Reuters/Markets headline: Treasuries, U.S. dollar sell off as Trump trade war drives recession fears
In Succession (2018-23) Logan, Kendall, Roman, Shiv & Conner constantly bounce stupid half-baked ideas back-and-forth, always choosing in the end to lean politically to the right towards fascism– and that’s how it ends up.
Two years later, we have in real life with the Trump administration the result of what was depicted in that HBO political drama series. In Succession, the 1%, and especially the 0.01% are clueless & impotent, back-filling their limitations with hysterics & rage. The power of money buys them everything, yet they still aren’t satisfied.
The most likable characters in Succession are the human throw-aways including: Tabitha, Jess, & (my favorite) Karolina. These minor characters are serious people who are intelligent & very good at what they do, but get no respect or love from those they dutifully serve. Without such talent, this parasite class would immediately shrivel up & die. These fictionalized conflicts wonderfully portrayed in Succession are actually real and are happening every day in all the institutions of bourgeois power.
Many of monied class don’t understand where money comes from at all, they simply perceive money as a divine right to be held by themselves. Inform them that money is a congealed expression of the value of human labor power, and the 1% gets hysterical and starts screaming for a fascist strongman.
It’s all very convenient for the puppet-masters of international finance & commerce. Their authority is never to be questioned, along with the 2-party political set-up and elite-biased court system. International law is ignored & attacked by US imperialism to further its predatory ambitions of world conquest and that’s how it is we are told. We are always fighting the evil Russians because of 1917, and we must submit because we are mere mortals compared to our demi-god leaders who are infallible.
The Frankfurt School of post-modernism provides the ideological justification for much of this propaganda, based on pre-fascist philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche in their writings on the “overman-superman”, etc, expressing an admiration for a strongman leader. German soldiers received copies of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra as gifts during World War I, as a conscious attempt by the far right to divert the working masses from the Marxism of Lenin & Trotsky. The social Darwinism of ‘survival of the fittest’, Malthusianism depopulation, and the rest of this epoch’s pseudo-science are simply genocide-enabling bourgeois rationalizations.
Spinoza & Hegel are the philosophical & ideological influencers of Karl Marx. There is no ‘overman’ or ‘fuhrer principle’ with socialism, as that Nietzsche garbage belongs in the dustbin of history. What we currently have in the White House is a cabal of Nazis who think they can enslave the world and are determined to do so. The popular resistance they face is massive and unconquerable, yet the fascists insist on this fight to the death. The Democrats are aware and doing everything they can in their service of fascism to disarm & misdirect the working population.
The international youth & working class must organize itself independently from existing capitalist political forces, which are all lined-up for battle against the working masses. These hostile camps include the DSA & Greens, the union bureaucracies, and NGO’s/non-profits with their million ties to big business & the military-police state.
The police are of no help to the working masses, in fact they are brought in by criminal corporate & government officials to drive worker leaders out of the factories while arresting anti-genocide student protesters exercising their right to free speech on campus. I can’t remember the last time I heard of a real cop acting heroically, I suppose it happens, but I mostly read about police shooting & arresting people without cause and then being protected by the courts. I wonder why police abuse & terror and legal system corruption is never seriously discussed in the media? A lot of other people do to.
Deep in the Oval Office everyday, fascists are meeting and plotting their next attack on the population. Elon Musk & Stephen Miller appear to have the most influence over Trump at this point, which means anti-immigrant scapegoating, tariff wars & crypto. All these reactionary policies are implemented in a series of chaotic fits, then modified by unexplained zig-zags and walk-backs intended to placate political resistance until the death squads can take over. It’s remarkable to note that Biden-Harris had over a year to question Trump on all this during their election campaigns, but never seriously did so. Now the Democrats are acting surprised by Trump. For the rest of us, it’s like being forced to watch a hideously bad TV show every day.
A final word on acting: I’ve now seen Succession twice all the way through. It’s a beautifully done series on some really ugly issues and probably the best streaming content since House of Cards (2013-17). You certainly have to be in a certain mood to watch & appreciate it. Succession perfectly cast three amazing actors for extremely difficult roles in bringing humanity & likability to deeply-flawed characters in Jeremy Strong, Kieran Culkin & Sarah Snook. Succession viewers takes turns hating Kendall, Roman & Shiv, while fitting in touching human drama involving the human capital they are wasting & abusing. The Hollywood trap is to romanticize these characters into real life, instead of learning the political lessons, and thus absolving the ruling class from mass criminality.
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