It’s the Billionaires, Stupid

It’s the Epstein class, not immigrants, who killed your American Dream

I am exercising my First Amendment rights. I never use AI in my writing.

This message — it’s the billionaires — has underpinned almost everything I’ve said or written over the years. But I want to say it as clearly and as directly as I can, because it’s the single most important thing for everyone to get right now. Ending billionairism is the key to untangling the gordian knot of intensifying fascism, unaffordable rents, wage slavery, artificial intelligence, unattainable healthcare, racist incarceration, endless idiotic wars, and global heating.

The billionaire class divides the working class through propaganda exploiting deep-seated racism and tribalism. People who are afraid and disgruntled are more susceptible to propaganda, and extractive capitalism ensures a lot of people are afraid and disgruntled. The billionaire class distracts us into fighting amongst ourselves, left versus right, while remaining oblivious to the real threat.

Meanwhile, they leverage the power of their wealth in three key ways:

1. To bribe politicians into changing laws and social structures in order to further enhance their wealth and decrease ours, and to evade any and all accountability. We are caught in a self-reinforcing vortex of capitalism;

2. To buy media corporations in order to control the hegemonic messaging, spread propaganda, and suppress the effectiveness of activists and organizers working to build a resistance. (You would not believe how hard it is to get the New York Times to report on civil disobedience);

3. To buy physical security through technological surveillance, technological violence, and influence over state violence.

On that third point, I’m concerned that the billionaire class could soon get so powerful that we won’t ever be able to stop them. Our bodies remain as soft as ever, whereas technologies such as AI and robotics get more capable of identifying and obliterating those bodies by the day. Extractive capitalism is an ideal system for developing weapons tech. It’s a terrible system for stopping irreversible planetary global heating.

In other words, we’re in a race against the billionaire class. This is why movement building needs to be a top priority for as many of us as possible, and why we need to find better strategies for doing it. (Thank you, Minnesotans!) But this a monumental task. Extractive capitalism comes with built in anti-organizing features, such as propagandizing our information, eliminating our free time, depleting our energy, and making food, housing, and healthcare attainable only to those who “play by the rules.” (This is why health insurance in America depends on employment.) For this reason, material mutual aid and community building are critical for building an effective resistance movement.

But strategically the movement needs to shift, somehow, from left looking right, to left and right looking up — together.

The “left” is already anti-billionaire at its core, is highly aware of the reality of class oppression, and therefore wants to end the status quo and change systems. This makes the left the principal threat to the billionaire class.

The main role of the Corporate Democrats is to neutralize this threat. The two-party system in America is designed to suppress the left through a “lesser of two evils” voting system. Corporate Dems are able to dominate the Democratic party by pulling as-big-as-necessary donations from the billionaire class. Whenever a progressive candidate preaching the anti-billionaire truth starts gaining momentum, the Corporate Dems coalesce and say, “If you don’t vote for our corporatist, the Republican will win. Yes, our candidate takes money from the ultra-rich, is worth a few hundred million or soon will be, won’t fight to make your lives better in any meaningful way, won’t do anything meaningful to stop global heating or do anything else that challenges the donor class. But they’re performatively better than the Republican.” Then relatively wealthy “liberals” fall in line to defeat the left and maintain the status quo. They did this to Bernie. They tried to do this with Mamdani.

This is not a bug in our electoral system, it’s a feature. Even Obama was, and still is, a Corporate Dem, although he hides it well with his incredible charisma. In America, there is no party for the people, only two parties for the billionaires. The two party system prevents anti-billionaire progressives from getting a toehold in government, let alone a critical mass. We certainly need nationwide ranked choice voting, money out of politics, and a party that stands meaningfully against billionaires, but this is much easier said than done.

To clarify, by “billionaire class,” I don’t just mean billionaires. Perhaps it’s more accurate to refer to these folks as the “Epstein class.” This group of billionaires, hundred-millionaires, Republican leaders, lobbyists, elite academics, and yes, Corporate Democrat leaders, believe they are above the law and that they can do whatever they like. So far, they’ve been right. They are mad with privilege. We now know, beyond a doubt, that they are fine with raping children. (A year ago, I could not have typed that.) Through their embrace of genocide, we know they are fine with murdering children. They do not see our lives as valid in any way. They are parasites on humanity: We could solve so many problems with their hoarded wealth alone, and even more if they didn’t use that wealth to undermine and block us at every turn.

We must find a way to join together, left, liberal, and right, to strip them of their wealth and to hold them to account.

I’m really not sure how to do this, however. I know a liberal who still doesn’t see the Regime as “fascist” and who won’t join the struggle. I know another liberal who still passionately hates Bernie because “he yells.” Unlike my liberal friends, the rightists I know can’t even agree with me on basic facts. For example, an old friend of mine on the right does not agree that ICE has trampled on anyone’s civil rights. He sees them only as doing their job of enforcing immigration law in a responsible way while being impeded by irresponsible radical left protestors. He is not a stupid person. My parents also have an almost-non-overlapping set of “alternative facts,” and in addition they tend to get angry extremely quickly, pivoting with “What about…” to irrelevant and often racist Fox News talking points so quickly my head spins. All of this makes it hard to have useful conversations.

Propaganda works depressingly well.

But I think we need to keep trying, to keep reaching out. My instinct is that the winning message is not “equality for all,” but instead, “unite against billionaires.” And the left is getting stronger: Day to day life is getting bad enough that people are waking up en masse, are primed for more Mamdanis. That’s a glimmer of hope.

I doubt I’ll ever be able to trust any person who still supports Trump at this point. At best, it means they’re too susceptible to propaganda. At worst, it means they knowingly and actively support fascism. Despite this, I’ll keep trying to get them to see that it’s the billionaires, stupid.

If you have anecdotes or even successes in reaching out to people on the right, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

What else is happening:

• I was interviewed on a BBC World News show to talk about Trump stupidly repealing the EPA’s ability to regulate carbon dioxide pollution. Thank goodness for BBC World News.

• I ruptured my patellar tendon two weeks ago in a cross country skiing fall and had surgery to repair it. I’m fortunate to have health insurance. Every day is a little better, which keeps my spirits up, but I can’t walk yet. It has never been more clear to me what a miracle it is to simply walk on the Earth.

• The news gets crazier and crazier. How crazy will it get? How bad will things get before they start to get better? I’m concerned about many things, such as World War III, the Regime closing the border and trapping resisters inside, a power grab before the midterm elections, and global heating. Does this make me a “doomer,” or a realist?

• I’ve started my vipassana meditation practice back up, and it’s super helpful as always. Despite how consistently beneficial it has been over the last twenty-three years, doing it each day remains a challenge!

With love and rage,

Peter