January 6th 2021, a 'peaceful protest' by Trump supporters:

2000-2500 protesters
174 police injured
5 police killed
Major damages to the Capitol building

And they call the left, liberals, or whatever you want to call it, the 'evil' and 'violent' ones.

#Politics #AntiTrump #USA #Left #Trump

2026 Italian Constitutional Referendum: No Votes Gain Landside Victory | Luca Neve All rights reserved.

#CostituzioneItaliana #Left #Sinistra #Dignità www.lucaneve.com/gallery-imag...

Chicago City Council Just Stabbed Tipped Workers in the Back After a blitz by restaurant industry lobbyists, Chicago’s city council voted last week to maintain the subminimum wage for service workers, keeping them stuck in precarity and poverty wages.

Chicago City Council Just Stabbed Tipped Workers in the Back

jacobin.com/2026/03/chicago-service-...

#left #news #vsn #SupportIndependentMedia #DiverseSpectrumOfTheLeft

GHOST PROPERTY

GHOST PROPERTY　ПРИМАРНА ВЛАСНІСТЬ
汝、ゴミ制度を焼却せよ！
Спали систему сміття!

www.deviantart.com/poison-raika...

<>

#ＡＩ生成 #roof #whose #hell #like #give #damn #city #hypocrite #just #blind #eye #graveyard #memories #left #rot #die #scrap #paper #sneers #owner #unknown #someone #else #land #but #cheap

Learn to read class structure. #Left #Marxism

Increase the Inheritance Tax For some young workers, the aging of the American population means growing care burdens, while others anticipate a life-changing windfall. Higher taxes on the ever-growing number of inheritances could meaningfully reduce inequality.

Increase the Inheritance Tax

https://jacobin.com/2026/03/unequal-inheritances/

#left #news #vsn #SupportIndependentMedia #DiverseSpectrumOfTheLeft

How Thoreau Challenged America to Live Up To Its Own Ideals A new PBS documentary, Henry David Thoreau, reveals the Thoreau often softened in high school textbooks — the abolitionist, antiwar dissident, and ecological thinker whose ideas still challenge a country failing its own revolutionary ideals.

How Thoreau Challenged America to Live Up To Its Own Ideals

jacobin.com/2026/03/thoreau-document...

#left #news #vsn #SupportIndependentMedia #DiverseSpectrumOfTheLeft

ICE vs. High Schoolers We spoke with high school students in Minneapolis about how they were affected by ICE’s occupation of the city.

ICE vs. High Schoolers

https://jacobin.com/2026/03/ice-vs-high-schoolers/

#left #news #vsn #SupportIndependentMedia #DiverseSpectrumOfTheLeft

Uber Backs Bills to Make It Harder to Sue Them for Crashes Uber is spending tens of millions on a California ballot measure that could make it harder for riders, pedestrians, and drivers to sue for damages after car crashes. It is part of a broader liability reform campaign the company is funding across the US.

Uber Backs Bills to Make It Harder to Sue Them for Crashes

jacobin.com/2026/03/uber-crashes-law...

#left #news #vsn #SupportIndependentMedia #DiverseSpectrumOfTheLeft

#trump #maga #trumptrain #donaldtrump #narcissism #trumpmemes #authoritarian #trumpforprison #liberal #left #gaslight #lefty

The Sordid History of State Collusion With the Far Right During the conflict in the North of Ireland, British security forces colluded with loyalist paramilitaries responsible for hundreds of sectarian murders. The record of collusion should be a cautionary tale for the contemporary US as the far right grows.

The Sordid History of State Collusion With the Far Right

jacobin.com/2026/03/state-collusion-...

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#Blair was centre #right at best, but mainly #RightWing.

#Labour haven't been true #left or #socialist for many, many years, other than #Corbyn 's tenure.

THIS!!!!!!!! 👇

Everyone on the #left must unite & work together to defeat the rabid #right & the #fascist #FarRight.

We don't want politics of hate, which is ALL #Reform offer, we want politics of hope.

#HopeNotHate

I think the #Left gets bastardized as "hippies". I can't stand those people. I am an organized and methodical person.

@workers.bsky.social
@feralcommie.bsky.social
@paulwalker44.bsky.social
@damar318.bsky.social

We're not from the #left or the #right. We're from the bottom and we're coming for for those on #top/

Mental Health Workers Fight for AI Protections in California ### In Northern California, 2,400 mental health providers went on strike earlier this month against medical giant Kaiser Permanente. A major point of contention is Kaiser’s efforts to replace human-provided mental health care with artificial intelligence. * * * In Northern California, 2,400 mental health care workers at Kaiser Permanente have been without a contract since last September. Kaiser’s desire to open the door to replacing therapist jobs with AI has been a big sticking point in negotiations. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images) “Kaiser executives say they’re not using AI to make patient care determinations, but they won’t say what technology is underpinning the online questionnaires that automatically determine whether patients require urgent appointments and assess whether they may be a threat to themselves,” said Carolyn Staehle, a behavioral therapist in San Francisco. “Whatever Kaiser wants to call it, it’s not a human being making these potentially life-and-death decisions, and it’s not the same level of care as being assessed by a licensed therapist.” Kaiser Permanente, the nation’s largest health maintenance organization (HMO), is forcing its therapists onto the streets in the ongoing battle to win parity for mental health care workers, in relation to traditional medical providers, in its services to twelve million members — also now confronting the challenge of artificial intelligence. The 2,400 striking mental health care workers are members of the National Union of Health Care Workers (NUHW). They walked out on Wednesday, March 18, in a “practice” strike that is most likely a taste of what’s to come. In 2022, these workers struck for ten weeks, the longest mental health care workers’ strike on record. Two issues dominated negotiations from the start: workloads for Kaiser therapists and wait times for Kaiser patients. The strikers won on both, forcing concessions until then all but unheard of. They won breakthrough provisions to retain staff and reduce wait times for patients, with plans to collaborate on transforming Kaiser’s model for providing mental health care. It’s inevitable that the current contract fight will be just as tough. But the NUHW members are battle-tested; each contract fight with Kaiser so far has included a strike. And this time, the NUHW members were joined in a sympathy strike by thousands of registered nurses who shared their concerns about Kaiser’s increasing use of artificial intelligence to the detriment of patient care. The significance of this cross-union solidarity can hardly be overestimated. Since 2009, NUHW has fought alone in a workforce deeply divided. In January of that year, a long-standing dispute between SEIU’s national leader, Andy Stern, and the 150,000-strong United Healthcare Workers, based in the Bay Area, came to a head: after many hours of hearings, the SEIU-appointed former secretary of labor, Ray Marshall, ruled for the national union. The local was trusteed, no vote taken, its officers fired, offices occupied, and assets seized; it was widely seen as a travesty. Its core was left to start again as NUHW. But not so much this time (though thousands of service workers still crossed picket lines). The registered nurses are represented by National Nurses United. Stationary Engineers, represented by IUOE Local 39, also held a sympathy strike with mental health workers and walked picket lines outside Kaiser medical centers in Oakland, Sacramento, Fresno, Santa Clara, and Santa Rosa. “We’re proud to strike alongside registered nurses and engineers in the fight for human-centered care at Kaiser,” said Joshua Gibbons, a therapist for Kaiser in Sacramento. “Mental health care is about human connection, and Kaiser is recklessly forging ahead with untested artificial intelligence that it sees potentially replacing us and the care we provide our patients.” Kaiser is determined to rescind past concessions; never mind that, in 2023, it was fined $200 million by the California Department of Managed Health Care for lacking sufficient behavioral health providers. And last month, Kaiser entered into a $31 million settlement with the US Department of Labor over violations of mental health parity laws. Alas, in our new world, where “billions” have replaced “millions,” Kaiser has $67 billion in reserves. Kaiser’s CEO Greg Adams is reported to receive more than $20 million in compensation annually. Kaiser was forced to reimburse patients who had to pay out of pocket for mental health treatment they couldn’t get from Kaiser — but, millions, no problem. “Kaiser has been punished and fined so many times for mental health violations; we can’t let it get away with more,” says Kaiser therapist Emma Olsen. “Our patients need human therapists, who can work seamlessly with their doctors and have enough time to do our jobs right — and it’s clear Kaiser doesn’t want to pay for that level of care.” Yet Kaiser wants to add AI to its array of extreme proposals — it is demanding “flexibility,” meaning all but a free hand in the introduction of AI. The workers have been without a contract since September. The sides remain far apart, with Kaiser sticking to proposals that would reverse patient care safeguards previously won by therapists and open the door to replacing therapist jobs with artificial intelligence and further outsourcing care. When it comes to AI, Kaiser is setting the stage to not just replace work done by therapists but to replace therapists themselves. The behemoth was once known as union-friendly; Kaiser Permanente was initially established, in collaboration with the unions, to provide medical services at Kaiser’s shipyards, steel mills, and other facilities, due in part to Henry Kaiser’s desire to treat all patients regardless of ability to pay, in the context of President Harry Truman’s failed national health care plan. Workers supported it and were central to its origins and growth. But ultimately, “it’s a corporation,” says Sal Rosselli, president emeritus of the union. “It’s the bottom line. Profit and competition.” Kaiser is a competitor, an empire builder, but this costs money. It spends its surplus on expansion. Kaiser, which began in California and stayed there for decades, now has hospitals and clinics in Hawaii, Washington state, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. It’s comparable to General Motors in the 1950s or even Amazon today. Health care is remaking the US economy. It’s the sector that employs the most workers, surpassing manufacturing and services; the industry is the biggest employer in thirty-eight states. Manufacturing cities like Cleveland and Pittsburgh have transitioned to health care as the driver of their economies. And hospitals are often the largest employers in small towns and rural settings. The industry will continue to grow (unlike manufacturing, it can’t be offshored), despite cuts in federal health care spending. Twenty-four hundred workers is not so many, then. But they’re 2,400 in a union that fights, and the health care workforce needs fighters. Their example is incalculable. * * * Thanks to Matthew Artz.

Mental Health Workers Fight for AI Protections in California

jacobin.com/2026/03/kaiser-workers-s...

#left #news #vsn #SupportIndependentMedia #DiverseSpectrumOfTheLeft

Could Avi Lewis divide or unite the NDP? New Democrats gather in Winnipeg to select their new leader, one that faces the challenge of rebuilding after the worst general election performance in the party's history. Power & Politics guest host...

'Power & Politics guest host J.P. Tasker asks one of the front-runners in the federal NDP leadership race, Avi Lewis, why he thinks he's the one for the job.'
#canada #NDP #federal #party #politics #socialism #progressive #left #leadership #theleap #oil #climate #environment #labour #government

#AI生成 #whose GHOST PROPERTY　ПРИМАРНА ВЛАСНІСТЬ - ポイズ - pixiv 錆びついた看板 崩れ落ちた屋根 誰のモンだ？ 知らねえよ そんなもん 見て見ぬフリする 偽善者の街 朽ち果ててゆく 記憶の墓場 「所有者不明」と 嘯く紙切れ 「他人の土地だ」と 逃げ口上ばかり 押し付けるだけの 正義かよ 冗談じゃねえ！ 叩きつけろ！ 相続放棄！ 権利も無いのに

GHOST PROPERTY　ПРИМАРНА ВЛАСНІСТЬ
汝、ゴミ制度を焼却せよ！
Спали систему сміття!

www.pixiv.net/novel/show.p...

<>

#ＡＩ生成 #roof #whose #hell #like #give #damn #city #hypocrite #just #blind #eye #graveyard #memories #left #rot #die #scrap #paper #sneers #owner #unknown #someone #else #land #but #cheap #excuse

#NoKings isn't a #CultureWar.

Difference between #right & #left is not that the right is the "culture of violence", & that the left is that of "nonviolence."

The right directs it's violence at it's fellow workers, where as the left focuses it's violence at the #EpsteinClass.

#NoWar but #ClassWar

#trump #maga #trumptrain #donaldtrump #narcissism #trumpmemes #authoritarian #trumpforprison #liberal #left #gaslight #lefty

Student Socialists Are Taking On Madison’s Real Estate Machine As part of a new wave of young socialist candidates, Madison’s Bobby Gronert is running for city council, bringing lessons learned from student organizing to city hall to challenge developers and shape what socialism looks like for a new generation.

Student Socialists Are Taking On Madison’s Real Estate Machine

jacobin.com/2026/03/student-socialis...

#left #news #vsn #SupportIndependentMedia #DiverseSpectrumOfTheLeft

Wordle - A Wordle Alternative Guess the hidden word in 6 tries. A new puzzle is available each day.

#LeftWordle 1,743 4/6 ( #Left #Wordle )

🟩🟨⬛⬛⬛
🟩⬛⬛🟩⬛
🟩⬛🟨🟩⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

https://left-wordle.com/

The Afroman Ruling Is a Victory for Artistic Speech Seven sheriff’s deputies sued musician Afroman for defamation after he mocked their failed raid in viral diss tracks. His victory comes at a moment when the lines of what constitutes artistic free speech are continually being redrawn.

The Afroman Ruling Is a Victory for Artistic Speech

jacobin.com/2026/03/afroman-trial-ra...

#left #news #vsn #SupportIndependentMedia #DiverseSpectrumOfTheLeft

We Can’t Income-Tax Ultra-Elites. We Must Tax Their Wealth. To tax the richest Americans, we need to go after their wealth, not just their income. Two proposals — one in California, one in Congress — could finally do it. The alternative is an ever-more-powerful billionaire class that threatens democracy itself.

We Can’t Income-Tax Ultra-Elites. We Must Tax Their Wealth.

jacobin.com/2026/03/wealth-tax-sande...

#left #news #vsn #SupportIndependentMedia #DiverseSpectrumOfTheLeft

‘Left’ | Chris_P

‘Left’

#Blipfoto #photography #bottle #left #discarded #derelict #undergrowth #quiet #found #textures

www.blipfoto.com/entry/348455...

GHOST PROPERTY　ПРИМАРНА ВЛАСНІСТЬ｜ポイズン雷花 錆びついた看板 崩れ落ちた屋根 誰のモンだ？ 知らねえよ そんなもん 見て見ぬフリする 偽善者の街 朽ち果ててゆく 記憶の墓場 「所有者不明」と 嘯く紙切れ 「他人の土地だ」と 逃げ口上ばかり 押し付けるだけの 正義かよ 冗談じゃねえ！ 叩きつけろ！ 相続放棄！ 権利も無いのに 責任だけを 負わせるのか？ 法的処置ちらつかせ 脅すのか？ もう俺のじゃない！ お前らのGHOST PROPERTY...

GHOST PROPERTY　ПРИМАРНА ВЛАСНІСТЬ
汝、ゴミ制度を焼却せよ！
Спали систему сміття!

note.com/poison_raika...

<>

#ＡＩ生成 #roof #whose #hell #like #give #damn #city #hypocrite #just #blind #eye #graveyard #memories #left #rot #die #scrap #paper #sneers #owner #unknown #someone #else #land #but #cheap #excuse #your

Monument to Human Chain Rescue Unveiled in Almaty - The Times Of Central Asia In 2016, residents of Almaty formed a human chain to rescue a dog and its owner who had become trapped in a river. Ten years later, in March 2026, an art

When the #Left says "People deserve roses, too" this is what they mean

Ground Troops in Iran: An Idiotic Idea for an Idiotic War ### Donald Trump is weighing whether to make the Iran War even more of a disaster by sending in ground troops. It’s a terrible idea that almost everyone agrees won’t achieve anything but kill US troops and draw the United States deeper into war. * * * Sending ground troops to Iran is the first step toward exactly the kind of quagmire every US president since George W. Bush has tried to avoid. (Kevin Carter / Getty Images) Because of a combination of gossip, outright misinformation, and genuine incompetence, it is next to impossible to know at any given time what exactly is happening with Donald Trump’s war on Iran. A slew of indicators now suggests the president is preparing to escalate US involvement any day now and send in ground troops. Then again, maybe he’s not. No matter what ends up happening, the following will still be true: deploying US ground troops to fight the war in Iran is a politically and militarily disastrous decision that will do the opposite of what Trump hopes it will do. This is such a bad idea that it has united both card-carrying members of Trump’s hated “deep state,” such as former Defense Intelligence Agency official and former NATO supreme allied commander James Stavridis, and some of Trump’s closest political allies, such as Nancy Mace and Matt Gaetz in opposition. His own just-resigned National Counterterrorism Center director, Joe Kent, a veteran and as MAGA as they come, says it would be a “disaster.” Stavridis’s explanation of the problem with ground troops being deployed to Kharg Island, where 90 percent of Iran’s oil is processed, is worth paying attention to in particular. Stavridis was not just once upon a time the highest ranking military official in NATO, in charge of both the alliance’s military operations and its war planning. He is also a hawk who just a few years ago advocated for NATO to go to war directly against Russia. In other words, this is not someone whose impulse is to avoid reckless US military force nor inclined to excessively weigh up the risks involved. And yet even he thinks that on balance, this would be a horrible idea: > The first challenge, before even contemplating boots ashore on Kharg, would be getting the [31st Marine Expeditionary Unit]’s ships through the Strait of Hormuz. . . . My guess is the [USS] _Tripoli_ and her naval escorts . . . would have to fight their way through the strait. . . . There are roughly 20,000 Iranians on the island (almost all civilian oilworkers) who would need to be contained in their homes or evacuated; the Iranians may have planted sophisticated booby traps; Iran could successfully strike one of the big amphibious ships (as the Argentines did to the British in the Falklands War in 1982). US casualties would almost certainly rise quickly from the thirteen who have so far been killed during Operation Epic Fury. Stavridis doesn’t mention that any US troops deployed to the island would be on a relatively small piece of land that’s packed with tens of millions of barrels of oil, a substance that famously bursts into flame with ease. It gets even more questionable when the mission turns to extracting Iran’s enriched uranium, all 440 kilograms (roughly 970 pounds) of it. Not only is this a massive quantity of material that is enormously difficult to access in the first place, given that it is stored in tunnels deep underground. But moving nuclear material around is an enormously logistically complicated process even at the best of times — in other words, when there’s peace and the government responsible for the material is trying to help you get rid of it — let alone in the middle of a warzone. It would almost certainly require an immense amount of time, as well as a large invasion force and a semi-permanent occupation, simply to allow the delicate process of safely extracting and transporting the uranium to take place. Even then, the US presence at these sites would still serve as one big, stationary target for any Iranian insurgency. Now think about every other aim this administration had when it first started the war and how miserably it has failed to achieve them: collapsing the Iranian state, doing Venezuela-like regime change, or encouraging a grassroots Iranian uprising. Even what progress they’ve made on destroying Iran’s missile-launching capability has stalled. Yet we’re supposed to believe things will be different with these fantastical operations. The politics of dead US service members are pretty straightforward. There is a reason why every president since George W. Bush has bent over backward to try and avoid putting American boots on the ground and instead try to wage war exclusively from the air, with the use of drones, or by using proxies: because as former commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan Stanley McChrystal recently put it, once you deploy ground troops, “you’re the same height as your potential opponent.” That means American soldiers are more likely to die, and their families and local communities are more likely to start demanding answers about what exactly their lives were just spent to achieve. The weak efforts by some hawks to treat a deployment to Kharg Island as some kind of clever loophole — that, as Rep. Pete Sessions mused on CNN, if it’s not “inside Iran in the cities,” then it doesn’t _really_ count as boots on the ground — will not magically stop this political blowback from happening. If dozens of young Americans start coming home in flag-draped coffins, it won’t matter to their loved ones that they were killed in an inferno on Kharg Island instead of the streets of Tehran. In fact, all indicators suggest Iranian leadership _wants_ Trump to send in ground troops. The Iranians’ whole aim in this war is to inflict as high a human and political cost on Trump and the United States as they can, to make US officials reluctant to launch any future unprovoked attacks on the country. They would be salivating at the prospect of having thousands of vulnerable US troops to fly drones into, wage guerrilla warfare against, or blow up with cheap, makeshift explosives like their forces did for years in Iraq during the lengthy US quagmire there. All the better if this initial deployment becomes the entrée for a full-on invasion, which would give Iran many more human targets to hit and much more time to do it in. Make no mistake: sending in ground troops is the first step toward exactly the kind of quagmire every US president since Bush has tried to avoid, and which Trump once made his political name denouncing. What’s more likely to happen if some large number of US service members end up slaughtered on Iranian soil: that a chorus of antiwar voices makes the rounds on cable news and the Sunday shows calling for this to wrap up, and Trump and his officials publicly announce they’re leaving? Or that the most unhinged chicken hawks in Washington are given monopoly of the airwaves to demand bloody revenge and Trump doubles down to make up for the perceived humiliation? If the president is finding it hard to find a face-saving way out of this mess now, he will find it magnitudes harder if and when Iranian forces kill an even bigger number of American troops. The absurd thing is, none of this has to happen. Trump could avoid these scenarios, even end the war entirely and prevent the coming economic crisis from getting worse, if he would just drop his maximalist demands and sue for peace. But in his mind, that would look weak. So refusing to face reality and trying desperately to find some nonexistent alternative exit path, he is inevitably tempted to keep escalating and getting deeper into the war, which will only make it harder and harder to get out. Instead of asking for a ladder to climb out of the hole, he keeps stubbornly digging and digging. And as he does, he drags the rest of us down deeper into the darkness with him. * * *

Ground Troops in Iran: An Idiotic Idea for an Idiotic War

jacobin.com/2026/03/ground-troops-ir...

#left #news #vsn #SupportIndependentMedia #DiverseSpectrumOfTheLeft

<cite>Bummerland</cite> Sends Up Austin’s MAGA Tech-Bro Culture ### A new essay collection by Randolph Lewis chronicles how Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, an Apple campus, and scorched-earth MAGA capitalism killed Austin's famous weirdness — and finds unexpected glimmers of hope even in big-box America. * * * Austin used to be famously, charmingly weird. Now it's home to Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, an Apple campus, and archetypal right-leaning tech bros paying millions for ramshackle hippie cottages. (Suzanne Cordeiro / AFP via Getty Images) Review of _Bummerland: Ruin and Restoration in Trump’s New America_ by Randolph Lewis (University of Nebraska Press, 2026) MAGA may not deliver material benefits for the vast majority of its adherents, but it does provide them with a coherent worldview, demonizing dark-skinned groups (lately Somalis), snooty liberals, and anyone Donald Trump doesn’t like. Sections of the electorate can at least enjoy a flush of superiority while MAGA’s main beneficiaries — the ultrarich, particularly the tech oligarchs who gathered at the White House on Inauguration Day 2025 — wreak havoc on regions and communities that backed Trump. That’s hardly a formula for long-term sustainability, but it does befit the era of scorched-earth capitalism. Randolph Lewis’s _Bummerland: Ruin and Restoration in Trump ’s New America_ is a collection of dispatches from Austin, Texas, and beyond exploring the culture of the transformative moment. A fluid stylist with a keen eye for detail, Lewis states at the outset that his collection of thirty-five short essays aims to illustrate why the contemporary United States “often feels more like a woodchipper for the soul than a safe place to call home.” Although he is more interested in diagnosis than prescription, Lewis advocates what he calls a “soft revolution,” one that emphasizes “networks of neighborliness and compassion.” Randolph, whose previous books have profiled radical documentary filmmakers, is a professor of American studies at the University of Texas at Austin. The climate is increasingly hostile to his kind. In mid-February, the university system’s board of regents decreed that faculty should steer clear of “unnecessary controversial subjects” in their classrooms, which many interpret as an attempt to chill left-leaning instruction. In _Bummerland_ , Lewis ruminates on how Austin’s once-famed “weird” iconoclasm became a thing of the past. These days, he notes, the city is “home to super bros like Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, and thousands of California transplants who have turned ramshackle hippie cottages into multimillion-dollar acquisitions.” In 2019, Trump visited the North Austin site of Apple’s second campus, which opened in 2022. "Musk has shown how an ‘ordinary human male’ can experience a ‘metamorphosis from unloved wanker to glorious tech god soaring above the multitudes.’" Apple’s billion-dollar project produces an ivory tower of a different sort. As Lewis describes it, building “surfaces are as white and perfect as a new set of dentures, and everything feels precisely engineered in a way that is overpowering.” Lewis contrasts the presence of the now-multitrillion-dollar company with the homeless encampments that have sprouted up nearby. “There’s something broken in this place’s soul!” lamented _Texas Monthly_ about its hometown not long after Apple opened its doors. In a separate entry, Lewis visits the imposing Tesla Gigafactory near Austin, which is the second largest building in the world (trailing only a Boeing factory in Everett, Washington). Musk’s enthusiasts, Lewis surmises, live vicariously through his exploits. Above all, Musk has shown how an “ordinary human male” can experience a “metamorphosis from unloved wanker to glorious tech god soaring above the multitudes.” Musk, who is the world’s richest man and on track to be its first billionaire, splits time between Austin and the Texas coast. The archetypal podcaster Joe Rogan, who has lived in Austin since 2020, is always ready to absorb and disseminate his buddy’s babbling self-aggrandizement. Lewis later journeys to Las Vegas, where he checks out Musk’s ongoing Loop project, which shuttles people around in tunnels via Teslas. “In a chauffeured electric car,” Lewis reports, passengers “ride around for a few minutes, then emerge a few blocks away, not much faster than a person can walk.” The project has not delivered anything close to metro-level throughput. In other words, Musk took over $80 million of public money to try and fail to replicate the efficiency of an ordinary urban subway. Many cities are falling under the spell of what Lewis usefully labels Muskism, “a charismatic new strain of techno-capitalism” ramming through overhyped megaprojects that advance oligarchs’ private agendas. In addition to his insightful sketches of our dystopian present, Lewis finds seeds of a more hopeful future planted in unexpected places. On a hot Sunday in Austin during the pandemic, Lewis seeks the cool air inside a Target, wryly noting that like most Texans, his motto is “no AC, no me.” In the “bright, clean” aisles, he finds “existentialist drama,” where customers graze and gather “stuff you don’t really love but are willing to accept as good enough.” It’s far from utopia, but like his fellow shoppers, he writes, “I am grateful that Target is tidy, air-conditioned and safe.” "Many cities are falling under the spell of what Lewis usefully labels Muskism, ‘a charismatic new strain of techno-capitalism’ ramming through overhyped megaprojects that advance oligarchs’ private agendas." Target’s main competitor also provides a dose of unexpected comfort. During the pandemic, Lewis and his wife traveled to a Walmart Superstore in Buda, one hour from Austin, to get vaccination shots. Instead of the long line he expected, friendly staff escorted Lewis to his appointment, and “an elegant man with an Indian name” boosted both the writer’s immune system and his spirits. Even in soulless surroundings like big-box stores, Lewis suggests, there are building blocks of community and what he refers to as our shared “emotional infrastructure.” His Target and Walmart entries make it clear that Lewis is determined not to write off big-box America as devoid of humanity or beyond hope. About two years after the 2022 mass shooting in Uvalde, Lewis visited the indelibly scarred small town eighty miles west of San Antonio. In November 2023, Uvalde’s town square unveiled twenty-one murals honoring the lives of the nineteen students and two teachers killed. The tributes provide a “powerful expression of collective mourning,” Lewis says, adding that their “homemade qualities make them even more poignant.” The author juxtaposes the murals’ “brilliant expressions of love” with Uvalde’s other tourist attractions, including a machine-gun amusement park that allows patrons to fire weapons such as a Vietnam War–era flamethrower with a range of 260 feet. It would be easy to fault Lewis for not ending his collection with a programmatic list of policy remedies to address the many ills he describes. The problems that he presents, however, are colossal in scope. Incisive and witty, _Bummerland_ instead urges readers to reflect on both the weirdness and promise of everyday experience and to make authentic contact with fellow witnesses to stay sane amid the current madness. * * *

Bummerland Sends Up Austin’s MAGA Tech-Bro Culture

jacobin.com/2026/03/austin-maga-musk...

#left #news #vsn #SupportIndependentMedia #DiverseSpectrumOfTheLeft