There’s a profound lack of explanation for where we are, how we got here, and why so many truly odious people have been able to take charge of our broken system and become so important in our lives. All we seem able to do is shake our heads and hold to the slim reed that someone will emerge to save the day. But before we truly fix the mess, we might need to explain how we got into it. So I’m going to start recommending books that I believe do that. First up is City on the Edge by Jonathan Weber. That city is San Francisco, the epicenter of technology and some of this generation’s leading Democrats. Weber’s is the story of how, in thirty years, the tech industry, as a function of its own avarice, drive for power, messianic mission, and the peculiar people in it, takes over the nation, propelling its political partners with it. Looking past Donald Trump—whose second term has been very much driven by tech money and power—we can clearly see the next crisis of democracy on the horizon: a system overwhelmed by the interests of this industry and the power structure it has created.
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