#mueller report

Sadly, he was out-manoeuvred by the slippery AG William Barr, and hamstrung by an archaic DoJ ruling.

But here is the furthest he could go. Let the record show he went there.

"As set forth in our report, after that investigation, if we had confidence that the President clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said that."

Attorney General Bondi shames the Department of Justice—forever.

February 12, 2026

Robert B. Hubbell

Two stories dominated the news on Wednesday, both confirming the steady erosion of Trump’s power in his party and standing among the American people. Although Attorney General Pam Bondi’s contemptuous performance is displacing most of the oxygen in the news cycle, the more significant political development is the House of Representatives’ rejection of Trump’s 25% tariffs on Canadian goods. The House GOP caucus defied Trump, despite his threats of “consequences” for any Republican who failed to support his illegal tariffs.

As noted in the Concluding Thoughts to yesterday’s newsletter, the defining characteristic of the Trump administration is that it “is weak, chaotic, and wildly unpopular and doing everything it can to make itself more so,” quoting Rebecca Solnit. The testimony of Pam Bondi before the House Oversight Committee was a prime example of the administration “doing everything it can to make itself more unpopular.” Bondi succeeded spectacularly in that effort. See Politico, House Democrats think Pam Bondi just helped them in the midterms. More on that in a moment.

The rebuke to Trump on tariffs was a sea change. Trump’s campaign pledge to improve the economy was based on his absurd belief that charging consumers more for cheap foreign imports would make life more affordable for Americans. Trump thereafter ignored the Constitution and arrogated to himself the power to levy tariffs without congressional involvement or oversight. Those illegal tariffs are the subject of a pending appeal before the Supreme Court.

In the meantime, Democrats in Congress began proposing resolutions that would revoke Trump’s declaration of an emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Trump claims that the IEEPA grants him emergency authority to impose tariffs at will and at whim.

After months of effort, Democrats finally gained sufficient support from Republicans to pass a resolution revoking the emergency declaration. See HuffPost, House Votes To Slap Back Trump’s Tariffs On Canada In Rare Bipartisan Rebuke Of White House Agenda.

Importantly, the House voted to revoke the declaration of an emergency despite Trump’s threats to primary any Republican in the House or Senate who voted against the tariffs. See The Hill, Donald Trump threatens ‘consequences’ for Republicans who voted against tariffs on Canada.

Per The Hill,

“Any Republican, in the House or the Senate, that votes against TARIFFS will seriously suffer the consequences come Election time, and that includes Primaries!” the president wrote in a Truth Social post Wednesday evening, shortly after six House Republicans voted to repeal the president’s tariffs on Canada.

For the resolution to take effect, it must pass in the Senate and be signed by Trump—both unlikely outcomes. But that is not what matters most. The two most important facts are these:

1. Trump has lost control of the House Republican caucus because, 2. Some Republicans fear voters more than they fear Trump!

The loss on the tariffs is stinging because it has been the centerpiece of Trump’s lies about the economy. Republicans in the House—and at home in GOP districts—do not believe those lies and want the tariffs to end.

Per Pew Research (02/04/26),

By a wide margin, Americans continue to say they disapprove of the Trump administration substantially increasing tariffs: 60% say this, including 39% who say they strongly disapprove. By contrast, 37% say they approve of the increased tariffs, and just 13% strongly approve.

Trump has lost control of the narrative. Most people no longer believe his lies. They know whether they are paying more for groceries and imported electronics. No amount of gaslighting by Trump can change the financial condition of a family struggling to make ends meet.

In the end, Trump can’t change the lived experience of hardworking Americans facing challenges that Trump has never experienced and cannot fathom. He rode a wave of populism despite his billionaire lifestyle and elitist “Epstein class” connections.

The attributes that should have made Trump unelectable in a party whose members are increasingly financially unstable, food insecure, and healthcare-deprived are finally catching up to him—and to the rest of the Republican Party. That is why six GOP members broke ranks on Wednesday to rebuke his tariffs.

Attorney General Bondi shames the Department of Justice—forever.

Pam Bondi gave a performance for the ages. And not in a good way. She will be forever remembered as the US Attorney General who responded to a statement by a member of Congress, Jamie Raskin, asking her to answer the questions being put to her, “You don’t tell me anything, you washed-up, loser lawyer! You’re not even a lawyer.” See The Guardian, ‘You’re a washed-up loser lawyer’: Pam Bondi taunts Democrats over Epstein | Pam Bondi.

For the record, Rep. Jamie Raskin’s credentials are stellar:

· Juris Doctor magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. · Professor of constitutional law at American University, Washington College of Law for over 25 years before entering Congress; · Co-founder and director of the LL.M. Program on Law and Government; and · Founder of the Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project

Bondi showed up to the House Oversight Committee hearing with a “burn book” that contained scripted insults for the Democrats on the committee. She followed the same disgraceful process in the Senate. The “performance” brought shame to the Department of Justice that it will never outlive. Rather, it must forever hold up Pam Bondi as an example of everything the DOJ must reject.

She was partisan when she was called to be impartial. She was vulgar when she was called to be the paragon of professionalism. She was callous when asked to show empathy for victims. She placed the president’s interests above all else, even though she represents the United States of America, not the president.

The media is filled with videos of disgusting displays of behavior by Bondi that would result in suspension from middle school and termination from employment by any private employer in America.

The most callous moments in her conduct occurred when she refused to turn to acknowledge the Epstein survivors sitting in the hearing room. A dramatic photo shows Bondi staring blankly ahead while victims stand to raise their hands to indicate that the Department of Justice has refused to interview them. The photo is featured in Politico; see also NBC News, Epstein survivors say they felt ‘degraded’ and a ‘lack of empathy’ from AG Pam Bondi.

The media is filled with headlines that claim that Bondi “lied” to Congress in her testimony. See CBS, Lawmaker accuses AG Pam Bondi of lying under oath during hearing on Epstein files, and HuffPo, Bondi Lies To Congress, Tells Them Maxwell Was Not Transferred To A ‘Lower Level Facility’.

Bondi’s misleading and false statements are too numerous to recount, but they matter—and should be pursued by state bar licensing authorities. In one simple exchange, Bondi made multiple misrepresentations that she must have known were false—because she participated in the events she described.

When Rep. Nadler asked her how many Epstein co-conspirators the DOJ had prosecuted, she responded by attacking Nadler as follows:

During impeachment, you said the president conspired and sought foreign interference in the 2016 election. Robert Mueller found no evidence. Robert Mueller found no evidence, none, of foreign interference in 2016.

First, Trump publicly invited Russia to interfere in the 2016 election. He said (about emails allegedly deleted from Hillary Clinton’s computer server), “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” See PBS (2/13/18), Trump asked Russia to find Clinton’s emails. On or around the same day, Russians targeted her accounts.

Second, Robert Mueller specifically found that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump. Indeed, Mueller indicted 34 people who carried out that interference.

Mueller’s report stated at Volume I, page 1:

As set forth in detail in this report, the Special Counsel’s investigation established that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election principally through two operations. First, a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Moreover, Mueller indicted and obtained guilty verdicts or pleas from 34 people involved in Russia’s interference in the 2016 campaign. See Time Magazine, Mueller Investigation: All of the Guilty Pleas, Indictments.

Per Time, Mueller

convicted or [obtained] guilty pleas from 34 people and three companies, including top advisers to President Trump, Russian spies and hackers with ties to the Kremlin. The charges, which Mueller referenced during his opening statement to the House Judiciary Committee on July 24, range from interfering with the 2016 election and hacking emails to lying to investigators and tampering with witnesses.

Now, let’s compare the actual facts about what Mueller concluded about foreign interference and Bondi’s statement, which was “Robert Mueller found no evidence, none, of foreign interference in 2016.”

Bondi’s statement is false in both a material and an absolute sense. It is the opposite of the truth, not merely false in certain details. And she knows better because she represented Trump in his first impeachment trial (which related to his attempt to blackmail Ukraine in connection with the 2020 campaign, not the Russian interference in 2016).

Making a material, knowingly false statement to Congress is a felony. See 18 U.S. Code § 1621 – Perjury. Perjury occurs when a witness takes an oath to tell the truth and “willfully and contrary to such oath states or subscribes any material matter which he does not believe to be true.” A person who commits perjury “shall” be fined or imprisoned for not more than five years.

There are many additional examples, but one instance of the Attorney General is one too many. She should resign. Failing that, she should be subject to disciplinary proceedings by the relevant state bar. Her conduct is so egregious that the only appropriate remedy is disbarment.

The fact that Bondi felt free to lie to Congress creates a problem of “tone at the top.” If the top lawyer in the DOJ lies to Congress with impunity, what message does that send to DOJ lawyers across the nation? Answer: It frees them to do the same. And that is becoming a pandemic within the Bondi DOJ. See Jamie Conrad, Lawfare, Senior Government Lawyers Are Shirking Ethics Rules With Impunity.

Sadly, state bar associations have largely shirked their obligation to enforce discipline against Trump administration lawyers who violate applicable ethical cannons and criminal statutes.

As Jamie Conrad writes,

But the current administration and its allies have been aggressively pushing against established norms in legal ethics as in other fields—and state supreme courts have largely been acquiescing. The net result is that federal government lawyers are becoming insulated from investigation and discipline regarding their compliance with rules of professional conduct. As a result, they are increasingly free to ignore those rules.

Pam Bondi just lied to Congress. What is the State Bar of Florida going to do about that fact?

At some point, the wheels of justice will turn, and Pam Bondi will face accountability. Trump may issue her a preemptive pardon, but she could be subject to discipline for violating the state bar’s rules of conduct that grant her the right to practice law. See Florida Bar Rule Rule 4-3.3 Candor toward the tribunal. (“A lawyer shall not knowingly . . . (1) make a false statement of fact or law to a tribunal or fail to correct a false statement of material fact . . . .)

Unfortunately, the Florida Supreme Court has ruled that complaints against Pam Bondi are beyond the state bar’s jurisdiction. See State Supreme Court rejects attempt to force Florida Bar to investigate Bondi • Florida Phoenix. There is no logical support for that position; indeed, it removes the primary mechanism for enforcing ethical conduct. But that rule could change with a shift in Florida's political climate. Do not give up on the quest to seek accountability for Bondi—and all DOJ lawyers who are flouting ethical and statutory requirements.

As I said, Bondi’s disgraceful performance was one for the ages. She shall forever be the textbook example of how a lawyer should not conduct themselves in any proceeding, much less a congressional hearing.

Concluding Thoughts.

Yesterday, I recommended an article by Rebecca Solnit as my Concluding Thoughts. Many readers responded with high praise for her essay. If you haven’t done so, check it out.

Today, I want to commend to your attention Bill Kristol’s piece in The Bulwark, The People Are Leading. The Leaders Should Follow. As usual, Kristol’s commentary is smart, sharp, and cogent. This piece, recommended by reader Richard P., focuses on the indispensable role of the people in defending democracy during this fraught time.

I recommend the entire article to your attention, but the gist is here, which starts with Kristol’s discussion of the upcoming funding fight over DHS:

Why give those agencies additional money now? There’s no reason to do so. You know who understands this? The citizens of Minneapolis. Their sustained and exemplary civic action, taken at real risk to themselves to help defend their neighbors against Trump’s paramilitary forces, is a rebuke to the timidity of our political leaders. We see this kind of pattern across the board. The massive turnout at the No Kings demonstrations in June and October showed that many in the public were more energized than their ostensible leaders. The amazing courage and persistence of the Epstein survivors led Congress to pass legislation in November compelling the release of the Epstein files. . . . The public’s rallying to the cause of democracy and liberty is the most heartening development of the last twelve months.

Kristol is right. We have reason to be heartened by the overwhelming response of the people. They have answered their nation’s call during a time of peril. It could have been otherwise. In responding, the people have saved democracy for themselves and for future generations.

The battle is not over, but we can see the fruits of our labor in each new development, even in the ugly performance by Pam Bondi, a pyrotechnic retreat to cover for the collapsing regime of her Dear Leader.

We are winning. Ultimate success will be achieved only if we redouble our efforts. But we are on the right path. Keep it up, everyone! You are heroes of democracy!

Lisa Needham at Public Notice:

It has often been said that Donald Trump was running for president to keep himself out of prison. Mission accomplished.

But the fact that Trump wasn’t behind bars long ago, that he didn’t suffer any consequences for his criming and now likely never will, can be laid squarely at the feet of one man: Attorney General Merrick Garland. Garland dragged his feet on prosecuting Trump for election interference and pilfering classified documents, making it easy for him to run out the clock.  Coming in on the heels of a literal insurrection, Garland was a bad fit for his job from the jump. He made clear early on that he didn’t see addressing issues from the Trump era as a priority, declaring that he would not look backward. Garland is an institutionalist, leading him to see his real job as protecting the Department of Justice rather than imposing any consequences on Bill Barr and others who turned the DOJ into a corrupt playground. Someone who saw the abstract notion of an institution as more important than actual people and actual wrongdoing was never going to be the person who aggressively pursued an ex-president whose crimes were always in full view, which was what the country desperately needed back in 2021.

Bringing a knife to a gunfight

Rather than moving quickly to prosecute people — including Trump — for January 6, Garland’s first moves were to take actions that actually favored Trump, all in the name of protecting the institution. In May 2021, the DOJ went to court to block the release of most of a Bill Barr memo that might have revealed how hard Barr worked to avoid charging Trump with obstruction of justice after the Mueller report. There, Garland was continuing work that had begun under Trump. But while it made sense that Barr would want to block the release of information revealing his role in helping Trump, it made no sense for Garland to want the same. The country had both a right and a need to learn everything possible about what happened during the first Trump presidency and led to a spasm of treasonous violence. That’s far more important than getting a generally favorable ruling on the DOJ’s right to sit on memos. 

Garland also moved quickly to defend Trump against defamation claims by E. Jean Carroll, brought after Trump claimed she made up her accusation of sexual assault to sell books. The DOJ filed a brief substituting the government as the defendant for Trump so it could argue that Trump’s defamation of Carroll was done in the scope of his employment as president, which would likely have resulted in the case getting dismissed. As with the Barr memo, Garland decided it was more important to preserve the DOJ’s general ability to protect federal officials from defamation claims than to acknowledge the unprecedented nature of Trump’s behavior and let him suffer the consequences he clearly deserved.  Taken in a vacuum, neither of these actions would be quite so galling. In both instances, Garland was generally trying to maximize the DOJ’s power, which isn’t necessarily awful. But what is galling is that he took these two steps with such swiftness, only a few months after being confirmed, while not showing nearly the same concern to address Trump’s crimes. 

Fairness to the point of absurdity

Garland’s desire to always appear evenhanded is also what led to the ridiculously aggressive pursuit of Hunter Biden, naming a special counsel and ultimately successfully prosecuting the president’s son for tax evasion and lying on a federal form to obtain a gun. And don’t forget how swiftly Garland appointed a special counsel to investigate President Biden’s retention of classified material. In early November 2022, the White House voluntarily disclosed that some classified documents had been found at Biden’s think tank. The FBI opened an investigation five days later, and Garland raced to name a special counsel, appointing Robert Hur in January 2023. Hur was a Trump appointee, serving as United States Attorney for the District of Maryland from 2018 to 2021, and he demonstrated his hackishness by releasing a report in February of this year that did grave political damage to Biden by gratuitously describing him as an “elderly man with a poor memory.”

While Garland couldn’t move fast enough to protect the DOJ and to aggressively pursue the Biden family to show his evenhandedness, he didn’t get around to naming Jack Smith as a special prosecutor until November 2022, nearly two years after the insurrection. By that time, it was likely already too late. This is true even if Smith had not run into unexpected obstacles, such as Trump winning over the Supreme Court with an absurd argument that he was basically wholly immune from criminal charges.

[...]

All those motions and appeals take time, which is why it was a bad idea to wait until November 2022 to appoint Smith, who then had to convene a grand jury to consider criminal charges over Trump’s willful retention of classified documents and his lies to the FBI about it. Smith didn’t issue an indictment in that case until June 2023. Smith had to convene a separate grand jury for charges related to the insurrection, so the DOJ didn’t indict Trump on those charges until August 2023.

This left Smith overseeing two incredibly complex cases against a defendant with nearly limitless resources, given that Trump could keep tapping political action committees for his legal bills, shifting the cost to his campaign donors and the RNC. By March 2024, Trump had racked up $100 million in legal fees, and while he kept draining the coffers of various PACs, donors were always eager to replenish those funds. Therefore, Trump could file as many frivolous motions as he wanted and run out the clock without taking any money out of his pocket. Smith never honestly had a chance that these cases would wrap up before Election Day. Garland’s foot-dragging on naming Smith is precisely what allowed Trump to run out the clock on his federal criminal charges, setting the stage for a presidential run that culminated Tuesday with his shockingly thorough defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris.

Nothing like someone calling Biden out for everything that Trump is 100% worse on policy about. Completely ignoring the consequences of the last Trump Presidency, especially Roe v Wade as if it didn't happen or blaming Dems for not fixing it even though they didn't have a majority because of Manchin and Sinema.

They are blaming Democrats for things that Republican majorities are responsible for. Then they pretend they want the same things as you but say they can't bring themselves to vote for Biden. Sound familiar? Never forget:

The most important line in the Mueller report appears in the introduction to Volume I:

“The Russian government interfered with the 2016 election in sweeping and systematic fashion.” 

Mueller has published a detailed accounting of Russia’s attack on our presidential election. His report describes how Russia conducted a social-media disinformation campaign and weaponized email messages to sabotage the election. Mueller’s description of the Russia attack makes it clear that information warfare is the new battleground.

How much better at it do you think they've gotten since 2016 and Putin's complete takeover of Russian media and elimination of all dissenters?

Mueller report hoax

This article is from 2019 and never more important than now. Maybe people didn't take it seriously then. I hope they will, now.

"Shortly after World War II, when Europe lay in ruin and humanity was newly traumatized by the spectacle of organized violence that an authoritarian regime could achieve in the industrial epoch, the Western World experienced a sudden cultural shift. This new regime of thought is sometimes called postmodernism, but that term is obscure and overused; a better way to think about this is that there was no longer a unifying narrative, a guiding thread that united humans in the West. Whereas some countries might have previously had religious bonds, or ethnic bonds, or monarchial bonds, or even political bonds around, say, an authoritarian leader, suddenly there were none anymore — or at least none that were universally believed. Individualism and identity were more important, and politicians and legal bodies would now have to consider how to govern subjects in an ambiguous, pluralistic, multicultural world.

At the same time, it was becoming clear that the forces that shaped the world — the power to  organize society, or to exterminate it — were in the hands of scientists and technologists. The atom bomb, the intercontinental ballistic missile, the radio, the car, electrification, the refrigerator and the moon landing all happened in a span of about a hundred years. Science and technology spurred World War II, and led to its conclusion. And as the war receded from memory, it was apparent that the areas of greatest economic growth were all in technical fields — computers, engineering, communications, biotech and material science.

Jean-Francois Lyotard, a French philosopher who studied the condition of knowledge in this new era, realized that technology had changed the way that humans even thought about what knowledge was. Knowledge that computers could not process or manage — for instance, the ability to think critically or analyze qualitatively — was increasingly devalued, while the kinds of knowledge that computers could process became more important. As Lyotard wrote:

The miniaturisation and commercialisation of machines is already changing the way in which learning is acquired, classified, made available, and exploited....The nature of knowledge cannot survive unchanged within this context of general transformation. It can fit into the new channels, and become operational, only if learning is translated into quantities of information. We can predict that anything in the constituted body of knowledge that is not translatable in this way will be abandoned... Along with the hegemony of computers comes a certain logic, and therefore a certain set of prescriptions determining which statements are accepted as “knowledge” statements.

Lyotard wrote this in 1978, before the modern internet even existed. Today, the idea that computational forms of knowledge — and/or the kinds of people who traffic in that knowledge — are more valuable to our society seems to be universal. Thanks to generous grants from the tech industry and well-heeled nonprofits like the Mellon Foundation, humanities academics across the world have been spurred to do more research in what is called the "digital humanities" — a vague term that often means applying statistical and quantitative tools to data sets that involved humanities research, such as literary corpuses. The tech industry investments in digital humanities fulfills Lyotard's prophecy that society would cease to see the humanities' brand of knowledge as useful; that it would attempt remake the humanities into a discipline characterized by discrete information, rather than a means of analyzing, considering, and philosophizing the world.

In the same essay, Lyotard actually distinguishes between two different types of knowledge: the "positivist" kind, that is applicable to technology; and the "hermenutic" kind of knowledge. Hermeneutics, meaning the study of interpretation, is what the humanities (and to some extent social sciences) concerns itself with. One can see how this kind of knowledge might be difficult for computers to catalogue and use. The idea that a computer could produce a literary analysis of a Vonnegut short story sounds absurd because it is: this is not the way that computers process data, this is not what humans generally regard computers as useful for, and it is certainly not what they are designed to do by the tech companies. Unsurprisingly, then, this type of humanities knowledge has become devalued, and not even considered "knowledge" by many.

So this leads us to a predicament in which slowly, since the postwar era, humanities skills and associated knowledge have been devalued, while STEM knowledge — an acronym for "Science, Tech, Engineering and Math," meaning the kind of quantitative knowledge associated with technology — reigns supreme. One of the most interesting places that you can see this trend is in fiction: the kinds of heroes and protagonists that people admire and look up to in fiction are increasingly those with STEM knowledge, as these people are seen as heroes because we uncritically accept that STEM knowledge is what changes the world. There is a reason that Iron Man is a billionaire technologist, and Batman is a billionaire technologist, and The Hulk's namesake Bruce Banner has multiple PhDs in the Marvel canon, and that the mad scientist Rick Sanchez (of "Rick and Morty") is essentially an immortal, infinitely powerful being because of his ability to understand science and wield technology. We admire these people because they possess the kinds of skills that our society deems the most valuable, and we're told that we, like them, can use these skills to master the universe.

(There is a potent irony here, of course, in that it is artists who write these narratives, and artists who are partly responsible for creating and popularizing this kind of STEM-supremacist propaganda. Weirdly, though, you rarely see a superhero or a super-spy who started life as a painter, or a novelist, or a comic book artist.)

Moreover, in real life, people who possess technological knowledge, primarily the scions of Silicon Valley, are widely adulated, viewed as heroes who will inherently change society for the better. This manifests itself in various ways: some technologists, like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have set up philanthropic foundations to "solve" our social problems — though curiously, the means by which that happens always seems to enrich themselves and their fellow capitalists along the way. Some of them promise widespread social change for the better via their own businesses, as though running a for-profit tech company was in and of itself a gift to the world and a net positive for social cohesion: you see this in many tech companies that advertise themselves as operating "for good," such as in the PR rhetoric of Facebook.  Then, there are those who believe that their contribution to society will be helping us leave this planet, and who are investing heavily in private spaceflight companies with the ultimate intention of colonizing space; this includes both Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

In all these cases, the idea that people with STEM knowledge are predestined to save the world is an idea has become so dominant we don’t even question it. Some call this attitude STEM chauvinism, though I prefer the moniker STEM Supremacy. The noun "supremacy," I believe, is called for, because of how the idea that STEM knowledge (and those who posses it) is superior to other forms of knowledge has become so hegemonic that our culture openly mocks those who possess other forms of knowledge — particularly the hermeneutic, humanities-type knowledge. There is a fount of memes about humanities majors and how useless their fields are; some of these memes depict humanities majors as graduating to working at low-wage jobs like McDonalds; others mock critical humanities majors (particularly gender studies) as being out-of-touch, social failures.

Such discourse is intersectional with other supremacist beliefs, such as patriarchy, and often these kinds of memes that celebrate STEM knowledge and mock humanities knowledge will simultaneously mock women and celebrate masculinity. It was unsurprising to me when, last year, it leaked that a Google engineer, James Damore, had circulated an anti-diversity manifesto in which he used discredited science to argue that there were biological reasons for the gender gap. He went on to argue that there were reasons men were more interested in computers and in leadership, and women less. Though Damore was fired, he maintains that many of his peers agreed with him. Such incidents speak to the ways that different chauvinist tendencies, one of STEM Supremacy and one of patriarchy, can intersect to form novel noxious political ideologies.

The concept of "STEM Supremacy" relies on a popular belief that STEM knowledge is synonymous with progress. Yet if you take this kind of belief a bit too far, you might be keen to abandon democratic ideals and start to believe that we really should live in a society in which the STEM nerds rule over us. This has resulted in a number of half-baked supremacists within the tech industry who advocate either for authoritarian technocracies or, more bizarrely, monarchy.

I’ll give a few brief examples. There’s Google engineer Justine Tunney, a former Occupy Wall Street activist who now calls for “open-source authoritarianism. ” Tunney has argued against democracy and in favor of a monarchy run by technologists, and advocated for the United States to bring back indentured servitude.

But perhaps best-known among the techno-monarchists is Mencius Moldbug, the nom de plume of Curtis Yarvin, a programmer and founder of startup Tlon — a startup that is backed at least in part by billionaire anti-democracy libertarian Peter Thiel, who famously once wrote he did not believe democracy and freedom were compatible, and expressed skepticism over women's suffrage. Moldbug's polemics are circular, semi-comprehensible, and blur political theory and pop culture; Corey Pein of The Baffler described his treatises as "archaic [and] grandiose," while being "heavily informed by the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and George Lucas."

Both of these so-called thinkers constitute parts of a larger movement that calls itself "Dark Enlightenment," alternatingly known as "neoreactionaries." True to its name,  the political agenda of Dark Enlightenment includes a celebration of patriarchy, monarchy, and racialized theories of intelligence differentials. 

The notion that monarchy is popular again in Silicon Valley might sound absurd. We associate monarchies with stodgy, quaint medieval kingdoms, the opposite of the disruptive, fast-moving tech industry. And yet those in the tech industry who see monarchy as appealing are keen to point out how the hierarchical aspects of monarchial rule are actually familiar to their industry. As Pein mentions in his Baffler essay, Thiel delivered a lecture in 2012 in which he explained the connection:

A startup is basically structured as a monarchy. We don’t call it that, of course. That would seem weirdly outdated, and anything that’s not democracy makes people uncomfortable.

[But] it is certainly not representative governance. People don’t vote on things. Once a startup becomes a mature company, it may gravitate toward being more of a constitutional republic. There is a board that theoretically votes on behalf of all the shareholders. But in practice, even in those cases it ends up somewhere between constitutional republic and monarchy. Early on, it’s straight monarchy. Importantly, it isn’t an absolute dictatorship. No founder or CEO has absolute power. It’s more like the archaic feudal structure. People vest the top person with all sorts of power and ability, and then blame them if and when things go wrong.

[T]he truth is that startups and founders lean toward the dictatorial side because that structure works better for startups. It is more tyrant than mob because it should be. In some sense, startups can’t be democracies because none are. None are because it doesn’t work. If you try to submit everything to voting processes when you’re trying to do something new, you end up with bad, lowest common denominator type results.

The underpinnings of STEM Supremacy are, as I've laid out, complicated to see and stretch back to the end of World War II — but when put together they form a broader picture of where the philosopher-kings of the tech industry are heading, and what they believe. If we continue to live in a society that devalues humanities-type knowledge and glorifies STEM knowledge, this kind of thinking will persist, I fear. And the tech industry is partly responsible for cultivating this noxious worldview, in the sense that their PR apparatuses glorify STEM knowledge and encourage the public to view their leaders as demigods.

This isn't a unique phenomenon. Any situation where a certain ideology is denigrated and another valorized, there will be at some point a corresponding rise in a chauvinism in favor of the valorized ideology. The situation today is made more complicated by the fact that the tech industry benefits from the normalization of STEM Supremacist beliefs. The unearned trust that the public has for tech startups and tech industry ideas, the lack of regulation, and the absurd valuations of companies that continue to lose money — this is all motivated by an underlying belief that these companies are innately good, their owners smart, and their work more vital than other fields. Whether they admit it or not, you can draw a line from the public relations departments of tech companies and Justine Tunney's call for "open-source authoritarianism."

Ironically, the only antidote to all this sophistry is the humanities — the kind of critical thinking that they entail, and the kind of thinking that it is impossible for computers to do. I've often wondered if part of the tech industry's investment in digital humanities is designed to help stave off critical discourse or criticism of their companies. Indeed, by remapping the idea of what knowledge is in the first place, the tech industry is helping to realize a future in which we lack even the language to think critically about their role in society. Or maybe even a future in which they rule over us as monarchial, benevolent dictators — at least in their eyes. Perhaps this was the plan all along. (Oh yeah. It was)

By KEITH A. SPENCER

Keith A. Spencer is a senior editor at Salon who edits Salon's science/health vertical. His book, "A People's History of Silicon Valley: How the Tech Industry Exploits Workers, Erodes Privacy and Undermines Democracy," was released in 2018. Follow him on Twitter at @keithspencer, or on Facebook here.

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THESE FUCKERS IN SILICON VALLEY WANT A MONARCHY !!

"Few Catholics outside the D.C area are likely familiar with Fr. Arne, who never wrote a book or made national headlines. Yet a list of those who appear in Eberstadt’s book to laud his role among “billionaires and Supreme Court Justices” indicates the breadth of his influence: George Weigel, Fr. Thomas Joseph White, Arthur Brooks, Hadley Arkes, Peter Thiel, and Fr. Paul Scalia, to name but a few..."

"From his perch on K Street at the Catholic Information Center (CIC), Father Arne Panula shepherded some of the nation’s power brokers into the Catholic Church..." Mary Eberstadt

“As recently as 2017, Billy [Barr] was on the board of directors of the DC-based Catholic Information Center, led by the ultraright and secretive group Opus Dei…Its board includes the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo, and White House counsel Pat Cipollone..."