Understanding the Existential Threat of a Cult

An existential threat, put simply, is a threat to society – a veritable threat to existence does not have to be present for someone to experience a sense of existential threat. Trump draws fervent support from conservatives who believe the president is willing to restore the country to its moral and constitutional foundations. Conservatives accepted Trump because he appointed their judges, and rolled back regulations they hate. These conservatives claim liberals pose “an existential threat” to the country, and the response includes need to turn to natural law which is the foundation upon which the spirit of the US Constitution is built. Trump’s SCOTUS nominee, Judge Gorsuch is a natural law thinker. The Republican deception is to use the existential threat of socialism to ensure that they can win elections. This allows control of court nominations who tend to support the tradition of natural law of a market.

A cult is a group of people who organize around a strong authority figure. Cults, like many other groups, attempt to expand their influence for the purposes of power or money. No one joins a cult; they are recruited by systematic social influence processes. However, to achieve these ends, destructive cults employ a potent mixture of influence techniques and deception to attain psychological control over members and new recruits. This fundamental level of control is known alternatively as ‘brainwashing,’ ‘thought reform,’ or ‘mind control.’ A successful induction by a destructive cult displaces a person’s former identity and replaces it with a new one. That new identity may not be one that the person would have freely chosen under her own volition. Cult leaders are typically malignant narcissists and want people who will be obedient to them.

Lean Festinger first developed the theory of cognitive dissonance in the 1950s to explain how members of a cult who were persuaded by their leader, that the earth was going to be destroyed on 21st December and that they alone were going to be rescued by aliens, actually increased their commitment to the cult when this did not happen. The dissonance of the thought of being so stupid was so great that instead they revised their beliefs to meet with obvious facts: that the aliens had, through their concern for the cult, saved the world instead. Eileen Barker, has written that, together, cult leaders and followers create and maintain their movement by proclaiming shared beliefs and identifying themselves as a distinguishable unit; behaving in ways that reinforce the group as a social entity, like closing themselves off to conflicting information; and stoking division and fear of enemies, real or perceived.

Populists also have an incurable predilection to claim allegiance of whole segments of the population, which might not be true in reality. Populists detest accountability and prefer personal deification at the expense of party institutionalization. The ensuing lack of institutional governance results in the cultivation of personality cults and eventual democratic breakdown. He must appear ordinary, to allow people to relate to him. And yet he must also be seen as extraordinary, so that people will grant him permission to be the arbiter of their individual and national destiny. For instance, they’re not about likeability. Leaders with cults of personality are usually aggressive. They keep audiences on edge with their outbursts and unpredictability. They create a bond that goes beyond agreeing with ideas and policies: people simply want a part of this person. Trump’s appeal is less intellectual than emotional. No matter if few of his political ideas are original.

Cult leaders arise from decayed communities and societies in which people have been shorn of political, social and economic power. The disempowered, infantilized by a world they cannot control, gravitate to cult leaders who appear omnipotent and promise a return to a mythical golden age. The cult reflects the leader’s prejudices, worldview, personal style and ideas. Trump did not create the yearning for a cult leader. Huge segments of the population, betrayed by the established elites, were conditioned for a cult leader. They were desperately looking for someone to rescue them and solve their problems. As long as a person stays in the cult, they are receiving constant reinforcement of the cult identity. Only when we recognize Trump as a cult leader, and many of those who support him as cult followers, will we understand where we are headed and how we must resist.

Donald Trump represents an existential threat to the current system. Trump won the nomination as the candidate who lied the most, won the presidency as someone known to lie; has an unshakable base despite ongoing lies. Underlying social issues made this possible. Enablers support the Trump’s behavior out of fear, love, or a misguided sense of loyalty. Autocrats, like Trump, surround themselves with their political cronies and lackies rather than competent people – have no way of eliciting, recognizing or assessing useful criticism. They are unwilling to hear anything negative – that leads to very bad decisions. There’s no doubt that Donald Trump was the instigator of the 2020 insurrection. But the former president’s schemes never would have gotten far (or even off the ground) without the participation of right-wing media executives, lawyers and pliant state officials. Without holding these enablers accountable, democracy and the rule of law will remain at risk.

The cult leader grooms followers to speak in the language of hate and violence. The cult leader constantly paints a picture of an existential threat, often invented, that puts the cult followers in danger. The cult leader, unlike a traditional politician, makes no effort to reach out to his opponents. The cult leader seeks to widen the divisions. The leader brands those outside the cult as irredeemable. The leader seeks the omnipotence to crush those who do not kneel in adoration. The followers, yearning to be protected and empowered by the cult leader, seek to give the cult leader omnipotence. Democratic norms, an impediment to the leader’s omnipotence, are attacked and abolished. Cults are a product of social decay and despair, and our decay and despair are expanding, with ongoing increase in inequality. George Orwell understood that cult leaders manipulate followers primarily through language, not force.

Cults maintain their power by promoting an “us vs. them” mentality. Trump instinctively understands how indispensable his own individual persona is to his ultimate goal of grasping and maintaining power. Amidst his string of business failures, Trump’s singular talent has been that of any con man: the incredible ability to cultivate a public image. Of course, Trump did not build his cult of followers – his in-group in many ways – as the stage was set for his entrance. America had already split into two political identities by the time he announced his campaign for president in 2015, not just in terms of the information we consume, but down to the brands we prefer and the stores we frequent. With the help of Fox News and Trump’s reality TV star’s penchant for manipulating the media, Trump tore pages from the us-against-them playbook of the European far right and presented them to a segment of the American public addicted already primed to receive it with religious fervor.

A destructive cult is absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability, which uses deception when recruiting as well as mind-control techniques to make a person dependent and obedient. Cults are typically hierarchical, that uses formal and informal practices to socialize members. After escaping the Unification Church, Steve Hassan dedicated his life’s work to freeing other people from mind control organizations and destructive cults. He is now one of the world’s leading experts on mind control and cults. Hassan is a direct personal witness to the way cult leaders are defined by their use of money, power, greed, sex, lies, charisma and violence to control their followers and empower themselves. In 2016 Hassan saw those traits personified in the form of Republican nominee Donald Trump. He then tried to alert the public to the danger that a cult leader would become president and that ruin and despair for the United States would be the inevitable result.

It’s not unusual for a president, current or former, to hold sway over his party and its voters. But once Trump attained the presidency, he took over the Republican Party and instituted a fiefdom where he rewards loyalty and punishes anyone who displeases him. Even today Trump’s impact on the GOP stands out for its breadth; Trump has influenced the party and its members on everything from policy to rhetorical style.  The majority of the 2024 Republican presidential candidates look to recreate the movement that helped propel Trump to the White House six years ago. Before, during and after his time in the White House, Trump called into question the legitimacy and effectiveness of key institutions — in the government, the media and the world at large. Republicans routinely rail against “The Swamp” – Trump’s ill-defined term for institutional corruption, which happens to include organizations like the FBI and NATO.

New recruits to cults are “love bombed”. Donald Trump constantly tells his followers that he loves them. His people need and want to believe that Donald Trump loves them. Trump’s followers have a deep investment in him emotionally and personally. I would tell Trump’s true believers the same thing I would tell people in other mind control cults: Think back to what you thought you were getting involved with, and now think about where you are now. If you knew then where you would be four and a half years later, would you have ever gotten involved with Donald Trump in the first place? Only when we recognize Trump as a cult leader, and many of those who support him as cult followers, will we understand where we are headed and how we must resist. How long will they continue to believe that if he appears to be in this only to help himself?

The Republican Party has devolved into a cult of personality, where every new piece of evidence of their leader’s criminality enhances his popularity. How many indictments should it take to bring down a cult leader? Not withstanding, the faithful are indifferent to a thick criminal record that could quickly weigh down the cult leader. Political cults end when accountability begins. How can the cult leader face accountability? A post-Civil War provision of the 14th Amendment says any American official who takes an oath to uphold the US Constitution is disqualified from holding future office if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or have “given aid or comfort” to insurrectionists. Voters can sue under the 14th Amendment to disqualify Trump from holding the presidency or any other office under the United States. Basically, citizen groups are filing legal challenges asking the state Supreme Court to direct the secretary of state to exclude Donald Trump from the ballot in 2024.

Excluding Donald Trump from the ballot in 2024 is the initial response to this existential threat. It is necessary to resist this regression into a petty, fragmented brand of politics rooted in resentment and fear. Research indicates that approximately two-thirds of cult members are psychologically healthy people that come from normal families. It isn’t necessary to buy into the big lie all of the time. You can step back from thinking. As Eckhart Tolle says, “Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them.” Question from where your thinking arises. How do these thoughts or feelings relate to your history; what is this event tapping into? What is the root of this feeling? In what ways am I lying to myself? These are questions that can begin the process of seeing reality more clearly. This will counter the intentional blurring of the relationship between proposed facts and reality that dominates the present political climate.

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The Rise of the American Oligarchy

When a small group of people rules a society, the political system is considered an oligarchy; when only money and wealth determine how a society is controlled, the political system is a plutocracy. From the standpoint of a democratic society, oligarchies are inherently unjust and corrupt. It is a system of government in which virtually all political power is held by a very small number of wealthy but otherwise unmeritorious people who shape public policy primarily to benefit themselves financially through direct subsidies to their agricultural estates or business firms, lucrative government contracts, and protectionist measures aimed at damaging their economic competitors — while displaying little or no concern for the broader interests of the rest of the citizenry. On the other hand, in an authentic democracy, there must be commercial-free zones where the power of human rights, citizenship, community, equality and justice, are free from the corrupting influence of money.

From 1949 to 1967 Leo Strauss served as a professor in the University of Chicago political science department, and became the source of the inspiration of the neoconservative ideology of the Republican Party. He developed a political philosophy based on deception, the power of religion, and aggressive nationalism. This was a system in which the people are told no more than they need to know as deception is a norm in political life. He recommended the use of religion for the morals of the masses, but not applying to the leaders. If the masses really knew what was going on it would lead to nihilism. The void was to be filled with religious values. Also, Strauss proposed the use of aggressive foreign policy to unite the masses. In Strauss’s view perpetual deception of the citizens by those in power is critical because they need to be led, and they need strong rulers to tell them what’s good for them.

The greatest victory for the neoconservatives was not that they highjack the theories of neoliberalism and use them to promote their own political global agenda but the fact that they managed to make the world to see their ideas as necessary or even the best way, perhaps the only way, for the social order to be regulated. Neoliberalism in all horrible reality is a significant disruptive force that dominates policy, politics, and culture to the advantage of the select few, enabling concentration of wealth and power to breed totalitarian nation-states. The great prophets of neoliberal economic policies like Milton Friedman claim economic freedom is a necessary condition for political freedom; it appears neoliberalism is a breeding ground for totalitarian tendencies, not free will and democracy. The strategy of neoliberalism has been successful based upon the income and wealth of a privileged minority gaining political dominance.

To distract voters, Republicans now embrace the uncertain populist policies of division and misinformation. Fox News tells viewers they are the only reliable source of political information – re-enforcing the alt-right propaganda in social media. In post-truth politics social media assists political actors who mobilize voters through a crude blend of outlandish conspiracy theories and suggestive half-truths, barely concealed hate-speech, as well as outright lies. These “populist” voters now live in a media bubble, getting their news from sources that play to their identity-politics desires, which means that even if you offer them a better deal, they won’t hear about it, or believe it if told. We now realize the need to control how social media is manipulated by big money. Friedrich Nietzsche claimed there are no facts only interpretations. In his view there was no objective fact about what has value in itself – culture consisted of beliefs developed to perpetuate a particular power structure.

Far the most disastrous feature of the neoliberal period has been the huge growth in inequality. How did neoliberalism manage to survive virtually unscathed for so long? There is a neoliberal counter-revolution based on polarization. Trump’s victim politics is a complete fraud, an old trick used by economic elite to keep working-class Americans fighting each other rather than taking on the oligarchs who are ripping them off. Trump and his allies are again stoking racial tensions even as they seek to cut taxes on the rich by shedding affordable health care for everyone else, dismantle protection for workers and consumers, and tear down environmental protections that stop wealthy corporations from poisoning communities. Victim politics is cultivated for a reason – to keep workers distracted from the real causes of economic inequality. Trump informs his followers: I am your retribution. Retribution is the act of taking revenge.

It is about a system, corrupted by the influence of big donors and powerful interests, that makes voting more difficult than necessary, particularly for historically disadvantaged groups. Republicans are using the same baseless lies about voting fraud to push a staggering number of laws to scale back voting rights. The reason they’re willing to weaken American democracy is very simple: it’s all about retaining power. The rules being put into place will make it more difficult, if not impossible, for many minority voters to participate in elections. In addition, these states are allowing partisan groups to take over running elections. As a group Republicans, are pushing towards replacing democracy with a system where a powerful minority holds disproportionate and borderline tyrannical control over government and blocks the majority of Americans from having meaningful say over the direction of the country. There is a need for federal legislation to prevent partisan bias from determining whether elections were conducted properly.

By the time Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992) came to write The Constitution of Liberty (1960), a network of lobbyists and thinkers he had founded was being lavishly funded by multimillionaires who saw the doctrine as a means of defending them against democracy. Hayek’s writing rejects such notions of political freedom, universal rights, human equality and distribution of wealth – democracy has no absolute value, in fact, liberty depends on preventing the majority from exercising choice over the direction that politics and society might take. In the updated version the progress of society depends on the liberty of these ‘economic elite’ to gain as much money as they want and spend it how they wish. All that is good and useful, therefore arises from inequality. In other words, there should be no connection between merit and reward, no distinction made between earned and unearned income, and no limits to the rents they can charge.

An ongoing plot to weaken US democracy has been in play for 50 years. In 1980 Charles Koch sought ways to steer American politics to the right without having to win the popular vote. He chose do it through philanthropy, with it’s guarantee of anonymity. This led to the founding of think tanks like the Kato Institute to create so-called discussion papers that would drive discussion of right-wing policy issues like minimal government and regulations into mainstream media. This was done with such consistency that people forgot that the saying “capitalism and freedom were interchangeable” was an ideology, not established fact. Reconciliation hasn’t just excluded types of legislation; it has had a bad effect on the legislation it includes. Any change will be an uphill journey, as the people now in control – the economic elite – will not readily let go of their power without legislation to control big money in elections.

Rising inequality has become the defining challenge of the century; it has profound implications for the health and resilience of democracies everywhere. Inequality – and the fears of social decline and exclusion it generates – feeds social polarization and the shrinking of a vital moderate center. Inequality is usually associated to an unequal distribution of resources and, therefore, it is related to the gap between the rich and the poor. It also relates to an unequal access to opportunities or benefits from economic activity. In the best-case scenario, this unequal distribution is associated to talent or effort; but, in most cases, it is the result of institutional structures that create social barriers based on: sex, age, ethnicity, social status, among other variables that define individuals’ initial conditions. Inequality can lead to social tensions, discrimination, poverty traps, erosion of social capital, regional imbalances, and an unfair access to justice. It also prevents people from obtaining fair benefits from economic activities.

Within the plutocracy the wealthy win acceptance from the entire political class that its largely speculative activities, such as financialization – the growth of the scale and profitability of the financial sector at the expense of the rest of the economy – are normal. Through this process the financial markets, financial institutions, and financial elites gain greater influence over economic policy and economic outcomes. In addition, the wealthy control enough of the media to ensure they are credited for being the economy’s principle engine of growth. In return, they are given privileged treatment as the well-being of the national economy relies on them. Plutocrats make investments to ensure ongoing upward flow of cash. Over the decades they have spent millions of dollars opposing unions and supporting deregulation. With the subsequent increased inequality, many find themselves living in a precarious and unequal democracy of a political economy of a new gilded age.

There is no difference between the fake news, misinformation, disinformation of today – such lies have been churned out for years, but today it is designed to support the plutocracy. There is an orchestrated counter-revolution based on polarization. Trump’s victim politics is a complete fraud, an old trick used by economic elite to keep working-class Americans fighting each other rather than focusing on processes to counter the plutocrats who are ripping them off. Trump and his allies stoke racial tensions even as they seek to cut taxes on the rich by shedding affordable health care for everyone else, dismantle protection for workers and consumers, and tear down environmental protections that stop wealthy corporations from poisoning communities. Victim politics is cultivated for a reason – to keep workers distracted from the real causes of economic inequality.

An economic system that rewards psychopathic personality traits has changed our ethics and our personalities – neoliberalism favors certain personality traits and penalizes others. Our society constantly proclaims that anyone can make it if they just try hard enough, all the while reinforcing privilege and putting increasing pressure on its overstretched and exhausted citizens. An increasing number of people in search of happiness fail – feeling humiliated, guilty and ashamed. We are forever told that we are freer to choose the course of our lives than ever before, but the freedom to choose outside the success narrative is limited. Furthermore, those who fail are deemed to be losers or scroungers, taking advantage of our social security system. A neoliberal meritocracy would have us believe that success depends on individual effort and talents, meaning responsibility lies entirely with the individual and authorities should give people as much freedom as possible to achieve this goal.

Democracy funded and fueled by corporate power disenfranchises the individual, provoking some to search for empowerment through identity politics. Within neoliberalism a person’s identity becomes so undermined by the system that he/she must adopt a social identity in order to create a sense of personal identity and connection with others. Neoliberalism has turned us into competitive individuals. In such a system everyone has to make those choices that turn his life into a professional success or personal happiness; moreover, these choices depend solely on his or her personal efforts. This creates a binary system of winners and losers. As humans are social animals this is a formula for unhappiness. The construction and perpetuation of stereotypes such as abusers of the welfare state, social scroungers, social hammock, is creating strong prejudices in people’s thinking. These ideas are purposely marginalizing the unemployed, the homeless, asylum-seekers, etc. and diverting suspicion from the real culprits.

Social classes are hierarchical groupings of individuals that are usually based on wealth, educational attainment, occupation, income, or membership in a subculture or social network. The class system in America puts those with the most wealth, power, and prestige at the top of the hierarchy and those with the least at the bottom. During the 21st century the middle class continues to be stripped of jobs, income, and security. Max Weber (1864-1920) claims people are motivated by custom or tradition, by emotions, by religious or ethical values, and by rational goal-oriented behavior. All human behavior, Weber says is motivated by various combinations of these four basic factors. However, just because an action is rational in terms of fulfillment of a short-term goal, does not mean it is rational in terms of the whole society. It often happens, he writes, that an excessive focus on short-term goals undermines the very goals of society.

It is time to reject the metanarrative of neoliberal globalization – postmodern thought and chose action that is part of the process to address social inequality and social injustice. What the mainstream media have really supported is the neoliberal project that has reduced everything to markets, undermined regulation, stagnated wages, introduced risk, precarity and uncertainty, and brought about recurrent major economic crises. In all of this the mainstream media has been a significant enabler in the shift from the social democratic advances of the post-war period to the establishment of a corporate-financial oligarchy in which democracy in any real sense is meaningless. In this setting the media have not been the purveyors of truth. This assault on reality is the fraud used to support a specific formation of power. If Trump is re-elected America will be left with the trappings of a democracy – while the reality slowly disappears, replaced instead by a nationalist oligarchy.

When the Constitutional Convention finished in 1787, Ben Franklin was asked what kind of government the new nation would have. He famously remarked, “a republic, if you can keep it.” Oligarchies remain in power through two strategies: first, using divide-and-conquer tactics to ensure that a majority doesn’t coalesce, and second, by rigging the political system to make it harder for any emerging majority to overthrow them. Trump is the natural outcome of the history of divide and conquer of the oligarchs. To overcome this strategy, requires the power of the ballot. Democracy means more than elections, an independent judiciary, a free press, and various constitutional norms. For democracy to persist, there must also be relative economic equality. Addressing domestic economic and social crises and reviving America’s middle class is critical to defending democracy. If society is deeply unequal economically, the wealthy will dominate politics and America will continue the path leading to an oligarchy.

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The Populist Narrative on Social and Economic Inequality

Late-stage capitalism is a term that describes the current phase of capitalism, characterized by extreme inequality, environmental degradation, social alienation, and political corruption. Late-stage capitalism is not a precise or scientific term, but rather a subjective and critical one. It reflects the perception that capitalism has reached a point where it is no longer sustainable, beneficial, or desirable for most people. As inequality and injustice increase, so does the potential for conflict and violence. People who feel marginalized, oppressed, or exploited may resort to protests, riots, revolutions, terrorism, or war to express their anger and frustration. This can lead to social chaos and instability. As capitalism alienates people from themselves, each other, and nature, it affects their physical and mental health. People also lose their sense of purpose, identity, community, and creativity. These structures of feelings and atmosphere are part of the conditions of formation and emergence of right-wing populism.

In late capitalism, the lack of dignity to human beings and their needs is so severe that so many people end up in dire financial situations. While homelessness has always been present in society, in late capitalism, the homelessness is so severe that it has become a crisis. While there is a lot of wealth, the gap between the wealthy and poor is so wide and there is barely a middle class anymore. What is now perceived as the middle class is actually a working class that is a little better off than those living in poverty. A quality of late capitalism is that there are programs managed by the State that intervene and stabilize some of the inequalities. With late-stage capitalism comes increased alienation and disillusionment from one’s self, labor, each other and the social and natural world. One of today’s issues is the dissatisfaction and disillusionment with a ‘system’ that creates increasing economic inequality for most.

Using the sociological imagination, we can see that there is an increase of depression and anxiety as capitalism advances and there are more ways to exploit people. Culturally, there is a mentality of “every man for himself” and therefore, those slightly better off financially will often be heard complaining about the poor and homeless people for “taking up free money from the government” whereas in reality, these people may still be suffering with too little welfare to live on. All workplaces, however harmonious they appear, contain a relatively high number of employees who are disillusioned or angry at what they see as real, hurtful and relevant issues of serious dissatisfaction with their lot. Late state capitalism is both a time of oppression and of social change. Many start to gain awareness and are now looking around to find better ways to live for themselves and each other.

As corporations and oligarchs gain more control over politics and society, they erode the principles and institutions of democracy and human rights. They undermine the rule of law, the separation of powers, the freedom of expression, the right to privacy, the right to education, the right to health care, and other civil liberties. They also promote authoritarianism, nationalism, populism, fascism, and other forms of extremism. Thus, social frustration, originating from socio-political and socio-economic problems, has been channeled by the populist parties, which feed and sharpen social polarization. Populist parties exploit discontent stemming from a perceived elites’ failure, and they find fertile ground in times of crisis. Such tendencies increase tribalism among ordinary citizens and the political establishment and originate from social resentment. Therefore, it is essential to understand the political importance of unacknowledged resentment as an explosive force in social relations.

Late-stage capitalism is a term that captures the dissatisfaction and disillusionment with the current state of capitalism. It describes a system that is unsustainable, unjust, and undesirable for most people. It leaves one with the sense that monopolies, and the oligarchs that run them, have rigged the system in their favor. To become disillusioned means to lose one’s illusions about something or someone. People who are disillusioned have lost their illusions. This is usually meant in a negative way, as disillusioned people tend to be a little bitter. When you’re disillusioned, you’re wiser but not necessarily happier: you’ve learned from experience that life isn’t always how you’d like it to be. Recognize that disillusionment is better than ignorance. Firstly, know that disillusionment (while unpleasant) is far better than ignorance. Late-stage capitalism is not inevitable or irreversible. It is a human-made system that can be changed or replaced by another system.

The sharp rise in inequality and the destruction of old sites of stable industrial employment that had accompanied globalization and the financialization of capitalism, led to widespread popular resentment, and this provided a fertile terrain for the rise of disillusionment and right populist politics. Because of growing disillusionment and anger students and workers voted for leaders outside the mainstream party candidates during the 2016 presidential primary elections – the consequence of being left behind by soaring inequality and the failure of government to deliver. Donald Trump – figured out how to harness their disillusionment and growing anger. The growing political chaos in America is the consequence of insecurity associated with rising inequality from many being left behind.

While all men and women suffer from disillusionment, few know that their state of disillusionment is the result of the breakdown of an illusion they themselves had manufactured. Disillusion is never possible without fantasy – and the destructive strength of the disillusionment can never exceed the strength and energy that was used to create the fantasy in the first place. The adverse effect is that man places values on his illusions, and over values what is not true, or no longer exists. In order to clear these errors of thinking, man must release the emotion that keeps him tied to this false reality. The removal of illusion or fantasy involves understanding that expectations are not failed, but false. With this recognition comes an opportunity for change. The challenge: Populist rhetoric always promises a new, more inclusive political community but very often this only achieves new ways of exclusion.

Economic inequality is a tricky issue. Some level of inequality may be natural. While some inequality is inevitable in a market-based economic system as a result of differences in talent, effort, and luck, excessive inequality could erode social cohesion, lead to political polarization, and ultimately lower economic growth. Rising social spending has been used to combat inequality. Fiscal policy is a key policy instrument available to governments to achieve their distributional objectives. In advanced economies, taxes and transfers decrease income inequality by one-third, with most of this being achieved via public social spending (such as pensions and family benefits). Progressive income taxes also play an important redistributive function in some countries. However, it is important to ensure that social spending is adequate, effective and sustainable. Inequality can have adverse political and social consequences, with the potential to undermine macroeconomic stability and sustainable growth.

A fair and equitable distribution of income is a fundamental element of the social contract. Social contract theory says that people live together in society in accordance with an agreement that establishes moral and political rules of behavior. Some people believe that if we live according to a social contract, we can live morally by our own choice and not because a divine being requires it. During the 21st century the cost of many discretionary goods and services has fallen sharply, but basic necessities such as housing, healthcare, and education are absorbing an ever-larger proportion of incomes, aggravated by wage stagnation. These shifts point to an evolution in the “social contract”: the arrangements and expectations, often implicit, that govern the exchanges between individuals and institutions.1 Broadly, individuals have had to assume greater responsibility for their economic outcomes. For many individuals the changes are spurring uncertainty, pessimism, and a general loss of trust in institutions.

Ronald Reagan facilitated neoliberalism becoming a mainstream ideology. It was in 1972 that the World Bank took up the theme of poverty, which more or less corresponds to the beginning of the neoliberal global political economy, later to be known as the Washington Consensus, which reflected the set of policies that became their standard package of advice attached to loans. With the passing of time and according to the intentions of the user, the vocabulary evolved. ‘Elimination’ of poverty became ‘reduction’ of poverty and, over the last few years the concept of extreme poverty appeared, associated with hunger. These, it was declared, must gradually be eliminated, while poverty must be mitigated. The rich persuade themselves they acquired their wealth through merit, ignoring the advantages – such as education, inheritance and class that may have helped to secure it. The social contract of the neoliberals: the creed of docile respectful working poor to depend on inequality to drive the motor of the ideal market system.

Robert Nozick argued that any distribution of goods and benefits – even a highly unequal one – is just if it could have come about from a just distribution through transactions that did not violate anyone’s natural rights to life, liberty, and property. Because such transactions in a state of nature would have given rise to a “minimal state” (whose powers are limited to those necessary to prevent violence, theft, and fraud), only the minimal state is justified. This supported the Washington consensus, which ignored the problems associated with rising inequality and even encouraged the weakening of social safety nets. The backlash against rapid cultural change, the distal cause of the groundswell of support for right wing populists is the insecurity associated with rising inequality. The growing populist movement is a predictable response to stagnating wages, middle class contraction, and worker displacement. Yet populist policies will make the problem worse in the long run.

Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) described the rich or leisure class as sheltered from economic pressures that prevailed. From this privileged position, as a class, they were less responsive to the demands required to change society. John Rawls social contract theory is the moral and political point of view is discovered via impartiality, and he argued for a set of basic principles of distributive justice (justice in the distribution of goods and benefits). It is a neoliberal ideology that defines the social relationships of poor people and the attitude towards them that supports an economic system that creates inequality. In 2023, 47 per cent in a recent survey of Canadians say they’re living paycheque to paycheque; while about 61% of Americans are living paycheque to paycheque. The growing disaffection among the working classes in established democracies concerning their sense of their ability to influence the policy decisions leads to populist anger. In order to combat this growing dissatisfaction and disillusionment, it is necessary to reframe the narrative on social and economic inequalities.

1https://questioningandskepticism.com/balancing-inequality-and-competition-the-ideal-social-contract/

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To Create Positive Change That Lasts: Reduce Alienation.

The seventeenth century was one of the most turbulent periods in English history, socially, culturally, and for the monarchy. Traditions and norms were turned upside down as the pendulum swung back and forth between periods of war and peace, austerity and exuberance, and religious tolerance and prejudice. The political landscape changed dramatically during the 17th Century. For example, whilst some European superpowers, such as France, witnessed the nearly autocratic rule that was King Louis XIV’s, there were dramatic changes in England. Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) and his generation changed the course of the British Empire for all time through their religious, political and scholarly thought as well as the actions they took. The century began with the idea of divine right to rule led to Charles’s beheading, followed by a disastrous socio-political experiment, led to William and Mary’s reign (1689-1702), a constitutional monarchy with a parliament that had a greater say than ever before.

Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism argues that the purpose of life is the pursuit of happiness, and that the purpose of government is to aid that pursuit. Laissez-faire capitalism, she argues, is the only system that truly protects individual rights. Rand believed: “It took centuries of intellectual, philosophical development to achieve political freedom. It was a long struggle, stretching from Aristotle to John Locke to the Founding Fathers. The system they established was not based on unlimited majority rule, but on its opposite: on individual rights, which were not to be alienated by majority vote or minority plotting.” The core of Rand’s philosophy, Objectivism, is that unfettered self-interest is good and altruism is destructive. Ayn Rand was defined by her rage, not her advocacy of a fantasy version of capitalism. Her message of creative aspiration is laced with anger and cruelty, and endowed with idealized and moralized selfishness and greed.

Alan Greenspan became one of the members of Rand’s inner circle, the Ayn Rand Collective, who read Atlas Shrugged while it was being written. During the 1950s and 1960s Greenspan was a proponent of Objectivism, writing articles for Objectivist newsletters. Greenspan was nominated by President George W. Bush to serve for an unprecedented fifth term as chairman of the Federal Reserve. He was previously appointed to the post by Presidents Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. In 2000, Greenspan raised interest rates several times; these actions were believed by many to have caused the bursting of the dot-com bubble. In October 2008, Greenspan belatedly hinted that he may have finally seen the dark side of Rand. In a speech to Congress, he said he had found a “flaw” in his “ideology” of how the free market worked. He had always hewed to the Randian belief that companies left to their own devices would work in their best long-term interests.

The real-estate bubble demonstrated that many companies had actually favored massive short-term profits over long-term sustainability. In the process, they laid the groundwork for the biggest recession in sixty years. Public policy analyst Robert Reich argues that “the theme that united all of Trump’s [budget] initiatives so far is their unnecessary cruelty.” The culture of cruelty has become a primary register of the loss of democracy in the United States. Vast numbers of individuals are now considered disposable and are relegated to zones of social and moral abandonment. A culture of cruelty highlights both how systemic injustices are lived and experienced, and how iniquitous relations of power turn the “American dream” into a dystopian nightmare in which millions of individuals and families are struggling to merely survive. Neoliberalism is an anxious form of crisis management attempting to cover over the clash with neoliberal interpretation of freedom and responsibilities, on the balance between personal freedom and the common good.

In the aftermath of a potentially demoralizing 2008 electoral defeat, when the Republican Party seemed widely discredited, the emergence of the Tea Party provided conservative activists with a new identity funded by Republican business elites and reinforced by a network of conservative media sources. According to publicly available IRS records, the five essential pillars of just such a Tea Party movement network were all funded and in place by that spring of 2009 – the Sam Adams Alliance to direct grassroots efforts; the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity to direct propaganda efforts in state capitals across the United States; the State Policy Network (SPN funded by dark money) to coordinate funding and free-market policies at state-based think tanks. This included hundreds of grants from the Koch foundations to American universities that were linked in through SPN and, of course, CSE’s (Citizens for a Sound Economy founded by Koch, but later funded by companies like Exxon and Microsoft) its successor, Americans for Prosperity, built to coordinate the effort nationally. By 2010 the Tea Party became a very influential movement in American politics.

In 2016 Donald Trump campaigned as an economic nationalist but surrounded himself with a transnational corporate transition team that supports policies of neoliberal capitalism. These include tax breaks for the rich and for corporations, further privatization of public services, deregulation and the reduction of the social safety net. Trump used the rhetoric of an “anti-politician” to conceal his real policy agenda, and appealed directly to sections of the white working class that rejected Hillary Clinton’s corporate centrism. For 2025 Trump and his backers aim to strengthen the power of the White House and limit the independence of federal agencies. The plan includes altering the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.

The basis on which populist parties rally electoral support, while multi-faceted, is often deeply emotional, playing on feelings of anger, resentment or nostalgia that reflect alienation from conventional politics.  Donald Trump stunned the political world in 2016 when he became the first person without government or military experience ever to be elected president of the United States. Trump’s policy record included major changes at home and abroad. He achieved a string of long-sought conservative victories domestically, including the biggest corporate tax cuts on record, the elimination of scores of environmental regulations and a reshaping of the federal judiciary. For 2025 Trump intends to bring independent agencies – like the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer protection rules against businesses – under direct presidential control.

Populism is a phenomenon which can emerge in all forms of a democratic system. Political theorist Cas Mudde, defines populists as sharing three key characteristics. They are anti-establishment, having faith in “plain talkers” and “ordinary people” as opposed to the “corrupt establishment” of business, government, academia, and media. They are authoritarian, favoring strong leaders over democratic institutions and traditions. They are nativist, putting their nation first. The most exposed to its influence are political systems which experience an institutional transition. Populism is a political discourse that imagines a struggle between a good and virtuous “people” and a nefarious establishment. In advanced democracies a more relevant, negative aspect of populism is that it undermines the civility of the relations among citizens. What can be done to improve representation and accountability to keep voters engaged within the party system, and what can be done once a sizeable share of the electorate is so alienated from political parties that it elects a populist government?

Trump won the 2016 nomination as the candidate who lied the most, won the presidency as someone known to lie; has an unshakable base despite ongoing lies. Underlying social issues made this possible. His base is concerned about their place in the world, not about economic hardship. Rather it is about dominant groups that felt threatened by change, and a candidate who took advantage of that trend. Faced with the fact that non-white groups would soon outnumber them revved up their support for Trump, their desire for anti-immigrant policies, and opposition to political correctness. While social networking has long been recognized for its ability to catalyze and organize collective social change campaigns, it was a profound surprise to many political observers that the platform could be used so effectively to connect with politically- and civically-alienated voters, those who President Trump declares as his base, “the forgotten men and women of this country.”

Trump is a narcissist, and narcissists are liars. Narcissism is a disorder of the self – a self based on opportunism instead of values. For them life is a game and they play to win, and the lie becomes necessary for their own survival. When narcissistic leaders undermine collaboration, they by definition reduce the effectiveness of an organization. It’s about the leader creating a culture that induces people to act less ethically and less collaboratively than they would otherwise, whether they’re narcissists or not. Many Republicans may not like or trust Trump, they just hate the alternative more. When you’re involved with a narcissist, cognitive dissonance is a psychological state that keeps many clinging to a narcissistic person like Trump, who has succeeded in creating two camps. Narcissists view themselves as being perfect, so there is no reason for them to change.

The English Civil War divided the country, with people and families split between their values and opinions on power, human suffrage and political freedom. Emerging out of the violence, turbulence and chaos were the Levellers, a political movement which preached ideas of equality, religious tolerance, suffrage and sovereignty. In many ways, the Levellers embodied a populist movement and exercised further control and influence through a well-thought-out propaganda mechanism which involved pamphlets, petitions and speeches, all of which connected the group with the general public and conveyed their message. Many crucial and fundamental principles and concepts were debated. The political movement advocated such an idea based on its Christian origins and the belief that everyone has the ability to use reasoning to make informed decisions for themselves. Their appeal to reason against arguments drawn from precedent or biblical authority marks a milestone in political thought.

Charles, King And Martyr, is a title of Charles I who was King of England, Scotland and Ireland from 1625 until his execution on 30 January 1649. The title is used by high church Anglicans who regard Charles’s execution as a martyrdom. His feast day in the Anglican calendar of saints is 30 January, the anniversary of his execution in 1649. The cult of Charles the Martyr was historically popular with Tories. The observance was one of several “state services” removed in 1859 from the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England and the Church of Ireland. Today the trials are the message. They are the drama around which Trump plays his role as the unjustly accused victim, whose rights are trampled and who is the martyr for his oppressed “deplorables”. He is taking the slings and arrows for them. The narcissist is the self-sacrificing saint. The criminal is the angel. The liar is the truth-teller. If any Republican lapses in faithfulness, they are more than a mere doubter or skeptic, but a betrayer and traitor.

Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment, observes Friedrich Nietzsche. Resentment as a cultural response to economic struggle has political consequences. More than half of US workers are unhappy with their jobs. The frustration you experience by not living the life you imagined is created by the resentment that the outcome of an event is less than you imagined it would be. A narcissist like Trump is operating from a place of defense all the time. The lie is more of a PR stunt, a marketing ploy rather than a cohesive integrated set of values. The narcissistic personality is more of a store front designed to hide that there isn’t any there, there. Narcissism and resentment go together. The usual explanation is that narcissists are resentful because the world doesn’t recognize their brilliance or meet their demands for special privileges. Trump appeals to resentment that ultimately rests on economic failure: working-class whites angry and disillusioned left behind by soaring inequality. Research argues feelings of disillusionment prompt people to take more extreme positions.

Claiming to be the victim of the political establishment has been key to Trump’s political persona and the basis of Trumpism. Donald Trump harnessed the resentment and sense of victimhood of the Republican Party. Trump came across unceasingly pained, injured and aggrieved: the primaries were unfair, the debates were unfair, the general election was unfair. He gave a voice to that part of America that also feels aggrieved. Trump claims there is a conspiracy against him supported by ‘fake’ news. Some suggested that generations of creeping economic insecurity have inspired deep anger, compelling many voters in the white middle and working classes to embrace Trump, flaws and all, because he challenges the American status quo. Trump claims: ‘I’m the turnaround guy. I’m going to drain the swamp. I’m going to blow Washington up.’ And so, anyone who was disaffected about government, which turns out to been a lot of people, likes this narrative.

Former president Donald Trump faces a total of 91 charges across four criminal cases. They include 44 federal charges and 47 state charges, all of them felonies. Trump has denied wrongdoing in each case. Trump is committed to being the victim. In contemporary usage, “populism” is generally understood to mean political movements and individuals who channel widespread alienation and frustration by claiming to speak for “the people” against forces that are said to be destroying cherished ways of life. Trump claims, “I was indicted for you.” Why? As a narcissist he only cares about himself. If the MAGA voters leave him behind, he is history. Most skeptics believe that by continuously questioning our knowledge, the source thereof, and what is held as “truth,” we can greatly reduce the risk of being deceived. The goal of such a process is not any specific measure of economic freedom, rather it is the potential to reduce the level of alienation in America.

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The Connection Between Social Darwinism and Narcissism

Social Darwinism gives some individuals the opportunity to justify their pathological narcissism. This was precisely the case with Hitler and many other individuals who unleashed their destructive desires on others, hiding behind baseless theoretical concepts. The results showed the psychological profile of social Darwinists as clearly dysfunctional in terms of personal life quality. They express characteristics like admiration for power and desire to dominate, pursue one’s goals at all costs, exploitative attitude towards people, and hostility. The supreme idea that only those who do not sympathize with others and are ready to use them can be successful and survive is far from the principles of liberal democracy. Power and money are more important than honesty and reciprocity. Cool, cynical manipulation is accepted as an effective way of achieving one’s own goals. These beliefs reflect the supreme principle of naive social Darwinism – only the strongest, best adapted to life in the ’competitive social jungle’ can survive.

People who strongly believe that the social world is a competitive jungle appear anti-social, expressing aversive, antagonistic, and selfish attitudes. This general personality feature typically contains Machiavellianism, narcissism, and subclinical psychopathy. The essence of narcissism is self-absorption, high self-esteem, feeling of uniqueness and being better, arrogance, and an instrumental attitude towards people used to maintain an unrealistic self-image. Narcissists believe they are unique or “special” and can only be understood by other special people. What’s more, they are too good for anything average or ordinary. They only want to associate and be associated with other high-status people, places, and things. As noticed by Leary and colleagues, social Darwinists’ self-esteem is a reaction to social disapproval and lack of recognition. This conclusion is probably in line with the observed elevated level of hostility if we assume that hostility of narcissist persons usually draws from the sense of being depreciated.

The narcissism and manipulation of powerful rulers is legendary. Examples of excessive preoccupation with building shrines to themselves range from the Egyptian Pharaohs to Louis XIV of France. One is their characteristics is dishonesty. They are quite willing to distort the truth so as to make themselves appear more impressive, more successful, better, and smarter than everyone else. Conversely, they protect themselves from unwelcome news by surrounding themselves with yes men and yes women. Bearers of bad news are severely sanctioned, or banished from the inner circle whether it is the court of King Louis IV, or the cabinet of Donald Trump. Consider Trump’s statement: “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not happening.” It makes victims question their reality, becoming even more dependent on the gaslighter as the only source of true information. Will Trump, the narcissist and ultimate media manipulator, finally pay the price for his tactics?

Studies conclude that higher social class is associated with increased entitlement and narcissism. Paul Piff from the University of California, Berkeley Psychology Department says that wealth gives rise to a sense of entitlement, a sense that one deserves more good things in life than others, which in turn gives rise to an increased or inflated sense of self-importance, vanity, grandiosity, and omnipotence (narcissism). Piff is a specialist in the area of wealth and personality, as well as its effects on behavior. He has found that upper-class individuals are more likely to lie and cheat when gambling, cut people off when driving, and endorse unethical behavior in the workplace. Social narcissism represents the dark side of intelligence and communication skills. As humans become more intelligent, as we improve our ability to communicate with others, our prospect for understanding reality increases, but our prospect for massive self-deception increases to the same degree.

“Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise,” observes Sigmund Freud. Lying allows a person to establish perceived control over a situation by manipulating it. It’s a defense mechanism that (seemingly) prevents them from being vulnerable, that is, to not open up and reveal their true self to another person. A narcissistic liar is a person who lies to get what they want. They are often charming and persuasive. But their primary goal is always self-promotion. They want to present themselves in a certain light and believe they can get away with it. Lies can be used to get others to form false beliefs and garner their support. It is well known that false information can influence people’s thinking even after they come to realize the information is false. The cure for the present epidemic of narcissism is for us to stop lying to ourselves about what we think we know.

Narcissists tend to communicate differently than other people. Their words are often used as tools or weapons. Their language often disguises their true intent. In addition to hoarding conversation time, narcissistic communicators also tend to control and direct conversation topics. They focus on what they want to talk about, the way they want to talk about it, with little or no consideration for alternate views. George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four doublespeak: use of euphemisms, jargon, vagueness, intentional omission, misdirection, and idioms in order to obscure the truth and engage in Machiavellian behavior. Doublespeak is language that deliberately obscures, disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words. When a narcissist is criticized, their inflated sense of self is damaged. Any perceived negative feedback, even if offered in gentle or productive ways, can easily result in outbursts of narcissistic rage. A narcissist cannot tolerate threats to their massive egos and grandiose self-image.

Autocrats tend to have a blend of narcissistic and antisocial personality disorder traits such as a lack of empathy, grandiosity, thirst for power and control, lying and deceit, indifference to conventional laws or rules or morality, many also associated with narcissistic personality disorder. Enablers may support the narcissist’s behavior out of fear, love, or a misguided sense of loyalty. Autocrats surround themselves with their political cronies and lackies rather than competent people – have no way of eliciting, recognizing or assessing useful criticism. They are unwilling to hear anything negative – that leads to very bad decisions. There’s no doubt that Donald Trump was the instigator of the 2020 insurrection. But the former president’s schemes never would have gotten far (or even off the ground) without the participation of right-wing media executives, lawyers and pliant state officials. Without holding these enablers accountable, democracy and the rule of law will remain at risk.

Democracies rest on the ability of the general public to hold their elected officials accountable. But what happens when a large segment of voters knows very little about today’s policy debates or even the basic workings of American government? If voters do not understand the programs of rival candidates or their likely consequences, they cannot rationally exercise control over government. An ignorant electorate cannot achieve true democratic control over public policy. The immense size and scope of modern government makes it virtually impossible for voters to acquire sufficient knowledge to exercise such control. The problem is exacerbated by voters’ strong incentive to be “rationally ignorant” of politics. Widespread voter ignorance also incentivizes another common type of political deception: lying about the nature of your policies in order to overstate benefits and conceal possible downsides.

No one equivocates or dis-informs with greater conviction than the narcissist-politician, whose blatant disregard for facts can at times be mind-boggling. Trump’s opponents learned explaining and defending against the narcissist leaves you open to more abuse. When you address the content of what is being said and explain and defend your position, you endorse Trump’s right to judge, approve, or abuse you. Your reaction sends this message: “You have power over my self-esteem. You have the right to approve or disapprove of me. You’re entitled to be my judge.” People must appreciate how important emotions are in making decisions that impact on making a better world. People tend to overestimate their emotional intelligence – the ability to read, understand and respond to emotions in ourselves and others. Voters need to focus on the roll backs of previous progressive legislation, and not be overwhelmed by the manipulative rhetoric of the various front men for the economic elite.

Resentment as a cultural response to economic struggle has political consequences. More than half of US workers are unhappy with their jobs. The frustration you experience by not living the life you imagined is created by the resentment that the outcome of an event is less than you imagined it would be. Donald Trump, himself is a cauldron of resentment, has deeply internalized a life-time of deep resentments, and thus is able to tap into, articulate, and mobilize the resentments of his followers, in a way that Democrats and other professional politicians are able. Trump appeals to resentment that ultimately rests on economic failure: working-class whites have been left behind by soaring inequality (but they mistakenly blame emigrants taking their jobs). Donald Trump – figured out how to harness their disillusionment and growing anger – is superior to the others in exploiting the narcissism of small differences to recruit from the Republican base.

The historian Jennifer Burns has this wonderful insight when she describes Ayn Rand as ‘the ultimate gateway drug to life on the right’ – justifying a certain picture of the world is learned at a very early age, that leads them down the path to narcissism. Because the current culture gives them just enough to behave in ways that the neoliberals describe as being the ideal entrepreneur of the self, confusing freedom with imaginary lack of constraint, and so on and so forth. Republicans have captured the ideal of American individualism, and taken it to narcissistic extreme. Donald Trump’s federal indictments on the former president’s seizure of more than 300 classified documents, and his efforts to overturn 2020 election, means the American constitutional system faces a significant stress test sparked by a failed autocrat’s narcissism. Prosecutor Jack Smith can inform the jury that narcissism is a not uncommon personality feature associated with traitors and manipulators brought before American justice system.1

Social Darwinism offered a moral justification for the wild inequities and social cruelties of the late 19th century. The twentieth century America rejects social Darwinism. Thus creating the large middle class that became the core of the economy and democracy. Safety nets were built to catch Americans who fell downward through no fault of their own. Regulations were designed to protect against the inevitable excesses of free-market greed. The rich were taxed, and investments made in public goods – public schools, public universities, public transportation, public parks, public health – that made all better off. Donald Trump is running for president again, and voters are going to hear a lot about the 2017 tax cuts he signed into law. There’s also the curious fact that the tax cuts for businesses were permanent, but the tax cuts for individuals were temporary. If Trump and Republicans take over the House or Senate, or both, social Darwinism is back.

1https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/04/narcissists-who-endanger-america/673723/

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Error 404: the Need for Change

Georg Hegel (1770-1831) introduced a system to study history – dialectical thinking – a progression in which each successive movement emerges as a solution to the contradictions inherent in the preceding movement with the development of freedom and the consciousness of freedom. Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979), one of the most prominent members of the Frankfurt School, initially turned to Hegel’s ideas in his writing in order to explain their philosophical strength through the dynamics of socioeconomic contradictions. Marcuse uses dialectical thinking to expose the contradictions by which an advanced industrial society is constituted. The problem of concealment occurs here because not only does society produce contraindications in the forms of domination that come with them, it also produces the social and psychological mechanisms that conceal these contradictions. An example of social contradictions is the co-existence of the growth of national wealth and poverty at the same time.

The desire for knowledge, Nietzsche argues, stems from hubristic self-focus and is amplified by the basic human instinct for belonging — within a culture, what is designated as truth is a form of social contract and a sort of “peace pact” among people. Domination is exercised by a particular group in order to sustain and enhance themselves in a privileged position. Marcuse observes that the system doesn’t require force – just introduce one-dimensional thinking – which leads to acceptance of oppression and surplus repression. The system must make the citizen think they are freer than they actually are. This means the economic elite must control the political discourse, not the workers. The ideology in place ensures the oppressed identify with the oppressor. The desires of the individual must conform to the desires of the economic elite. It is necessary to expose the contradictions by which today’s advanced industrial society is constituted.

Marcuse argued that “capitalism and mass culture shape personal desires” so there is no essential or unchanging aspect to human nature. Mass culture results in domination of “the inner world of the human subject”. A man under capitalism is “one dimensional” since he bears no trace of the conflicts which make him multi-dimensional and capable of change. This is why Marcuse believes that people under Liberal Western capitalism are no freer than people under totalitarian role, their oppression is just transparent. For Marcuse the one-dimensional man is closely related to both consumerism and mass media that together serve as an ideological apparatus which reproduces itself through its subjects. This apparatus promotes conformity and is aimed at preventing resistance. The person who thinks critically demands social change. One-dimensional thinking does not demand change nor does it recognize the degree to which the individual is a victim of forces of domination in society.1

An economic system that rewards psychopathic personality traits has changed our ethics and personalities. Freud claims there exists a dynamic balance between the individual and society that consists of aggressive instinctual impulses, but society attempts to oppress the individual into its requirements. Herbert Marcuse noted violence is a pain-causing process present whenever there is a difference between the actual and the potential for a person. It pervades the social fabric in insidious ways now made apparent when relations of repression result in outbursts, with root causes barely understood. Marcuse termed this ‘surplus-repression’ referring to the organized domination in modern society over and above the basic level of repression of instincts Freud believed necessary for civilization. Henry Giroux likens this more extreme form of repression to a widespread system of ‘culture of cruelty’, which tends to normalize violence to such a degree that even the common occurrence of gun violence fails to trigger a systemic analysis or response.

Alfred North Whitehead used the phrase great refusal for the determination not to succumb to the facticity of things as they are – to favour instead the imagination of the ideal. The student protests of the 1960s were a form of Great Refusal, a saying “NO” to multiple forms of repression and domination. This Great Refusal demands a new/liberated society. This new society requires what Marcuse calls the new sensibility which is an ascension of the life instincts over the aggressive instincts. This idea of a new sensibility is yet another move beyond Marxism insofar as it requires much more than new power relations. It requires the cultivation of new forms of subjectivity. Human subjectivity in its present form is the product of systems of domination. We rid society of its systems of domination by ridding it of the forms of subjectivity formed by those systems and replacing them with new forms of subjectivity.

Freud described the reality principle, the ability to evaluate the external world and differentiate between it and the internal world. The reality principle did not replace the pleasure principle, but represses it, such that, a momentary pleasure; uncertain of its results, is given up, but only in order to gain in a new way, an assured pleasure coming later. The reality principle strives to satisfy the id’s desires in realistic and socially appropriate ways. In neoliberalism the reality principle is replaced by the performance principle. The performance principle presupposes particular forms of rationality for domination that stratifies society, Herbert Marcuse observed, “according to the competitive economic performance of its members.” Domination is exercised by a particular group in order to sustain and enhance themselves in a privileged position. The neoliberal performance principle teaches us to conceive of social problems as personal problems – emphasizing individual responsibility while failing to address systemic state violence in all its manifestations – healthcare, education and the war on the poor.

The technological boom has been supported by the idea that there is some fundamental connection between technological development and the human quest for liberation and a better life. However, we were disabused of this idea by Freud and many others. The question now is “does technological advance lead to more repression and domination?” If technologies benefit people in some way, or favour one group over another, then they are not neutral. As Heidegger observes, “The will to mastery becomes all the more urgent the more technology threatens to slip from human control”. The essence of technology is not something neutral, as the technical trends claim, but rather the issue is related to use. In a nutshell, the great danger is that the technological mode of being, which has us unconsciously perceiving everything in the world as a potential resource to exploit for our ends, tends to come at the exclusion of all else.

Technology affects the way individuals communicate, learn, and think. It helps society and determines how people interact with each other on a daily basis. Technology plays an important role in society today How has technology made the world worse? The increase in mobile use has led to more traffic accidents, a rise in eye strain and visual impairment, increased brain activity, and more. Not to mention the mobile Internet has increased the ways cybercriminals can access our personal information and secured accounts. All the while people are glued to their phones. It leads to a loss of focus and decreased productivity. For example, the constant notifications from emails and social media can interrupt work and cause people to switch between tasks, reducing their overall efficiency. There needs to be a distinction between being busy on a device and getting things done. In the extreme, it can lead to addiction issues and/or aggravate psychological disorders.

The Internet, or more broadly, the digital revolution is truly changing the world at multiple levels. But it has also failed to deliver on much of the promise that was once seen as implicit in its technology. If the Internet was expected to provide more competitive markets and accountable businesses, open government, an end to corruption, and decreasing inequality – or, to put it baldly, increased human happiness – it has been a disappointment. The lack of debate about how the Internet should be developed was due, to a certain extent, to the digital revolution exploding at precisely the moment that neoliberalism was in ascendance, its flowery rhetoric concerning “free markets” most redolent. What seemed to be an increasingly open public sphere, removed from the world of commodity exchange, seems to be morphing into a private sphere of increasingly closed, proprietary, even monopolistic markets.

Instead of a new age of enlightenment through easy communication and universal access to information, we see the emergence of an increasingly polluted information environment. Demands from policy makers for change began nearly a decade ago, when the Federal Trade Commission entered into a consent decree with Facebook designed to prevent the platform from sharing user data with third parties without prior consent. As we learned with the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook paid lip service to that consent decree, following a pattern of “apologize, promise to do better, return to business as usual” that persists to this day. The FTC has accused Facebook of breaking antitrust law by gobbling up many smaller social media start-ups and acquiring several large, well-established competitors, in what amounts to a concerted effort to build a social media monopoly. Other platforms, especially Google and Twitter, have also resisted calls to change business models partly responsible for the amplification of hate speech, disinformation, and conspiracy theories.

There are two aspects of safety that require attention: product development and business models.  The challenge with business models is harmful content is unusually profitable. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter monetize through advertising, the value of which depends on user attention. Platforms use algorithms to amplify content that maximizes user engagement. Hate speech, disinformation, and conspiracy theories are particularly engaging – they trigger our flight or fight instinct, which forces us to pay attention – so the algorithms amplify them more than most content. Other platform tools, such as Facebook Groups and the recommendation engines of each platform, increase engagement with harmful content. There are at least four areas that need regulation: safety, privacy, competition, and honesty. Only by coordinating action across all four will policy makers have any hope of reducing the harm from internet platforms.

Today the Internet has become controlled by a handful of companies who exercise an unprecedented level of control over people’s lives. When these companies were in their infancy, like the internet itself, they were synonymous with innovation. However, these tech giants are abusing their market power to undermine fair competition and free-market capitalism. Big Tech sympathizers are undermining the long-term welfare of consumers and small businesses because these companies use their market power and low prices to crowd out competition, further perpetuate their monopoly and reduce incentives for innovation. Google and Facebook’s stranglehold on the online news and ad market has allowed them to benefit from journalistic content without paying for it — cutting off revenue needed to pay reporters, photographers, and editors to cover local news in their communities. Over 2,000 newspapers have closed since 2004, in an industry was once among the largest employers in America.

For Marcuse the one-dimensional man is closely related to both consumerism and mass media that together serve as an ideological apparatus which reproduces itself through its subjects. This apparatus promotes conformity and is aimed at preventing resistance. Marcuse introduces the concept of the “one dimensional man” as someone who is subjected to a new kind of totalitarianism in the form of consumerist and technological capitalism. A man under capitalism is “one dimensional” since he bears no trace of the conflicts which make him multi-dimensional and capable of change. This is why Marcuse believe that people under Liberal Western capitalism are no freer than people under totalitarian role, their oppression is just transparent. The struggle that Hegel envisioned is the great tension between ‘is’ and ‘ought,’ between the way things are and the way they ought to be. The necessary ingredient for Hegel’s philosophy was freedom of action, not just freedom of thought.

Hegel who saw a world governed by individual self-interest believed that we are controlled by external forces, and are nothing but pawns in the game. The internal strains today’s system faces includes: increasing income and wealth inequality within economies, declining intergenerational mobility, mounting economic and social polarization, and rising influence of wealth in politics leading to the concentration of both economic and political power in the hands of an elite and a weakening of democratic polity. According to Marcuse, social domination has resulted in social unhappiness which can be alleviated only by a fundamental change in society itself. Hegel stresses a state needs a strong and effective central public authority – and believes reforms should always stress legal equality and the public welfare. Moreover, Hegel repeats the need for strong state regulation of the economy, which if left to its own workings is blind to the needs of the social community.

1 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marcuse/#OneDimThiDemRejDem

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Impact of Marginalization On the Social Determinants of Health

Oxford reference defines marginalization as a spatial metaphor for a process of social exclusion in which individuals or groups are relegated to the fringes of a society, being denied economic, political, and/or symbolic power and pushed towards being ‘outsiders’. Marginalized populations experience discrimination and exclusion (social, political and economic) because of unequal power relationships across economic, political, social and cultural dimensions. When you push people to the edge of society by not allowing them a place within it, you marginalize them. Marginalization can result from intentional campaigns that exclude certain people (like ethnic groups) from society. It can also occur unintentionally due to structures that benefit some members of society while making life challenging for others. Those who are at the centre have benefited from globalization, but those who are already marginalized are often left further behind – with the rich becoming richer and the poor becoming poorer.

Another problem is that people born in a marginalized community lack the required social and cultural capital to participate in mainstream development processes. Their social networks are weak and vulnerable. Lack of social capital deprives an individual of access to resources, such as, economic, educational and cultural and other support systems. This creates social isolation and limits their participation in the development process. The World Health Organization defines social determinants of health (SDOH) as “the circumstances in which people are born, live, work and age, and the systems put in place to deal with illness” (2010). The CDC defined the key domains of social determinants of health in Healthy People 2020 as economics, education, social and community context of living, neighborhoods and the built environment, and their relationship to health. This illustrates the fact that health outcomes are affected not only by environment but also by the experience of the individual in that environment (Havranek et al., 2015).

People who are socially marginalized are largely deprived of social opportunities. They may become stigmatized and are often at the receiving end of negative public attitudes. Their opportunities to make social contributions may be limited, and they may develop low self-confidence and self-esteem. Social policies and practices may mean that they have relatively limited access to valued social resources such as education and health services, housing, income, leisure activities, and work. The impact of marginalization, in terms of social exclusion, is similar, whatever the origins and processes of marginalization, irrespective of whether these are located in social attitudes such as, towards impairment, sexuality, ethnicity, and so on or, social circumstance such as closure of workplaces, absence of affordable housing, and so on. Different people will react differently to marginalization depending on the personal and social resources available to them.

One recent example of the intersection of marginalization and social determinants of health has been evident during the COVID-19 pandemic. A study entitled “Multivariate, Transgenerational Associations of the COVID-19 Pandemic Across Minoritized and Marginalized Communities” by Yip et al. demonstrated that social determinants of health, not preexisting medical or psychiatric conditions, were the primary predictors of the multigenerational COVID-19 experience of families. This occurred for families from marginalized communities despite adherence to mitigation factors. Marginalized people don’t necessarily belong to one particular demographic: Marginalization occurs due to ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability status, socioeconomic level, and age. Additionally, the marginalization of certain groups because of ethnicity, race, caste, migrant status, gender, class, or nature and conditions of work, for example, continues to undermine health. In particular, the COVID-19 pandemic has unmasked the inequities and disparities that patients of historically marginalized populations experience. Adverse health outcomes – both physical and mental – resulting from these disparities can be attributed to SDOH.1

Neoliberalism has turned us into competitive individuals. In such a system everyone has to make those choices that turn his life into a professional success or personal happiness; moreover, these choices depend solely on his or her personal efforts. This creates a binary system of winners and losers. As humans are social animals this is a formula for unhappiness. The construction and perpetuation of stereotypes such as abusers of the welfare state, social scroungers, social hammock, is creating strong prejudices in people’s thinking. These ideas are purposely marginalizing the unemployed, the homeless, asylum-seekers, etc. and diverting suspicion from the real culprits. Since the 1980s, the emergence of neoliberalism as a dominant government paradigm has led to increasing instances of accountability failure, resulting in significant challenges to marginalized and lower socioeconomic groups.

Economic marginalization as a process relates to economic structures, in particular, to the structure of markets and their integration. To the extent in the markets that some individuals or groups engage in are segmented from the others in general, these individuals can be said to be marginalized from the rest of the economy. Segmentation and exclusion may, however, have non-economic and non-financial origins, for example in discrimination by gender, caste, or ethnicity. Here, integration takes on a broader meaning. People who are experiencing marginalization are likely to have tenuous involvement in the economy. The evidence indicates that students from low-income families are disadvantaged right through the education system to postsecondary training. The sources of their income will vary. These experiences affect men and women differently and vary with age. Poverty and economic marginalization have both direct and indirect impacts on people’s health and wellbeing.

Poor psychological health can disrupt your ability to think clearly, make healthy decisions, and fight off chronic diseases. Over time, neglecting your mental well-being can lead to feelings of anger, anxiety, fear, depression, self-blame, sadness, stress and isolation. The causes of social marginalization include sexual orientation and gender, religion or ethnicity, geography or history, less representation in political spheres, different cultures or rituals, different language or clothing, caste and class, poverty or race, etc. Impoverished people often don’t have the time or resources to advocate for their interests, either because they live in marginalized communities and lack access to necessary resources or spend excessive time and energy trying to provide for themselves and their families. On a societal level, the marginalization of specific individuals and groups carries a cost for society as a whole. When specific people and groups are shunted to the side and not allowed to make their voices heard, everyone loses out on their perspectives and is poorer for it.

The injustice in the US is systematic; much like family secrets we do not talk about. Decisions are made by well-intended people, in a society that can be described as having cognitive dissonance. The victims are those who are already suffering the most from one discrimination or another. The more acute the driving force behind securing public health, the more marginalized these individuals become. In short, it is not the individuals, but the system that is unjust. “If you’re in an advantaged position in society, believing the system is fair and that everyone could just get ahead if they tried hard enough doesn’t create any conflict for you … [you] can feel good about how [you] manage it,” said Godfrey. But for those marginalized by the system – economically, racially, ethnically – believing the system is fair puts them in conflict with themselves and can have negative consequences. We need to look in the mirror.

A gaslighter’s statements and accusations are often based on deliberate falsehoods and calculated marginalization. The term gaslighting is derived from the 1944 film Gaslight, where a husband tries to convince his wife that she’s insane by causing her to question herself and her reality. Consider Trump’s statement: “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not happening.” It makes victims question their reality, becoming even more dependent on the gaslighter as the only source of true information. In relation to hostile online material, the enthusiasts for chaos have no interest in whether it is true, nor even whether it supports their own ideological position. They will share hostile fake material both for and against their ‘side’, not simply for the devilment but because they see it as making collapse and chaos more likely. Social media has provided a huge proselytizing opportunity to those with destructive intentions. Many of Donald Trump’s tweets qualify.

The idea of canceling began as a tool for marginalized communities to assert their values against public figures who retained power and authority even after committing wrongdoing – but in its current form, we see how warped and imbalanced the power dynamics of the conversation really are. Now conservative elites have harnessed cancel culture to “cancel” anyone whose opinions cause controversy. For example, just as populism undermines democracy, “cancel culture” undoes the tolerance such that as you cancel disagreement, you start seeing it everywhere. Cancel culture’s zero-sum game plays off disadvantaged groups against one another, rather as right-wing populism pits the blue-collar “left behind” against groups that remain marginalized, such as Blacks, LGBTQ, low-income individuals and undocumented immigrants. Amid the left’s Twitter micro-wars, its real enemy – neoliberal hegemony – remains safely out of view. While black, queer, transsexual and feminist folk bicker, powerful white dudes carry on running the world.

For many students and their families who are struggling with inequity and social exclusion, poverty is a common marker of their marginalized social status. Poverty engenders a wide range of daily struggles, and can include the denial of a young person’s primary needs, such as homelessness or insecure housing, or facing the day without adequate clothing or nutrition. Poverty isn’t a learning disability, but when we ignore the needs of poor children, poverty can become disabling. Political and economic agendas that underlie conditions of daily life, and thus SDOH, are structurally rooted in lack of opportunity and inequitable access to resources. However, marginalized people are not responsible for ending their own oppression. It more important for the apologists for neoliberal prejudiced views to step out of their echo chambers and see the marginalized as humans than it is for the oppressed to humanize oppressors.

Social determinants of health (SDOH) and marginalization have a cumulative impact on a population in many complex ways. Marginalization forces a group into a position that impacts their experiences, identity, and environment. The resources that the groups will receive in this position such as education, income, and residence are disproportionately distributed, which can result in adverse life conditions and health outcomes. Social and health inequities aggravate one another, with marginalized groups having higher rates of infection, hospitalization, and mortality. While some may lack accessibility to adequate mental health services, the occupations, living conditions, and structural oppression experienced by marginalized groups increase allostatic load and worsen mental health inequities. Understanding how the marginalization of different groups has been established, as well as how it harms the wellbeing of these groups, is the first step we can take toward combating inequality and inequity.2

1https://science.nichd.nih.gov/confluence/display/newsletter/2022/06/10/Deconstructing+Bias%3A+Marginalization

2 Ashley Pratt and Dr. Triesta Fowler, Deconstructing Bias: Marginalization,  https://science.nichd.nih.gov/

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 Authoritarian Capitalism and 1984: How Freedom Dies

Between the 9th and 15th Centuries, autocratic monarchies and ecclesiastical hierarchies dominated Western society. These systems began to fall away as people increasingly asserted their right to individual liberty. This push for a greater focus on the individual favoured capitalism as an economic system because of the flexibility it allowed for private property rights, personal choice, entrepreneurship and innovation. It also favoured democracy as a governing system for its focus on individual political freedom. The shift toward greater individual liberty changed the social contract. Previously, many resources were provided by those in power (land, food and protection) in exchange for significant contributions from citizens (for instance, from slave labour to hard labour with little pay, high taxes and unquestioning loyalty). With capitalism, people expected less from governing authorities, in exchange for greater civil liberties, including individual, political and economic freedom.

The primary theme of 1984 by George Orwell is to warn readers of the dangers of totalitarianism. The central focus of the book is to convey the extreme level of control and power possible under a truly totalitarian regime. It explores how such a governmental system would impact society and the people who live in it. This includes true horror of totalitarianism, mass surveillance and repressive regimentation of people and behaviours within society. Surveillance is a key part of the novel’s world. Coined phrases outlining manipulation of language as a form of mind control includes: newspeak the method for controlling thought through language; and doublethink the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct. One of Orwell’s most important messages in 1984 is that language is of central importance to human thought because it structures and limits the ideas that individuals are capable of formulating and expressing.

The end of the Cold War supposedly signaled the “end of history” and with it the rise of liberal democracy and the demise of authoritarian regimes worldwide. With the economic and political demise of Soviet-style communism, most of the communist regimes supported by the Soviet Union across the world, like Ethiopia, Afghanistan and South Yemen also collapsed. Communist Cuba is a lone exception to this trend. Basically, you can have capitalism without democracy. Rather than transitioning previously totalitarian states toward democracy and deepening it within perceived established liberal states, globalization has instead been theorized as enhancing despotism and repressive policies. Russia is a prominent example of authoritarian state capitalism: Putin has created a super wealthy and loyal plutocracy that owes its existence to authoritarianism. The reemergence of Russian autocracy under Putin, conversely, has coincided with economic growth but not caused it (high oil prices and recovery from the transition away from communism deserve most of the credit).

In the wake of the 1989 crackdown on prodemocracy protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, the Chinese Communist Party seemed morally bankrupt. Twenty years later, the Chinese Communist Party has built a new popularity by delivering staggering economic growth and cultivating a revived – and potentially dangerous – Han Chinese nationalism. China’s material successes, as seen in its gleaming city skylines and piles of foreign currency holdings, suggest the government’s top priority is economic growth. While growing the economy, it has kept the majority of wealth in the hands of an elite class of business leaders, many of whom have willingly accepted authoritarian rule in exchange for getting rich. Far from forming a middle class that might challenge authority, these groups now have reason to join their rulers in repressing “instability” among the people. Communism has been replaced by authoritarian capitalism, which is the engine of China’s economy. This heralds the return of authoritarian great powers.

A defining characteristic of authoritarian capitalism is the presence of a capitalist economy on one hand along with the absence or erosion of democracy and civil liberties on the other hand. Authoritarian capitalism must be carefully distinguished from public ownership, which is unproblematic insofar as state companies are democratically-controlled and accountable. The contradiction between the freedom of the market and social freedom resulting after the 2008 crash: The inequality in economic status has been turned into inequality in political status. For long time, democracy and free markets were touted as the twin answer to most ills. But while free-market tenets have come under strain in the international financial crisis, with the very countries that espoused the self-regulating power of markets taking the lead to embrace principles of financial socialism to bail out their troubled corporate colossuses, the spread of democracy encounters increasingly strong headwinds. This put democracy in retreat.

Technology and AI are authoritarian capitalism’s largely bloodless methods for extending total control over the population, making sure that every individual toe the party’s line. This compliance is also enabled by the emerging military surveillance industrial complex, which is going to be at the core of successful authoritarian capitalism. Vast databases of citizens’ DNA and irises will make personal identifications impossible to fake, while ubiquitous online, mobile and CCTV monitoring will liquidate privacy and any possibility of organized dissent. In the state’s gaze, each person will stand naked with no choice but to do the autocrat’s bidding or be vanished and die, forgotten by all, out of sight in a “black jail” or in an officially non-existent concentration camp. Unless the world’s democracies come up with attractive and effective solutions to socioeconomic ills such as unemployment, falling living standards and income, and inaccessible medical care, then authoritarian capitalism will win.

Fox News tells viewers they are the only reliable source of political information – re-enforcing the alt-right propaganda in social media. This opens the door to gaslighting – a form of psychological manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, making them question their own memory, perception, and sanity.  In post-truth politics social media assists political actors who mobilize voters through a crude blend of outlandish conspiracy theories and suggestive half-truths, barely concealed hate-speech, as well as outright lies. These “populist” voters now live in a media bubble, getting their news from sources that play to their identity-politics desires, which means that even if you offer them a better deal, they won’t hear about it, or believe it if told. We now realize the need to control how social media is manipulated by big money. Friedrich Nietzsche claimed there was no objective fact about what has value in itself – culture consisted of beliefs developed to perpetuate a particular power structure.

Disinformation can be dangerous on social media because, the sheer amount of information there and the length of readers’ attention spans can allow it to go unchecked. Social media platform algorithms are designed for optimized user retention and engagement, and are not looking for misinformation or disinformation. A combination of lies and religion are used to control the people. There is no difference between the fake news, misinformation, disinformation of today – such lies have been churned out for years, but today it is designed to support the plutocracy. Trump’s victim politics is a complete fraud, an old trick used by economic elite to keep working-class Americans fighting each other rather than focusing on processes to counter the plutocrats who are ripping them off. The truth is that present capitalism creates enormous wealth, but it concentrates into oligopolies and monopolies, to the extent the economic elite creates and normalizes a culture of lying to itself leading to its inherent instability.

The Republican Party with its full-throated support of small government and minimal regulations of neoliberalism, embrace the uncertain populist policies of division and misinformation. The trick neoliberals employ is to maintain the myth of democracy through regular elections, but to separate any real power from the hands of those elected. The rise of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is a clear symptom of the catastrophic normalization of authoritarian capitalism: based the belief in the need for top-down leadership; nationalism; the friend/enemy scheme; and militant patriarchy (law and order policies; idealization of warfare and soldiers; repression of constructed enemies; conservative gender relations). Trump stands for what can be characterized as authoritarian capitalism. He blames Mexico and China for deindustrialization and social decline without ever mentioning that US capital exploits workers both in the US and in destinations of outsourced capital, including in Chinese sweatshops and Mexican maquiladoras.

Many consider ‘authoritarian capitalism’ to designate any capitalist system where the state plays a more prominent role than has been considered ‘optimal’ since the 1980s. The efforts to repatriate industries creates such a climate. For example, the United States and Europe are providing huge monetary incentives as they try to acquire the building blocks of electric vehicle manufacturing to avoid becoming dependent on China. This includes the construction of battery factories and plants to process lithium and other materials on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Volkswagen is also building a factory in Ontario, but the company made the decision to do so only after the Canadian government matched U.S. incentives. These incentives are all consistent with authoritarian capitalism where the state plays a conspicuous role, as the next stage of capitalism – in which a capitalist market economy exists alongside an authoritarian government.

The true value of Nineteen Eighty-four is it teaches us that power and tyranny are made possible through the use of words and how they are mediated. The theme of lies in 1984 is: lying, deception and false appearance is usually connected with the want for power and control, the belief that no one will find out, and avoiding punishment, which are evident in 1984. George Orwell observes: “The further a society drifts from the truth the more it will hate those who speak it.” Orwell demonstrates how a government’s manipulation of technology, language, media, and history can oppress and degrade its citizens. The book was written as a warning of what could happen if people allowed their governments to obtain too much power after Orwell saw what happened to the people in Nazi Germany. Orwell concludes “If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

One reason the authoritarianism of the present system has been easy to ignore is that its abuses largely took place out of sight, inflicted on those least able to resist. The dark underbelly of globalization has been the increasingly violent tactics used by states to control and suppress the movement of people across their borders. Authoritarian capitalism is not new, but the use of force is becoming more overt, which is why it is all the more important that progressives expose and resist the appalling treatment of the most marginalized. Authoritarian capitalism is rapidly evolving, intensifying and spreading across the globe. In the process, democracy is being destroyed. This is a crisis that expresses itself in the rising authoritarianism visible in divisive and exclusionary politics, populist political parties and movements, increased distrust in fact-based information and news, and the withering accountability of state institutions.

The fusion of autocratic politics and state-guided capitalism has emerged in the 21st century as leading challenge to international spread of democratic ideas. Blaming citizens for their alleged populist or anti-democratic turn is misleading. Without the active involvement of the economic elite, both foreign and domestic, authoritarian capitalism could not have emerged in Hungary. To satisfy the needs of the economic elite, Orbán not only dismantled crucial democratic institutions, but also silenced those who could get in the way, such as trade unions and NGOs, as enriching this new elite necessarily creates losers. When elites turn neoliberalism into crony capitalism instead of well-functioning free markets, they doom democracies and stabilize authoritarian politics. Recent GOP activities in the US result in resurgence of reactionary nationalist, religious, racist, and antifeminist ideologies and movements. In addition, there are efforts to make voting more difficult. With the possible election of Donald Trump in 2024, the specter of authoritarian capitalism haunts America.

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Urgent Optimism Approach Makes Change Possible

You know how some gamers just can’t seem to quit. Even when they keep losing the same level over and over…and over again. Why do they waste so much time on a level they can’t seem to beat? Well, it’s actually not a waste of time. They’re actually getting better, gaining skills and “leveling-up.” As with many things in life, progressing through a game comes with almost guaranteed failure. Yet the passion to try over and over again in pursuit of a win is incredibly potent within the gaming community. They demonstrate a nearly unmatched perseverance considering an equally unmatched number of failures. They remain optimistic at the opportunity to succeed. This lesson in grit and perseverance is vital for any creative endeavor, or truly, any path towards success. You must have an uncanny willingness to try, explore, fail and be confident that it will ultimately lead to victory.

Bello argues, neoliberalism continues to punctuate the lexicon of policymakers with their emphasis on free trade, the central role of private enterprises, and a minimalist role for the state. The seeming failure of the present economic paradigm has brought a wave of detractors from all sides, even from among the staunch supporters of neoliberalism. Studies undertaken in recent years by various academics and institutions provide empirical evidence suggesting that neoliberal global capitalism (also known as globalization) or simply capitalism has failed to deliver what it has been preaching for the last two decades. Neoliberalism, by contrast, views life as ceaseless struggle. Agents vie for scarce resources in antagonistic competition in which every individual seeks dominance. This political theory is codified in non-cooperative game theory; the neoliberal citizen and consumer is the strategic rational actor. Rational choice justifies ends irrespective of means. 

The neoliberal project is founded on – and acts upon – the assumption that the average citizen is too confused and ignorant to really know what’s best for society or themselves. With respect to “fake news”, the common practices of social media “sharing” constitute an emerging practice that makes one an especially favorable target for neoliberal strategies of social control. A willful hostility toward established knowledge has emerged on both sides of the political spectrum, one in which every opinion on any matter is as good as every other. The historian Jennifer Burns has this wonderful insight when she describes Ayn Rand as ‘the ultimate gateway drug to life on the right’ – justifying a certain picture of the world is learned at a very early age, that leads them down the path to narcissism. Because the current culture gives them just enough to behave in ways that the neoliberals describe as being the ideal entrepreneur of the self, confusing freedom with imaginary lack of constraint, and so on and so forth.

The concealing aspects of neoliberal ideology are not accidental (i.e. not simply errors) but relate systematically to a set of social and cognitive interests of the elites. Neoliberalism refers to the state of the world wherein almost every aspect of human existence has in some way impacted or controlled by contemporary relations of capital, meaning that global capitalism has achieved governance. Neoliberals, recognizing their waning control of their ideology over the working class, are in the process of replacing it with data points from social media (i.e. Cambridge Analytica). By developing a psychological profile using Facebook likes it is possible to develop algorithms to control and manipulate targeted populations for political purposes. Psychographic profiling of the electorate allows further segmenting of personality types into specific subgroups who are susceptible to precisely targeted persuasion messages attached to an issue they care about.

When stripped of their representational aspects, narratives in video games typically are essentially reproductions of life under neoliberalism, corresponding to the reality of controlled choices and participation. The games fetishize interactivity and glorify agency in the same way that neoliberal capitalism extols the virtues of freedom and deregulation. Galloway (2006) warns that “while it might appear liberating or utopian, don’t be fooled; flexibility is one of the founding principles of global informatics control”. The mobility afforded in the narratives work under this same principle, appearing as play but operating within the structure of informatic control. Furthermore, as games lure players in with greater promises of agency, active play, and nonlinear narratives, they are becoming increasingly better at subtly reinforcing the paradigm shift to a society of controlled flexibility. Narrative choice in video games becomes play that is exploited as a productive force for neoliberal plan, and as such is deeply linked to the systems of control that elites employ.

The question of who controls the text is answered by players as themselves, but this is a prevalent deception in place throughout the culture of trickle-down economics, as the control remains firmly in the hands of the author, the programmer, and the system itself (Aarseth, 1997; Galloway, 2006). Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter (2009) point to this illusion of free will as the most insidious means of control. It is when the subject of neoliberalism believes they have free will and are free from ideology that the inherent ideology is the most effective. The players rehearse the narratives of neoliberalism willingly, believing that they are in control and thus are at the greatest risk of being influenced. The individualism and imperialism of the Western world is apparent in these games as well, featuring the player as a notable wanderer who is able to advance through the ranks of any culture that they please, and conquer the world of the game through exploration.

The pervasiveness of networks, computers, and consoles in contemporary society means that neoliberal thought is plugged into culture in the home, during leisure time, and within personal space. As cultural expression functions as the new locus of identity, people become more deeply invested both intellectually and emotionally in the narratives of video games. Neoliberal capitalism heralds interactivity and agency as empowerment and participatory democracy, while hiding the underlying ideologies and systems of control at work within them. The society of control requires subjects whose identities are fluid and fluctuating, rather than stable. Desirable subject positions are also reinforced through language, media, and the production of meaning. Language organizes and orders subjectivity, while “the communications industries integrate the imaginary and the symbolic within the biopolitical fabric, not merely putting them at the service of power but actually integrating them into its very functioning”.1

Jane McGonigal promotes a solution applying urgent optimism. She is a best-selling author and director of game research and development at Institute for the Future, a non-profit think tank that helps people prepare for the future. Urgent optimism is the desire to act immediately to tackle an obstacle, combined with the belief that we have a reasonable hope of success. The good news is urgent optimism is not a fixed personality trait. It changes throughout our lives and, crucially, it’s changeable – we can purposely build more of it through future imagination training. Urgent optimism means you are not losing sleep over worries about the future. Instead, you are stoked to get out of bed in the morning and do something about it. Your imagination literally switches from a first-person perspective, where you see the world from within your own body, to a third-person perspective where you experience your actions from an out of body vantage point.

An important part of genuine education is realizing that many of the things we think are natural and inevitable (and therefore should accept) are in fact conditioned (and therefore can be changed). The world doesn’t need to be the way it is; there are other possibilities. The now common idea that we can “check facts ourselves” is at best an illusion. The fact we can “look things up on the net” can give people the impression they understand something when in fact they are overlooking important domain-specific details, or are trusting the wrong sources. Jane McGonigal’s psychology around urgent optimism and how to look at the future, and to stay engaged in a difficult problem, harnessing reward activity to create our future offers answers of how to look at the future. By harnessing reward activity of gamers to map out necessary changes over the next ten years to address the difficult problems created by the existing austerity economic policies, it is possible to identify processes to improve social life.

Power is best seen as an invisible force linking individuals and actors, in a state of constant flux and renegotiation. There is a small group who have been made very wealthy by the existing system. Change is a threat to them. It is this group that loves its status quo so much that it sees its own change as an underhanded attack on its way of life. The debate is no longer how fast the ocean is rising, rather how fast will we rise to the occasion to introduce change. This is about introducing equality, justice and fairness so that it not just a perception, but a reality, that the system is no longer gamed for those at the top. To create change we must seek out ideas that make a difference. It is urgent to save globalization from the neoliberal mindset because globalization is reversible. Our outlook must have a sense of urgency as things never stop moving, and we must be optimistic as there is always opportunity.

With the increasing socioeconomic inequality, we recognize the need for change. Often we have to acknowledge that change is sometimes difficult or close to impossible. Empowerment happens when individuals and organized groups are able to imagine their world differently and to realize that vision by changing the relations of power that have kept them in poverty, restricted their voice and deprived them of their autonomy. While none of us can actually “see” the future, we can practice looking into the future and seeing what might be. The path forward is urgent optimism – a mindset that includes mental flexibility, realistic hope, and future power. Hope-reward feedback loop creates a vision of the future we can become. As we practice seeing many different crazy futures, we become more comfortable with the reality of continuous change, and we start to find hope in the possibilities that exist alongside the difficulties.

1 https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/bitstream/11375/14395/1/fulltext.pdf

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Universal Basic Income Can Provide a Temporary Fix

Determinants of health reflect underlying forces that are at work in the subsequent development of disease. The World Health Organization has declared poverty to be the single largest determinant of health. Poverty can and does lead to illness (due to poor nutrition, inadequate shelter, greater environmental risks and lesser access to healthcare) but the opposite is also true; illness leads to poverty by reducing household savings, overall productivity, and quality of life for individuals and families. Many people do not realize the cost to the healthcare system that stems directly from poverty. Canadians in the lowest income groups are three times less likely to fill prescriptions and 60% less able to get needed tests because of cost. Living in poverty can double or triple the chances of developing diabetes and complications such as blindness and cardiovascular disease – but it also causes financial problems for the healthcare system itself.

The economy of the 1950s and 1960s was about an unprecedented rise in middle class jobs: there was more room at the top. In 1958, Michael Young wrote a futuristic novel, The Rise of the Meritocracy, a satire on a society stratified by merit. Young coined the term, formed by combining the Latin root “mereō” and the ancient Greek suffix “cracy”, in his essay to describe and ridicule such a society. The story was intended as a warning: if society was viewed as perfectly meritocratic, then disproportionate awards are showered on the elite, and contempt is increasingly shown to those on the bottom. Young mocked the existing education system in Britain, arguing it was simply a centuries-old class system in sheep’s clothing. Typically lacking the best schools, underprivileged children routinely did badly on exams – the standardized intelligence tests that consequently determined their social position.

The cost and pain of poverty in the U.S. is less about basic goods like water and electricity than nonmaterial factors: insecurity, stress, lack of opportunity and discrimination. Also, a study by scholars at Villanova University concluded that mass incarceration has increased the U.S. poverty rate by an estimated 20 percent. Childhood poverty is estimated to cost the United States approximately $1 trillion a year. This is the result of a loss of economic productivity, higher health expenses, and increased criminal justice costs. It is also estimated that for every dollar spent in reducing poverty (in US), the nation would save up to $12 in reduced expenses. The cost-of-living crisis is disproportionately affecting poorer households. With fewer resources to cover rising bills, many are taking on debt just to get by. This has consequences in the short term, but also lengthens the effects of this crisis for the most vulnerable.

Poverty means living with constant worry about having enough healthy food to eat, adequate housing, clothing, not to mention time to get outside, to exercise and to socialize with friends and relatives. This applies not only to those living on incomes in the poorest ten per cent but also to those at each rung up the income scale; the middle class experiences more stress, a higher prevalence of disease and earlier death than high earners, while those with low incomes and living in poverty suffer most of all. Systemic poverty is the root cause of many health and social problems, not to mention the economic toll. People living in poverty face barriers to work such as personal, health, and disability challenges, mental health and addictions issues, a limited number of good jobs, a lack of education and training, discrimination, criminal records, and structural and historical barriers such as those faced by Indigenous people.

Here’s what the evidence tells us. The stress of worrying about the basics of life lowers the body’s defences against disease. As a result, we see a higher and increasing prevalence of all disease (obesity, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, cancer, lung disease, mental illness, addictions and others) among those who are worse off right across the income gradient. Children who go to school hungry and whose parents are under constant stress tend not to learn well and so become discouraged and leave school early. They then are often doomed to repeat the poverty cycle with low-paid work, chronic unemployment, and a greater likelihood of becoming involved in crime and drug addiction as well as early pregnancy. Real life is nothing like the neoliberal narrative. Support for neoliberalism comes from enabling the myths of privatization, deregulation, and retrenchment of the welfare state.

In the late 80s, in Canada, as in many developed countries, the trend began toward smaller government, lower taxes, fewer social supports, privatization, and a reliance on continued economic growth with “trickle down” economics to “raise all boats.” The result has been a flattening of income tax with greater relief for the wealthy, fewer social supports in the way of welfare rates, child benefits, employment insurance (EI) and other income supplements for the poor, and inadequate government investments in social housing, child care and development, education and skills training. The increasing income gap in society is alarming because it erodes social cohesion – a basic sense of trust between people who do not know each other. A reasonable degree of social cohesion is needed so that a society (and the world) can function, and for people to have the chance to increase their opportunities in life. Inequality tests our ethics.

Poverty limits choices. Poor people have limited choices for their diet. They often lack shops in their area where they live, or have trouble reaching them. In particular, the poor have the lowest intake of fruits and vegetables. This leads to consumption of an overabundance of cheaper junk food (high fructose corn syrup drinks and processed foods), leading to more obesity and chronic disease than the general population. Few courageous politicians exist today, as they all look over their shoulders to check that the crowd is following them (to make sure they are still leading), especially as elections approach. They introduce fear tactics, and then check to see if it resonates with voters. It falls to the general public to be the agents of change. We realize we have become disillusioned not because our expectations failed, but because they were false.

Data consistently show that poverty destroys opportunity and causes worse health outcomes. The poorer you are the more likely you will die early. Creating lasting and meaningful plans that use a human rights framework to address poverty would be costly, but not nearly as expensive as doing nothing. Taxpayers’ dollars (federal, provincial and local) are being wasted. Research by economists for the Ontario Association of Food Banks demonstrated that the cost of poverty in Canada is between $72-86B annually (healthcare, soup kitchens, shelters, police, corrections). Poverty could be eliminated for just a fraction of this amount. Enacting policies to end poverty is the best step forward legally, morally and economically. That same report pegs the national health care costs attributable to poverty at $7.6 billion. A 2008 report from the Public Health Agency of Canada estimates that $1 invested in the early years saves between $3 and $9 in future spending on the health and criminal justice systems, as well as on social assistance.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted by the United Nations in 2015 as a universal call to action to end poverty and protect the planet; provide the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. The global challenges we face include poverty, gender equality, climate change, food security, sustainable agriculture.  Give poor people cash without conditions attached, and it turns out they use it to buy goods and services as well as improve their lives and increase their future earnings potential. This would buy time for the necessary long-term change: increase pay for low-wage workers (a living wage); increase welfare rates, EI and child benefits; provide universal subsidized child care; invest in social housing, education and skills training; improve healthcare access; and specifically focus on First Nations’ issues. How? reduce the tax breaks, loopholes and offshore shelters for the wealthy, and ensure that our natural resource revenue is used to improve the well-being of all.

The small government and minimal regulations mindset has heralded the globalization of indifference that prevents progressive government initiatives to address the issue. The purpose of UBI on the surface is to prevent or reduce poverty and increase equality among citizens, in reality, it is to control the restless mob. We need to adopt policies that have science behind them. The trickle-down economic theory was rebranded in the 1970s to an ideology – supply side economics – the doctrine that tax cuts could be had for free (incentive effects would generate new activity hence more revenue) without causing budget deficits. An ideology is a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to all members of this society (that is normative or based on what is considered the normal or correct way of doing something). We must not let laissez-faire apologists explain away various failures during the pandemic by the (false) existence of a vast left-wing conspiracy.

With ongoing deterioration of the economy, it is becoming clear for stability in the community we need to ensure the availability of bread. Universal basic income (UBI) is an answer – perhaps the answer – to long-term economic stagnation – a trickle-up form of Keynesianism that would stimulate our economy through increased household spending. Moreover, if funded by fees on unproductive activities like pollution and speculation, it would help solve two other deep problems of 21st – century capitalism: climate change and financial instability. And it wouldn’t need to replace or reduce spending on current programs that benefit the poor, a regressive trade-off that conservatives favor but most progressives oppose. If the amount is significant enough it could replace a large part of existing welfare and social programs. A lifelong base income, along with health insurance for all, are the next pieces.

With the present economic model now discredited, it’s time to devise a new narrative to guide our economies in a way that prevents neoliberalism’s excesses, promotes universal well-being as an economic imperative and ensures nationalism doesn’t once again win the battle of ideas. Donald Trump’s appearance on the world stage is accelerating our understanding of the scope of failure of the neoliberal version of globalization and the risks associated with not addressing it. This flags the urgency for structural changes in society that need to be taken in order to overcome social problems, as well as avoid the easy-sounding solutions (surveillance, censorship, control, policing, law and order) of creeping fascism, that are now advanced. The need for a steady income among middle-class Americans and Canadians is accelerating as the labor-market changes. The UBI approach buys time for progressives to reform neoliberal capitalism.

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