The world’s richest people will subject us to tyrants so they get tax breaks.
Pass it on.
What a fucking asshole Bezos is.
He would supply the concertina wire and supplies for “re-education” camps if given the opportunity.
These guys can hear the music. They’ve seen the sides being chosen: Elon Musk and Peter Theil assembling with Trump’s gangster government in waiting. They see Mark Zuckerberg praising Trump as a “badass.” And now they see Bezos getting in line, too.
What’s remarkable is that Trump didn’t have to arrest Bezos to secure his compliance. Trump didn’t even have to win the election. Just the fact that he has an even-money chance to become president was threat enough.
Or maybe that’s not remarkable. One of Timothy Snyder’s rules for resisting authoritarians is that “most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given.” People surrender preemptively much more often than you might expect.
Two weeks ago, Ian Bassin and Maximillian Potter wrote what might be the most prophetic essay of the year. They warned about “anticipatory obedience” in the media.
Seventeen days later, Bezos made his demonstration.
To think most of this power is largely based on everyone not deleting an app.
We are the only fucking guardrails.
Also, I should check Amazon for a guillotine.
While I have no answers, this is exactly what we should expect when business owners control media.
Everyone should read the story of how the Spanish American War started. Newspapers need reform.
Well I just spent 30 minutes or so reading about this (on Wikipedia) and am not surprised to see names like Hearst involved. I will admit that I was skeptical about your statement, but it is clear that journalism in the US has a long history of problems and big money ownership. We do need reform, and perhaps that is even more evident in the internet and big money era. Thanks for posting that statement!
