The “alternative minimum tax” (AMT), which was introduced to ensure the mega wealthy pay a fairer share of tax, comprised $31m of Trump’s tax bill.

I don’t get the point of such ridiculous exaggeration. AMT starts and $200,000, which is the income of about half the town where I live. Educated professionals  (who are not professors, of course) don’t make less than $100,000 here in the boondocks and less than $150,000 on the coasts, and if there are two of them, that’s the AMT threshold right there. By referring to them as “mega wealthy”, which is patently ridiculous, you have made a step towards losing them in the next election. 

This could be worded in a slightly different way to avoid angering people. These tiresome rhetorical flourishes (neo-Nazis! Mega wealthy! White supremacy! Trump wants to murder me!) repel potential voters because nobody wants to be allied with screeching freaks.

And this is precisely why it makes no sense to be offended by the people’s eagerness for fake news. You exported them to the virtual world of fantasy. You can’t expect them to live there but consume the news from your world, the world from which you ejected them.

In the past, surplus populations produced by modernization (and that’s what modernization always does, it creates surplus people) were exported to the colonies.

Today there are no more physical spaces where the unwanted people rejected by modernization can be dumped. So instead, they are exported into the virtual world of the Internet and the fantasy world of drug addiction.

Drugs and screens are today what Canada and Australia were in the 19th century.

At the time when it was possible and necessary to resist liquid capital through not allowing it to shuffle large masses of desperate scabs around to break Labor, the EU did the opposite. It bent over backwards to help liquid capital destroy Labor. And now people can’t forgive it for doing that and don’t trust it. 

Today, only global measures can address globally generated problems. But the EU has lost people’s trust that it will do anything but assist liquid capital in its exploitation schemes. Can anybody really blame people for losing trust after being so massively betrayed? This is why I can’t blame the British people for Brexit. 

The way Labor fought against an excessive exploitation by capital was through strikes. The workers would organize, make demands and walk out. The capitalists would bring in scabs- desperate people who’d agree to work in exploitative conditions- to break the strike. Workers would resist. The result was an improvement of labor conditions. Everybody knows that. 

Then the capital became liquid and went global. And so did this whole process I just described. This is why unions lost power. The capital doesn’t operate locally. It started using globally produced desperate workers to break the Labor’s power.

But then there is the third stage in this process: scabs have become not human. And that spells the ultimate defeat of Labor because you can’t effectively stop technological advances. 

The problem is that everybody who is looking for a solution is stuck in the first two stages. 

So. Remember how I bugged you, folks, with the nation-state while writing the book? 

Well, after a short respite, prepare to be bugged again. 

I have a new project: citizenship. 

Hey, at least it’s something everybody can understand and discuss. Let’s all be happy I’m not into beta binomials. Because those suckers are crazy boring, believe me. 

In Switzerland, citizenship applications for people residing in small villages or townships tend to be judged not by the federal authorities but by local communities. If you are, say, an immigrant who lives in a small village, the inhabitants of the village can choose not to grant you citizenship if they feel that you are not being respectful of local customs and traditions. Even if you fulfill all formal requirements for citizenship, your application will still be denied if your neighbors don’t want you. 

This happened, for instance, to a woman called Nancy Holten who has been refused citizenship twice because she angered her community of Gipf-Oberfrick with attacks on cherished local traditions. Holten is one of those loud weirdos who tend to drive everybody round the bend with their eccentricities. Should she be denied citizenship, though?

What say you, readers? Who’s in the right, Holten or the angry villagers?

“As a union rep, try not to be judgmental,” the workshop presenter said. “Don’t jump to conclusions, don’t condemn people for not being exactly like you, don’t interrupt or become aggressive. Try to speak less and listen more.”

At which point I realized this is not a job for me. The part where I speak loudly, swear and denigrate people’s intellectual ability I’m good for. I’ll be a total overachiever. But the rest? I’m useless. 

As a union rep I’m authorized by the NLRA to do the following in the meetings with the administration:

• Speak loudly
• Speak impulsively 
• Swear
• Demean the administrators’ intelligence 

I already do all this but it’s good to be authorized. 

“The majority needs God because they have nothing else. And the remaining minority needs God because they have everything but,” said Tolstoy. Today, the majority and the minority have swapped places but the quote is still true.