Highlights 8: The Knowledge Crisis, Trans Edition; Right-Wing Info Power; Trump Fans' Tony Soprano Syndrome; Harassment as Governance; CEO Pay is Too Damn Low!; The Green Transition Depends on China; China Weans Itself from US Tech; It's the Monopoly Power Stupid; When Student Housing is a Profit Center

Santa Barbara, CA on December 10, 2016

THE KNOWLEDGE CRISIS I WAS TALKING ABOUT: TRANS EDITION

 

‘“I'm one of the only people that watched that MSNBC town hall, which is horrible. But there was one of the sit down interviews [Harris] did in sort of like the final quarter of the campaign, where she gave that infamous answer [about medical care for trans people],  I will follow the law on this, which is like, it just seems like [the Democratic] strategy for like the past year is like, just don't move, don't do anything, just bury your head in the sand until you can ascertain public opinion one way or the other, and just go with that. . . . ."’

 

‘"I've had a lot of conversations with staffers, with pollsters, et cetera, on this particular topic, of . . .  should Democrats respond to anti-trans rhetoric? And there's two issues. The first one is you're playing whack-a-mole with conspiracy theories.

 

‘Nine times out of 10, any argument that comes out about trans people is misconstruing science  “or the way the world just works, basic numbers, right? And so you're arguing with people who are the statistic equivalent of climate denialists, right? So like rebutting that is a bit of a challenge, but that being said, right, Democrats have a message on climate.

 

‘It's follow the science. What does the science tell us? The science is X.

 

‘The issue [with trans rights] is that Democrats don't really have a message to coalesce around. . . .’

 

‘The first bathroom ban was in North Carolina almost a decade ago, and people were boycotting.

 

‘It was a huge deal. Governor lost his re-election, Republican governor, right? Democrats never crafted a message.

 

‘It's been 10 years . . .  [and] they don't know how to talk about it. And where that becomes a problem is, you know, polls, the trans people did not decide this election, but polls do show that the advertising got average Americans to start associating a focus on trans people and other marginalized people as anathema to their economic concerns, as not focusing on their economic concerns. That's where the ad did work.

 

‘It didn't win the election, but it did get people to associate helping trans people with their own negative economic situation, which is bad, I think, generally for acceptance. If you can do that to anyone, you can pick apart Democratic Coalition forever. The issue is that people on the Hill, people in DC, don't see it that way.’

 

SOURCE: Jael Holzman, Chapo Trap House

 

THE FULL-TIME NON-STOP RIGHT-WING INFORMATION ECOSYSTEM AND ITS POWERS

 

 

 

SOURCE: @mattsheffield via The Editorial Board

 

TRUMP FANS ARE SUFFERING FROM TONY SOPRANO SYNDROME

 

'As Trump reshapes the nation in his image, some of his supporters seem inclined to turn cautionary tales on their head, empathizing with villains or antiheroes to such a degree that they miss the point of these stories entirely, even when the writers make the message as clear as possible. We might call this problem Tony Soprano Syndrome, after the patron saint of flawed antihero protagonists. One undecided voter told a New York Times focus group earlier this year that Trump is “the antihero, the Soprano, the ‘Breaking Bad,’ the guy who does bad things, who is a bad guy but does them on behalf of the people he represents.”

 

'Almost every single thing here is wrong, but it’s wrong in a way that illustrates the illiteracy that I am talking about. The Sopranos is by any measure one of the greatest television series of all time, focusing on the daily travails of a mob boss who tries to balance his mental health with keeping his marriage together and raising his children. But Tony is a murderer whose greed and ambition harm the people he claims to love. He is not a moral exemplar, nor is he intended to be; his selfishness helps no one else and is destructive to all around him. The same is true of Walter White, the protagonist of Breaking Bad, who at one point in the show literally looks at the camera and says of his crimes, “I did it for me.”

'Tony and Walter are also aspirational figures for a certain type of man experiencing a certain type of midlife crisis because, despite their body aging and their looks fading, they can still shape the world around them with a seemingly infinite capacity to endure or inflict violence. They want to tell themselves they’re protecting something—home and hearth perhaps—but actually want to validate themselves with a justification for hurting someone else, even if they have to invent one.

 

'Walter represents the emotional state of a particular type of viewer—someone who wants to enjoy his ability to make himself feel good through violence and suffering, and doesn’t want his good time spoiled by a mouthy woman reminding him that the things he is doing are actually bad. This type of reactionary masculinity is itself emblematic of the Trump era, as if conservatives listened to feminist critiques of “toxic masculinity” and decided to shear all virtue from their conception of traditional manhood and retain only those parts that involve dominance and exploitation of others.'

 

SOURCE: Adam Serwer, Portside via The Atlantic

 

THE GOVERNING MODEL WILL BE FULL-TIME HARASSMENT 

 

‘On Nov. 19, two weeks after Election Day, Elon Musk demonstrated perhaps the most brutal, if not sadistic, technique for making life in the federal civil service intolerable.’

 

‘A Wall Street Journal headline from Nov. 22 captured the situation well: “Musk Unleashes Online Army on Federal Workers.”’

 

‘What happened? Musk had reposted a tweet declaring, “I don’t think the U.S. Taxpayer should pay for the employment of a ‘Director of Climate Diversification’ at the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation.” Musk added a comment, echoing the language of the president-elect: “So many fake jobs.”’

 

‘Musk’s tweet, which was viewed by 33.2 million people, described Ashley Thomas, a 37-year-old who, The Journal reported, holds “engineering, business and water science degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Oxford” and works as the “little-known director of climate diversification” at the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, which advises “private companies to fund ways to improve living standards in developing countries.” A Finance Corporation official told The Journal that Thomas’s work “is highly technical and is focused on identifying innovations that serve U.S. strategic interests, including bolstering agriculture and infrastructure against extreme weather events.”

As evidence mounted that Thomas’s job was under threat, she sought to pull herself out of the spotlight, taking down all of her social media accounts.’

 

‘The social media excoriation of public sector employees is just one way that President-elect Donald Trump and his MAGA loyalists are using to destroy what they see as strongholds of the left in government and academia.’

 

SOURCE: Thomas Edsall, New York Times

 

THE CEO PAY IS TOO DAMN LOW!

‘“We don’t mind paying our footballers, top-rate footballers, extraordinary amounts of money,” Spencer, a former Treasurer of the UK Conservative party, told the Financial Times. “Somehow that’s considered perfectly acceptable. But if the CEO of BP or HSBC earns £20mn a year, materially less than their peer group in America, everyone jumps up and down saying this is an outrage.” Spencer said pay was one of the reasons why the UK was lagging behind other markets such as the US. . . .’

‘The median FTSE 100 chief executive pay amounted to £4.1mn last year, while bosses of S&P 500 companies in the US were paid a median of $16mn. AstraZeneca’s Pascal Soriot, who stands to earn as much as £18.7mn this financial year, is the best paid CEO on the FTSE 100. However, 36 per cent of shareholders voted against his pay award. Meanwhile, the average annual salary of Premier League football players is about £2.1mn, according to FT research. The best-paid — including Manchester City’s Kevin De Bruyne and Erling Haaland — are estimated by football data agency Capology to earn about £20mn a year in on-field salary. This does not take into account their ability to earn more through lucrative sponsorship deals. . . .’

 

‘“The US celebrates the fact that great chief executives earn large amounts of money. They want their chief executives to be paid like football stars,” said Spencer.’

 

SOURCE: Emma Dunkley, Financial Times

 

THE GREEN TRANSITION WILL NOT BE LED BY THE UNITED STATES OR EUROPE

 

‘The inescapable conclusion of the past 35 years is that it is foolish to treat the US as a reliable partner in global climate policy.

 

‘During Biden’s honeymoon, the hope was that the US and Europe would act together. In Europe, outright climate scepticism is rare and the EU has built an impressive suite of subsidies and carbon pricing. The end of coal-fired power generation in the UK this year was historic. But in Europe too the cost of living crisis is swinging the political mood against tough climate action. The looming crisis in the European car industry, brought on by Chinese success in EVs, exposes the hypocrisy of a continent that promised a Green Deal while clinging to diesel. 

 

‘To varying degrees, both Europe and the US have failed to grasp the decarbonisation challenge identified by their own scientists decades ago. Insofar as there is to be a global climate leader it can now only be China, which is responsible for more than 30 per cent of global emissions and has mastered the green energy supply chain. Given mounting tension with the US, Beijing has every incentive to minimise oil imports. The key question is whether the Chinese Communist party can muster the political will to override its fossil fuel interests. If it can, it will not single-handedly solve the climate crisis but it will assert a claim to leadership that the west will find hard to answer.’

 

SOURCE: Adam Tooze, Financial Times

 

AS U.S. THINKS TECH IS ITS FINANCIAL FUTURE, CHINA WEANS ITSELF FROM U.S. TECH

 

‘China has finally said aloud what was once only discussed behind closed doors: the country must rid itself of US chips.

 

‘Four government-backed industry associations, representing the bulk of China’s semiconductor demand, issued co-ordinated statements this week urging member companies to rethink purchases of American silicon that three of them deemed as “no longer safe or reliable”.

 

‘“Be cautious when purchasing US chips,” the four associations said, urging their members to look for Chinese or other foreign suppliers instead.

 

‘The directives came amid the latest tit-for-tat salvo between Beijing and Washington over the foundational technology, an exchange that has laid bare their intensifying competition and added momentum to the development of increasingly separate international supply chains.

 

‘In an unusually swift response on Tuesday, Beijing banned the shipment of key minerals and metals to the US, just hours after American officials unveiled new export controls designed to “degrade” China’s ability to make the most advanced chips.

 

‘The latest US controls include tougher restrictions on shipping semiconductor manufacturing tools to China and a ban on exports of advanced memory chips needed in artificial intelligence hardware.

 

‘In response, China prohibited the export to the US of gallium, germanium, antimony and superhard materials, and imposed stricter controls on graphite.

 

‘Its action signalled a new willingness on Beijing’s part to confront directly US efforts to cut the country off from advanced technology. In talks with President Joe Biden last month, Chinese leader Xi Jinping linked Washington’s tech controls to stymying China’s right to development, calling it a red line for the first time.’

 

SOURCE: Ryan McMorrow and Eleanor Olcott,  Financial Times

 

IT’S THE MONOPOLY POWER, STUPID

 

‘For decades, local grocery stores thrived. Then in the 1980s, the government stopped enforcing a key antitrust law. Rapid consolidation followed, giving rise to food deserts & a price spike. Our new graph shows the dramatic impact of this policy shift.’

 

SOURCE: Stacy Mitchell, Twitter

 

WHEN STUDENT HOUSING BECOMES A PROFIT CENTER FOR UNIVERSITIES

 

‘The numbers in this report are shocking. The average purpose-built student room in London now costs more than the maximum maintenance loan, leaving students with a shortfall even before they’ve bought any food, paid for their travel or covered other living costs. The current London Plan is not helping by making the provision of more new beds unviable.’

 

 

SOURCE: Sarah Jones and Martin Rushall, Priced Out? The Accommodation Costs Survey 2024