well, you know that something big—and bad—is afoot. And that something is Network States.

In his book The Network State, entrepreneur (read: rich tech-clown) Balaji Srinivasan looks to resuscitate serfdom—with all of us as the new serfs. Srinivasan outlines how billionaire tech-bros can whip-up their own private “Startup Cities” or “Network City.” What begins as an online community crowdfunds its way into buying up physical land; at that point, the tech-lord seeks diplomatic recognition as a sovereign entity. Et voilà! You got yourself a neo-fief.

Far-fetched? Just consider the following.

California Forever (Solano County, CA; see here and here)

A pack of Silicon Valley heavyweights (such as Marc Andreessen, Reid Hoffman, Laurene Powell Jobs) secretly purchased over 60,000 acres of farmland northeast of San Francisco. Their goal? To build a walkable, sustainable city from scratch—supposedly to solve the California housing crisis. Hmm, sure...

Telosa (the American West; see here and here)

An idealist vision of billionaire Marc Lore, Telosa will be a $400 billion “city of the future.” The social philosophy behind it is a notion called “Equitism” (catchy). This is where the land is owned by a community endowment so that as the city becomes more valuable, the wealth is shared among residents rather than just landlords. Hmm, sounds Ponzi to me...

Próspera (Roatán, Honduras; see here and here)

This Startup City actually exists, to an extent. It’s a semi-autonomous zone on an island in Honduras. Próspera has its own legal system and a plethora of business-friendly regulations. A lot of PandoDaily-type investors have bought in, to include Peter Thiel. These are an aggressive, libertarian, worldview “disruptor” lot looking to cook up their own neocolonial Shangri-La. What could possibly go wrong?

Snailbrook (Texas; see here and here)

Reports have it that Elon Musk has been buying up thousands of acres outside of Austin, Texas. He seems to be planning to build a town for his employees at SpaceX, The Boring Company, and Tesla. The project has been likened to an updated “company town” where employees work and live under the direct and total control of their boss. Back in the day, such reserves were typically “coal towns” that forced miners to live in squalid penury. So, yup, you get the Musky drift of this project.

In short, billionaire-lords are planning exit strategies from the inconvenience of democracy. Along with their fiefdoms, lots of these super-rich assholes are building private bunkers as well. Still others want to leave Earth entirely to colonize Mars (and I wish them Godspeed on this venture).

Since pesky voters keep clamoring for living wages, affordable housing, ample healthcare, and top-quality daycare and public education for their kids—all social outcomes that require unconscionable things like fair taxation, genuine business regulations, and real public spending—these MAMA lords want simply to start governing themselves. And, of course, just like on the medieval manor, somebody is going to have to come along to do the actual work.

So what?

Tragically for the Epstein Class, it just can’t seem to grab enough cold, hard cash under the oppressive yoke of the American Republic. Life has become so terribly difficult for these money-mongers that they’ve decided to decentralize the whole U.S. Constitutional show to establish, instead, a private legal and commercial system all their own. One that will run, without a doubt, on a for-profit, government-as-a-service, corporate model.

You know what I mean. Shit that would make Ayn Rand blush.

And who will be the Grand Poobah of this neo-feudal, neo-manorial plutocracy? Who will reign supreme as the Overlord of a Neoliberal Nobility?

King-Pope Donnie, of course, piloting his MAMA Ship of Fools.

COMING IN TWO WEEKS: One Lucky Idiot installment #4...

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SoldierGirl

All things military by someone who has been an Army Brat, an active-duty Army officer, and a scholar of military culture

By Brenda M. Boyle

In Part One of this Rant, I introduced three key postcolonial theories of Homi Bhabha and applied them briefly to the Avatar films. To recap, those theories are:

Unhomeliness: The alienation of the colonized person from herself—her own culture, language, identity, and home.

Double Consciousness: The disorienting state of the colonized person being forced to see herself both through the eyes of the colonizer and through the eyes of her indigenous culture, creating a tormenting split or “doubling” of awareness.

Hybridity: The unavoidable collision and mingling of colonizer and colonized cultures that produces a new and strange “Third Space” where novel beliefs and identities grow within an unfamiliar cultural synthesis.

Most important to note about Bhabha’s take on colonial occupation is that he judges, in the end, that the colonial enterprise will backfire. Due to the phenomenon of cultural hybridity, in the long run the colonizer, too, will begin to experience first double consciousness and then unhomeliness. Hybridity, therefore, as it mutates the colonizer’s dominant culture, works to undermine the authority of the colonizer. In effect, Bhabha sees hybridity as a form of resistance to colonial power. But it is one that comes, usually, at a tremendous cost to everyone involved.

As I did in my previous post, I’ll quote again from Bhabha’s most influential work, The Location of Culture (1994):

This Third Space displaces the histories that constitute it, and sets up new structures of authority, new political initiatives. ... The process of cultural hybridity gives rise to something different, something new and unrecognizable, a new area of negotiation of meaning and representation. (211)

The aim of Part Two of this Rant is to explore how Bhabha’s notion of hybridity is playing out so perfectly on James Cameron’s sci-fi planet of Pandora. In spite of their overwhelming firepower, the colonizing Sky People are as doomed to destabilizing transformation as are the colonized Na’vi.

The Postcolonial Mosh Pit of Pandora

Let’s consider first the clash of many cultures taking place in the Avatar films. The most obvious is a collision of interplanetary species as humans invade the world of the Na’vi. But even within those two factions there are a number of discreet cultures at work.

On the human side, we witness the profit-driven corporate culture of Resources Development Administration (RDA) doing its acquisitive business. And perceivable within that mindset are behavioral differences among the executive elite, the middle management, and the working stiff. Next we have a military culture operating full-tilt within the colony. But that, too, is not monolithic. There’s tension between the professional ethos of state-run military forces—in the films, the Marines in particular—versus that of private military contractors—the RDA-hired mercenary force of SecOps (Security Operations). Where the former (in theory) wars with honor, the latter bullies for profit. In Avatar, Jake complains, “Back on Earth, these guys were army dogs. Marines. Fightin’ for freedom. But out here they’re just hired guns. Takin’ the money. Workin’ for the Company.” Thus we see tensions existing in the two pillars of colonial expedition—Money and Muscle.

Add to this assortment of human cultures on Pandora that of the research scientists. While they, too, are working for RDA, their aim is not profit but the acquisition of new knowledge. These academics are focused most on understanding and interacting with the Na’vi—not on stealing their planetary resources at any cost. During the course of colonization, friction arises among all of these human groups. Moreover, the result of their conflict is the subversive mixing and morphing of these corporate, military, and research cultures—that is, hybridity.

For example, in Avatar, SecOps personnel such as Jake (Sam Worthington) and Trudy (Michelle Rodriguez) transform from hired guns working for the Company into freedom fighters defending the Na’vi. Scientists such as Norm (Joel David Moore) and Max (Dileep Rao) transform from milquetoast eggheads into guerrilla men of action. Grace (Sigourney Weaver) transforms from an irritable academic needing a cigarette into an agitator biting the corporate hand that feeds her. In Avatar: Fire and Ash, Dr. Garvin (Jemaine Clement) does the same. Also in that third film, even the ultra-gung-ho Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) starts to butt heads with his RDA masters (more on this discord below).

On the Na’vi side, the misadventures of colonization likewise lead to the hybridization of discreet cultures. While the Na’vi share much in common, such as a reverence for Eywa, they are also divided into different clans. Each clan has its particular practices and beliefs, largely based on geographical location. The Omaticaya structure their lives accordingly as forest dwellers. As seaside people, the Metkayina, in Avatar: The Way of Water, do the same. In the third movie, we’re introduced to the Mangkwan clan, also known as the Ash People. Their native lands are a scorched and desolate volcanic region of Pandora. As a consequence of this inhospitable location, they’ve rejected Eywa to become warlike and crazed. However, just as with the various human cultures on Pandora, the invasion of the Sky People inevitably jumbles together these various Na’vi clans.

For example, in the second movie, Jake, Neytiri, and family flee their forest home to become seaside refugees. There Omaticaya and Metkayina ways start to mingle—uneasily. Similarly, whenever Jake sends out a call-to-arms to the wider Na’vi populace, we see a number of clans answering the summons to fight the Sky People. In this way, sparked by colonial invasion, a sweeping hybridization of Na’vi cultures starts to take place.

Nor is this forced cultural fusion happening only among the Na’vi clans or only within the human factions. Not by a long shot. Because of this interplanetary invasion by the Sky People, the intermingling of Na’vi and human is running rampant on Pandora—with increasingly unhomely results.

In the Avatar films, more than just superficial social customs are undergoing Bhabha’s principle of hybridity. Being forged as well in the crucible of colonization are entirely new ideologies as well as wholly unrecognizable identities—and entities.

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New Ideologies

I quoted above Bhabha describing how the Third Space of hybridity “displaces the histories that constitute it,” setting up in their place “new structures of authority, new political initiatives.” Exactly that process is taking place on Pandora. Both the pre-colonial histories of the Na’vi and that of the humans are being utterly altered by the violence of invasion. What is more, all of these alterations are aimed at undermining the authority of the colonizer.

New political initiatives include the renegade scientists allying with RDA employees, particularly former military people now working for SecOps. As a group, these humans can no longer tolerate the brutality and injustice being inflicted by RDA on the indigenous population of Pandora. (Demonstrating, by the way, something of the anguish of double consciousness creeping into the colonizer camp.) Among the Na’vi, a similar new alliance of the clans forms for the express purpose of opposing the Sky People. If the Na’vi way of life is to survive, they must fight as one nation against the invader. Within the unique Third Space created by the colonial event, these two new political organizations then unite to form a joint Na’vi-human Resistance Movement. Such an alliance, obviously, is unprecedented in either Na’vi or human history—and cultural hybridity is responsible for bringing about these radical changes.

Certainly, the formation of these new political groups, founded on ideologies new to the Na’vi and to the humans alike, also requires new structures of authority. In Avatar, replacing both the chieftain hierarchy of the clans and the corporate hierarchy of RDA is Jake as the Toruk Makto.

Because Jake is able to bond with and ride the apex predator on Pandora, the Toruk (meaning “Last Shadow”), he gains the status required to unite the Na’vi clans in rebellion against RDA. Although five individuals before Jake had attained such a legendary distinction, none of them were scientifically concocted avatars and none of them formed alliances with Earthlings. (That is, unless James Cameron is planning some really big plots twists in the sequels to come.) Thus, so far as we know at the moment, the Jake Toruk Makto is singular and the result of Bhabha’s concept of hybridity.

Before we get feeling too warm and fuzzy about this hearty band of hybrid rebels, though, keep in mind that there is a darker new ideology brewing on Pandora as well. Namely, that of Quaritch and Varang (Oona Chaplin). In the most recent movie, Avatar: Fire and Ash, the berserker ex-Marine and the maniacal clan leader of the Mangkwan join forces to become a power couple from hell. As a kind of anti-Neytiri, Varang practices dark shamanistic arts and has turned against Eywa. As a dead human transformed by the Company into a permanent avatar, Quaritch is starting to chafe at the RDA collar cinched around his neck. Together these two have formed a new political initiative and authority structure that looks destined to clash violently with both Jake’s Resistance Movement and RDA’s profit venture.

As is ever the case, the new and strange Third Space of colonialism necessarily triggers a deadly chaos of social breakdown and power-vacuum.

Unrecognizable Identities and Entities

Along with new ideologies, Bhabha also talks of cultural hybridity giving rise to “something different, something new and unrecognizable” that will require a renegotiation of “meaning and representation.” What Bhabha has in mind, as a cultural scholar, are the new kinds of political aims and social actors produced by the mayhem of actual, historical episodes of colonization on, well, Earth. Encounters such as the Powhatan Pocahontas coming into contact with the Englishman John Smith.

As a filmmaker and science fiction storyteller, James Cameron is not so hindered by reality.

Cameron takes the new strangeness of colonial hybridity to extremes. In the Avatar movies, the different, new, and unrecognizable things he imagines arising from an interstellar colonial encounter include not just shifting political motives and identities, such as those discussed in the previous section. Cameron’s creations feature entirely new life forms—that is, actual corporal entities never before known. Not only do these new beings require a rethinking of meaning and representation; they require wholly new names and ways of understanding the universe.

While I doubt that Cameron creates his sci-fi invasion tale with Bhabha’s Third Space specifically in mind, no doubt he constructs the filmic world of Avatar with the thorny issues of colonialism very much in mind. In my view, Cameron does an admirable job—deliberately or inadvertently—of using hybridization to comment tellingly on the colonial project. In his creation of strange new bodies to deal with, Cameron evocatively enlists sci-fi imagination as a way to make utterly plain the anarchy and carnage of colonial occupation.

The obvious place to start is with all the wild and wacky animal and plant life found on Pandora. The filmmakers go nuts in their invention of so many amazing Others. These new entities certainly figure vitally in Cameron’s depiction of colonial exploitation. Not just the Na’vi, but in particular the highly intelligent, whale-like Tulkun are the victims of the Sky People. RDA hunts and slaughters the Tulkun for a substance in their brains called “amrita,” which stops human aging. Along with the “unobtanium” being mined on Pandora, this miraculous nectar guarantees a gigantic corporate payday back on Earth.

Even more significant to consider, however, are all the newly concocted life forms in these films. That is, entities that did not exist prior to the colonial mingling of Earthling and Pandoran. We’ll look first at the avatars.

Brewed as genetically fused creatures, the avatars are engineered by RDA as bio-machinery to facilitate the conquest of Pandora. Basically, avatars are huge, Na’vi-like puppets that a human consciousness can inhabit periodically in order to interact with the natives. This is how Jake comes to be on Pandora, as an avatar jockey. However—and this is where the serious hybridization kicks in—these avatars soon slip out of RDA control.

Jake (like all good White Saviors) decides to go native—while inside his new Na’vi-like body. In the first movie, as an avatar, Jake learns the Na’vi ways, beds Neytiri, and becomes the supreme leader of the Na’vi. As if that isn’t hybridizing enough, at the end of the film Jake migrates his human consciousness permanently into his Na’vi-esque body. At that moment, Jake becomes an entirely new and alien being.

In the second film, more of these Human-Na’vi interfaces are made flesh. The downloaded consciousnesses of Quaritch and a squadron of his SecOps goons, all killed in combat, are reincarnated as avatars by RDA. (No, corporations never learn.) And so we’re off to the hybridity races. Starting with these interwoven entities, the Third Space cat is out of the bag.

While these autonomous avatars are a highly problematic colonial move in and of themselves, their ramifications get worse. Not only are the humans invading Na’vi culture and bodies; they’re laying claim to the Na’vi gene pool. In the second movie, we meet the offspring of Jake and Neytiri. While they’re all endearing kids, they nonetheless are, like dear old Dad, weird new entities. Entities that suffer from double consciousness and unhomeliness. Even more of a concern, though, is how these mixed-species children trigger profound apprehension in those around them.

Such abnormal creatures are a living sign of the impending annihilation of the Na’vi. Those strange offspring will have their own stranger offspring—and on and on. On their own planet, in their own homes, then, the Na’vi experience the palpable unhomeliness brought on by colonial takeover. Thus, Jake’s offspring are more disturbingly subverting than the original avatar begetting them.

And imagine if Quaritch and Varang pop out a love—well, more likely—a hate-child. Safe to say that won’t go well.

Nor is Cameron nearly finished inventing uncanny hybrids.

Introduced in the second movie, the character of Kiri (also played by Sigourney Weaver) is an even more exotic chromosomal cocktail. This quirky teen is some manner of mystery-child especially attuned to the Pandoran natural world and, it seems, to the ways of Eywa. Although the biological daughter of the now-dead Grace, Kiri’s father remains unknown. Major hints are being dropped that, perhaps, she is the all-female spawn of Grace and Eywa. That would entail some kind of bizarre spiritual intervention into the biological? Or something like that?

Yeah. Wowzers. We’re really getting out there.

And let’s not overlook (as tempting as it might be) the character of Spider (Jack Champion). Along with being the son of Quaritch and an unidentified mother, in the third movie Spider goes from being simply a remarkably annoying Na’vi wannabe to a miraculous new life form of his own. Thanks to the inexplicable sorcery of Kiri, Spider is turned into a human capable of breathing the Pandoran atmosphere. The mutation makes Spider not only another one-of-a-kind entity, but one more existential danger to the Na’vi. If the Sky People can discover how to replicate Spider’s biological adaptation, they would be able to overrun Pandora all the more easily.

Oops.

Yet more annoying, Spider and Kiri look to be budding teen sweethearts. Can’t wait to see their offspring.

The Empire Subverts Back?

In the world of Avatar, hybridized trouble lurks everywhere. But, as discussed in Part One, Bhabha theorizes that danger is not a one-way street in the colonial encounter. The colonizer will suffer the mutation of cultural subversion alongside the colonized—albeit that shock will come more gradually and less jarringly.

Might such blowback be brewing on Pandora?

Interesting to note is that although this whirlwind of hybridity was started by the Sky People landing on Pandora, most of it (if not all of it) has been facilitated by Eywa—the most enigmatic new entity of the storyline. If we stop to think about it, the Great Mother prevents Neytiri, early in the game, from whizzing an arrow or two into Jake’s chest. She allows Jake’s consciousness to migrate from his human body into his Na’vi-ish avatar. She permits Grace, when she dies, to enter the spirit realm of the ancestors—as the Na’vi say, “to return to the Mother.” Hell, Eywa is even going to let irksome little Spider into that sparkly afterlife.

Most important of all, Eywa sends into battle the shock troops of all Pandoran creatures great and small whenever the Sky People are about to crush Jake and his Freedom Fighters.

Just what the hell is going on?

In an article titled “The Empire Writes Back with a Vengeance” (The Times of London, 3 July 1982), Salman Rushdie writes:

The English language ceased to be the sole possession of the English some time ago...and those whom it once colonized are carving out large territories within the language for themselves. The Empire is striking back.

Playing off the Star Wars allusion, Rushdie refers to the process by which colonized people use the tools, language, and culture of their colonizers to challenge imperial authority and assert, in retaliation, their own revitalized identity and power. If you’re intrigued, see also The Empire Writes Back (1989), an influential work of postcolonial literary analysis that elaborates on this reversal.

This kind of turnabout is how the colonial project backfires: the cultural change forced onto the colonized comes home to roost on the colonizer. The subjugating culture does not simply replace the subjugated culture; instead, the two merge in a hectic and unpredictable melee. Such is the cultural pressure-cooker suggested by Bhabha. His concept of the Third Space is where all manner of subversion and resistance to colonial authority might spark.

Might Cameron be moving the plot of his Space Epic in this direction? That is, toward some kind of spectacular, sci-fi, postcolonial comeuppance?

God, I sure hope so. Here’s my dream outcome for the Avatar saga—no matter how many more movies it takes.

Eywa is playing the long game, suckering the Sky People into thinking they have the upper hand on Pandora. In fact, She’s gathering—through hybridization—the technologies and warriors to mount a retaliatory expedition to Earth. A counter-invasion, in fact. Eywa’s aim? To rescue Her sister planetary deity: Mother Earth. (Gaia to the Greeks and Terra Mater to the Romans, with scholars of mythology and anthropology identifying hundreds of distinct goddesses in cultures around the world that fit this role.) And who will lead this interstellar rescue mission? Hell no, not Jake. Neytiri will command this matriarchal force to rid the Earth—to rid the Universe!—of the rapacious patriarchal insanity of corporate capitalism.

You heard it here first, folks. If this is where Cameron is heading, I want a cut of the box office. But why is this my fantasy scenario?

Because I’d hate to see Neytiri get Pocahontas-ized.

I’d hate to see Neytiri dwindle into Jake’s wife. Become a pathetic refugee of a ruined culture. Be stricken with the deadly double consciousness of unhomeliness.

Neytiri is fierce. Sure of herself. Neytiri is devoted to Community. To Good. Neytiri has trained herself, body and mind, to defend these things she holds dear. Unafraid to act.

These qualities make Neytiri everything RDA must eradicate on Pandora as, evidently, it has eradicated them on Earth. In order to ransack and abuse, in order to turn insatiable profit, RDA must rid Pandora of the culture represented by Neytiri. That means RDA must not only master the Na’vi; RDA must kill Eywa herself.

I just hope Eywa is planning to strike back.

But I doubt it. If the Avatar films run true to type for Hollywood blockbusters, they will back off offering audiences any actually astute and contentious social insights. Instead, they’ll likely lapse into the predictable blather and schmaltz of feel-good endings. Bad Guys vanquished. Good Guys triumphant. The voices of a delightfully new “diverse” Pandora raised in harmonious Kumbaya.

The usual schlock.

If so, unhomely hybridity will have swallowed up our Hero, and we’ll be left with nothing but The Tragedy of Neytiri.

COMING IN TWO WEEKS: introducing a new acronym—MAMA

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