In significant ways popular condemnation of Donald Trump and the corporate titans and billionaires he brought with him to ‘public’ office is cluttered beyond what makes analytical sense. Mr. Trump is the quintessential plutocrat— a self-interested man of inherited means and limited life experience who stumbled upward through political economy engineered to benefit his class. It is this very public nature of his ‘success’ that attaches class culpability to his actions.
If the problem is plutocracy, this is the one that must be addressed. Otherwise, who are these wise and caring plutocrats who are preferred to Mr. Trump? When Hillary Clinton was giving speeches to Wall Street ($21 million in speaking fees in two years), was she speaking to the intelligent, competent and socially ‘woke’ plutocrats who will someday soon save the environment and end U.S. militarism? When Barack Obama was bailing out Wall Street, was he bailing out the good and just plutocrats who really care about the rest of us?
Graph: The economic circumstances of people who have to work— middle-aged breadwinners, has been declining since the onset of the neo-capitalist coup in the mid-1970s. The Clinton ‘boom’ was weak relative to earlier history and the (George W.) Bush and (Barack) Obama booms (a/k/a economic calamities) were weaker still. Bi-partisan political actions have supported the ‘right’ of capitalists to crush labor and that is what they have done. How surprising then…