Greed is The Plan - Greed has always been The Plan
If you want to fight back, it is best to know what they enemy really is...
Infoxication and infosaturation are two inelegant words that describe an important problem, a problem that is stated in the words themselves. Info is short for information. -xication and -saturation are stand-ins for intoxication and saturation, words that signify too much or more than one can handle. Pre-digital we called this information overload, a term that seams quaint when measuring what was considered “overload” before the internet, but the concept is the same: More information than we can reasonably process is coming at us all the time.
There are two main differences between information overload and infoxication/infosaturation. First is the time frame in which each phenomenon occur – overload pre-internet, infoxication/infosaturation in the digital age. Second, and related, the volume of the information presented to us, as well as the intensity of the deluge, is far more intense now than then.
Pre-internet, people dealt with a staggering amount of information, but the way it was created, disseminated, stored, and archived was limited by physical things like space and capacity. Today, words, sounds, and images can be reduced to a series of zeroes and ones, to digital formula. Digitally, information becomes much easier to store and distribute, so much so that today our capacity to warehouse and share information seems endless. For instance, with digital, we no longer have worry about physical space for our music collection.
By converting sound to numerical sequences, the idea of shelf space for storage of a physical sound carrier becomes an anachronism, but it’s more than that. No longer confined by physical space, our music collection in near infinite in size. Today, theoretically, all the music that we have “free” access to digitally is ours - all of it. Anyone with an internet connection and a workable listening device has available to them the whole works of Beethoven, Bach, and Mozart; pretty much everything recorded by Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, Nina Simone, the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and the Sex Pistols. Read about obscure bands like Dictatrista, Modmach, Turtles Jr, or Nar and want to hear them? Pre-digital, you waited until you or someone you knew found a record or tape by them. Today, you type the name into a search engine and there you go.
Early-internet, we were told that all this information, all this music, would lead to great things. Because our musical choices were now unlimited, there was nothing to stop us from discovering more and more different kinds of music, artists and genres that we’d never dreamed existed. And for some of us, those who were already adventurous listeners, that is true, to a point. But for those to whom this tidal wave of sound is new the experience is part kid-in-a-candy-store, bull-in-a-china-shop, and completely-buried-in-shit.
Overwhelmed, we don’t just retreat. We give up decision-making. We rely on gatekeepers and their algorithms to feed us information. At the same time, the constant flow of info, trivia, bullshit, and lies keeps increasing. Stay plugged in and there is no escape. We withdraw, hoping things slow down so we can get back to “simpler times.” We seek comfort in the familiar and seek out voices with whom we agree with. The gatekeepers – constantly monitoring us through digital tracking aps and devices – feed us more and more of what we think we want, and then cut it with total crap. We become angry, lost, and confused. We have a hard time focusing what really matters, or the core of what matters.
On Monday and Tuesday, Donald Trump issued over 100 executive orders and issued many, many pardons. We all knew this was coming, but the sheer volume of Trump was overwhelming. There was the despicable and disturbing, such as the blanket pardon of the January 6 insurrectionists, including the most violent of the ilk, people who have absolutely no plans other than to return to right-wing violence and intimidation.
And then there is the plainly meaningless and absurd, like Trump’s executive order demanding the lowering of prices. Presumably, Trump is tasking his people with, I dunno, visiting each and every CEO and business owner to make deals with them so that they can make less money? Whatever. Very soon after Trump issued his price chop order, I read an article on how egg prices are likely to keep climbing (thanks for shortages due to avian disease). The first thing I pictured was Donald Trump standing in front of a group of chickens, yelling “Apologize! Apologize for not laying more eggs!” and then threatening the birds with tariffs.
In between the outrageous and the absurd are Trump orders which are the core of his economic agenda, which is the agenda that matters most to Trump and his backers. Here’s the gist of some of these orders:
· Declares a “national energy emergency” [there is none], which “expedited, deregulated drilling” and other forms of “energy exploration,” sans solar and wind.
· Rescinds Biden’s orders banning development of new coastal drilling.
· Roll back natural gas regulations.
· Exit Paris Climate Agreements and whatever regulations came with them.
· Elimination and banning of diversity programs for government and businesses.
· Ditching programs and rules that ban discrimination, “including the Equal Employment Opportunity order of 1965 signed by former President Lyndon B. Johnson.”
· Withdraw from the World Health Organization and any agreements that the US is bound to by membership.
· Creation of the Department of Government Efficiency, which is tasked to “streamline government” by “eliminating burdensome regulations.”
Trump is gutting things like the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, which is essential to keeping airplanes from falling from the sky, which is what Boeing aircraft seem to do much of nowadays. From food quality to infant safety to workers’ rights, Trump is targeting agencies tasked to protect us from the worst of capitalism, practices that make Trump and his kind a lot of money.
On Friday, Trump started his purge of “watchmen,” inspector generals who are supposed to investigate and prevent corruption and self-dealing. Related, at least thematically, are Trump’s “plans” to “lightly regulate” (read: self-regulation) Crypto, which he is doing while capitalizing on his presidency through the creation of a “meme coin,” a lucrative but sketchy cryptocurrency, which works more like a collectable baseball card than money, something that worries the hardcore Crypto crowd.
The thread between all these actions is not White supremacy, misogyny, homo- or transphobia, or even xenophobia – though all that is present in much of what Trump is doing. The thread is greed. What Trump and his backers are after is more money. To get more money they want to weaken the system that tries to prevent them from fleecing, polluting, and killing us. Most regulations seem to “hurt” business will be attacked. Any rule that puts consumer health and safety over profit will be eliminated. Corruption will be ignored.
Remember the Trump / Musk Xwitter interview in the 2024 campaign? It is the moment the Bro Bro and the Tech Bro became tight. The thing they bonded over? Not White supremacy. Not immigration. Not misogyny or anti-trans ranting. Nope. Trump and Musk bonded over Musk ignoring labor laws and treating his employees like shit. Trump cooed about Musk ordering his workers back to work during the pandemic, an illegal order which led to a coronavirus outbreak at Tesla’s Hayward, California plant.
Cruelty is not the plan. Cruelty is a biproduct of the plan. The plan is anything that makes the rich richer, specifically the Richie Rich that is Donald Trump. The hate towards immigrants, the approval of violence against women, the virulent racism, the denigration of queer folks, and the hostility towards trans people – all that is real and it is present. It hurts people and the meeting out that hurt is deliberate. However, the hate is also there to serve the greed. It is a tool used to gain support, while dividing the most of us so that we can’t organize and fight true power.
Divide and conquer is a very old distraction; one whose American roots go back to the genocide of native people and our side of the slavery scheme. Increase bigotry, increase hate, urge us to take sides, get people to stop talking and start attacking, stoke the hate, encourage violent language, force people to take sides, and then dump a lot of useless information on people, more information – important and trivial – than anyone can successfully absorb; do all this and you have a prime state of chaotic confusion, where people are distrustful of everything and told that the best path forward is alone. (Do all this and you also have a successful social media company.)
Now look up, look at those in power, look at how all the billionaires surrounding Trump at his coronation get along. Yes, they are in competition against each other, but together they seek to rule the rest of us. They know when their interests align and how to ally themselves to see their dreams come true. No matter how much palace intrigue they engage in, they know when to end it and focus on what is important: Their greed.
Fortunately, the battle against greed is a very old one. Every religion – save the Christian distortion known as Prosperity Gospel – sanctions greed. Most political and even economic philosophies decry or at least warn against greed. Evolutionary, greed is not a successful survival strategy. Most people seem to be repelled by greed, especially episodes of unrestrained greed. And, though propaganda states otherwise, while some wealthy people are considered heroes, mostly greedy people are not. People admired Elon Musk when he was rich and eccentric. They do not jibe with the greedy, hateful, maniacal Musk.
We fight hate by fighting greed. We fight for a better world by fighting greed. We fight greed during Trump, yes, but also during Biden, Obama, Clinton, and Carter. We fight greed during the reign of the next president, or the next ruler or czar or whatever we wind up with. We fight the plan. Greed is the plan.