We're Going To Need Steam Control

Steam will be released, one way or another. 

It’s something American elites need to learn now. Not in the next presidential cycle and not when the Democrats – the only party remotely interested in offering tiny improvements around the edges of American life – take back control of one or both chambers of Congress. The lesson needs to be internalized today, right now: Steam, a righteous steam – as Tom Wolfe writes about in Bonfire of the Vanities –  has collected in the hearts of working people in the United States and it’s going to spill over in the form of unspeakable acts or it's going to be slowly and carefully released by those with the power and means to control the steam. Those are the choices.

Wolfe writes eloquently about “steam control” in his 1987 novel about the dirty inner workings of New York City and all the obscene greed, eye-watering corruption, systemic racism, and class warfare of New York in the years before it was made into a pristine tourist destination. Wolfe writes of a righteous steam – a righteous anger – that can and will take the form of violence, both random and targeted – take your pick – if it is ignored long enough. 

Thanks to all those who support BFT. Consider subscribing for $3 or $5 a month, or leaving a tip!

The water of American life reached its boiling point during the bank bailouts of 2008, a breaking point in U.S. history that has delivered not one, but two presidential terms to a man who opposes representative democracy. Those hot little water molecules have since gained enough energy to break free from their liquid state and now threaten to burn anyone at any time, and maybe – with enough of those molecules transforming into furious water vapor – all the piping bursts all at once. Maybe there are more superheated molecules in our neighborhoods and cities and counties and states than we can know.

We saw that steam spill into full view this week in the hours after an assassin shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in the middle of Manhattan, the casings of his bullets reading “deny,” “defend,” and “depose,” legal tactics insurance companies use to reduce liability or reject claims from people begging for healthcare from a healthcare system designed to withhold healthcare at any cost. 

The killing itself was only part of the steam being released into the open air. The real steam – the shit making the shaking pipes beg for mercy – was seen in the public reaction to Thompson’s killing (I'm no advocate for political violence and I think we're entering an extraordinarily dark period if this sort of act is glamorized, especially in the eyes of young people with no economic prospects). The steam streamed out in the form of untold millions of laughing emojis on social media platforms. It showed itself in social media comments from otherwise well adjusted people saying hey, this is what happens when you push folks too far, when you deny them basic human rights like access to a doctor. The steam could be seen in people openly celebrating Thompson’s murder, daydreaming online about more killings of prominent healthcare CEOs who had made themselves and their golf partners fabulously wealthy by using artificial intelligence to deny millions of requests for basic health services. 

Capitalism Is Coming For Your Kids

There’s an accelerational aspect to capitalism that – quite conveniently for capital – is invisible to people living within the system. It is as felt by the subjects of capital as it is unseen. It is destructive, yet unopposed. The acceleration is not toward the future, not toward something better and

Bad Faith TimesDenny Carter

The steam was everywhere on Wednesday, spilling out of any crevice with so much as a millimeter of open space. We got a glimpse of the unbridled and yes, righteous, anger that has animated 21st century life and brought us to the precipice of authoritarianism. American business elites and politicians better buck up and learn a little something about Reverend Bacon's steam control because what we saw from people in the wake of the Thompson assassination, both political and apolitical, working and middle class, chronically online and relatively offline alike, was only a gust of steam. There’s so much more where that came from. 

“I’m an ER nurse and the things I’ve seen dying patients get denied for by insurance makes me physically sick," a TikTok user wrote hours after Thompson was killed, according to the New York Times. "I just can’t feel sympathy for him because of all of those patients and their families.”