1. Speaking of things collapsing, I have a few thoughts on Sam Bankman-Fried, right-wing populism, 1990s nostalgia, Kirsten Gillibrand, Eric Adams, Matt Yglesias and the socialism of fools. (This one is for the fans).

2. It's hardly surprising that the collapse of FTX, along with fact that the now disgraced Sam Bankman-Fried was second biggest funder of Dems in 2022, is causing the far right to salivate: look (((they))) control Biden. But Yglesias offers his own version of this.

3. Yglesias: 'Any political success is a highly collective endeavor and no one person is responsible for any result. But money does matter in politics... It’s plausible that without SBF’s money, Trump would still be in the White House.' This is absurd.

4. Money matters in politics, but it's not always decisive. SBF spent at least $11 million in primary to defeat progressive Andrea Salinas, who won. That's even more true on national scale. 2020 national election was $14 billion overall, so SBF's tens of millions dwarfed.

5. So why, after SBF has been utterly disgraced as a ponzi con artist, is Yglesias telling us to be grateful to SBF ('without SBF’s money, Trump would still be in the White House')

6. As Yglesias admits, he & SBF share a worldview (in MY's words 'agree on a lot of important issues'). In his May apologia for SBF, Yglesias links his approval of SBF with a familiar hitting his familiar theme of popularism (i.e. Dems moderating & technocratic restoration)

7. One way to understand popularism is not as an ideology but as a gestalt. It's 1990s nostalgia: an attempt to return to era when left was weaker & Clintonian dems exalted tech & technocracy. This photo of Clinton, Blair & SBF is revealing.

8. The dream SBF was able to sell to the Yglesias/Shor types is a dream of 1990s restoration: lets go back to world before Occupy Wall Street, BLM, Me Too. A world where tech lords & moderate Dem pols come up with technocratic solutions, no messy left activism.