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They Really Don't Care, Do They? Trump and the billionaires don't even live on the
same planet as the rest of us.
I try to stay focused on the present
and what we can do today to ensure that we fix the mess we are in as a
country at the moment. But I will admit, every so often my
mind wanders to the past. For example, remember earlier this
year when Joe Biden was president? Yes, that’s right. It was earlier this
year and not some sepia-toned memory from grandpa and grandma times. But I also remember specific
incidents. One has stuck with me all morning. I tried to remove it with a
torrent of TCM movies and a chaser of TikTok, but it didn’t work. I don’t know why it is so resonant
for me. Or so obstinately stuck in my brain box. It took place in the before times.
Back when we had survived one bout of Trump but were recovering as a nation
and our hearts were full of hope about the future. Sigh. Anyway, my wife and I were at a gala
for a ballet company. I know that sounds like just the kind of thing that
East Coast liberals do all the time, but to be honest, despite my love of
ballet, it was the only time I was ever at a gala for a ballet company. (If
you were there too, stop reading at this point because it may become
offensive to you depending on who you are and your level of sympathy for
assholes.) (I think I would like to invent some
kind of AI equivalent of paywalls that block people from reading further
based on their likely reaction to what follows. To protect them, of course.) In any event, everyone was
beautifully dressed and looked very glamorous. Except for me. I was
maintaining my resistance to wearing black tie to black tie events because,
well, what was all the social progress of the past fifty years for if not to
let me not wear black tie. I’ll admit, my resistance may not have been
entirely political. It may also have had something to do with those being my
pre-Zepbound days and my tux pants not fitting. But I prefer to think it had
more to do with my role as a champion of social progress than my vanity. Anyway, my wife looked glamorous in
a spectacular gown. (As an opera singer she has many gowns.) All the donors
and would be donors and guests of donors were also glammed to the max. And
the ballet company also was there out-glamming everyone. It was in a glitzy New York setting,
one of those places that hosts a gala every night at events where the rich
pay to soothe their consciences or for proximity with creative people or
activists or just to be near other rich people. Trust me, although we were among the
rich, we were not of the rich. We were the guests of a friend of
Carla’s. (At this point, I think I had better stop identifying people or
offering too many more details lest they get me in trouble and I never get
invited back any such events again. Which would be a pity. Because the tux
pants fit now. Actually, they are too big. Which is something that frankly,
I’d like as many people to see as possible.) Thank you, Eli Lilly. Anyway, the meal began benignly
enough. There was polite conversation. Flattery flowed like wine and the wine
flowed like the flattery. About thirty minutes after everyone
sat down for dinner and while the conversation was humming, we were joined at
our table by a guy who plunked himself down while still in mid-cell phone
conversation, ignoring the rest of us. From the call, he made it very clear
that he was in the midst of a big deal. (I’m always tempted to narc on these
guys who are spilling sensitive details, using too many companies’ and
people’s names and inviting insider trading scandals…especially when they’re
doing it just to let us know how important they and the investment bank they
work for are. But I restrained myself.) Once the call was done, he plonks
the phone on the table starts shoveling the salad into his mouth and says,
while spewing arugula and pine nuts, “So, what’re we talking about?” The small talk around the table
stopped and his wife informed him that we were having a nice conversation
about pretty much nothing. She then introduced us and noted that my wife and
I were from Washington, DC and that I was someone who was a “political commentator.”
That’s not exactly accurate although every once in a while, as you know,
drawing on the sense my Mama instilled in me that everyone was interested in
my opinions, I do, when I can’t contain myself, opine. Anyway, that was enough to set him
off on why he and his buddies were working hard to get Donald Trump
re-elected president. He explained that Trump was the only one who really
understood our economy and that the secret to America’s success was to enable
the successful among us to do their thing because in the end, that was the
way for all the rest of us to ultimately benefit. They were the sled dogs. We
were the baggage. Feed the dogs. I gently pointed out a few problems
with his theory—like the fact that the GOP had actually presided over most of
the economic downturns of modern times and that Democrats basically spent
their time digging out of holes Republicans had put us in. That’s not true, he said
emphatically while demolishing a bread roll. So, calmly, with the warm tones
of a friendly school marm, I enumerated each of the seven notable downturns
of the past half-century and reminded him that only one, at the end of the Carter
Administration, came while a Democrat was president. He then changed the subject, shifted
from ingesting food to guzzling wine, and all too forcefully made the point
that Democrats were addicted to spending. I couldn’t help myself and observed
that the federal deficit had increased under Nixon, Ford, Reagan, George H.W.
Bush, George W. Bush and Trump and that the only times that it had decreased
in modern memory were under Carter, Clinton, Obama and Biden. The conversation went on like this.
He grew more insistent in his arguments. (He was after all, a moneybro and I
was just an opinion-flogging middle-aged Jewish guy from New Jersey.) But GDP growth, he said insistently!
Nope, I replied. GDP grew on average around 4.3 percent under Dems while
under Republicans it grew substantially less fast, only about 2.5 percent. But…jobs! No. Of the 51 million jobs created
since 1990, roughly 50 million were created under Democrats. He was furious. My wife nudged me.
Or maybe she stabbed me with her salad fork. I’m not sure which, but I still
have a mark on my upper thigh. I tried to change the subjects. He
then went on to say that he knew that what Trump intended to do was stand up
to the world in the way Democrats were too feckless and weak and woke and
diverse to do. He explained, as if it would add weight to his argument, that
he was talking with some buddies (undoubtedly over golf…I have a theory that
if we closed all the golf courses in America we would be much better
off…because there would be fewer inappropriately confident conversations
among those who believe their wealth is validation of their wisdom)…anyway,
he was talking with his Republican buddies at some club on the Upper East
Side and they saw a new boom coming in America because Trump was going to
bring back tariffs in a big way and that this was a good way to knock a few
foreign heads together and get people to invest and make things here. I tried to gently bring up
Smoot-Hawley and the colossal failure this strategy had helped trigger and he
then challenged me, asking me where I, column writer and talking head, got
off questioning him, big swinging dick, about this stuff. I pointed out that
on trade I had a little experience, that once upon a time, I was Deputy Under
Secretary of Commerce for Trade Policy and then for almost half a year I was
Acting Under Secretary for International Trade. I also pointed out that most
of the jobs he said would be brought back were actually exported to the past
and not overseas due to tech-driven increases in productivity. (I did not
point out that he probably had made a nice load of cash helping to finance
those “efficiencies.”) Before I could get any more words
out of my mouth, however, my wife explained that we needed to go home and
change the channel so the dog could watch his favorite show. (Which was a
lie. She knew the TV was already tuned to HGTV so he could watch “Love It or
List It” all night as was his wont at the time. He has since moved on to
“House Hunters International.”) We made our excuses and left and if
I’m being honest with you, she was not happy with me during the car ride back
to our hotel. But, hey, I didn’t bring the subject up. I didn’t escalate it.
I didn’t go all New Jersey on the guy. I just served up some facts to go
along with the filet mignon and the something something on the side that was
served with a reduction of something. But now, in retrospect, after a year
of Trump, the thing that sticks with me as I reflect on that moment was just
how transcendently and smugly confident this Ivy-league educated,
much-wealthier-than-me guy was about his views, which were all, entirely, completely,
and subsequently proven again to be totally and inarguably, wrong wrong
wrong. Wrong. He was wrong about everything. That’s clear now, right? I mean we
won’t have to explain this again, will we? The whole myth that Republicans were
better at economics just because rich guys liked them is done, right? That’s all dead and buried along
with sensible trade or fiscal policies, our ability to attract the best minds
to America, dependable rule of law, and (soon) the independence of the Fed,
right? I mean it must be clear by now that
the reason the rich guys like Republicans is that the Republicans were
actually not interested in the overall economy at all, they didn’t care about
outcomes for the country or the people. They just ensured that, over the
course of the past half century, America’s wealthiest got wealthier and
wealthier. They have proven that
they-really-don’t-care-do-they that the cost to the economy, to society, was
damaging in the long run…and that in turn is because they don’t really care
about the long run. The long run is for schmucks. When you have a billion
dollars, or even “just” hundreds or tens of millions, you never have to run
again. People will run for you. Social collapse doesn’t touch you. Job losses
and rising prices don’t matter. Even faltering American competitiveness
doesn’t matter because the super rich and super empowered are global
citizens, able to tap into upside and exploit downside wherever on the planet
they may find it. They can live above the law. Do what
they want. Shatter lives. And toast it all afterwards. The reason they supported Trump was
that they knew he was like them and vice versa. Their metrics of success were
his metrics of success. Their blindspots and lack of concern for the world at
large meshed with his. While Democrats were foolishly hung
up on economic and social and national security policies for America, these
guys were focused on getting through the programs and policies that would
ensure they never had to care about any of those things ever again. And frankly, thinking back on this
guy, they actually may even have liked it a little bit that they would do
well while everyone else was being screwed. One of the appeals, you see, of
being elite, of traveling in the world of galas and limos and dancers
performing just for you is that it is all just for you…no crowds…no lines…no
wait…no anxiety…no worrying about the rent…no glum talk. No bothersome facts.
No ugly realities. And if you’re lucky, no obnoxious
former economic officials to point out just how wrong they are about well,
pretty much all of it. (I’m pretty sure that’s where he came out on all this
because we were never invited back again.) Needless to say, the rich guy was
right about the election results in 2024 and the earnest ink-stained wretch
and sometime Dem activist and wonk was, as it turned out, wrong. But I was right about what would
happen if Trump were elected. To which, I can hear this guy saying
through a fine spray of micro greens, who cares? Because he is getting what he
wanted. And then some. Forty years of GOP and Centrist Dem engineered gains
in inequality in this country have been kicked into high gear. Taxes are
lower. Regulations are being expunged. Regulatory agencies are being shuttered.
Anti-fraud and corruption lawyers are being assigned to help round up Latino
nurses and school teachers in Chicago. Corruption at the highest levels of
our society is in bloom as never before. The power centers of the entire U.S.
government and political system—from White House to Congress to Supreme Court
to the donor class who pick so many of our maintstream candidates for high
office—are all working to serve the interest of a smaller and smaller subset
of America’s elite while the rest of us are left inhabiting the world they
are rapidly trying to exist and dealing with the consequences of their
rampant, pathological greed. That said, one other thing strikes
me: Just as they are raping the system as never before, the consequences of
their action are more visible than ever, more painful to millions. The patter
of their con artist front man in the White House is being revealed daily to
more and more people as bullshit. Trump can say affordability is a hoax but
if your healthcare bill is tripling, energy costs are rising by double
digits, food is more expensive and there is no relief in sight…while Trump
paints the White House gold and builds a ballroom for billionaires that will
dwarf with gut-wrenching metaphorical accuracy “the People’s House”…then the
message is clear. The modern GOP has betrayed its
voters, betrayed the country and is just now playing a cynical game of
stealing the valuables out of a house it has set alight. Fortunately, that kind of pain can
motivate the masses as it has in the past when the era of trust-busting
followed the last Gilded Age or when the nation pulled itself up by its own
bootstraps in the wake of the Great Depression. Around every dinner table in this
country…far from the galas and the White House ballroom…there will be
Americans who can speak from experience when they debunk the lies of MAGA and
Trump, of “trickle down” and “rising tides lift all boats.” Lessons are being taught in real
time. Lived experiences are communicated more forcefully than recounted
historical facts. The politicians may not get it. The
rich guys who write the checks for them may not get it. But the abuses are
now so egregious, the failures touch so many tens of millions among us, the
contempt for those on top for all the rest of us is so clear, that I truly do
believe the tide will turn politically for America over the next months and
years. 2026 will be an important watershed as Democrats regain control of one
or both houses. 2028 will be the year the lies of MAGA are buried with their
leader, the most promiscuously dishonest leader in American history. I don’t necessarily trust our
political class and their hired gangs of communicators to get this message
through nor do I trust the American media, much of it now largely
compromised, to tell the story as they should. But they won’t have to. Because we can see the truth with
our own eyes. And as in the past, that kind of
reality can finally silence the arrogance and smugness of those who think
they have outsmarted us all, who think they have gamed not just financial
markets but the country and the world. We know the difference between the
myths on which they have depended and the reality we wake up to every
morning. I only wish that after our
collective voices are heard, I could once again sit opposite my dinner debate
opponent and ask him, gently, of course, what he thought was behind the
political earthquake that came once Americans demanded leaders who put the people
ahead of the billionaires and their buddies. But, I don’t expect it will happen.
Because, as you may have guessed, we’ve never been invited back to join these
people at that or any other fancy dress galas. |
