Immiseration (Part 2)

A Word You Need to Know for the Next Four Years

Picking up where we left off:

Why You Need to Know the Word Immiseration

I wanted to acquaint you with this evocative word because the next four years of the Trump Terror 2 administration are going to be an immiseration-fest the likes of which (to channel Trump’s babble) the world has never seen before!

Lots of people are going to be plunged into misery. Cruelly and deliberately.

Camden, New Jersey

So why did voters, by ticking the box for Trump, decide to bring increased immiseration down on our collective heads—and, more often than not, on their own heads as well?

One obvious, albeit too general, answer is this. A lot of Americans are riled up and ignorant. That is, we feel our mounting immiseration, and it pisses us off. But many of us don’t understand its primary source. So we can’t do anything useful about it.

Since the election of Reagan, a well-observed phenomenon has been working-class Americans voting against their own financial interests when they cast their votes for Republicans. These voters obviously desire the hot-button cultural agenda on offer by Republicans (normally, issues revolving around religion, race, abortion, immigration, education, and the like). But these voters just as obviously don’t understand the neoliberal structural agenda Republicans enact (invariably, tax cuts for the super-wealthy and for large corporations, cuts to social programs, deregulation of industry and financial markets, and the like).

All of these are economic policies that only serve to increase the immiseration of these working-class voters.

How does such pulling the wool over somebody’s eyes take place? Easy. The same way we all think that the society we’ve been born into is somehow natural and inevitable. In a word: Ideology (see Reproducing the Regime and Neoliberal Ideology and Bullshit).

Just as the feudal serf was taught to believe in the Divine Right of Kings—and so stay obediently at the bottom rung of the feudal social ladder—Americans are fed the belief that we are hearty Individuals navigating a Free Market of opportunity—with similar stultifying effect. The great majority of us grind a lifetime away in underpaid and unsatisfying jobs getting increasingly pissed off that we’re not becoming filthy rich.

To vent our anger, mainly we blame (vaguely) “The Government” for our plight over (highly convoluted) issues like “inflation.” Few of us (myself included) really understand all the ins and outs of inflation or how it works exactly or who exactly has the most say in controlling it. Even more of a problem, when we blame “The Government,” all we’re really doing is complaining about our own shortcomings. Many Americans don’t seem to understand that, in a democratic republic, “The Government” is up to us to determine.

Well, to be fair, at least in theory it is.

In most societies, those who control the productive forces (land, technology, riches, raw materials, whatever they may be) attain ruling-class status. As a result, these people also come to monopolize the political power of that society. Either they rule it themselves or they control—through the use of their wealth—the political figures who rule ostensibly.

This political dynamic has been going on in America since Day One. Only now, I think we’ve reached a watershed moment in human socio-economic history. While Trump, Fox “News,” and other whiz-bang liars like the many-shirted Steve Bannon are adept at using MAGA ideology to rile up angry-but-ignorant Americans (even to the point of storming the Capitol; see BULLSHIT as the New Truth), such traditional wielders of wealth, in my view, are no longer the bigger threat.

The bigger threat now is not so much the capitalist class in general, but the billionaire class in particular.

That is, those rarified few at the very tippy-top of the heap who profit obscenely from the immiseration of millions of workers. Those fat-cat moneybags hitherto hiding behind the likes of Trump and Fox and Bannon. In my view, when it comes to explaining The Immiseration Question, it’s time to take a hard look at these guys.

Corporate multibillionaires have emerged as the newest economic apex predator on the scene.

So brace yourself for a thumbnail history lesson.

The first industrial revolution (roughly 1750-1840) brought steam. And with steam power, production could be mechanized. Building on this innovation, the second industrial revolution (roughly 1870-1914) brought electricity. And with electrical power, mass production was enabled. And mass production forever changed the shape of human society.

Now this same amplification effect is taking place with our newest technologies.

The third industrial revolution (roughly 1950-2010) brought the microchip. And with the microchip, among many other things, global capitalism was not only made possible, but financial markets were empowered to the point where the ultra-wealthy came to control the course of world affairs. Now, in the fourth industrial revolution (roughly 2010-current), innovations on the microprocessor are bringing forth a fusion of astonishing new technologies that blur the boundaries of the digital, the physical, and the biological realms.

And these new technologies are evolving at an exponential rather than lineal rate. And these new technologies promise to enhance vastly our physical and mental powers as humans. And these new technologies—and most importantly AI—are owned and operated by the corporate multibillionaire class.

Think about it. Based on everything we’re seeing in our current social-economic-political moment, our greatest fear must be how such an ownership of such an astonishingly powerful set of productive forces is sweeping us beyond the mere plutocracy enabled by the third industrial revolution. Now the fourth industrial revolution is herding us, full tilt, over the cliff edge of outright oligarchical autocracy.

Around the globe, this dangerous trend is well underway. Well-heeled, tech-savvy, nuclear-armed autocrats are making their move. The most dangerous are Xi Jinping of China (which, for a “communist” nation, sure practices one hell of a lot of capitalism) and Putin of Russia (that other erstwhile “commie” state).

Now, with the re-election of The Donald, it’s America’s turn, I fear, to rid itself of troublesome, business-unfriendly democratic principles—voting, the rule of law, checks-and-balances, liberty and justice for all.

All that anti-capitalist shit.

Do you really need evidence?

Elon fucking Musk.

Trump got elected in 2016 mainly because Putin had his Russian hackers spread MAGA lies. Trump got re-elected in 2024 mainly because Tech billionaires decided to hop aboard the MAGA Gravy Train—that little-engine-that-could bound for those most-coveted of corporate destinations: Tax-Cutville and De-Regulation Town.

Musk in particular put to use his vast wealth and cutting-edge digital wizardry/monopoly to sucker enough disgruntled, immiserated Americans—predominately by way of spreading social media disinformation—into voting for Trump. By extension, then, these Americans voted for the very people who immiserate and disgruntle them the most—the corporate multibillionaires.

Like dollar-sucking vampires, the billionaires have emerged from the shadows. Tech Giants especially are falling all over themselves to lick Trump’s perineum. To curry favor they contribute millions to Trump’s farcical inauguration (where he fell asleep over lunch). To ensure they get what they want, they clamor to be appointed to his sham Cabinet posts or his ridiculous “Department” of Government Efficiency (DOGE; see also Letters from an American for 16 January 2025).

And you know full well what these blood-suckers intend to do. Suck more blood. Capitalists can’t help themselves. The system itself won’t allow it. Profit must be made.

And the easiest and best way to profit is to hand workers the shit-end of the stick.

Goldman Sachs, for example, predicts that just around the corner 300 million jobs worldwide will be lost or downgraded by way of AI replacing humans (see Forbes). The blood-suckers at Goldman Sachs, of course, crow about the benefits of increased corporate profitability and how exciting new jobs will open up for workers as a result of this AI great replacement.

But that’s all bullshit. Corporate profits only mean increased dividends for the big shareholders. These new jobs will be crap. The pay and benefits will suck. Still, people will be desperate to get them.

Meanwhile, wealth inequality marches on.

In their ideal business environment, capitalists wouldn’t employ humans at all. We’re too much trouble.

So let’s not be naïve.

The hostile takeover of the U.S. Republic is underway. Billionaires now openly roam the Halls of Power in D.C. Musk has been made the sole leader of DOGE. He’s been given unrestricted access—with zero oversight—to the data systems of the U.S. Treasury (among other federal bureaus; see, for example, Robert Reich). He’s unilaterally—and illegally—shutting down federal agencies, such as USAID, that he’s decided—nobody knows why or based on what criteria—are inefficient (see, for example, Letters from an American for 7 February 2025).

Not surprisingly, many of the agencies Musk is demolishing have opened investigations on him and his companies in the past (see, for example, The Guardian).

Oh, yeah. Musk is also giving Nazi salutes to Trump (see HuffPost).

Who knows? Maybe soon Musk and his fellow Tech-bros won’t need Trump and the Republicans anymore to serve as their ventriloquist dummies (see Billionaires Backing Bigots). Maybe soon, having stockpiled so much wealth and controlling all the advanced technology, they’ll simply take over. Ruling America as a superrich oligarchy. Just as superrich oligarchies currently rule China and Russia.

What’s to stop them? And what will that mean for us?

Expanding immiseration.

What else?

COMING IN TWO WEEKS: aw heck, let’s go to the movies!

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