Features
Trump’s Second Coming and the Tech-Industry Complex
by Rajan Philips
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.· W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming
It is pathos time in American politics. In his second inaugural address on Monday, January 20, Donald Trump proclaimed divine causality for his second coming. “My life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again,” declared Trump. He was referring to the failed attempts on his life during the election campaign.
But there was no hint of humility or any offering of thanks for God’s mercy. Neither attribute is a part of his constitution, and Trump owes nothing to the god he has created for himself to be used as a marketing embellishment. While there is nothing eschatological about Trump’s second coming, what rings familiar is Yeats’s second coming foreboding from a different era a hundred years ago. The Irish poet’s insight forcefully captures Trump’s America – where the best lack conviction and the worst have all the intensity.
An even more powerful insight as well as foresight of what is now unfolding in America can be found in the writings of the progressive American philosopher Richard Rorty (1931-2007) from the late 1990s. Rorty’s 1998 book, Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America, has been noted for its prophetic prediction of “an authoritarian strongman” rising to power taking advantage of the economical struggles of the working classes and their disaffection with over-righteous left-liberals preaching social rights over economic necessities. Trump’s election in 2016 fulfilled Rorty’s 1998 prophesy.
The Dark Years and Beyond
Two years earlier in 1996, Rorty presaged Trump’s second coming in a retro-futuristic essay entitled, “Looking Backwards from the Year 2096.” The essay is presented as an excerpt from a speculative article on ‘Fraternity’ published in a 2095 symposium edited by symbolically fictional Cynthia Rodriguez, SJ and Youzheng (not Kash) Patel, and offers these glimpses of light at the end of a long Trumpian tunnel:
“Our long, hesitant, painful recovery, over the last five decades, from the breakdown of democratic institutions during the Dark Years (2014-2044) has changed our political vocabulary, as well as our sense of the relation between the moral order and the economic order. Just as twentieth-century Americans had trouble imagining how their pre-Civil War ancestors could have stomached slavery, so we at the end of the twenty-first century have trouble imagining how our great-grandparents could have legally permitted a CEO to get 20 times more than her lowest paid employees. We cannot understand how Americans a hundred years ago could have tolerated the horrific contrast between a childhood spent in the suburbs and one spent in the ghettos. Such inequalities seem to us evident moral abominations, but the vast majority of our ancestors took them to be regrettable necessities.”
Rorty died one year before Obama was elected, but he was spot on in setting the start of the Dark Years that began with Trump’s foray into politics to negate the promises of Obama’s presidency. But Trump was not a one-term aberration as many thought he would be, and Biden’s presidency did not turn out to be a permanent restoration after Trump. Indeed, another American prognosticator, Harvard University’s Michael Sandel, has called the Biden presidency an interregnum between Trump’s two terms. Trump is now musing about a third term and there is no limit to what he thinks he can do. He might even fancy that he is physically immortal. But there are limits to what he can actually do and even to the lasting effects of all his executive orders and odours that he has been issuing in the first two weeks of his second term.
In Rorty’s sweep of American history, Americans overcame the scourge of slavery in their first hundred years, and they opened the age of human rights and social rights for all peoples in the next hundred years. The Dark Years under Trump are the culmination of the tussles between the promises of the welfare state and supremacy of the market; the frustrations of socialist endeavours followed by the fanaticism of globalization; the fragmentation of societies and lopsided wealth distribution between the overclass of the super-rich and the professional and cultural elites, on the one hand, and the mass of underclasses, on the other; and the rise of populisms targeting the very structures that were created to expand equality and inclusivity as deep state enemies of the people.
Rorty is optimistic that by 2044, twenty first-century Americans, like their predecessors in the earlier two centuries, will find their enlightened way out of the current darkness by rediscovering fraternity and unselfishness and moving past the insistence over rights and their denial. Fraternity, for Rorty, “is an inclination of the heart,” and “not the sort of thing that anybody can have a theory about or that people can be argued into having.” The sources for this metamorphosis will come not from philosophers, lawyers, political theorists or social scientists, but from a “political discourse dominated by quotations from Scripture and literature” that have always been a huge part of the American spirit and ethos. From the likes of John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath,” and the “social gospel theology” of Walter Rauschenbusch.
If Rorty’s end goals seem utopian, the means to them that he advocates are not. Nor are they ahistorical. The means involve reconstituting the old “coalition of trade unions and churches” that would “topple(d) the military dictatorship in 2044” and “retain(ed) control of Congress by successfully convincing the voters that its opponents constitute ‘the parties of selfishness’.” While Rorty’s prescience is remarkable, even though there is no military dictatorship, it could not be expected to be microscopic about the specific aspects of the current darkness and the way out of it.
The Business of Trumpism
For instance, Rorty could not have presaged in any detail the personification of the American crisis in a president called Donald Trump. What might be worrisome for the here and now is whether Trumpism and its hangover could last as far as 2044. To borrow from Scripture, Trump is turning what was set up to be “government of the people, by the people, for the people”, into a “den of thieves,” by the super-rich, for the super-rich. His MAGA (Make America Great Again) universe has always been enthralled by what was mistakenly magnified to be Trump’s business talent and acumen. The truth of the matter is that Trump always knew that he never belonged in the club of the great captains of American capitalism. Now he is pursuing the illusion of presidential greatness.
He seems to be proving to be far more successful in politics than he has been in business. His business was primarily limited to the parking lots and vacant parcels of capitalism, i.e., property development. And he thrived not by playing straight but going crooked all the time. He is deploying the same methods in politics to good, rather bad, effect. He has overshadowed four living former presidents (Clinton, Bush, Obama and Biden), and has bested the two best female candidates who challenged him – Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris.
A slight majority of American voters ignored and rejected Kamala Harris’s warnings that Trump was carrying an Enemies List, and that his second term would be dedicated to implementing Project 2025 – a conservative road map for using the Trump presidency to overhaul the federal government structures and dismantle the social welfare and civil rights scaffoldings that have been put in place by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society initiatives. Trump is now fully bought into upending them, and is blindly signing Executive Orders drafted by his policy minions.
True to form, the orders are creating chaos and confusion all around, and the executive order to end the funding of federal agencies and programs, all of which have been created by law, had to be rescinded within 24 hours in the face of court challenges and stay orders. The method in all the madness of the Trump presidency is keeping the MAGA base happy and looking after Trump’s super-rich sponsors.
To keep his base happy, Trump has pardoned all 1,500 or so criminals who were already jailed or facing prosecution for the 2021 January 6 insurrection at the Capitol to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. That has not gone down well with police organizations, courts and a majority of the population including Republicans. Trump has also fired all the lawyers in the Department of Justice (DOJ) who were involved in indicting Trump for inciting the January 6 insurrection. That should send an unflattering message to Chief Justice Roberts who has defined presidential interactions with the DOJ as a core executive function protected by absolute immunity.
The deportation of illegal immigrants was already a common practice under the Obama and Biden Administrations. But Trump is making a show of it by televising the rounding up and handcuffing of immigrants and deporting them on military aircrafts as opposed to commercial airlines.
A third sop to the base is Trump’s threat to eradicate the policy and programmes implemented by the federal government to promote diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the hiring of government employees and contractors. Their origin goes all the way back to President Kennedy’s 1961 Executive Order that started the American Affirmative Action. Now Trump wants to end it and there is no level too low that he will not stoop to end DEI. He has been doing just that in the wake of the tragic midair crash last Wednesday of a passenger plane and a military helicopter over the Potomac River in Washington.
Rather than showing presidential compassion and empathy over the death of everyone in the two ill-fated aircraft, 67 in all, Trump has taken to blaming Obama, Biden, and Biden’s Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (one of Biden’s more brilliant cabinet ministers) and their DEI hiring practices for the crash. Even Republican politicians are disgusted at the crude crassness of Trump’s politics.
The Tech-Industrial Complex
In his farewell address to the nation on January 15, outgoing President Biden warned of the danger of a “tech-industrial complex” in the form of “an oligarchy (is) taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.” Biden was following the example of President Eisenhower who had similarly, in his farewell address in 1960, warned of the danger of a military-industrial complex. More than hundred years earlier Theodore Roosevelt had warned of the danger of money power in American politics.
These presidential warnings betray the tensions between the power of capital and the political power of the state. While there is no illusion about the sway that money power and corporate elites have had over any and all governments, never before has an American president surrounded himself with all the richest men the way Trump is doing now. There seems to be no billionaire woman yet who is a member of Trump’s White House billionaire club. What is also unique about this club is that it is comprised entirely of big tech billionaires.
They are a different breed and are the exponents of what the Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis calls ‘Techno Feudalism.’ One that has been devouring industrial capitalism of old and replacing its two pillars of markets and profits with ‘digital trading platforms’ and ‘cloud rents.’ More on that for another time. The brazenness of this cabal and its agenda run diametrically counter to the nativist compulsions of MAGA populists. Not to mention the internal contradictions and egotistical clashes within the cabal itself.
The chasm between the tech cabal and the rest of the country couldn’t be deeper or wider. In this century so far, the top 1% of Americans, or 3 million people, own more than a third of the national wealth, and tech cabal is at the apex within this group. For the bottom 50% of Americans, or 150 million people, their share of the national wealth is only 1.5%. For the American households, the median household net worth is about $193,000 and median annual household income is about $81,000. It is their cost of living and affordability challenges that Trump exploited to win the presidential election. But after taking his oath as president, and amidst two weeks of non-stop issuance of executive orders, he has said little or nothing about the people’s main grievances that he got elected to address.
At the same time, Trump is pushing his party in Congress to give him the budget to jumpstart his tax reduction agenda amounting to $4 trillion. He needs it to keep his bargain with his billionaire club. But the Republican Party with slender majorities in the Congress and the Senate is not offering Trump its unanimous support without which nothing could be passed by Congress.
For this reason, Trump is looking for alternative revenue sources to accommodate his tax cuts. They include imposing tariffs on imports that has global implications, freeze on federal grants and programs, revenue from increased fossil fuel production and downsizing government. But none of them can be easily implemented or achieved. The cuts to programs to enable tax cuts for the wealthy will impact everyone who is not wealthy and will mobilize their opposition. Democrats are gearing up for the fight, calling Trump’s tax cut agenda – “a contract against America.” The midterm elections in 2026 will show which way the political wind is blowing.
The perceptive commentator seeking to make some sense of social and economic developments within most Southern countries today has no choice but to revisit, as it were, that classic on post-colonial societies, ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ by Frantz Fanon. Decades after the South’s initial decolonization experience this work by the Algerian political scientist of repute remains profoundly relevant.
The fact that the Algeria of today is seeking accountability from its former colonizer, France, for the injustices visited on it during the decades of colonial rule enhances the value and continuing topicality of Frantz’s thinking and findings. The fact that the majority of the people of most decolonized states are continuing to be disempowered and deprived of development should doubly underline the significance of ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ as a landmark in the discourse on Southern questions. The world would be erring badly if it dismisses this evergreen on decolonization and its pains as in any way outdated.
Developments in contemporary China help to throw into relief some of the internal ‘structural deficiencies’ that have come to characterize most Southern societies in current times. However, these and many more ‘structural faults’ came to the attention of the likes of Fanon decades back.
It is with considerable reservations on their truthfulness that a commentator would need to read reports from the US’ Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on developments in China, but one cannot approach with the same skepticism revelations on China by well-known media institutions such as Bloomberg News.
While an ODNI report quoted in this newspaper on March 25th, 2025, elaborated on the vast wealth believed to have been amassed by China’s contemporary rulers and their families over the years, Bloomberg News in a more studied manner said in 2012, among other things, on the same subject that, ‘Xi’s extended family had amassed assets totaling approximately $376 million, encompassing investments in sectors like rare earth minerals and real estate. However, no direct links were established between these assets and Xi or his immediate family.’
Such processes that are said to have taken hold in China in post- Mao times in particular are more or less true of most former colonies of the South. A clear case in point is Sri Lanka. More than 75 years into ‘independence’ the latter is yet to bring to book those sections of its ruling class that have grown enormously rich on ill-gotten gains. It seems that, as matters stand, these sections would never be held accountable for their unbounded financial avarice.
The mentioned processes of exploitation of a country’s wealth, explain in considerable measure, the continuing underdevelopment of the South. However, Fanon foresaw all these ills and more about the South long ago. In ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ he speaks insightfully about the ruling classes of the decolonized world, who, having got into the boots of the departing colonizers, left no stone unturned to appropriate the wealth of their countries by devious means and thereby grow into the stratum described as ‘the stinking rich.’
This is another dimension to the process referred to as ‘the development of underdevelopment.’ The process could also be described as ‘How the Other Half Dies’. The latter is the title of another evergreen piece of research of the seventies on the South’s development debacles by reputed researcher Susan George.
Now that the Non-aligned Movement is receiving some attention locally it would be apt to revisit as it were these development debacles that are continuing to bedevil the South. Among other things, NAM emerged as a voice of the world’s poor. In fact in the seventies it was referred to as ‘The trade union of the poor.’ Accordingly, it had a strong developmental focus.
Besides the traditional aims of NAM, such as the need for the South to keep an ‘equidistance’ between the superpowers in the conduct of its affairs, the ruling strata of developing countries were also expected to deliver to their peoples equitable development. This was a foremost dimension in the liberation of the South. That is, economic growth needed to be accompanied by re-distributive justice. In the absence of these key conditions no development could be said to have occurred.
Basing ourselves on these yardsticks of development, it could be said that Southern rulers have failed their peoples right through these decades of decolonization. Those countries which have claimed to be socialistic or centrally planned should come in for the harshest criticism. Accordingly, a central aim of NAM has gone largely unachieved.
It does not follow from the foregoing that NAM has failed completely. It is just that those who have been charged with achieving NAM’s central aims have allowed the Movement to go into decline. All evidence points to the fact that they have allowed themselves to be carried away by the elusive charms of the market economy, which three decades ago, came to be favoured over central planning as an essential of development by the South’s ruling strata.
However, now with the returning to power in the US of Donald Trump and the political Right, the affairs of the South could, in a sense, be described as having come full circle. The downgrading of USAID, for instance, and the consequent scaling down of numerous forms of assistance to the South could be expected to aggravate the development ills of the hemisphere. For instance, the latter would need to brace for stepped-up unemployment, poverty and social discontent.
The South could be said to have arrived at a juncture where it would need to seek ways of collectively advancing its best interests once again with little or no dependence on external assistance. Now is the time for Southern organizations such as NAM to come to the forefront of the affairs of the South. Sheer necessity should compel the hemisphere to think and act collectively.
Accordingly, the possibility of South-South cooperation should be explored anew and the relevant institutional and policy framework needs to be created to take on the relevant challenges.
It is not the case that these challenges ceased to exist over the past few decades. Rather it is a case of these obligations being ignored by the South’s ruling strata in the belief that externally imposed solutions to the South’s development questions would prove successful. Besides, these classes were governed by self- interest.
It is pressure by the people that would enable their rulers to see the error of their ways. An obligation is cast on social democratic forces or the Centre-Left to come to center stage and take on this challenge of raising the political awareness of the people.
On the morning of 21 March, 2025, a Chinese-built K-8 jet trainer aircraft of the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) crashed at Wariyapola. Fortunately, the two pilots ejected from the aircraft and parachuted down to safety.
A team of seven has been appointed to investigate the accident. Their task is to find the ‘cause behind the cause’, or the root cause. Ejecting from an aircraft usually has physical and psychological repercussions. The crew involved in the crash are the best witnesses, and they must be well rested and ready for the accident inquiry. It is vital that a non-punitive atmosphere must prevail. If the pilots believe that they are under threat of punishment, they will try to withhold vital information and not reveal the truth behind what happened, prompting their decision to abandon the stricken aircraft. In the interest of fairness, the crew must have a professional colleague to represent them at the Inquiry.
2000 years ago, the Roman philosopher Cicero said that “To err is human.” Alexander Pope said, “To err is human. To forgive, divine.” Yet in a Royal Air Force (RAF) hangar in the UK Force (RAF) hangs a sign declaring: “To err is human. To forgive is not RAF policy” These are the two extremes.
Over the years, behavioural scientists have observed that errors and intelligence are two sides of the same coin. In other words, an intelligent human being is liable to make errors. They went on to label these acts of omission and commission as ‘Slips, Lapses, Mistakes and Violations’.
To illustrate the point in a motoring context, if one was restricted to driving at a speed limit of 100 kph along an expressway and the speed crept up to 120 kph, then it is a ‘Slip’ on one’s part. If you forgot to fasten the seatbelt, it is a ‘Lapse’. While driving along a two-lane road, if a driver thinks in his/her judgement that the way is clear and tries to overtake slower traffic on the road, using the opposite lane, then encounters unanticipated opposite traffic and is forced to get back to the correct lane, that is a ‘Mistake’. Finally, if a double line is crossed while overtaking, while aware that the law is being broken, that is labelled as a ‘Violation’. In theory, all of the above could be applied to flying as well.
In the mid-Seventies, Elwyn Edwards and Frank Hawkins proposed that good interaction between Software (paperwork), Hardware (the aircraft and other machines), Liveware (human element) and the (working) environment are the essentials in safe flight operations. Labelled the ‘SHELL’ concept, it was adopted by the International Civil Aviation Organisation. (ICAO). (See Diagram 01)
In diagram 01, two ‘L’s depict the ‘Liveware’, inside and outside an aircraft flightdeck. The ‘L’ at the centre is the pilot in command (PIC), who should know his/her strengths and weaknesses, know the same of his/her crew, aircraft, and their mission, and, above all, be continuously evaluating the risks.
Finally, Prof. James Reason proposed the Swiss Cheese Theory of Accident Causation. (See Diagram 02)
From this diagram we see that built in defences in a system are like slices of Swiss cheese. There are pre-existing holes at random which, unfortunately, may align and allow the crew at the ‘sharp end’ to carry out a procedure unchecked.
Although it is easy and self-satisfying to blame a crew, or an individual, at an official accident investigation, what should be asked, instead, is why or how the system failed them? Furthermore, a ‘just culture’ must prevail.
The PIC and crew are the last line of defence in air safety and accident prevention. (See Diagram 3)
A daily newspaper reported that it is now left to be seen whether the crash on 21 March was due to mechanical failure or pilot error. Why is it that when a judge makes a wrong judgement it is termed ‘Miscarriage of Justice’ or when a Surgeon loses a patient on the operating table it is ‘Surgical Misadventure’, but when a pilot makes an honest error, it is called ‘Pilot Error’? I believe it should be termed ‘Human Condition’.
Even before the accident investigation had started, on 23 March, 2025, Minister of Civil Aviation, Bimal Ratnayake, went on record saying that the Ministry of Defence had told him the accident was due to an ‘athweradda’ (error). This kind of premature declaration is a definite ‘no-no’ and breach of protocol. The Minister should not be pre-empting the accident enquiry’s findings and commenting on a subject not under his purview. Everyone concerned should wait for the accident report from the SLAF expert panel before commenting.
God bless the PIC and crew!
– Ad Astrian
Yes, it’s happening tomorrow, Friday (28th), and Saturday (29th,) and what makes this scene extra special is that you don’t need to rush and pack your travelling bags and fork out a tidy sum for your airfare to Thailand.
The Thai Street Food Festival, taking place at Siam Nivasa, 43, Dr. CWW Kannangara Mawatha, Colombo 7, will not only give you a taste of Thai delicacies but also Thai culture, Thai music, and Thai dancing.
This event is being organised by the Thai Community, in Sri Lanka, in collaboration with the Royal Thai Embassy in Colombo.
The Thai Community has been very active and they make every effort to promote Amazing Thailand, to Sri Lankans, in every possible way they can.
Regarding the happening, taking place tomorrow, and on Saturday, they say they are thrilled to give Sri Lankans the vibrant Thai Street Food Festival.
Explaining how Thai souvenirs are turned out
I’m told that his event is part of a series of activities, put together by the Royal Thai Embassy, to commemorate 70 years of diplomatic relations between Thailand and Sri Lanka.
At the Thai Street Food Festival, starting at 5.00 pm., you could immerse yourself in lively Thai culture, savour delicious Thai dishes, prepared by Colombo’s top-notch restaurants, enjoy live music, captivate dance performances, and explore Thai Community members offering a feast of food and beverages … all connected with Amazing Thailand.
Some of the EXCO members of the Thai Community, in Sri Lanka,
with the Ambassador for Thailand
I’m sure most of my readers would have been to Thailand (I’ve been there 24 times) and experienced what Amazing Thailand has to offer visitors … cultural richness, culinary delights and unique experiences.
Well, if you haven’t been to Thailand, as yet, this is the opportunity for you to experience a little bit of Thailand … right here in Colombo; and for those who have experienced the real Thailand, the Thai Street Food Festival will bring back those happy times … all over again!
Remember, ENTRANCE IS FREE.
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