Controversial South African political figure and Zulu minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi dies at 95


 Controversial South African politician and traditional minister of South Africa’s large Zulu ethnic group, Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi, in traditional dress March 26, 2009. Buthelezi has died at the age of 95, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced on Saturday, Sept. 9, 2023.. 

(AP Photo/File)Photos

BY MOGOMOTSI MAGOME
 September 9, 2023

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Controversial South African politician and traditional minister of the Zulu ethnic group Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi has died at the age of 95, South African president Cyril Ramaphosa announced on Saturday.

Buthelezi founded the Inkatha Freedom Party, the third largest political party in South Africa when the country transitioned from the racist apartheid system to a democratic one in 1994.

He was admitted to hospital in July following a failed medical procedure to ease his back pain, his family said at the time.
“Prince Buthelezi, who served as the democratic South Africa’s first Minister of Home Affairs, passed away in the early hours of today, Saturday, 9 September 2023, just two weeks after the celebration of his 95th birthday,” Ramaphosa said in a statement on Saturday.

According to Ramaphosa, arrangements for his mourning and funeral will be announced after consultations with the Zulu royal family.

“Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi has been an outstanding leader in the political and cultural life of our nation, including the ebbs and flows of our liberation struggle, the transition which secured our freedom in 1994 and our democratic dispensation,” said Ramaphosa.

Buthelezi was part of the late Nelson Mandela’s first cabinet when the latter became South Africa’s first democratically elected president in 1994.

Mandela appointed him as a minister of home affairs, a position he continued to hold in the second administration of former president Thabo Mbeki.

His legacy has remained a contested one due to the role he played during South Africa’s apartheid era, including heading the administrative region of Zululand, a part of the “homelands” regions that were the cornerstone of the apartheid government’s policy of separate development.

His party was also blamed for the pre-election violence that engulfed the country and the province of Kwa-Zulu Natal before the country’s historic 1994 elections.

Now known as KwaZulu-Natal province, the region was one of the 10 “homelands” created by the white-minority government meant to group Black South Africans according to their ethnicity in the country’s mostly rural areas.

These were meant to keep the apartheid system intact by installing so-called “puppet leaders” leading to Buthelezi being labeled a sell-out by liberation movements like the ruling African National Congress at the time.

A former member of the ANC Youth League, in 1975 he formed what was later to be known as the Inkatha Freedom Party, an outfit founded on an ideology of Zulu nationalism which he initially aligned to the African National Congress but later got involved in violent clashes with ANC supporters in the 1980s and early 1990s.

The violence that erupted between Inkatha and the ANC in the 1980s and early 1990s remains one of the bloodiest in South African history and a dent in Buthelezi’s political career. Many were killed in the clashes which took place in the then Zululand and later spread to areas including the Transvaal, now the Gauteng province.

These culminated in what got to be known as the Shell House Massacre in 1994.

Nineteen IFP supporters were shot and killed by ANC security guards after nearly 20,000 of them marched to Shell House in Johannesburg, which was then the headquarters of the ANC, banned in 1990.

They were opposing the upcoming elections and accused the ANC of undermining Zulu leaders and chiefs.

In the early 1990s, leaders of the apartheid government admitted to funding the Inkatha Freedom Party as they sought to destabilize the struggle against apartheid and what was increasingly looking like a road to the end of white minority rule

Buthelezi opposed apartheid but his stance on controversial issues regarding the oppressive system put him at odds with ANC leaders.

This included his opposition to international sanctions against apartheid and his support for free markets at a time when most liberation movements were largely socialist and African nationalists.

His leadership of the Zululand administration was considered a betrayal to Black South Africans as the “homelands” system was an integral part of the apartheid machinery.

With the growth and significance of his IFP party, Buthelezi wanted his party to play a bigger role during the negotiations for a peaceful transition to democracy, but he withdrew from the negotiations and threatened to boycott the historic 1994 elections after his proposals, including the autonomy of the Zululand region, were rejected.

However, he agreed to participate in the elections about a week before they were held, winning 10% of the national vote and forming part of Mandela’s coalition government which also included the National Party.

He remained a lawmaker in South Africa’s Parliament from 1994 until his death and the leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party until he was replaced at its national conference in 2019.

Throughout his political career, Buthelezi remained deeply involved in the affairs of the Zulu nation, serving as a traditional prime minister and advisor to the late King Goodwill Zwelithini and his successor, his son King Misuzulu KaZwelithini.

In 2022, he oversaw the installation of Misuzulu as the new king of the Zulu nation amid fierce, internal disputes within the Zulu royal family about who was the rightful heir to the throne.

During his last days, it had become apparent that the two had fallen out, with a sickly Buthelezi questioning the new king.

Buthelezi turned 95 last month.

Foreign hackers attacked IT software to breach U.S. aeronautical organization


Foreign hackers breached a U.S. aeronautical organization by exploiting vulnerabilities in IT software from the company Zoho, the U.S. government warned Thursday. 

File Photo by Christopher Schirner/Flickr

Sept. 9 (UPI) -- Foreign hackers breached a U.S. aeronautical organization by exploiting vulnerabilities in IT software from the company Zoho, the U.S. government warned Thursday.

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency published a joint cybersecurity advisory Thursday warning of the threats with the FBI and U.S. Cyber Command.

"This [advisory] provides information on an incident at an Aeronautical Sector organization, with malicious activity occurring as early as January 2023," CISA said in the statement Thursday.

CISA said the hackers, described as "nation-state advanced persistent threat actors," had gained unauthorized access to the software Zoho ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus. The exploits are known as "CVE-2022-47966 and CVE-2022-42475."

"Advance persistent threat actors often scan internet-facing devices for vulnerabilities that can be easily exploited and will continue to do so," U.S. Cyber Command said in a separate release.

According to the industry publications The Hacker News and Bleeping Computer, the U.S. Cyber Command statement hinted at the involvement of Iranian hackers.

CISA advised all organizations that could be affected to report suspicious or criminal activity to the FBI.

In January, CISA added the CVE-2022-47966 to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog, which effectively ordered federal agencies to secure their systems against the particular exploit.

The North Korean state-backed hacker group Lazarus has been exploiting the same vulnerability since earlier this year.

AFTER GOOGLE CEO ERIC SCHMIDT VISITED NK HACKING BEGAN

New Jersey authorities vote to reinstate black bear hunting

The New Jersey Fish and Game Council voted to approve changes to its black bear management policy to allow for regulated hunts twice a year in parts of the state.

File Photo by Paul D. Vitucci

Sept. 9 (UPI) -- The New Jersey Fish and Game Council voted to approve changes to its black bear management policy to allow for regulated hunts twice a year in parts of the state.

The policy will allow for two one-week periods in which black bear can be hunted in defined zones in seven counties, Patch reported. The fact that the vote was held is confirmed by an agenda published by the Fish and Game Counci

The seven counties in which black bear can be hunted are Warren, Sussex, Morris, Passaic, Bergen, Somerset and Hunterdon -- according to a map published by New Jersey Fish and Wildlife.

The rules, which are expected to be formally adopted when published in the state register next month, would expire in May 2028, Patch reported.

Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy had reinstated the bear hunt last December by executive order after a one-year absence.

Murphy noted in his executive order last year that he had previously directed state officials to take "all necessary and appropriate actions" to protect black bears and even consider closing lands to hunting the animals.

State officials decided to close the hunting of bear and no bear hunting took place between 2020 and 2022. The hunt was brought back last year because of an increase in human-bear encounters prompted by a rise in bear populations.

"State biologists project that, in the absence of population control measures, the black bear population in the northwest portion of New Jersey would increase to over 4,000 bears in the next two years," Murphy wrote in the executive order.

"The DEP received 1,538 bear incident reports between January and October 2022, a 237% increase from the same period in 2021, including 1 human attack, 62 aggressive encounters with humans, 12 dog attacks, 12 home entries, 15 attempted home entries, 89 instances of property damage and 52 attacks on protected livestock."

New Jersey Fish and Wildlife estimates that there are now 3,000 black bear in the state, about double than in 2018.

Hunters must follow specific rules in hunting black bear. Hunters are prohibited from harvesting black bear less than 75 pounds or accompanied by bears weighing less than 75 pounds. Hunters can buy up to two permits for two separate zones but can only harvest one bear.

Only muzzleloader rifles of .44 or larger caliber or shotguns no smaller than 20 gauge and no larger than 10 gauge with rifled slugs can be used. Hunters must possess a rifle permit if using a muzzleloader.

Hunters must immediately take any harvested bear to a check station where Fish and Wildlife personnel will inspect the specimen for sex, weight and size and extract a tooth for aging.

IT'S AMERIKA

UK

Yoga class' meditation exercise confused for 'ritual mass murder' scene

Police in England were called to a community space when an observer confused a yoga class' meditation exercise for the scene of a mass killing.

 File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 8 (UPI) -- Police descended on a community space in Britain when some local dog walkers mistook a yoga class' group meditation exercise for the results of a "ritual mass murder."

The Seascape Cafe at the North Sea Observatory in Chapel St. Leonards, England, detailed the unusual incident in a Facebook post.

"If any one heard the mass of police sirens in Chapel St Leonard's at 9:30 p.m. last night then please be reassured," the post said. "They were on their way to the Observatory after someone had reported a mass killing in our building. Having seen several people laying on the floor... Which actually turned out to be the yoga class in meditation."

"Dear General Public, please be mindful that the Observatory has lots of yoga classes happening in the evenings. We are not part of any mad cult or crazy clubs," the post said.

The class' teacher, Millie Laws, wrote on her Unity Yoga Facebook page that police were called when "some local dog walkers mistook the scene for a ritual mass murder."

Laws said the class had already dispersed by the time police arrived at the building. She said she learned about the police's visit in a phone call from the building's manager.


"I was very shocked," she told CNN. "It was so surreal and I didn't quite believe it was true. I have spoken to most of the people who took part and they have just said how mad it is. They were all participating in a beautiful deep relaxation and it could have never run through any of our minds that it could be taken in this way."

A police representative confirmed officers were called to the building for what turned out to be a mistake.

"A call was made following concerns for the occupants of the North Sea Observatory, at Chapel St. Leonards. Officers attended, we're happy to report everyone was safe and well. The call was made with good intentions," the representative said.

Notorious Australian crime boss shot dead in attack at Melbourne cafe

REMINDS ME OF 'CRAZY' JOEY GALLO

Sept. 9 (UPI) -- A man shot to death in a brazen attack at a Melbourne cafe on Saturday has been identified as a notorious Australian crime boss, multiple reports indicated.

The shooting left one man dead and one wounded, police in the Australian state of Victoria said in a statement.

Emergency services were called after "a number of shots were fired" outside a cafe ay 10:20 a.m., they said. The man who was killed at the scene had not yet been officially identified, while another man who was shot in the incident was hospitalized with serious injuries.

"Police are working to determine the circumstances surrounding the in incident, however at this stage the incident appears to be targeted," they said.

The slaying victim was identified by the Australian Broadcasting Corp. and the Herald Sun as 50-year-old Gavin Preston, who was imprisoned for 11 years on a charge of defensive homicide for a fatal shooting in 2012.

He was just released from prison earlier this year.

Two suspects dressed in black approached the men as they were eating and opened fire before fleeing the scene in a black SUV which was later found abandoned, Acting Victoria Police Superintendent Mark Hatt told reporters in an update.

He confirmed police investigating the shooting for possible links to organized crime, adding that "given the circumstances, we believe it is linked to organized crime."

"The incident took place outside the cafe, there were a number of other people dining at the time. It's unfortunate it has taken place in such a public manner," Hatt said.

 

Judge: TurboTax software company Intuit misled customers with claims of 'free' use
By Patrick Hilsman


A judge with the Federal Trade Commission ruled Friday that Intuit Inc., which owns Turbo Tax, mislead customers by claiming its products are available for free. File Photo by Steve Buissinne/Pixabay


Sept. 8 (UPI) -- A judge with the Federal Trade Commission ruled Friday that Intuit, the company that produces TurboTax software, mislead customers by characterizing their product as "free" in advertisements.

Judge D. Michael Chappell said that Intuit Inc. "engaged in deceptive advertising in violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act."

The ruling comes from an FTC administrative complaint filed in March 2022.

"In the complaint, FTC staff alleged that the company's ubiquitous advertisements touting their supposedly 'free' products -- some of which have consisted almost entirely of the word 'free' spoken repeatedly -- mislead consumers into believing that they can file their taxes for free with TurboTax," the FTC said in a press release Friday.

Chappell said TurboTax's so-called "free" services were ultimately not available to many potential customers and that Intuit was "prohibited from engaging in deceptive practices in the future."

"In fact, most tax filers can't use the company's 'free' service because it is not available to millions of taxpayers, such as those who get a 1099 form for work in the gig economy, or those who earn farm income. In 2020, for example, approximately two-thirds of tax filers could not use TurboTax's free product," the FTC said.


Copies of the order will be given to relevant parties for the next 20 years and the company will be required to keep strict records to ensure compliance, according to the FTC.

Study of millions of couples debunks adage that opposites attract

By Amy Norton, HealthDay News

In an analysis of about 200 studies involving millions of couples, researchers came to the conclusion that there is little behind the claim that opposites attract. If anything, the one about birds of feather flocking together is much closer to the truth. 

Photo by Pexels/Pixabay

There's an adage that in romantic relationships, opposites attract. Now, a large, new study confirms that just like many old sayings, it's wrong.

In an analysis of about 200 studies involving millions of couples, researchers came to the conclusion that there is little behind the claim that opposites attract. If anything, the one about birds of feather flocking together is much closer to the truth.

When it came to the hundreds of "traits" the study analyzed -- from political leanings to smoking and drinking habits -- partners were almost always more alike than different.

It was only in relation to 3% of traits that people tended to pair off with someone who had different inclinations, according to the findings published recently in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.

Read More

Compatibility, popularity may shape romantic pursuit
Two-thirds of romantic couples started as friends, study finds
Marital stress may impede heart attack recovery
Study: Couples in supportive marriages have better mental, physical health

To be fair to the adage, the findings do not mean that people rarely find themselves attracted to someone who is much different from them.
"We looked at cohabiting and co-parenting couples," explained lead researcher Tanya Horwitz, a doctoral candidate at the University of Colorado Boulder. "So, this study speaks to long-term relationships."

On average, the findings show, long-term partners are similar in a host of ways -- from religious and political beliefs, to educational background and certain aspects of intelligence, to lifestyle habits.

The results are based on data from 199 published studies involving millions of male-female couples, dating as far back as 1903. The researchers also did their own analysis of data from the UK Biobank, an ongoing research project that is collecting health and genetic information from about 500,000 British adults.

In all, the researchers looked at over 150 "traits," assessing how often couples were in step on each. And for 82% to 89% of those traits, partners were clearly more likely to be similar than different.

Among the traits where couples were most strongly aligned were political and religious beliefs, education level, certain IQ measurements, and smoking and drinking habits.

Then there were personality traits -- where, Horwitz said, there's been less certainty as to whether opposites attract or repel.

Overall, the study found, partners did tend to be more alike than different on the "big 5" personality traits (extroversion, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness and neuroticism). But the correlations were not as strong as those for factors like political or religious attitudes.

Extroverts, for example, were only slightly more likely to pair up with a fellow extrovert rather than an introvert, Horwitz said. The finding was similar when it came to neuroticism.

There were only a few traits where, in the UK Biobank study, partners were somewhat more likely to be opposites than in lockstep. One was "chronotype" -- that is, night owls more often paired with early risers than fellow night owls.

Horwitz had no ready explanation for that, and said it's possible it was a chance finding.

Where did the notion that opposites attract originate? Horwitz noted that research in the 1950s, by psychologist Robert Winch, suggested that some traits are "complementary." So a person might choose a mate who has "opposing" qualities that complement some of his or her own.

But there has been little scientific data to back up the idea that opposites attract.

"It's basically folk wisdom," said Angela Bahns, an associate professor of psychology at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.

Bahns, who was not involved in the new research, has studied the topic. In a 2016 study, she found that in both romantic pairings and friendships, people are typically drawn to like-minded individuals. And there was no evidence that partners or friends changed over time to become more in sync; the similarities were there from the get-go.

Part of the story is "structural," Bahns explained. If you're a college graduate, for instance, you're more likely to be around a lot of college graduates, versus someone with only a high school diploma.

But there's also the fact that similarities can be very attractive: It's "validating," Bahns said, when someone shares your beliefs.

Interestingly, Bahns has found that in a bigger, more diverse environment -- a large university, versus small college, for example -- people tend to be even more similar to their romantic partners and friends.

Bahns said that may be because when you have a large pool of potential mates and friends, you can -- however consciously or unconsciously -- be more selective.

No one, though, is saying that people cannot have close relationships just because they are dissimilar in some ways.

"This does not mean that people can't be, or shouldn't be, attracted to someone different from them," Horwitz said. "We're talking about what's observed in relationships, on average."

This study did not include same-sex couples, who've been the subject of much less research. If data on those couples had been included, Horwitz noted, any findings specific to them might have gotten lost in the ocean of data on heterosexual partners.

Instead, the researchers are doing a separate analysis focusing on same-sex pairs.

More Information

The Cleveland Clinic has more on healthy relationships.

Copyright © 2023 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Trump overstated net worth by at least $3.6 billion a year, N.Y. attorney general says

New York Attorney General Letitia James (C) said in a Friday court filing that former President Donald Trump has inflated his net worth by as much as $3.6 billion a year since 2011. A civil lawsuit James filed against Trump is scheduled to be tried Oct. 2. 

File Photo by Jim Lo Scalzo/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 8 (UPI) -- According to a Friday court filing by New York Attorney General Letitia James, former President Donald Trump overstated his net worth by at least $3.6 billion per year since 2011.

Friday's filing is the latest in New York's civil lawsuit against Trump, his eldest sons and top Trump executives.

The filing is part of a $250 million civil lawsuit alleging that Trump systematically and fraudulently overstated his assets' value.

The suit seeks to recover the $250 million and bar Trump, his sons and daughter from serving as officers or directors of any company in New York.

Read More

New York judge refuses Donald Trump's effort to delay fraud trial
In civil lawsuit, Trump accused of overstating net worth by $2.2 billion
Lawmaker urges House probe into Saudi billions given to Jared Kushner firm

Friday's filing used methods "market participants would consider when determining estimated current value."

The filing said, "After factoring in these and other fundamental considerations that any informed buyer and seller in the marketplace would take into account, Mr. Trump's net worth would be further substantially reduced by between $1.9 billion to $3.6 billion per year, which is still a conservative estimate."

Friday's filing was in response to a Trump motion for summary judgment in the case. That motion will be heard Sept. 22 and the trial is expected to start Oct. 2.

New York Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron Wednesday refused Trump's effort to delay the civil trial, writing on the document obtained by UPI that, "Defendant's arguments are completely without merit."

James also made a court filing Aug. 30 in which she said he had overstated his net worth by more than $2 billion.

James said in Friday's filing that Trump's net worth is between $1.9 billion and $2.6 billion less per year than he has claimed it was since 2011.

According to the New York civil suit, Trump, sons Donald Jr. and Eric, and Trump Organization executives' motive in inflating the asset values was to get better financial terms from lenders and insurance companies.

Tibetans protest China's G20 summit participation over Beijing's occupation of Tibet

By Doug Cunningham
SEPT. 8, 2023 

1 of 5 | On Friday, members of the Tibetan community protested against China's participation in the G20 summit because of China's occupation of Tibet. 

Photo by Tibetan Youth Congress | License Photo

Sept. 8 (UPI) -- The Tibetan Youth Congress on Friday peacefully protested China's participation in the G20 summit in north Delhi's Majnu ka Tilla area.

They held banners and chanted anti-China slogans, while some painted "Free Tibet" on their faces and bodies.

"This protest is not against India or India hosting the G20 Summit. We are raising these slogans against the Chinese participation in the G20 Summit,'' Tibetan Youth Congress President Gonpo Dhundup said.

Dhundup said the protest was aimed at China's occupation of Tibet. He said the Chinese government illegally occupies Tibet and the situation there is currently "very critical."

China insists Tibet is Chinese because it was once part of the Mongel-led Yuan dynasty. China forced Tibetan leaders to sign a treaty in 1951 that allows Chinese occupation while supposedly guaranteeing Tibetan "autonomy."

The Dalai Lama and many of his followers fled to India during a 1959 Tibetan uprising against the Chinese occupation. He and the Tibetan people consider the treaty dealing with the Chinese occupation, known as "The Seventeen Point Agreement," as one that was signed under duress.

Chinese President Xi Jinping isn't attending the G20 summit in person.

President Joe Biden was expected to arrive Friday for the summit in New Delhi with a planned meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi before the G20 meeting begins.

Why have so many Americans succumbed to Trumpism?

Robert Reich

September 08, 2023

LONG READ

Today, in the sixth essay about the loss of America’s sense of common good, I want to summarize where we’ve come by focusing on one of the worst consequences of the loss: The emergence of Trumpism, and of the despair that has led so many Americans to give up on democracy.

Starting next week, in the seventh essay of this series, I’ll talk about what I believe we can and should do to resurrect the common good.

It is easy for many of us to condemn fellow Americans who have succumbed to the lies and thuggery of Donald Trump. It’s convenient for us to assume they’re ignorant, or racist, or gullible fools.But what if their willingness to believe and support Trump is understandable, given what has happened to them? I’m not suggesting it’s justifiable, only that it may be explicable.

As we have seen, many of the key political and economic institutions of our society have abandoned their commitments to the common good — and along the way, abandoned the bottom half of the adult population, especially those without college degrees.

The consequence has been a catastrophe, especially for the bottom half. The erosion began 40 years ago. By 2016, when Trump was elected president, the typical American household had a net worth 14 percent lower than the typical household in 1984, while the richest one-tenth of 1 percent owned more wealth than the bottom 90 percent put together.

Income has become almost as unequal as wealth: Between 1972 and Trump’s election in 2016, the pay of the typical American worker dropped 2 percent, adjusted for inflation, although the American economy nearly doubled in size.

Most of the income gains have gone to the top. The 2016 Wall Street bonus pool was larger than the annual year-round earnings of all 3.3 million Americans working full-time at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

Whereas 90 percent of American adults born in the early 1940s were earning more than their parents by the time they reached their prime earning years, this proportion steadily declined. Only half of adults born in the mid-1980s are now earning more than their parents by their prime earning years.

Average weekly nonsupervisory wages, a measure of blue-collar earnings, were higher in 1969 (adjusted for inflation) than they are now.

Most Americans without college degrees are working longer hours than they worked decades ago and taking fewer sick days or vacations, and they have less economic security.

Nearly one out of every five American workers is in a part-time job. Two-thirds are living paycheck to paycheck. Along with pay, employment benefits have been shriveling. The gap in life expectancy between the nation’s most affluent and everyone else is widening, as well.

Increasing numbers of working Americans have been succumbing to opioids. Death rates have been rising for Americans with no more than high school degrees, due to suicides, chronic liver cirrhosis, and poisonings, including drug overdoses.

Americans who for decades have been on a downward economic escalator have become easy prey for demagogues peddling the politics of hate.

THE STANDARD EXPLANATION for why America has become so economically lopsided is that most Americans are no longer “worth” as much as they were before digital technologies and globalization, and therefore must now settle for lower wages and less security. If they want better jobs, they need more education and better skills.

But this account doesn’t explain why other advanced economies facing similar forces haven’t succumbed to them nearly as dramatically as has the United States.

Or why America’s U-turn from broadly shared prosperity to stagnant wages for most and great riches for a few occurred so quickly in the late 1970s and 1980s.

It doesn’t clarify why the pay of top executives at big companies has risen so dramatically since then, or why the denizens of Wall Street are now paid tens or hundreds of millions annually.To attribute all this to the impersonal workings of the “free market” is to be blind to the political power America’s economic elites have gained over the rules of the market — and their failure to use their power to deliver rising or even stable incomes and jobs to most of the rest of the nation.

Since 1971, when Lewis Powell urged the leaders of American corporations to devote a portion of their profits to politics, America has witnessed the largest and most entrenched system of legalized bribery in its history.

This money — supplemented by additional money from the super-wealthy — has rigged the “free market” for the benefit of large corporations and the rich.

And what have they gotten for their money?

— Lower trade barriers have enabled corporations to outsource abroad, making more stuff in low-wage nations and then selling it back to Americans, who get the benefit of cheaper goods but also lose higher-paying and more secure jobs. As a result, entire sections of America have been denuded of manufacturing jobs.

— The deregulation of Wall Street has enabled corporate raiders (now dubbed shareholder activists and private-equity managers) to force CEOs to abandon all other stakeholders except shareholders.

— Deregulation of finance also allowed high-paid bankers to pocket huge sums while exposing most Americans to extraordinary economic risks, culminating in the Wall Street crisis and the taxpayer-funded bailout of large Wall Street firms. Americans who subsequently lost their jobs, savings, and homes were understandably outraged — especially after these same bankers were never held accountable. Within a few years of the financial crisis, most bankers returned to pocketing vast fortunes, but most other Americans were still living with the consequences.

— Weakened unions, causing the unionized portion of the workforce to drop from 35 percent of all private-sector workers in the 1960s to just 6 percent today, and wages to stagnate.

— Laws against monopolies have been weakened.

— Laws that prevent corporate insiders from getting rich in the stock market by using confidential information have been negated.

— Laws that prevent the wealthy and big corporations from bribing politicians with campaign donations have been weakened or repealed.IT HAS BEEN A VICIOUS CYCLE. Each change in laws has ratcheted wealth and power upward, making it easier for the wealthy and powerful to gain further legal changes that ratchet even more wealth and power upward.

All of this has taken a profound toll on public trust. Much of the public no longer believes that the major institutions of America are working for the many; they are vessels for the few.

When the game is widely seen as rigged in favor of those at the top, society shifts from a system of mutual obligations to a system of private deals. Rather than be founded in the common good, political and social relationships increasingly are viewed as contracts whose participants seek to do as well as possible, often at the expense of others (workers, consumers, the community, the public) who are not at the table.

When it’s all about making deals, one “gets ahead” by getting ahead of others. Duty is replaced by self-aggrandizement and self-promotion. Calls for sacrifice or self-denial are replaced by personal demands for better deals.SOME CONSERVATIVE COMMENTATORS seeking an explanation for the decline of the working class and the rise of Trumpism have turned to social Darwinism. They assume that struggling white people, like poor Black people, are simply losing the race to survive.

In his 2012 book Coming Apart, sociologist Charles Murray, the darling of conservative intellectuals, attributed the demise of America’s white working class to what Murray described as their loss of traditional values of diligence and hard work.

He argued they brought their problems on themselves by becoming addicted to drugs, failing to marry, giving birth out of wedlock, dropping out of high school, and remaining jobless for long periods of time. Government has aided and abetted their decline, he argued, by providing help that encourages these social pathologies.

Murray and others of his stripe — such as J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy (and now a Republican senator from Ohio) — seem not to have noticed that the wages of the white working class have stagnated or declined for the past 40 years, steady jobs once available to them have disappeared, the economic base of their communities has deteriorated, and their share of the nation’s income and wealth has dramatically shrunk.

These are the underlying source of the social pathologies Murray chronicles. The drug addiction, out-of-wedlock births, lack of education, and unemployment are its symptoms, not its cause.AS BERNIE SANDERS CHARGED in the 2016 Democratic primaries, “This type of rigged economy is not what America is supposed to be about.” Hillary Clinton noted at the start of her 2016 campaign that the “deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top.”

Donald Trump proclaimed that “the system is rigged against the citizens.” Trump added that he was the only candidate “who cannot be bought”— a refrain he repeated all the way to the White House. And in his inaugural speech in January 2017, he charged:

“The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs; and while they celebrated in our nation’s Capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.”
Trump’s attempted coup could not have gotten as far as it did — and it continues to this day — without the deepening anger, despair, and suspicions that have subsumed a substantial portion of the American population.

This is especially true of Americans without college degrees, without good jobs, whose pay has stagnated, who have little or no job security, and whose adult children are no longer doing better than they did — in places that have been hollowed out and economically abandoned.

It’s a mistake to assume that their anger and despair are rooted mainly in racism or xenophobia. America has harbored white supremacist and anti-immigrant sentiments since its founding. The anger and despair come as the consequence of four decades of widening inequalities and political corruption.

Trump has responded to this by portraying himself as a strongman who would fight for the “forgotten Americans.” He has responded to their suspicions by giving them a set of villains who, he claims, have conspired to keep them down — the so-called “Deep State,” the cultural elites supporting it, and the political establishment guarding it.

And now, in his third run for the presidency, he is casting himself as a martyr on their behalf — fusing his identity with theirs. When he announced his candidacy in March 2023, he told supporters, “In 2016, I declared: I am your voice. Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”

Last June, after being charged with retaining government secrets, he told a Republican gathering in Michigan: “I’m being indicted for you.” On August 3, the day of his indictment for seeking to overturn the 2020 election, he posted, in all caps, “I AM BEING ARRESTED FOR YOU.” A week later, at a campaign event in New Hampshire, he said, “They want to take away my freedom because I will never let them take away your freedom. They want to silence me because I will never let them silence you.”

In his 2024 campaign, Trump is using the criminal proceedings against him as a means of fusing his own identity with that of millions of Americans who have felt mistreated and bullied by the system. He is them. This fusion is a hallmark of authoritarian fascism.

Hopefully, democracy will survive the 2024 election. The longer-term challenge for America will be to respond to the anger, despair, and suspicions of those who have been left behind, with hope rather than neofascism. We must assert a common good based on democracy, the rule of law, and a system that works for the good of all.

How and where do we begin? In the chapters ahead, I will offer some ideas. Thanks, once again, for joining me on this journey.

These weekly essays are based on chapters from my book THE COMMON GOOD, in which I apply the framework of the book to recent events and to the upcoming election. (Should you wish to read the book, here’s a link).