The shock doctrine comes to America

Capital is waging an all-out war against democratic governance.

Though the broad contours of what’s happening are hard to miss, it’s extraordinarily difficult to tease out what specifically the Trump administration is up to these days. And that makes him very difficult to write about if you have any interest whatsoever in specificity in accuracy. Earlier today, for example, I began writing an article about Trump’s establishment of a sovereign wealth fund — something that’s actually been a key item on the agenda of American socialists for years. But then before I could put it out, I got a text from Matt Bruenig: evidently Trump’s executive order just proposed that various cabinet members should develop a plan for a SWF.

In other words, it isn’t necessarily going to happen, which makes the article I wrote pretty pointless. But this has been the story over and over with Trump’s administration: they’re all unreliable narrators, and events are moving so quickly that it’s impossible to verify anything in a timely manner.

Ironically, however, it was this very atmosphere of chaos and confusion that made me realize: this is the shock doctrine.