Weekly Grounding #38
News, links, writing
Weekly Groundings are published every Friday to highlight the most interesting news, links, and writing I investigated during the past week. They are designed to ground your thinking in the midst of media overload and contribute to Handful of Earth’s broader framework. Please subscribe if you’d like to receive these posts directly in your inbox.
“Who (or What) Comes After Biden?”
After months of defending Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, the mainstream media has now made a quick and seemingly coordinated pivot on this issue. New York Times columnist Ezra Klein recently called for the Democrats to put up a different candidate. And in this piece at The Financial Times, Rana Faroohar argues that Biden should be replaced by an unabashedly populist candidate: “What does America crave? A true story about where we are — in a rich but quite vulnerable society in which only a third of people can afford the things that make us middle class and one in which both political and economic power have become far too concentrated. But also a plan for how to rebalance things, and someone with a record of having done so. That argues for some Midwestern populist who has won elections in a swing state rather than a coastal progressive or some middle-of-the-road business type.”
While this Democratic Party populist alternative seems unlikely, it appears that the powers that be no longer have use for Biden in the White House and are eager to find a replacement with a better chance of defeating Trump, who dominates swing state polling.
“RFK Voters Split On Israel War Support, Back Him On Ukraine”
Democratic Party pandering to the professional-managerial class has cost the party dearly and pushed many voters into the Trump camp or toward a third party. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. continues to draw significant polling support from both former Democratic and Republican Party voters. In this fascinating Breaking Points/JLPartners focus group, Kennedy supporters are asked about his views on the wars in Ukraine and Israel. While all agree with his opposition to American bankrolling of the Ukraine War, many disagree with his support of Israel’s war on Gaza for both moral and economic reasons.
When asked about Kennedy’s unconditional support for Israel, one participant articulated the America First (broadly conceived) sentiment that cuts across large swathes of the American electorate: “We had Hurricane Katrina over here where they wiped out millions of peoples’ homes and they didn’t even help them. So how could you go help another country when you can’t even help your own? I just don’t get it, I just don’t. I stand firm to that.”
“Why Even Julian Assange’s Critics Should Defend Him”
At Unherd,
addresses Julian Assange’s legal battles and the global ruling class effort to damage his image in the public eye. He writes that “the Swedish ‘investigation’ was never about bringing justice to the alleged victims or establishing the truth; it was a way of destroying Assange by setting in motion the legal machinery that has been crushing him ever since — and of course sullying his reputation by associating his name, in the public sphere, with rape.”Fazi continues: “[E]ven if you disagree with Assange’s methods or political ideas, this case should matter. For it is about so much more than one man: it is about whether you want to live in a society where journalists can expose the crimes of the powerful without the fear of being persecuted and imprisoned. If the British state allows Assange to be extradited to the US, it won’t be dealing a potentially deadly blow just to one man, but to the rule of law itself.”
“Freedom to Be ‘Wrong’: The Only Real Advantage of Democracy”
In a provocative post on
, argues that the only benefit of democracy is “the freedom to read and listen to whatever I want, and to say whatever I want” in the political sphere. However, he believes that this one advantage of democracy over other political systems is under threat from (perhaps counterintuitively) contemporary liberalism itself.Milanovic explains: “The expansive liberal ideology creates unnecessary conflict by insisting that on all important political and social issues people must share the same opinion, and by denigrating those who do not. Very often they dream, especially if older, of the return of a world of three American TV channels and two weeklies that always had the same news and the same cover page. This allegedly created a consensus of sensible people. But it did so only because others had no say. That world, I think fortunately, will never return because the Internet has made it impossible. But rather than thinking that this is a bad development, we should embrace the freedom to think whatever we want, and to say whatever we want (however strange it might seem to others). For this is probably the only real advantage of democracy.”
See my two-part essay on free speech (Part 1 and Part 2) for more on the question of democracy and liberalism in today’s political climate.
“Were the Luddites Right? Why Building Digital Trust is Key to Technological Innovation”
Daniel Dobrygowski, Head of “Governance and Trust” at the World Economic Forum, addresses the question of burgeoning global resistance to Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies. He writes: “A vital lesson from the experiences of the early Industrial Revolution is that, while the spotlight often shines on the capabilities of new technologies, what’s too often overlooked is the fundamental importance of prioritizing the needs and concerns of the individuals who use and are affected by them.”
It is interesting that the World Economic Forum is engaging directly with issues raised by the historical Luddite movement. However, the article is premised on the ideology of the inevitability of technological progress, which I critiqued in my essay this month on Handful of Earth. Beware of platitudes about “trust” and “agency” that attempt to nudge the public toward compliance.
“Torching the Google Car: Why the Growing Revolt Against Big Tech Just Escalated”
Speaking of Luddites,
of writes on the significance of a recent torching of a driverless car in San Francisco: “Now, more than ever, Silicon Valley should be paying attention. We all should. Because the torching of the Waymo car may well prove to be a turning point. If no one in power is going to listen to the growing chorus of people shouting their fears that big tech has concentrated too much wealth, influence, and control over their lives — or to the legion of New Luddites organizing against the excesses of Amazon, generative AI giants, and self-driving car companies — then this smoldering husk of an AI-driven robot may merely be the first.”Merchant continues: “Over the last decade, from Uber to crypto to web3 to generative AI, Silicon Valley has offered not a vision of the future, but a series of increasingly desperate and disparate pitches — a patchwork of driverless vehicles for financial gain, if you will, that each uniquely fail to consider any prospective social cost. The actual self-driving cars are but one very tangible manifestation of a ‘move fast and break things’ ethos that now clearly registers as toxic to people who have to live among the rubble. The original Luddites opposed ‘machinery hurtful to commonality,’ not any and all new tech. Today's self-driving car adversaries seem to be operating on a similar principle. And as the feeling of helplessness grows among those pushed around by the tech giants’ whims and schemes, the climate for resistance will only continue to ripen. The distance will shrink between the hammer and the loom — between the firework and the self-driving car.”
What grounded your thinking this week? Feel free to share in the comments.