The political system in the U.S. is currently an unfair, unequal, and unkind system keeping the rich, rich and the poor, poor. It is time to see this and demand change.
Obscene fortunes spread pandemic infections, conspicuously
here via toxic “money as speech” across primary campaigns, thus
election choices. Echoing the Calvinist fantasy about the favored elect,
if today’s billionaires didn’t anoint great wealth as self-justifying,
how could they defend their presumption to govern? Even without
Calvinism, global tycoons assume election to special status, nothing
less than “justification by wealth alone.” So much for acknowledging
transparent “outside levers” like employee sweat equity, community
infrastructure, technological wizardry, or fossil fuel-driven commerce,
let alone WS pump-priming, cheap money, dismal regulations, and
regressive taxation? Even the vagaries of good luck cut through “wealth
by hard work and genius alone” patter.
To support this faux religion (and real cash), the top
rung now purchase incredibly cheap insurance, even when combining costs
for lobbyists and campaigns. In fact, the fabulous totals billionaires
spend on influence-peddling fall short of ordinary sales taxes. If the
infamous Sheldon Adelson tripled his estimated $100 million,
election-year payola, that would still not equal 1% of his $32 billions.
Were the craven Koch Bros. to multiply their palm-greasing, they’d
still fall short of 5% of total fortunes. What mischief accrues from the
other 95%? “Citizens United” divided the country but unified
plutocratic kingpins, legalizing this “venture capital” to secure what’s
“ours stays ours.” Thus, bad wealth distribution corrupts politics,
ravages the landscape and assaults majority rule, reinforced by bad
morality (the void that is “compassionate conservatism”) and bad
religion (wealth is salvation). A trifecta of triumphalism.
Money Equals Wisdom, Too
Thus do robber barons inevitably reprise, if not modernize
the divine right of kings, even if our plutocrats can’t directly lop
off heads with impunity. You’d think in our advanced modern times the
defenses for entitlement would have improved. But what bright sixth
grader can’t demolish distortions of “wealth for wealth’s sake,” namely:
- Great wealth (and investment) are job-creators that lift all boats, with prosperity for all.
- Climate change, that ornery hoax, has zero linkage to burning forests or fossil fuels, drilling and fracking, mining and development, or farm and industrial pollution.
- Only talent, brilliance, and hard work justify why the 1% deserve all the treasures they amass.
And let’s not ignore the political offshoot: amassing a
fortune magically elevates your public character and judgment above mere
mortals (or fair elections). Money equals more than speech now but
grants to tycoons the wisdom of ages, the conviction they know how to
run everything. That’s also why “conflicts of interests” only apply to
the infidels who dare interfere with the sacred free market. Thus
government, when run not by plutocratic agents, steals from the rich
only to give to the undeserving poor. Charles Dickens or George Bernard
Shaw, where are you?
The Great Awakening?
All coherent, sustainable cultures, whether tribes or
communities, gangs or families, temper the innate selfishness that
jeopardizes the “general welfare.” When appetites run rampant, injustice
and disorder loom. Even the infamous “law” of the jungle (might make
right) co-exists with retaliation against heinous infractions. Thus the
guillotine, thus deposing of barbaric tyrants, even revolution.
Will we ever reverse current inequality without disowning
blatant commandments spouting growth for growth’s sake and thus wealth
for wealth’s sake. One need not live like an indentured slave to insist
no one family over time passes on more than, say, fifty or one hundred
million dollars. If that much. The war cry against “too big too fail”
parallels “too fat a wallet to inherit.” If that means indicting the
love of money (plus how size, scale and leverage matter today), we will
hardly be the first to inspire the pitchforks of equality against
excesses of plutocracy.
In Northwest Coast native populations, regular
“potlatches” (initiated by higher ups) reinforced community health by
redistributing goods so no one starved, nor disrespected chiefs. In a
sensible culture, when one group amasses disruptive wealth, there must
be the rebalancing of communal redistribution. The wealthy now afford
huge fortresses of all sorts, social, physical legal, and ideological
(along with police power). Until we stigmatize wealth for wealth’s sake
as a belief system anathema to America’s highest good, thick ruling
class barricades will hold firm.
Here’s a Bold Idea: Tax the Rich
Fundamentalist blowhards like Mike Huckabee yammer on about “taking back this nation for Christ.” Fair enough if Christians honor Jesus. For the secular, let’s indict corrupt moneylenders, along with Paul Krugman, as “Wall Street Vampires.” Or
address demolished democracy with FDR’s Four Freedoms. Pick your
pitchfork. It ain’t rocket science. When enough folks on the right and
the middle join the left to declare war on bloated plutocracy, that
critical mass will disrupt the status quo. Compared to getting support
for another Middle-East quagmire, organizing a mass confrontation
against conspicuous consumption should be less daunting. Cross-cultural
integration was the key, across income, religious, ethnic and regional
lines, that powered America’s early populism and spawned the redemptive
20th Century.
Progressive Era.
When since the Pilgrims has the great Yankee battleground
not set the gospel of rampant exploitation vs. humanistic and spiritual
visions, signaled most dramatically by steady advances against racial,
ethnic and sexual bigotry. In an era full of darkness, any prospect for
reform depends on recalling our own progressive beacon, captured by Sam
Pizzigati’s masterpiece, “The Rich Don’t Always Win.”
When do good Americans (even the religious) realize Mammon
is eating their spiritual lunch, if not America’s legacy? Will the
gospel of wealth continue to snooker too many people far too much of the
time? The greatest positive today is the awesome clarity of inequality:
not since the age of Robber Barons has the tension between abusive
wealth and common good been more visibly dramatic. And that first
demands shifting a monumentally false, national wealth narrative, then
finding the political and legal leverage to put the breaks on a run-away
train.
ermont
Sen. Bernie Sanders kicked off his long shot presidential campaign
Tuesday with a pitch to progressives in the Democratic Party and others
who want change from a “rigged economy” that favors the rich.
hristianity's demographic death grip on the United States continues to loosen its hold, new polling data from 
