How Did American Capitalism Get so Rotten?

 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VBh3WS6HzNE

 

Republicans say they hate communists. So why do they like Donald Trump?

Though Trump may fail, Americans’ acquiescence as he grabs for power raises a question for those who freak out over Mamdani’s city-run bodegas: why is Trump’s lurch to take over the American economy any better than what they hear from the Democratic Socialists of America?…

 https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/oct/04/trump-communism-republicans

 

American Christianity Is a Capitalist Cult (Genetically Modified Skeptic on YouTube)

Wealth is the American Christian God.

Interview: 

https://youtu.be/5NPU6cBUWGU?si=Ze_UxYRkEQP4NXiE

Can You Be a Bible-Believing Christian and a Socialist? (Dan McClellan and Dan Beecher; Data Over Dogma podcast on YouTube)

Pastor Mark Driscoll says you can't be a Bible-believing Christian and a socialist, and that "thou shalt not steal" settles the question.

This week, we take that argument apart: what the Ten Commandments actually presuppose, what the eighth-century prophets had to say about creditors and land consolidation, and why the economics of the New Testament look nothing like Driscoll's. Ancient Israel and Judah weren't running a capitalist economy or a socialist one, but the text has a great deal to say about who gets protected and who gets ground down.

Chapters:

0:00 Welcome and Twisted Scripture
0:48 Who Is Mark Driscoll?
1:46 The Claim: No Christian Socialists
2:52 Does Ownership Prove Capitalism?
3:31 What Socialism Actually Means
5:16 Fire Departments and Safety Nets
5:55 Ancient Economies, Modern Categories
6:53 The Generational Wealth Argument
9:28 Sell What You Own
10:07 Prophets Against Predatory Lending
11:44 Writing From Outside of Power
13:10 The Ten Commandments Problem
15:04 The Eighth Century Debt Crisis
17:23 Jubilee, Gleanings, and Deuteronomy
19:25 "Taxation Is Theft"
20:50 Acts 4 and 5: Communalism
21:31 Individual Charity vs Government
24:00 Render Unto Caesar
25:30 Why Churches Aren't Enough
27:31 Wealth for Everybody
28:11 Wrap-Up

Interview: 

https://youtu.be/sOaVL_iPWDo?si=vlBVPuS_9gvXs_VD

The SpaceX IPO made Musk a trillionaire. The old rules of capitalism no longer apply

All of it is arbitrary – based on the hype and will of one man with a giant ego and an insatiable thirst for money and power. It’s built on self-dealing. There’s no accountability. No checks. No balances...

 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/12/spacex-ipo-elon-musk-trillionaire

 

Chris Hedges. He's absolutely brilliant.

 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/cxELKjjUUgI

 

Catherine Rampell and Scott Lincicome on Trump's Tariffs (Al Franken podcast on YouTube)

It’s been over a year since Trump’s “Liberation Day” when he rolled out his global tariffs, but the Supreme Court struck those down resulting in chaos and confusion about what happens next. Guest Host Catherine Rampell, of The Bulwark and MSNOW, welcomes Scott Lincicome, VP of economics at the Cato Institute, to try to make sense of how the 166 billion dollars in tariffs will be refunded to businesses that were impacted. Catherine and Scott break down the bureaucratic red tape of the refund process, why small businesses are once again getting left behind, and the valid fears of political retaliation that are keeping major corporations silent.

And with the U.S. government taking multi-billion-dollar equity stakes in everything from steel mills to quantum computing, we discuss the rise of “state capitalism.” It’s not exactly the free market that Republicans have been cheering for generations.

Plus, after Trump’s landmark trip to China, many Americans are experiencing what Scott calls “China envy.”
Interview: 

https://youtu.be/_xuSoxexbSw?si=emIcpGUE39GkY5kJ

History Minute (097): The beating heart of the American economy

Elizabeth Kennedy writes: 

This nascent capitalism of 1619 evolved into a highly efficient system capable of powering an industrial revolution. By 1860, cotton—grown on Indigenous lands expropriated using militarized violence—comprised 59% of American exports. It was, as the saying went, “king.” Other countries could not compete with a nation that codified a caste of workers as non-human and legalized violence as a management technique. As the sociologist and ethnographer Matthew Desmond observes, “Given the choice between modernity and barbarism, prosperity and poverty, lawfulness and cruelty, democracy and totalitarianism, America chose all of the above.” Human bondage was the “beating heart” of this new American economy, pumping wealth to Southern planters, raw materials to Northern mills and British industrialists, and capital to European bankers.

https://www.promarket.org/2023/02/01/to-build-an-equitable-economy-we-must-understand-capitalisms-racist-heritage/

Elizabeth Kennedy is an Associate Professor of Law and Social Responsibility at the Sellinger School of Business and Management at Loyola University Maryland. Her research focuses on the evolution and application of law and policy that advances racial equity, environmental justice, and worker power. A former union organizer, she earned her J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, served as a labor policy advisor to the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy, and practiced law with the New York firm Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP.

J.D. Vance ally Chris Buskirk is planning MAGA’s post-Trump future - The Washington Post

Vance told The Post in a statement that Buskirk is an "original thinker" who saw, "before almost anyone," how the "right combination of ideas, organizing and funding can ensure lasting political success for the Republican Party."

Outside of electoral politics, Buskirk's projects aim to push unrestrained capitalism into American life…

Richard Painter, a corporate law professor at the University of Minnesota who served as chief ethics lawyer in the Bush White House, said this influx of interest in Rockbridge, 1789 and Executive Branch creates the appearance of a "pay to play" network, of people who are paying to get access to administration officials or the Trump family...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/11/04/chris-buskirk-maga-vance-post-trump/

 

Greta Thunberg’s “Super Power” vs. Fascists and Liberals (Pt 1) (Conspirituality podcast)

Greta Thunberg is a burr in the ass of the powerful throughout the world—and not only for rightwing sociopaths. Increasingly, as she grows up, learns more, and networks with other activists around the world, she’s become a scourge for liberals as well.

Many of them would prefer she remain a child, providing a theatre of emotional catharsis for a climate crisis industry more interested in raising money from green economy donors than forcing change.

Now, as Thunberg broadens her target to capitalism and colonialism writ large, it’s more and more clear that she’s confronting what autistic philosopher Robert Chapman calls “the empire of normality”, from her lived experience of autism, about which so many of the conspiracy theories we cover here swirl.
Interview: 

https://www.conspirituality.net/episodes/brief-greta-thunberg-super-power

Chapters

Part one:

• Seizure of the Madleen
• Why do Fascists Hate Greta
• Why are Liberals Backing Away from Greta?
• Neurodiversity and activism

Part two (coming soon):

• Masking, Burnout, Contemplation
• Hamster Wheel of Capitalism
• Parenting in Humility

 

Peter Thiel’s Palantir poses a threat to America

As Thiel has written: "The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women – two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians – have rendered the notion of 'capitalist democracy' into an oxymoron." 

Hello? 

If "capitalist democracy" is becoming an oxymoron, it's not because of public assistance or because women got the right to vote. It's because billionaire capitalists like Musk and Thiel are intent on killing democracy…

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/30/peter-thiel-palantir-threat-to-americans

 

Brief: The Cult of Crossfit (Conspirituality podcast)

When cultural and psychological anthropologist Katie Rose Hejtmanek set out to study Crossfit, she knew she had to throw herself into it fully. For seven years, she traveled to “boxes” around the world while committing herself to her local Brooklyn box. What she uncovered was a rabid fan base that deeply values community and a business model that offers a refreshing response to unfettered capitalism—as well as the misogyny, racism, and militarized Christian themes that inform this beloved and despised fitness regimen. She joins Derek to discuss her new book, The Cult of CrossFit: Christianity and the American Exercise Phenomenon.

Interview: 

https://www.conspirituality.net/episodes/brief-the-cult-of-crossfit

Pope Bob Vs. Trump World (Conspirituality podcast, episode #258)

The most annoying convert TradCath in the world, JD Vance, whose cherubic face belies all his bootlicking aggression, gets his moment with Pope Bob. Usha stands behind him in a black mantilla. He hands the pontiff an oversized envelope: an invitation from Donald and Melania to a White House dinner. Bob smiles guardedly as he takes it and without looking at it, setting it on his desk. “I’ll read that at some point,” Vance sputters, “of course, of course.”

The scene is set for the Church-State tension of whatever phase of global fascism we’re now entering. These ghouls who jail students, disappear immigrants, and lobby for the Trump Gaza resort, shuffle into the Vatican with hats in hand to meet a fellow American who is nothing like their boss, asking for pats on the head, wondering what kind of alliance they can forge, perhaps through anti-wokeness discourse.

The enigmatic response from Pope Bob sums up where we all are as we read the incense swirls for whether he’s going to keep steering the world’s 1.4B Catholics against the tides of late-stage capitalism and environmental protection, Francis-style.
Interview: 

https://www.conspirituality.net/episodes/258-pope-bob-vs-trump-world

Maga Catholics are on a collision course with Leo XIV. They have good reason to fear him | Julian Coman | The Guardian

In a column published at the weekend, the American Catholic commentator Sohrab Ahmari referenced a sermon by Leo from last year, in which the future pope acknowledged that the issue of migration "is a huge problem, and it's a problem worldwide" that needed to be solved. This recognition, Ahmari suggested, could at least open up the possibility of fruitful future dialogue with the Maga Catholics in and around the White House. 

He failed, however, to quote the sermon's next passage: "Every one of us, whether we were born in the United States of America or on the North Pole, we are all given the gift of being created in the image and likeness of God, and the day we forget that is the day we forget who we are." Words for Vance and Rubio, who met Leo after Sunday's inaugural mass in Rome, to ponder...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/21/maga-catholics-leo-xiv-trump-anti  

 

Anthea Butler On Trump’s Lack of Empathy (Bradley Onishi and Daniel Miller; Straight White American Jesus podcast)

Brad speaks to Professor Anthea Butler, a captain in the Biden campaign’s “Catholics for Biden” initiative, and chair of the Religious Studies department at the University of Pennsylvania. They discuss the details of Trump’s COVID diagnosis and how his recklessness is fueled by four things: 

• Prosperity Gospel 
• positive thinking, 
•  racism, 
• capitalism,  
• hypermasculinity. 

These themes ground a conversation that ranges from Trump’s lack of empathy for Americans, especially BIPOC, who have contracted the virus, his supporters’ call for empathy after telling the nation that it was okay if “grandma dies” to save the economy, the conservative Evangelicals and Catholics who held a superspreader prayer rally at the Lincoln Memorial, and the belief that whiteness is a shield against the iniquities that plague other people.
Interview: 

https://www.straightwhiteamericanjesus.com/episodes/bonus-content-anthea-butler-on-trumps-lack-of-empathy/

Senate report: How private equity ‘gutted’ dozens of U.S. hospitals - The Washington Post

"The only real solution is to pass laws preventing private equity ownership of certain critical businesses. Extractive capitalism should flourish only where it can't kill people."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/10/17/private-equity-steward-hospital-bankruptcy/

——-

RFK Jr Says the Devil Measures Carbon (Conspirituality podcast)

“God talks to human beings through many vectors. But nowhere with such detail, and grace and joy, as through creation. When we destroy nature, we diminish our capacity to sense the divine.”

With this April 2023 tweet, RFK Jr inaugurated his presidential campaign, which has now folded into a daily ritual of Trump bootlicking.

Now, Bobby is telling Tucker Carlson and the world that climate change cannot be solved through commitment to the “carbon orthodoxy.”

“It’s not about quantifying stuff,” he says. “That's what the devil does. But the reason we're preserving these things is because we love our children.”

What does this mean?

Matthew tracks the sources and implications of Kennedy’s broken climate discourse—rooted in St. Francis of Assisi, appealing to gentleman farmers and homeschoolers, allergic to the scientific abstractions that give us a truly global picture, and always committed to the free market.
Interview: 

https://www.conspirituality.net/episodes/brief-rfk-jr-says-the-devil-measures-carbon

Inequality of the Economy: Interviewing Secretary Yellen | The Problem With Jon Stewart

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/X9fU89gj_AA

Supreme Court to decide if the government can seize control of YouTube and Twitter - Vox

This anti-capitalist Republicanism, moreover, is hardly limited to DeSantis. Among other things, it's penetrated deep into the Federalist Society — the powerful legal organization that plays an enormous role in selecting Republican appointees to the federal bench. During the Biden administration, the Federalist Society's annual conventions have featured an array of paranoid speakers making grandiose claims about corporate America, such as "massive corporations are pursuing a common and mutually agreed upon agenda to destroy American freedom."… 

As the Verge's Nilay Patel colorfully explained, running a profitable social media company "means you have to ban racism, sexism, transphobia, and all kinds of other speech that is totally legal in the United States but reveals people to be total assholes." These sorts of assholes also apparently have many friends in the Florida and Texas state legislatures…

https://www.vox.com/scotus/2024/2/15/24049045/supreme-court-first-amendment-netchoice-moody-paxton-youtube-twitter-facebook

Billionaires are lining up to fund Donald Trump’s anti-democratic agenda

Democracy is compatible with capitalism only if democracy is in the driver's seat, so it can rein in capitalism's excesses. 

But if capitalism and its moneyed interests are in charge, those excesses inevitably grow to the point where they are able to extinguish democracy and ride roughshod over the common good. That's why 

Trump's neofascism – and the complicity of today's Republican party with it – are attracting the backing of some of the richest people in the US...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/21/donald-trump-anti-democratic-agenda-billionaires-neofascism