This piece of writing is about politics. I doubt that the politics in question are particularly controversial at this point, but who knows? You have been warned.
Assuming the globe doesn’t turn into a fireball during the next few weeks, the government of the United States is set to undergo significant political change. The Democratic party will have a majority in the Senate and the House, as well as a Joe Biden in the White House. I know that, for many of my more conservative and apolitical friends, this turn of events is tinged with uncertainty. Certain political and media interests have long worked to frame the Democratic party as the nest of identity politics, hugbox artificers, and regulation fiends. The overwhelming sense that “nothing will really change” and “both parties are fundamentally the same” reigns supreme. The goal of this short piece is to try and add nuance to this dull equivalence. At the very least, I want to highlight some of the non-insignificant ways that a Democratic majority in our policy making could be pretty darn close to objectively better than the Republican stuff we’ve been contending with for the past four years.
As a rule, I’m not even going to touch identity. Though I personally believe that discussions about race and class are central to improving our country, I also know that many of the folks, young and old, that live in the white suburbs of northern Massachusetts don’t really give a shit. “I don’t owe people anything, what does this stuff have to do with me?” I get it, I used to think the same way. When you are born and raised in a place where everybody looks the same, there is little to no visible poverty, and crime is low enough that the cops are bored out of their minds hunting for speeding tickets, the social media posts from liberal college students about Black Lives Matter seem very foreign. Instead, I’ll be talking about other things that do have a direct impact on everybody’s lives, rich/poor, black/white–issues that the Trump administration has catastrophically failed to do literally anything about.
Let’s start with Net Neutrality and digital intellectual property rights in general. If you aren’t aware, Trump chose a man named Ajit Pai to be the FCC chairman in 2017. Before that, Pai worked as a Lawyer for Verizon and firms defending large communications companies. As head of the FCC, Ajit Pai killed Net Neutrality in the USA, deregulated various mechanisms in place to limit the already hyper-powerful corporate media landscape, and generally sides with the rights of corporate power over individual citizens. As an avid fan of the independent web (I code and host my own website for pretty much no reason other than to be somewhat more independent from larger social media moguls), this stuff is appalling. While the FCC has been hammering away at their project to make the internet as hostile as possible to individuals, the slew of conservative judges that the Republican administration has churned out over the years are no doubt working to cement legal precedents for a vision of the internet powered by corporate bureaucracy. Investigations into unethical and illegal behavior by large corporations were halted during the Trump presidency, surprise surprise. I find it particularly alarming that our government is so keen to dismantling Facebook and Google while internet providers like Comcast have been allowed to monopolize the physical information infrastructure of the entire country for decades. Somebody is paying somebody else a lot of money, and the Trump administration has been especially blatant about its conflicts of interest. Meanwhile, Comcast is increasingly free to snoop your online activity and tattle to Disney whenever they deem your internet use anti-profitable.
There is no guarantee that the new Democratic administration will be more resistant to the influence of rich monopolies. After all, it was old Clinton himself that passed some of the worst deregulations in the media landscape (indie radio pretty much died in 1996). That said, we may at least have an FCC that stands up for the rights of citizens. We will also have a government composed of policy makers with a higher inclination toward internet regulation than the past administration. Biden has already promised to bring back Net Neutrality and expand internet access nationwide, and now he has the senate majority to actually make it happen. I am hopeful, but I temper my hopes. You must understand though, that during the Trump administration these ideas weren’t even on the table. Any bill even suggesting that internet use should be at all protected would wither in Mitch McConnell’s desk. Basically, I’m just glad to have an administration that maybe, just maybe, can be reasoned with about these things.
My regulatory pipe dream is expanded rights for citizens regarding copyright law. If you use Youtube to watch smaller channels, you know what I’m talking about. Youtube is the corporate whipping boy. Corporations like Disney and Nintendo are allowed to immediately demonetize or even claim the income of any video they want, and it is up to the creator to manually refute the claim. It isn’t even a human or lawyer making these (mostly false) infringement calls. The process is automated. I follow a small aquarium hobbyist that has to deal with false claims multiple times a week, and the headache is getting to him. There needs to be penalties in place to disincentivize false copyright claims. And I can assure you, breaking up Youtube isn’t going to make it easier for independent content creators to fight for their rights. Beyond the Youtube sphere, Nintendo recently shut down an online Super Smash Bros. Tournament for pretty much no reason at all other than a desire to promote newer product and stifle attempts to keep the old Gamecube community afloat during the pandemic. How are a bunch of Smash players supposed to fight that injustice? Corporate media is leveraging its power to sculpt culture to the liking of profit-obsessed jerks. I foresee a boring dystopia in which all of our interactions online fall under some form of copyright, allowing the corporate government to censor our expression at will. In the ancient days, myths were a commons and ideas could move. Mickey Mouse was shoved down my throat before I could even conceptualize the idea of applesauce, let alone intellectual property rights, so I feel like I’m entitled to representing the fucking three circle mouse logo without worrying about a Disney lawyer ascending from the pits of hell like a Fury to claw my eyes out.
To tie this rant back to the discussion at hand: would Mitch McConnell and Trump defend me from that Fury? Hell no. It has yet to be seen if Biden’s gang will be more useful in that regard, but the change brings me hope.
(I did email Elizabeth Warren about my intellectual property concerns a few months back. She got back to me today… with an automated email about her response to Covid-19… I guess she didn’t read it.)
More pressing than our internet freedoms is the health of the environment. I allow the boomers their cognitive dissonance and strange moods, but if you are under the age of thirty and do not understand just how pressing the threat of climate change and ecological collapse is, then you need to be beaten over the head with a block of cement. I’m honestly shocked that politicians don’t use Trump’s anti-environment stance to attack him more often, but I suppose it really is an issue divided by age groups. In typical shill fashion, Trump has peeled back over one hundred pieces of environmental legislation in order to appease frackers and drillers. His environmental protection agency is a stunted little creature, and his gutting of federal land management is partially responsible for the uncontrolled fires of the west. These past four years have really hit home the ideological shift of the Republican party. Once home to pro-environment policy makers decades ago, modern conservatives no longer see America’s natural resources as anything more than materials for profit. It’s all Minecraft as far as the lobbyists are concerned. America’s lack of concern for the world has global implications as well. The clear cutting and burning of the Amazon rainforest has been met with zero response from the Trump administration. The asshole that runs Brazil apparently kisses Trump’s ass. While I’m at it, what the hell was up with the fixation on coal? “Clean coal?” Even if that idea wasn’t totally bonkers, coal isn’t a thing anymore. Coal’s not cool. Coal isn’t the backbone of our energy infrastructure. It’s embarrassing. It was a blatant appeal to sects of voters that Trump evidently had no real intention of helping.
I look forward to a wave of policy aimed at improving the health of the planet. It has to happen. I don’t need to echo the stakes; you can find more skilled advocates across the web. If I could have one wish, though, I think more public funding for transportation would be awesome. Every workday, i95 becomes choked with cars during the morning and again at night. The hours spent in Boston’s commuter traffic are brain-crushing, and I can only imagine the collective fuel waste. An expanded commuter rail with greater consistency, more trains, and a farther reach into the northern suburbs of Mass and even southern NH would be a miraculous boon. We need buses, too. As it currently stands, living beyond the cities of America without a car is nearly impossible. The original stimulus bill contained billions of dollars for the airline industry (which proceeded to pocket the money and layoff most of its staff), but almost no cash went to busing and other forms of transit. If Americans can reorient their relationship to physical movement, perhaps we can reduce fuel consumption, clear up the roads for the real car enthusiasts out there, and free ourselves from the bondage of the interstate highway.
There is so much more that could be discussed about the folly of the Trump years, but I’m just about burned out. If you’ve read this far down, thank you. If you were previously ambivalent to the current political climate, I hope I have illuminated some issues of legitimate concern. Trump has taken great pains to ensure that meaningful discussions about policy are silenced in a discord of jeers and victimhood, and the media has been somewhat complicit in this phenomenon. Ignore superficial politics and keep your eyes on reality. Don’t let the mainstream Democrats fool you either–old men with lobbyists behind them are similar across the spectrum. Now that they’ve won, they may try to distract you with self congratulation and token moves. We must remind them that this is there last chance. Don’t let corporate powers trick you into worship. Also, read a fucking newspaper.