Amazon staff on Tuesday got an email from their CEO, Andy Jassy, who admonished them to eat or be eaten by AI, while also informing them that they should expect “headcount reductions” over the next few years.

Amazon’s corporate behavior is not out of the ordinary and reflects the logic of late-stage capitalism, with its callous disregard for workers and vast income and wealth inequalities. What’s notable is that this sort of savage law of the jungle is right in line with US foreign policies of empire with its concomitant violence and endless war.

Indeed, by bombing Iran, the US has openly declared that the only operative logic is that of raw, unrestrained savagery. The US has always made it a point to break international law in order to show the rest of the world that the rules don’t apply to it because nobody else was in the position to counter it’s military power. Meanwhile, as its conventional power has dissipated the US has resorted to terrorism, or what Washington Post writer, David Ignatius’ calls the “dirty war”, as its modus operandi.

Americans may remain ignorant or unconcerned about US foreign policies but the US’s increasingly unhinged behavior abroad is a profound threat to what little freedoms we still have left here at home. Make no mistake: the American ruling classes open embrace of Mafia-style gangsterism in Gaza, Ukraine, Iran, Libya Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan etc. also means that they will have no qualms about brushing aside whatever ethical, legal, constitutional and democratic constrains that still stand in the way of their frantic bid to preserve the crumbling order.  

Watching all of this unfold, I question our sanity. How is everyone not bat-shit crazy? I hover on the edge and writing this blog is my therapy but what-the-fuck?

Our president is certainly crazy. But Trumpism came into existence precisely because we live in a wildly unequal and increasingly economically precarious society, supported fulsomely by the neoliberal centrism of the Democratic Party, which to no ones surprise made them increasingly unappealing to voters. The real problem is that Trump’s right-wing authoritarian demagoguery is simply a particularly dangerous symptom of a much deeper malady.

Amazon CEO’s proclamation is a sign of what’s to come from the feral elite who rule uneasily over an increasingly unstable empire.

Stay safe out there.