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Comment by kmeisthax

2 days ago

We did. In fact, some of the Biden-era antitrust lawsuits are still active, AFAIK. What happened is that the capital class acted swiftly and firmly to shut down the FTC (and SEC), by brown-nosing Trump[0], so that the federal government couldn't challenge them.

The word "deep state" gets thrown around a lot here, especially by the people who thought Trump was going to stop this bullshit, but it's useful to describe what's going on: the accumulation of informal power structures that render the formal, legitimate one ineffective. Hollywood was part of the last iteration of the deep state; but they are being gradually pushed out of it, both because they are on Trump's enemies list and because tech centralizes power and control far faster than artistic industry does. In other words, Hollywood is no longer useful and is being replaced with something worse.

[0] To be clear, about half the DNC was hoping a judge would block Lina Khan's lawsuits and make her look weak enough to be replaced with a stooge.