

Letās trace a line from Jimmy Carterās presidency through to Trump and the broader neoliberal catastrophe we inhabit today⦠Connect the dots with meā¦
- Carter deregulated key industries (airlines, trucking, finance), under the logic that competition would lower prices. This deregulation began dismantling worker protections and union power.
He appointed Paul Volcker, whose interest rate hikes (to āfight inflationā) tanked employment, crushed organized labor, and shifted power toward capital. This āVolcker Shockā initiated decades of wage stagnation and debt reliance for working people.
And he began rolling back the welfare state while not building meaningful alternatives, opening space for Reagan to fully gut it.
The economic consensus began tilting toward free-market absolutism: austerity, privatization, and attacks on labor.
- Oh boy!
Afghanistan: Carter (through Brzezinski) greenlit support to Mujahideen warlords before the Soviet invasion. This led to a brutal proxy war that helped incubate violent jihadist networks, including the early precursors to al-Qaeda.
Iran: Carter supported the Shah until the regime collapsed. The hostage crisis and U.S. blowback paved the way for U.S. militarization of the Middle East.
Israel/Egypt Accord (Camp David): Removed Egypt as a counterweight to Israel, entrenching U.S.-Israel hegemony in the region, with Palestine marginalized entirely.
The U.S. became further entangled in Middle Eastern conflicts and oil politics, setting the stage for endless wars, 9/11, and Islamophobia.
- Reagan didnāt invent neoliberalism, he codified what Carter started:
He Used Carterās deregulation as precedent to further destroy labor, defund public goods, and privatize government. He pushed tax cuts for the rich, shifting wealth upward. And he expanded the security state and laid ideological groundwork for the racist turn in U.S. policy.
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Clinton continued deregulation (Glass-Steagall repeal). He was responsible for mass incarceration (ātough on crimeā laws), and he signed NAFTA, decimating domestic manufacturing and labor organizing, and he āreformedā welfare which deepened poverty.
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Obama bailed out Wall Street, not homeowners. He expanded drone warfare and surveillance, and he sold a technocratic sheen over systemic rot, giving way to disillusionment.
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Neoliberalismās mask fell off, the culmination of 40 years of rot, Trump used populist rhetoric and fascist tactics to deepen wealth inequality, gutted regulations, and emboldened white nationalism.
Iāll skip Biden and his genocide and go back to Trump, since Trump is continuing it, and weāre back at the end of the line, what shape did it make? A pile of shit on fire.
Climate catastrophe unaddressed, mass surveillance and militarization is well entrenched, working-class despair fuels far-right movements, and Palestine remains occupied and brutalized with U.S. complicity.
All this starts not with Trump, but with liberal acquiescence to capital: Carterās pivot away from postwar social democracy toward corporate and military alignment.
I love Pop OS because it got me back into Linux after ditching it for windows for the last 10 years, partly to do .net development and partly because I hated the state of Ubuntu/Unity.
As soon as cosmic is stable and easy to install on Nix Iāll switch to it.