Back in pre-historic times (1999), the file sharing platform Napster rose to prominence. Napster allowed people to freely share their music collections on the Internet, bypassing the music industry, and bypassing payment to the music industry as well. It was a magical time for music fans, but not so great at all for the music industry. After fighting it in court, the RIAA won, and the glory days of Napster were over. For music fans, Napster became just a fond memory of the Internet back in it's "Wild West" days.
Now, Donald Trump is about to assume the Presidency. He is filling his cabinet with the sort of people you'd expect him to, if his goal was to create a kleptocracy of the United States. A home school Evangelical in charge of the Department of Education. An oil executive as Secretary of State. A former Texas governor as head of the Department of Energy. A fast food tycoon to head the Department of Labor. This doesn't even take into account Trump's own myriad of commercial conflicts of interest the world over, and the double duty his family will involve themselves in with both government responsibilities and tending to the family businesses. Trump is actually putting the foxes in charge of the hen house.
This era will be magical for the corporate interests and all that stand to gain from their control of government policy. The looting of America's middle class will continue unabated. Medicare and Social Security are soon to be up for grabs and the private sector will be salivating over that. It's a return to the wild west days of the robber barons and it will all be blessed by the voters, particularly in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
Napster was brought down in a couple of years. Will Trumpism face the same fate, come the elections of 2018 and 2020? I'm not going to hold my breath.
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