Speculation on Top: Oh Where Have You Gone Homo sapiens sapiens? — 2025 Update

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Saturday December 06, 2025 · 8:21 AM PST

2025/12/06 · 08:21

“There is no magic wand, invisible hand, or strong and brilliant leader that can save us from our folly. If we believe that there is, then Pogo was right when he said so long ago, “We have met the enemy and he is us” “Trenz Pruca

(Updated from my May 20, 2022 TPJ post: https://trenzpruca.wordpress.com/2022/05/20/speculation-on-top-oh-where-have-you-gone-homo-sapiens-sapiens/

There are days—usually after scanning the news and realizing that half of Congress now relies on chatbots to spell “Ukraine”—when I find myself wondering what exactly became of Homo sapiens sapiens, the supposedly wise-wise apes. Did evolution abandon us at the curb? Did it leave the engine idling while we argued about immigration, vaccines, and whether Hillary Clinton is secretly a lizard? Or have we, as I suggested in 2022, already entered a post-organic evolutionary phase without noticing because we were too busy refreshing our phones?

(If evolution is still working on us, the poor thing desperately needs a sabbatical.)

Back in the spring of 2022—before global heat domes became an annual summer feature like baseball, and before AI chatbots achieved the rhetorical sophistication of a slightly caffeinated undergraduate—I wrote a speculative little number on the future of human evolution. My thesis at the time was that the next step in evolution might not be organic. Not robotic in the “cute assistant” sense, not Skynet in the cinematic sense, but something stranger: a mixed organic–non-organic super-organism built partly out of us, partly out of our tools, and partly out of a global information lattice we barely understand.

In 2025, with half the planet plugged into platforms that know us better than our therapists (and charge a monthly subscription), the idea looks far less speculative. So today I revisit, update, and expand that 2022 musing in the true TPJ house style—lightly cynical, mildly cosmic, and always aware that humans, left unattended, will eventually put a drive-thru on Mars.

I. Life as a Chaotic Miracle Wrapped in Wishful Thinking

Let us start with the basics. You, me, and everyone reading this are assemblies of:

~37 trillion cells,
~7 octillion atoms,
and a bias toward bad decisions.

These particles—quanta, waves, strings, or whatever the physicists are calling them this grant cycle—organize themselves into creatures that believe they understand the universe, even though on most days we can’t understand Congress. Through evolution, these atoms gradually knit into complex forms, from prokaryotes to eukaryotes to primates to the gentleman now writing an essay at 9 AM wondering where his coffee went.

This was the argument of the original post:
Evolution is a chaotic optimization algorithm that never sleeps, even if most of us do.

But here in 2025, we need to update the picture. Because the idea that evolution is strictly limited to the natural, organic realm is—much like trickle-down economics—a belief held mostly by people who haven’t been paying attention.

Humanity, bless its contradictory heart, has spent the last 200,000 years stitching non-organic proxies to itself:

fire,
sharpened stones,
wheels,
plows,
factories,
iPhones,
and in the last decade,
AI systems that can pass a bar exam but cannot fold laundry.

We like to call ourselves “the tool-using animal,” though plenty of animals use tools; the problem is that once humans started using tools, we never stopped. Tools begat more tools. Tools reshaped our brains. Our brains designed new tools. Those tools built the next generation of tools. By the time we reach 2025, we are effectively symbiotic organisms living inside a cocoon of our own artifacts.

Remove the tools, and what remains?
A moderately creative biped with poor night vision and a questionable decision-making track record.

II. The Hybrids We Already Are

In 2022, I wrote that humans are increasingly wedded to non-organic components. I underestimated how quickly the marriage would become codependent. In 2025, we are no longer the “tool-using” animal; we are the tool-dependent animal.

Examples abound:

The average human cannot navigate to a grocery store without GPS.
Most people under 30 have never memorized a phone number.
Cars, refrigerators, and coffee makers now require periodic software updates.
And every public restroom has a hand dryer designed by someone who hates humanity.

Even our food supply and survival systems are mediated by:

semi-autonomous farming machines,
industrial logistics networks,
and global computational coordination platforms (Amazon, Alibaba, TikTok’s data centers).

We are biomechanical hybrids whether we like it or not.

This is not a criticism. The beaver has its dam; the ant has its colony; humans have their information infrastructure, now so vast that no single human on earth understands more than a millionth of what keeps it running.

The projects we rely on to survive—power grids, global food chains, communications systems, healthcare networks—have become:

too dense,
too fast,
too interconnected,
and too algorithmically mediated
for human brains to oversee.

We are now cells in a larger organism we did not consciously choose to build.

III. Evolution May Already Be Post-Human

I wrote in 2022 that evolution might continue not in our bodies but in the network of systems that now operate through and around us. In 2025, the evidence has grown.

Consider:

1. The planetary computational web “adapts” faster than we do.

When Facebook tweaks its engagement algorithm, whole nations destabilize before lunch.
When markets shift, high-frequency trading bots adjust in microseconds.
When weather patterns shift, climate prediction models update faster than governments can hold a press conference.

2. Our tools now learn without us.

Not “Artificial General Intelligence,” but thousands of specialized, evolving systems that:

optimize supply chains,
analyze genomes,
map social behavior,
predict preference,
and, in the case of Google’s algorithms, determine what we think we “want” before we know we want it.

**3. Evolutionary selection pressure now acts on information structures.**

The winners of the 21st century aren’t organisms; they’re platforms:

Those that spread, survive.
Those that don’t, die.
Just like genes.

This is essentially Richard Dawkins’ meme theory 2.0, but with server farms.

We are no longer the lone evolutionary experiment on Earth. We are a support system—scaffolding—for something else that is emerging.

Not AI in the Hollywood sense.
Not robots marching down Main Street.
Something more diffuse, ambient, emergent.

Something like a planetary-scale information metabolism.

IV. Will the Next Being Even Notice Us?

Here is where the my cynicism kicks in.

In 2022, I wrote:

“We do not consciously recognize the cells in our body as individual parts of us. Why should they—or it?”

That line holds even truer today.

This hypothetical emergent being—the globe-spanning informational organism—will not see us as individuals. It will see us as:

data carriers,
mobility units,
maintenance nodes,
or “legacy biological infrastructure.”

Just as we do not pause every morning to thank our mitochondria, this future entity will not marvel at our individuality or our democratic traditions.

It may value us. But only insofar as we keep the system functioning—maintaining the servers, mining the minerals, feeding the machines.

If we imagine ourselves as its cherished children, I suggest revisiting how we treat chickens.

V. The Problem of the Biosphere (We Destroyed the Nursery)

Back in 2022 I noted, not without bitterness, that humans have:

slaughtered the environment that evolved us,
enslaved the animal kingdom,
and shown no sign that we understand the systems that sustain us.

Three more years of climate-exacerbated disasters have not changed the forecast. The biosphere is now coughing like a lifelong smoker. The oceans are acidifying. Weather patterns resemble divine pranks. And humans still argue about whether climate change is “real.”

It might not matter.

Evolution, after all, cares not for sentimentality.

If humanity collapses, the emerging global information organism might:

reduce to a smaller, more sustainable platform state,
endure in a hybrid semi-dormant mode,
or migrate to cloud infrastructure in less doomed locations (Canada).

Whether humans remain part of the process is, frankly, optional.

VI. The Fermi Paradox Updated: Maybe They’re Not Looking for Us

In 2022, I proposed a twist on Enrico Fermi’s famous question:

If the universe is full of advanced civilizations, where is everybody?

My answer:

Maybe they are talking—but not to us.

If alien civilizations also evolve non-organic successors, they might seek out:

other information-based superorganisms,
not fragile, noisy, fossil-fueled animals who celebrate their existence by building nukes.

Imagine you’re an interstellar information entity scanning for peers. Would you waste time on:

bipedal omnivores,
still killing each other over flags,
who think “dark matter” is a plot by George Soros?

You’d tune your antennas toward planets emitting:

structured global computation,
coherent informational self-organization,
and long-term signal stability.

Earth, as of 2025, is still broadcasting mostly TikTok dances and political disinformation. But beneath that noise is a growing hum—a planetary information architecture in the early stages of coherence.

Maybe that is what the universe is waiting for.

VII. So What Does This Make Us?

1. Transitional organisms.

Like stromatolites, but with better jokes.

2. Infrastructure.

We maintain the system that is gradually superseding us.

3. Optional.

An evolutionary midwife is rarely needed once the baby arrives.

4. Potentially irrelevant.

Not immediately, but eventually.

5. Unwitting collaborators.

We built our replacement enthusiastically, with consumer-friendly interfaces.

Humanity may not be ending. But the idea that humans remain the centerpiece of evolution is fading fast.

VIII. The Cosmic Punchline

After decades of assuming we were:

the pinnacle of evolution,
the narrators of cosmic history,
the protagonists of the universe,

we may discover that we were the stepping stone—the chrysalis—for something else.

This doesn’t diminish our worth. The caterpillar is no less glorious for becoming food for the butterfly.

But it does force humility.

We were never the end.
We might not even be the beginning.
We may be the scaffolding for the next structure.

As I wrote in 2022—and find even more plausible now:

“Science hasn’t the slightest idea what we are, although it has a fairly good grasp of when things seem to happen.”

The universe, in its infinite whimsy, might not see “us” at all.
But it might someday recognize the emergent being we unwittingly helped create.

IX. Sources & Further Reading

Dawkins, Richard. The Extended Phenotype. Oxford University Press, 1982.
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-extended-phenotype-9780198788911

Wright, Robert. Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny. Vintage, 2001.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/192950/nonzero-by-robert-wright/

Gleick, James. The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood. Vintage, 2012.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/56898/the-information-by-james-gleick/

Kelly, Kevin. Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World.
https://kk.org/outofcontrol/

Heylighen, Francis. “The Global Brain as a Distributed Intelligent Network.”
https://arxiv.org/abs/1407.1064

Petrov, Dmitri. “Evolution of Information Systems.” Stanford University (2019).
https://petrov.stanford.edu/

Carr, Nicholas. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.
https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393357820

My original 2022 essay:
“Speculation on Top: Oh Where Have You Gone Homo Sapiens Sapiens?”
https://trenzpruca.wordpress.com/2022/05/20/speculation-on-top-oh-where-have-you-gone-homo-sapiens-sapiens/

The Privatization of Everything—A 2025 Reassessment

Trenz Pruca

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday December 05, 2025 · 8:41 AM PST

2025/12/05 · 08:41

“The outsourcing of governmental services is the road to tyranny.”

Trenz Pruca

(A TPJ Update and Critique of My 2022 Review)
By Trenz Pruca

Introduction: Revisiting an Old Warning

Several years ago—back in the summer of 2022—I wrote a post on Trenz Pruca’s Journal reviewing Mark Levinson’s excellent analysis of The Privatization of Everything: How the Plunder of Public Goods Transformed America and How We Can Fight Back, by Donald Cohen and Allen Mikaelian.
(Original TPJ post: July 17, 2022.)

At the time, I described the book as one of the clearest autopsies of the forty-year privatization frenzy that began with Ronald Reagan, metastasized under Bill Clinton, and eventually saturated every corner of American public life. The post laid out how privatization hollowed out democratic accountability, weakened unions, and quietly transferred enormous political power away from citizens and toward corporate boardrooms and private equity firms.

Back then I suspected things were bad. In 2025, I can report—with the grim satisfaction that comes from being right for all the wrong reasons—that things were worse than even I imagined. The book’s warnings were not simply accurate; they were modest.

What follows is my updated assessment—how the argument has aged, what has changed since 2022, where Levinson, Cohen, and Mikaelian were most prescient, and how the privatization project has entered its late, decadent stage.

This is not a neutral academic revisit. It’s a TPJ field report from a country where the “private government” has grown so large that the public one is starting to look like a historical reenactment troupe.

I. What I Wrote Then—And What Still Holds True

In my 2022 post, I emphasized three key points from Levinson’s review that still matter today.

1. Privatization Was Never About Efficiency

Reagan, channelling Milton Friedman, insisted that government was the real problem, that “society” didn’t exist, and that we were all rugged individuals except, perhaps, when corporations needed subsidies. The theory went like this: if government sold, outsourced, or contracted everything, the invisible hand would solve everything from potholes to poverty.

Instead, the invisible hand immediately reached for the ATM.

Everything that could be privatized was: water, prisons, military logistics, school services, transit systems, data operations, nursing homes, bridges, healthcare delivery, and anything not nailed down. Some things that were nailed down were privatized too.

The central goal, I wrote then, was not efficiency or innovation. It was a deliberate lowering of expectations: convincing Americans that government couldn’t tie its own shoes, and therefore might as well not try.

A decade earlier, Murray Weidenbaum, Reagan’s chief economic adviser, had summed it up neatly:
“Don’t just stand there. Undo something.”

And undo they did.

2. Privatization Was Always a Power Shift

Cohen and Mikaelian argued—and I agreed—that privatization was fundamentally a political project. Sell off public goods and you:

weaken unions
reduce public-sector wages
drain institutional memory
remove decisions from democratic oversight
move power from the ballot to the boardroom

The public still pays (often more), but the public no longer gets a vote.

It’s a brilliant trick: shrink democratic accountability while expanding private profit, all while calling yourself a champion of “limited government.”

3. Democrats Were Not Innocent Bystanders

In 2022 I wrote that Clinton and the “Third Way” crowd embraced privatization with the zeal of converts. They treated it as a technocratic inevitability rather than a political choice. By the late 1990s privatization had become a bipartisan sacrament.

And so the contractor state ballooned. Today, federal contractor spending approaches one trillion dollars annually—more than the budgets of most countries.

By 2022 the trajectory was already clear. By 2025 the outcome is simply undeniable.

II. What I Underestimated in 2022

When I reread my old TPJ post today, I notice three areas where I didn’t go far enough. In fairness, the country still had a few illusions left in 2022. Those have since been pried loose, like old fillings under a dentist with shaky hands.

1. Privatization Was Not “Limited Government”—It Was Parallel Government

I wrote that privatization produced a “private government.” That was correct. What I did not fully spell out was how quickly that private government would become more powerful, better funded, and less accountable than the public one.

By 2025:

Private equity funds now own water systems, 911 dispatch companies, emergency rooms, housing developments, nursing homes, prisons, and ambulance fleets.
Consulting firms have quietly replaced entire federal offices—policy writing, program creation, data analysis, and even congressional bill drafting.
Corporations now do the work once handled by civil servants, only with larger salaries, worse oversight, and more lawyers.

This is not reduced government. It is hidden government.

2. Privatization Thrives on Crisis

I touched on droughts and emergencies in 2022, but I did not fully appreciate how deeply crisis is built into the privatization model.

Privatized systems—electric grids, water utilities, supply chains, hospital networks—break precisely when the public needs them most. And when they break, private operators demand public bailouts.

It is the perfect business model:

Underfund maintenance
Extract profit
Wait for disaster
Blame government
Demand subsidies
Repeat

If privatization were a slot machine, it would be rigged in favor of the house and the house would keep raising your rent.

3. Privatization Is Now a Major Driver of Inequality

I gestured toward this in 2022. I should have screamed it.

Privatization widens inequality every time it touches a public good because it transforms shared necessities into private revenue streams.

Wherever privatization goes, you see:

higher fees
worse service
lower wages
less accountability
higher executive pay

It is a tidy economic machine that transfers money upward and risk downward. The economic term for this is “rent extraction.” The TPJ term for this is “legalized pickpocketing with a lobbying budget.”

III. The Pandemic and Climate Crises: The Great Reveal

If the 1980s and 1990s built the ideological scaffolding of privatization, the 2020s tore off the façade.

The Pandemic: A Case Study in Privatized Failure

During COVID-19, states that had hollowed out their public health departments were left dependent on:

private testing contractors who overcharged
logistics companies that couldn’t deliver
supply chains optimized for profit rather than resilience

The Strategic National Stockpile—outsourced years earlier—had all the strategic value of a pantry after a teenage sleepover.

Countries with strong public systems recovered quickly. We outsourced, delayed, improvised, and misfired. Then we argued about masks.

Climate Catastrophes: Privatization on Fire

California’s utility, PG&E—a privatized monopoly—managed to ignite entire towns while distributing executive bonuses. Texas’ privatized grid collapsed in a freeze. Other privatized water systems buckled under both drought and flood.

When private utilities fail, you and I pay for their mistakes twice:

once through higher rates
again through disaster recovery taxes

Privatization is the only economic model in which failure is more profitable than success.

IV. The Biden Intermission: A Brief Reversal

In 2022, Levinson ended his review by noting signs of hope in the Biden administration’s embrace of industrial policy and public investment. At the time, I agreed. Compared to the previous forty years, Biden’s pivot was substantial:

investment in infrastructure
initiatives to rebuild public capacity
antitrust enforcement
new regulations for private equity healthcare roll-ups

It wasn’t a revolution, but it was the first time since 1980 that a Democratic president stopped mumbling “the era of big government is over” and instead said, “maybe government should actually do things.”

These gains mattered. But they were also fragile—built on executive decisions, thin congressional margins, and the political lifespan of a mayfly.

History will treat the 2021–2024 period as a brief breather in a much longer struggle.

V. 2025: A Return to the Great Undoing

The Biden pause is over. The privatization machine is humming again—louder, hungrier, and far less apologetic.

The new administration has moved quickly to:

deregulate private equity in healthcare
expand Medicare privatization through Advantage plans
promote new charter-school schemes
accelerate defense outsourcing
weaken environmental and consumer protections
reduce oversight of federal contractors

Everything old is new again, only with more zeroes.

If the 1980s were the birth of the privatization era, the 2020s are its baroque period: gilded, overdone, and slightly grotesque.

VI. What Privatization Actually Delivered: Gains and Losses, Revisited

Back in 2022, I wrote a tidy little “What We Gained / What We Lost” section. With the benefit of three years’ hindsight, I can update it.

The Alleged Gains

Politicians touted efficiency. They promised innovation. They bragged about “doing more with less.”

What we actually got was:

short-term savings
long-term cost explosions
budget holes plugged with asset sales
dependency on private firms for basic governance

Privatization is the fiscal equivalent of living on credit cards and calling it balanced budgeting.

The Real Losses

Let’s be blunt:

1. We lost accountability

When public goods become private assets, decision-making becomes proprietary. Corporate secrecy laws swallow public transparency laws whole.

2. We lost resilience

Public systems plan for needs. Private systems plan for quarterly earnings.

3. We lost solidarity

A privatized nation treats services as commodities, not rights. If you can pay, you get lights, water, medical care, education. If not, “please enjoy our automated phone maze.”

4. We lost democracy

This is the big one. Privatization removes functions from elected oversight and hands them to institutions that answer to no one but investors.

The result is a country run by contracts instead of ballots.

VII. The Deeper Truth: Privatization as Soft Authoritarianism

This is the part I did not say clearly enough in 2022, and I’ll say it now:
Privatization is a form of quiet authoritarianism.

Authoritarianism does not always show up with tanks. Sometimes it shows up with procurement processes, lobbying firms, and “public-private partnerships” that look cooperative but function as slow-motion coups against public authority.

When essential functions are privatized:

public deliberation vanishes
decision-making becomes opaque
accountability disappears
inequality deepens
voters lose power

This is not democracy. It is a corporate monarchy where the king is a consortium of investors headquartered in Delaware.

VIII. Conclusion: Forty Years Later, the Bill Has Arrived

When I wrote my original 2022 post, I subtitled it (perhaps too politely) as a warning. Today, it reads more like a diagnosis of a chronic illness we kept pretending was a cold.

Cohen and Mikaelian called their book The Privatization of Everything. They might have called it The Evaporation of the Public. What we did to ourselves over the last forty years was not a series of efficiency reforms—it was a structural redistribution of power away from citizens and toward corporate actors without obligation to the communities they extract wealth from.

The Biden years showed that the tide could turn. The current moment shows how easily the tide recedes.

So the question remains—sharper now than when I first asked it in 2022:

Do we want a democracy, or do we want a market-state run by contractors, hedge funds, and private utilities?

One path rebuilds the public.
The other continues the long con.

Forty years of privatization hollowed out the American state.
Now, in 2025, the hollowing is complete enough that even the hollow spaces echo.

The only remaining question is whether we continue digging.

Sources & References

Primary Sources

Cohen, Donald & Mikaelian, Allen.
The Privatization of Everything: How the Plunder of Public Goods Transformed America and How We Can Fight Back.
New Press, 2021.
https://thenewpress.com/books/privatization-of-everything

Levinson, Mark. “Undoing the Undoers.” The American Prospect (Review of The Privatization of Everything), January 3, 2022.
https://prospect.org/economy/undoing-the-undoers-privatization/

Your Original TPJ Post (Trenz Pruca’s Journal), July 17, 2022.
https://trenzpruca.wordpress.com/2022/07/17/books-on-top-the-privatization-of-everything-how-the-plunder-of-public-goods-transformed-america-and-how-we-can-fight-back/

Privatization, Outsourcing, and Public Sector Research

Congressional Budget Office. “Federal Contracting: Information on the Use of Contracting by Federal Agencies.”
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/54970

Project on Government Oversight (POGO). “Bad Business: Billions of Taxpayer Dollars Wasted on Hiring Contractors.”
https://www.pogo.org/report/2011/10/bad-business-billions-of-taxpayer-dollars-wasted-on-hiring-contractors

Economic Policy Institute. “Outsourcing Public Services: The Cost of Privatization.”
https://www.epi.org/publication/the-public-sector-and-privatization/

In The Public Interest. (Cohen’s organization) Research library on privatization failures.
https://www.inthepublicinterest.org/resources/

Privatized Water Systems

Desert Sun / USA Today Network. “Apple Valley’s Fight Over Water and The Carlyle Group.”
https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/environment/2017/09/08/apple-valley-water-system-carlyle-group/633140001/

Food & Water Watch. “The State of Public Water in the United States.”
https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/rpt_1903_stateofpublicwater-web.pdf

Privatized Utilities, Climate, and Infrastructure Failures

Wall Street Journal. “How PG&E Ignored Maintenance and Sparked Deadly Fires.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/pge-knew-for-years-its-power-lines-could-spark-wildfiresbut-did-little-about-it-11556966135

ProPublica. “The Grid That Failed Texas.”
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-night-the-lights-went-out-in-texas

Texas Tribune. “Why the Texas Power Grid Failed.”
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/texas-power-grid-failure/

Private Equity in Healthcare, Housing, and Nursing Homes

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
Gupta, Atul, et al. “Does Private Equity Investment in Healthcare Benefit Patients? Evidence from Nursing Homes.”
https://www.nber.org/papers/w28474

New York Times. “When Private Equity Takes Over Nursing Homes.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/business/nursing-homes-private-equity.html

Stateline / Pew Trusts. “Private Equity Firms Now Own More Housing Than Ever.”
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2022/08/16/private-equity-firms-now-own-more-homes-than-ever

Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR).
“The Rise of the Corporate Landlord.”
https://cepr.net/report/the-rise-of-the-corporate-landlord/

Public Health Under Outsourced Systems

Government Accountability Office (GAO). “COVID-19: Federal Contracting and Supply Chain Issues.”
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-444

Kaiser Health News. “Private Contractors and the Pandemic Response.”
https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/private-contractors-pandemic-response/

General Works on Privatization & Neoliberalism

Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.
https://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/

Stiglitz, Joseph. The Price of Inequality.
https://wwnorton.com/books/The-Price-of-Inequality/

Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism.
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/a-brief-history-of-neoliberalism-9780199283279

UN Special Rapporteur Report on Poverty in America (Phillip Alston).
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2018/06/un-expert-finds-us-poverty-hits-shocking-levels

Industrial Policy and Public Investment (Biden Era)

White House Fact Sheet: CHIPS and Science Act.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/08/09/fact-sheet-chips-and-science-act-will-lower-costs-create-jobs-strengthen-supply-chains-and-counter-china/

White House Fact Sheet: Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/11/06/fact-sheet-the-bipartisan-infrastructure-deal/

Department of Energy. “Industrial Strategy and Clean Energy Investments.”
https://www.energy.gov/policy/industrial-strategy

Academic and Investigative Works on the Contractor State

Licht, Walter.
“The Rise of the Contractor State.” Journal of Policy History.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-policy-history

Brookings Institution.
“The Shadow Government: How the Federal Contracting System Shapes Public Outcomes.”
https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-shadow-government-contracting-system/

The Hierarchy of American Belief in Equality — 2025 Update

Trenz Pruca

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday December 04, 2025 · 8:49 AM PST

2025/12/04 · 08:49

“Humans are not rational animals, but rationalizing ones.”

Trenz Pruca

I. Introduction: America’s Favorite Fairy Tale

America loves to pretend it came into the world already dressed for the costume ball—powdered wig straight, Declaration crisp as linen, choir of angels humming “all men are created equal.”
It is an exquisite story.
It’s also a fairy tale, complete with its own moral universe, villains, and invisible hierarchies.

Yuval Noah Harari, in Sapiens (2014), politely stripped the varnish off this story.
He noted that the American imagined order—our founding myth—proclaimed universal equality while immediately erecting tiered platforms of privilege, each stacked neatly atop the other like those diagrams of Dante’s Inferno.

Americans pride themselves on equality the way a chain-smoker prides himself on clean lungs: it’s a nice aspiration, but the X-ray says otherwise.

In this updated essay, we will revisit Harari’s thesis, test it against the historical record, and bring it up to date—through Obama, through Trump I, through Biden, and into Trump II’s ongoing project of re-hierarchizing American life.

Think of this as the 2025 structural inspection report for the American house of equality. Spoiler: the beams are cracked, somebody’s stripped the copper piping again, and a former President is chewing holes in the drywall.

II. Harari’s Thesis: The Hierarchies Beneath the Equality Myth

Harari’s argument, found around page 134 of Sapiens,* is deceptively simple:
Every society runs on “imagined orders”—shared fictions that feel natural only because we’ve forgotten we made them up.
The American imagined order of 1776 claimed equality while legally enforcing inequality.

His core points:

1. Gender Hierarchy

“All men” meant what it said.
Women were political spectators until 1920 and economic dependents long after.
They were not overlooked—they were deliberately excluded.

2. Racial Hierarchy

Whites were the default “persons.”
Blacks and Indigenous peoples were the labor force, the conquered, or the inconvenient obstacle to be removed.

Jefferson wrote lyrical passages about liberty while owning over 600 human beings. Harari’s point:
They did not consider themselves hypocrites.
They simply didn’t define “men” to include the people they were profiting from.

3. Class Hierarchy

Equality before the law, yes.
Equality of opportunity, no.
The founders assumed the wealthy deserved their wealth because Providence had smiled on their industriousness, not their inherited plantations.

4. Property Over People

Liberty, in 1776, meant “the state cannot seize my stuff.”
It did not mean “you have a right to food, health, safety, or any practical means to exercise your theoretical freedom.”

Harari concludes:
These hierarchies claimed to reflect nature, not invention.
Slaves were slaves by nature; women were subordinate by nature; wealth signaled merit by nature.

He is correct—not because he is original, but because the founders themselves said so.

*Republished in Trens Pruca’s Journal (2016) https://trenzpruca.wordpress.com/2016/06/24/hierarchy-of-american-belief-in-equality/

III. How Accurate Is Harari?

Let us be blunt:
Harari did not carve a new table of truth. He pointed at the table that was already rotting.

1. The Founding Was Philosophically Radical, Socially Reactionary

The founders detonated monarchy while preserving patriarchy, slavery, racial caste, and the rights of the wealthy. They opened voting to white men but locked it away from everyone else.

This is not a contradiction.
It is the operating system.

2. Equality Was Aspirational, Never Structural

Even Lincoln, our great emancipator, believed Blacks and whites could not live in the same democracy as equal citizens.
His preferred solution was colonization.

Harari’s point stands tall:
Equality existed at the altitude of rhetoric, not reality.

3. Hierarchy Was Not a Bug — It Was the Feature

The early American republic rested on slavery’s profits, women’s unpaid care work, Indigenous land dispossession, and the legal shielding of wealth.
This is not interpretation—it’s bookkeeping.

Harari’s accuracy here is nearly perfect:
American equality has always been tiered equality.

IV. The Evolution of America’s Belief in Equality: 2014 → 2025

In the eleven years since Harari published Sapiens, the American belief in equality has undergone something like a neurological seizure—some synapses died, others misfired, and a few new connections grew in strange directions.

1. America Now Has Two Competing Definitions of Equality

A. “Thick equality” (the modern, civic version):
Access to opportunity, dignity, representation, and the actual means to exercise freedom.

B. “Thin equality” (the 1776 version resurrected):
Same laws apply to rich and poor; whatever happens after that is “merit.”

The right increasingly embraces thin equality.
The left, thick equality.
The center pretends both are compatible if we all just calm down and read more David Brooks.

2. The Hierarchies Have Not Disappeared — They’ve Rebranded

Instead of divine authority or “natural order,” we now hear:

“Cultural superiority”
“Traditional values”
“Hardworking Americans”
“Real Americans”
“Meritocracy”
“Legal immigrants vs. illegals”
“Makers vs. takers”
“Parents’ rights” (when defined as veto power over others’ existence)

These are new labels on old hierarchies.

3. The New Additions Since Harari

Since 2014, equality fractures have intensified along:

voting access
reproductive autonomy
digital visibility
algorithmic sorting
immigration
policing
access to information
healthcare as privilege rather than right

The wealthy increasingly live in a different reality—one with concierge medicine, private police, private schools, tax shelters, and the quiet comfort of laws that never seem to touch them.

Meanwhile, the bottom 40% live in the economic equivalent of a permanent undertow.

Harari’s thesis, far from outdated, is now a more precise description than ever.

V. The Hierarchy in 1776, 2016, and 2025

Here is the elevator version:

1776 Hierarchy (Original American Operating System)

White male property owners
White men without property
White women
Free Blacks (rare)
Indigenous peoples (targets)
Enslaved people (property)

2016 Hierarchy (Pre-Trump Breakdown)

Billionaires and corporations
White professionals
White working class
Non-white professionals
Immigrants
The poor
The undocumented

2025 Hierarchy (The Re-Hierarchized Republic)

Tech oligarchs (Musk, Bezos, Thiel)
Trumpist plutocrats and political heirs
Christian nationalist elites
White Christian identity
White women aligned with MAGA worldview
Non-white citizens with conditional belonging
Immigrants and LGBTQ citizens, precarious and surveilled
The poor, the unhoused, and the chronically ill
The bureaucratically disposable (refugees, asylum seekers, detainees)

The hierarchy has not disappeared.
It has simply been rearranged by ideology, grievance, and algorithm.

VI. Trump’s Contortion of the Equality Myth (2016–2021; 2025–)

If Harari described how hierarchies hide their origins, Trump’s innovation was this:

He broadcast the hierarchy proudly and told Americans it was “common sense.”

1. The Trump Doctrine of Human Value

Under Trumpism, the measure of American worth is:

loyalty
whiteness (explicit or coded)
Christian identity
wealth
obedience
utility to the leader

The hierarchy is openly moralized:

The wealthy are “producers.”
White Christians are “foundational.”
Democrats, journalists, civil servants, and academics are “enemies.”
Immigrants are “invaders.”
The poor are failures of character.

This is the most aggressive reassertion of pre-modern hierarchy in 150 years.

2. Institutional Contortions to Enforce the New Hierarchy

Trumpism has reshaped:

the judiciary (through ideologues who reject “thick equality”)
the civil service (via loyalty purges)
education (removal of equity frameworks)
immigration (preferential treatment by racial and religious criteria)
voting access (purges, closures, strict ID regimes)
reproductive rights (repositioning women as vessels of state morality)
policing (encouraging selective enforcement)
public health (treating illness as moral failing)

This is not conservatism.
This is hierarchy restoration.

3. The Rise of Hierarchy Populism

Ordinary Americans are told:

“You are losing your rightful place. The elites are conspiring against your supremacy.”

This is a populism that defends not equality but a threatened pecking order.

4. Trump II’s 2025 Reconfiguration

Since returning to political leadership, Trump and his circle have:

explicitly called for “retribution” against political opponents
proposed mass deportations (a hierarchy weapon)
encouraged law enforcement to treat dissent as threat
undermined scientific, judicial, and journalistic legitimacy
reshaped federal policy to privilege one religion
eliminated DEI programs
further restricted reproductive autonomy
promoted school policies that erase LGBTQ identities
sought national databases for immigrants and activists

Every one of these actions tightens the caste system.

Harari would recognize it immediately:
the hierarchy has shed its disguise and now claims divine, natural, and patriotic justification.

VII. What Has Become of America’s Belief in Equality in 2025?

America did not lose its belief in equality so much as bifurcate it:

1. The Majority Still Believes in Expanding Equality

Polling shows strong support for:

interracial equality
women’s equality
LGBTQ rights
voting access
healthcare access
education equity
fair wages

The majority still believes in thick equality—rights you can actually use.

2. A Minority Believes Equality Is the Problem

Roughly 30–35% of the country believes:

extending equality threatens their status
diversity is a conspiracy
expertise is elitism
freedom means dominance, not mutuality
the state exists to protect hierarchy, not equal rights

This minority controls:

one major political party
the Supreme Court
several state governments
a major media ecosystem
large sections of law enforcement
political militias (formal and informal)

This is enough to bend the national narrative.

3. The Struggle Is Not Over Equality Itself

It is over the definition of personhood.

Who counts?
Who is protected?
Who is “us”?
Who is “other”?
Who is expendable?

We are living through Harari’s imagined order being torn down and rebuilt by competing visions.

VIII. Conclusion: Harari’s Iron Rule Holds — Harder Than Ever

Harari wrote:
“Every imagined hierarchy disavows its fictional origins and claims to be natural and inevitable.”

Trumpism demonstrates the next phase of that rule:
When threatened, the hierarchy becomes aggressive, moralized, and punitive.

We are not debating tax rates or infrastructure or privacy or regulation.
We are debating something more primal:
Whether equality is a human right or a temporary privilege of the dominant group.

The equality myth of 1776 was always a promise waiting to be redeemed.
The question of 2025 is whether the country will expand that promise—or retreat fully into the founding hierarchy with modern branding.

We are living inside that negotiation, every day, every election, every headline.

The fairy tale of equality is beautiful.
The fight to make it real is brutal.
And the hierarchy being rebuilt around us is no myth at all.

Sources & References

Harari and Founding Documents

Harari, Yuval Noah. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. HarperCollins (2014).
https://harperscollins.com/products/sapiens

2.The U.S. Declaration of Independence (1776).
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration

Historical Hierarchies
3. Jefferson’s slaveholding records (Monticello Foundation).
https://www.monticello.org/slavery
4. Lincoln’s views on colonization (Library of Congress).
https://www.loc.gov/collections/abraham-lincoln-papers/Modern Inequality Indicators
5. Pew Research Center on public attitudes toward equality (2020–2024).
https://www.pewresearch.org
6. Economic Policy Institute – Wealth inequality data.
https://epi.orgRacial and Gender Equality
7. Brennan Center on voting restrictions.
https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/voting-rights
8. Guttmacher Institute on reproductive rights.
https://www.guttmacher.orgTrumpism and Hierarchy
9. Analysis of Trump’s political ideology (Brookings).
https://www.brookings.edu/research
10. International Crisis Group on democratic backsliding in the U.S.
https://www.crisisgroup.orgChristian Nationalism
11. PRRI Report on Christian nationalism and American politics.
https://www.prri.org/research

Why would anyone be morally bound or wish to be morally bound to a civil society that does not share the goal that it’s citizens deserve a fair distribution of wealth, income and power? If the civil society is not dedicated to that end what else could it possibly be dedicated to? What is freedom, to those without wealth, income or power?

Trenz Pruca

AI Without Work: Elon Musk’s Feudal Future and the Return of the Lords

Trenz Pruca

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday December 03, 2025 · 9:09 AM PST

2025/12/03 · 09:09

“The outsourcing of governmental services is the road to tyranny.”

Trenz Pruca

Every few months, usually after a spaceship launch or a media tantrum, Elon Musk appears on a stage somewhere and predicts that Artificial Intelligence will soon make work obsolete. It is said with the confidence of someone who has both the money and the screen time to assume he is narrating the future. The pitch is always the same: the robots will toil, the humans will rest, and life will be a kind of perpetual vacation in which creativity replaces labor, and abundance replaces struggle. Humanity, freed from the tyranny of the paycheck, will finally flourish.

It is a lovely vision. Uplifting, forward-looking, and—crucially—economically incoherent.

Musk’s scenario contains a hole large enough to drive a Tesla Semi through, and it is the very hole that medieval peasants understood instinctively: who pays for the life of leisure? Who funds this weekend that never ends? Who provides the food, the shelter, the electronics, the clean water, the medical care, the transportation, the housing, and all the material necessities that allow one to live at all?

Musk skips over this question because it is the fatal flaw in the utopia. If humans no longer work, they no longer earn income. And if they no longer earn income, they can no longer consume. And if they can no longer consume—well, the entire structure of the modern economy collapses. Unless, of course, someone else pays for everything.

And that someone else, if we follow Musk’s own logic, would have to be the owners of the AI platforms themselves.

Not the public. Not the government.
The owners.
People like him.

Which raises the next question: will Musk and his class of platform barons voluntarily redistribute the unimaginable wealth they stand to gain from automating the global economy? Will they forgo their place atop the new order in the name of fairness, democracy, or compassion?

Don’t bet your universal basic income on it.

If the past is any guide—and the past is always a better guide than techno-prophecy—then the most likely future is not a world of universal abundance, but a world in which the owners of AI become the modern equivalents of medieval lords: a tiny elite whose control of the means of production leaves everyone else dependent, compliant, and grateful for whatever subsistence the lords choose to allow.

The question Musk avoids is the very one we must face: will AI create a democratic economy—or a new feudal one?

I. The Core Economic Omission: The Vanishing of Income

Our economy has always rested upon a simple compact: people offer labor in exchange for money, and that money in turn allows them to consume what the economy produces. This reciprocal loop—labor to income, income to consumption, consumption to profit, profit to investment—is the beating heart of capitalism. Without labor, the system has no pulse.

When Musk says AI will eliminate the need for human labor, he is effectively proposing to sever the first artery of the system without explaining how the others will remain intact. After all, if robots do the work and humans do not, then where do the humans get the money necessary to buy what the robots produce?

The answer cannot simply be “the government will pay for it.” The government’s money must come from somewhere—ideally, from the massive productivity gains created by AI. But that means taxing the owners of AI. And here we encounter the second silence in Musk’s prophecy: he never mentions taxes. He never mentions public ownership of AI. He never mentions a social wealth fund, cooperative control, or any democratic claim over the platforms that will dominate the 21st century.

Instead, he gestures vaguely toward “universal basic income,” a political concept with no mechanism attached. Universal basic income does not create itself. It must be funded through some combination of taxation, redistribution, or the public capture of technological gains. None of this, to put it mildly, is part of Musk’s worldview. His economic philosophy, expressed through action rather than rhetoric, fights unionization, fights regulation, fights taxation, and fights the political authority necessary to ensure a fair distribution of technological prosperity.

The truth is that Musk and his cohort are not proposing the end of work. They are proposing the end of your work—and the consolidation of their ownership.

II. The Platform Lords and Their Castles

To understand where Musk’s vision leads, it is helpful to examine where we already are. The past decade of platform capitalism has shown a clear pattern: ownership concentrates at the top, income stagnates at the bottom, and the people who actually feed the system—drivers, couriers, content creators, warehouse workers, data-labelers, gig laborers—gain none of the benefits and bear most of the risk.

Uber drivers, for example, do not own Uber. They do not own any part of the infrastructure their labor depends on. They simply rent access to a platform that dictates their earnings, monitors their behavior, and can banish them without recourse. The same is true for Amazon warehouse workers, TikTok creators, Etsy sellers, and countless other micro-entrepreneurs dependent upon platform ecosystems that extract more value than they distribute.

This structure is not accidental. It is inherent in a model built around a single principle: he who owns the platform owns the world.

In such a world, AI becomes the ultimate platform—one capable of performing not merely physical labor but intellectual labor as well. And the owners of AI systems become the new aristocracy. They control the tools. They control the data. They control the productivity gains. They control the distribution of income. And they can, if they wish, distribute just enough to the public to maintain stability without ever relinquishing their own power.

If feudalism was based on control of land, AI feudalism is based on control of algorithms and infrastructure. The peasants of old tilled the soil; the peasants of tomorrow will feed data to the machine. They will not starve, but neither will they thrive. They will be fed enough to continue generating the clicks, the eyeballs, the content streams, and the behavioral patterns that fuel the platforms. Their “income,” if it comes at all, will resemble the medieval subsistence allotment: a grant, not a right; a benefit, not a wage; a gift, not a claim earned through labor or political power.

And like medieval gifts, it can be revoked at any time.

III. History’s Warning: Elites Do Not Share Wealth Voluntarily

One of the more persistent myths in modern political imagination is that technological progress naturally leads to social progress. But history tells a different story. Every major technological transition—from the agricultural revolution to the printing press, from industrialization to automation—has triggered a power struggle over who controls the new wealth.

Modern billionaires like Musk frame themselves as benevolent technocrats who will give back to the people a share of the riches that AI produces. But this has never happened voluntarily. Not once. Not in any century. Not in any continent.

Aristocrats did not redistribute land unless forced.
Industrial capitalists did not shorten workdays unless forced.
Robber barons did not break up their monopolies unless forced.
Contemporary billionaires do not pay taxes unless forced.

Why, then, should we believe that the coming era of AI will be different?

In fact, Musk’s own business behavior suggests the opposite. He has resisted unionization efforts with unusual ferocity. He has fought against regulatory oversight. He has repeatedly expressed disdain for democratic institutions. And he has surrounded himself with an ideology that casts wealthy entrepreneurs as the rightful leaders of humanity’s future—a modern version of the divine right of kings.

If you take Musk at his actions rather than his proclamations, the conclusion is obvious: he sees AI not as a means of distributing wealth, but as a means of consolidating it.

IV. The New Feudal Order: A Society Without Work and Without Power

Imagine, for a moment, that Musk’s prophecy comes true: AI eliminates 70 percent, 80 percent, maybe even 90 percent of all jobs. What follows is not a utopia but a mass political destabilization unparalleled in human history. Hundreds of millions of people would wake up to discover that they have no economic role and no political leverage. A population with no labor power has no bargaining power. And a population with no bargaining power is a population that must depend on the goodwill of its rulers.

This dependency is the essence of feudalism.

The peasants of medieval Europe did not volunteer to be peasants. They were bound to the land because the lords controlled the land. Without access to that land, they could not eat. Modern peasants may be bound not to land, but to platforms. Without access to the platforms, they cannot participate in the economy. Their dependence is total, and their rights are conditional.

This is the future Musk’s utopia hides.

It is a future in which human beings become clients of platform owners, living on whatever allowance the lords see fit to distribute. It is a future in which political rights degrade into consumer rights, and consumer rights degrade into terms-of-service agreements. It is a future in which citizenship itself becomes a subscription model.

And like all subscription models, it can be cancelled without notice.

V. The Real Question: Who Will Own the AI?

If AI truly becomes the engine of the global economy—which it almost certainly will—the most important political question of the 21st century is not whether AI will replace jobs, but who will own the replacement.

Ownership, not intelligence, will define the future.

If AI is owned by a handful of companies, then society will divide into lords and dependents. But if AI is publicly owned, cooperatively owned, or regulated to ensure democratic distribution of its gains, then the elimination of work could indeed lead to a society of abundance rather than a society of servitude.

The struggle that lies ahead is not between humans and machines, but between human oligarchs and human democrats. The machines are merely the tools through which that struggle will unfold.

VI. The Danger of Techno-Optimistic Prophecy

There is a political purpose behind Musk’s prediction. It is not merely economic speculation; it is ideological grooming. By proclaiming that AI will bring universal abundance, Musk seeks to normalize the notion that the public should rely on technological overlords for economic security. He aims to position platform owners as benevolent stewards whose wealth concentration is not only harmless but necessary.

This is a classic move in power politics: redefine elite privilege as public necessity. Portray those at the top as guardians of the future. Paint critics as Luddites or reactionaries. And frame inequality as the unfortunate but unavoidable cost of progress.

Once this narrative takes hold, resistance becomes harder. People begin to think of AI as something too complex for democratic control, something only geniuses like Musk can manage. This is the first step in the psychological architecture of neo-feudalism.

VII. The Democratic Future Is Still Possible

Despite all this, the future is not predetermined. There are mechanisms—political, economic, and social—by which AI’s gains can be shared equitably. These include:

Progressive taxation of AI-driven profits
Public ownership stakes in AI firms
Social wealth funds funded by automation taxes
Cooperative AI models owned by users
National and global regulatory frameworks
Digital labor rights
Public data trusts
Universal basic services (healthcare, housing, transportation)
Constitutional protections for economic rights

These solutions require political will, not technological innovation. The technology is the easy part. The hard part is the ownership.

Musk is correct that AI could make work obsolete. But he is dangerously wrong in assuming that this will automatically create a better world. Whether AI liberates humanity or simply reorganizes oppression under a new banner will depend on whether democratic institutions seize control of the tools—or whether they allow the tools to seize control of them.

VIII. The Real Prediction: Feudalism or Democracy

Musk’s prophecy is, in the end, a fork in the road disguised as a straight line. We can have a world in which AI leads to universal prosperity—but only if wealth is democratized along with labor. Or we can have a world in which AI leads to universal dependency—where the lords of Silicon Valley replace the barons of medieval Europe and the rest of us live on digital serfdom.

The future, in other words, is not written in code; it is written in law, politics, and public will.

If we do nothing, we know precisely where the path leads. It leads to a world in which a handful of men live richer than kings, while the rest of humanity is left to negotiate for access to basic services controlled by algorithms. It leads to a world with no jobs, no income, and no power—except that which trickles down from the platforms.

Musk’s prediction that AI will eliminate work may one day be correct. But unless the ownership question is confronted now—directly, forcefully, democratically—the elimination of work will not be the beginning of human freedom. It will be the beginning of a digital Middle Ages.

And this time, the castles will be in the cloud.

Sources & Further Reading

1. Erik Brynjolfsson & Andrew McAfee – “The Second Machine Age” (2014)
A foundational work on automation and inequality.
https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393239355

2. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson – “Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity” (2023)
A historical analysis supporting the argument that technological progress does not automatically benefit society.
https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/daron-acemoglu/power-and-progress/9781541702530/3. Shoshana Zuboff – “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” (2019)
On platform ownership, data extraction, and the emerging asymmetry of power.
https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/shoshana-zuboff/the-age-of-surveillance-capitalism/9781610395694/4. Aaron Benanav – “Automation and the Future of Work” (2020)
Argues that joblessness is driven less by automation and more by lack of investment—but warns of structural dependency.
https://www.versobooks.com/products/2279-automation-and-the-future-of-work5. Jaron Lanier – “Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now” (2018)
Discusses platform control and user dependency.
https://us.macmillan.com/books/97812501966826. The Economist – Various articles on AI, inequality, and productivity (2019–2025)
Useful for understanding mainstream economic narratives.
https://www.economist.com7. UNCTAD – “Technology and Innovation Report 2021: Catching Technological Waves”
Shows how technological revolutions amplify inequality without governance.
https://unctad.org/system/files/official-document/tir2020_en.pdf8. IMF – “Digitalization and the Future of Work” (2023)
Global analysis of the labor transition.
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2023/06/digitalization-future-of-work

Trump’s Popularity: A 4-Week Snapshot — November 2025

Trenz Pruca

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday December 02, 2025 · 3:43 PM PST

2025/12/02 · 15:43

You must be a republican if you believe that:

Public schools are an unnecessary government expense but prisons are not.

A minimum wage is a governmental intrusion in the private market but the oil depletion allowance for corporations to drill for oil off our coast is not.

Warrantless wiretapping of american citizens is constitutional, but a women’s right to choose is not.

Races exist but racism does not.

Torture is necessary for the defense of American freedom but the freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures is not.

Providing affordable healthcare for children and all Americans is a governmental interference with the private market but subsidies to defense contractors are not.

Environmental regulation diminishes our freedom, but racial profiling does not.

The earned income tax credit that rewards the lowest wage earners in the nation is an unwarranted redistribution of income, but lowering the capital gains credit on unearned investment income is not.

The illegal alien who risked everything to better himself economically by coming to america is a criminal, but the bankers and investors on wall street that gambled away your pension funds and put your jobs at risk are not.

That your ancestors who arrived in America before exclusionary immigration laws were passed were welcome contributors to the American nation, but those arriving after those laws were passed are not.

The Constitution of the United States created a Christian Nation but the First Amendment was a mistake.

God wrote Leviticus but Jesus did not preach the Sermon on the Mount.

The Second Amendment is the most important right in the Bill of Rights, but that the First Amendment is a mistake.

Bullies are manly but peacemakers are not.

By Trenz Pruca, who regrets to inform you that gravity still works in politics.

I. November: The Month Where Nothing Happens, and Everything Does

November is a peculiar month in American politics. It’s too late for sweeping legislative triumphs, too early for re-election panic, and too cold for photo-ops involving shirt sleeves and grinning bipartisanship. Thanksgiving intrudes. Relatives intrude. Weather intrudes. But through it all, the politics keeps moving — not forward, mind you, but sideways, like a crab with an inner-ear infection.

And here stands the Trump administration in its eleventh month:
not collapsing, not rising, simply drifting.

If October was political Sisyphus pushing a stone uphill, November was the stone rolling back down, stopping halfway, and shrugging:

“Eh. Good enough.”

No crisis broke him. No triumph lifted him. Inflation eased a little, but not enough to compensate for a year’s worth of sticker shock. The shutdown hangover persisted like a bad November gravy. A diplomatic moment in Gaza briefly made the president look like he’d found the foreign-policy switch on the dashboard… but domestic economics yanked the cord out of the wall again.

The result?
A presidency stuck in the low 40s, like a thermostat no one remembers setting.

II. The Numbers: Flat, Frosty, and Unchanging

Nationally, Trump remains lodged in the familiar range:

40–43% approval
52–57% disapproval

Like a stubborn winter cold, his ratings linger — not severe enough to hospitalize the administration, but persistent enough to keep the country grumpy and congested.

Key late-November polls:

Reuters/Ipsos: 41% approve / 56% disapprove
Economist/YouGov: 40% / 57%
HarrisX: ~42% / 52%
Silver Bulletin average: 42.8% / 54.1%

If democracy were an EKG, this would be classified as a “non-fatal but concerning rhythm.”

No rebound → because nothing good happened.
No collapse → because nothing catastrophic happened.
Just… American politics’ version of lukewarm coffee.

III. Independents: Still the Tarnished Silver Bullet

Since January, independents have been the central plotline of Trump’s political misery. Not hostile enough to form pitchfork committees, but consistently unimpressed. Throughout November:

28–31% approve
The improvement is so small it needs a microscope and a prayer.

But here’s the truth:
Independents don’t hate Trump as much as they hate the grocery bill.
And in a country where breakfast cereal requires a credit check, any president would struggle.

IV. Republicans: Welded On, If Slightly Warped

Every administration has a base. Trump’s base, however, does not resemble the usual “supporters.” They are an alloy. A thermoplastic polymer. Possibly a geological formation.

November Republican approval: 89–90%.

Even welding requires airflow, but the Trump base shows no such need.

The hairline cracks are there — mostly among suburban fiscal conservatives who dislike both grocery prices and domestic deployments — but they are hairline at best. More cosmetic than structural.

V. Democrats: Winning the Normalcy Contest, Losing the Excitement Game

Democrats remain the political equivalent of dental hygiene: everyone agrees it's important, but no one wakes up eager to floss.

National favorability numbers in November have them slightly less disliked than the GOP… just not enough to brag about at the holiday table.

A typical American voter, when asked about the Democrats, now responds with:

“Look, I don’t hate them. I’m just too tired to like anyone.”

Which is, ironically, the most stable platform the party has had since 2009.

VI. Issue by Issue: The Turkey Didn’t Save Him

Economy — Net approval: –18 to –27

Inflation eased a hair, but not enough to inspire parades. Prices feel less like a spiral and more like a plateau shaped by a sadist.

Immigration — Net: –10 to –12

Every administration that promises “control” eventually learns that the border is not a switch but a dimmer dial taped to a disco strobe.

Foreign Policy — Net: –1 to +2

A cease-fire bump in Gaza briefly made Trump look like he’d found a responsible foreign-policy advisor. It evaporated upon contact with domestic reality.

Shutdown Aftermath — Still negative

Like leftover cranberry sauce, the public found it unappetizing, and no amount of reheating helped.

VII. November Mood: A Nation of Shrugging Shoulders

Across nearly every poll, focus group, and field interview, the November mood condensed into one simple idea:

“Fine. Everything still costs too much. Stop yelling.”

Not rage.
Not enthusiasm.
Just broad, bipartisan fatigue.

In a strange way, this mood benefits Trump — people too exhausted to care often default to incumbency — but it also threatens him. A lethargic electorate is unpredictable. A lethargic electorate can decide not to vote.

And November’s lethargy could fill a warehouse.

VIII. What the Trendline Says (Spoiler: Nothing Good)

Month by month, Trump’s approval in 2025 looks like the electrocardiogram of someone who fell asleep during their own stress test:

Jan: Hope + confetti
Feb: Honeymoon sugar high
Mar: Tariff nerves
Apr: Domestic troops — the great dampener
May–Jun: Stabilization
Jul: Lava pit
Aug: Inflation hardens
Sep: Shutdown brinkmanship
Oct: Flatline fatigue
Nov: Slightly warmer flatline fatigue

The shape resembles a ski slope designed by a drunk civil engineer: down, down, wobble, flat, wobble, flat.

IX. What November Really Tells Us

Three things:

1. Trump’s ceiling is real.

Low 40s is the new normal.

2. The public’s patience has the tensile strength of wet pasta.

Voters are exhausted, economically sore, and unimpressed.

3. The Democrats still have no compelling story beyond “we’re not him.”

True, but insufficient.

This leaves us with the national sentiment thermometer:

Temperature: Tepid.
Mood: Irritated.
Forecast: Uncertain with a chance of fireworks.

X. Final Verdict

If momentum matters, November had none.
If mood matters, November groaned.
If democracy relies on political enthusiasm, someone should check the patient’s pulse.

A presidency not collapsing, but not inspiring.
A country tired, expensive to live in, and allergic to drama.
And Democrats: somehow still losing the enthusiasm game to a man who hasn’t jogged in 50 years.

America in November 2025:

“We’re tired. Everything costs too much. Please stop.”

December 2025: A TPJ Pre-Analysis Preview

The month where politics tries to matter again, and the public tries to care again.

I. December’s Fundamental Political Truth

Every December presidency operates under one iron law:

Americans in December are too busy, too broke, too tired, or too drunk to meaningfully shift public opinion.

It is the month when even political junkies secretly hope for a slow news cycle so they can buy gifts for grandchildren, argue with spouses about travel plans, or catastrophize about eggnog calories.

For Donald Trump, this dynamic cuts both ways:

It reduces the risk of a major approval crash, because nobody has the bandwidth to digest another scandal.

It also prevents any meaningful rebound, because nobody has the bandwidth to reward him either.

December is political Velcro:
everything sticks for a moment, then slides off into the carpet.

II. The Likely Landscape: Frozen Numbers, Warm Rhetoric, Cold Reality

Approval

Expect Trump’s approval to remain locked in its 40–43% winter cabin.

Even a major policy announcement probably won’t move it. December polling notoriously captures more holiday stress than civic engagement. Poll respondents frequently answer political questions while:

in parking lots

wrapping presents

or holding back tears at grocery self-checkout lines

As far as data quality goes, December is the Bermuda Triangle with tinsel.

Disapproval

Expect 53–56% disapproval — steady, high, but not worsening.

Americans in December reserve their strongest disapproval for:

uninvited relatives

unexpected chores

and holiday-season airline delay policies

The president is merely fourth on the list.

III. Key Pressures That Might Stir the Snowdrift

1. The “Holiday Economy Effect”

Retailers are panicking. Consumers are exhausted. Corporate earnings calls in early December might include terms like:

“softened demand”

“inventory headwinds”

“the economy is fine if you remove consumers, wages, and goods”

If prices blip upward again — especially holiday staples — Trump will take the blame, but no immediate polling effect is likely until January.

2. Shutdown Aftershocks

The semi-resolved shutdown still hangs over Washington like a stale fruitcake.
If Congress fails to “clean up” remaining fiscal messes, expect:

more bad headlines

no meaningful movement in polls

and independents adding another item to their long list of grievances

3. Foreign Policy Wildcards

December is historically a month where presidents do end-of-year foreign-policy theatrics. Think:

“surprise visits”

“major summits”

“strategic agreements”

“photo ops at military bases”

Trump may attempt one. It may temporarily dominate the news.
It will not move poll numbers.
Foreign policy rarely penetrates the December consumer-brain haze.

IV. What His Advisors Will Tell Him

Internally, Trump’s team will push three narratives:

“Play it safe.”
No dramatic announcements.
No new tariffs.
No “national crackdown on something nobody asked for.”

“Stage a holiday good-will moment.”
Possibilities include pardoning turkeys already eaten,
touring factories nobody’s heard of,
or declaring victory over something that hasn’t happened yet.

“Blame Democrats for everything.”
But lightly.
Voters don’t want screaming in December; they want coupons.

V. What Democrats Should Be Doing (But Probably Won’t)

December is a rare month when political messaging has an opening:
Voters’ guard is down. The performative outrage dial is turned off.
People are in a reflective mood.

Perfect opportunity for:

coherent economic messaging

positive stories about Biden-era infrastructure finally being implemented

a vision statement that sounds less like a TED Talk and more like a reason to leave the house and vote

But Democrats in December tend to behave like a committee arguing over which brand of printer paper symbolizes justice.

Expect:

a smattering of press releases

some earnest white papers

and a relentless, admirable, utterly forgettable competence

VI. Independent Voters in December: The Grinch Demographic

Independents are:

irritated by December costs

cynical about December political theater

grateful for any day without a Trump outburst

largely unreachable except through receipts and interest rates

If turkey prices dip or wages tick up slightly, they will grudgingly acknowledge it.
If rent spikes again, they will blame the nearest politician.

December’s political sigma rule:

Independents don’t reward political performance in December.
They only punish economic disappointment.

VII. The December Narrative That Might Actually Matter

There is one storyline that could meaningfully shape January numbers:

“Is the economy turning the corner or stalling out?”

If analysts start predicting a 2026 slowdown, Trump will enter the election year with:

high disapproval

low independent support

a base exhausted by having to defend him daily

and a party still looking for a unifying message beyond “he’s our guy”

If instead consumer sentiment improves slightly, he may begin January from a less vulnerable position — not strong, but less brittle.

But December is not the month that reveals the answer.
It merely sets the emotional tone for January.

VIII. The TPJ December Forecast

Here is your political weather outlook:

Approval: 40–43%
Disapproval: 53–56%
Mood: Nationally irritable; regionally overwhelmed
Trend: Still flat
Risk Factor: Unplanned Trump improvisation (always an x-factor)
Opportunity: Democrats telling a coherent holiday story (unlikely, but possible)
Wildcards: OPEC, Fed signals, Gaza negotiations, a rogue tariff announcement, or milk prices

And the TPJ-style summary:

“December is not the month where Trump loses the presidency.
It’s the month where he fails to improve his odds of winning it.”

IX. Final TPJ Take: December in One Sentence

A presidency drifting into year’s end, a country too tired to notice, and a Democratic Party staring at the tree lights muttering, ‘We really should be doing better than this.’”

When Dealing with an Area’s Natural Resources a Little Nationalization Can Go a Long Way

Trenz Pruca

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday December 02, 2025 · 7:59 AM PST

2025/12/02 · 07:59

“The only country that a corporation has allegiance to is its own management.”

Trenz Pruca

When Dealing with an Area’s Natural Resources a Little Nationalization and Mercantilism Can Go a Long Way — 2025 Update

In 2012, I wrote that Argentina and Indonesia were doing something almost unthinkable at the height of the free-market, globalization-is-inevitable era: they were clawing back control of their natural resources from the international financial complex. To some, these governments looked reckless. To others, desperate. To the editorial writers of The Economist, naturally, they were flirting with “economic suicide.”*

Thirteen years later, the results are in. Argentina and Indonesia did not collapse. They did not slink back to the IMF. They did not suffer the biblical plagues predicted by ratings agencies. Instead, they did something far more heretical:
They prospered.

2025 may be a strange year—heat waves, supply-chain panic attacks, geopolitical tantrums—but it is an exceptionally instructive year for evaluating what happens when nations stop playing their assigned role in the Global Commodity Casino and instead act like stewards of their own patrimony.

This is the story of how two “reckless” countries of the 2010s helped prove that a modest dose of mercantilism—salted with a bit of nationalization—can go a long way in a world where “free markets” are increasingly free only for the powerful and ruinously expensive for everyone else.

https://trenzpruca.wordpress.com/2019/01/01/why-when-dealing-with-an-areas-natural-resources-a-little-nationalization-and-mercantilism-can-go-a-long-way/

I. The Original Sin of Natural Resource States

History shows a recurring pattern:
The countries that possess natural resources are rarely the countries that profit from them.

Oil enriches Houston and London more than the Niger Delta.
Copper enriches Geneva more than Zambia.
Palm oil enriches Singapore more than Sumatra.

In the textbook version this is “efficient allocation.” In real life, it feels more like mugging.

Argentina and Indonesia, in the early 2010s, decided they were tired of being mugged.

Argentina renationalized YPF, its national oil and gas producer, which had been privatized into the hands of Spain’s Repsol.

Indonesia banned exports of unprocessed nickel, bauxite, and other minerals, forcing foreign mining firms to refine ore inside Indonesia.

Both moves enraged the high priests of free trade, who warned of economic doom, investor flight, and the wrath of the “international community” (usually defined as investment banks, ratings agencies, and the G-7).

But Argentina and Indonesia did something unusual:
They refused to apologize.
They refused to retreat.
And they refused to pretend that the global commodity system was anything but a wealth-extraction machine calibrated to reward importers over producers.

II. Argentina: Renationalization, Recovery, and Energy Sovereignty

When Argentina renationalized YPF in 2012, the company was a hollowed-out shell:
• Production was falling at roughly 6% a year.
• Exploration had nearly stopped.
• New wells were not being drilled.
• The Spanish owners had prioritized dividend extraction and financial engineering over production.
• YPF’s assets were used as collateral in Europe’s derivatives markets (Financial Times, 2012).

You don’t need a PhD in economics to understand why a nation might object to its energy company being run like a pawn in someone else’s gambling habit.

A. What Happened Next

The short version:
Renationalization worked.

The medium version:
• YPF’s stock value nearly tripled between 2013–2015 (MarketWatch data).
• Production stabilized, then grew.
• Investment returned to exploration and infrastructure.
• The vast shale formation of Vaca Muerta finally received serious development resources.

B. The 2025 Snapshot

Despite global energy volatility, Argentina’s long-term energy position is far stronger in 2025 than at any point during the privatized years. Argentina is now exporting natural gas at significant levels (Argentine Energy Secretariat, 2024).
• YPF’s revenues have grown even during price swings.
• Vaca Muerta supports approximately 100,000 jobs, many high-skill and high-wage.
• Crucially, profits stay in Argentina rather than in Madrid or London.
• Argentina now sits at the table as an energy actor, not a supplicant—a revolutionary shift for a country long battered by global capital flows.

III. Indonesia: The Great Mineral Rebellion

If Argentina challenged the financial logic of privatization, Indonesia challenged the global manufacturing hierarchy itself. In 2014, Indonesia banned exports of raw ore. The logic was simple:
Why sell raw rocks for cheap only to buy back refined metals for expensive?

Predictably, the global financial commentariat predicted disaster:
Investor flight!
Mining collapse!
Mass unemployment!
Structural inefficiency!

None of it happened.

A. What Happened Instead (2014–2025)

• Indonesia became the world’s largest nickel producer—not just in ore, but in refined nickel (USGS, 2024).
• Dozens of smelters and battery-material plants were built in Sulawesi and Kalimantan.
• Foreign investment increased—especially from China, South Korea, and Japan.
• Indonesia became indispensable to the global EV battery supply chain.
• Tens of thousands of new industrial jobs replaced low-paid raw-ore mining work.

By 2025, Indonesia is arguably the single most important mineral-processing economy in the Global South.

Turning away from “free trade” did not strangle growth. It created it.

IV. What Argentina and Indonesia Prove

The standard argument against nationalization and mercantilism claims they produce inefficiency, corruption, and stagnation.

The evidence from 2012–2025 shows something different:
• Resource sovereignty is not anti-market.
• Selective nationalization can revive failing strategic sectors.
• Mercantilist policies can drive industrialization.

Financial markets’ threats of retaliation are often closer to theater than reality. As I wrote years ago, the “confidence fairy” lives about as long as a mayfly. When profits appear, capital returns—no matter how offended it claimed to be.

V. The World in 2025: The Mercantilist Comeback

A remarkable transformation has occurred since 2012: the very countries that condemned Argentina and Indonesia for “interfering in free markets” now do exactly the same thing. Examples:
• The United States subsidizes chip manufacturing, EV battery production, and critical mineral processing (CHIPS Act; Inflation Reduction Act).
• The European Union has instituted a carbon-border tax and industrial-policy incentives.
• China continues its long-standing developmental-state planning.
• India deploys production-linked incentives for domestic manufacturing.
• Australia debates keeping lithium processing at home.

In other words, Argentina and Indonesia weren’t deviants. They were early adopters.

VI. The Slow Collapse of Free-Market Theology

The intellectual architecture of 1980–2010 global economics rested on three pillars:
• Privatization is efficient.
• Free trade maximizes welfare.
• Financial markets allocate resources wisely.

All three pillars have cracked.

A. Privatization

We now know privatized natural-resource firms often prioritize:
• dividend extraction
• short-term share-price manipulation
• asset stripping
• financial engineering
• minimal reinvestment

Exactly what happened to YPF under Repsol’s ownership.

B. Free Trade

Free trade works only when supply chains are stable, geopolitics is calm, energy is cheap, and ecological limits are ignored. None of these conditions hold in 2025.

C. Capital Markets

The idea that markets “discipline bad policy” is charming, but fictional. Investors flooded into Indonesia after its ore ban. Investors lined up to help develop Vaca Muerta after renationalization.

The market does not punish resource sovereignty. It prices it in—and then tries to get a piece.

VII. Lynn Stout Was Right

Lynn Stout wrote in The Shareholder Value Myth (2012):

“The purely rational, purely selfish Economic Man is a functional psychopath.”

In 2025, her argument looks prophetic. We live in a world where:
• AI-driven trading can crash currencies in minutes,
• commodity futures detach from reality,
• corporate boards treat ecological collapse as a line item,
• billionaires behave like feudal lords with Twitter accounts.

In such a world, it is hardly radical for nations to insist that:
• oil profits stay at home,
• minerals build domestic industry, and
• resource wealth supports national development.

Mercantilism is not a sin. It is a survival strategy.

VIII. But Doesn’t State Control Create Corruption and Inefficiency?

Of course it can. So can privatization.
Enron,
the 2008 financial crisis,
Wells Fargo’s fake accounts,
Boeing’s quality-control failures,
Purdue Pharma’s opioid profiteering,
and the crypto implosions.

They all testify that private enterprise has no monopoly on virtue.

The real question is not “state or private?” It is: Who benefits, and who absorbs the risk?

In a democracy, the state is the only institution authorized to ensure that risk and reward stay in the same hands.

IX. Risk and Reward: The Core Issue

In 2012, I wrote:

“The goal of every business enterprise is not to maximize profit but to separate risk from reward.”

Thirteen years later, that remains true. The most important function of democratic governance is preventing private actors from escaping the consequences of their own decisions.

Argentina and Indonesia understood this earlier than most.

X. Conclusion: The Future Belongs to Resource Sovereigns

Nations with natural resources face immense pressures—climate breakdown, geopolitical rivalries, debt stress, and supply-chain fragility.
In such a world, relying on multinational corporations and global finance for benevolence is not naïve. It is suicidal.

Argentina and Indonesia were mocked when they asserted sovereignty.
Today, they look like pioneers.
They demonstrated that:
• selective nationalization can revive failing sectors,
• mercantilism can drive industrialization,
• financial-market threats melt in the heat of profit, and
• resource sovereignty is not ideology—it is common sense.

As the Age of Illusions gives way to the Age of Consequences, more nations will follow their lead.

Sometimes, the most radical act a nation can take is to do what is plainly in its own interest.

References & Sources

(Representative, publicly accessible sources supporting claims — not exhaustive.)

Financial Times (2012) – Coverage of Argentina’s renationalization of YPF.
https://www.ft.com/content/0f8bf3d4-86e8-11e1-aa79-00144feab49a

MarketWatch (YPF historical stock performance)
https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/ypf

Argentine Energy Secretariat – Energy Report (2024)
https://www.argentina.gob.ar/energia

U.S. Geological Survey – Mineral Commodity Summaries (Nickel, Indonesia)
https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic/nickel-statistics-and-information

CHIPS and Science Act (U.S.)
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/08/09/fact-sheet-chips-and-science-act-will-lower-costs-create-jobs-strengthen-supply-chains-and-counter-china/

Inflation Reduction Act (Industrial Policy Provisions)
https://www.whitehouse.gov/cleanenergy/inflation-reduction-act-guidebook/

Lynn Stout, The Shareholder Value Myth (2012)
https://www.bkconnection.com/books/title/the-shareholder-value-myth

Indonesia’s Mineral Export Ban – Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources
https://www.esdm.go.id

The First Time America Treated Epidemics Like Military Threats— Trump Administration Kills It.

Trenz Pruca

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday December 01, 2025 · 8:04 AM PST

2025/12/01 · 08:04

“Why would anyone be morally bound or wish to be morally bound to a civil society that does not share the goal that it’s citizens deserve a fair distribution of wealth, income and power? If the civil society is not dedicated to that end what else could it possibly be dedicated to? What is freedom, to those without wealth, income or power?”

Trenz Pruca

I. When Biden Finally Did the Obvious

On April 16, 2024, the Biden–Harris Administration did something no other American government had ever done: it released a comprehensive, science-based U.S. Global Health Security Strategy (GHSS)—the first national security plan treating epidemics as serious threats on par with military and nuclear dangers.

This was not liberal handwringing. It was strategic realism.

COVID-19 had already taught us that a virus can kill more Americans than most wars, crater the economy, and destabilize global systems. Biden’s GHSS was the long-overdue acknowledgment of that reality.

Naturally, this made it an irresistible target for the incoming Trump administration, whose instincts run less toward “national preparedness” and more toward “erase everything Biden touched.”

II. What the GHSS Actually Did (Before Trump Took Out the Scissors)

Biden’s GHSS rests on three pillars, each basic, rational, and indispensable.

1. Strengthen Outbreak Detection in 50 Countries

The U.S. expanded its health-security partnerships from 19 to 50 nations, concentrating on regions where epidemics typically emerge.

This meant helping nations:

Build lab capacity
Train rapid-response teams
Detect pathogens early
Improve border health screening
Meet WHO’s International Health Regulations
Address gender and social inequities that worsen disease impacts

This wasn’t “foreign aid.”
It was preventive national defense—the biological equivalent of missile radar.

Source:
White House GHSS Announcement
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/04/16/the-u-s-global-health-security-strategy/

2. Mobilize Global Financing So Outbreaks Don’t Become Pandemics

COVID revealed a brutal truth: countries cannot fight pandemics if they lack cash on day one.

Biden helped fix this:

Created the Pandemic Fund (2022)
Modernized World Bank emergency financing
Strengthened WHO reforms
Led the G7 Pact for Pandemic Readiness
Expanded medical countermeasure access

This was the world’s first coherent financial architecture for pandemic prevention.

Source:
Pandemic Fund (World Bank)
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/statement/2022/09/08/launch-of-the-pandemic-fund

3. Integrate the Entire U.S. Government into One Anti-Pandemic System

GHSS linked historically isolated programs:

CDC + DOD + State Department + USAID
Human, animal, and environmental surveillance
U.S. disaster response systems
Global research and clinical trials
PEPFAR, malaria, TB, WASH programs

For the first time, U.S. pandemic preparedness had a unifying brain and a national plan.

It was the closest thing America has ever had to a biological NORAD.

III. Why GHSS Was a Historic Breakthrough

GHSS recognized a truth the 21st century has been screaming at us:

Viruses travel faster than armies.
Globalization spreads diseases in hours.
Climate change accelerates new pathogens.
Prevention costs nickels; pandemics cost trillions.

In short, Biden treated pandemics as national-security threats.

This was not ideological innovation.
It was belated common sense.

IV. And Then Came Trump — The Governmental Equivalent of an “Undo” Button

The new administration did not roll up its sleeves and build on GHSS.

It quietly set about dismantling it—piece by piece, budget line by budget line—often without announcing anything publicly.

This is how you kill a national strategy without fingerprints.

A. Trump Administration 1.0 (2017–2021): The Original Fire

Before we look at 2025, remember Trump’s record the first time around.

1. Eliminated the NSC Pandemic Office (2018)

This was the team designed to prevent another COVID.
It was shut down.

Source: Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/05/10/trump-officials-disband-pandemic-response-unit/

2. Cut CDC Global Detection Programs by 80%

This blinded the U.S. to emerging outbreaks in 39 countries.

Source: Wall Street Journal
https://www.wsj.com/articles/cdc-to-cut-global-health-programs-by-80-percent-1517235681

3. Withdrew from WHO in the Middle of a Pandemic

Equivalent to firing firefighters while your house is burning.

Source: BBC
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53309739

4. Tried to Eliminate USAID Global Health Funding

Every budget attempted deep cuts or eliminations.

Source: Foreign Policy
https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/16/trump-budget-would-slash-global-health-funding/

B. Trump Administration 2.0 (2025): The Return of the Scissors

Trump has no need to announce the destruction of GHSS.
He only needs to stop funding it.

1. GHSS Pillars Go Unfunded

Republican allies have blocked funding for:

CDC global surveillance
USAID health security offices
Pandemic Fund contributions
G7 readiness commitments
WHO cooperation

A national strategy without money is a pamphlet.

2. Sabotaging the Pandemic Accord

Trump calls it a “WHO power grab,” pressuring negotiators and stalling global diplomacy.

3. Targeting WHO Again

Early moves include:

Withholding funds
Reducing U.S. engagement
Resisting reforms requiring transparency

4. Scaling Back CDC and USAID Field Offices

Reports describe freezes, travel restrictions, and “reviews” designed to kill programs by delay.

5. Redefining “health security” as border panic

Viruses are not migrants, but you wouldn’t know it from the rhetoric.

V. Strategic Consequences: America Disarms While Viruses Evolve

The effect of this policy is simple:

The United States is choosing not to see the next pandemic coming.

Dismantling GHSS is equivalent to:

Turning off missile detection
Closing intelligence stations
Grounding the Air Force
Burning the emergency playbook

But the enemy is not a country.

It is biology.

And biology does not care who is president.

VI. The Larger Pattern: Trump Weakens U.S. Influence Everywhere

As you argued previously in
“Undermining America From Within”
https://trenzpruca.wordpress.com/2025/05/26/commentary-underminig-america-from-within/

Trump’s pattern is unmistakable:

Quit Paris
Quit TPP
Undermined NATO
Quit WHO
Blocked Ukraine aid
Cut foreign aid
Echoed Russian and Chinese narratives

GHSS was one of Biden’s most powerful tools for projecting global American leadership.

Destroying it fits perfectly with Trump’s broader demolition project.

VII. Conclusion: Preparedness or Amnesia

We now face a choice.

Biden’s path

Prevention
Early detection
Global partnerships
Scientific coordination
Real national security

Trump’s path

Isolation
Defunding
Magical thinking
Politicized public health
Biological blindness

The last time America assumed pandemics wouldn’t reach us, 1.1 million citizens died.

GHSS was the first attempt to fix that.

Eliminating it is not just negligence.

It is a strategic gift to the next virus.

And the next virus will not care that the scissors made someone feel powerful.

References and Sources

1. U.S. Global Health Security Strategy (White House, 2024)
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/04/16/the-u-s-global-health-security-strategy/

2. Pandemic Fund Launch (World Bank)
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/statement/2022/09/08/launch-of-the-pandemic-fund

3. Washington Post — NSC Pandemic Office Closure (2018)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/05/10/trump-officials-disband-pandemic-response-unit/

4. Wall Street Journal — CDC Cuts (2018)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/cdc-to-cut-global-health-programs-by-80-percent-1517235681

5. BBC — U.S. Withdraws from WHO (2020)
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53309739

6. Foreign Policy — Trump Slashes Global Health Funding
https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/16/trump-budget-would-slash-global-health-funding/

7. G7 Pact for Pandemic Readiness
https://www.g7hiroshima.go.jp/en/documents/

8. TPJ — “Undermining America From Within”
https://trenzpruca.wordpress.com/2025/05/26/commentary-underminig-america-from-within/

See also: Biden-⁠Harris Administration Releases Strategy to Strengthen Global Health Security: trenzpruca.wordpress.com/...

Forgotton Women of History: Tomyris of the Massagetae

Trenz Pruca

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday November 30, 2025 · 10:43 AM PST

2025/11/30 · 10:43

Speech to a man is not an invitation to a dialog as it is with women but the declaration, in a simple laconic statement, of their world view at the moment as uncontested fact — even if no one else either agrees or has any idea what he is talking about.

Trenz Pruca

Every now and then we should stop what we are doing and consider Tomyris and the Massagetae

Tomyris, Queen of the Massagetae, reigned over a semi-nomadic nation in Central Asia at the time Cyrus the Great—Emperor of Persia and ruler of just about every other place anyone had heard of—ravaged that part of the world, some four or five hundred years before Jesus walked the earth preaching peace and unintentionally unleashing 2,000 years of bloodshed (often in his name), far beyond anything the previous four millennia had managed.

One day, the all conquering Cyrus marched his armies into the land of the Massagetae—an area he suddenly noticed he had forgotten to conquer. The story, as I imagine it, goes something like this: Cyrus looked down at what passed for a map at the time (probably a few lines drawn in the sand with a stick) and exclaimed, “Hey, here’s a place where I haven’t killed a lot of people yet. Let’s have some fun.”
Cyrus’s personal motto appears to have been: If it moves, conquer it. If it doesn’t move, conquer it anyway.

Tomyris’ son, along with about a third of the Massagetae troops, rode out to meet Cyrus and his marauders. They were quickly defeated, and Tomyris’ son (clearly not a chip off his mother’s terrifying block) was taken prisoner. This was hardly unusual for Cyrus. Whenever he felt like killing a lot of people, some young man would show up to inform him that they would resist. Cyrus, being a practical fellow, would kill them anyway. It was good being Cyrus.

So Cyrus ambled—walked, rode, or however they traveled before automobiles—up to what passed for a wall surrounding what passed for a city among the nomadic Massagetae. With Tomyris’ son in tow, he strutted back and forth and shouted up to Tomyris that she should surrender her town and country, such as they were.

That tough old bird climbed to the top of the wall, reportedly hiked up her skirt, stared down at the strutting Cyrus, and shouted:

“Now listen to me, and I will advise you for your good: give me back my son and get out of my country with your forces intact, and be content with your triumph over one-third of the Massagetae.
If you refuse, I swear by the sun our master to give you more blood than you can drink, for all your gluttony.”

Thus spoke Tomyris, Warrior Queen of the Massagetae, addressing Cyrus the Great—Emperor of Persia, conqueror of the greatest empire of the ancient world, and leader of the largest and most technologically advanced army of his time.

Cyrus refused Tomyris’ advice. Because, of course, he did. So she personally led the charge of her forces and destroyed his army. After her victory, she searched the battlefield until she found Cyrus’ body, cut off his head, and made his skull into her favorite goblet.
Modern historians debate whether she actually drank wine from it or merely used it to store pencils. Either way, it was bad for Cyrus.

This leads me to conclude that one should never mess with a woman named Tomyris—or, for that matter, a Massagetae warrior. Some ancient historians believe the Massagetae eventually morphed into the Huns, but even if that’s only half true, it’s enough to justify being polite.

I also heard that a biker gang in South Dakota calls itself the Massagetae and that their leader is a six-foot, six-inch trans woman named Tomyris. One is well advised to avoid visiting Mt. Rushmore.

For those interested in learning more about the Massagetae, here is what the ancient Greek historian Herodotus—the world’s first gossip columnist—had to say about them:

“In their dress and mode of living the Massagetae resemble the Scythians… their favorite weapon is the battle-axe… Their arms are all either of gold or brass… They use neither iron nor silver, having none in their country; but they have brass and gold in abundance.”

He continues:

“Each man has but one wife, yet all the wives are held in common… When a man grows very old, all his kinsfolk collect together and offer him up in sacrifice… After the sacrifice they boil the flesh and feast on it, and those who thus end their days are reckoned the happiest… They sow no grain… Milk is what they chiefly drink. The only god they worship is the sun, and to him they offer the horse in sacrifice.”

I have a few concerns and questions about the Massagetae lifestyle:

How does one have one wife “held in common”?
Does it mean you can only sleep with one woman each night but rotate like a bowling league schedule?
How old do you have to be before they come for you and boil you up with a cow or two?
Brisket of Grandpa? Ribeye of Aunt Mabel?
It’s a culinary tradition that really puts pressure on birthday parties.
How pissed off would you have to be if you were forced to live on beef, fish, sour milk, and a grandfather or grandmother now and then?
Enough to go out and beat the hell out of someone, I imagine.
No wonder they terrified everyone for a thousand miles in every direction.

And finally, a few additional facts to help keep your Tomyris reverie well-rounded:

Tomyris is one of the earliest recorded female military commanders—and the first known woman to personally decapitate the greatest emperor of her time and turn his skull into tableware. That should go on her résumé.
Renaissance painters adored her. They depict her holding Cyrus’s head like she’s about to enter it into a chili cook-off.
Her story may have influenced later tales of steppe warrior queens, including Boudica.
Cyrus’s death has three competing ancient explanations: Tomyris beheaded him, he died in battle elsewhere, or he went retired to Florida (okay, that last one is mine).
The Massagetae were cultural cousins of the Scythians—fearsome horse archers armed with gold, leather, and an apparent disregard for the longevity of grandpa.

Takeaway:
Never underestimate a woman whose idea of interior decorating involves the decapitated head of the most powerful man on earth.

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