Joan Westenberg (@Daojoan) lays out the cold truth of what's happening around us...
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The future of the United States is no longer decided in Washington. That ship has sailed. It's now dictated in the bunkers, private jets, and compounds of an ideological Silicon Valley, by billionaires and wealth extremists intent on treating democracy as a nuisance that must be swatted away. These men — raised on a rabid press that mythologized their existence in their lifetimes, called them Wunderkind and treated them as something above and beyond mere mortality — have consumed a steady diet of libertarian and authoritarian fan fiction and, in its throes, conceived of a new order, designed to serve their lofty egos at any and all cost.
The Internet was supposed to be the great equalizer. It was meant to be a force that shattered hierarchies and gave power to ordinary people. Instead, it enabled the wealth extraction and avarice of a cartel of overfed, over-pampered despots who enriched themselves in the name of innovation, bled the world to the point of near-total collapse, intellectualized their power fetish and now view public institutions as the final obstacles to be dismantled in their egotistical, delusional pursuit of More.
America's decline into fascism was enabled, supported, nurtured, and encouraged by tech billionaires and CEOs who are so far removed from humanity and human flourishing that they imagine themselves better stewards of our existence than we are. It was preventable. It is deplorable. And it should be an affront to anyone who believes in freedom, determination, and autonomy.
This is not an abstract debate or a distant concern. This is not a conspiracy theory, although, on some level, it is clearly a conspiracy. The authoritarian slide in the United States is happening today, enabled by billionaires who see governance as a tool for personal gain. Democracy is being dismantled in real-time, not through military coups but through corporate takeovers, algorithmic propaganda, and the unchecked influence of wealth.
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FULL ESSAY -- https://www.theindex.media/the-fascist-tech-bro-takeover-is-here-2/
