THE DEEP GREEN DELUSION: 

Vitalism and Communal Autarky

DrChris A James

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Environmental Philosophy

A treatise on the contradictions in the environment movement, in particular deep green ecology.

https://www.academia.edu/36891699/THE_DEEP_GREEN_DELUSION_Vitalism_and_Communal_Autarky

Contents:

1.

 

THE EMERGENCE OF DEPOLITICIZED GROUPS.

2.

 

POST-MATERIAL ACTIVISM.

3.

 

E.F.SCHUMACHER AND ENVIRONMENTCAPITALISM.

4.

 

THE IMAGINED TRANSITION.

5.

 

LIVING BY DEFAULT.

6.

 

RETREAT FROM PROTEST.

7.

 

THE APOCALYPTIC DISCOURSE.

8.

 

THE ANTHROPOSOPHY OF RUDOLF STEINER.

9.

 

COROLLARY.BIBLIOGRAPHYINDEX.

 

The Deep Green Delusion: Vitalism and Communal Autarky.

Since we can’t stop poor people from breeding, let’s build fences to keep them out. And let’s ask the world’s biggest polluters to pay for the fences

 [David Attenborough]1

 

Introduction.

I have been in the social movements since the 1960s. I was still in school when I attended my first mass rally in London. I have been an environmental activist since the 1970s, but after so many years I have had to rethink my commitment, not because I have ceased caring for nature, but because I believe nature has become a euphemism for the re-enchantment of the world as myth and mystery, a tendency that has its roots in anti-Enlightenment Romanticism and the minority traditions.

 

I contend therefore that the deep green ecology thatches risen as a solution to fast capitalism, over-consumption and climate change, is a delusion. I argue that mainstream environmentalism has failed so it has been usurped by a more radical and discursive deep ecology movement; currently the fastest growing green movement across the western world. However, I contend that deep ecology is much more than a niche environmental formula; it is secular theology with connections to mysticism and the pessimistic philosophies, biological determinism and anti-humanism. I argue that the world needs growth and it needs environmental protections, it does not need cults and superstitions. There is nothing to be gained by a return to the wilderness except misery and an intense struggle for survival. Further, I argue that primitive localization coupled with pessimism and social biology would reduce the world’s food supply which could cost the lives of millions of people, especially in the underdeveloped world. 

Indeed, deep ecology combined with archaic mysticism running alongside the authoritarian state has a dark history; there are always problems in creating states with states.

1  UK Guardian [2012] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/18/david-attenborough-big-business. Retrieved 22nd January 2012.

Geopower. On the States of Nature of Late Capitalism

Federico Luisetti

2019, European Journal of Social Theory

2307 ViewsPaperRank: 1.122 Pages

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Earth Sciences,

Indigenous Studies,

Climate Change,

Political Theory,

Political Ecology

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The article argues that environmental planetary discourses have coalesced into the Anthropocene crisis narrative and reformulated the state of nature apparatus of Western political theory. The Anthropocene, as an ecological state of nature of late capitalism, casts light on the logics of geopower, which assembles species thinking, a fascination with nonlife and sovereignty, and the imaginary of extinction and mutation. Geopower shifts governmental technologies from human populations and their ‘milieu’ to nonhuman species, energy flows and ecosystems, from political economy and biopower to Earth science and systems ecology. This configuration of power suggests a shift in the neoliberal agenda and imposes the Earth as a political personage, generating threatening political myths and figures of chaos and sovereignty, such as Gaia, Chthulu and Climate Leviathans.

Gaia, Goddess of the Anthropocene?

Federico Luisetti

458 ViewsPaperRank: 2.23 Pages

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Feminist Theory,

Social Contract Theory,

Naturalism,

Bruno Latour,

Anthropocene studies

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As one of the figures of the emerging states of nature, a symptom of the preoccupations of neocolonial and decolonial political animisms, Gaia confronts Western political philosophy, political theology, and political ecology. She is not the sovereign of the Anthropocene but the goddess of an age that is still searching for its rituals and shamans, it constitutions and insurrections.

Demons of the Anthropocene. Facing Bruno Latour’s Gaia

Federico Luisetti

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Michel Serres,

Thomas Hobbes,

Roberto Esposito,

Bruno Latour,

Animism

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As proposed in 2012 by the 3th International Geological Congress, the Anthropocene is the geological epoch of the Quaternary Period following the Holocene, the age that accounts for the transformation of humans into a force shaping the Earth, and of human actions into a geological phenomenon. Current debates on the Anthropocene are introducing new figures of impersonality, modes of political agency that are shaking the certainties of modern political philosophy. A key protagonist of this epistemic turn is Gaia, the Earth, the Greek Mother of most Western gods. Borrowing from James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis and addressing the Earth beyond the organisms/environments, humans/nonhumans divide, Bruno Latour has turned Lovelock’s planetary vitalism into the cornerstone of a new state of nature. Latour’s Gaia is a philosophical demon replacing Hobbes’s Leviathan and introducing a new political theology of nature. As in Roberto Esposito’s biopolitical naturalism, Gaia’s archaic relations with things and bodies suggest a return of animist and totemist paradigms and confront political philosophy with unprecedented questions.

The Dynastic Wealth of US Oligarchs Is a Threat to Democracy

A new report estimates that $21 trillion of that wealth will pass internally within America's already dynastically wealthy families between now and 2045.


A billboard truck from MoveOn calls on Senator Marco Rubio's office to increase

 federal taxes to big corporations on May 17, 2021 in Tampa, Florida. 

(Photo: Gerardo Mora/Getty Images for MoveOn)


CHUCK COLLINS

February 7, 2022

 by Inequality.org

There is an understandable focus on new wealth technology billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, especially as their wealth surges during the pandemic.

But it is equally important to understand how multi-generational wealth dynasties are deploying dynasty trusts and other elaborate tax dodges to sequester trillions and dodge inheritance taxes.

A recent ATF report on billionaire campaign contributions found that US billionaires made a combined $1.2 billion in political contributions in the 2020 election cycle, ten percent of all campaign contributions.

Wealth managers have pointed to a substantial intergenerational transfer of wealth, recently estimated at $68 trillion, as baby boomers pass on wealth to the next generations. But most of this wealth is passing within the upper canopy of the wealth forest, between the already wealthy and their heirs.

A new report, from the Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF), estimates that $21 trillion of that wealth will pass internally within America's already dynastically wealthy families between now and 2045. The report, "Dynasty Trusts: Giant Tax Loopholes that Supercharge Wealth Accumulation," estimates that these wealthy families will avoid as much as $8.4 trillion in estate and generation-skipping taxes between now and 2024, by using dynasty trusts and other currently legal loopholes (assuming current estate tax rules).

"Dynasty trust" is the term for a variety of wealth-accumulating structures that remain in place for multiple generations to ensure their fortunes cascade down to children, grandchildren and beyond undiminished by wealth-transfer taxes. They typically are employed by estates of $10 million or more.

The ATF report points out that the $8.4 trillion sum—an average of $350 billion a year over 24 years—is equivalent to the cost of over four Build Back Better plans costing $1.75 trillion each over ten years. About half of the $8.4 trillion is equivalent to the cost of 24 years of the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC), that was included in the House-passed BBB bill and is estimated to reduce childhood poverty by 40%. The expanded CTC costs about $1.6 trillion over 10 years, or roughly $160 billion a year.

The report describes the activities of the wealth defense industry—the tax attorneys, accountants and wealth managers—who are "paid millions to hide trillions" on behalf of their wealthy clients.

"The choice is clear," the report declares. "We can fix our broken estate and gift tax system and stop the concentration of an ever-larger share of America's wealth inside enormous dynasty trusts, or we can trust our democracy to a handful of trillionaire trust fund babies."

The report underscores the warnings from an June 2021 IPS report, "Silver Spoon Oligarchs: How America's 50 Largest Inherited Wealth Dynasties Accelerate Inequality." Without reforming estate and gift-tax laws, the U.S. will continue to see the concentration of wealth within several hundred ultra-high net worth families, forming oligarchic power blocks.

History buffs will enjoy the sections of the new ATF report that traces the history of U.S. wealth-transfer taxation from Teddy Roosevelt's 1910 clarion call for an estate tax that increased "rapidly in amount with the size of the estate" and was "properly safeguarded against evasion."

The report further documents the aggressive moves of estate-planners to diminish or zero-out tax liabilities and the usually delayed and often ineffective efforts by the IRS to block their ploys. For example, many of the loopholes deployed by the ultra-wealthy artificially depress the value of family assets for tax purposes and create trusts that enable families to aggressively avoid estate and gift taxes. This allows for virtually unlimited intergenerational transfers of wealth from one generation to the next.

Tax avoidance isn't the only concern, as these oligarchic concentrations of wealth and power pose political threats to our democratic system. A recent ATF report on billionaire campaign contributions found that US billionaires made a combined $1.2 billion in political contributions in the 2020 election cycle, ten percent of all campaign contributions.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.




Chuck Collins is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies where he co-edits Inequality.org, and is author of the new book, "Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality, Bringing Wealth Home, and Committing to the Common Good." He is co-founder of Wealth for the Common Good, recently merged with the Patriotic Millionaires. He is co-author of "99 to 1: The Moral Measure of the Economy" and, with Bill Gates Sr., of "Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes."

Why $73 million Sandy Hook settlement is unlikely to unleash a flood of lawsuits against gun-makers

While the settlement is a notable victory for the families of Sandy Hook’s victims, it’s still unclear if it’s a game changer for gun control advocates.

 Timothy D. Lytton

 -

February 18, 2022

SOURCEThe Conversation

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

Families of the victims of the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School reached a historic US$73 million settlement with gun-maker Remington Arms. The Feb. 15, 2022, deal marks the first time a firearms manufacturer has settled a lawsuit brought by gun violence victims since Congress granted the industry sweeping immunity from civil liability in 2005.

Since it was filed in 2015 in Connecticut, the Sandy Hook case has focused media attention on claims that the firearms industry bears some responsibility for the epidemic of gun violence in the U.S. As part of the settlement, Remington agreed to release thousands of pages of internal company documents about its marketing strategy for the semiautomatic rifle used in the massacre. The Sandy Hook families hope that these will provide clues as to how manufacturers can reduce the criminal misuse of their weapons.

Prior to the settlement, some media reports suggested the case could unleash a flood of litigation or significantly change the landscape of lawsuits against the gun industry. However, as a legal scholar who has studied the history of lawsuits against the gun industry, I believe that’s unlikely.

To see why, we need to first review the federal liability shield protecting gun-makers at the heart of the case.

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An Uncertain Legacy

That law, known as the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, grants gun manufacturers immunity from lawsuits that arise out of the criminal misuse of a weapon.

But the Sandy Hook families argued that their lawsuit fell under an exception to this federal immunity. The exception allows gun violence victims to sue a manufacturer who “knowingly violated a state or federal statute applicable to the sale or marketing” of a firearm.

The families claimed that Remington Arms “marketed, advertised and promoted the Bushmaster XM15-E2S for civilians to use to carry out offensive, military style combat missions against their perceived enemies.” They said that this marketing was unethical and therefore violated Connecticut’s Unfair Trade Practices Act, which they argued is a state statute applicable to the marketing of a firearm.

The Connecticut high court agreed and, importantly, interpreted the term “applicable” broadly. That is, the court said that a relevant statute only had to be “capable of being applied” to gun sales, not that the law needed to be specifically about firearms, as other courts had held.

It is this interpretation that could potentially prompt a flood of lawsuits across the country.

Since many states have unfair trade practices laws like Connecticut’s, it seems likely that gun violence victims will bring similar claims elsewhere. Victims are thus likely to allege that a gun manufacturer’s aggressive marketing of combat-style weapons violates a state statute – like an unfair trade practice law – that is applicable to the sale or marketing of a firearm.

However, the U.S. Supreme Court has the last word on the interpretation of federal statutes, and the justices refused in 2019 to hear Remington’s appeal of the case. Presumably, the Supreme Court wanted to wait until the litigation had run its course in the Connecticut state courts before weighing in.

Now that the case has settled, it will never reach the high court – which means the scope of the exception to federal immunity based on a violation of state unfair trade practices law remains unclear.

Regulation through litigation

To many, it seems absurd to hold gun-makers liable for marketing a legal product that did precisely what it was designed to do.

Although the Second Amendment undoubtedly imposes restrictions on the civil liability of gun manufacturers, the idea of holding them liable for carelessness is actually not so far-fetched.

The ultimate goal of litigants in lawsuits against the gun industry is to use civil liability to encourage companies to look for ways to make their products less susceptible to criminal misuse and to prevent the diversion of their products into illegal markets.

This is essentially the tactic being used by states, local governments, tribes and others suing pharmaceutical companies over their role in America’s opioid epidemic. After two decades of litigation, claimants are winning jury verdicts in state courts around the country, and the industry is attempting to negotiate a $26 billion dollar global settlement for federal cases.

But while drugmakers aren’t protected from such lawsuits, gun-makers are – thanks to Congress. That means using civil litigation to regulate the gun industry will require either a repeal of the 2005 law, which seems unlikely, or finding a way around it.

[Over 140,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletters to understand the world. Sign up today.]

The Sandy Hook settlement leaves unanswered the scope of the federal immunity shield, which thwarted all prior attempts to hold gun manufacturers responsible for the criminal misuse of their weapons. What’s more, Remington’s reasons for agreeing to settle may have more to do with the company’s struggle to reemerge from bankruptcy than a newfound willingness among gun-makers to settle claims.

While the settlement is a notable victory for the families of Sandy Hook’s victims, it’s still unclear if it’s a game changer for gun control advocates.

This article incorporates background from articles published on June 21, 2016, and March 25, 2019.

Timothy D. Lytton

Distinguished University Professor & Professor of Law, Georgia State University.

Inside the campaign to abolish the subminimum wage in 25 states by 2026

"This is the only future for the service sector and the economy overall: wages must go up or there will be no future.”

By

 Rebekah Entralgo

 -

February 18, 2022

SOURCEInequality.org

As the economy recovers from a global pandemic, many business owners are pointing to labor shortages caused by the “Great Resignation” as a source of frustration.

The term refers to the more than 33 million U.S. workers who have quit their jobs since the spring of 2021, largely due to low wages and burnout. The restaurant and service industry is experiencing one of the largest shockwaves to its workforce, adding just 108,000 jobs in January 2022, and remains 900,000 jobs short of where it was prior to the pandemic, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But restaurant workers and their allies are offering a different perspective: This is not a “Great Resignation,” but rather a Great Rejection of low-wage work. 

On Valentine’s Day, 2022, One Fair Wage – a national coalition organized around the movement to increase wages for service workers – announced it is embarking on a $25 million campaign to remove the subminimum tipped wage in 25 states by 2026, marking the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence.

“Typically Valentine’s Day is the highest-grossing day in the restaurant industry, but this year the restaurant industry is struggling,” said Saru Jayamaran, President of One Fair Wage, during a virtual event. “Not because of Covid-19 and the decline of business and sales, but because this is the worst staffing crisis in the history of this industry in the U.S. […] One million workers have left the industry, and of those who remain, 54 percent say they are leaving, and 80 percent say that the only thing that would make them stay or come back is a full, livable wage with tips on top.”

According to Jayamaran, the breaking point came when pandemic conditions required restaurant workers to do so much more for so much less – enforcing masks and Covid-19 vaccination requirements on the same people for whom they rely on for tips. Learn more Racial equity & the tipped wage

In 43 states and on the federal level, tipped workers are paid as little as $2.13 per hour in direct wages, with tips making up the balance of the federal minimum wage, which remains stagnant at $7.25 per hour. Ending the subminimum wage for tipped workers, recent analysis from the Center for American Progress suggests, would help alleviate poverty, sustainably grow the economy, and advance gender, racial, disability, and economic justice. 

Ending the subminimum wage would also abolish a shameful relic of slavery. Tipping became prevalent in the United States after the Civil War, when restaurants and railway companies embraced the practice because it meant they didn’t have to pay wages to recently freed slaves. The racial biases that created the practice of tipping are still prevalent in the industry today. 

Although Black workers represent the majority of the tipped service industry, they are also the ones making the least. A survey by One Fair Wage found that prior to the pandemic, Black tipped workers’ income, including tips, was already substantially lower than their white counterparts’ earnings, with 60 percent of them reporting earning less than $15 per hour, compared to 43 percent of white workers. Since the pandemic, 88 percent of Black tipped workers, compared to just 68 percent of all workers surveyed, have seen their tips plunge by half or more.

Ending the subminimum wage would not just benefit workers, but employers as well. 

“It’s not rocket science,” said Russell Jackson, a supporter of One Fair Wage and the head chef and owner of Reverence NYC in Harlem. “For us, we pay a living wage, we have a fair tip share, and we think about how we treat our staff. […] What we need is legislation with teeth that will help us to be consistent across the board.”

Progress has already been made in Washington, D.C., where organizers recently gathered enough signatures to place an initiative to phase out the tipped wage back on the ballot. Similar legislation is making its way through the state houses in Michigan, New York, and Massachusetts, among others. If they are successful, they will join the seven states that have already eliminated the subminimum wage for tipped workers.

On the federal level, the House passed legislation in 2021 that would eliminate the subminimum wage and boost the federal minimum to $15 by 2025, but that bill has stalled in the Senate.

“It’s time for states—and the policymakers who represent them—to follow the lead of millions of workers refusing to work for poverty wages and thousands of independent restaurants raising wages to recruit staff, and permanently raise wages and end subminimum wages once and for all,” said Jayaraman. “This is the only future for the service sector and the economy overall: wages must go up or there will be no future.”

Rebekah Entralgo

Rebekah Entralgo is the managing editor of Inequality.org. You can follow her on Twitter at @rebekahentralgo.

MONOPOLY CAPITALI$M IN SPACE

MOVE OVER NASA
Why Musk’s biggest space gamble is freaking out his competitors

Starship is threatening NASA’s moon contractors, which are watching its progress with a mix of awe and horror.


SpaceX's Elon Musk provides an update on Starship on Thursday, near Brownsville, Texas. | Miguel Roberts/The Brownsville Herald via AP


By BRYAN BENDER
02/12/2022 

Elon Musk is planning yet again to rocket beyond the status quo. And if he succeeds, the aerospace giants that won the first space race may never catch him in this one.

Standing in front of the towering Starship rocket at Space X’s southwest Texas “Starbase” on Thursday night, Musk pledged that his most ambitious spaceship yet will make its first journey in the coming months.


“At this point, I am highly confident we will get to orbit this year,” he said in the first update in two years on the invention he acknowledged “does sound crazy.”

“It will work,” he declared. “There might be a few bumps along the way, but it will work.”


Starship is designed to be the first all-purpose space vehicle: a reusable and refuelable spacecraft that can take scores of people and millions of tons of cargo from Earth directly to the moon and eventually Mars — and do it over and over again.

“There might be a few bumps along the way, but it will work.”
Elon Musk

If he can pull it off, Musk’s previous breakthroughs — electric cars, reusable rockets for launching satellites, the first commercial space capsule to dock with the International Space Station — might seem, by comparison, to be modest achievements.

“It is the kind of thing we used to talk about as ‘wouldn’t it be great if we could do these kinds of things?’” said Scott Altman, a former astronaut who is now president of ASRC Federal, a space R&D company.

But NASA officials — and their longtime aerospace contractors — are watching with a mix of awe and horror.

“They are shitting the bed,” said a top Washington space lobbyist who works for SpaceX’s competitors and asked for anonymity to avoid upsetting his clients.

Launch teams monitor the countdown to the launch of Arianespace's Ariane 5 rocket carrying NASA's James Webb Space Telescope on Dec. 25 in Kourou, French Guiana. |

 Bill Ingalls/NASA via Getty Images

NASA and its major industry partners are simultaneously scrambling to complete their own moon vehicles: the Space Launch System mega-rocket and companion Orion capsule. But the program is billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule — and, many would argue, generations behind SpaceX in innovation.

The space agency’s first three Artemis moon missions over the next three years — including a human landing planned for 2025 — are all set to travel aboard the SLS rocket and Orion capsule, which are being built by Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Aerojet Rocketdyne and numerous other suppliers and engineering services firms.

But with the SLS’ first flight this year further delayed at least until late spring, concerns are growing that even if it succeeds, the system, at an estimated $2 billion per launch, could prove too costly for the multiple journeys to the moon that NASA will need to build a permanent human presence on the lunar surface.

That makes Starship, which conducted a successful flight to the edge of space last year, especially threatening to the contractors and their allies in Congress.

As Starship progresses, it will further eclipse the argument for sticking with SLS, according to Rand Simberg, an aerospace engineer and space consultant.

“Once the new system’s reliability is demonstrated with a large number of flights, which could happen in a matter of months, it will obsolesce all existing launch systems,” he said.

“If SLS is not going to fly more than once every couple of years, it’s just not going to be a significant player in the future in space, particularly when Starship is flown,” he added.

Neither Boeing, the main contractor on the SLS rocket, nor NASA responded to requests for comment on the criticism of the program or Musk’s latest plans for Starship.

Simberg said the biggest breakthrough of Starship would be the “radical cost reduction” it potentially offers, particularly the plan to use tankers in low-Earth orbit to refuel it, which could significantly bring down the long term cost of operations in deep space.

“If the company can demonstrate that its new heavy-lift rocket is not just reusable but, in Elon Musk’s words, rapidly reusable — it will revolutionize spaceflight,” he wrote in a recent paper titled “Walmart, But for Space.”

Musk on Thursday also said “the essential technology — the holy grail breakthrough that’s needed — is a rapid and completely reusable rocket system.”

“So this has never been accomplished before and a lot of people for the longest time thought this was not possible,” he added.

A SpaceX Starship test vehicle descends during a flight test in Boca Chica, Texas. 

| SpaceX via AP

Robert Walker, former chair of the House Science Committee and a space industry consultant, said that if Starship succeeds, the value of the NASA launch vehicle will be seriously imperiled simply because it is not designed to fly nearly as often as Starship.

“If the first Artemis flight is successful, it may be two years until we can get to the second one,” he said. “Musk can roll things out pretty quickly.”

SpaceX has already beat its competitors on transporting astronauts to the International Space Station.

The Dragon space capsule has made three successful trips, with another planned for April, while the first flight of Boeing’s Starliner, which was developed under the same NASA public-private partnership, continues to be delayed.

And SpaceX is already playing a key role in NASA’s moon program.

The company was hired last year to use its Starship technology to provide the Human Landing System that will take astronauts to the lunar surface on the third Artemis mission.

It beat out competitors including Blue Origin, the rocket company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos that is developing its own fleet of rockets and spacecraft in the Texas desert, but has yet to launch anything into orbit.

Altman, the former astronaut, said SpaceX and its Starship could play a much bigger role in NASA’s moon program beyond the landing now set for 2025. “We’ve been trying to get the SLS and Orion together for the Artemis program,” he said.

“Right now Starship is a link in that chain,” he added, referring to the role it will already play in the moon landing. “It’s a technology, it’s a capability we’re going to need.”

It’s unclear how exactly NASA might contract with Starship for future missions. But it could establish a public-private partnership, similar to its arrangement for rides to the space station or for the moon lander.

The implications also go beyond exploring the heavens.

The Pentagon, which has hired SpaceX to launch some of its spy satellites, is also eyeing the new vehicle for “point to point” cargo missions on Earth.

“Starship can carry a C-17 load of cargo and get it anywhere in the world in an hour,” said Walker, who previously served on a SpaceX advisory board but no longer has any ties to the company.

“There are just major uses for this if, in fact, he can pull it off,” he added.

If he can pull it off, Elon Musk’s previous breakthroughs might seem, by comparison, to be modest achievements.

 | Jae C. Hong/AP Photo

Even Musk himself sounded a cautionary note on Thursday, warning that there will likely be technical setbacks before Starship proves its reliability.

“Orbital flight is really just the beginning,” he said. “There will probably be a few bumps in the road, you know, but we want to iron those out with satellite missions and test missions and get to a high flight rate and have and have something that’s extremely reliable.”

The potty-mouthed D.C. lobbyist, a longtime detractor of SpaceX, described the reaction among his clients to Musk’s presentation on Thursday as “promises, promises, promises.”

But he said such dismissals are passé. “It’s like you keep saying ‘he can’t do it’ but it keeps working. It keeps working. I think people are scared. He’s starting to make people who were never believers think he might.”