Christian Prophets Are on the Rise. What Happens When They’re Wrong?

 Christian Prophets Are on the Rise. What Happens When They’re Wrong?

They are stars within one of the fastest-growing corners of American Christianity. Now, their movement is in crisis.

By Ruth Graham NY Times

Jeremiah Johnson, a 33-year-old self-described prophet, was one of the few evangelical Christians who took Donald J. Trump’s political future seriously back in 2015.

This track record created a loyal audience of hundreds of thousands of people who follow him on social media and hang on his predictions about such topics as the coronavirus pandemic, the makeup of the Supreme Court, and the possibility of spiritual revival in America. And they took comfort ahead of the presidential election last fall when Mr. Johnson shared a prophetic dream of Mr. Trump stumbling while running the Boston Marathon, until two frail older women emerged from the crowd to help him over the finish line.

So when Joseph R. Biden Jr. was certified as the winner of the election, Mr. Johnson had to admit he had let his followers down.

“I was wrong, I am deeply sorry, and I ask for your forgiveness,” he wrote in a detailed letter he posted online. “I would like to repent for inaccurately prophesying that Donald Trump would win a second term as the President of the United States.”

The desire to divine the future is a venerable one, fueling faith in figures from ancient Greek oracles to modern astrologists. Christianity in particular is a religion whose foundational text is filled with prophecies proven true by the end of the book. Whether the gift of prophecy continues into the present day has long been the subject of intense theological debate. But in recent years, self-described prophets have proliferated across the country, accelerating in stature over the course of the Trump era. They are stars within what is now one of the fastest-growing corners of Christianity: a loose but fervent movement led by hundreds of people who believe they can channel supernatural powers — and have special spiritual insights into world events.

Many are independent evangelists who do not lead churches or other institutions. They operate primarily online and through appearances at conferences or as guest speakers in churches, making money through book sales, donations and speaking fees. And they are part of the rising appeal of conspiracy theories in Christian settings, echoed by the popularity of QAnon among many evangelicals and a resistance to mainstream sources of information.

The prophetic imagination roams far beyond national politics. It follows the Super Bowl and the weather; it analyzes events in pop culture, like Kanye West’s recent turn toward evangelism, and global events, including a particular fascination with Israel. Many prophets caution followers against trusting what they read in the news, but in its place they offer a kind of alternative news cycle, refracting and interpreting events in the real world through a supernatural lens.

“In my lifetime — 49 years as a follower of Jesus — I’ve never seen this level of interest in prophecy,” said Michael Brown, an evangelical radio host and commentator, who believes in prophecy but has called for greater accountability when prophecies prove false. “And it’s unfortunate, because it’s an embarrassment to the movement.”

The past year has been riddled with prophecies that did not pan out. As the coronavirus swept the United States in the spring, several prophets issued public assurances that it would decline by Passover; Cindy Jacobs, one of the most influential American prophets, led a global day of prayer to “contain” the virus in March. And by the fall, so many prominent prophets had incorrectly predicted the re-election of Mr. Trump that the apologies and recriminations now constitute a crisis within the movement.

The backlash to Mr. Johnson’s apology was immediate. On Facebook, he reported that he received “multiple death threats and thousands upon thousands of emails from Christians saying the nastiest and most vulgar things I have ever heard toward my family and ministry.” He also said he had lost funding from donors who accused him of being “a coward, sellout, and traitor to the Holy Spirit.”

But the popularity of self-appointed prophets shows no signs of waning.

As denominational Christianity declines almost across the board, magnetic independent leaders have stepped into the void. “There’s this idea that you can’t trust anybody except these trusted individuals,” said Brad Christenson, a sociologist at evangelical Biola University. “It’s a symptom of our time. People don’t trust institutions, and people think that all mainstream institutions are corrupt: universities, science, government, the media. They’re searching for real sources of truth.”

The result is that many congregations are awash in misinformation. Almost half of Protestant pastors frequently hear members of their congregations repeating conspiracy theories about current events, according to a survey released last month by Lifeway Research, which is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.

Prophecy is a facet of the fast-growing charismatic Christian movement, which has an estimated half-billion followers worldwide and is characterized in part by the belief that the “gifts of the spirit,” which also include speaking in tongues and supernatural healing, continue into the present day, rather than being an artifact of biblical times.

Mr. Trump supercharged the public profile of this already ascendant stream of Christian culture. His evangelical advisory council included unprecedented numbers of charismatic leaders, including his primary faith adviser, Paula White, a charismatic pastor and televangelist. A few weeks before the 2020 election, he attended services for the third time at a “healing, prophetic” megachurch in Las Vegas, where speakers shared predictions and visions about his second term, to applause from Mr. Trump and the congregation. (The charismatic movement over all is notably multiracial, although the most successful politically oriented prophets of the Trump era were white and appealed to an audience that resembled Mr. Trump’s base.)

Christian prophets are meeting a hunger for reassurance and clarity that can be observed in other corners of American culture. Astrology is exploding in popularity. More than 40 percent of Americans believe in psychics, according to Pew.

Prophecy, similarly, is not only a predictive tool, but an analytical lens for making sense of the past and current events. The most successful prophets can connect seemingly disparate pieces of data in a grand narrative, adding new layers of interpretation as events unfold and inviting others to contribute.

In Crystal River, Fla., Scott Wallis had read Mr. Johnson’s prophecies on Facebook and was encouraged by them. He trusted Mr. Johnson in part, he said, because of two recent prophecies that had proven true, including one about the Los Angeles Dodgers winning the World Series. (Mr. Johnson reported the prophecy two days before the team clinched the championship.)

For Mr. Wallis, a pastor and prophet himself, it made perfect sense that God would be involved in the outcome of the American election, just as he is involved in every human life. “Some people, like deists, believe God created the earth but abandoned the people and left them alone,” Mr. Wallis said. “I don’t believe that.” When a friend prophesied to him in 2014 that he would soon marry, he did not even have a girlfriend, but he was married by the end of the year.

The internet has made it much easier for prophets to disseminate their visions, with many more outlets at their disposal: social media, podcasts, books and a traditional media ecosystem that remains largely under the radar even to many other evangelicals. An appearance on “It’s Supernatural!,” an interview show hosted by the octogenarian televangelist Sid Roth, can be career-making for prophets. So can an endorsement from the venerable Elijah List newsletter, which claims 240,000 subscribers. Charisma magazine and the Christian Broadcasting Network both cover prophetic predictions as news.

Jennifer Eivaz, who calls herself “the Praying Prophet,” realized in college that she could hear God’s voice in a way she could “prove out.” When she and her husband started to lead a church in Central California, she would have dreams and receive specific information about people who attended. She was careful not to scare people, she said, often opting to check in with them rather than launch into specific predictions or insights into their lives.

She also started recording training videos on prayer and prophecy, which caught the eye of Steve Shultz, who had founded The Elijah List and invited her to contribute. As her profile rose, she became an internationally sought-after conference speaker at events with names like the Inner Healing and Deliverance Institute and the Prophetic Wisdom & Prayer conference, where believers pay to gather for music, prophecy and inspiration.

Ms. Eivaz occasionally offers public prophecies about national or international events. In May 2015, she announced that the yearslong drought in California was over and that “the rains are coming back.” The message tied together the biblical prophet Elijah’s experience on Mount Carmel; Ms. Eivaz’s recent trip to Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif.; a vision of a mother bear fighting for her cubs; the California state flag; and Gov. Gavin Newsom. (The drought did not formally end until 2017, although the state experienced unusually high rainfall over the summer of 2015.)

But those kinds of visions come to her only once every year or two, she said. She has watched with alarm as predictive prophecies like these have come to dominate the prophetic movement. “It’s like fact-shopping,” she said, adding that social media rewards “buzz and sensationalism” over wisdom, and pressures independent prophets especially to churn out fresh predictions every few days.

Mike Killion, who was a charter-bus driver in North Carolina until the pandemic dried up his business, pays attention to what he calls “synchronicities,” and others might call coincidences. He believes God is intimately involved in world events, and closely attuned to the prayers of his people.

If Mr. Killion’s phone is on the table and he mentions wanting to go on a cruise, for example, the phone “hears” him and starts offering advertisements for cruises, he said. “God works the same way,” he explained. “He’s listening to everything you say.”

Prophets are not always right about every prediction, Mr. Killion said, and they are certainly not always right immediately. “There’s this idea that prophets have to be right all the time, and have to be right next week,” said Mr. Killion, “when there are prophets in the Bible who had prophecies who weren’t fulfilled in their lifetimes.”

Mr. Killion scoffed at Mr. Johnson for walking back his prophecy about Mr. Trump’s 2020 victory. “Jeremiah Johnson should have kept his mouth shut,” he said a few days before Mr. Biden’s inauguration. “It still may happen.”

Mr. Johnson, for his part, appears to remain chastened. This week, he began a new YouTube series titled “I Was Wrong,” in which he plans to survey what the prophetic movement is, and where, in his view, it has gone awry.

In the first installment, he reviewed some of his past prophecies about politics and national events, and picked apart how he had erred in 2020. “Not everything that God speaks to us privately should have been public knowledge,” he said somberly. “I got caught up in the moment.” He spoke about his hope for “reformation,” and his concerns about God’s judgment to come. And in future episodes of the series, he promised, he will share what God is showing him about what comes next.

Ruth Graham is a national correspondent covering religion, faith and values. She previously reported on religion for Slate. @publicroad

The Senate Has Become a Dadaist Nightmare

 

The Senate Has Become a Dadaist Nightmare

No one would ever design a legislative body that worked this way.

 

By Ezra Klein The New York Times Opinion Columnist

 

 

This week, congressional Democrats advanced a budget resolution — the first step in using the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation process to pass President Biden’s $1.9 trillion fiscal rescue plan. I recognize that is not the most thrilling start to a column. But now that Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have pledged their undying fealty to the filibuster, the budget reconciliation process is where Biden’s agenda will live or die. Oy, is that depressing.

Budget reconciliation reveals the truth of how the Senate legislates now. To counter the minority’s abuse of the filibuster rule, the majority abuses another rule, ending in a process that makes legislation systematically and undeniably worse. The world’s greatest deliberative body has become one of its most absurd, but that absurdity is obscured by baroque parliamentary tricks that few understand.

“Budget reconciliation.” It sounds sober, important and official. But it’s farcical — or it would be, if the consequences weren’t so grievous.

It’s understood, by now, that the filibuster has mutated into something it was never intended to be: a 60-vote supermajority requirement on almost all legislation considered by the United States Senate. I have made my case against the filibuster in detail before, and I won’t repeat it here. Suffice to say, in a closely divided Senate, with highly polarized parties, it’s almost impossible to get 60 votes on major legislation. But there’s a workaround, and that workaround is getting both wider and dumber.

The budget reconciliation process was created in the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. It was an afterthought: an optional process to let Congress quickly clean up its spending plans so they matched the budget. No one even used it until 1980. But as the Senate was stalled by more frequent filibusters, clever legislators realized that the budget reconciliation process was immune to the filibuster, as it was limited to 20 hours of debate, and all kinds of bills could be routed through it.

In response, Senator Robert Byrd persuaded his colleagues to pass new rules to ensure budget reconciliation remained true to its original purpose. These rules, formally enshrined in the Budget Act in 1990, impose a series of tests on budget reconciliation bills. The most consequential are that every individual provision of the bill must alter taxes or spending, and not in a “merely incidental” way; the bill cannot increase deficits after the budget window, which is usually around 10 years; and the bill cannot muck with Social Security. Any senator can challenge any provision of any budget reconciliation bill for violating these rules. The parliamentarian then rules on the question, and if the parliamentarian rules for the challenger, the provision is struck from the bill. (The Senate can choose to ignore the parliamentarian, just as they can vote to change any Senate rule. That hasn’t happened yet where budget reconciliation is concerned, but it may soon. More on that later.)

Byrd’s reforms didn’t work as he intended. The problem of the filibuster demanded a solution, and even covered in “Byrd droppings,” budget reconciliation was the closest thing to an alternative. The Byrd rules didn’t prevent non-budgetary legislation from being passed through reconciliation, but they did make that legislation worse, and weirder, and the Senate has simply decided to live with the ridiculous results, and make the rest of us live with them, too.

President George W. Bush’s tax cuts, for instance, were designed to expire — expire! — after 10 years because otherwise they would have increased deficits after 10 years, and so been ineligible for reconciliation. President Donald Trump’s tax cuts employ the same trick. This is a legacy of budget reconciliation: Massive chunks of our tax code are just set to disappear at an arbitrary point in the future, and what happens then is anybody’s guess.

The distortions don’t end there. Budget reconciliation warps policy design by pushing away from regulation and toward direct spending and taxation. An example: If you were designing a health care bill in budget reconciliation, you couldn’t pass a rule saying private insurers had to cover pre-existing conditions. But you could add a trillion dollars to Medicaid funding so it could cover anyone with pre-existing conditions who couldn’t get private insurance. Or to use an example that is actually in the reconciliation package Democrats are designing now: You can pass $1,400 checks through budget reconciliation, but you can’t pass emergency paid leave. When Congress writes laws through budget reconciliation, it writes them with one arm tied behind its back.

Even worse is the way budget reconciliation quietly decides which kinds of problems the Senate addresses, and which it ignores, years after year. Both House and Senate Democrats have said that their first bill will be the “For The People Act,” a package making it easier and safer to vote, and weakening the power big donors wield in politics by matching small donor donations at a 6:1 rate. But the “For The People Act” can’t pass through the budget reconciliation process, so it’s a dead letter.

“Why should it only take a simple majority to do tax cuts for the rich but it takes a supermajority to address the integrity of our elections?” Senator Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon, told me. “That makes no sense. Access to the ballot shouldn’t have a higher hurdle than helping the rich get richer.” But in today’s Senate, it does. The same is true for gun control or immigration reform.

But budget reconciliation doesn’t just alter liberal priorities. Social conservatives often complain that when Republicans hold Congress, their legislative asks are shunted aside for tax cuts and health care repeal laws. That is, in part, a budget reconciliation issue: You can pass tax cuts and (partially) repeal Obamacare through budget reconciliation. You cannot regulate pornography or push school prayer through the process.

You can also only do a limited number of budget reconciliation packages each fiscal year. That forces legislators to craft giant bills that jam every legislative priority into one rushed package, rather than crafting one bill, debating and modifying it, and then passing it and moving onto the next.

“I find it ironic that people suggest reconciliation is somehow better for the institution,” Adam Jentleson, former deputy chief of staff to the former Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, and the author of the excellent new book, “Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy,” told me. “It’s terrible for the Senate!” As he notes, budget reconciliation decreases the power of committees and increases the power of the Senate leadership, “since leadership drives the assembly line for putting together these mega-packages. There’s no transparency and it creates a field day for lobbyists.”

In 2012, Steven Teles, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University, published a paper arguing that American public policy had become defined by kludges. “The term comes out of the world of computer programming, where a kludge is an inelegant patch put in place to be backward compatible with the rest of a system,” he wrote. “When you add up enough kludges, you get a very complicated program, one that is hard to understand and subject to crashes. In other words, Windows.”

Or, the Senate. The modern use of budget reconciliation is a kludge. The institution has become paralyzed by the filibuster and rather than rewriting its rules to solve that problem, senators have instead patched it through budget reconciliation. The Senate gets just enough done that no one can say it is actually impossible to pass big bills through the body. But budget reconciliation narrows the range of problems Congress can solve, the number of bills it can pass and the policy mechanisms it can use. No one would ever design a legislative body that worked this way, but this is how the Senate has come to work, one kludge on top of another. “For any particular problem we have arrived at the most Gerry-rigged, opaque and complicated response,” Teles wrote. That is both an apt description of today’s Senate and of the kind of policy budget reconciliation produces.

All of this is a choice. Every Senate rule can be changed by a simple majority vote. A simple majority could end or reform the filibuster — as we saw when Democrats ended it for most executive branch nominations and most judicial nominations in 2013, and when Republicans ended it for Supreme Court nominees in 2017. The details quickly get complicated, but a simple majority of senators could vote to loosen some of the limits on budget reconciliation, as Senator Bernie Sanders, the new chair of the Budget Committee, has suggested. The Senate is bound by nothing but its own convictions.

But this is a Senate that, collectively, has no convictions. It does not believe enough in the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold to simply abide by it. It does not believe enough in passing bills by a simple majority to make that the standard. It is the self-styled moderates, like Manchin and Sinema, who freeze the institution in dysfunction, but there is nothing moderate about the modern Senate: It is radical in its inanity, a legislative chamber designed by dadaists.

“Democrats have an opportunity to restore our democracy and deliver on the promises they campaigned on,” the Rev. Dr. Stephany Rose Spaulding, founder of Truth and Conciliation, told me by email. “But they can’t do that without breaking down structural barriers to progress — that starts with eliminating the filibuster. If we allow the filibuster to block voting rights, gun violence prevention, Covid relief and more, we’re sending a clear message to millions of voters that their votes and voices don’t count in our democracy.”

To be clear, if Democrats will not get rid of the filibuster, it is better that they use budget reconciliation than that they fail the American people totally. But the fact that Democrats are using budget reconciliation at all is evidence that even Sinema and Manchin know the filibuster has gone too far, that the chamber cannot operate under supermajority rules, all of the time.

This is a terrible way to legislate. Enough with kludges. End the filibuster, and make the Senate great again.

Ezra Klein joined Opinion in 2021. Previously, he was the founder, editor in chief and then editor-at-large of Vox; the host of the podcast, “The Ezra Klein Show”; and the author of “Why We’re Polarized.” Before that, he was a columnist and editor at The Washington Post, where he founded and led the Wonkblog vertical. @ezraklein

A Pennsylvania Mother’s Path to Insurrection

 A Pennsylvania Mother’s Path to Insurrection

How claims by Rudy Giuliani and Alex Jones spurred a parent of eight to become one of the Capitol riot’s biggest mysteries, and a fugitive from the F.B.I.

 

By Ronan Farrow The New Yorker

Before the pandemic, Rachel Powell, a forty-year-old mother of eight from western Pennsylvania, sold cheese and yogurt at local farmers’ markets and used Facebook mostly to discuss yoga, organic food, and her children’s baseball games. But, last year, Powell began to post more frequently, embracing more extreme political views. Her interests grew to include conspiracy theories about covid-19 and the results of the Presidential election, filtered through such figures as Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and the Infowars founder Alex Jones. On May 3, 2020, Powell wrote on Facebook, “One good thing about this whole CV crisis is that I suddenly feel very patriotic.” Expressing outrage at the restrictions that accompanied the pandemic, she wrote, “It isn’t to late to wake up, say no, and restore freedoms.” Several days later, she posted a distraught seven-minute video, shot outside a local gym that had been closed. “Police need to see there’s people that are citizens that are not afraid of you guys showing up in your masks. We’re going to be here banded together, and we’re not afraid of you,” she said. “Maybe they should be a little bit afraid.”

On January 6th, during the storming of the United States Capitol, Powell made good on that threat. Videos show her, wearing a pink hat and sunglasses, using a battering ram to smash a window and a bullhorn to issue orders. “People should probably coordinate together if you’re going to take this building,” she called out, leaning through a shattered window and addressing a group of rioters already inside. “We got another window to break to make in-and-out easy.”

In recent weeks, as journalists and law-enforcement officials tried to identify participants in the assault, she came to be known as “Bullhorn Lady” and “Pink Hat Lady.” She appeared on an F.B.I. “Wanted” poster, was featured in cable-television news segments, and became an obsessive focus of crowdsourced investigative efforts by laypeople and experts. Forrest Rogers, a German-American business consultant who is part of a Twitter group called the Deep State Dogs, recently identified Powell and reported her name to the F.B.I. She is now being sought by law enforcement.

In her first public comments since the riot, Powell acknowledged her role in the events at the Capitol. During a two-hour telephone interview, she claimed that her conduct had been spontaneous, contrary to widespread speculation that she had acted in coördination with an organized group. “I was not part of a plot—organized, whatever,” Powell, who was speaking from an undisclosed location, told me. “I have no military background. . . . I’m a mom with eight kids. That’s it. I work. And I garden. And raise chickens. And sell cheese at a farmers’ market.” During the interview, she reviewed photographs and videos of the Bullhorn Lady, acknowledging that many of the images showed her, and offered detailed descriptions of the skirmishes they depicted. She declined to comment on some of her conduct—including smashing windows and shouting orders to fellow-rioters—that could carry criminal charges. “Listen, if somebody doesn’t help and direct people, then do more people die?” she said. “That’s all I’m going to say about that. I can’t say anymore. I need to talk to an attorney.”

Powell was born in Anaheim, California, and grew up on what she described as “the really bad side” of Fresno. She was raised by her mother, who worked at a local shop, and by her stepfather, a plumber. “It was rough, but she didn’t do without anything,” her mother, Deborah Lemons, who has had a strained relationship with Powell for the past several years, said. “She always had clothes. She always had food.” Lemons said that, when Powell was a child, she and her stepfather were the victims of a carjacking. Powell was held at gunpoint and her stepfather was kidnapped for several hours by their assailant. “Knowing what that feels like, I am just absolutely amazed that she would participate in something like this and not consider or have a lot of compassion for the people who were inside that building,” Lemons said, referring to the riot. “She well knows what it’s like to wonder if she’s gonna lose her life.”

When Powell was fifteen, her family moved to West Sunbury, in western Pennsylvania, to care for an ailing relative of her stepfather’s. The town was typical of declining Rust Belt communities. “There were a lot of steel mills that closed even since I lived there,” Powell told me. She told me that she had married young, and her mother said that Powell had her first child at sixteen. After graduating from high school, she remained in Pennsylvania. Three years ago, Powell separated from her husband. Since then, she has worked various part-time jobs to support her children, who range in age from four to their mid-twenties. She told me that she has a certification as a group fitness instructor, and has taken a course in alternative medicine. “She’s very granola, very crunchy,” a friend, who asked not to be identified, told me. “Does yoga, eats vegetarian, homeschools all their kids.”

Powell said that, before the election of Donald Trump, in 2016, she held a wide range of political opinions. “My views kind of fall all over the place,” she said. “I guess you could say that I’m more libertarian at heart.” Though her county supported Trump by wide margins in both 2016 and 2020, Powell told me that she didn’t vote for him in his first run, and her social-media posts during that time include sharp criticism of him. “Trump makes me uncomfortable as a presidential candidate,” she wrote in a Facebook post that linked to a piece about Trump’s lack of civility. “What disturbs me is that so many people support this type of person.” She also told me that she took issue with his environmental policies. During his tenure in the White House, however, she embraced Trump and, eventually, the misinformation that he nurtured about the coronavirus and election fraud.

Those political views began to have various impacts on her life after the pandemic hit. Paula Keswick, who co-owns a local creamery that sold Powell cheese and yogurt, said that Powell was barred from working at some events after she refused to obey pandemic restrictions. “She was just adamant she was not going to wear a mask,” Keswick said. (Powell said that she now works part time at a local bookstore.) Last summer and fall, Powell said, she attended various protests, including anti-mask rallies. “If there was a protest in Harrisburg, I was there for almost all of them,” she told me. On July 4th, she drove for four hours to join members of several far-right groups, some of them armed, who gathered at the Gettysburg National Military Park, purportedly to protect Civil War monuments from desecration. At the rally, a man wearing a Black Lives Matter shirt was surrounded and aggressively questioned by about fifty demonstrators. In a video posted online, Powell is among the group, holding an iPhone with the same Kate Spade Hollyhock Floral case that she was later photographed carrying at the Capitol. Powell also told me that she attended rallies in Washington, D.C., on dates she could not recall, including one attended by members of the far-right group the Proud Boys, where Alex Jones, who has falsely alleged that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was faked, spoke. (Powell said that Jones is not her “favorite person,” but that she considers him to be “another journalist to listen to—he has interesting things to say.”) She told me that she did not share the racist views espoused by some on the far right. (In 2013, she tweeted, “what’s up, my niggas?” Powell defended the use of the N-word, saying, “My favorite book is ‘Gone with the Wind,’ and it uses that term freely.”)

Last November, Powell voted for Trump. “It was a little bit of a hard decision for me, and I didn’t make that decision to vote for him till two months before the election,” she said. “I appreciate his business mind. Economy-wise, he has it going on. He loves America.” Ultimately, she concluded, she “couldn’t vote for the other person. I really don’t think Biden or Harris will be good for the country.”

Concerns about mask requirements, which she called a “liberty issue,” were instrumental in her decision. She claimed that the risks of the coronavirus had been overstated by public-health officials, saying that she had not seen many deaths in her county. On November 5th, 2020, she wrote in a Facebook comment directed at a friend, “I won’t get a vaccine either. I hear what you’re saying about the whole world being in on the conspiracy as far as the corona virus goes.” On December 27th, she posted, “I’m unashamedly a ‘super spreader,’ ” attaching photographs of crowded, mask-free holiday and birthday parties. That day, she uploaded a video of a large maskless meal, during which several children said, “No masks,” and Powell could be heard saying, “The masks are total bullcrap. You guys just need to get out there and live. Get arrested—it’s fine.”

Powell connected her beliefs about the coronavirus to claims promoted by Trump and his allies that he had won the election. The day after the election, she shared a screenshot of a graphic claiming that several states had more votes recorded than they did registered voters, information that Facebook flagged as “partly false.” In the accompanying text, Powell wrote, “I’m sitting here thinking about how everyone has been so complacent during COVID.” She went on, “The government knows exactly how far you can be pushed because the population has been successfully tested.”

That post, like others reflecting Powell’s increasingly extreme views, was met with positive reinforcement online. “The dumbing down and fattening up of America has been very successful,” one person wrote in response to the election-fraud conspiracy theory. “It may be too late if ever they wake up.” Earlier posts protesting mask-wearing prompted comments such as “Truth!!!” and “Wake up people!!!!”

Powell said that she derived her beliefs “a little bit from everywhere,” and that she was not a follower of any mainstream news source. “You can go online, go on Facebook now, and dig up a thousand different links about it,” she said, of the election-fraud conspiracy theories. She said that Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, had been a significant source of information, and that she had watched remarks he gave in Gettysburg, on November 25th, during a widely discredited state-senate committee hearing in which he and several witnesses made baseless claims of voter fraud. “That was pretty moving to me,” she said. “I learned a lot from Giuliani and people’s testimonies.”

Joan Donovan, a scholar of media manipulation and extremism, who serves as the research director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy, told me that Powell’s process of radicalization was increasingly common. “You don’t have to go to the dark corners of the Web to find this anymore,” she said. “Through these influencers, through these political propagandists, it’s all brought in through your news feed, through your home page.” Donovan said that friends’ comments often provide an echo chamber for misinformation, and that every click on extremist content can prompt social-media algorithms to produce more of the same. Giuliani, in particular, has proved to be a popular entry point into the world of misinformation. “There were a lot of people like her in that crowd,” Donovan told me, referring to Powell’s participation in the Capitol riot. “They’re going to figure out ways to get back online and to keep communicating with each other. And, if Trump does figure out a way back on platforms where he can build power in the way he did before, this group of people is going to continue to be dangerous and menacing.”

At the July 4th demonstration in Gettysburg, Powell met Kevin Lynn, the founder of a group that advocates for the hiring of American workers in the U.S. technology industry. Last August, after Lynn’s group placed ads pressing Trump to restrict the outsourcing of jobs overseas, Lynn met with Trump at the White House. Lynn told me that he had attended the Gettysburg protest to document the event, and that he interviewed several participants, including Powell. Afterward, the two stayed in touch. “I would say we’re friends,” he said. Before Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington, D.C., Powell told Lynn that she planned to attend, and they agreed to go together. On January 5th, Powell and Lynn met near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and drove to Washington in his car. At least two other friends, the owners of the bookstore where Powell works, drove in another car. (The bookstore owners did not respond to a request for comment.) At the rally, on the morning of January 6th, Powell helped Lynn operate his camera. Trump urged attendees to “fight like hell.” He added, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol. . . . Let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.” Powell said that Trump’s words weighed “partially” in her decisions that day. “It’s good he did ask the American people to come and let their voices be heard for what they believe in,” she told me, “but it was definitely not the sole reason that I came.”

Both Powell and Lynn said that, as they marched to the Capitol, they were separated. Lynn told me that he did not enter the Capitol and that he was “shocked” by the footage of Powell in the thick of the violence.

Source: FBI

At the Capitol, Powell said that she found herself in an increasingly violent confrontation between rioters and Capitol police. Powell appeared to be wearing a jacket designed specifically for the concealed carrying of a gun, but said she did not carry one, “unless you count a Lärabar and bottle of water as a weapon.” In one video, her pink hat is briefly visible in a crush of bodies during a skirmish near an entrance on the west front of the Capitol which is reserved for members of Congress and staffers. “That’s where the pileup was,” she told me, after reviewing the video. “The people were wedged so tight.” She said that she heard a woman’s cries growing gradually quieter beneath the crowd and claimed ultimately to have seen her dead body. (The New Yorker was unable to confirm whether a woman died there.) Powell added, “I was beaten with a baton, and sprayed and gassed.”

In another video, Powell and other rioters are seen using a makeshift battering ram to shatter one of the Capitol’s windows. She pulls the heavy, pipe-shaped object back and throws her weight forward against it repeatedly. (“That’s one of those things I can neither confirm nor deny,” she said. “I just need to talk to an attorney. If you look at that video, people are just going to make their own assumptions.”) In yet another video, she stands outside a broken window, shouting instructions through the bullhorn to rioters inside. Powell says, “I’ve been in the other room,” and appears to outline a plan involving breaking a pane of glass to get into another part of the Capitol. Powell said, regarding her knowledge of the building’s layout, “Anything that was said was figured out as time went on. It wasn’t like there was a map or anything.”

After the riot, Powell said, “I was by myself—I didn’t rendezvous with a bunch of people . . . I didn’t meet militias.” Lynn said that Powell did not join him for the drive home. Powell declined to answer questions about how she returned to Pennsylvania, or with whom.

Forrest Rogers, who reported Powell’s name to the F.B.I., at first thought he had identified a ringleader in a premeditated campaign to invade the Capitol. “The initial footage showed a woman, an apparent insider with an understanding of the Capitol layout, shouting commands to a bunch of unknowns through a bullhorn,” Rogers said. “This created a perception that she was one of the conspirators with an extensive network.” John Scott-Railton, a researcher at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, who has been involved in crowdsourced efforts to identify participants in the riot, said that he also independently confirmed Powell’s identity: “It became clearer over time that her actual role might be different, but still important to understanding what brought a person like that to the Capitol.”

Lemons, Powell’s mother, expressed astonishment at her daughter’s conduct and said that she condemned the violence during the riot. “The whole family is, in a way, just devastated,” she said. “It’s a thing you never expect, that your child is going to be on some F.B.I. ‘Wanted’ poster.” Powell said that her only regrets were the possible repercussions for her children. Asked whether she would have acted differently, given the chance, she said, “I try not to think about that. There are some things that are just worth blocking out.”

 The Wind

By Lauren Groff The New Yorker

Pretend, the mother had said when she crept to her daughter’s room in the night, that tomorrow is just an ordinary day.

So the daughter had risen as usual and washed and made toast and warm milk for her brothers, and while they were eating she emptied their schoolbags into the toy chest and filled them with clothes, a toothbrush, one book for comfort. The children moved silently through the black morning, put on their shoes outside on the porch. The dog thumped his tail against the doghouse in the cold yard but was old and did not get up. The children’s breath hovered low and white as they walked down to the bus stop, a strange presence trailing them in the road.

When they stopped by the mailbox, the younger brother said in a very small voice, Is she dead?

The older boy hissed, Shut up, you’ll wake him, and all three looked at the house hunched up on the hill in the chilly dark, the green siding half installed last summer, the broken front window covered with cardboard.

The sister touched the little one’s head and said, whispering, No, no, don’t worry, she’s alive. I heard her go out to feed the sheep, and then she left for work. The boy leaned like a cat into her hand.

He was six, his brother was nine, and the girl was twelve. These were my uncles and my mother as children.

Much later, she would tell me the story of this day at those times when it seemed as if her limbs were too heavy to move and she stood staring into the refrigerator for long spells, unable to decide what to make for dinner. Or when the sun would cycle into one window and out the other and she would sit on her bed unable to do anything other than breathe. Then I would sit quietly beside her, and she would tell the story the same way every time, as if ripping out something that had worked its roots deep inside her.

It was bitterly cold that day and the wind was supposed to rise, but for now all was airless, waiting. After some time, the older brother said, Kids are going to make fun of you, your face all mashed up like that.

My mother touched her eye and winced at the pain there, then shrugged.

They were so far out in the country, the bus came for them first, and the ride to town was long. At last it showed itself, yellow as sunrise at the end of the road. Its slowness as it pulled up was agonizing. My mother’s heart began to beat fast. She let her brothers get on before her and told them to sit in the front seats. Mrs. Palmer, the driver, was a stout lady who played the organ at church, and whose voice when she shouted at the naughty boys in the back was high like soprano singing. She looked at my mother as she shut the bus door, then said in her singsong voice, You got yourself a shiner there, Michelle.

The bus hissed up from its crouch and lumbered off.

I know, my mother said. Listen, we need your help.

And when Mrs. Palmer considered her, then nodded, my mother asked quickly if she could please drop the three of them off when she picked up the Yoder kids. Their mother would be waiting there for them. Please, she said quietly.

The boys’ faces were startled, they hadn’t known, then an awful acceptance moved across them.

There was a silence before Mrs. Palmer said, Oh, honey, of course, and she shuffled her eyes back to the road. And I won’t mark on the sheet that you were missing, neither. So they won’t get it together to call your house until second period or so, give you a little time. She looked into the mirror at the boys and said cheerfully, I got a blueberry muffin. Anyone want a blueberry muffin?

We’re O.K., thanks, my mother said, and sat beside her younger brother, who rested his head on her arm. The fields spun by, lightening to gray, the faintest of gold at the tops of the trees. Just before the bus slowed to meet the cluster of little Yoders, yawning, shifting from foot to foot, my mother saw the old Dodge tucked into a shallow ditch, headlights off.

Thank you, she said to Mrs. Palmer, as they got off, and Mrs. Palmer said, No thanks needed, only decent thing to do. I’ll pray for you, honey. I’ll pray for all of you; we’re all sinners who yearn for salvation. For the first time since she rose that morning, my mother was glad, because a person as full of music as the bus driver surely had the ear of God.

The three children ran through the exhaust from the bus as it rose and roared off.

They slid into the warm car where their mother clutched the steering wheel. She was very pale, but her hair was in its familiar small bouffant. My mother thought of the pain it must have cost my grandmother to do up her hair in the mirror so early in the morning, and felt ill.

You did good, babies, my grandmother said as well as she could, her mouth as smashed as it was. She turned the car. A calf galloped beside them for a few steps in the paddock by the road, and my younger uncle laughed and pressed his hand to the glass.

This is not the time for laughing, my uncle Joseph said sternly. He would grow up to be a grave man, living in an obsessively clean, bare efficiency, teaching mathematics at a community college.

Leave him be, Joey, my mother said. She said in a lower voice to her mother, Poor Ralphie thought you were dead.

Not dead yet, my grandmother said. By the skin of my teeth. She tried to smile at the boys in the mirror.

Where we going? Ralphie said. I didn’t know we were going anywhere.

To see my friend in the city, my grandmother said. We’ll call when we find a phone out of town. She put a cigarette in her mouth but fumbled with the lighter in her shaky hands until my mother took it and struck the flame for her.

They were going the long way so they wouldn’t have to drive past the house again, and my mother watched the minute hand of the clock on the dash, feeling each second pulling her tighter inside.

Faster, Mama, she said quietly, and her mother said without looking at her, Last thing we need’s being stopped by one of his buddies. I got to pick up my pay first.

The hospital loomed on the hill beside the river, elegant in its stone façade, and my grandmother parked around back, by the dumpster. Can’t risk leaving you, she said. Come with, and bring your stuff. But when she began to walk, she could only mince a little at a time, and my mother moved close, so she could lean on her, and together they went faster.

They went up the steps through the back door into the kitchen. A man in a ridiculous hairnet, like a green mush-room, was carrying a basin of peeled potatoes in a bath of water. Without looking he barked, You’re late, Ruby. But then the children caught his eye, and he saw the state of them, and put the potatoes down and reached out and touched my mother’s face gently with his hot rough hand. Lord. She get it, too? he said. She’s just a kid.

My mother told herself not to cry; she always cried when strangers were tender with her.

Put herself between us. She is a good girl, my grandmother said.

I’ll kill the bastard myself, the man said. I’ll strangle him if you want me to. Just say the word.

No need, my grandmother said. We are going. But I got to have my check, Dougie. All we got is four dollars and half a tank of gas, and I don’t know what I’m going to do if that’s all we got to live on.

Can’t. No way, Dougie said. Check gets sent to the house; you know this. You filled the form. You checked the box.

My grandmother looked him directly in the face, perhaps for the first time, because she was a timid woman whose voice was low, who made herself a shadow in the world. He sighed and said, See what I can manage, then he disappeared into the office.

Now through the door of the cafeteria there came two women moving fast. One was a plump pretty teen-ager chewing gum, the cashier, and the other was Doris, my grandmother’s friend, freckled and squat and blunt. For extra money, she made exquisite cakes, with flowers like irises and delphiniums in frosting. It was hard to believe a woman as tough as she was could hold such delicacy inside her.

Oh, Ruby, Doris said. It got even worse, huh. Jesus, look at you.

Shoved his gun in my mouth this time, my grandmother said. She didn’t bother to whisper, because the kids had been there, they had seen it. Thought I was going to be shot. But, no, he just knocked out a few teeth. My grandmother gingerly lifted her lip with a finger to show her swollen bloodied gums. When Doris stepped forward to hug her, my grandmother winced away from her touch, and Doris took the helm of her shirt and lifted it, and said, Oh, shit, when she saw the bruises marbling my grandmother’s stomach and ribs.

Better go up and get looked at by a doctor, the cashier said, her damp pink mouth hanging open. That looks really ugly.

No time, my grandmother said. It’s already too dangerous to show up here.

In silence, Doris took her cracked leather purse from the hook and put all the cash in her wallet in my mother’s hand. The cashier blew a bubble, considering, then sighed and pulled down her own purse and did the same.

Bless you, ladies, my grandmother said. Then she took a shuddering breath and said, In a way, it was my fault. I thought I would stay until we finished the shearing. You know he’s rough with the sheep. I wanted to save them some blood.

Mama? my younger uncle said by the door.

No, don’t you do that nonsense, you know that’s not right, Doris said, fiercely. It’s his fault. Nobody else but his.

Mama? Ralphie said again, louder. It’s him, he’s here. He pointed out the window, where they could see just the nose of the cruiser coming to a stop behind my grandmother’s Dodge.

Get down, Doris said, and they all crouched on the tile. They heard a car door slam. Doris, moving faster than seemed possible, went to the door and locked it. Half a second later the knob was rattled, and then there was a pounding, and then my mother could not hear for the blood rushing in her ears.

Doris picked up the pan of potatoes and came to the window wearing a furious face. What in hell you want? she shouted. Dare to show your face here.

There was a murmuring, then Doris shouted down through the glass, not here, up in the E.R. getting looked at. Quite a number you have done on her. Could not hardly walk. She said this nastily, glowering. Then she turned her back on the window and went to the stainless-steel table in the middle of the room, where the cashier watched out the window over Doris’s shoulder.

They heard an engine starting up, and at last the cashier said in a thick voice, O.K., he got in and now he’s driving around. But, like, when he figures out, you’re not up in the E.R. he’s gonna just come into the kitchen through the cafeteria, you know. Like, there’s no lock on that door and we can’t stop him.

Doris called for Dougie in a sharp voice, and Dougie hurried out of the office with an envelope, looking flushed, a little shamefaced. He had been hiding in there, my mother understood.

I won’t forget your kindness, all of you, my grandmother said, but my mother had to take the paycheck because my grandmother’s hands were shaking too much.

Send us a postcard when you make it, Doris said. Get a move on.

My grandmother leaned on my mother again and they went out to the car as fast as they could, and it started, and slid the back way, down by the green bridge over the river. When they had twisted out of sight of the hospital, my grandmother stopped the car, opened her door, and vomited on the road.

She shut the door. All right, she said, wiping her mouth gingerly with a finger, and started the car up again.

My mother saw on the dashboard clock that it was just past eight. The teachers were doing roll call right now. Soon a girl would collect the sheets and take them to the office, where someone, thinking they were doing the right thing, would notice that all three of the kids were gone, and call their absence in, first to the house, where the phone would ring and ring. But then, getting hold of nobody, they would call it in to the station, and it would be radioed out immediately to him. And he would know that not only was his wife gone but his kids were gone with her. They had an hour, maybe a little more, my mother calculated. An hour could maybe take them out of his jurisdiction. She told her mother this, pressing her foot on an imaginary accelerator. My grandmother did drive faster now through the back roads. Gusts of sharp wind pressed the car.

For some time, they were strung into their separate thoughts. My mother counted the cash. A hundred and twenty-three, she said with surprise.

Doris’s grocery money, I bet, my grandmother said. Bless her.

Ralphie said sadly, I wish we could’ve brought Butch.

Yeah, just what we need, your stinky old dog, Joey said.

Can we go back someday to get him? Ralphie said, but my grandmother was silent.

My mother turned around to look at her brothers and said, bitterly, We’re never going back. I hope it all burns down with him inside.

Hey, the little boy said weakly. That’s not nice. He’s my dad.

Mine, too, but I’d be happy if he eats rat poison, Uncle Joseph said. Then he bent forward and looked at the floor, then at the seat beside him, and said, Oh, jeez. Oh, no. Where’s your knapsack, Ralphie?

Uncle Ralphie looked all around and said at last, with his eyes wide, I took it into the kitchen but I think I left it.

There was a long moment before this blow hit them all, at once.

Oh, this is bad, my mother said.

I’m so sorry, Ralphie said, starting to cry. Mama, I gotta go pee.

Surely Doris will hide it, my grandmother said.

Hold your bladder, Ralphie. But what if she doesn’t find it in time? my mother said. What if she doesn’t see it before he does? And he knows that you took us. And he gets on the radio for them all to keep an eye out for us. They could be looking for us now.

My grandmother cursed softly and looked at the rearview mirror. They were whipping terribly fast on the country curves now. The boys, in the back, were clutching the door handles.

My uncle Joey, in a display of self-control that made him seem like a tiny ancient man, said, It’s O.K., Ralphie, you didn’t mean to leave your bag.

My younger uncle reached out his little hand, and Joseph, who hated all show of affection, held it. Ralphie had a fishing accident when I was a teen-ager, and my cold, dry uncle Joseph fell apart at the funeral, sobbing and letting snot run down his face, all twisted grotesquely in pain.

Mama, we got to get out of the state, my mother said. We’ll be safer across state lines.

Shush now, I need to think, my grandmother said. Her hands had gone white on the wheel.

No, what we got to do is ditch the car, my uncle Joseph said, they’ll be looking for it. Probably already are. We got to find a parking lot that’s full of cars already, like a grocery store or something.

Then what do we do? my grandmother said in a strangled voice. We walk to Vermont? She laughed, a sharp sound.

No, then we take a bus, Joseph said in his hard, rational voice. We get on a bus and they can’t find us then.

O.K., my mother said. O.K., yeah, Joey’s right, that’s a good plan. Good thinking. We’re fifteen minutes out from Albany, they got a bus station, I know where it is.

It was her father who had once driven her there in his cruiser, because her middle-school choir was taking a bus down to New York City for a competition. He had stopped on the way for strawberry milkshakes. This was a good memory she had of him.

Fine, my grandmother said. Yes. I can’t think of nothing else. I guess this will be our change of plans. But, for the first time since the night before, tears welled up in her eyes and began dripping down her bruised cheeks and she had to slow the car to see through them.

And then she started breathing crazily, and leaned forward until her forehead rested on the wheel, and the car stopped suddenly in the middle of the road. The wind howled around it.

Mama, we need to drive, my mother said. We need to drive now. We need to go.

I really, really have to pee, Ralphie said.

It’s O.K., it’s O.K., it’s O.K., my grandmother whispered. It’s just that my body is not really listening to me. I can’t move anything right now. I can’t move my feet. Oh, God.

It’s fine, my mother said softly. Don’t worry. You’re fine. You can take the time you need to calm down.

And at this moment my mother saw with terrible clarity that everything depended upon her. The knowledge was heavy on the nape of her neck, like a hand pressing down hard. And what came to her was the trail of bread crumbs from the fairy tale her mother used to tell her in the dark when she was tiny, and it was just the two of them in the bedroom, no brothers in this life, not yet, and the soft, kind moon was shining in the window and her father was downstairs, worlds away. So my mother said, in a soothing voice, So what we’re going to do is, Mama’s going to take a deep breath and we’re going to drive down into Albany, over the tracks, take a right at the feed place, go down by the big brick church, and park in that lot behind it. It’s only a block or two from the station. We’re going to get out and walk as fast as we can and I’ll go in and buy the tickets on the first bus out to wherever, and if we have time I can get us some food to eat on the bus. And we’ll get on the bus, and it will slide us out of here so fast. It’ll go wherever it’s going, but eventually we’ll get to the city. And the city is so enormous we can just hide there. And there are museums and parks and movie theatres and subways and everything in the city. And Mama will get a job and we’ll go to school and we’ll get an apartment and there’ll be no more stupid sheep to take care of and it’ll be safe. No more having to run out to the barn to sleep. Nobody can hurt us in the city, O.K., boys? We’re going to have a life that will be so boring, every day it will be the same, and it is going to be wonderful. O.K.?

By now my mother had pried my grandmother’s hands off the steering wheel and was chafing the blood back into them. O.K.? All we need is for you to take a deep breath.

You can do it, Mama, Joseph said. Ralphie covered his face with both hands. The grasses outside danced under the heavy wind, brushed flat, ruffled against the fur of the fields.

Then my mother prayed with her eyes open, her hands spread on the dash, willing the car forward, and my grandmother slowly put the car back into gear and, panting, began to drive.

This was the way my mother later told the story, down to the smallest detail, as though dreaming it into life: the forsythia budding gold on the tips of the bushes, the last snow rotten in the ditches, the faces of the houses still depressed by winter, the gray clouds that hung down heavily as her mother drove into the valley of the town, the wind picking up so that the flag’s rivets on the pole snapped crisply outside the bus station, where they waited on a metal bench that seared their bottoms and they shuddered from more than the cold. The bus roaring to life, wreathed in smoke, carrying them away. She told it almost as though she believed this happier version, but behind her words I see the true story, the sudden wail and my grandmother’s blanched cheeks shining in red and blue and the acrid smell of piss. How just before the door opened and she was grabbed by the hair and dragged backward, my grandmother turned to her children and tried to smile, to give them this last glimpse of her.

The three children survived. Eventually they would save themselves, struggling into lives and loves far from this place and this moment, each finding a kind of safe harbor, jobs and people and houses empty of violence. But always inside my mother there would blow a silent wind, a wind that died and gusted again, raging throughout her life, touching every moment she lived after this one. She tried her best, but she couldn’t help filling me with this same wind. It seeped into me through her blood, through every bite of food she made for me, through every night she waited, shaking with fear, for me to come home by curfew, through every scolding, everything she forbade me to say or think or do or be, through all the ways she taught me how to move as a woman in the world. She was far from being the first to find it blowing through her, and of course I will not be the last. I look around and can see it in so many other women, passed down from a time beyond history, this wind that is dark and ceaseless and raging within. ♦

 

Socialism for the Rich. Capitalism for the Rest.

 

Made in the U.S.A.: Socialism for the Rich. Capitalism for the Rest.

Once we take care of the pandemic, we need to sort this out.

 By Thomas L. Friedman New York Times

Opinion Columnist 

I understand why Democrats are fuming.

Donald Trump ran up budget deficits in his first three years to levels seen in our history only during major wars and financial crises — thanks to tax cuts, military spending and little fiscal discipline. And he did so prepandemic, when the economy was already expanding and unemployment was low. But now that Joe Biden wants to spend more on pandemic relief and prevent the economy from tanking further, many Republicans — on cue — are rediscovering their deficit hawk wings.

What frauds.

We need to do whatever it takes to help the most vulnerable Americans who have lost jobs, homes or businesses to Covid-19 — and to buttress cities overwhelmed by the virus. So, put me down for a double dose of generosity.

But, but, but … when this virus clears, we ALL need to have a talk.

There has been so much focus in recent years on the downsides of rapid globalization and “neoliberal free-market groupthink” — influencing both Democrats and Republicans — that we’ve ignored another, more powerful consensus that has taken hold on both parties: That we are in a new era of permanently low interest rates, so deficits don’t matter as long as you can service them, and so the role of government in developed countries can keep expanding — which it has with steadily larger bailouts, persistent deficit spending, mounting government debts and increasingly easy money out of Central Banks to finance it all.

This new consensus has a name: “Socialism for the rich and capitalism for the rest,” argues Ruchir Sharma, chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, author of “The Ten Rules of Successful Nations” and one of my favorite contrarian economic thinkers. 

“Socialism for the rich and capitalism for the rest” — a variation on a theme popularized in the 1960s — happens, Sharma explained in a phone interview, when government intervention does more to stimulate the financial markets than the real economy. So, America’s richest 10 percent, who own more than 80 percent of U.S. stocks, have seen their wealth more than triple in 30 years, while the bottom 50 percent, relying on their day jobs in real markets to survive, had zero gains. Meanwhile, mediocre productivity in the real economy has limited opportunity, choice and income gains for the poor and middle class alike.

The best evidence is the last year: We’re in the middle of a pandemic that has crushed jobs and small businesses — but the stock market is soaring. That’s not right. That’s elephants flying. I always get worried watching elephants fly. It usually doesn’t end well. 

we raise taxes on the rich and direct more relief to the poor, which I favor, when you keep relying on this much stimulus, argues Sharma, you’re going to get lots of unintended consequences. And we are.

For instance, Sharma wrote in July in a Wall Street Journal essay titled “The Rescues Ruining Capitalism,” that easy money and increasingly generous bailouts fuel the rise of monopolies and keep “alive heavily indebted ‘zombie’ firms, at the expense of start-ups, which drive innovation.” And all of that is contributing to lower productivity, which means slower economic growth and “a shrinking of the pie for everyone.”

As such, no one should be surprised “that millennials and Gen Z are growing disillusioned with this distorted form of capitalism and say that they prefer socialism.”

In the 1980s, “only 2 percent of publicly traded companies in the U.S. were considered ‘zombies,’ a term used by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) for companies that, over the previous three years, had not earned enough profit to make even the interest payments on their debt,” Sharma wrote. “The zombie minority started to grow rapidly in the early 2000s, and by the eve of the pandemic, accounted for 19 percent of U.S.-listed companies.” It’s happening in Europe, China and Japan, too.

And it’s all logical. Prolonged and increasingly generous bailouts, where governments are willing to buy even corporate junk bonds to prevent foreclosures, added Sharma, “distort the efficient allocation of capital needed to raise productivity.”

The past few years should have been an era of huge creative destruction. With so many new cheap digital tools of innovation, so much access to cheap high-powered computing and so much easy money, start-ups should have been exploding. They were not.

“Before the pandemic, the U.S. was generating start-ups — and shutting down established companies — at the slowest rates since at least the 1970s,” wrote Sharma. “The number of publicly traded U.S. companies had fallen by nearly half, to around 4,400, since the peak in 1996.” (The number of start-ups has increased in the pandemic, but that may be because so many businesses closed.)

Alas, though, big companies are becoming huge and more monopolistic in this easy money, low interest rate era. It is not only because the internet created global winner-take-all markets, which have enabled companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple to amass cash piles bigger than the reserves of many nation-states. It’s also because they can so easily use their inflated stock prices or cash hordes to buy up budding competitors and suck up all the talent and resources “crowding out the little guys,” Sharma said.

Meanwhile, he added, as governments keep stepping in to eliminate recessions, downturns no longer play their role of purging the economy of inefficient companies, and recoveries have grown weaker and weaker, with lower productivity growth. So it takes more and more stimulus each time to prop up growth.

This is all actually making our system more fragile.

Now that so many countries, led by the U.S., have massively increased their debt loads, if we got even a small burst of inflation that drove interest on the 10-year Treasury to 3 percent from 1 percent, the amount of money the U.S. would have to devote to debt servicing would be so enormous that little money might be left for discretionary spending on research, infrastructure or education — or another rainy day. 

Sure, we could then just print even more money, but that could threaten the status of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and raise our borrowing costs even more.

So, yes, yes, yes — we must, right now, help our fellow citizens, who are hurting, through this pandemic. But instead of more cash handouts, maybe we should do it the way the Koreans, Taiwanese, Singaporeans, Chinese and other East Asians have been doing it — cash assistance to only the most vulnerable and more investments in infrastructure that improve productivity and create good jobs. The East Asians also focus on making their governments smarter, particularly around delivering things like health care, rather than bigger — one reason they have gotten through this pandemic with less pain.

Biden plans a big infrastructure package soon. He totally gets it. I just hope that Congress, and the markets, don’t have debt fatigue by the time we get to the most productive medicine: infrastructure.

Going forward, how about more inclusive capitalism for everyone and less knee-jerk socialism for rich people. Economies grow from more people inventing and starting stuff. “Without entrepreneurial risk and creative destruction, capitalism doesn’t work,” wrote Sharma. “Disruption and regeneration, the heart of the system, grind to a halt. The deadwood never falls from the tree. The green shoots are nipped in the bud.”