Sunday blog: Finally, 3 pieces of good news for a change
Commentary by Devin McCue, Sumner Newscow — Everything stinks.
The Supreme Court is hellbent on ruining the country. People with guns are killing kids in record numbers. The Earth is still on fire and the EPA can’t do anything to stop it.
Everywhere you turn, it seems like things are getting worse…because they are. But, even with all that in perspective, there are some silver linings around this dark cloud of impending doom. They just seem harder and harder to find.
So, let’s take a minute to put all the bad news to the side for just a while and focus on some good news. Here are a few stories that should give you a little peace from the dispiriting news cycle.
1 — The January 6 hearings are going remarkably well
It took over a year, but we’re finally getting the analysis and condemnation of 2021’s domestic terrorist attack on the capital. And unless you only get your news from far-right ghouls like Tucker Carlson, you already know how big these hearings have been so far.
We’ve heard from top Trump confidants like Bill Barr and even his own daughter, Ivanka, that they knew the election wasn’t stolen and so did Trump, but he pursued the Big Lie anyway. The special committee has shown Trump lied to officials and his own donors in order to profit on the scheme. Election officials detailed Trump’s attempt to commit fraud in the Georgia election. And most heartbreaking of all, we’ve heard from witnesses who became the victims of the disgraced former president’s attacks.
The biggest bombshell of them all so far was the surprise testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson on Tuesday.
Hutchinson was an aide to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and had an office literally in-between her boss and the President. She was in the middle of the planning and frantic damage control from the January 6 attack and detailed a terrifying picture of the turmoil surrounding Trump and Rudy Giuliani. Her testimony showed clear connections between Trump and the right-wing extremist groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath-keepers and the foreknowledge that the attack would get violent.
I was in the camp that expected these hearings to be less substantial than what the country deserved, but I’m happy to be wrong on that front. These hearings have given the most insight into this terrorist attack on January 6 that we’ve seen so far. And they aren’t even over.
2 — Unionization is spreading across the United States
If any of you work for a large corporation or even a smaller one with more than a handful of employees, you should care about this story a lot.
Unions get a bad reputation because we only talk about Jimmy Hoffa when the subject comes up in American consciousness. But Unions are the whole reason my grandpa’s generation could buy a house and support a family on a single-income wage. But, as you can see from the graph above: that’s the very reason my generation can’t.
Unions speak for the workers and the reason we don’t think of them that way is because of a decades-long disinformation campaign and active union-busting techniques to make us think they’re a “waste of money.”
But, that’s finally starting to change.
We’re seeing the biggest wave in organized labor in nearly a century, and it’s mostly thanks to young people and other exploited workers toiling away for major corporations. While there’s been a steadily increasing roar of support for union membership in the last few years, the wave started when two major companies, Starbucks and Amazon, launched crazy union-busting efforts in a public way.
This led to a vast re-education about labor rights in this country and we’re starting to realize the benefits. There are now 138 unionized Starbucks in the US, with 196 left to vote, and nearly every industry is looking at organizing themselves.
This is an important time in our history, and you should be ecstatic to be a part of it. Because wouldn’t you like to be paid more?
3- Crypto is collapsing
Cryptocurrencies are one of the most surprising and annoying inventions in the last decade or so, for a few reasons.
They appeal to the cis-het white bros that want to argue with you about Elon Musk’s “genius.” They put as much carbon into the atmosphere as the entire country of New Zealand. And they created the ugliest “art” craze of all time (and I’m including cubism).
That’s what makes the latest crypto crash, especially delicious this year. I’ve written about crypto scams in the past, but this collapse is on another level.
Since the beginning of 2022, when the total value of all crypto markets peaked, the value of the industry has dropped $2 trillion. Since the entire market was only worth $3 trillion as a whole, that means 67% of capital vanished in only six months.
Bitcoin makes up for 40% of the crypto industry and has seen catastrophic drops like this before (which would make me second-guess investing in it, but what do I know), but this round of market deflation started when Terra lost some of its value. Terra is a so-called “stablecoin” that isn’t supposed to fluctuate in value and stay as a bedrock for other cryptocurrencies to scale their value against.
But, since Terra is still a made-up currency without any backing besides the faith ugly white dudes who need to shower put into it, it turns out Terra wasn’t as stable as it thought. It lost 30% of its valuation overnight and sent ripples throughout the industry.
I’m happy to watch crypto collapse again and again, but there is a sad side to this story. Crypto started out as a way for day-traders and average joes to get rich speculating on a market they created for themselves. That isn’t the case anymore.
Just like everywhere else, the top .01% of all Bitcoin traders own more than the rest combined. So, the people who are really hit hard by this collapse are the people who believed in it the most. And just because they made a stupid choice doesn’t mean they should have to lose everything.
