What the Hell is Going On: An Explainer in these Strange Times

A jumping off point for those looking to understand how we got here, where we're going, and what we can do

Dispatches From A Collapsing State is an independent venture focused on educating and organizing in resistance of rising authoritarianism. It depends on your support. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber as capitalist media domination means actual critiques of capitalism and the status quo are left to fend for themselves.

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Though I left academia a couple of years ago to write and organize full-time, I’m still a teacher at heart and always will be. In the classroom I learned that effective education is dependent on scaffolding information, meaning you need to build on ideas and expand them, but also take moments to make sure everyone is on the same page. So, with an influx of new readers who are looking for answers and explanations, considering the complicated nature of our present situation, and hoping that maybe you might want to get friends, family members, coworkers, and neighbors up to speed, this is going to hopefully serve as a primer and explainer so that we can meet the moment and begin to create something better.

At the end of this article I will include a host of resources that I have created. The Audio From A Collapsing State podcast is presently going step-by-step in how to prepare one’s self both for the incoming Trump Administration, but, more importantly, in starting to get involved in organizing, coalition and community building, and creating a movement that can fight back and avoid the worst consequences of what I am about to describe.

I hope you find this helpful as you wrap your mind around all of this and will share with like-minded people so that they can get ready and join the fight.

Okay, So, What the Hell is Going On?

All right. The United States of America is currently experiencing what a lot of other countries have experienced over the last few decades. A lot of really wealthy individuals and corporations are co-opting our government through the usage of puppet politicians and political parties in order to line their pockets and expand their power. Using strategies that have worked in those other countries, often with the help of American institutions like the CIA and the military, they are more or less merging with the government so that it can be turned into a weapon to carry out their agendas, which includes redistributing wealth from over 90% of the population to themselves, using bodies like law enforcement and the military as protection arms, slashing programs and spending that helps people in order to lower the standard of living and produce cheap labor, and claiming our natural and created resources for their own private usage.

You Didn’t Mention Donald Trump?

So, for the purposes of this explainer, we’re occasionally going to mention individuals like “Donald Trump” and entities like “the Republican Party” and “the Democratic Party,” but to fully understand our situation it’s necessary to start looking past conventional narratives that obscure the larger picture. What has been communicated to us regularly is what’s called a “pseudo-environment.” If you want to learn more, look up Walter Lippmann. In some ways, it might help to think about American politics like professional wrestling in which you watch two people fight in a ring to settle a fictional storyline rivalry, but what’s actually occurring is that you’re paying a group of people behind the curtain who orchestrated the event.

Trump is an avatar, a useful idiot. We’ll talk about his role and what the Make America Great Movement is and how it works, as well as what the Republican and Democratic parties represent, but out of necessity we have to look behind the foreground we are given and communicated. This is tricky business sometimes because we’ve spent most of our lives only learning about the pseudo-environment versus the actual material conditions.

Who are These “Wealthy Individuals” Then?

The most high-profile one is Elon Musk, who can’t help but make himself the center of attention. But Musk is representative of an oligarchical class that is deadset on overtaking the government and refashioning it as described above. It helps to think of tech leaders and finance barons as the latest generation of wealthy people carrying on in the tradition of 20th century robber barons. These were people who helped build the industrial economy and gained historic wealth constructing railroads, building cities, selling steel and oil. Those robber barons amassed so much wealth that they bought politicians and governments and then used them to rig the economy in their favor. When that stuff melted down in the Great Depression, they turned to Fascists and Nazis to try and eliminate liberal democracy and capture everything. They failed for a variety of reasons.

Musk and this new generation of robber barons got their wealth constructing the digital economy. It gets a little weird talking about it because it’s “immaterial,” but it was just another industrialization period. Following the same pattern, they co-opted politicians and government and rigged the economy to their favor. While this happened, the government began relying on them for operations, including data services and the growing surveillance and military-industrial state, which meant more wealth and more power for them. All the while, these tech industrialists began to disdain democracy, just as their predecessors, and started to align with the Right and authoritarian ideologies.

So, It’s a Tech Problem?

Kind of, but not totally. The time to rein tech oligarchs in took place during the Obama years, but the Democratic Party threw in their lot with them and declined to construct guardrails. That’s created the Musk Problem, but that’s hardly the sum total of it. The tech oligarchs, however, wield unbelievable wealth and power, as well as unparalleled control over corporatized communications, including social media, newspapers, and telecommunications. And, this new environment, which has already been used for aggressive surveillance post-9/11, is now in a perfect position to be turned against us as a tool in crushing resistance to the oligarchical agenda.

A lot of what we’re suffering through is also the result of an organized effort by a bunch of wealthy people (see: the Koch Brothers) who banded together in the 1970’s (lookup the Powell Memo) to undermine federal power. They have systematically destroyed education and trust in science or government. To do so, they have used their own wealth to create a universe of interconnected think-tanks and institutes to manufacture conspiracy theories and culture war divides they can exploit, which has furthered the Neoliberal agenda, broken down guardrails, and generally worsened the country, which they have used to their advantage in a repeating cycle.

What’s Neoliberalism?

Okay. Bear with me here because this is important.

After the Depression, there was the New Deal, which saved us from oligarchical control and fascism. It was a political program, but also a philosophy which communicated the government should help its citizens and help regulate capitalism to keep it from getting out of control. This consensus lasted until the 1970’s, when stagflation, coupled with the assault by the wealth class described above, broke that mindset.

What took its place is called Neoliberalism. This was a mindset cooked up while capitalism was in crisis during the Depression and as Fascism, Nazism, and Communism seemed like ideologies that would take over the world. Neoliberals saw people as dangerous and likely to become radical and extreme. They believed democracy was relatedly dangerous, especially when considering how it could undermine economic projects. The sole organizing principle of the world, they argued, should be the pursuit of wealth by the wealthy. To assist this, they sought to undermine democratic energies, create a world in which people “voted with their dollars,” governments should stop regulating capitalism, and the “free market” should be the main driver of everything.

They won. The administrations of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher opened the doors and soon liberals within opposing bodies, including the Democratic Party, got on board as well, creating a new consensus. This changed politics and culture. The parties started working on joint projects that would redistribute tens of trillions from the working and middle classes to the wealthy, deregulating business, privatizing government affairs, and creating an environment where the wealthy got more powerful and even more wealthy. Culturally, greed, consumption, and advancement were prioritized, leading to an increasing feeling of isolation as people felt like they couldn’t trust one another and communities and shared goals were wastes of time and energy.

What Does Neoliberalism Have to Do with Authoritarianism?

The original lie of Neoliberalism was the idea of sustained growth and improving standards of living. The construction of globalism meant a lot of “Second” and “Third” World people would be necessarily exploited. They were forced into backbreaking labor, their resources stolen to fuel the global capitalist machine. They didn’t do this willingly. America and other “First World” countries relied on dictators and fascists to crackdown on opposition, break the back of leftists and labor unions, and create a surveillance state in which personal freedoms were erased.

You’ll notice, that’s what’s happening with us now.

We were sold a fantasy that America was going to benefit from all of this and so we could look away. In the 1990’s, when America was still prospering from the implementation, it felt like maybe it was worth it. More Americans would join the middle-class or get wealthy. All the while, Neoliberalism allowed more and more wealth to be transferred, more systems to be rigged, and, over time, the wealth class got more and more control. Eventually the bottom would fall out in 2008 with the Financial Crash and the consequences of the War on Terror, which was a front for expanding Neoliberal control, and suddenly the worm turned.

Neoliberalism has two modes. The Rise, which provides cheap goods for most and a period of financial ascendancy for some, and The Fall, which relies on authoritarianism to implement discipline. We lived through The Rise and we’re living through The Fall.

What’s that Mean For Me?

Well, if you grew up poor like me, you’ve probably felt its influence your entire life. Maybe, like my family, you or your folks worked in factory or service jobs. Those jobs either left the country (where cheap labor was made available) or became increasingly more brutal and unrewarding. Medical care got worse and more expensive. Advancement through higher education became a premium, often making it unaffordable or saddling you with ludicrous debt. You were willing to take jobs that maybe paid less or treated you poorly because the alternative was financial oblivion. It probably felt like the walls were always closing in. Because they were. The people around you are becoming more radical, taken in by demagogues like Donald Trump, and spouting some ludicrous, disturbing bullshit. You might be cobbling together a living doing two or three separate jobs and don’t have much hope for retirement. You probably feel like you’re losing your mind.

If you’re middle class, you probably either work in a place where things are noticeably declining and the industry is dying or you’re in tech and starting to see the same things after a boom period. People are getting fired or leaving and not getting replaced. There are less resources. You’re probably being told by managers that they’re “sorry” and wish it was different. Unregulated financial firms are gobbling up everything and. making it all shittier. Innovations like Artificial Intelligence are looming in the distance and already threatening your employment. All the while, people around you are starting to either drop out of paying attention to politics or beginning to normalize and accept Trump and authoritarianism. You’re discouraged by what’s happening and starting to wonder if you should just make yourself small and hope it doesn’t get worse. You probably feel like you’re losing your mind.

How do the Democrats and Republicans Figure Into This?

Parties are expressions of interests. That can mean entrenched interests mixed with the interests of voting groups, but presently it means carrying out the will of entrenched interests mixed with gestures of support for voting groups to bolster their tallies.

The Republican Party is primarily dedicated to the wealth class described in this explainer, which includes the billionaire donors who have systematically dismantled the federal government, large-small business owners who have substantial wealth but are not at the oligarch level (you might call them burghers), and now, dangerously, tech oligarchs looking to cement control. The donors have supplied the background support, infrastructure, strategies, and legislation, the burghers chip in with resources (and occasionally with coup attempts like January 6th), and the tech oligarchs have been making inroads toward taking over the party. To bolster their support, the GOP has created a faux-populist movement (MAGA) to capitalize on anger rightfully belonging to the donors and turned it toward their political enemies. In this way, the GOP has pulled off an authoritarian staple: representing the interests of the wealthy while capturing large swathes of the working class through anti-elite anger and insincere promises tinged with leftist rhetoric abandoned by the liberal class.

The Democratic Party is a bit of a mess, obviously. Since the 1980’s they have shifted from their traditional base (labor, people of color, women, immigrants) to corporate interests, suburban voters, and the professional managerial class. The latter is made up of college-educated workers in the “new economy,” offering management of resources, logistics, production, and creativity. This is important to note as the divide between those who can afford college and those who can’t grows by the year. Because of this alignment, the Democrats have become more and more conservative, promising to protect the status quo and shepherd the economy as it is constructed, while only occasionally offering small changes through “means testing.” The party pays lip service to its past base of labor, people of color, women, immigrants, and LGBTQ+ Americans in the form of carefully chosen rhetoric that is tested as to not offend corporate interests, suburban voters, the professional managerial class, and the prized “moderate voter,” but the laws passed and agendas pursued rarely prioritize them.

In this present alignment, the GOP serves as an accelerant for authoritarianism, sewing disillusionment and anger with the status quo and liberal democracy as a whole, wielding think-tank designed conspiracy theories and culture war triggers to activate inherent prejudices like racism, sexism, homo/transphobia, ableism, and xenophobia to create in and out groups which determine who “deserves” help and who deserves punishment. The Democrats, as the conservative party, continue to protect the status quo, assuring voters it is good and stable, while continuing to move to the Right as the GOP gains more and more purchase.

It helps to think in terms of Good Cop / Bad Cop as it centers the parties on the same team, namely the interests of capitalism and Neoliberalism. The GOP is all rage and Id, demanding to destroy everything while secretly ushering in the authoritarian phase of Neoliberalism while the Democrats express empathy and concern but ultimately aren’t interested in reform on a large scale.

I Thought Democrats were Left? What About Wokeness and Cancel Culture?

There is no “Left.” Since World War II the U.S. and its allies have hunted down leftists, literally killed them, jailed them, ran them out of places of power, surveilled them, undermined them, and painted them as radical extremists until what remained was a Center/Right Wing duopoly. There are occasionally left-leaning politicians who get elected (see: Bernie Sanders), but their influence is mitigated, isolated, and the Left Wing perspective almost never gets communicated in public debate. The only time Leftist type legislation gets past is because capitalism requires a transfusion of wealth in order to keep its unhinged system from crashing.

Let’s clear up some misconceptions, because they are legion.

“Woke” is a term co-opted from Black culture that means being aware of what’s actually going on, in this case the white supremacist, patriarchal, and classist nature of the United States. This isn’t a political alignment. It isn’t Left or Right. It’s an actual understanding of how this country has worked and how it currently works. Everything else is a choice predicated on wanting to live in a fantasyland and ignoring how you and everyone you know has been affected by an intentionally unfair and rigged system.

“Cancel Culture” was a reaction to Trump’s victory in 2016 and was a consumer movement. As the walls of the Neoliberal economy closed in, many people were left to decide who could participate in the economy and began sorting their consumer decisions through a moralistic lens. In other words, there was only so much pie and the choice was made to decide who got part of the pie based on their behaviors. This wasn’t political. It was a consumer choice, which Neoliberalism has rendered as one of the only means of actually asserting power.

What people think of as “the Left” now is a fabrication of corporate and popular culture. Actual leftism is interested in solving the problem of intentional inequality so that a select and corrupt few prosper while people suffer unnecessarily. What you have been exposed to is a marketing campaign. As anger toward Trump brewed in 2016 and beyond, corporations with no actual political ideology beyond growing their own profit recognized an opportunity to cash in on that anger while also protecting themselves from potential boycotts. This process had begun earlier as institutions like universities and corporations started including “diversity statements” and “statements of principles” in their bylaws and PR announcements as a way of fending off criticism. Over the past 8 years we’ve now seen products having nothing to do with “wokeness” or “diversity” given these things as a marketing appeal. For an example of how this works, think of Pepsi, a carbonated sugar drink that was marketed as representing “a new generation.” Absolute hogwash, but effective.

In this way, movies, television shows, drinks, products, entire corporations, were marketed to people as representing a political ideology they wished was being served. This is the basis of capitalist marketing. Infusing meaningless products with the energy of unfulfilled wants and needs. We were living in an America where Trump, a fascist demagogue was president, but we could buy the experience of living in a country where that wasn’t so.

Disturbingly, the basis of a lot of our mass politics now is a backlash to this marketing campaign. The Right, which is now bolstered by young, angry, white men, is an actual fascist movement that uses their anger at products like the Marvel Universe diversifying their movies and superheroes (moving the focus from white male heroes to women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ representations) to then take control of the larger system.

In other words, there’s what’s actually going on, which few remain aware of, namely power and control over resources, and the simulation of politics, which is what we’re fed on a daily basis.

What Happened in the 2024 Election Then?

Trump and the GOP capitalized off anger with the status quo, activated dissatisfaction through inherent prejudices, took advantage of the country having moved to the Right politically, and won.

The Kamala Harris Campaign did what any modern Democratic campaign would do and continued the process of moving the party to the Right. It’s hard for some to understand, but Harris not only courted “moderate Republicans,” an oxymoron, but essentially ran a campaign that more closely resembled the George W. Bush Neoconservative movement of the early 2000’s than the “leftist” campaign it was decried as. As Trump took over the GOP, beginning in 2016, castoff Republicans began joining the Democratic Party and helped moved it to the Right inch by inch, leaving us, once again, with a shifted paradigm in which we get to choose between Right and Center Right representation. And in times of great anger and danger, the Right tends to win those contests, especially when the Center Right alternative bases their campaign on their terms, namely border security and strengthening law enforcement and the military.

It’s a sad state of affairs, especially when you consider rank and file Democrats are now blaming “wokeness” and gay/trans people for the loss and actively seeking to drag the party even further to the Right.

What Does It Mean that the “Country is Moving to the Right?”

Remember how I talked about how the GOP is using an absence of leftist representation by Democrats to its advantage? In authoritarian cycle the Right notices this vacuum and quickly sweeps in to take advantage by highlighting cultural schisms (such as the gulf between college educated people and those who couldn’t afford it) and then deflects populist anger toward elites toward political enemies. There’s a reason, after all, the Nazis were the National Socialist Party. There’s a lot of anger and energy to use, and principles don’t figure into it.

Absent representation by the Democrats, the GOP has managed to capture these energies and use them for Right Wing projects. And, in this cycle, moderate liberals, most interested in protecting themselves and their own privilege, are predictably aceding ground to the Right, accepting their framing of topics like immigration, gay and trans rights, and actively normalizing Trump and authoritarianism. This has made the political discussion increasingly more right in nature and giving ground to the authoritarians. You’ve already seen liberal media doing this, including stories equating “wokeness” with antidemocratic ideas and asking if “the Left” has gotten out of control. Already you’re seeing liberal pundits, personalities, and politicians getting in line with Trump for fear of reprisal and, also, an understanding that if they worm their way into the “in” group by embracing the “out” group framing, they could stand to benefit.

This is the situation Neoliberalism has taken advantage of for decades as the Democratic Party has grown more conservative. It’s happened over and over, and now it’s speeding up. Expect news and culture and the political environment to shift and cultivate more and more support for Trump and his oligarchical controllers.

Okay. Fine. What am I Supposed to Do About It?

The construction of Neoliberalism and the modern administrative state was intentionally done with the purpose of making you feel powerless and alone. You’re supposed to gaze upon this “grand design” and feel very small. In the face of that, you’re meant to just keep consuming, using your career and your purchases as the sole means of exercising any measure of control.

The Democratic Party will not suddenly “wake up” and “come to its senses” anymore than the Republican Party will. That’s not how any of this works. We’ve been fed a line of bullshit that change and progress came from the parties, when in fact parties, throughout U.S. history, have hindered change and served the wealth class until regular people mobilized and forced them to advocate on their behalf. This has been the case since the Federalist monopoly over power was broken in the 19th century and it was the case with the Progressive Movement and then the Civil Rights, Feminist, and Gay Rights Movements of the 20th century.

The incoming Trump Administration is going to be a disaster for you. As laid out, the intention is to lower your standard of living, further exploit labor, increase precarity, and introduce more overt and aggressive authoritarian measures in order to expand control. As I’ve discussed in Audio From A Collapsing State, the time period before he takes office should be spent getting your affairs in order and preparing for a storm. But, if we are to make a better future, it is going to take an actual democratic movement that we will create.

To understand how to defeat Neoliberalism we must first see what it did as a matter of strategy. The Neoliberal agenda requires authoritarian control that breaks up labor unions, suppresses dissent, and isolates citizens from one another until they simply give up and go along. Attacks on organized labor has left millions upon millions of Americans vulnerable in their jobs, creating a situation where nearly everyone is terrified that one wrong move will result in unemployment. We have watched brutality employed against protesters increase over the last few years and have seen advances in surveillance and technology that amplifies the power of state violence. And, I doubt you need to tell me that we are a historically and tragically lonely country where civic engagement is flatlining. We have been told, for far too long, that the “experts” have politics and administration under control and we shouldn’t worry about it and focus on consuming and advancing in our careers. This has to change.

The first step is to recognize we have been lied to. Manipulated. This isn’t just Trump. It’s a corporate news media that features the wrestling match but rarely gets into solutions or the core problem of Neoliberal capitalism. Likely, you understand this already. There’s a reason a record number of people distrust our media. They deserve it. But you might have also been taken advantage of by hope peddlers on social media and the internet who have lied to you and told you the Democratic Party and any number of institutional heroes (see: Mueller, Robert) would rein in Trump. The energy and resources you could have used to create something real were stolen and diverted. And, I should mention, take note of the fact that your education likely didn’t touch on much of this information and didn’t teach you how to recognize authoritarianism or organize against it.

We’re learning as we go. We have to disabuse ourselves of these fantasies that keep us complacent and isolated. We need to stand up in our workplaces, find solidarity with our colleagues, and start taking stands that make us, and the wealth class, uncomfortable. We need to pressure the Democratic Party to realign and be prepared, if they won’t, to find other means of exerting political control. We need to recognize the role we’ve played in this larger cycle and heal ourselves of the abuse and the lies and illusions that have been placed upon us and that we, ourselves, have carried. And then, we need to cultivate coalitions in our communities and nationally that prioritize the fate of citizens, a re-invigoration of regulatory power, reform of our corrupted systems, and actual solutions to the economic conditions and looming threats like global climate change.

It isn’t easy work. Not at all. But it’s the only choice we have now beyond shutting up and hoping it’ll be okay and joining the authoritarians and selling our souls. I’m going to continue to outline steps to take in order to organize and create a movement (see the links below), but you also have to make a choice for yourself. I can only tell you that you deserve better. Better representation. Better compensation. A better life. And the people around you, including your family, your coworkers, and your neighbors deserve better. What is being implemented right now is going to be atrocious. It’s going to make your life worse and more precarious and much. more dangerous. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

And it shouldn’t be that way.

Resources

• Where We Are and Where We Must Go: An episode dedicated to reading the lay of the land after the 2024 Election and beginning the process of reckoning with what must be done.

• Beginning to Resist: Thoughts on how we, as individuals, should spend the months leading up to the second Trump presidency and preparing for the cruel austerity his oligarchical puppetmasters are going to unleash.

• The Oligarchical Order: A primer on how to give up conventional and failed political understandings in favor of seeing how capitalism directs the course of events and where it is leading and what to expect

• What It Will Take to Defeat Authoritarianism: A discussion on radical acceptance, seeing things as they are, and beginning to heal ourselves in preparation of forming coalitions, including taking an honest self-inventory and working on becoming informed, active allies.