The US political system is showing clear signs of systemic breakdown, according to a new book by Katherine Stewart, a journalist who specializes in the religious right.
Money, Lies and God
The circulation of democratic ideals is being blocked by concentrated wealth (“huge concentrations of wealth have destabilized the political system”) while Christian nationalist toxins accumulate unchecked. The filtering mechanisms that should maintain healthy democratic function – like reasoned debate and pluralistic values – are being rejected in favor of what Stewart calls “brutal acts of will.”
The symptoms are clear in how these movements operate:
Wealthy donors acting like blood clots, restricting the flow of democratic participation
Religious institutions being corrupted from their original purpose (like the 1986 Catholic bishops’ economic justice message being co-opted)
Strategic infection of young talent into anti-democratic career paths
Systematic poisoning of election integrity discourse
Failure of democratic forces to mount an effective immune response due to lack of coordination
Stewart’s diagnosis suggests the condition is advanced but perhaps not yet terminal, which delays sufficient reaction.
There’s no feature as of yet in the American political system that would ensure that the Maga movement is going to rule indefinitely.
But without aggressive intervention to restore healthy democratic function, the prognosis is grim.
The key point: Just as renal failure requires early active medical intervention, saving democracy requires active resistance and coordination immediately from pro-democratic forces. Silence and inaction only allow disease to progress.
Elon Musk exemplifies the sunk cost fallacy in action. When faced with evidence that his predictions or projects aren’t succeeding, he often escalates his commitment rather than changing course. His response pattern mirrors the Vietnam War syndrome, where military commitments escalated despite mounting evidence of strategic failure. When criticized, he typically amplifies his original claims to absurd heights and attacks detractors, transforming what could be learning opportunities into exercises in tragically doubling down into deaths.
Despite more and more tragedy for owners of Tesla, and anyone around them, the CEO just said this nonsense to investors about his 2025 safety prediction.
Source: Twitter
He jumps from 10 to 100 without explanation and then dumps out “won’t crash” for 2025.
Four people were seriously hurt in a crash at the north end of the Interstate 5 bridge in Vancouver on Friday night and a driver faces charges, according to the Vancouver Fire Department.
Just before midnight, firefighters responded to a two-car crash at the I-5 South bridge, where a 2018 Tesla had smashed into the back end of a 2024 Tesla, according to investigators with the Washington State Patrol. Both cars then crashed into the left concrete barrier on the bridge.
Police in Surrey responded to a single-vehicle collision on a rural road near Mud Bay Park around 8 a.m. Saturday.
Surrey Police Staff Sgt. Lindsey Houghton said in an email to the Now-Leader that the black Tesla appeared to have gone into the ditch and flipped onto its roof in the 131A block of Colebrook Road.
Tesla crash more than ever, and much faster than they are made. So many crash, Tesla can’t keep up with replacing them.
Key Observations: Data clearly shows that both serious incidents (orange line) and fatal incidents (pink line) are increasing at a steeper rate than the fleet size growth (blue line). This is particularly evident from 2021 onwards, where: Fleet size (blue) shows a linear growth of about 1x per year. Serious incidents (orange) show an exponential growth curve, reaching nearly 5x by 2024. Fatal incidents (pink) also show a steeper-than-linear growth, though not as dramatic as serious incidents. The divergence between the blue line (fleet growth) and the incident lines (orange and pink) indicates that incidents are indeed accelerating faster than the production/deployment of new vehicles. Source: Tesladeaths.com and NHTSA
Consider 2016 for documented evidence of fraud, when Elon Musk not only promised that Tesla driverless would be solved completely by 2017 but also SpaceX would put a man on Mars by 2022.
In reality SpaceX hasn’t even come close to Mars, even though NASA was able to do it very successfully 20 years ago now. Instead Musk has been grounded for exploding rockets and showering people with toxic debris.
Despite the setback, [fraudster Elon Musk] indicated optimism about the timeline for the next launch, suggesting it might proceed as early as next month. “Success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed!” he quipped, sharing viral clips of the fiery event. Under FAA regulations, SpaceX must conduct a thorough investigation to identify corrective actions, which the agency will review before authorizing further launches.
It’s a wonder Tesla manslaughter robots haven’t been grounded for far worse, such as lighting California on fire.
He’s spreading clips of environmental disasters to generate attention, while indicating optimism, calling for deregulation, and apparently laughing all the way to the bank from increases in death and destruction for his own entertainment.
Roman writers found the relative empowerment of Celtic women remarkable. In southern Britain, the Late Iron Age Durotriges tribe often buried women with substantial grave goods. Here we analyse 57 ancient genomes from Durotrigian burial sites and find an extended kin group centred around a single maternal lineage, with unrelated (presumably inward migrating) burials being predominantly male.
The report says essentially wealth and power centered around women. Men would enter into the extended families of these women. Romans characterized this matrilocal system as “barbaric”, in one of history’s great ironies. It’s a clear case of propaganda serving political ends rather than any objective assessment of societal sophistication.
Archaeological evidence now suggests the powerful women of Celtic societies possessed sophisticated features that Rome actually lacked and thus was jealous and fearful.
Consider how these two societies handled wealth and power. Rome’s system was brutally simple: the eldest male (paterfamilias) held absolute power over family, property and even life itself. By contrast, the genetic evidence from Durotrigian graves reveals something far more sophisticated: extended families built around powerful maternal lineages, with complex networks distributing wealth and influence through daughters and granddaughters while strategically incorporating talented male newcomers through marriage.
This differed from Rome’s oppressive patriarchy in its remarkable stability. While Roman families regularly battled and tore themselves apart in inheritance disputes, the archaeological record tells a different story for Celtic Britain: generations of wealthy female burials in the same locations, with consistent grave goods suggesting unbroken lines of power and influence. These Celtic “matriarchies” achieved this stability through thoughtful power-sharing between blood relatives and married-in males, avoiding the messy bloody succession crises that plagued Rome’s male-dominated system.
Rome’s dismissal of these sophisticated systems as “barbaric” served multiple ends. At a basic level, painting conquered peoples as uncivilized made conquest easier to justify to their own population. But there was likely a deeper fear at work: the Durotrigian system represented a sophisticated competing model of social organization that directly threatened Rome’s patriarchal power structure. Rather than acknowledge or learn from it, they chose to deliberately mischaracterize it as primitive. It’s a strategy that would be repeated countless times in later colonial encounters, as advanced indigenous systems were painted as “savage” to justify ruthless extraction before destruction.
The archaeological evidence from Britain forces us to confront an uncomfortable truth: Rome’s accusations of barbarism often masked their own limitations and insecurities when faced with more sophisticated social systems.
These ancient DNA findings both rewrite our understanding of Celtic Britain and they invite us to question how many other advanced social structures throughout history were deliberately mischaracterized and destroyed, taking with them valuable lessons in human organization that we’re only now beginning to rediscover.
a blog about the poetry of information security, since 1995
