Greed Is Not Good. It Is a Mortal Sin.

Our Elites Need to Support Democracy

 Miner at Freeze Fork, W. Va., Ben Shahn/FSA, Oct. 1935.

"It is hard to imagine an economy and society that can continue functioning indefinitely with such extreme divergence between social groups." 

- Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014) p. 297.

The central precondition for Trump's rise to power was the gutting of the white working class. We can lay this sin at the feet of the nation's wealthy elites - financial, industrial, agrarian, you name it. And let's not forget Mark Zuckerberg, or Charles Koch. Or the quiet and unobtrusive coupon clippers whose families have been wealthy for generations. I expect that none of them think of themselves as bad people, but this has not prevented many of them from happily participating in the project to pauperize working people (the destruction of unions played a big part here) while further enriching themselves. Tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations, joined with ever smaller slices of America's income for the workers, have been a part of this project since before the time of Ronald Reagan. 

The rage and frustration of the white working class has been a useful tool for Republican politicians, who for decades practiced a bait-and-switch in every election cycle, promising to address workers' grievances, and then after the election reverting to a policy of tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation of banks and other businesses, and seeking to destroy government programs for poor and middle-income Americans. 

In 2016 the Brahmins of the Republican party received a rude shock when their preferred candidates were shouldered aside by Donald Trump, who rapidly became the People's darling. The Brahmins found themselves sidelined by a man who saw no point in maintaining even the superficial niceties of democracy, and they were surprised and shocked. Shame on them. The pot boiled over, and the people who thought they were the cooks didn't see it coming.

A strong supporting role in the project to destroy democracy has been played by the Protestant evangelicals and the Roman Catholic church, or at least the elites who see themselves as being in charge of those organizations. These people were willing to surrender all their precepts about how we should live in this world, in exchange for a ban on abortion. (Will they change? No. For a story, click here.)

Overturning Roe v. Wade is just a first step for these people. Shortly after they deal with abortion, look for them to move forward with a ban on contraception. Will they then push for a de facto ban on women working outside the home? I don't know. But I'm pretty sure daycare will become harder to find and more expensive.

This ecclesiastical lust for secular power will only grow, and we need only look at the history of the Roman Catholic church to discover that an increase in secular power almost always brings with it a concomitant decline in spiritual power. (For an example of clerical overreaching in fourteenth-century France, click here.)

Theocracy is not democracy.

The police in this country are, I'm afraid, in serious need of reform. The self-pitying warrior mentality that stands behind the flag with the thin blue line is a fascist construct. I'm the victim while I'm bashing in your head.  The infamous social media post by the national FOP, below, is only one exhibit among many. (For a story click here.)

Here's one more: a training program for the Kentucky State Police that repeatedly quotes Adolf Hitler with approval. 

It pains me to say these things about the police. I've gotten to know a number of honorable and dedicated cops over the years. But the policing system in this country is broken.

The judiciary are a mixed bag. I think we tend to concentrate on the ones who are happy lackeys to oligarchs, because they are so visible and so powerful, and perhaps because some of them display a certain acerbic flamboyance. But there are still honorable judges who are devoted to the Constitution and the law. We've seen a number of them at work in the litigation over the recent election.

The armed forces are actually a bright spot. People keep wondering why they are so reluctant to speak out, but their reluctance is a sign of their dedication to the Constitution and to our democracy. Unlike in many other countries, the military in the United States are supposed to stay out of politics. With luck, they will be able to maintain that absolutely vital tradition. A democracy in which the military plays an active part in politics is a democracy in peril.

I don't mean to let the politicians off the hook here. Now that the Republican Party has done everything but rename itself the Trump Party, some party officials may be genuinely shocked at what they see when all the shells in their little shell game get turned over at once. Others may be thrilled that they no longer need to dissemble about their deepest beliefs. Either way, they are unworthy of their offices.

And Steve Bannon deserves a paragraph of his own: Shortly after the election, he suggested that Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI director Christopher Wray should be beheaded. A romantic amateur to the end.

(For a recent death threat by a Trump lawyer against Christopher Krebs, former head of the federal cybersecurity agency, click here.)

Lay on top of all this our four-hundred-year history of the enslavement and oppression of black people, and then sprinkle on all the other seeds of destruction that we have sown, not least the oncoming climate disaster, and perhaps you can see why I think we're in a pretty pickle.

See also Unsustainable Income Equality, Bannon and Co. Aren't Very Good at Being Evil, Mr. Piketty's Book, Submerged Narratives, Life on the Farm, How Do We Put This Back Together?