While the pace of disastrous change in the U.S. is dizzying, we should have seen it coming. Billionaires and anti-democratic libertarians have been building up to this for decades. Much of it stems from the most profitable enterprise in history: fossil fuels.

In a chapter on taxes in her book At a Loss for Words, former CBC journalist Carol Off details efforts going back to the 1960s by “dark money” forces led by fossil fuel industrialists to overturn regulations, especially environmental, and remove barriers to companies by having the U.S. Supreme Court rule that corporations have the same rights as people, among other measures. This has substantially widened the gap between rich and poor that had been shrinking since President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1930s New Deal. The richest one per cent now have more wealth than 95 per cent of the world’s population.

Referencing research by Democracy in Chains author Nancy MacLean, Off writes of “a small band of brothers” who in the 1970s created a “complete blueprint for a post-democracy world” that people in high places would put into play. The movement was sparked by political economist James Buchanan, a pro-segregationist who believed democracy and equality were incompatible with capitalism.

  • rabber@lemmy.ca
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    11 hours ago

    I saw David Suzuki treating the waitress like shit in a restaurant here in Victoria last year

    Edit: I want to add more cuz I fuckin hate David Suzuki. Virtue signaling rich piece of shit. Talks big about indigenous issues but owns land on several of the gulf islands.

    Know several people who have met him and dudes a total asshole

    • Arghblarg@lemmy.ca
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      9 hours ago

      Sadly, can corroborate. He was a jerk to my future wife at a book-signing 'cuz she didn’t plonk a freshly-purchased copy of the new book he was reading from to get signed, but another one, after she gushed about how much his environmentalism and views had influenced her. I mean, yeah an author does readings and book signings to sell books, but a fan has still taken time to travel, sit and listen, and maybe will buy after the event.

      • rabber@lemmy.ca
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        8 hours ago

        No he’s a regular guest at the university I work at and I’ve heard so many nasty things. He’s a fraud.

          • rabber@lemmy.ca
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            7 hours ago

            I would say that someone who says they care about the environment but owns multiple acreages on unceded indigenous territory is a fraud. He certainly doesn’t put his money where his mouth is.

            Fuck anyone who treats their waitress poorly btw. It’s a given you are a waste of skin if you do this.