![]() ![]() Long before Donald Trump and Fox News transformed the traditional Republican dog whistle into an air raid siren of white fright, or the Supreme Court had overturned Roe or began to target Lawrence v. Second, and most pressing, Google and Facebook have exploited their control over online communications and debate to misinform and enrage citizens for profit, while simultaneously choking off responsible news media by stealing their advertising revenue and threatening their very survival.Ĭoncentration of control in the hands of wealthy white men. First, the concentration of wealth and control in ever fewer hands, by its very nature, undermines fundamental balances of power. Monopoly threatens democracy in many ways, but two stand out. The simple fact is that almost every major problem that threatens us today was created by or made worse by monopolists.Ĭonsider just some of the effects of the radical concentration of economic power and control in America over the last few decades. Our first task is simply to catalog the many effects of the crisis of monopoly in America today, so we fully understand how all these problems grow from the same root. Most important, it’s a story that demands that we relearn how to dream, then empowers us to make our dreams come true. A story that transports us from a defensive stance of fighting to protect specific “rights” to an offensive posture of building a new liberty for all Americans and a far better world in which to live. ![]() It’s a story we can tell in language that deeply moves most Americans. It disrupts the narratives of the Republicans and of the monopolists themselves, resolves many of the tensions between the different wings of the Democratic Party, and reinforces the widening fights against voter suppression, fundamentalism, and the radical decrees of America’s new Court of the Inquisition on Capitol Hill. The story of our fight against monopoly control and exploitation is also politically smart. It provides a plot that leads not merely to a victory over deviltry, but to the redemption of the original promise of America. It engages everyone in the task of rebuilding. It provides us with the simplest of moral crimes, of selfish people looting and breaking the foundations of a good economy and a good society. It explains most of the many crises we face today and shows us how to fix them. The fight against monopoly-or rather, for democracy, prosperity, equality, and true liberty-provides us with exactly the narrative we seek. It is simply to take to its logical conclusion what Democrats started in July of 2021 when President Biden revolutionized how we see and address concentrated economic power, in his Executive Order on Competition. And it’s one that does not require the rise of a once-in-a-century orator to lead us. Worse, the fact that Democrats are so often on the wrong end of the marionette’s strings only reinforces the sense of hopelessness and confusion in our ranks and of chaos in the world around us. Sometimes Larry Summers’s fables about inflation. Sometimes the Republican Party’s medieval war on personal liberty. Because absent a narrative able to explain and direct how people respond to the many grave crises we face, Democrats condemn themselves to playing supporting characters in other people’s dramas. And in these very dangerous times, that’s a big problem. The Biden White House especially has introduced smart answers to the challenges of the day, from the seizing up of supply chains to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And I’m not talking only about all the admirable ideas that glitter in the wreckage of the first reconciliation bill. Today’s Democrats have many policies that would make people better off. An especially well-fashioned story can create an entirely new sense of community and possibility. But in hard times, they need to craft narratives to explain why the pot is empty, to restore hope for better days, and to enlist people in a march toward reform. In stable times, politicians can spend their hours detailing how they plan to put a fatter chicken in every pot. ![]()
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