Five Things: Destroying Confidence, Elon Musks Failed Ideas, Chaos Fascism, Saving Democracy, Back Work like 90s.
It's Sunday, again. Read this now.
Hello and welcome back to Five Things!
I don’t want to, but I guess I have to. After the so called “liberation day” we are facing a global recession as Trump is raising tariffs for most countries, except for Russia and North Korea. It is a desperate and ill-guided attempt to get more manufacturing jobs back into the USA. Trump and his bro Musk are also trying to wreak havoc on the democratic institutions and waging a war on the poor. We cannot ignore this, we have to deal with this threat to democracy. The United States have been the most important partner of Germany and I don’t want to see the USA turning into a fascist state. Not just because I care about my friends in the United States, but also for really selfish reasons. In Germany, we typically get developments that happen in the US about 5 years later. I really am not interested in a further shift to the right. With more than 1200 demonstrations against Trump and Musk to take place in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., I remain hopeful that a strong opposition to Trump will emerge, reclaiming the public discourse.
Read on, my dear!
How a Con Man President Is Destroying Confidence
“Trump’s tariffs were, instead, determined by a crude, and, well, stupid formula that made no economic sense. It’s still an open question whether that formula was determined by some junior staffer or derived from ChatGPT and Grok.
Maybe the next movie in the Terminator franchise will be “Terminator: Trade War,” in which Skynet realizes that it doesn’t have to destroy humanity with nuclear bombs, it can accomplish its goals simply by giving bad economic advice.” - I was hoping for an economic rebound in Germany, instead we’re getting a global economic crisis, thanks to all the MAGA idiots.
The Failed Ideas That Drive Elon Musk
“Muskism isn’t the beginning of the future. It’s the end of a story that started more than a century ago, in the conflict between capital and labor and between autocracy and democracy. The Gilded Age of robber barons and wage-labor strikes gave rise to the Bolshevik Revolution, Communism, the first Red Scare, World War I and Fascism. That battle of ideas produced the technocracy movement, and far more lastingly, it also produced the New Deal and modern American liberalism. Technocracy lost because technocracy is incompatible with freedom.” - let’s make sure it loses again. I didn’t know that Elon Musk has a belief system deeply rooted in his family.
Donald Trump Has Invented Something New and Chilling: Chaos Fascism
“Across human history, fascism has been imposed upon democracy mostly in one of two ways. First, by brute force—a military coup, that sort of thing. Second, a bit more stealthily, and legally—through legislation, executive decrees, and court decisions that hand more power to the leader.
Donald Trump is inventing a new way. Call it chaos fascism. Destroy the institutions of democracy until they’re so disfigured or dysfunctional that a majority no longer cares about them.” - also, create so much chaos all at once that the public cannot focus on the big picture anymore.
How to Save a Democracy
“If American democracy is to prevail, pro-democracy forces must follow the handbook that has enabled oppositions to stop would-be autocrats in other countries. They should coordinate to defend and expand their institutional powers while they have them, wield them to obstruct Trump’s authoritarian agenda, strengthen grassroots resistance efforts, and protect the activists, officeholders, and other individuals exposed to retribution from the administration. The alternative may be that democracy slips away while they wait.” - indeed, the response so far has been hardly noticable, at least from abroad.
Why You Should Work Like It’s the ’90s
“In the United States, employees work more hours than those in many other rich nations. As more white-collar employers require their staff to be in the office full-time again, workers have the right to demand something in exchange: a return to the norms of the 1990s, before smartphones made everyone instantly reachable.” - I worked in the 90s while I was a university student. I cannot say it was that glamorous. I prefer to have a fluid definition between home and work and as a boss I am perfectly fine when my employees divide their time as they see fit, as long as the work gets done.
That’s it. Have a great Sunday! If you missed last Sunday’s edition of Five Things, have a look here:
— Nico