Oligarch Wine in a New Bro Bottle

Techno-optimism, information power, and the rise of the broligarchs 

By Greg Guma

 The Alienation Index is rising, and reveals deep disenchantment with the power structure. My favorite pollster was explaining statistics I barely understood. The new AI, he explained, had replaced the old Misery Index, which was calculated by adding the unemployment and inflation rates. But as the Marmot Poll made plain, expectations concerning the constructive use of government power were cratering. It had happened before and I wasn’t surprised.

”People are as mad as hell,” he explained, “but they’re also seriously bummed out.”

I admitted to feeling alienated myself. But as a senile US Senator recently said, “people will get used to it.” Perhaps. Yet I wondered, could this matter and mean something?

The answer was quick and brutal. “It means that the people know exactly what’s going on around here,” Jack said. That’s not his name, but what I call him. “They’re seriously pissed about not being able to make a difference anymore, here at home or anywhere else. Sure, they feel guilty about the past, you know the racism, invasions and all that. But they really enjoyed how we used to be the envy of the world, and think this is being purposely eroded. They feel hurt, forgotten, betrayed, and powerless to do anything about it. I call this syndrome RS — Reality Shock.”

Billionaire Row at the Trump Inauguration

”But how? Why? Isn’t Trump starting to get things under control? Bombing Iran, neutralizing enemies, co-opting critics, the deportation round ups, putting alligators back to work. It’s a reptilian renaissance.”

Jack found my attitude vaguely amusing. “People aren’t that dense, despite their voting choices — or their belief in our reptile overlords. They see things being changed, disrupted. And it doesn’t look much like what they were promised. The system is being rearranged, with techno-optimism, redistribution to the top, and the rise of the broligarchy.”

”You’ve lost me. What’s all this?”

My iPhone went silent. Then he whispered, “I can’t talk here. Meet me at the old place.” And hung up.

We rendezvoused in an abandoned mall whose location I won’t reveal, where I briefly felt a slight case of RS myself. There used to be consumers and thriving businesses in this place. But my resignation was followed by paranoid awareness.

Jack started with a wry observation about how, the last time we met here, my big concern was the Trilateral Commission, the old school corporate league that tried to control the world through power sharing by key governments. David Rockefeller was the kingpin then, with the help of OGs like Kissinger and Brzezinski. How naive and short-sighted.

”It’s no longer about oil and resource scarcity. Now it’s all about the algorithms and the whole ROTTEN alliance.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. “What’s ROTTEN?”

”Just an acronym. Rich Oligarchs Tech Titans Egomaniacs and Narcissists, the real global power players today.”

”They call themselves that?”

”They prefer Broligarchs. They don’t agree on everything, but enough. And they have an ideology called techno-optimism. The basic idea is that technological innovation will save humanity and nothing should stand in the way, especially governments or elections. It was laid out in the Techno-Optimist Manifesto. That’s a 5,000 word blog post written by Marc Andreessen. He’s the venture capitalist who co-founded Netscape. Used to be known as a Silicon Valley kingmaker, but financially they’ve moved way beyond him.”

“Ok, I’ll bite. What do they believe?”

”Unfettered free speech, at least for themselves. Artificial Intelligence, contempt for old media, and deep skepticism about diversity quotas, political correctness, and the elite consensus, all that DEI stuff. It meshes well with Trump’s agenda. Techno-optimism is about growth at all costs. Move fast and break things, that’s what they say. Regulations, safety, even sanity just get in the way of innovation. If we don’t watch out, it could replace liberal humanism.”

“Sounds delusional. Who are these guys?”

“Call them crazy, but they are all billionaires. It started about twenty years ago with the PayPal Mafia.”

”Now you’re just making things up!”

”Hardly. I’m talking about the co-founders, executives and engineers of PayPal. Elon Musk was one of them, and David Sachs, who became the White House crypto cazar. And Peter Thiel. He’s not one of the richest in the group, but he is a key player. Co-founded PayPal, then Palantir, that big data analysis business that’s begun taking over government systems. He was also the first outside investor in Facebook and jump started J.D. Vances’s career. Plus, he secretly funded the Hulk Hogan lawsuit that took down Gawker. Seriously far Right.

“After PayPal made them rich, they started a ton of other companies, invested in each other's projects, sat on each other's boards. If you wanted to make it in Silicon Valley, you needed that Mafia. They were so sure of themselves they once posed for a Fortune photo shoot. Thirteen of them, dressed as mobsters — track suits, leather jackets, shoulder pads, gold chains, cigars, slicked back hair, poker chips and whiskey. Then I noticed, several were from South Africa, born during apartheid. They started out with vast privilege — in an authoritarian regime.”

“Maybe they were just kidding around,” I protested. “I need more, real proof of a conspiracy.”

“You want receipts, Ok. I’ve already mentioned Musk, Sachs, Andreessen, and Thiel. You can add Mark Zuckerberg, the second richest person in the world after Musk. And Jeff Bezos, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Alphabet’s Larry Page, Microsoft’s Ex-CEO Steve Ballmer. They’re numbers 3 through 6 in global wealth. Bill Gates was also part of the gang, but he’s broken away, somewhat. Put them together and you have Tesla, Space X, Facebook, Amazon, Google, Alphabet, Oracle, and Microsoft. The techno-industrial complex.”

”That doesn’t mean they’re working together.”

“They meet often enough. Take the annual Sun Valley Conference, a modern Bohemian Grove. They’re usually all there in Idaho. It’s known as Summer Camp for Billionaires. They also attend private dinners and smaller gatherings, networking, building relationships. Plus all the one-on-one meetings and invitation-only sessions, ‘pods’ for peer-to-peer exchanges. They’re rarely announced.

“And don’t forget the conferences and summits: CES — which calls itself the world’s most powerful tech event, MWC Barcelona — which bills itself the most influential connectivity event, the Web Summit, SXSW, Silicon Valley Leadership Group, or the ones on AI. These are chances for them to network, discuss trends, reach consensus.

“Of course you know, five of the world’s ten wealthiest people were at Trump’s inauguration. Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Page, Thiel, Andreessen, all of them and more were there — France’s Bernard Arnault of LVMH, India’s richest man Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Group, Apple’s Tim Cook, Google’s Sundar Pichai, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew and Uber’s Dara Khosrowshahi.”

“OK, I get it,” I said. “But where is all this going?”

“Depends on who you ask. Some call it techno-fascism, techno-feudalism, cyber populism, or authoritarian technocracy. But those are just words. Basically, their claim is that the internet, social media and all the technological innovations ahead can be tools of freedom. But it’s actually about more wealth and giving them the power to decide how the future looks.

“After World War II, techno-optimism fueled the government’s investment in technologies the broligarchs now control. Since then the dynamic has changed. Now the emphasis is on their close ties with military systems, border security, and mass surveillance. New forms of communication are putting capitalism on cyber-steroids, high tech forms of knowledge extraction and manipulation. The Bros despise any attempts to restrain their vision of progress. Even the restrictions of nationalism, which their agenda could make obsolete. It’s like a new global religion, one that absolves them of moral or civic duty, or any serious consideration of the real social costs.”

Some call this evolutionary humanism. Related to Darwinian evolutionary theory, it says that conflict is essential, inevitable, and pushes us forward. When forces collide, the smartest and fittest should simply press forward, regardless of popular resistance. It’s good that shrewd, brilliant innovators push restrictions aside, they say. It makes us stronger and more prosperous.

Evolution never ends. The argument goes: If we hold back extraordinary people, the result could be degeneration, even extinction. It’s the kind of thinking that unfortunately led to the rise of the Nazis. Yet that isn’t the inevitable result. If combined with an evolution of consciousness, positive values and peaceful means, evolutionary humanism could help us to meet the serious challenges we face. As Friedrich Nietzsche put it, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” Confronting adversity can lead to positive change and resilience, helping us to honestly face future challenges. But not necessarily.

I was exhausted and even more alienated and confused than when our conversation started. The current crisis has made the old conspiracies look quaint, the era when groups like the Council of Foreign Relations or Trilateral Commission thought they could manage or renovate international relations through elite meetings, position papers, and clever policies. The Broligarchs are leading us toward a society in which it will be impossible to disconnect from all-knowing networks. Humanity is in danger of being stripped of its basic autonomy and free will. Yet millions of people are passively accepting this future. I can remember a time, decades ago, when the very idea of using social security numbers as universal identifiers, an early way to create a national data bank, was considered unthinkable. How quaint.

A few weeks after we met, I called Jack again late one night. It was after the announcement that Trump had chosen Palantir, the company Thiel founded, to implement an Executive Order instructing government agencies to share their data and create a master database that can keep track of everyone in the country. They started off with $133 million in government money, but recently had been given another $795 million.

Palantir was talking with the Social Security Administration and IRS about buying its technology, and was already working with the Department of Health and Human Services and other agencies. What began with Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was continuing to gain momentum. His departure made no difference.

“How’s that affecting the Alienation Index? Are people beginning to wake up and do something?”

“They’re concerned about misinformation and deep fakes, but hesitate to express their opinions,” he explained. “Their big fears are criticism, retaliation, and being physically attacked. They’re overwhelmed by the complexity of protecting their privacy. Most people feel they have little control nowadays over how their personal data is collected and used. Sure, they’d like more protection, but they’re afraid of crime and terrorism, and willing to sacrifice more privacy to feel secure.”

”Why don’t journalists write more about this? We don’t hear much about the dangers.”

”According to the polling, it would only increase the Alienation Index. And that means even more Reality Shock.”

Another Me: Living with an Alter Ego

Eugene Michael Scribner was my journalistic Id, a liberated alter ego whose satire, criticisms and transgressive observations on sports, politics, media, drinking and “mass mental derangement” would appear in newspapers for 27 years. 

By Greg Guma

Sometimes I needed to be someone else to express how or what I really felt. Eugene Michael Scribner began as the central character in a science fiction novella about a disillusioned reporter who uncovers a mind control conspiracy. But he soon escaped from the page and became a separate voice. 

His origin story was written in 1971 while I was recovering from depression, and set in a distant future when computers were assembling a history of the time before they took over. Mainly, it was an extended flashback to an earlier “age of tranquility,” a time when television was erasing the line between illusion and reality, and psychedelic drugs were used for social control.

It expressed a frustration with hypocrisy, stupidity, and my own fecklessness, plus foreboding about the growing ability to manipulate human consciousness. I also imagined encounters with a politician who becomes a media-savvy demagogue. Was it a premonition of Trump, whom I knew in Queens as a teenager, or Bernie Sanders, whom I would encounter for the first time less than a year later? Or just a lucky guess.

Anyway, about two years later Eugene took a step into the real world with a “gonzo” journalism feature about being a stoned young bureaucrat attending a conference on aging. A new journalism experiment published in The Vermont Freeman, an alternative paper, it was inspired by Hunter Thompson’s Rolling Stone stories, and presented opinions and insights I couldn’t comfortably express on the job. 

        EMS, as I called him, was my journalistic Id, a liberated alter ego whose satire, criticisms and transgressive observations on sports, politics, media, drinking and “mass mental derangement” would appear in newspapers for the next 27 years.* Only a very few people, mostly editors, knew I was doing it.

In 1999, his last print byline was on a cover story for The Vermont Times, thanks to its editor, Shay Totten. “Presidential Death Match 2000” was a media analysis of the campaign, complete with fake movie descriptions based on various candidates: Al Gore as a struggling cyborg in “Millenium Man,” Wesley Clark in “Full Mental Jacket,” and Jesse Ventura, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Donald Trump, and Ross Perot as a team of oddball independents in “Mission Improbable.” 

It also synopsized an imaginary feature film called Momentum. In this “future blockbuster,” a Trump-like Michael Douglas villain tries to steal the election from Kevin Costner, a senator and former basketball player. Schwarzenegger, here a wrestler-turned-talk-show-host and third party insurgent, saves the day by preventing Costner’s assassination at the convention and impaling Douglas on a replica of the Statue of Liberty. The point was that politics and entertainment were merging, and it might be less dangerous to fund dystopian movie fantasies than continue spending so much advertising money to manipulate reality.

In summer 1978, Eugene burst into the Vanguard Press, initially as a field correspondent for coverage of stock car racing. In a background memo, inserted into the piece, he began with an insult:

“Guma, you party hack, what do you know about racing? I’ve seen you total too many rusted hulks to believe anything you say about stock. This ain’t sizzler racing, pistonhead… Anyway, here are the notes you wanted (and I better be paid this time). 

“First, remember that stock car racing started in the south in the 1940s as a redneck’s way of knowledge; you didn’t need strength, just speed and guts. The south was just about the hottest car buying area in the country then, and it didn’t take long for Detroit to figure it out (and exploit it). Pontiac stepped into stock in ‘55 and soon the Speed Image took over.

     “I hardly have to say that it’s a man’s man’s world to the core. Talking about sexism at the track is like spitting into a hot exhaust.” 

And so on.

EMS was a darker, more uninhibited me, a jaded tough talker who supposedly didn’t care what anyone thought. He was cynical about politics, intrigued by cultural dynamics, and willing to reveal himself in ways I wasn’t. In one of the countless “special” sections we published to attract ads from various business sectors — fashion, cars, kids, and so on, I decided to have him cover as many bars as possible. We called the feature “Sex and Drugs and Disco: Confessions of a Barfly.”

“If news assignments could kill,” it began, “I wouldn’t be sitting up, drunk and stoned, trying to explain why some bars make it and others fade away. But I’m not dead yet, despite an eight-day binge which began at Rasputin’s, a college ‘meating place’ renowned for its long lines, and continued in Winooski and Montpelier. 

“I’m just wasted and still unable to answer the basic question. What are cult bars and who goes to them?”

In a back to school special called ”Into the ‘80s,” I gave Eugene free reign in a long feature about the possible return of the military draft. The subhead telegraphed its viewpoint: “Is this any way to start a decade?”

Eugene’s voice was more blunt and funny than mine at the time; as editor, I often went for gravitas, especially in weekly editorials. EMS embellished versions of my own experiences with a casual, irreverent style.

“I’m not worried for myself,” he confessed, “I long ago went through my own paranoia over being ‘called’ by Uncle Sam. He wasn’t a cliche then, just a bad joke. My initial solution, since I was already in Vermont, was to slip quietly across the border into Canada. Over 50,000 young men took similar routes during the Vietnam era.” 

Later, he revealed how his father had pulled strings to get him a medical deferment, and what he saw during his pre-induction physical. It began with a bus ride “to a place with high fences a lot of guns. There they were put in a classroom and told they were no longer in the United States.” Then he explained what he thought about the history of conscription, proposed “national service” legislation, and War Hawk politicians who wanted “a bigger military, cruise missiles, a freer CIA, and a lot more nuclear bombs in Europe.” 

A righteous, well-documented screed, it concluded with this:

“If you’ve been arrested or are in some way morally or medically impaired, you may not have to worry. But you might want to anyway. You might not want to see your privacy invaded, your occupation selected, and your ‘sacrifice’ for your country determined by the Hawks. After the decade of ME, you might be thawing out from psychic numbness and want to confront the war machine. 

“In the past, we’ve fueled the American Dream with ourselves. Maybe that dream is over. If nothing else, it would be a better way to begin a decade.”

Public Occurrence, 1975
EMS does an interview.

        Despite the extreme opinions, there was little reaction. This suggested that it was possible to say almost anything about national politics. But when the insults were directed closer to home, the reaction could be immediate and threatening. That’s why the Vanguard stopped running restaurant reviews; negative reviews were a headache for the struggling ad department.

        Then Eugene went too far with a story that took aim at multiple targets, including the merchandising of sports, the state’s push for “four season” tourism, and even the town of Stowe. I think it was the last one that really upset the local powers-that-be. 

Top Notch, a popular ski resort, was hosting a high profile tennis tournament for the second year in 1979, and despite enjoying the sport myself as both participant and observer, everything else about the event bothered me. Especially all the related branding and advertising — for beers, cars, wines, tennis gear, jewelry, sneakers, and its prime sponsor English Leather. I headlined the story “The Selling of a Tournament.”

“Stowe is not just a place — it’s a product,” it began. “And this week the product has been marketing its newest line of summer fun.” The goal was satire, but I underestimated how personally residents might take it when I called Stowe “basically a collection of luxury homes and resorts,” a community that didn’t “just have a name — it has a logo.” Specially produced signs were on display all over town. To hammer the point home, I quoted a telling remark overheard in a local bar: “We’ve all got to sell Stowe.”

Since I followed tennis, it was a decent report on several matches, and especially the rivalry between top seeds Jimmy Connors and Tim Gullikson. But my actual targets were the commercialization of sports, tourism’s negative impacts on Vermont, and the owner of the resort.

“As the lady said, we’ve all got to sell Stowe,” wrote Eugene. “And the synthesis of men’s cologne, Jimmy Connors, and a leisure world community in which there is plenty of farmland but few farmers or cows, is a gimmick of tourism whose time has definitely arrived. 

“For that reason, I’m not going to talk about Art Kreizel’s failure to install a permanent service building with showers and toilets for the players, or to obtain approval for a waterline. And I’m not going to dwell on the Top Notch owner’s angry response to Health Department criticisms or the relaxing of environmental regulations by the District 5 Environmental Commission. That kind of muckraking would be in a bad taste.

“Instead I’m just going to mention that the Sweet-Smelling Top Notch Without Snow Jimmy Connors $75,000 Purse is a harbinger of things to come. And the main thing is the selling of year-round fun in the mountains.

“Advantage tourism, farmlands love.”

Within days, The Stowe Reporter issued a scathing editorial, going after the Vanguard and its imaginary reporter.  The Chamber of Commerce took it even further, banning our publication from local distribution. 

It came as a shock, but was also somewhat satisfying to see the strong reaction. The publishers were understandably upset. It was only one town, however, and ski resorts were not yet significant advertisers. Even bad publicity was exposure, as well as a sign that the Vanguard Press was making a mark.

* For a more recent online Scribner article, check out Millennium II: Launch and Casting the President