Follies of the Oligarchs

In today's exciting episode of canned political soap opera, Kamala Harris anointed Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to become her viceroy. The intended message is that Harris has embraced liberal populism, in much the same way she embraced it during her ill-fated 2020 presidential campaign when she co-sponsored Medicare For All legislation with the then-ascendant Bernie Sanders. 

ut if you're the cynical type, her selection of Walz is simply a PR gimmick to attract voters who might otherwise pull the lever for the fake-populist Donald Trump.

To hear the mainstream media tell it, millions of disaffected and younger voters will pivot to the Democrats, all because Walz has so folksily described the Republicans as "weirdos." How cool is that?  It's so much more down-to-earth than the party's failed message of calling Trump an existential threat to "democracy."

It is designed to make the electorate forget all about such existential threats as both political parties being in full support of World War III, most notably of Israel's continued genocide of Palestinians and its provocations of Iran and Lebanon. So if the Democratic side of the duopoly can only put a folksier face on murder and misery, they will manufacture the consent of US citizens.

From all indications, liberals are so relieved to be rid of Joe Bden that they're flocking to Harris rallies and emptying their pocketbooks to support a candidate whose main selling point is that she doesn't shuffle or slur her speech. She enunciates her word salads loudly and clearly enough for everybody to hear, if not to understand.

The real test is whether she will heed the instructions of the Silicon Valley donor class to fire Federal Trade Commissioner Lina Khan if she is elected. So far, she hasn't said. Nor has she returned a recent hefty donation from tech mogul Reid Hoffman, who explicitly demanded that Khan be fired. He has since "walked back" his threat, thus at least temporarily relieving Harris of answering it while she is still only the unelected nominee. The selection of Walz is protective armor for her. Once she is safely esconced in the White House, Walz can be dismissed, policy-wise and influence-wise if not bodily. If he became too much of a renegade populist, they could always pull a Henry Wallace on him.

When an ailing Franklin Roosevelt was running for his fourth term, his advisers moved to replace his prairie populist Vice President Wallace with Harry Truman. And when Wallace decided to defend his office and make an independent run, the Democratic machine actually took the drastic step of cutting the power at the 1944 party convention to prevent a delegate vote from even taking place. Of course there was no internet back then, so they couldn't avoid bypassing democracy by having delegates cast their votes remotely before the physical convention even took place.

So take Kamala Harris's choice of Tim Walz with a very healthy dose of cynicism. Her main advisor is her brother-in-law Tony West, the head legal honcho of Uber and the former Obama Justice Department official who gave Wall Street bankers a slap on the wrist rather than crimiinally prosecute them after the 2008 collapse. West has not resigned from Uber. He is merely taking a leave of absence from this predatory firm.

West and Uber are agents of work force precarity. exploitation and oppression. They are integral players in the Silicon Valley oligarchy which now equals or even surpasses Wall Street in political power.

So the fact that a federal judge has just declared the Google faction of this oligarchy to be an illegal monopoly should give ordinary people a reason to hope that at long last, a preliminary kick has been dealt to the tender butts of these arrogant overlords - the actual existential threats to what is still left of our democracy.

The antitrust ruling is of course coupled with Monday's Wall Street crash, further exposing the inherent corruption of late financial capital for anyone with the awesome ability to wrest their attention from the Coronation Follies show, which itself is competing for attention with the Paris Olympics.Tje crash itself originated in Japan and thenEurope, whose markets were said to be panicking at the latest US jobs report, which showed that late capitalism is not profiting as much as expected from an exploited workforce. The arrogant tech overlords are taking an especial hit, making their tender monopolistic fannies even more sensitive.  What an unexpected shock that A.I. might turn out to be just another big fat greedy bubble ready to burst. It might even put the kibosh on investments in Elon Musk's nascent brain implant franchise.

And that probably means that you and I will be told by Kamala Harris at another inauguration behind barbed wife that we all have to tighten our belts and share the sacrifice with the poor billionaires.

Not as likely to win the support Barack Obama momentarily enjoyed after he won office on that whole hope and change thing.

It's time to cure ourselves of the notion that any politician will ever save us. It's time to stop identifying ourselves as mere consumers and spectators ratherthan as active citizens and iindependent thinkers.

Destroying the Google empire's rotten, censorious search engine and knowledge monopoly will be an essential first step.