Where to begin when hope has been buried under racism, hate and political division?

"Vote for us because the other guy is a fascist" is not a plan. It's lazy and evidence of a break with reality, not to mention an abject failure to listen and learn.

No society can flourish without a vision and the courage to have the audacity of hope. The bottom 90% of American workers have been indoctrinated to believe that mediocrity is progress. It’s the same fantasy that portrays trickle-down economics delivering prosperity to those doing the heavy lifting, while the rich manage all the wealth and control the tap. Even a teaspoonful of critical thinking would leave the average American scratching their head. Human nature dictates that if you hand all the money to the people at the top of the food chain, expecting them to share it, you will leave empty-handed and bitterly disappointed.

Here’s what you need to be thinking about, because rest assured, those at the top are salivating at what they see as the answer to them keeping even more of the wealth you help generate, as they sit in their counting houses. The cost of your labour is what stands in the way of their obscene wealth exploding yet further. Just as in the 1990’s, when corporate America threw the US manufacturing workforce under the bus to mine cheap labour in China. The next few years will see the same wealth owners throw millions of today’s American workers under the same bus, this time fueled by artificial intelligence. There is no loyalty when it comes to greed.

The irony is that you are, as we speak, paying for the technology that will throw your family and your future on the scrap heap. Your taxpayer dollars are handed out like candy in subsidies and tax breaks to fund the development and implementation of a technology that has been taken hostage to ensure that job security is a relic of the past. Higher electricity costs and environmental damage are just the icing on the cake of the perfect crime perpetrated on American society in the sole pursuit of profit and wealth.

AI has the power to democratise wealth creation, but that would represent a threat to the overlord vision that the tech oligarchs, in partnership with the most corrupt administration in American history, plan to deliver. Artificial Intelligence unquestionably has the potential to change the world for the better. Used responsibly, it can educate and streamline workflows across all aspects of life, improving work-life balance while still delivering increasing economic growth and with it, societal prosperity. It operates at its best when partnered with humans whose brains are far more capable than those of today's AI. It’s the partnership that is the magic sauce, and that is where China is once again ahead of the curve.

Tragically, the social benefits in this greed-driven administration do not even register on its roadmap; any use for the betterment of society is labelled as woke. For them, the sole focus is on cutting labour costs to increase profit. Welcome to social Darwinism. Profit is their sole focus, other than, of course, military use, which is already in play and an important part of the now trillion-dollar DOD budget. Let’s not forget, of course, the massive investment in AI surveillance technology, not just within the DOD but also Homeland Security, where it has been deployed to build an extensive state surveillance network under the guise of supporting the deportation of illegal immigrants. This is YOUR MONEY that’s being spent to spy on YOU.

The use of AI to support mass deportation is merely a rehearsal for the technology to be used to identify perceived political enemies and those expressing dissent. The whole open assault on Europe is because regulations protect citizens from what is being rolled out in the US. For Trump, his executive order preventing state regulation of AI is a clear sign that, despite MAGA’s alleged obsession with freedom and free speech, this administration intends to dictate precisely what represents privacy and free speech regardless of the US Constitution.

American society is built around the same old class system that has defined Western democracies for decades. Education has long been promoted as the gateway to social mobility. The US public school system has long failed students who are forced to adopt a Hunger Games approach to learning, having to dodge bullets and fight for educational opportunities. At the same time, the children of the chosen few, consider top-tier private education a right by virtue of their family wealth.

Status in a capitalist society is everything. Elevation to the ‘middle class’ has long been the goal of the ‘working class.’ In a game created by the rich to divide and conquer. The size of your house and the car you drive have become the measure of who you are in a ‘fake it while you make it’ world. The truth is, it’s just an entertaining game show for those breathing the rarified air of the top 1%. It’s amusing for the rich to watch the middle class create an illusion of wealth for their working-class rivals by showing off their mortgaged homes and leased cars, only for a medical event or a missed paycheck to collapse their well-crafted illusion.

So here’s the thing about AI: if you are looking at the most vulnerable sectors of the job market, the crosshairs of labour-saving opportunities are trained overwhelmingly on jobs held by the well paid, well-educated middle class, many of whom are already shouldering tens of thousands in student debt (not something the children of the top 1% have to concern themselves with). The bottom line is that it’s always been a rigged system, but the days of the middle class are all but over. AI will define a simple 2-tier society: the wealthy and the rest.

The theory that no job is safe has some merit as we begin to witness the intersection of AI and robotics. Nowhere is this more evident than at a company like Amazon, which is using this intersection point to replace tens of thousands of workers. It’s no wonder we are seeing private equity firms like BlackRock buy up trailer parks in preparation for wealth contraction among the bottom 90%. I’m fully expecting to see sprawling refugee-style tented camps offering the next generation of private equity-owned social housing for those displaced by AI. The tightrope those at the top of the food chain are walking is how to manage the socioeconomic cleansing of their new world. If you think the massive expansion of private detention warehouses is solely to support the deportation of immigrants, you need to seek urgent medical help.

The state is creating a permissive environment to build a new society populated by native born Americans. They have already hinted at deporting those who hold joint citizenship or have a right to remain. I hate to go all Darwinian on you, but if you don’t have critical thinking in your intellectual armoury, I suggest you invest in some, because if this new vision for America comes to pass, there is no way back. They are putting the infrastructure in place RIGHT NOW to support a societal realignment. Institutionalisation of the homeless, the disabled and the vulnerable represents a profit opportunity moving forward as we see the potential emergence of ‘freedom cities’, with Washington taking pole position to be the first.

America is already a very different place than it was a year ago, but the terrifying thing is, the administration has quite literally normalised tyranny. When I wake up each morning with a cup of tea and read the news of what’s happening in America, NOTHING shocks me anymore. It’s just another page in the journalised cruel decline of humanity into a Hunger Games society. What’s truly terrifying is when I read the UK news, I see the same political cancer seeping into British culture, primarily funded by US money and social media propaganda.

My biggest fear is not whether truth, justice and common sense can prevail because there is no question that they can. The American people could bring this administration to its knees in three months, if not sooner. The question, however, is whether a ‘me, me, me’ society can make the sacrifices required to make it happen? In November, I started writing about targeted economic disengagement and its potential to deliver political change.

The truth of the matter is, Trump has broken the system to such an extent that there is no political solution to this problem. The Democrats can’t fix it properly because the party is infected with the same corporate interests that brought us to this moment. I’m not arguing that their intent is the same as this administration's malign ambition; that’s clearly not the case. They are happy to apply regulations to protect people, but they are as addicted to corporate money as the Republican Party, hence my often tagging them as Republican lite, a party currently bankrupt of ideas, with little appetite for transformative change.

We can debate political ideology all day long. However, the truth is that cleaning house requires ambition to be more socially responsive than it seems corporate Democrats are prepared to be. They enjoy the gravy train too much to put people before their own self-enrichment. This is a BIG problem that’s way above my pay grade and seems beyond a leadership team that is feeding from the same trough. What I do know, however, is that the party can’t operate without funding supplied by the Democratic base. Just like a government can only govern by consent, the Democratic Party can only function with donations from its base. So tell me who really has the power in both instances?

I stepped away from my economic disengagement proposal when spending blackouts became a social media fashion statement. Democratic advocacy groups competed for engagement and fame with myriad ‘big beautiful boycotts,’ blackouts, and calls for a general strike. How did that go, I hear you say? It went exactly the way corporate America expected. Divide and conquer was their response, and what do you know, it worked. Results indicate holiday retail showed resilience, with major reports from NRF, Visa, and Mastercard indicating growth around 3.7-4.2%, surpassing $1 trillion for the first time. The problem is, Americans are retail addicts, and the 70% of US GDP comes from consumer spending.

Economic disengagement can be a devastating weapon when it comes to making politicians sit up and listen, but it can’t be used as a social media vanity project; it has to be a singular, focused, sustained action, not defined by politics, but by public rejection of the wealth disparity. As for general strikes, it is simply not viable in the current economic climate. It would be a gift to employers already seeking opportunities to trim fat from their payrolls. Don’t get me wrong, general strikes can deliver change, but they have to attract mass SUSTAINED participation, and in my opinion, too many Americans would be hurt by such an act of potential self-harm.

To make economic disengagement work, you have to spend time identifying pinch points and developing a strategy for an easy-to-participate-in mass campaign of economic resistance. You need a campaign board of economists who can define a roadmap to identify economic vulnerabilities, a team of top social influencers, and a messaging strategy to drive broad participation. This is not about targeting companies that support the administration; it’s about an all-out assault on corporate America, while boosting local and small businesses.

It has the potential to be far more devastating than any political campaign, and if framed correctly, it can be a war against corporate exploitation rather than a political fight. You have to remember that the MAGA way is to divide Americans politically, which leads to a stalemate. That’s how it’s designed to operate. What we need to do is think outside the box and start speaking to the 90 million Americans who sat on their hands in 2024. It’s all about re-engaging those who feel abandoned by the political process. In the off-season elections, they proved they are awake and listening, as are independents.

It’s time to ditch politics and put people first. The good news is that this philosophy has broad traction within the Democratic Party itself. It’s time to ditch the term progressive and adopt a ‘people first’ label if a badge is required.

In the next episode, we’ll explore the intersection of people-first politics and the opportunities it presents in the real world. I guarantee there is a solution to these dark times, but only if we can put our retail addiction on temporary hold and coalesce under the banner of ‘People over Politics.’ We don’t have to abandon our political beliefs; we simply have to identify a common human ambition to restore American values, NOT political values, because on that we will likely never agree, and that’s fine. It’s time to give birth to a third way, void of corporate control. Ambitious? Yes, but never forget, fortune favours the brave in times of need.

This is part of a series of posts examining the path to liberation from the tyranny we find ourselves in. If you want to catch up, these are the links to PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE | PART FOUR

H A P P Y N E W Y E A R

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