The Brooklyn Rail

Appearing on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on CBS on July 31, Kamala Harris said she’s not running for Governor of California because “The system is broken.” When Colbert pointed out that everything she predicted during the presidential campaign about what would happen if Trump was elected has happened, and asked if any of it has surprised her, she replied, “I didn’t predict the capitulation.” And she said, “It’s on all of our shoulders, now.”

Although most of the MAGA movement seems content to pretend the Epstein/Maxwell crimes and Trump’s involvement in them never happened, the issue won’t go away entirely, and continues to haunt Trump’s actions and words. Sometimes I think this is the way it eventually has to happen, because the people who believed in Trump and made Trump possible need a way to go on after Trump without shouldering the full weight of devastating shame and grief. Trump has to be taken down by his own base in some sort of scapegoat/cleansing ritual. The people who voted for Trump need an off-ramp, some way of saving face, a saving grace.

I come from the two worlds, so I can put myself in the place of the Trump voters. I have a strong class sense of being devalued by the elites. I think the way America decides who wins and who loses is rigged. Trump voters thought Trump was on their side because he was so awkward and insecure and unacceptable to the elites. They felt good pumping him up, and he pumped them up in turn by appealing to their worst impulses. But now he’s the most powerful man in the world and he is no longer concealing the fact that he is repulsed by them. He considers them weaklings and losers and “bad people.” You’re either for him, or you’re against him, and questioning him on anything is unforgiveable.

It is possible that they will eventually take him down, but, tragically, it may be too late. Much of the structure of democratic government and the rule of law has already been dismantled, and we’re only seven months in. The midterms are fifteen months away, and the demolition plan of Project 2025 is still accelerating. Add to that the total disarray of the Democratic establishment and the rush of universities, law firms, and other businesses, and the military to comply with Trump’s every demand, and it all looks quite bleak. The speed of the destruction and the extent of the capitulation is terrifying. 

This month, Nvidia, the world’s largest semiconductor company, that controls ninety percent of the market for the chips needed for AI systems, became the first company in the world to reach a $4 trillion valuation. Jensen Huang, the 62-year-old CEO of Nvidia, is personally worth $143 billion. Huang met with Donald Trump at the White House on July 10 to talk about tariffs and export controls on its AI chips designed to close the Chinese market to US industry, and convinced Trump to release the controls and let Huang sell his chips to China.

In an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on July 13, Huang said that AI will boost workplace productivity, but it could also lead to job loss if companies don’t innovate. “If the world runs out of ideas, then productivity gains translates to job loss,” he said.

“AI is the greatest technology equalizer we’ve ever seen,” claimed Huang. “It lifts the people who don’t understand technology.” Presumably, it lifts them by telling them what to say and think, because they don’t know what to say and think now.

Fourteen percent of Americans are functionally illiterate, meaning they can’t read beyond the level of a fourth-grader. Eighty percent of kids involved in the juvenile justice system are functionally illiterate, and two-thirds of the people incarcerated in federal prisons are functionally illiterate. Teaching people to read is still one of the most effective political acts.

The companies that are pouring money into the development of AI are doing so to make staggering profits in the future. What will be the business model for this new technology? The business model for social media is to take peoples’ information for free, and give them what they say they want, for a price. Surely, some version of that will become the business model for AI.

Trump just secured $170 billion for his mass deportation plans. Most of this money will go to the Department of Homeland Security over four years. It will fund ten thousand new ICE agents to go into American cities to round up tens of thousands of immigrants and put them in new prisons built by private prison companies, to await deportation. Trump has pledged to deport more than a million immigrants this year and millions more by the end of his second term.

Trump invaded Los Angeles in June with 2000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines. On June 8, Trump made it clear that he wasn’t going to stop with LA: “We’re going to have troops everywhere,” he said. And on June 12 in Los Angeles, Kristi Noem said, “The Department of Homeland Security and the agencies and departments of the military, people that are working on this operation, will continue to sustain and increase our operation in this city. We’re not going away. We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and this mayor have placed on this country, and what they have tried to insert into this city.”

US Border Patrol El Centro Sector Chief Gregory Bovino is now in charge of Customs and Border Protection operations in Los Angeles. He was part of the show-of-force raid on MacArthur Park on July 7 that ended in a confrontation with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. After the confrontation, Bovino said, “I don’t work for Karen Bass. Better get used to us now, cause this is going to be normal very soon. We will go anywhere, anytime we want in Los Angeles.”

On July 8, President Trump said he was also considering taking over the governance of Washington, DC, a move he has signaled many times before. “I think we should take over Washington, DC. Make it safe. . . We have tremendous power at the White House to run places when we have to,” said Trump.

At that same presser after a Cabinet meeting, Trump also announced that he would take over New York City if Zohran Mamdani is elected mayor in November. “If a communist gets elected to run New York, it can never be the same . . . We’re going to straighten out New York . . . Maybe we’re going to have to straighten it out from Washington. . . We’re going to make New York great again also.” Trump started out in New York, and perhaps he will finish there.