Silicon Valley smokescreen
The one thing that tech can count on, regardless of which party is in power, is the spigot of government cash continuing to flow.
If you’re reading this on Sunday, it’s the last day before we’re back in Trumpworld.
This next administration promises to be leaner and more efficient than the first one. And I’m not hopeful about the potential for resistance either; Democrats are already capitulating and there’s not much appetite, seemingly, for action on the part of liberals.
Compounding that apathy is the role of the tech industry in promoting and backing Trump. It’s the topic of my book—preorder now!—and also a column I wrote for MSNBC last Monday.
The main problem tech leaders have with liberals, and a key reason for their tilt to the right, is that they’re being targeted by regulators and criticized by Democrats.
As I wrote, that’s not material reality:
But that partisan divide is a smoke screen. The one thing that tech can count on, regardless of which party is in power, is the spigot of government cash continuing to flow. A wealth-generating torrent of state spending has made many of these men into billionaires, and led to their outsized power in determining the country’s political future. And alongside that wealth is a growing dissatisfaction with how they’re treated — not as it applies to their material success, but that they’re facing criticism at all.
Still, expect it to continue.
Over at Nor’easter, Will Solomon links to his great review of my book Owned (preorder! preorder!) and offers the following kind words:
It’s an interesting and very timely book in which Higgins traces out the rise of reactionary tech billionaires and the near-simultaneous transformations of once putatively left-wing journalists Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi into right-wing mouthpieces. Both are writers I used to read and respect and for whom I now feel something closer to contempt, as I’ve written about several times.
Read Will’s review at Counterpunch.
Thanks for reading, see you on the other side of the inauguration.