In her magnificent 2023 book *Doppelganger*, Naomi Klein describes the "mirror world" of right wing causes that are weird, conspiratorial versions of the actual things that leftists care about:
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For example, Trump rode to power on the back of Qanon, a movement driven by conspiratorial theories of a cabal of rich and powerful people who were kidnapping, trafficking and abusing children. Qanon followers were driven to the most unhinged acts by these theories, shooting up restaurants and demanding to be let into nonexistent basements:
"Pizzagate" gunman killed by police in North Carolina
Edgar Maddison Welch, an avid QAnon follower, made headlines when he fired shots inside a pizza parlor in 2016.
Newsweek (www.newsweek.com)
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And while Qanon theories about children being disguised as reasonably priced armoires are facially absurd, the right's obsession with imaginary children is a long-established phenomenon:
Wayfair: The false conspiracy about a furniture firm and child trafficking
It's gone global, and involves a US-based furniture company and unfounded allegations of human trafficking.
BBC News (www.bbc.co.uk)
Think of the conservative movement's all-consuming obsession with the imaginary lives of children that aborted fetuses might have someday become, and its depraved indifference to the hunger and poverty of *actual* children in America:
Child Poverty in America: Highest Rates, Causes & Impact
Explore child poverty in America with United Way NCA. Learn about the highest poverty rates, key causes, and how you can help fight for change.
United Way NCA (unitedwaynca.org)
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And while Qanon theories about children being disguised as reasonably priced armoires are facially absurd, the right's obsession with imaginary children is a long-established phenomenon:
Wayfair: The false conspiracy about a furniture firm and child trafficking
It's gone global, and involves a US-based furniture company and unfounded allegations of human trafficking.
BBC News (www.bbc.co.uk)
Think of the conservative movement's all-consuming obsession with the imaginary lives of children that aborted fetuses might have someday become, and its depraved indifference to the hunger and poverty of *actual* children in America:
Child Poverty in America: Highest Rates, Causes & Impact
Explore child poverty in America with United Way NCA. Learn about the highest poverty rates, key causes, and how you can help fight for change.
United Way NCA (unitedwaynca.org)
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Trump's most ardent followers reorganized their lives around the imagined plight of imaginary children, while making excuses for Trump's first-term "Kids in Cages" policy:
Trump migrant separation policy: Children 'in cages' in Texas
Reporters who visited a migrant detention centre in Texas say they saw 20 children in one enclosure.
BBC News (www.bbc.co.uk)
Obviously, this has only gotten worse in Trump's second term. The same people whose entire political identity is nominally about defending "unborn children" are totally indifferent to the actual *born* children that DOGE left to die by the thousands:
USAID shutdown has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
The Trump administration’s decision to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths from infectious diseases and malnutrition, according to Harvard Chan School’s Atul Gawande.
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (hsph.harvard.edu)
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Trump's most ardent followers reorganized their lives around the imagined plight of imaginary children, while making excuses for Trump's first-term "Kids in Cages" policy:
Trump migrant separation policy: Children 'in cages' in Texas
Reporters who visited a migrant detention centre in Texas say they saw 20 children in one enclosure.
BBC News (www.bbc.co.uk)
Obviously, this has only gotten worse in Trump's second term. The same people whose entire political identity is nominally about defending "unborn children" are totally indifferent to the actual *born* children that DOGE left to die by the thousands:
USAID shutdown has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
The Trump administration’s decision to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths from infectious diseases and malnutrition, according to Harvard Chan School’s Atul Gawande.
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (hsph.harvard.edu)
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They cheered Israel's slaughter and starvation of children during the siege of Gaza and they are cheering it on still today:
As for pedophile traffickers, the same Qanon conspiracy theorists who cooked their brains with fantasies about Trump smiting the elite pedophiles are now making excuses for Trump's central role in history's most prolific child rape scandal:
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They cheered Israel's slaughter and starvation of children during the siege of Gaza and they are cheering it on still today:
As for pedophile traffickers, the same Qanon conspiracy theorists who cooked their brains with fantasies about Trump smiting the elite pedophiles are now making excuses for Trump's central role in history's most prolific child rape scandal:
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This is the mirror-world as Klein described it: a real problem (elite impunity for child abuse; the sadistic targeting of children in war crimes; the impact of poverty on children) filtered through a fever-swamp of conspiratorial nonsense. It's world that would do anything to save imaginary children while condemning living, real children to grinding poverty, sexual torture, starvation and murder.
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This is the mirror-world as Klein described it: a real problem (elite impunity for child abuse; the sadistic targeting of children in war crimes; the impact of poverty on children) filtered through a fever-swamp of conspiratorial nonsense. It's world that would do anything to save imaginary children while condemning living, real children to grinding poverty, sexual torture, starvation and murder.
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Once you know about Klein's mirror-world, you see it everywhere - from conservative panics about the power of Big Tech platforms (that turn out to be panics about what Big Tech does with that power, not about the power of tech itself):
To conservative panics about health - that turn out to be a demand to dismantle America's weak public health system *and* America's weak regulation of the supplements industry:
Brief: MAHA is a Supplements Grift — Conspirituality
Two new MAHA-approved bills would force insurance companies to cover supplements and shield homeopathic manufacturers from any liability while allowing them to make more health claims. As Derek argues, this is what Kennedy has always been aiming for: shuffle as many alt-med products into circulation as possible while ensuring they don't need any of those pesky regulations pharmaceuticals must endure.
Conspirituality (www.conspirituality.net)
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Once you know about Klein's mirror-world, you see it everywhere - from conservative panics about the power of Big Tech platforms (that turn out to be panics about what Big Tech does with that power, not about the power of tech itself):
To conservative panics about health - that turn out to be a demand to dismantle America's weak public health system *and* America's weak regulation of the supplements industry:
Brief: MAHA is a Supplements Grift — Conspirituality
Two new MAHA-approved bills would force insurance companies to cover supplements and shield homeopathic manufacturers from any liability while allowing them to make more health claims. As Derek argues, this is what Kennedy has always been aiming for: shuffle as many alt-med products into circulation as possible while ensuring they don't need any of those pesky regulations pharmaceuticals must endure.
Conspirituality (www.conspirituality.net)
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But lately, I've been thinking that maybe the mirror shines in both directions: that in addition to the warped reflection of the right's mirror world, there is a *left* mirror world where we can find descrambled, clarified versions of the right's twisted obsessions.
I've been thinking about this since I read a Corey Robin blog post about Mamdani's campaign rhetoric, in which Mamdani railed against "mediocrity" and promised "excellence":
Excellence over mediocrity, from Mamdani to Marx to food
Excellence over mediocrity, from Mamdani to Marx to food
(coreyrobin.com)
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But lately, I've been thinking that maybe the mirror shines in both directions: that in addition to the warped reflection of the right's mirror world, there is a *left* mirror world where we can find descrambled, clarified versions of the right's twisted obsessions.
I've been thinking about this since I read a Corey Robin blog post about Mamdani's campaign rhetoric, in which Mamdani railed against "mediocrity" and promised "excellence":
Excellence over mediocrity, from Mamdani to Marx to food
Excellence over mediocrity, from Mamdani to Marx to food
(coreyrobin.com)
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Robin pointed out that while this framing might strike some leftists as oddly right-coded, it has a lineal descent from Marx, who advocated for industrialization and mass production because the alternative would be "universal mediocrity.”
Robin went on to discuss a largely lost thread of "socialist perfectionism" ("John Ruskin and William Morris to Bloomsbury Bolsheviks like Virginia Woolf and John Maynard Keynes") who advocated for the public provision of *excellence*.
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Robin pointed out that while this framing might strike some leftists as oddly right-coded, it has a lineal descent from Marx, who advocated for industrialization and mass production because the alternative would be "universal mediocrity.”
Robin went on to discuss a largely lost thread of "socialist perfectionism" ("John Ruskin and William Morris to Bloomsbury Bolsheviks like Virginia Woolf and John Maynard Keynes") who advocated for the public provision of *excellence*.
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He identifies Marx's own mirror world analysis, pointing out that Marx identified a fundamental difference between capitalist and socialist theories of the division of labor. While capitalists saw the division of labor as a way to increase *quantity*, socialists were excited by the prospect of increasing *quality*.
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He identifies Marx's own mirror world analysis, pointing out that Marx identified a fundamental difference between capitalist and socialist theories of the division of labor. While capitalists saw the division of labor as a way to increase *quantity*, socialists were excited by the prospect of increasing *quality*.
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(There's a centaur/reverse centaur comparison lurking in there, too. If you're a centaur radiologist, who gets an AI tool that flags some diagnoses you may have missed, then you're improving the rate of tumor identification.)
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(There's a centaur/reverse centaur comparison lurking in there, too. If you're a centaur radiologist, who gets an AI tool that flags some diagnoses you may have missed, then you're improving the rate of tumor identification.)
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(If you're a reverse centaur radiologist who sees 90% of your colleagues fired and replaced with a chatbot whose work you are expected to sign off on at a rate that precludes even cursory inspection, you're increasing X-ray throughput at the expense of accuracy):
(In other words: the reverse centaur is the mirror world version of a centaur.)
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(If you're a reverse centaur radiologist who sees 90% of your colleagues fired and replaced with a chatbot whose work you are expected to sign off on at a rate that precludes even cursory inspection, you're increasing X-ray throughput at the expense of accuracy):
(In other words: the reverse centaur is the mirror world version of a centaur.)
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After the election, Mamdani doubled down on his pursuit of high-quality services. In his inaugural speech, Mamdani promised a government "where excellence is no longer the exception":
Robin was also developing his appreciation for Mamadani's vision of public excellence. In the *New York Review of Books*, Robin made the case that it was a mistake for Democrats to have ceded the language of efficiency and quality to Republicans:
Democratic Excellence | Corey Robin
Among Zohran Mamdani’s rhetorical innovations has been his declaration of war on mediocrity.
The New York Review of Books (www.nybooks.com)
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After the election, Mamdani doubled down on his pursuit of high-quality services. In his inaugural speech, Mamdani promised a government "where excellence is no longer the exception":
Robin was also developing his appreciation for Mamadani's vision of public excellence. In the *New York Review of Books*, Robin made the case that it was a mistake for Democrats to have ceded the language of efficiency and quality to Republicans:
Democratic Excellence | Corey Robin
Among Zohran Mamdani’s rhetorical innovations has been his declaration of war on mediocrity.
The New York Review of Books (www.nybooks.com)
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Where Democrats do talk about efficiency, they talk about it in Republican terms: "We'll run the government like a business." Mamdani, by contrast, talks about running the government like a *government* - a *good* government, a government committed to excellence.
Writing in *Jacobin*, Conor Lynch takes a trip into the good side of the mirror world, unpacking the idea of socialist excellence in Mamdani's governance promises:
Zohran Mamdani Wants to Reclaim Efficiency From the Right
New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani is trying to demonstrate that the public sector can match or even surpass the private sector in excellence. It’s high time the Left reclaimed the value of “efficiency” from right-wing forces of privatization and austerity.
(jacobin.com)
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Where Democrats do talk about efficiency, they talk about it in Republican terms: "We'll run the government like a business." Mamdani, by contrast, talks about running the government like a *government* - a *good* government, a government committed to excellence.
Writing in *Jacobin*, Conor Lynch takes a trip into the good side of the mirror world, unpacking the idea of socialist excellence in Mamdani's governance promises:
Zohran Mamdani Wants to Reclaim Efficiency From the Right
New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani is trying to demonstrate that the public sector can match or even surpass the private sector in excellence. It’s high time the Left reclaimed the value of “efficiency” from right-wing forces of privatization and austerity.
(jacobin.com)
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During the Mamdani campaign, "efficiency" was one plank of the platform. But once Mamdani took office, he learned his predecessor, the lavishly corrupt Eric Adams, lied about the city's finances, leaving a $12b hole in the budget:
Mamdani came to power in New York on an ambitious platform of public service delivery, and not just because this is the right thing to do, but because investment in a city's people and built environment pays off handsomely.
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During the Mamdani campaign, "efficiency" was one plank of the platform. But once Mamdani took office, he learned his predecessor, the lavishly corrupt Eric Adams, lied about the city's finances, leaving a $12b hole in the budget:
Mamdani came to power in New York on an ambitious platform of public service delivery, and not just because this is the right thing to do, but because investment in a city's people and built environment pays off handsomely.
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Maintenance is always cheaper than repair. A main differences between a business and a government is that a business's shareholders can starve maintenance budgets, cash out, and leave the collapsing firm behind them, while governments must think about the long term consequences of short-term thinking (the fact that so many Democratic governments have failed to do this is a consequence of Democrats adopting Republicans' framing that a good government is "run like a business").
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Maintenance is always cheaper than repair. A main differences between a business and a government is that a business's shareholders can starve maintenance budgets, cash out, and leave the collapsing firm behind them, while governments must think about the long term consequences of short-term thinking (the fact that so many Democratic governments have failed to do this is a consequence of Democrats adopting Republicans' framing that a good government is "run like a business").
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The best time to invest in New York City was 20 years ago. The second best time in now. For Mamdani to make those investments and correct the failures of his predecessors, he needs to find some money.
Mamdani's proposal for finding this money sounds pretty conservative: he's going to cut waste in government. He's ordered each city agency to appoint a "Chief Savings Officer" who will "review performance, eliminate waste and streamline service delivery."
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The best time to invest in New York City was 20 years ago. The second best time in now. For Mamdani to make those investments and correct the failures of his predecessors, he needs to find some money.
Mamdani's proposal for finding this money sounds pretty conservative: he's going to cut waste in government. He's ordered each city agency to appoint a "Chief Savings Officer" who will "review performance, eliminate waste and streamline service delivery."
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These CSOs are supposed to find a 1.5% across-the-board savings this year and 2.5% next year:
Does this sound like DOGE to you? It kind of does to me, but - crucially - this is *mirror-world* DOGE. DOGE's project was making government cuts in order to make government "run like a business." Specifically, DOGE wanted to transform the government into the kind of business that makes cuts to juice the quarterly numbers at the expense of long-term health:
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These CSOs are supposed to find a 1.5% across-the-board savings this year and 2.5% next year:
Does this sound like DOGE to you? It kind of does to me, but - crucially - this is *mirror-world* DOGE. DOGE's project was making government cuts in order to make government "run like a business." Specifically, DOGE wanted to transform the government into the kind of business that makes cuts to juice the quarterly numbers at the expense of long-term health:
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But Mamdani's mirror-world DOGE is looking to find efficiencies by cutting things like sweetheart deals with private contractors and consultants, who cost the city billions. It's these private sector delegates of the state that are the source of government waste and bloat.
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But Mamdani's mirror-world DOGE is looking to find efficiencies by cutting things like sweetheart deals with private contractors and consultants, who cost the city billions. It's these private sector delegates of the state that are the source of government waste and bloat.
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The literature is clear on this: when governments eliminate their own capacity to serve the people and hire corporations to do it on their behalf, the corporations charge more and deliver less:
My turn: Public-private partnerships are an industry gimmick that don’t serve public well
Don't waste public tax money. Caltrans public employees can do road projects more efficiently than private contractors without as many cost overruns.
CalMatters (calmatters.org)
As Lynch writes, DOGE's purpose was to dismantle as much of the government as possible and shift its duties to Beltway Bandits who could milk Uncle Sucker for every dime.
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The literature is clear on this: when governments eliminate their own capacity to serve the people and hire corporations to do it on their behalf, the corporations charge more and deliver less:
My turn: Public-private partnerships are an industry gimmick that don’t serve public well
Don't waste public tax money. Caltrans public employees can do road projects more efficiently than private contractors without as many cost overruns.
CalMatters (calmatters.org)
As Lynch writes, DOGE's purpose was to dismantle as much of the government as possible and shift its duties to Beltway Bandits who could milk Uncle Sucker for every dime.
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Mamdani's ambition, meanwhile, is to "restore faith in government [and] demonstrate that the public sector can match or even surpass the private sector in excellence."
As Mamdani said in his inauguration speech, "For too long, we have turned to the private sector for greatness, while accepting mediocrity from those who serve the public."
Turning governments into businesses has been an unmitigated failure.
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Mamdani's ambition, meanwhile, is to "restore faith in government [and] demonstrate that the public sector can match or even surpass the private sector in excellence."
As Mamdani said in his inauguration speech, "For too long, we have turned to the private sector for greatness, while accepting mediocrity from those who serve the public."
Turning governments into businesses has been an unmitigated failure.
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After decades of outsourcing, the government hasn't managed to shrink its payroll, but government workers are today primarily employed in wheedling private contractors to fulfill their promises, even as public spending has quintupled:
Is government too big? Reflections on the size and composition of today’s federal government | Brookings
Elaine Kamarck analyzes government failures and propose reforms to boost federal performance, accountability, and trust.
Brookings (www.brookings.edu)
Instead of having a government employee do a government job, that govvie oversees a private contractor who costs twice as much...and sucks at their job:
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