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Do you remember when the main claim for Donald Trump’s qualification to be president was that he was the very epitome of the successful businessman? The proof, we were told, rested on how wealthy he was. After all, Americans keep score with money. That claim not only proved to be false, or simply phony, but Trump has now reversed the idealization of business.
The first day I was in school, I was told that we were going to learn how to read, and a book was placed in my very hands! The thrill of holding that little book is one of the lasting memories of my life. I hold in my mind the picture on the cover of that book. The central figure was a man in a denim shirt, square-shouldered and square-jawed, with penetrating eyes gazing into a future filled with ever-growing wonders. An airplane flew high overhead, a ship sailed at sea, a train chugged along, and a large factory in the background sent smoke billowing from its smokestack. The man carried some sort of tool slung over his shoulder.
That man, a worker rather than a businessman or owner of a monopoly, represented something of an ideal for the times. He is the way I remember my father, one of the soldiers who returned from the war and built a wooden rocking horse for me, one that children still ride in my living room to this day. These men and women, working with their hands, were seen as the builders of the American dream. You could see that man of the era in the pictures of the president who had started in a shoe store and in the commander of the Allied forces now running for the nation’s highest office. He could also be seen by first graders in the police officer my book assured me would always protect us. He was there, too, in my childhood, in the dog named Spot, and in the carefree world where children like me and my classmates played.
How did we get from those idyllic pictures to Donald Trump? Like the Roman god Janus, we need to look back to understand what has brought us to this day, and forward to what we can yet become. America has not yet extricated itself, but even as we are forced to fight to the last ditch of the political battlefield, we must learn from the past and prepare for real reform. We cannot be content simply to return to what we remember as ordinary, because that, in fact, led to Trumpism. We need to recognize and avoid the forces that contributed to it.
My focus here, among the many mistakes we can and must learn from, is the abusive power of money in politics. Opening the door to this exploitation was a radical change, one that led directly to the catastrophe of Trumpism. As a member of the Board of Common Cause, I was privileged to work with leaders in the early 1980s who saw what was coming with grave and compelling clarity.
Surely it is no longer necessary to offer proof for the assertion that the President of the United States is running a mafia-like organization for personal financial gain and political power. Perhaps a future Justice Department will decide that his conduct warrants prosecution under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). Nor should it be necessary to offer examples of the mafia-like connections and conduct of the most financially successful oligarchs in history, whose fortunes have been built in no small measure on being well connected. Were a RICO case ever brought against Trump, I would argue that those who enabled and profited from this system should stand alongside him as co-defendants.
The story of the rise and spectacular damage done to our political system is told brilliantly in Jane Mayer’s 2016 book, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. A central role in the account was played by the Koch brothers, whose family fortune grew in part through their father’s oil refineries in Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany. One of the brothers, Fred Koch, was a founding member of the John Birch Society and believed Dwight Eisenhower was a communist. Many of America’s wealthiest families, holding extreme libertarian views, came together to reclaim a culture they believed had been ruined by the New Deal. They met regularly, organized their strategy together, and formed something akin to a mafia-like network, conducting operations with a remarkable degree of secrecy.
The political operatives and their network of employees were disciplined, intelligent, and, at times, ruthless. Private detectives were used to cast doubt on any and all opposition, including government officials, journalists, and whistleblowers. They funded organizations that could work in tandem to influence and even control Congress, courts, state legislatures, think tanks, and academic institutions. Ultimately, they were able to exercise unbridled influence over President Trump.
Why have the last two generations witnessed an era of profound economic inequality? Why has the increasingly urgent need to address climate change, even the most modest environmental efforts, been defeated at every turn? Why have unions and all forms of protection for employees been weakened, while their effective take-home pay has been reduced year after year? Why is the middle class being diminished so dramatically while hedge-fund billionaires prosper beyond their wildest dreams?
The answers to these questions lie in a decades-long effort by some of America’s wealthiest families to convert economic power into political power. Through a carefully planned network of organizations and institutions, they worked step by step to fundamentally reshape American government and culture. The Tea Party and the Citizens United decision were the culmination of that effort. Each was conceived and advanced through what I term the Organization of the Koch Brothers.
In Trump’s second term, the concentration of personal wealth among the “haves” and “have-mores” has absolutely soared. It should be noted that this represents far more than a mere increase in income. The political organization of the wealthy, having achieved much of its intended purpose, gave way to a new phase of oligarchic power, embodied by what has increasingly come to be recognized as the American oligarchy: a class of the extremely wealthy.
The oligarchic team that swung into action on behalf of the new regime rapidly became part of the regime itself. I like the term Paul Krugman has used to describe them: “the tech bros.” Centered in Silicon Valley, they have proved to be even more dangerous and broadly disliked than the traditional oligarchs who preceded them. They are takers with no inclination to give back, even to charitable causes.
Tellingly, unlike the robber barons of the Gilded Age, many modern oligarchs show little sense of gratitude for their good fortune. The robber barons, whatever their faults and excesses, often felt some obligation to return a portion of their fortunes to society through philanthropy and institution-building. By contrast, many of today’s oligarchs show little inclination to devote a significant portion of their wealth to the public good and little sense of responsibility toward society or empathy for their fellow human beings.
In fact, Elon Musk has argued that empathy has become a weakness of Western civilization, describing it as an obstacle to the kind of government transformation he seeks. Peter Thiel often confuses religious yearnings with personal ambition, wealth, and power. Mark Zuckerberg has failed to adequately address concerns about the protection of youth and vulnerable people regarding the use of his technology platform and the wealth it has generated. And Jeff Bezos, the architect of a new form of shopping by command while also pursuing private space ventures, can only be judged slightly better, if at all.
One very significant problem is that the tech bros are all connected at the hip, operating as though they were part of a common enterprise. The greater concern, however, is the harm and havoc their vast political power within the Trump administration has already wrought, along with the fear of how much more damage it may inflict on our future. They will be able to pour vast sums of money into the upcoming midterm elections. The question of how ruinous this influence will be now looms before us. We can only hope that resentment against the abuses will produce the long-postponed popular uprising.
The great political question going forward is whether there will be a significant backlash against the obscene concentration of wealth and power held by a tiny fraction of the electorate, whose behavior and personal excesses may ultimately backfire.
Send in the clowns! Maybe next year, beginning with the midterm elections, the audience will finally have its say.