Daily Take: The Old America Is Dying. Who Will Build the New One?

0:00I have several cherished sweaters in my closet from Quince that I wear on repeat. You know, I run cold sweaters for sweaters often and that's one of the things that Quince does best. Quince also makes premium pants, fitted tees and polos and breathable active wear. Quality basics designed to work across your wardrobe and hold up to everyday wear. Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and therefore they cut out the middlemen to your pain for high quality and not brand markup. And as such as clothing, Quince brings that same approach to everything they make from hotel quality bedding and bath and kitchen essentials and thoughtfully designed furniture. They make well-designed pieces for everyday living. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com slash Tom THOM. If free shipping on your order in 365 day returns now available on Canada and the UK too. That's q-u-i-n-c-e.com slash Tom Quince.com slash Tom.

1:00The old America is dying. Who will build the new one? The article starts with an epigraph, a quote from Antonio Gromsi, who is the famous Italian antifascist during the Mussolini era. He said the old order is dying and the new cannot yet be bored. In this interregnum, monsters appear. While Hakeem Jeffery's revealed as a trash talk to Medicare for all that he doesn't believe or in a full blown populist mo- moment in America, Trump, Bannon and the neo-fascist tech pros and billionaires fully realize what's going on and are committed to making the most of it. As our Bernie Sanders, AOC, Mommdami, El Saeed and hundreds of other democratic candidates this year. In its core, populism is a way of understanding politics as a struggle between ordinary people and a powerful elite that has stopped serving them. It's not inherently left or right-wing. It's really up way political scientists describe

2:02a moment when the majority of a population has lost faith in the existing system and is looking for alternatives to it. Arguably the greatest failure of government in the past century was the Republican Great Depression, kicked off in 1929 and lasting largely through the end of World War II. It created a populist moment that brought to power Bernie, a Bernie-like populist in America named Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It also brought to power a Trump-like populist in Germany named Adolf Hitler. Because populist movements or eras typically evolve out of desperation, a third of Americans and Germans were unemployed in the 1930s. They break open the door to people who offer solutions that radically depart from the norm. Breaking the old model and replacing it with a new one in fact is the essence of that populist pitch, be it coming from the fascist or the democratic socialist side. And make no mistake, America is now being pulled in both directions by powerful movements from

3:03both sides. A recent Pew poll found that while almost 90% of Americans trusted our government to do the right thing for them in the Eisenhower Kennedy 1960s, today that number sits at a shocking 17%. The ground for a major wrenching transformation of America has been seated, and the neo-fascist movement, which figured it out first, has, for the moment, captured control of our federal government along with about half of our states. But there's also a massive progressive pushback and dissatisfaction that if anything is amplifying the widespread populist sentiment. So which side will prevail? The creation story of this moment is found when Reagan's campaign cut a deal with the Iranian mullahs to hold onto their American hostages until after the election of 1980, thus destroying President Jimmy Carter's chance at re-election. Reagan immediately began to execute a neo-fascist vision that had been presented to him by the billionaires who funded the Heritage Foundation with their 1981 mandate for leadership that era's

4:05version of Project 2025. He destroyed the American Union movement, slashed wages for working-class people, gutted the middle class, made it harder to retire on Social Security, made deep-cut staff D.R. Social Safety and ended free college, killed Carter's solar energy programs, gave trillions of tax dollars to billionaires while raising taxes on working people, slashed funding for our public schools, and repeatedly blamed the nation's problems on black people and elites in our universities. In 1993, President Bill Clinton picked up Reagan's neoliberal mantle and brought us the end of the era of big government and the end of welfare as we know it, as Reagan's draconian tax cuts, which no Democratic president since has seriously challenged, began the modern explosion of billionaires in monopolistic corporations. President Obama, although he campaigned on the populace sounding slogan of hope and change, continued the neoliberal plan, turning our healthcare system over to a handful of massive insurance companies and their billionaire executives.

5:0845 years of neoliberalism, as I document in detail in the hidden history of neoliberalism, have taken us from two-thirds of us being in the middle class with a single paycheck in 1981, down to a mere 41% of us claiming that status, and having to have two full-time jobs to do it today. Like the Republican Great Depression devastated average voters, so has this failed neoliberal experiment bringing us to this second modern populist moment. On the neo-fascist side, there's a populist movement initially led by tech and fossil fuel billionaires that's been joined by the over 200 billionaire families and foundations, who spent nearly one in five of all dollars used in the 2024 election. They're added eight eight, excuse me, they're aided daily in their efforts by propaganda operations run by Vladimir Putin as internet trolls Elon Musk, Rupert Murdoch and Benjamin Netanyahu with APEC all committed to spreading strongman, ethno-nationalist movements across the world at the expense of democracy, and of course Donald

6:12Trump and his seizure of our federal government and police agencies. Their most compelling weapon is their control of most of our media, particularly the powerful social media sites, Fatesbook and Axe. As Peter Thiel wrote in 2010, quoted in the opening of Gilderands' brilliant new book, The NERD RIKE, quote, the initial founding vision was that we were going to use technology to change the whole world and basically overturn the monetary system of the world. The basic idea was that we could never win an election on getting certain things because we were in such a small minority, but maybe you could actually unilaterally change the world without having to convince people and beg people and plea to the people who were never going to agree with you through technological means. Technology is this incredible alternative to politics, end of quote. On the side that still embraces democracy, the populist progressive movement has been led by Bernie Sanders for decades, although that mantle is increasingly being picked up across the Democratic Party as politicians recognized over the past decade this populist moment. Multiple polls from 2016 showed that Bernie Sanders could have easily

7:17beat Trump if the Democratic Party machine and the big donors Bill Clinton brought along hadn't sabotaged Sanders. It was verified by the public. Populous voters were ready to elect a populist in that election, and the only one offered them was Trump. They rejected the neoliberalism of Reagan and the Clinton's alike, and those who voted for Democrats are clearly now opting for a reinvention of America along the social democracy lines pioneered by the Scandinavia nations. In his book, I paid Hitler in 1930, Steele Baron Fritz Tyson confesses that he was entranced by populist Hitler's promise to resurrect Germany from the depths of the Depression and its loss in World War I. He organized the first seed money that got Hitler into power in 1933 and brought along many of his fabulously rich peers. Today's heir to Hitler's authoritarian populist mantle is Trump, although Vance and Rubio among others are waiting for the king to fail so they can step into the vacuum. During that same time, the plutocrat and former New York governor Franklin Roosevelt turned his

8:21back on his own class and embraced a Bernie-like populist message, claiming that he could put America back together by taxing the morbidly rich at 90% and using government to meet workers' needs. Today's heirs to FDR's progressive populist mantle could well be billionaire Illinois governor JB Pritzker or Karl Rasmussen Alexandria Casio Cortez, although there are numerous competitors. On both sides, the message is similar. The elites and the government have failed us, feathered their own nest while ignoring us and ours, and they must be overthrown and replaced. We need radical change in the direction of our government and our culture. The only difference is that Republicans are saying they'll fix things by handing the reins of government to billionaires and the stability of society to armed, masked ICE agents. While Democrats are saying we must reverse Reaganism, tax the rich, and use that money to restore our middle class with free healthcare education and housing supports. We've been in this populist moment since the middle of the GW Bush administration,

9:23although it was a slow boil until the 2016 election. The first indication was Obama winning with a populist message and the four sure proof was Trump winning twice, unpurely populist messages. The Trump movement, however, figured out that this was where America was at long before it occurred to Democrats and Biden's efforts, although valiant, were too little and too late. So here we are at this populist moment and our country faces a binary choice, fascism, or democratic socialism. Republicans are universally lined up on the fascist side, backing Trump and ICE while feeding at the trough of their billionaire donors. That unanimity gives them tremendous power. Their only problem is that they failed to deliver for the people and the voters know it. Democrats are split between those corrupt neoliberals like Marie Gleuzincamp Perez, who are deeply in the pockets of corporate and wealthy interests, and a new and growing generation of politicians who describe themselves as democratic socialists or social Democrats. This schism, a remnant of the Clinton years, is weakening the Democratic

10:28Party's populist appeal, as many believe the Paris style Democrats will prevent the AOC or Pritzker style Democrats from actually accomplishing the transition to a social democracy that America needs. Some doubt that this is the most important election in our life in their lifetime, noting that every cycle we hear that kind of rhetoric. But given the stakes and the boiling populist energy arrayed on both sides, it's hard to imagine that this isn't the most critical one since 1932 America in 1933 Germany. So vote.

11:29And the family's on their knees. They sold the dream to billionaires. And told us we were free. While the people built the country, they were never meant to home. The old America is dying. Who will build the new one now? Will we buy before the powerful? Or finally stand our ground? This country still belongs to us. If we remember what is true, when the old America is dying,

12:31we the people built the new. We have stood here once before, when fear was just a strength, when angry men blame strangers while the ribs just keep the blame. But another road is waiting when all king can own the day, where a job can feed a family and democracy still has a say. The old America is dying. Let the broken pieces fall. We can build a nation worthy of the dignity of all. Not for billionaires or strong men. Not for hatred, dress is true.

13:34The future isn't theirs to give us. It belongs to me and you. So raise your voice. Raise your hands. Raise the promise we once knew. The old America is dying. We the people built the new.