"The Next Step in the United States' Campaign of Regime Change"

 

US President Donald Trump and top administration officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, characterized Saturday’s assault on Venezuela and abduction of the country’s president as a warning shot in the direction of Cuba, Mexico, Colombia, and other Latin American nations.

During a Saturday press conference, Trump openly invoked the Monroe Doctrine—an assertion of US dominance of the Western Hemisphere—and said his campaign of aggression against Venezuela represented the “Monroe Doctrine” in action.

In his unwieldy remarks, Trump called out Colombian President Gustavo Petro by name, accusing him without evidence of “making cocaine and sending it to the United States.”

“So, he does have to watch his ass,” the US president said of Petro, who condemned the Trump administration’s Saturday attack on Venezuela as “aggression against the sovereignty of Venezuela and Latin America.”

Petro responded defiantly to the possibility of the US targeting him, writing on social media that he is “not worried at all.”

In a Fox News appearance earlier Saturday, Trump also took aim at the United States’ southern neighbor, declaring ominously that “something’s going to have to be done with Mexico,” which also denounced the attack on Venezuela and abduction of President Nicolás Maduro.

“She is very frightened of the cartels,” Trump said of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum. “So, we have to do something.”

“This armed attack on Venezuela is not an isolated event. It is the next step in the United States’ campaign of regime change that stretches from Caracas to Havana.”

Rubio, for his part, focused on Cuba—a country whose government he has long sought to topple. “If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned, at least a little bit,” Rubio, who was born in Miami to Cuban immigrant parents, said during Saturday’s press conference.

That the Trump administration wasted no time threatening other nations as it pledged to control Venezuela indefinitely sparked grave warnings, with the leadership of Progressive International cautioning that “this armed attack on Venezuela is not an isolated event.”

“It is the next step in the United States’ campaign of regime change that stretches from Caracas to Havana—and an attack on the very principle of sovereign equality and the prospects for the Zone of Peace once established by the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States,” the coalition said in a statement. “This renewed declaration of impunity from Washington is a threat to all nations around the world.”

“Trump has clearly articulated the imperial logic of this intervention—to seize control over Venezuela’s natural resources and reassert US domination over the hemisphere,” said Progressive International. “The ‘Trump corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine—applied in recent hours with violent force over the skies of Caracas—is the single greatest threat to peace and prosperity that the Americas confront today.”

-Jake Johnson, Common Dreams

Regime Change in Venezuela is the Marriage of Colonialism and Gangster Capitalism

I watched the coverage on CBS and NBC of the U.S. assault on Venezuela and the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, and what I witnessed was not journalism but the choreography of propaganda. CBS, in particular, offered thirty uninterrupted minutes of state-sanctioned fantasy, anchored by a fawning interview with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, a man implicated in the killing of more than one hundred people at sea, killed without evidence, accountability, or due process. Rather than interrogating power, the networks defaulted to spectacle.

At no point did either network raise the most basic questions of legality, sovereignty, or international law. Instead, both newscasts offered images of people dancing in the streets celebrating what amounts to a spectacularized violation of international and domestic law.  

There was no mention that the attack and abduction were condemned by the presidents of Mexico and Brazil, by international legal scholars, or by a widening circle of global leaders alarmed by the precedent being set. There was no scrutiny of the fabricated claims that Venezuela was plotting an invasion of the United States or serving as the epicenter of drug trafficking, assertions long discredited but endlessly recycled to justify imperial violence. 

Nor , crucially, was there any acknowledgment of Trump’s staggering hypocrisy: while declaring a war on drugs in the name of national security, he pardoned one of the most notorious narcotics traffickers ever prosecuted in the United States, Juan Orlando Hernández, described by prosecutors as a central figure in an eighteen-year operation that flooded the U.S. with more than 400 tons of cocaine.

Absent as well was any critical examination of Trump’s resurrection of the Monroe Doctrine, now stripped of even its earlier pretenses and refashioned as a doctrine of open coercion, colonial entitlement, and gangster capitalism. This silence was not incidental; it functioned to protect the ideological framework that renders imperial violence normal and profitable.

This imperial aggression mirrors the logic of Adolf Hitler’s doctrine of Lebensraum, a racist and expansionist ideology that justified conquest, terror, and annexation in the name of national destiny. History does not repeat itself mechanically, but it does return with new uniforms, new slogans, and the same deadly imperial ambitions.

The danger could not have been clearer when Marco Rubio publicly threatened the governments of Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, and other nations in the region, warning that they would face retaliation if they failed to submit to the Trump administration’s demands. This was a declaration of imperial intent, a signal that the United States now claims the right to decide which governments may exist and which must be eliminated. 

Equally absent from the broadcast was any reckoning with the toxic reach of neoliberalism itself, despite the fact that Trump openly gloated publicly over Venezuela’s oil reserves and made the astonishing admission that he intended to hand control of those resources to the largest U.S. oil conglomerates. This declaration was an open admission of support for the fusion of state violence, corporate plunder, and imperial entitlement. 

In that moment, conquest was no longer disguised as security policy; it was announced as a business transaction. Such candor would have forced George Orwell and Aldous Huxley to append new chapters to their warnings about dictatorship, chapters in which authoritarian power no longer bothers to conceal its motives, and where the extraction of wealth replaces ideology as the naked logic of domination. 

What we are witnessing is fascism unbound, armed with military force and insulated by media silence. When mainstream media abandon their obligation to question power, to name crimes, and to defend democratic norms, they do more than misinform the public. They normalize lawlessness, launder violence, and prepare the population to accept the unthinkable as inevitable. This silence is not neutrality. It is complicity, and in an age of disappearing laws and vanishing lives, it is a complicity that history will recognize for what it is—an updated version of the worst horrors of the past.

-Henry Giroux

Trump’s Contempt for the Constitution

 

Donald Trump has, once again, shown his contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law. The President of the United States does NOT have the right to unilaterally take this country to war, even against a corrupt and brutal dictator like Maduro. The United States does NOT have the right, as Trump stated this morning, to “run” Venezuela. Congress must immediately pass a War Powers resolution to end this illegal military operation and reassert its constitutional responsibilities.

Trump’s attack on Venezuela will make the United States and the world less safe. This brazen violation of international law gives a green light to any nation on earth that may wish to attack another country to seize their resources or change their governments. This is the horrific logic of force that Putin used to justify his brutal attack on Ukraine.

Trump and his administration have often said they want to revive the Monroe Doctrine, claiming the United States has the right to dominate the affairs of the hemisphere. They have spoken openly about controlling Venezuela’s oil reserves, the largest in the world. This is rank imperialism. It recalls the darkest chapters of U.S. interventions in Latin America, which have left a terrible legacy. It will and should be condemned by the democratic world.

Trump campaigned for president on an “America First” platform. He claimed to be the “peace candidate.” At a time when 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, when our healthcare system is collapsing, when people cannot afford housing and when AI threatens millions of jobs, it is time for the president to focus on the crises facing this country and end this military adventurism abroad. Trump is failing in his job to “run” the United States. He should not be trying to “run” Venezuela.

Bernie Sanders is a US Senator, and the ranking member of the Senate budget committee. He represents the state of Vermont and is the longest-serving independent in the history of Congress.

 

Trump Launches Illegal Assault on Venezuela

The U.S. president this weekend attacked a sovereign nation, killed its citizens, and kidnapped its leader. Americans probably still can be shocked and horrified. An undeclared, unprovoked, and illegal war designed to, well, we can only guess—though Donald Trump and JD Vance have seemed to concede this was a war for oil—puts the United States on the same moral and legal footing as Russia, which invaded its neighbor in a war of pure aggression. 

Rep, Jim Himes, ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said in a statement: Maduro is an illegitimate ruler, but I have seen no evidence that his presidency poses a threat that would justify military action without Congressional authorization, nor have I heard a strategy for the day after and how we will prevent Venezuela from descending into chaos. Secretary Rubio repeatedly denied to Congress that the Administration intended to force regime change in Venezuela. The Administration must immediately brief Congress on its plan to ensure stability in the region and its legal justification for this decision.

Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) aptly explained the constitutional outrage. “Trump rejected our Constitutionally required approval process for armed conflict because the Administration knows the American people overwhelmingly reject risks pulling our nation into another war,” he declared on social media. “This will further damage our reputation—already hurt by Trump’s policies around the world—and only isolate us in a time when we need our friends and allies more than ever.” Indeed, Mexico already denounced the action. Others are sure to follow.

Any and all regime officials who insisted in congressional briefings that the boat strikes were about drugs, not regime change, lied to Congress as Kim and others have pointed out, and participated in a wholly unconstitutional war. Even Susie Wiles conceded in a recent Vanity Fair article that attacking the mainland would require congressional assent. So much for that.

The U.S. attorney general declared that the United States had indicted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on narcotics charges and will be tried in federal court. That outlandish proposition opens the seizure to scrutiny and raises the interesting possibility that Trump claims he enjoys immunity but no other heads of state.

Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), an Iraq War veteran, posted a sobering warning: “I fought in some of the hardest battles of the Iraq War. Saw my brothers die, saw civilians being caught in the crossfire all for an unjustified war. No matter the outcome we are in the wrong for starting this war in Venezuela.” He added, “Second unjustified war in my lifetime. This war is illegal; it’s embarrassing that we went from the world cop to the world bully in less than one year. There is no reason for us to be at war with Venezuela.”

It is hard not to conclude that the action is a “wag the dog moment” aimed at distracting the public from the Epstein files, the rotten economy, and Trump’s declining health. It very well could supercharge Trump’s lawless and violent domestic policies against migrants, civil society groups, and others on grounds that they are authorized by wartime powers. His rickety tower of constitutional rubbish will continue to build.

We should have no expectation that congressional Republicans will do anything to thwart Trump (the power of the purse, impeachment, activation of the War Powers Act). They have repeatedly caved in allowing his illegal attacks on boats and even the killing of survivors left adrift after the U.S. blew up their boat.

Democrats, however, should act to garner public support and reiterate the danger posed by MAGA. Impeachment of all concerned and future criminal prosecution where possible should be on the table. Funding for the government runs out this month, and a nonstop series of speeches to the American people during a second government shutdown would be edifying.

This mind-blowing attack is the direct result of a Supreme Court MAGA majority, and Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. specifically, who granted him broad immunity never envisioned by the Framers. He has taken that and run with it—now headfirst into war.

The dangers to Americans in Venezuela and elsewhere, the potential for chaos or the ascension of an equally bad or noxious figure, international isolation and rebukes, and magnified economic uncertainty are all possible.

The Contrarian will have much more to say in the hours, days, and weeks ahead as we follow the ramifications of what, even for Trump, is a hideous assault on the Constitution.

The kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife solidifies America’s role as a gangster state. Violence does not generate peace. It generates violence. The immolation of international and humanitarian law, as the U.S. and Israel have done in Gaza, and as taken place in Caracas, generates a world without laws, a world of failed states, warlords, rouge imperial powers and perpetual violence and chaos. If there is one lesson we should have learned in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, it is that regime change spawns Frankenstein monsters of our own creation. The Venezuelan military and security forces will no more accept the kidnapping of their president and U.S. domination – done as in Iraq to seize vast oil reserves – than the Iraqi security forces and military or the Taliban. This will not go well for anyone, including the United States. 

-Chris Hedges

The Worst Foreign Policy Blunders of 2025

No president has understood less about what makes America great than Donald Trump; none has been more ignorant of the post-WWII international framework that allowed America to remain the premier superpower. In systematically weakening alliances, frittering away our moral authority, aligning himself with international dictators, trashing multilateral organizations, hollowing out the State Department and showing himself to be a feckless, corrupt bully, he has weakened America’s standing around the world to a degree no foreign enemy could have achieved. He always puts America Last.

Climate change denial: Withdrawing from the Paris Accords undermined the effort to slow the planet’s destruction and the multifaceted dangers climate change poses to national security (from instability/mass migration to promoting violence to increasing humanitarian disasters). But that was just the start of the Big Oil bonanza. Trump’s termination of government investment in job-creating, innovative industries means we have ceded leadership in key technologies to rivals. Specifically, Trump handed China dominance in the electric car business. This is one of many gifts to our main geopolitical rival. Meanwhile, opening up federal lands to oil drilling, cutting back on gas mileage standards, leading a full-out assault on wind power, and fixating on coal could be a roadmap for climate disaster—but also a recipe to lose prestige, influence, and competitiveness on the world stage.

Israel: Trump gave the rightwing Israeli government a green light to drag out a futile war to destroy Hamas (which is now up and functioning in Gaza) and indulged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for far too long in his policy of deliberate starvation. That immeasurably damaged Israel’s standing in the world, undermined bipartisan support for Israel, and eroded our standing to question other countries’ human rights records. Meanwhile, we have seen little sign the “peace deal” will move forward. The overhyped strike on Iran did not accomplish the goal of eliminating Iran’s nuclear weapons program, but rather left us with less insight into Iran’s nuclear program and less leverage to block its quest for a nuclear weapon.

Russia: Trump seems to have done everything possible to strengthen Russia’s hand in Ukraine and thereby show the world we are a feckless ally. He compulsively reveals his utter naivete and ignorance about foreign policy; and has blithely damaged the most successful alliance in history (NATO). Putting real estate mogul Steve Witkoff (“ill-informed, credulous, and utterly unfamiliar with the history and character of those he deals with,” as Eliot Cohen describes him) in charge of a Russia-Ukraine deal (among others) makes an acceptable outcome virtually impossible.

Caribbean: An illegal, unauthorized, unnecessary, and morally noxious policy of extrajudicial killings (which are not remotely necessary for cocaine interdiction) combines bad policy with bad politics. Trump seems to be driving us into open-ended war in the Western Hemisphere, where he imagines America can dominate like a 19^th century colonial power. (Remember the Maine?) This venture helps advance Trump’s authoritarian project to attain unlimited executive power in violation of our Constitutional system. His “might makes right” thinking mars America’s image and leads to interminable conflicts.

Tariffs: Tariffs, both an economic and foreign policy disaster, create animosity among centuries old allies, give China new openings (e.g. India), and ignore real national security issues (such as allowing NVIDIA to sell its H200 AI chips to China). It also deprives America of a key soft power tool we can apply selectively to further our national interests. Moreover, tariffs “make it more expensive to meet national defense requirements. …[D]efense companies of all sizes are beginning to report higher costs, from the defense conglomerate RTX to a ball bearing manufacturer in New Hampshire,” the Council on Foreign Relations explains. “Tariffs on steel and aluminum are particularly confounding.” The Supreme Court may save Trump (and the U.S.) from his economic stupidity.

National Security Strategy: As Brian O’Neill (writing for The Contrarian) and countless other experienced national security veterans have said, the NSS is a petulant, incoherent, amateurish non-strategy that reads like a MAGA wish-list of domestic impulses (e.g., White Christian nationalism, anti-trans hysteria, anti-immigrant venom) without grounding in the real world. Lacking even a hint as to how to achieve its twisted aims, it’s precisely what you would expect from a bombastic former Fox News host. Described by The Economist as a “dog’s breakfast” (apologies to our canine loved ones), this document “[s]horn of the enlightened values that have long anchored foreign policy…becomes a naked assertion of power that owes more to the 19th century than the world that America built after the second world war. And that leads to a document riven by contradictions.” All you need to know: Vladimir Putin applauded wildly (he could have written it!), and our allies condemned it.

Corruption: From FIFA to the UAE, foreign organizations and autocracies have proven they know how to manipulate Trump. Give him a phony prize or a shiny plane. Flatter him. And if they reward him financially with crypto purchases or real estate deals, he will be putty in their hands. This mob boss mentality (nice chips deal ‘ya got there, give me a cut and nothing will go wrong) places Trump’s interests ahead of national interests and sullies America’s reputation as model of decent government and fair business practices. To make matters worse, he has stopped enforcing foreign anti-corruption laws and foreign agents' registration.

Immigration: From South Korea to Central and South America, our cruel, illogical, and counterproductive mass deportation program has made us an international pariah. Trump has reduced our ability to gain cooperation on immigration (as well as other matters) where we need it. In closing our doors, we have sent scientists and other high-skilled workers back to other countries, to their advantage and our detriment. It amounts to foreign policy and economic self-sabotage.

USAID: Trump blew up a relatively inexpensive program that saves millions of lives, combats terrorism, and keeps malicious state actors out of developing countries. In unilaterally dismantling it, Trump committed the worst “own goal” in American foreign policy history. Moreover, its destruction has already killed hundreds of thousands of people including more than 450,000 children. The competition is stiff, but qualifies as one of Trump’s most morally repugnant moves.

Personnel: If “personnel are policy,” we know why our Defense Department, State Department, and intelligence community come out with one inane decision after another. Under this crew, we lurch from one embarrassing debacle to another, destroying the national security infrastructure and human capital we need to defend ourselves. Far from a “meritocracy,” this is affirmative action for irresponsible, ignorant, and mediocre suck-ups. Who can rely on what comes out of these once respected institutions? It’s hard to image self-respecting professionals wanting to work under Tulsi Gabbard, Marco “Sink into the Couch” Rubio, and the absolute bottom of the barrel, Pete Hegseth. Senate Republicans could have blocked each one of these duds, and hence are just as responsible as Trump for the trail of destruction they will leave behind.

-Jennifer Rubin, The Contrarian is reader-supported. To enable our work, help with litigation efforts, and keep the opposition movement engaged through the new year and beyond, please join our community as a paid subscriber.

 

President Zelenskyy's Address on December 31, 2025

 

What does Ukraine want? Peace, yes. At any cost? No. We want the end of the war, not the end of Ukraine. Are we tired? Extremely. Does that mean we are ready to surrender? Those who think so, are deeply mistaken. And clearly, over all these years, they still have not understood who Ukrainians are. A people who have held on through 1,407 days of a full-scale war. 

Just take in that number. That is longer than the Nazi occupation of many of our cities during World War II. 1,407 days of an unconquered Ukraine. A country that, in effect, spends every night in shelters. Every night in struggle. Often, without electricity; often without sleep, holding positions for many, many days. Yet always, without panic, without chaos, without division but in unity so that we can have peace.

Do we want the war to end? Absolutely. Why has it not happened yet? The answer is right next door to our country. Can Russia end the war? Yes. Does it want to? No. Can the world force it to do so? Yes, and only that way will it work. Why does the world not do this to the full extent? Let us break this down, step by step, honestly as it truly is. Our people know this better than anyone. Of course, more than anything else. Right now, we want peace. But unlike New Year’s snow, it will not simply fall from the sky like a miracle. 

But we believe in peace; we fight for it, and we work for it. And we will continue to do so. Because in 2026, we truly want that the skies be calm and the land be peaceful; that warmth and light fill our homes and not 170, but the full 220 days as it should be, that all our people return home from the front, from captivity, from occupation; that we stand, that Ukraine stands. 

Happy New Year, dear people. Slava Ukraini.

Чого хоче Україна? Миру, так. За будь-яку ціну? Ні. Ми хочемо кінця війни, а не кінця України. Ми втомилися? Надзвичайно. Чи означає це, що ми готові здатися? Ті, хто так думає, глибоко помиляються. І очевидно, що за всі ці роки вони досі не зрозуміли, хто такі українці. Народ, який протримався 1407 днів повномасштабної війни.

Просто порахуйте цю цифру. Це довше, ніж нацистська окупація багатьох наших міст під час Другої світової війни. 1407 днів нескореної України. Країни, яка фактично проводить кожну ніч у сховищах. Щоночі в боротьбі. Часто без електрики; часто без сну, утримуючи позиції багато-багато днів. Проте завжди, без паніки, без хаосу, без розколу, але в єдності, щоб ми могли мати мир.

Чи хочемо ми, щоб війна закінчилася? Безумовно. Чому цього ще не сталося? Відповідь знаходиться прямо поруч з нашою країною. Чи може Росія закінчити війну? Так. Чи хоче вона цього? Ні. Чи може світ змусити її це зробити? Так, і тільки так це спрацює. Чому світ не робить цього повною мірою? Давайте розберемо це крок за кроком, чесно, як воно є насправді. Наш народ знає це краще за будь-кого. Звичайно, більше за все інше. Зараз ми хочемо миру. Але на відміну від новорічного снігу, він не просто впаде з неба, як диво.

Але ми віримо в мир; ми боремося за нього і працюємо заради нього. І ми продовжуватимемо це робити. Бо у 2026 році ми справді хочемо, щоб небо було спокійним, а земля мирною; щоб тепло і світло наповнювали наші домівки, і не 170, а повні 220 днів, як і має бути, щоб усі наші люди повернулися додому з фронту, з полону, з окупації; щоб ми стояли, щоб Україна стояла.

З Новим роком, дорогі люди. Слава Україні.

Nothing Is Ours Anymore

 

On Sunday [December 27], both President Donald Trump and his secretary of housing and urban development told us that 50-year home mortgages may soon be a thing. While seemingly insane (you could end up paying more than three times the cost of the house and never escape the burden of debt before you die). This is just the latest iteration of one of American businesses’ most profitable scams: the rental economy.

It’s a growing threat to the American middle class that rarely gets named, even as it reshapes our lives every day. Over the past two decades, it’s snuck in quietly, disguised as convenience, efficiency and “innovation.” As a result, nothing is “ours” anymore. Instead, we’re renting our lives away. There was a time when you bought things.

You bought a house, a book, a record, a car, a word processing program. You paid once, took it home or lived in it, and it was yours. If the company went out of business, your stereo still worked. If the manufacturer didn’t get their annual payment, your computer didn’t lock you out of your own words. You could read books on your phone or tablet without an internet connection to “confirm your purchase.”

We’re renting our lives away. America is disappearing. Today, almost everything that used to be a purchase has become a rental. Take Microsoft Word. Decades ago, you bought the word-processing program once and used it for years. Now it’s a monthly fee. Stop paying and you may not even be able to open documents you wrote yourself. Adobe did the same thing. So did music, movies and television. At first it felt like convenience; a few dollars a month didn’t seem like a big deal.

Even the latest versions of the two major computer operating systems are essentially spyware, constantly tracking everything you do while demanding that you put all your personal information on their “cloud” servers.

Instead of buying homes, people are renting because, in part, massive New York hedge funds and foreign investors are purchasing as many as half of all the homes that come available for sale in some communities and then flipping them into rentals. Renters can end up on the hook for their entire lives.

Even the means to get a good job — a college education — has become something you must pay for over a period of decades or even a lifetime instead of the pay-as-you-go model my generation had before Ronald Reagan gutted federal aid to higher ed. We now have almost $2 trillion in student debt — the only developed nation in the world that does this to its students — and I regularly get calls to my radio program from people in their 70s still paying off their student debt.

But this change was never really just about money. It has morphed over the past decades into a new form of corporate control over our lives and our wealth. It’s become a never-ending extraction of money and personal data from each of us, every month, every year, time after time, over and over again until we’re financially exhausted.

When you own something, you decide how it’s used. When you rent, someone else makes that choice. They can raise prices, change terms, remove features, track everything you do with it or shut it off entirely. Your “choice” becomes compliance. That same model has spread everywhere.

Cars used to be machines you owned. Now they’re rolling computers with features like heated seats, remote start or performance upgrades locked behind monthly fees. Similarly, cars are increasingly leased instead of purchased. Miss your payment this month and the lender will remotely disable “your” vehicle. Your car doesn’t just take you places anymore: It reports on you.

It’s become a never-ending extraction of money and personal data from each of us.

Phones are even worse. They’re not just devices; they’re gatekeepers. Apps can be removed. Accounts can be banned. Services can disappear overnight. And because so much of modern life runs through that phone — banking, work, navigation, health care — being cut off isn’t an inconvenience. It’s a functional exclusion from society.

This extends from major things like our cars and homes to simple things like mobile apps. Louise loves to play Scrabble on her phone and would gladly pay a one-time fee for an app that doesn’t throw ads at her, track and sell her information, or demand constant interaction. Instead, since the old Scrabble app she’s used for years went to a rental model, she’s gone through a half-dozen apps, each worse than the last at demanding her interactions or throwing ads.

And to add insult to injury, layered on top of this rental business model is a vast, multibillion-dollar industry harvesting our personal information. Every website you visit. Every app you download. Every product you register just to make it work. Your location, habits, preferences, relationships and even emotional responses are tracked, analyzed, packaged and sold. Most often without meaningful consent, and almost always without real alternatives.

This is not how American capitalism worked for over 250 years.

The question business leaders used to ask was simple: “What unmet needs do people have that our company can satisfy with a new product or service?” You built something useful, people bought it, and that was the deal. Today, the question has changed: “How do we make our product so essential that people can’t function without it, then crush or buy out our competitors so there’s no real consumer choice, then charge a monthly fee forever, all while extracting user data we can sell for even more profit?”

That’s not innovation. It’s parasitism.

In this model, the product is often just bait. The real commodity, the real profit center, the real source of unending corporate cash flow is you. And because the billionaire “tech bros” and Wall Street oligarchs control the products, the data, and increasingly our nation’s news and social media, they also control the content and algorithms that shape public opinion.

As a result, social media and even our news (think CBS, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Fox “News”) increasingly doesn’t just reflect reality, they engineer it to get us to think of this new rental economy as normal, as innovative, as The Way Things Should Be.

In addition to profitably amplifying outrage, profitably distorting truth and polishing the public image of this new rental economy — all to create billions in ongoing month-after-month profits — America’s billionaire tech lords and the right-wing politicians they bankroll (thanks to five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court) are manufacturing our consent (to apply Noam Chomsky’s phrase).

Thomas Jefferson warned that people are inclined to suffer evils while they are sufferable rather than abolish the forms to which they’ve grown accustomed. The billionaire tech bros and Wall Street are hoping we’ll all just roll over, sign up and let them ding our credit cards until our dying day.

Technology should serve human freedom, not manage it.

It’s gotten so bad that apps — which also acquire and then sell our data — have emerged that track our “subscriptions” so we can try to get it all under control. They’re advertising them on TV every day: Get this app to find out what apps are secretly extracting your cash because you long ago forgot you clicked on that link.

None of this was inevitable.

The solution is not to smash technology or retreat into the past. It’s for government to once again work for the 99% instead of the 1%. That means once again regulating money in politics, private equity, social media, data harvesting and the out-of-control rental economy that has replaced ownership.

It means breaking monopolies, restoring regulatory independence, making education affordable, supporting home and car ownership, and reaffirming that democracy — not billionaires — sets the rules of the road.

Technology should serve human freedom, not manage it. Markets should reward service and quality of content, not extraction. People should be able to choose to pay or not to pay for things from apps to the functionality of your car or home’s HVAC system.

Nothing is ours anymore. Not the road, not the floor. If everything we touch is leased, freedom is just another fee. If we don’t act to regulate this out-of-control rental economy, we may one day realize we didn’t lose our wealth and even our democracy all at once: We simply rented our way out of it.

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