Necrocapitalism is a socioeconomical concept introduced in the mid-2000s and formalized by Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee from City, University of London, in a 2008 publication of the same name. It is defined as a contemporary form of organizational accumulation that involves dispossession and the subjugation of life to the power of death.

Definition

A form of capitalism where a country’s trade and industry are founded on, linked to and dependent directly or indirectly on death and the profits accruing from it.

In her article Unveiling the Necrocapitalist Dimensions of the Shadow Carceral State: On Pay-to-Stay to Recoup the Cost of Incarceration, Brittany Friedman, demonstrates how necrocapitalism is an increasing vector of civil and administrative pipelines to incarceration, civil financial alternatives to criminal sanctions, and innovations to generate criminal justice revenue.

In his review about Monsanto: a photographic investigation by photographer by Mathieu Asselin, Dr. Thom Davies describes Monsanto’s behavior, that caused ecological, social, and health problems for countless people across the world, as necrocapitalism

Academic Case Study

• Orr, W., Henne, K., Lee, A., Harb, J.I. and Alphonso, F.C. (2023), Necrocapitalism in the Gig Economy: The Case of Platform Food Couriers in Australia. Antipode, 55: 200-221.

Usage:

an economy of genocide which profits necro capitalism

2:44

But he also points out that what distinguishes this genocide from others is that uh certain people including President Trump and his family will profit enormously from what is taking place by seizing and developing large tracks of land in Gaza. the Palestinians will be effectively dispossessed.

What do you make of Omar Bartov’s words?

Chapter 3: Big Tech and the Business of War

The United States with this administration, but also with the Biden administration has assumed huge responsibilities for Israel’s main conducts. And uh yes, I agree um that there is there is a complicity with Israel’s actions that puts the United States in the driving um in the driving seat of this and of course the people profing from it. This is what I this is what I described in my uh last year’s report in my fifth report on the genocide which was which was discussing the the how the Israeli economy had turned from an economy of occupation which profited Israel and other companies into an economy of genocide which profits necro capitalism. I mean there are organizations like Palantir but also big actor in the big tech and other firms who are frankly investing into into the Israeli economy pushing the I mean making the stock exchange race uh while the economy many Israelis is in crisis. So it’s not damaging this genocide is damaging the Palestinians of course so many Israelis and these don’t there is project ongoing and in fact has reached an acceleration and this imper this is US imperialism in the region and I’m when I say US imperialism I know that I’m making I assume that I’m making a disservice and paying disservice to many cities in fact who are not even aware of how uh their resources are uh spent.

Yes.

and pride from it because there are many Americans, many US citizens who cannot meet tens at the end of the month who needs to do three, four jobs in order to put something on the table for their families and they cannot even afford American while their government and many uh private in the private sector are profiting from from a genocidal war in in Palestine. and aggression in the in south in southwest Asia in in the Middle East.

5:21

QUESTIONS:

1. What would it take to graph Necrocapitalism against other trends, such as concentration of wealth, campaign finances, unemployment, poverty, etc?

2. What factors do you think would most closely precede the rise of necrocapitalism.

3. Is there widespread opposition to necrocapitalism among the bottom 75% of the sociopolitical spectrum? What factors, such as jobs, maintain support of the bottom three quarters?

MORE:

In July 2025, Francesca Albanese—the Italian lawyer serving as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories—was targeted by United States government sanctions (read more)

3:42

Yes. Where he was saying uh the outcome of the mayoral election as a data stats guy, I’m telling you, is one in trillion. And it was just the most sort of like seventh grade assessment of of stats and and figures to to come up with the idea that it was impossible that Spencer Pratt wouldn’t have made it into the top two in a city of 75% Democrats. The these are people who nobody around them seems to ever say like, “Hey man, uh you may want to double check that.” Well, part of it is that they’re dumb about politics. They’re really dumb about things they don’t know about, but nobody tells them that because they’re rich. And this is a a general affliction of the wealthy that adds to their psychosis and delusion is that everybody wants to plate and please them and be sycophantic. So, no one ever says, “You know what? That’s totally wrong. You’re an idiot.” You can’t say that, right? It’s all finding a way to nod along. But the more grim side of this is that this is part of their propaganda game. They know they’re lying. They know they’re not telling the truth. They’re engaged in what some call fifth generation warfare, the new era of propaganda, where you fight over what is basic reality, what is basic facts itself. So, they’re playing the old Trump game of just completely fabricating a reality. You know, there’s 15% registered Republicans in Los Angeles. Very unlikely you’re going to get a Republican mayor in Los Angeles anytime ever again. In fact, anybody who is a Republican becomes a Democrat to run because that’s just the way it works now. the Republican party is pretty much dead in California. But so I don’t think it’s necessarily that they’re stupid. I think the other possibility is that they’re just lying because this is part of their their strategy to create a parallel reality and to operate from that. They’ve seen with X that you can create these economies of false information that have real world impacts. You know, Elon Musk got like 50,000 retweets for also making false claims about the LA election. So on a certain level, they know what they are doing and they’re doing it on purpose. And that makes it more nefarious. And I would say that’s a hallmark of fascism is the creation of an unreality1 where people can no longer distinguish between fact and fiction and you can manipulate them from that position of radicalized ignorance.

Uh the the the um age-old debate over stupid and evil and sometimes it could be both. Um, let’s talk about uh Peter Thiel, who is sort of the um one of the the the godfathers of this uh I guess movement or I don’t can you call it really a movement? I mean, it’s a crew of it seems like just like literally a dozen or two people. Um they just have so much money. They’re everywhere. Um, Peter Thiel, it was just expo had um, one of his like I guess I don’t know societies was just exposed. Have uh, have you seen much about this dialogue?

Yeah. Well, the word that Peter Thiel likes to use is cult. And that’s also the word I use in my book. Peter Thiel has created a cult of powerful men who think it is their destiny to overthrow democracy in the 21st century using technology and money. And for about 20 years now, Peter Thiel had this secret cult society called dialogue where they have these weird off the record conversations with wealthy elites. Sort of like a Bilderberg or an Eyes Wide Shut for dorky intellectual subjects as far as we know. Uh, and this list was just revealed because apparently they had it in the coding of their website. This secretive list, these tech geniuses have this massive security flaw that allows some activists to figure out who’s on the list. Now, it’s not clear who’s a member yet to some of the members are clear or who’s just participating, but there are some pretty stunning names on the list. You know, Ezra Klein, uh, Nicholas Thompson of the Atlantic. And, you know, I have to say, I’ve wondered why certain people with very large platforms have ignored criticizing these tech billionaires in the way that they should. And no, I’m I’m wondering if we’re getting toward an answer here, but let’s let the rest of the story come out. But the point is that Peter Thiel in his book Zero to One says, “The way to run your company, the way to run anything is to create a cult.” because that’s where you get people who are obsessed and who are dedicated. And the other word he says for cult is a mafia. So you want a cult or a mafia. And that means getting a core group of people to become true radicalized believers and spread the message and carry out the project from there. And he actually names Jim Jones and Charles Manson as examples of people who have done this saying, “Well, that’s kind of bad. You know, uh, you don’t want to do that necessarily.” At the same time, I’d say that, you know, Manson and and Jones killed, you know, over a thousand people under 1500. These guys will are already on track to kill millions through the US aid cuts. And if they get their way, they’ll kill billions. So, we are dealing with a dangerous cult of radicalized venture capitalists who want to destroy democracy. And and what I like to say is that trying to explain what’s happening to our country without talking about Peter Thiel’s anti-democratic cult is like trying to explain 9/11 without talking about al-Qaeda

8:42

QUESTIONS:

1. What bad assumptions were Californian Twitter users making about Spencer Pratt and the mail-in ballots?

2. To what extend do political programs involve “reality distortion”?

3. How does Fascism employ reality distortion?

4. Have the Republican Doge supporters reconsidered their support for USAID cuts? Are they defending the cuts? How do they view Dogue?

Footnotes:

How do “Anger Management” Classes Work? Gemini

Anger management classes help you understand, process, and regulate intense emotional reactions. Rather than suppressing anger, the goal is to identify root triggers and learn healthy, constructive ways to respond before anger escalates into destructive behavior.

Core Structure & Delivery

• Format Options: Offered as individual counseling, structured group sessions, or certified online courses. Group settings are common because hearing others’ experiences helps normalize struggles and provides opportunities to role-play responses.

• Duration: Typically ranges from 4 to 12 weeks, with weekly 60-to-90-minute sessions. Court-ordered or state-mandated classes often require a specific total number of hours (e.g., 8, 12, or 26 hours).

• Curriculum Focus: Most programs rely on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which focuses on the relationship between thoughts, emotions, and actions.

What You Learn

1. Trigger Identification: Pinpointing specific situations, phrases, or internal stressors (like fatigue, stress, or feelings of injustice) that activate your anger.

2. Physical Awareness: Recognizing early body signals—such as elevated heart rate, muscle tension, or clenched jaw—that indicate anger is building before you react impulsively.

3. Cognitive Restructuring: Learning to notice “cognitive distortions” (like black-and-white thinking or catastrophic assumptions) and reframing them logically.

4. De-escalation Techniques: Practical tools like deep breathing, taking structured time-outs, and grounding exercises to lower physiological arousal.

5. Assertive Communication: Shifting from aggressive responses to clear, direct communication (such as using “I” statements) to address conflicts productively.

Assessment & Completion

• Initial Assessment: Programs usually begin with an intake evaluation to understand your goals, history, and whether anger management or a different intervention (such as therapy for trauma or substance abuse) is most appropriate.

• Certificates: Upon completing required attendance and participation milestones, programs issue a formal certificate of completion, which satisfies court, workplace, or legal mandates.

Anger management classes operate through a structured psychological framework designed to interrupt automatic, destructive reactions. Rather than forcing you to “stop feeling angry,” these classes treat anger as a secondary emotion—a signal pointing to underlying stress, hurt, or perceived threats—and teach you how to handle that signal constructively.

The Core Psychological Framework

Most classes rely heavily on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). These approaches break down an angry episode into four distinct stages:

[Trigger Stage] ➔ [Physiological Spike] ➔ [Automatic Thoughts] ➔ [Behavioral Response]

1. Trigger Stage: The external event or internal memory that starts the reaction.

2. Physiological Spike: Your sympathetic nervous system initiates a “fight-or-flight” response, pumping adrenaline and cortisol into your system.

3. Automatic Thoughts: Rapid, often distorted interpretations of the situation (e.g., “They’re disrespecting me on purpose” or “This is completely unfair”).

4. Behavioral Response: The outward action (yelling, stonewalling, physical aggression, or passive-aggressive behavior).

Classes target stages 2 and 3 so you can change stage 4.

Key Skills and Techniques Taught

1. De-escalating the Body (Physiological Control)

When your heart rate exceeds roughly 100 beats per minute, higher-level executive functioning in the brain (the prefrontal cortex) shuts down, making rational thought difficult. Techniques taught include:

• Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR): Systematically tensing and releasing muscle groups to drop physical tension.

• Controlled Diaphragmatic Breathing: Slow, deep breaths that stimulate the vagus nerve and activate the parasympathetic nervous system (the body’s “brake” pedal).

• Strategic Time-Outs: A agreed-upon protocol for stepping away from a conflict for 20–30 minutes until your physiology normalizes.

2. Reframing the Mind (Cognitive Restructuring)

Anger is frequently fueled by unhelpful thought patterns. Classes help you identify and correct these:

• “Should” Thinking: Believing people or circumstances must behave a certain way.

• Mind Reading: Assuming you know someone else’s negative motives.

• Personalization: Taking neutral or unrelated events as direct personal attacks.

You learn to challenge these thoughts with questions like: “Is there another explanation for this?” or “Will reacting strongly right now solve the issue?”

3. Constructive Expression (Communication & Boundaries)

Replacing aggression with assertiveness involves:

• “I” Statements: Framing concerns around your experience rather than blaming the other person (e.g., “I feel overwhelmed when plans change without notice” instead of “You always ruin our plans”).

• Problem-Solving Frameworks: Shifting focus from who is to blame to what concrete step can resolve the immediate issue.

What a Typical Session Looks Like

• Check-in (10–15 mins): Participants share instances from the past week where they felt anger, evaluating how they handled it using class tools.

• Skill Introduction (20–30 mins): The instructor introduces a specific concept or skill (e.g., boundary setting, conflict styles, or emotional triggers).

• Practical Application & Role-Play (20–30 mins): Participants practice the skill in realistic scenarios with feedback from the group or instructor.

• Assignment & Reflection (5–10 mins): Reviewing worksheets, anger logs, or practice goals for the upcoming week.

QUESTIONS:

How many anger management graduates reoffend?

If they work, should more people take anger management classes?

When is anger appropriate and how should it be expressed?

ELSEWHERE:

Quantity over Quality. Built to throw away.

• If the plastic button on the power windows breaks, you have to replace the whole panel.

• Manufacturers choose a lower grade of oil because it results in higher fuel economy but this results in lower reliability

• Is this reduction of quality and ease-of-maintenancee symptom of our financial system?

Why are so many car mechanics quitting? Gemini

The automotive repair industry is facing a severe, widespread shortage of technicians. Industry surveys show that a huge portion of mechanics plan to leave the field within the next few years, and a majority say they would not recommend the career to friends or family.

This mass exit is driven by a combination of systemic pay structures, high personal costs, physical burnout, and rapid technological shifts.

1. The Broken “Flat-Rate” Pay System

Most dealerships and independent shops use a flat-rate compensation model rather than standard hourly pay.

• Under this system, a job (like replacing a water pump) pays a pre-determined number of “book hours”—say, 3 hours—regardless of how long it actually takes.

• If a rusted bolt snaps or diagnostic software glitches, turning a 3-hour job into a 6-hour nightmare, the technician only gets paid for 3 hours.

• Unpaid downtime (waiting for parts, setting up equipment, moving vehicles) drains earnings, making income highly unpredictable.

2. Massive Personal Tool Costs

Unlike other skilled trades (like electrical or plumbing) where employers often supply major gear, auto mechanics are generally expected to buy and maintain their own tools.

• Entry-level technicians often spend $5,000 to $10,000 just to get started.

• Master technicians routinely have $30,000 to $50,000+ tied up in personal toolboxes, diagnostic scanners, and specialized equipment—often taking on significant personal debt via tool-truck financing just to do their job.

3. Rapid Modernization & Tech Overload

Modern vehicles are essentially computers on wheels, requiring mechanics to act as both software engineers and traditional mechanics:

• Mechanics must constantly diagnose complex CAN-bus networks, ADAS (driver-assist sensor) calibrations, high-voltage EV powertrains, and proprietary manufacturer software.

• Uncompensated Training: Shops rarely pay adequately for the endless hours of continuing education required to keep up with changing tech, expecting technicians to master complex electronics on their own dime or time.

4. Severe Physical Strain & Poor Working Conditions

The physical demands take a massive toll over a 10- or 20-year career:

• Daily exposure to heavy lifting, awkward positions, repetitive strain, loud noise, and toxic chemicals leads to chronic back, knee, and shoulder issues early in life.

• Many service bays still lack climate control, forcing techs to work in freezing winters or stifling 100°F+ summer heat.

5. High-Stress Environment & Disconnect with Management

• Pressure for Speed: The flat-rate system creates intense pressure to cut corners or rush jobs to make a living wage, creating constant stress.

• Wage Disparity: Labor rates billed to retail customers have skyrocketed (often $150–$250+ per hour), but technicians typically see only a small fraction of that rate in their actual paychecks, leading to widespread frustration with shop owners and dealership management.

Where Are They Going?

Mechanics aren’t giving up on hands-on work—they are pivoting to trades with better working conditions:

• Fleet Maintenance: Shift-based, hourly pay with company-provided tools (e.g., city transit, UPS, heavy equipment, agricultural machinery).

• Industrial & Plant Maintenance: Factory automation, robotics, and HVAC repair offer higher base wages, paid overtime, and milder physical environments without flat-rate stress.

• Tech & IT: Tech-savvy mechanics often transition into field service engineering, software support, or data center hardware maintenance.

QUESTIONS:

1. How pervasive is cost-cutting motivated disposable products. Who does this benefit?

2. Is there a market for better-made cars? If so, what companies are most likely to fill the demand for high quality, affordable cars?

3. What do you think will happen to the supply of, and market for mechanics?

4. Do electric cars mean less demand for mechanics?

5. After you’ve read this, are you more likely to purchase an older car?

Obama paved the way for Trump by betraying the working and middle class:

Democrats have written off Trump voters as racially driven but:

• there are millions that voted twice for Obama

• Obama won states like Indiana.

Obama maintained bifurcated policies, such as on crime and banking/mortgages:

• Crime: expanding the carceral state for: street crimes, drug offenses, and immigration violations. while effectively decriminalizing high level crimes

• Banking/Mortgages: bailing out banks, while 9-10 million families lost their homes

A summary of the plan was to crack down on the poor and middle class but coddle the powerful.

Transcript

30:13

I just want to read a passage you wrote about the Obama administration because it seems to me uh, that this passage explains how the Obama administration really paved the way for the arrival of Trump. The Obama administration failed to reverse the remarkable inversion in the criminal legal system of the last five decades. That is the vast expansion of the carceral state to punish street crimes, drug offenses, and immigration violations since the 1970s and the accelerating de facto decriminalization of high level crime in the suits since the 1990s. as nonprosecution agreements and deferred prosecution agreements proliferated to settle cases stemming from the financial and foreclosure crisis. These get out of jail free cards became even more deeply legitimized and institutionalized to deal with all kinds of corporate crime under Obama and his successors. Furthermore, Obama’s mortgage relief program ended up being a boondoggle for leading banks and mortgage servicesers who turbocharged the foreclosure crisis, turning millions of people out of their homes and illegally repossessing many properties. An estimated 9 to 10 million families would end up losing their homes, about twothirds of them to foreclosures. many people simply walked away from their devalued properties as you said earlier returning the keys to the banks and action that would destroy famil family’s credit for years. Um I I I think that the you make this point in the book. I mean you people who turned to Trump had at one point supported Obama well and at one point had supported Bernie Sanders too after Obama. Right. And so, you know, there’s a common argument that, you know, the the support for Trump is largely racially driven, but there were millions of whites who voted twice for Obama. And, you know, Obama won states like Indiana, which we can’t imagine the Democrats right now winning, right? But he won Indiana. And many of the a good proportion of the Sanders voters, we understand, then moved over moved over to Trump. And if you listen to Trump’s final commercial, his main commercial in the 2016 election, it s it could be a commercial by Bernie Sanders except that the voices unmistakably Trump’s, but it it’s pictures of Bill and Hillary Clinton, the so-called global elite, the oligarchy, and it’s interspersed with this multicultural um working class people of seemingly all different races, ethnic backgrounds, etc. And it’s a very very powerful commercial about this perception that uh these people have been abandoned in the United States. I want to add one other thing about Obama. The book I what I don’t want people to come away with is thinking corporations have always had all this power. There is no choice. There’s nothing we can do about it. And what I try to do in the book is say yes, corporations throughout American history have disproportionately had power, but it’s waxed and it’s waned. And I try to identify moments when it was possible to do something else. So after the savings and loan crisis, George HW Bush was forced to put some regulations in. The Clinton administration stripped down those guard rails and let let the economy rip and be deregulated. uh crashed and burned with the great recession. Obama comes in and we read back now and say it was always polarized with Obama. Yes, it was very polarized about the Affordable Care Act, but there was remarkable support ranging pretty broadly across the political spectrum to restructure the banks to do not just window dressing about uh economic reform, but something much more uh penetrating so that you wouldn’t have these banks become too big to to fail. uh that you would make them pay in some certain way that you would make them uh keep high reserves in in in uh compared to previously. And the Obama administration blinked on that and Obama’s justification he said if we sent these corporate executives to jail and we use the criminal system he says in his memoir that would have been violence to the social order. I think about that. I think about the violence to so many Americans who lost their homes, who lost their pensions, right? But but this would be violence to the social order. So what Obama sort of argues is, okay, we’re going to do regulation, right? We’re not we’re going to just let our Department of Justice close its eyes to what’s going on and instead we’re going to do regulation. And then he supported a very weak regulation economic reform regulation of the banking industry. Uh he delayed in in what side he was going to come out on that. By that time capital had regrouped. They were back on a roll. The largest banks had consolidated. They used the hundreds of billions of dollars um in the TARP money to to come back u to buy up smaller banks. and that then at that point uh Obama had missed the moment and yet there were there were opportunities legislation in Congress to take a much stricter uh position with the financial industry and it didn’t happen and Obama justified it. Okay, we’re going to do regulation. We’re not going to do criminal. But he didn’t really do either. And let’s talk before we talk about Trump the media a little bit and and the

36:18

QUESTIONS:

1. Do you think that Democrats go overboard in blaming racism for their political defeats?

2. How much difference would it have made if Obama had a more balanced criminal and economic policy?

3. Barak Obama attributed his resistance to prosecuting corporate executives to concern for the violence it would have to the social fabric. How would you assess the financial and political elites’ concern for the social fabric and working and middle class people? Might that suggest a significant element of Democratic losses?

Theme: Impunity

Here’s an excerpt from a recent briefing on his Substack.

Subscribe to Professor Pape’s Substack:

• https://professorrobertpape.substack.com/p/the-end-of-the-american-empire-a2e

The End of a GeoPolitical Model

My recent Foreign Affairs article, “Iran and the New Rules of Global Power,” argues that the Iran war has fundamentally changed America’s strategic position in the Middle East.

On Thursday evening, I want to take the next step—and address the question the article leaves open.

What if the Iran war did not simply expose a weakness in American strategy?

What if it marked the end of the geopolitical model the United States has relied on since the 1991 Gulf War?

4 Assumptions of Post-Cold War America

For more than three decades, American power rested on four assumptions:

1. forward bases could safely project power,

2. air superiority would dominate the battlefield,

3. precision strike would produce rapid victories, and

4. overwhelming technology would allow the United States to defeat regional adversaries quickly and at relatively low cost.

The Iran war challenges every one of those assumptions.

The United States has demonstrated overwhelming military superiority. Yet it has struggled to achieve the political objective that matters most: restoring secure commercial access to the world’s most important maritime corridors. At the same time, relatively inexpensive missiles and mass-produced drones have placed American bases, allies, and critical energy infrastructure under sustained pressure.

If that assessment is correct, then the question is no longer simply whether the United States wins in Iran. It is whether the military model on which Washington now spends roughly $1 trillion each year—and is preparing to spend substantially more—still produces the strategic outcomes it was designed to achieve. If not, this is no longer just a military debate. It could become one of the defining strategic, budgetary, and political questions heading into the midterm elections.

What if the Iran war is revealing not that America needs to spend more—but that it has been investing in the wrong theory of military power?

.. And if the post-1991 model has broken, what replaces it?

ELSEWHERE:

• Robert Pape Wikipedia Profile

• Breaking Points Interviews

Philip Pilington and Mario Nawfal describe the systematic breakdown of the financial system and the rise of informal “grey” markets for things like diesel that sell for above the official market price.

1. U.S. Treasury Market Interventions

• Market Friction: Host Mario Nawfal and analyst Philip Pilkington discuss recent interventions by the U.S. Treasury, where short-term Treasury bills were sold to buy back longer-term bonds [02:01].

• Failed Strategy: Pilkington argues this intervention only stabilized the market for about a day [03:30] and signals a rift or lack of alignment with the Federal Reserve [02:37].

2. Global Economic Pressures & The “Doom Loop”

• Rising Bond Yields: Global bond yields are climbing to multi-year highs across major Western economies [12:46].

• Japanese Yen & Carry Trade: The speakers detail a potential “doom loop” scenario in Japan [25:50]. If Japan sells U.S. Treasuries to support the yen, it drives U.S. yields higher, which incentivizes the carry trade and further weakens the yen [25:55].

• Systemic Risk: A survey mentioned by Pilkington highlights that 60% of surveyed investment professionals fear the financial system is heading toward a crisis similar to 2008 [04:34].

3. Energy Markets & Geopolitics

• Oil & Diesel Tightness: Despite official claims regarding shipping traffic through key transit routes [19:14], oil and refined product markets (such as diesel) remain under severe pressure [22:14].

• Secondary Sanctions: The discussion touches on proposed economic measures against Iran [30:48]. They speculate that secondary sanctions targeting major trade partners like China could provoke retaliatory measures, such as restrictions on rare earth metals [33:31].

QUESTIONS:

1. What would be the effects of diesel shortages on the US economy?

2. How will a financial crisis affect Iranian leverage in the war?

3. Will the unwinding of the Yen carry trade raise the cost of US borrowing?

4. What would happen if the US tries to strong-arm Iran and China?

5. How would the US adjust to a 30 - 35% fall in living standards?

Elsewhere:

• The Reformation in Economics: a book by Philip Pilkington that aims to deconstruct contemporary neoclassical economic theory in order to determine to what extent it is scientific and to what extent it is ideological.

Police Assault

If plain clothes police officers don’t identify themselves and try to grab an innocent man’s wallet, are they liable if they beat him up when he tries to run away? The victim didn’t know they were police officers because they didn’t identify themselves and bystanders called the police because they thought the victim was being mugged. The police officers were engaged in a case of mistaken identity, but they operated in such a way that no-one could differentiate them from criminals.

Police Impunity

Many people believe that qualified immunity grants police have “impunity” because qualified immunity blocks victims from getting their day in court and the government doesn’t have to explain itself. If the defendants were anyone other police, they would have to answer for their actions.

A Broken Social Contract

The American Dream carries with it the expectation of “liberty and justice for all.” More and more Americans are coming to believe that the powerful will act with impunity. This isn’t new in American history, but the blatant injustice is undermining American mythology among the formerly first-class white population.

QUESTIONS:

1. Should it be possible to hold police accountable if the police officer wrongly committed what would be considered a crime if performed by a civilian? Note: Police are shielded from legal liability by “qualified immunity.”

2. Should there be a remedy for every right?

3. Has their been an increase in impunity, or awareness of impunity, by those in power? How has awareness of this contributed to breakdown of the social contract?

Secret decisions that are kept from the public until the deals are done.

Credit: More Perfect Union

QUESTIONS:

1) Are the AI Data Center developers arguing that:

• the public overstates the costs of the externalities of the Data Center to the community, or

• the US interest in AI should override community concerns, or

• they only care about their personal monetary interests?

Gemini Research:

2) What is the legality of using NDAs to conceal project details from communities? This seems anti-transparency and anti-democratic.

Summary of Claims: They are necessary to remain competitive with other states that allow public NDAs and they are a standard way of doing bussiness.

GEMINI RESPONSE:

Yes, this issue centers on major investigative reporting by the Gulf States Newsroom and Type Investigations into how non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) are being used by tech companies and state leadership in Louisiana.

The secrecy surrounding massive tech infrastructure investments in the state—most notably involving Meta and Amazon—has sparked significant legal and political debate.

Key Highlights of the Situation

1. Meta’s $50 Billion Data Center (”Project Hyperion”)

• The Deal: Meta (operating through a shell subsidiary, Laidley LLC) pursued a multi-billion dollar AI data center campus in Richland Parish, Louisiana.

• The Governor’s Signature: Records revealed that Governor Jeff Landry personally signed a mutual NDA with Meta’s subsidiary.

• The Terms: The agreement bound state leadership from publicly discussing proposed deal terms, tax incentives, financial details, or even the existence of the agreement itself without Meta’s prior written approval. It also required the state to push for protective orders if compelled to release information under public records requests.

2. Amazon’s $12 Billion Expansion

• Similar non-disclosure dynamics occurred around Amazon’s planned $12 billion data center footprint in northwest Louisiana, where local and state officials were bound by secrecy clauses while early negotiations and infrastructure plans were being hashed out.

3. Widespread Use of Internal NDAs

• Beyond corporate NDAs, investigations revealed that over 120 state employees and dozens of lawmakers (including a majority of the Louisiana State Senate) signed internal confidentiality agreements with the Governor’s office or Louisiana Economic Development (LED).

• These internal NDAs forbid state staff from sharing information without written consent from the governor, even after leaving state employment.

Why It’s Controversial

• Transparency & Public Records: Open-government advocates and legal experts argue these agreements stretch traditional “trade secret” protections too far. Critics argue that when public incentives, water rights, and massive utility commitments (such as power deals with Entergy) are involved, using NDAs prevents citizens and local communities from having input before projects are finalized.

• Chilling Speech: First Amendment scholars have raised concerns that penalizing state workers or local representatives for speaking out creates a “gag order” culture, turning standard government transparency laws on their head.

• The State’s Defense: The governor’s office and economic development officials argue that NDAs are standard business tools required to remain competitive with other states when negotiating with trillion-dollar tech corporations. They contend confidentiality is necessary to protect trade secrets and sensitive strategy during high-stakes economic deals.

Selected YouTube Comments:

• The comments indicate that the Data Center developers are defying a large backlash.

You can’t get a permit for your shed you want to build but they can build and fund a whole secret data centre without anyone knowing?

You were robbed of any input because they knew you’d be against it.

So you’re telling me that a company can make a shady deal with a politician and then legally cannot talk about said deal. That doesn’t sound corrupt at all!

It’s interesting that the only people who want data centers in their area are the ones in charge. The ones who are supposed to be the voices of the people they represent.

Public officials should not have the authority to sign an NDA.

The corruption is off the charts

It WILL affect your health. It WILL affect your property. It WILL affect your water. It HAS increased your electric bill. Yes, you ARE paying for it.

“If you wanna keep harping on about NDAs, then we’re done.” Yes, we are done.

Trickle down corruption.

All this corruption is gonna keep happening and its gonna get worse because this country is not standing up to this government its gonna take EVERYBODY to stand up not just a few people so until that happens nothing is gonna change and we will eventually lose everything our rights are freedom people are losing their homes and land and they dont have a problem stealing if there is no consequences. The government is like the school bully there going to keep doing it until we stand up!!!! I dont know how far this needs to go before people realize that whats going on is serious and if people just stay quiet hoping someone will come save the day its gonna be to late and we and the younger generations will suffer the consequences of inaction!!!

Time to throw the tea in the harbor

And now the class war becomes fully evident for all to see. Not left vs right. UP vs DOWN. If you’re not a billionaire, we’re on the same team.

Shut ‘em Down.
Every single one of these corporations, lobbyists, politicians, etc need to go to PRISON… NOW.

Oh Big Brother thought they could buy off the city councils or county councils but when it gets a little more intrusive all hell is going break loose and these data centers will be run out of towns.

Here in Michigan the city of Saline voted 2 separate times no to build a Data center and the governor had a closed door vote with a little bribery money and it miraculously passed…

ANY representative that hides from their people like this should be physically forced to resign. Dragged into the streets if necessary.

In this video, I break down the psychological tactics that cause narcissists to expose the truth themselves, without confrontation, chasing, or emotional reactions. This is not about arguing, cornering them, or demanding honesty. It is about understanding how narcissists slip up and how you can remove their ability to control the narrative.

You will learn:

• How narcissists accidentally reveal the truth

• Why asking questions usually backfires

• The specific behaviours that make them expose themselves

• How to stop being manipulated through confusion

• And how to regain emotional control and clarity
  
  This video is for anyone who feels lied to, gaslit, or left questioning their own reality after dealing with a narcissist.

TRANSCRIPT:

2:18

.. [S]top asking questions

that seek honesty and start asking

questions that require consistency.

[music]

Instead of, “Why did you lie to me?” You

ask, “So, help me understand how that

fits with what you said last week.” This

bypasses their defense system. You’re

not accusing. You’re mapping. A narcissist

cannot maintain a false map for long.

Now, here’s the the real truth.

You are not meant to get a clean

confession. That is a fantasy that will

keep you stuck for years. The

truth comes out in fragments, in

contradictions, in moments where their

mask slips because no one is fighting

it. When you see enough fragments,

gaslighting stops working. Not because

they stop lying, but because you stop

needing them to confirm the reality.

And that’s the moment the power

truly shifts. Because the most dangerous

thing for a narcissist is not just about

being exposed. It’s about being

irrelevant to how you understand the

truth.
3:21

Another Tactic: Feed them something false.

“I quickly learned from others in town that [Trump] knew next to nothing about the casino industry, including the rules of the games”.

On this subject and others, Johnston played the trick of intentionally saying something false in order to get Trump to agree and betray his ignorance.

(The Guardian)

QUESTIONS:

1. Have you dealt with a (difficult) or Narcissistic person before?

2. What tactics did you try? Which tactics were successful and which were unsuccessful?

3. Do you think this approach works with narcissistic politicians or does it not work because the broader pubic lacks the required collective intelligence?

4. How long does it take to detect a narcissist? What are some red flags?

5. Have you ever dealt with a covert narcissist, as opposed to a grandiose narcissist? (I believe I have)

Transcript

1:27:58

And you know I spent 25 years investigating and researching fairly unpleasant people. These are the most odious egregious human beings I have ever looked into in my life. I mean two of them to give you examples. Peter Thiel who founded Palunteer which does a lot of this targeting software and various other things. Elon Musk of Tesla both spent formative years in what was then apartheid South Africa. One part of it the was in what is today Namibia but it was then still part of apartheid South Africa.

Their grandparents moved to those countries because they were the closest they could find to fascism post the Second World War because apartheid South Africa to go back to where we started was effectively ruled by people who had been jailed during the war because of their Nazi sympathies1 and involvement in pro-Nazi militias in southern Africa and German southwest Africa. And these people learned exactly the wrong lessons from apartheid.2 There are unrepentant white supremacists amongst many other things who simply believe that there are certain human beings who don’t deserve to live3 and they define them in all sorts of ways and these are the people who are not only driving AI because our governments are so totally inept and don’t even understand what AI really is. They these people themselves are drafting all of the regulation of AI. So they’re regulating themselves which means they’re not regulated at all and its impacts are terrifying not just in warfare but in terms of surveillance and repression4 at home as well.

QUESTIONS:

1. Do you agree with the speaker that tech policy is shaped by South Africans who learned the wrong lessons from apartheid? What evidence does he present?

2. If you were to critique this transcript, what are the top two points you would focus on? (see footnotes)

3. If you belonged to the group of South Africans being described, how would you reassure the speaker about the effects on AI surveillance and repression at home, or do you believe that is not their intent?

FOOTNOTES:

Transcript

50:47

Training will be accelerated and upon graduation, the platoon will be deployed to the front lines. It is at this point that the recruits are told that anyone who does not feel ready for this can privately tell their senior drill instructor and will be processed out with an honorable discharge and full benefits. All of this, of course, is a lie. And any recruit who expects in good faith that the institution hold the terms of the enlistment contract it signed with him will be exposed to the platoon and shamed mercilessly as a coward who lacks the Marine Corps’s three core values of honor, courage, and commitment. While nobody in my platoon fell for this, I have always found it noteworthy that any recruits shamed in this way are the ones with the courage to ask the institution to honor its own commitment.

51:44

QUESTIONS:

1. Are we conditioning people to expect that they can not call on their government to honor its commitments?

2. Does this disbelief extend to that the rights enshrined in the constitution, such as the 1st or 4th amendment?

3. How can we build broad support for the peaceful exercise of constitutional rights so that the public joins in demanding that the government honors our rights?

4. How can we enable the public to see through attempts to marginalize those who exercise rights by saying things such as

   1. “Are you trying to be difficult?” “They are troublemakers.”

   2. “Why don’t you just comply?”

   3. “Where did you get your law degree?”

   4. ** list your own phrase here

5. What are some other areas where people rightly question government’s commitment to honor their commitments?

ELSEWHERE:

Copslaining is an interactional pattern where policing authority is used to override, minimize, or reframe someone’s account of police behavior, depriving the person of epistemic credibility and reducing accountability.

• 100 Police “Copsplaining” phrases translated into Plain English using ChatGTP.

QUESTIONS:

1. Were you aware how central advertising commissions are to political consultants’ compensation?

2. Does a shift in economic model represent a good time to rethink the role of political consultants in campaigns?

3. Describe how the consultant class is in league with certain leaders.

4. What would the Democratic party look like if it were actually a membership organization, without a consulting class core?

5. How should Democrats call out consulting class conflicts of interests?

TRANSCRIPT:

48:55.

Cats also worked on Michael Lasher’s campaign and he’s not some like barn burning lefty uh in in in New York. So like you know the there is an infrastructure of how campaigns are run. There is a consultant class that is genuinely financially threatened by left-wing candidates and DSA in particular surging because they don’t get their massive commissions if you’re doing door-knocking even if it’s more effective. We’re we want media buys. We want ad buys. We want the commission. And they go on TV. They are consultants. You look up these CNN contributors. It’s like, oh, this woman works at the consulting firm and shock. she hates DSA and leftists and it’s never disclosed.

And so I guess I’m just asking about your experience with that, your assessment of how the consultant class in the Democratic party has grown and is whining and bitching and is a big part of like, you know, this kind of narrative in the national press, but no one gets to acknowledge it and it’s not ever disclosed.

The consulting class is basically all that the Democratic Party is like at its core. I mean really because it’s not a membership organization, you know, it’s not structured like DSA where you’re a member and you go to regular meetings and you participate in activities and you have internal debates about what the what it’s going to be. It really is just basically a grift for consultants and they are the ones that get very upset them and you know the elected leaders that they’re in league with that get very upset when there’s any challenge to that model. So yes, those are going to be some where some of the fiercest battles are actually waged. And if you are someone like Morris Katz who is willing to upset the Apple cart and work with a Zohran Mamdani, then you are going to be um persona nangrada to them because you’re sort of betraying the consultant class solidarity. Yes. So I think there is a lot of that going on underneath the surface. Um, and it really is actually quite critical to the future of what the Democratic Party is ultimately going to be because yeah, those people are going to fight for their paychecks. There’s no doubt about it.

51:06

Every day drivers were missing their turn because the exit was not properly marked.

Richard Ankrom a sign painter and artist spent 2 years researching and building everything from the proper font, to the correct color of blue, to the exact type of reflectors. He even printed out a work order, lest he be approached by authorities questioning this authorization for the job. After he created and installed the the new sign, it took 9 months before anyone noticed that it was out of place. Caltrans responded that it had the sign on order, but it took 8 years before Caltrans replaced the “artwork” with something official. 1

America’s First Freeway: The Arroyo Seco Parkway, aka, the 110

QUESTION:

1. Have you ever fixed something public that was bothering you, and that you thought would help other people?

   1. I didn’t “fix” anything so involved as this but a few years ago I found the door exposing a traffic light electronics open on a windy and flurrying day. There had been recent construction at that intersection. I closed and locked the door and then called the non-emergency police line.

2. The video describing the sign-making describes the 90s as a most uneventful era, when post cold war stability enabled this sort of sign-making quest rise to the top of someone’s agenda. Are there other projects of this type that you are aware of in what one might call the “Seinfeld Era”?

3. There are several ways to describe this:

   1. Socially Useful Prank

   2. Guerilla Public Service (Ankrom’s language)

   3. Vigilante — broadly : a self-appointed doer of justice

   4. Performance Art - an artwork or art installation in the art world where the artist is present in the work. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a public in a fine art context in an interdisciplinary mode.^[1] Also known as artistic action, it has been developed through the years as a genre of its own in which art is presented live. It had an important and fundamental role in 20th century avant-garde art. Performance artists often challenge the audience to think in new and unconventional ways, break conventions of traditional arts, and break down conventional ideas about "what art is".

   5. What word would you use to describe this?

4. What are some other examples of Performance Art that you are aware of?

5. What does Ankrom’s sign suggest to you artistically?

DETAILS:

Longer profile piece:

ELSEWHERE:

Sign-maker Richard Ankrom’s Documentary:

Guerrilla Public Service 2011

Guerilla Public Service Redux: Best Audio Version

YouTube Comments:

I love how they said they were already “in the process of upgrading all those signs” & how they had “ordered a new sign” yet his sign still remained up for 8 years!!

Reddit:

WyndiMan: This retelling of the story missed a significant point that helps explain why he was able to get away with putting the sign up.

Not only did he do up the fake work truck and safety equipment, etc., he did it while Caltrans was in the middle of a different project at the 4-level just up the road. There were already cones down, the left lanes closed, and the flashing merge right signs ahead of where the signage in question was. So of course no one would question a Caltrans worker doing work in that area!

Another telling of this story is here:

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/guerrilla-public-service/

15:55

if you see two fish fighting there’s an Englishman nearby.

You know they cause [laughter] these problems between them. I think I think that’s from the the war in Cyprus is where that one comes from. But um

if you see two fish fighting there’s an Englishman nearby. Yeah, it’s I think it’s from the cipher wars where that came from. Anyway, you know, they went into these places and yeah, they’d always make friends with one of them.

Sometimes, you know, a chief that was kind of out of power and wanted to return to power, but one way or another, they they’d find friends there and then

just slowly move in over time. And that that is very much how the Romans expanded as well.

Yeah. And there there are some other things in here too that are interesting um that will remind you of let’s say

quotes from Colin Powell as well. Um but you you mentioned about this the early period. Um do you want to do you want to

help people out with the history of who the Samites were, the Latins, the the Atruscans and all that? We can call up a

map. I think we have a map of um of the Samite uh territories

uh to show. Yeah, here we go. Um you know, this early period that the Romans

went through to consolidate their empire. Uh it took quite a long time, did didn’t it? Um and or do do you want to just give us a little bit background?

It took them like 400 years to get oh just like 20 miles in every direction from Rome and in that same amount of time they reached their maximum in the

same next 400 years they reached their maximum territorial extent but there were endless small tribes most of which

no one’s ever heard of.

GEMINI:

Q: What does the following quote mean: "If you see two fish fighting there’s an Englishman nearby."

This quote is a sharp, metaphorical piece of commentary on colonialism, foreign intervention, and the “divide and rule” strategy historically associated with the British Empire.

Though it is often attributed as an old African or Turkish proverb, its core meaning boils down to a single idea: When two parties who previously coexisted are suddenly at war, look for the outside instigator who benefits from their conflict.

Here is a breakdown of what the quote implies:

1. The Strategy of “Divide and Rule” (Divide et Impera)

Historically, the British Empire often established and maintained control over vast territories by exploiting existing rivalries—or creating new ones—between local groups. By keeping the local populations fighting each other (the “two fish”), they were too distracted and weakened to unite against the colonial power (the “Englishman”).

2. Engineering Conflict from the Shadows

The metaphor of the fish tank or the river implies that fish don’t naturally fight to the death without a disruption to their environment. The “Englishman” represents an external force that alters the environment—perhaps by tossing in a single piece of food, drawing an arbitrary border, or favoring one fish over the other—to trigger the chaos from a safe distance.

3. Modern Application

While the quote specifically names the English due to the sheer scale of the British Empire’s historical footprint (think of the partition of India, or colonial borders drawn in Africa and the Middle East), it is often used today to describe any modern superpower or third-party nation that covertly meddles in foreign affairs for its own geopolitical or economic gain.

In short: It’s a warning to look past the immediate conflict and ask: Who manufactured this fight, and who stands to profit from it?

QUESTIONS:

1. Among a select group of people, the British’s use of “Divide & Rule” is well known? How well-know is this practice by the general public?

2. How closely did the British study the Roman’s use of “Divide & Rule”?

3. Are their countries that were previously estranged by “Divide & Rule” that have partially or fully reconciled once they realized that they had been manipulated?

   1. Saudi Arabia and Iran a two countries that I suspect had a partial improvement in relations after mediation by China.

PREVIOUS:

1. Divide & Rule

2. Divide & Rule: The California Way

Chat GPT:

Here are 10 historical examples of the "Divide and Rule" strategy used by rulers, empires, and governments to maintain control by fostering division among their subjects or rivals:

1. The Roman Empire (Divide et Impera) 🇮🇹

• The Romans used "Divide et Impera" (Divide and Rule) to prevent alliances among conquered peoples.

• They pitted local tribes and city-states against each other, ensuring no unified resistance.

• Example: They played rival Gallic tribes against one another to weaken them before conquest.

2. The British Empire in India 🇮🇳

• The British used religious and ethnic divisions to maintain control over India.

• They encouraged tensions between Hindus and Muslims, weakening nationalist movements.

• Example: The partition of Bengal in 1905 was an attempt to deepen Hindu-Muslim divisions.

3. The British Empire in Africa 🌍

• The British applied indirect rule,1 favoring some ethnic groups over others.

• Example: In Nigeria, they empowered the northern Hausa-Fulani over the Igbo and Yoruba, fueling long-term tensions.

• Similar tactics were used in Sudan, Kenya, and South Africa.

4. Napoleon Bonaparte and European Wars 🇫🇷

• Napoleon used Divide and Rule to break up coalitions against France.

• He manipulated rivalries between Prussia, Austria, and Russia to keep them from uniting against him.

5. The Scramble for Africa (1880s–1914) 🌍

• European powers divided African tribes and kingdoms during colonization.

• Borders were drawn without regard for ethnic groups, creating perpetual conflicts that persist today.

• Example: Belgium favored the Tutsi over the Hutu in Rwanda, fueling the 1994 genocide.

6. The Habsburg Empire 🇦🇹

• The Austrian rulers controlled many different ethnic groups (Hungarians, Czechs, Slavs, etc.).

• They encouraged rivalries to prevent unity and rebellion within their vast empire.

7. The Soviet Union (Stalin’s Nationality Policy) 🇷🇺

• Joseph Stalin deliberately relocated ethnic groups within the USSR to create divisions.

• Example: Forced deportations of Crimean Tatars, Chechens, and others to weaken nationalist unity.

• He also encouraged conflicts between different Soviet republics to prevent rebellion.

8. The Middle East After World War I 🇹🇷🇮🇶🇸🇦

• Britain and France divided the Ottoman Empire's territories into artificial nations (Sykes-Picot Agreement).

• They placed rival ethnic and religious groups together, ensuring instability.

• Example: The creation of Iraq combined Kurds, Sunni Arabs, and Shia Arabs, leading to long-term conflicts.

9. Apartheid South Africa (1948–1994) 🇿🇦

• The South African government institutionalized racial divisions to keep control over the majority black population.

• They created separate "homelands" (Bantustans) for different ethnic groups, preventing unity against apartheid.

10. The United States and Racial Segregation 🇺🇸

• In the Jim Crow era, Southern elites encouraged racial divisions to prevent poor whites and African Americans from forming political alliances.

• Example: Laws and propaganda promoted racial hostility to maintain the power of the wealthy ruling class.

Final Thoughts

The "Divide and Rule" strategy has been used throughout history to maintain control over populations, often with long-term negative consequences such as civil wars, ethnic conflicts, and political instability. Many of today's global tensions can be traced back to colonial and imperial policies of division.

QUESTIONS:

1. Most people have heard the term “Divide and Conquer”. Have you thought of it as an old concept or do you also think of it as a contemporary tool of power?

2. How is the US using Divide and Rule abroad? Why did Republicans fund ‘transgender dance’ in Bangladesh?

3. Do powerful US interests weaponize diversity politics today to achieve Divide and Rule?

4. Do you hear much conversation in the mainstream media about the use of Divide and Rule?

PREVIOUS:

1. Divide & Rule

2. Divide & Rule: The “California Way”

3. If you see two fish fighting there’s an Englishman nearby.

FOOTNOTES:

We rejected a King and built an Imperial Presidency. They kept the King and built democracies.

The countries that came out of the same American Revolution, the same revolutionary period, and did not throw the king overboard, turned over the same two and a half centuries into some of the most stable democracies in the world.

So what, we might ask, was that American experiment again?

Imperial Presidency

Imperial presidency is a term describing the modern presidency of the United States. It became popular in the 1960s and served as the title of historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.‘s 1973 book The Imperial Presidency, addressing his concerns that the presidency was uncontrollable and had exceeded its constitutional limits.^[1]

According to political science professor Thomas E. Cronin, author of The State of the Presidency, the term “imperial presidency” describes the danger inherent in the American constitutional system’s letting a president create and abuse presidential prerogatives during national emergencies,^[2] based on presidential war powers that are vaguely defined in the Constitution, and on secrecy which shields a president from checks and balances by the government’s legislative and judicial branches.^[2].

.. Peter Baker wrote in The New York Times that the second Trump presidency had “established a new, more audacious version of the imperial presidency”.^[3]

⁽Wikipedia)

Book

A Resistance History of the United States, by Tad Stoermer

DETAIL:

Transcript: Gemini

QUESTIONS:

1. What are your thoughts on the “Imperial Presidency”?

2. If you had to choose between the more recent “Imperial Presidency” and a British-style King and Parliament, which would you pick?

3. I’ve heard that a Parliamentary system is more vulnerable to capture by a demagogue. Which system do you believe is more resistant to demagoguery?

4. The British system doesn’t have a Bill of Rights. If you could keep the American Bill or Rights, would you favor the American System with a less Imperial Presidency, or do you favor a more Powerful Presidency?

5. Is the imperial presidency necessited by the American “Empire”? Could the US reduced the power of the President if it shed part or all of the “Empire”?

Transcript:

Speaker: Todd Sturmer, Public Historian

0:02 In the wake of what happened on Saturday night at the Washington Hilton and the subsequent calls that a bunker is now absolutely necessary for the president under the White House, the British King Charles III has arrived in Washington to mark the 250 years since America declared independence from Great Britain.

0:17 So, the Wall Street Journal is calling the visit a charm offensive, an effort to salvage Britain’s badly fraying relationship with the United States.

0:25 But I think of it instead as a kind of wellness check, a check-in to see how the United States is doing on its own.

0:32 So, let’s see how the great great great great great grandson of America’s last king might find the old place. Hey folks, I’m Todd Sturmer. I’m a public historian and a scholar of American history at the University of Southern Denmark and Johns Hopkins and I’m the author of A Resistance History of the United States.

0:49 Charles III’s in Washington right now and this is a peculiar moment for the republic that broke from his ancestors empire. The visual alone is a dark joke, right? You have a 77-year-old hereditary monarch neutered by centuries of constitutional duct tape shaking hands with a 79-year-old president who has shown just how much of the American system depends on electing people who just choose not to burn the whole place down.

1:12 The last part matters because the United States was not, as we all know, founded as a democracy. It was founded as a republic by men who feared democracy more than they feared monarchy. Daniel Shays scared them more than George III ever did.

1:26 So by the summer of 1787, the men in the Philadelphia Convention watched in terror as farmers in Massachusetts followed the example of the resistance patriots to take up arms to alter or abolish their own state government, which had become as abusive as the British government had seemed 10 years before.

1:42 That was the context for the constitution they wrote and the arguments they used to support it. The documents mostly designed to keep the people away from power. An electoral college so that people would not directly choose the president. A senate appointed by state legislature so the people would not directly choose senators. A federal judiciary appointed for life and answerable to no one. A high bar for amending the constitution. A higher one for removing the president.

2:08 So they built this sprawling machine of fear, hoping ambition would check ambition, property would check people, that people in institutions would defend their own power, and virtue would rule over it all.

2:21 So the guardrails against a restless democratic public were structural, durable, and explicit. The guardrails against an executive who decided who was the state were vague, polite, and resting on the assumption that no such unvirtuous, ambitious person would ever be elected.

2:38 More than 200 years later, the structural guard rails against the people are mostly intact. The polite ones against the executive are absolutely not.

2:47 The presidency was always the especially weak point in the no-king story of that founding. The Federalists rejected monarchy in their pamphlets and their constitution went ahead and created something much like one. Anyway, they vested executive power in a single person, made that person head of state, head of the government, commander-in-chief, gave him the veto, the pardon, the appointment power, the authority to negotiate treaties, and command an army that he could deploy against the people.

3:14 The anti-federalists noticed all of that. They argued that the proposed American president would hold powers exceeding those of the actual British King who by then had been operating inside a parliamentary system for a century and could not raise an army or spend money without that parliament say so first.

3:30 The Federalists waved the objections away. But two and a half centuries of war, empire emergency and nationalist mythmaking doing its work proved that the anti-federalists were absolutely right.

3:41 Arthur Schlesinger called the result the imperial presidency in 1973 and the 50 years since then have been a story of how the office has continued to grow under presidents of both parties and now of course all of that’s exploding under Trump into something older and uglier than 1776—personal rule—not Charles III, Charles I.

4:03 So that’s what makes the royal visit useful for thinking about. Charles III is not arriving as the monster the mythmakers want you to believe America escapes in 1776.

4:13 He’s arriving as an executive whose authorities have been stripped away, ritualized into ceremony, fenced into celebrity, and only of real political consequence when and if parliament says there. He can’t raise revenue, can’t declare war, can’t pass a law or block one. He can’t pardon, can’t appoint, can’t fire on his own.

4:32 He gives a speech once a year that someone else writes, opens parliament, signs what he’s given to sign, smiles at the cameras, meets with the prime minister once a week, and then just otherwise stays out of the way. He’s an impotent king, which is to say, he’s exactly the kind of head of state the men who wrote the Constitution swore they would never tolerate. And the men who opposed the Constitution said was the only real guarantee of the rights of the people.

4:52 And here’s a part of the American story that the nationalist historiography has spent two and a half centuries refusing to allow you to look at directly. The countries that came out of the same American Revolution, the same revolutionary period, and did not throw the king overboard, turned over the same two and a half centuries into some of the most stable democracies in the world.

5:12 Britain itself kept expanding voting rights and reforming the powers of government. Canada was transformed by the tens of thousands of loyalists who refused the new republic and went north with their own ideas about representative government. And then they began dismantling slavery as early as 1793 and became the bulwark of freedom that enslaved Americans ran toward.

5:33 New Zealand gave women the right to vote 27 years before the United States did. All of them, including Australia, evolved over the same two and a half centuries into strong democracies.

5:44 Power sits where the founders of the American Republic refused to let it sit: with the people, exercised through parliaments and cabinet governments that answer to them, can be recalled by them, and can be removed by them. A vote of no confidence can bring a whole government down on a Tuesday afternoon, and an election can remake it.

6:02 The system has produced stability and freedom together, and the steady expansion of rights that follows from them, including the kind of universal healthcare that Americans are still debating whether to call a right at all.

6:12 Now, none of them have innocent histories. None of us get out of that. They are settler colonialist societies built on stolen indigenous land and they carry the violence of their founding the way every settler society does. And they bear the modern responsibility for fixing that, repairing that as settler societies must do.

6:29 But the political systems they built on top of that violence have proven more democratic, more responsive, and more durable than the ones the American founders designed. They kept the crown and built democracies underneath it. The country that threw the crown overboard built a republic. And the republic has been struggling since 1865 to become a democracy and now by any honest measure is struggling just to remain a republic.

6:52 So just what Charles III might ask: what was that American experiment thing again? Because if the hypothesis was that a self-governing people could do without a hereditary monarch and govern themselves through a constitution of their own design, then the control group is sitting in London and Ottawa and Canberra and Wellington. And the control group is doing better.

7:16 That’s the suppressed footnote of 1776. The real story, maybe the real spirit, the story of the loyalists. And it’s not a counterfactual. It’s a real alternate reality, an actual what-if which then actually happened somewhere else, just a border and some oceans away.

7:33 In October 1779, and this one I love, a Virginia loyalist named John Randolph, then in exile in London, wrote to his cousin and old friend Thomas Jefferson, and asked him a question we might all reflect on.

7:47 “Would it not be prudent to rescind your Declaration of Independence and be happily reunited to your ancient and natural friend and enjoy a peace which I most religiously think would pass all understanding? Your laws and regulations will be established on the solid basis of the British Constitution, and your happiness will be attended to with all the solicitude which belongs to an affectionate parent. Reflect, I beseech you, on what I have said.”

8:12 Now, pretty absurd to say that in 1779, but not quite so absurd for us to use today. What the 250th anniversary should be doing is the thing Jefferson never had the chance to do because the letter never reached him.

8:23 But we can reflect on what Randolph said against the backdrop of a hollowed-out Congress and an executive that keeps learning how little will stop him. Against the democracies that emerged from the empire America left. Against the fact that Britain, compromised and brutal as its abolition was, passed emancipation and brought it into effect across most of its empire a full generation before the United States.

8:43 Yes, Britain bought off the enslavers. Yes, emancipation came with coercive apprenticeship and imperial hypocrisy. But what Britain purchased was an end to slavery without paying the price of the catastrophe the United States required: Civil War, destruction, and more than 700,000 dead and still an incomplete settlement.

9:02 And against the simple embarrassing observable fact that the countries that remained within the British constitutional world have over the same two and a half centuries often been better at the thing the American nationalist historians insist the founders invented.

9:19 So Charles III arrives as a kind of wellness check—not for Britain, but for us. He stands in the photographs as a historical prop, a reminder of the path not taken and the danger we’ve refused to name.

9:31 Britain kept the crown and contained it. America rejected the crown and built an executive that kept swelling to fit one. We fled a king and built an imperial president. They kept a king and built democracies. Reflect on that.

Final thought: We rejected a King and built an Imperial Presidency. They kept the King and built democracies.

4:06

When you think about religious fanaticism from a European perspective, the Crusades is kind of the hallmark of that is where we you have state power and religion marrying together to create a force that then tries to conquer other parts of the world. Where does that idea come from? Where the does the driving force for the Crusades begin?

I think there’s a couple of things going on during the Crusades. Uh maybe more than a couple of things. One of them is the unfortunately um the the Vikings have become Christian and Europe is trying to figure out a way to integrate them in and it’s not going well.

Right. Cuz these are guys these guys are fighters. They’re they’re fighters. They’re fighters and they’re merchants and they’re and they’re fishermen and they’re dairy farmers and they’re trying to figure out how to integrate them and they won’t and they don’t want to live in a cold environment anymore. The problem is there’s still all this energy from their pagan raiding days and Europe is trying to figure out a way to dispense with some of that.

And one way to do that is to simply get a bunch of people to go to on the crusades. They don’t all have to be Normans. They don’t all have to be Vikings, but you you want some obviously, but it’s just to it’s like a pressure valve. You need to release it because there’s too many nobles. There’s too many knights. There’s too many warriors. So that’s one of the tensions going on. Another one is there was sort of a geographical envy.

QUESTIONS:

1. Have historians explored how states have adopted public policy to deal with an influx of immigration (such as the Vikings)?

2. Are there other examples of wars or quests been undertaken to provide an outlet for excess men of fighting age?

3. In what other contexts has the “release value” concept been used?

If you want a masterclass1 in how to defend oneself against manipulate questioning, watch this psychologist respond to a manipulative plaintiff’s manipulative lawyer who tries to allege wrongdoing based upon the following actions:

The psychologist interviewed with the accused client over a meal and a drink at his house.

• I think the lawyer is implying that it was wrong to accept the meal from the potential client she was interviewing with

The psychologist had her husband pick up muffins to share with people involved in the case, including Amber Heard, the lawyer’s client.

• I think the lawyer is trying to get the psychologist disqualified for violating confidentiality by letting her husband know she would be testifying in the Amber Heard/Johnny Depp case because she brings muffins when working with high-profile cases.

QUESTIONS:

1. Do you suspect that the manipulative line of question was requested by Amber Heard, who has Borderline personality disorder?

2. Why do you think the lawyer was asking this line of questioning? Was she trying to disqualify the psychologist as an expert witness?

3. What techniques did the lawyer use? Near the end, she appeared to be attempting to trick the psychologist into implicitly agreeing to certain premises by answering the question that followed them.

FULL VIDEOS:

FOOTNOTES:

A dog’s loyalty is legendary, but it isn’t infinite. While dogs don’t “decide” to pack a bag and leave the way a person might, the bond between a dog and its owner can break down completely under the wrong conditions.

Here is what typically causes a dog to detach, run away, or end up separated from a bad owner:

1. Chronic Fear and Self-Preservation

Dogs are wired for survival. Even the most devoted dog has a baseline limit when it comes to feeling threatened:

• The “Fight or Flight” Switch: If an environment involves constant physical abuse, extreme noise, or unpredictable aggression, a dog’s natural instinct to survive will eventually override its instinct to stay.

• Bolting Behavior: Given an open gate, a loose leash, or a broken fence, a dog living in constant fear will often run—not necessarily to somewhere, but away from the threat.

2. Complete Neglect of Basic Needs

A dog’s bond with a human relies heavily on the human being a provider. When basic needs are neglected, the relationship fundamentally changes:

• Severe Hunger or Thirst: A starving or dehydrated animal will roam to find food and water.

• Lack of Shelter: Extreme cold or heat forces a dog to seek refuge elsewhere.

• Deprivation of Connection: Dogs are pack animals. When isolated completely (e.g., chained in a backyard with zero human interaction), they don’t develop a bond to break in the first place—they simply wait for an opportunity to seek stimulation or comfort elsewhere.

3. Intervention by Others (The Most Common Path)

Because dogs are domesticated and often physically confined, “leaving” a bad situation usually requires outside help:

• Rescue or Animal Control: Neighbors or passersby notice signs of severe neglect or abuse and report it, leading to legal removal.

• A New Caretaker: A dog that strays onto someone else’s property and receives kindness, food, and warmth will often choose to attach itself to the new provider rather than return to a place of fear.

4. Emotional Shut-Down (”Learned Helplessness”)

Sometimes, a dog can’t leave. In cases of prolonged mistreatment where escape isn’t possible, a dog may experience what behaviorists call learned helplessness.

• The dog stops trying to run, hide, or protect itself.

• It becomes completely passive and emotionally withdrawn.

• While the dog remains physically present, the bond of loyalty has been replaced by quiet surrender.

The Bottom Line: A dog doesn’t leave because it stops loving an owner in a human sense; it leaves when its environment becomes incompatible with survival, safety, or emotional well-being. Loyalty is built on trust, and once trust is entirely replaced by fear or neglect, the bond breaks.

QUESTIONS:

1. Do Republicans think about the limits of their loyalty to the Republican Party and Trump?

2. Democrats do not have the same reputation for loyalty. What are the limits of Democratic loyalty, or is their tie a “lesser evil” trap?

3. Would Republicans be so loyal to the party if the alternative was not a “lesser of two evils”?

4. Narcissistic abuses use technics of randomized reinforcement. Do Tump and political parties us patterns of reinforcement to inspire hope, only to disappoint or betray?

VIDEOS: