putting it into words…

It’s nearly impossible to put into words what is happening right now in America. The richest 400 people in the USA (1/100th of the 1%) have as much wealth as the bottom 60% of America combined.

When you combine this wealth with the remaining wealth of the 1% (the other 99.99% of the 1%) – the 3.4 million Americans who have at least $5.8 million each in assets – this 1% out of the 340,000,000 Americans in total, you discover that they control 85% of the wealth.

What we also know is that the 400 wealthiest Americans paid 23% in taxes last year on their wealth. The bottom 50% of Americans paid 24%. When Truman was President the wealthiest 400 would have been in a 90% tax bracket. That was at the height of the post-war university expansion, healthcare expansion, infrastructure expansion.

Beginning in 1980, Ronald Reagan began the dismantling of the ‘regulated’ economic system – reducing taxes on the rich, reducing state spending on the poor and middle class, and exponentially increased spending on its military and domestic police forces.

Every Republican and Democratic President since Reagan has further reduced taxes on the rich, deregulated the banks, reduced spending not only on the poor but on all aspects that make America function, and has continued to increase spending on the military and on its police forces. The United States now spends more money on its military and police than the next 25 countries combined. The US maintains military bases in seventy countries and has troops stationed in virtually every country in the world. In fact, having US troops on your soil is part of US trade agreements.

How else are you expected to maintain your empire?

We have not seen this kind of wealth disparity since before the French Revolution (1789). America’s police forces now resemble paramilitary troops we previously associated with places like Brazil and El Salvador.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzYxJV_rmE8

The brilliance of the hit TV show Succession (2017-2023) was exposing the total disregard the rich have regarding everyone else in America. The White Lotus series also brilliantly exposes the wealthy’s contempt for everyone below their income bracket.

So, What do the wealthy really fear? Guy Sorman, conservative French-American economist who gets to advise political and economic leaders around the globe, laid it all out in an essay:

The Greens [environmentalists] are the priests of a new religion that puts nature above humankind. The ecology movement is not a nice peace-and-love lobby but a revolutionary force. Lime many a modern day religion, its designated evils are ostensibly decried on the basis of scientific knowledge: global warming, species extinction, loss of biodiversity, superweeds. In fact, all these threats are figments of the Green imagination.

He further argues in the essay that wages are too high, there’s too much welfare state action going on, everything is more efficient when privatized, and people don’t understand that capitalism requires “creative destruction” to operate profitably. Sorbon likens the environmental movement to the failed communist movement of the 20th century. Read the essay yourself for the full scope of fascist leanings.

How do we argue with that? Sorman is a widely “respected” as an economist because he tells the rich exactly what they want to hear. Sorman would have fit in perfectly on Succession, as one of the many obsequious advisors Logan Roy surrounded himself with.

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Which brings us to this infamous 1992 bestseller by the Rand Institute’s Francis Fukuyama: The End of History and the Last Man. The Berlin Wall had fallen, Russia’s experiment with communism had failed – liberal democracy had “won” the Cold War – there were no political revolutions left – welcome to the 1,000-year reign of liberal democracy.

When the rich hear stories they like they push them to the front of the bookstore isles.

I never read The End of History at the time for I suspected bullshit all around. But it’s been 30 years and I saw it in a used bookstore for $3 (hardcover, first edition – that should tell you something) and thought what the hell, let’s have a look.

By way of introduction Fukuyama says he will argue that “liberal democracy constitutes the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and is the final form of human government” – while other forms of government are characterised by “grave defects and irrationalities” while liberal democracy is “free from such fundamental internal contradictions.” That’s just the first introductory page.

By the time I got to the end of the Introduction (eleven pages) I realized that I had wasted three bucks.

Fukuyama notes that there are “Masters” in society because they are strong, and there are “slaves” because they are weak. (Yet he calls himself a Hegelian.) Fukuyama says that science and technology will solve any conceivable problem coming our way, and we should joyfully prepare ourselves for an era of “Accumulation Without End” (Chap 8).

He argues that democracy only works when people have an “irrational pride’ in their country and its institutions and a strong work ethic pursued solely for the purpose of being recognised as a good worker (p xix). This leads naturally enough to imperialism and world empire – which is good for it is in the pursuit of global liberal democracy (p xx). Henry Kissinger is such a great political strategist because he is such a “realist.”

Family ties, traditions, and a sense of community are all seen by Fukuyama as irrational forces undermining liberal democracies. People need to be re-trained to understand that the rational needs of the economy and fealty to institutions is what builds strong democracies.

Liberal democracy, now “safe” from external enemies cannot fail in the way communism or socialism failed because the internal truths which hold it together are simply too strong to collapse.

The “left’s” argument that capitalism creates economic inequality and therefore will always lead to the overthrow of democracy fails to recognize that people are now “equal” in opportunity.

The “right’s argument that there are always those who want to rule over others and will therefore pursue “irrational” means to power can also be dismissed because in a strong liberal democracy the people won’t allow for it. To think otherwise is to be just a pessimist.

No, my friends, there is a worldwide liberal democratic revolution happening – we have the stability and the ability to create previously unfathomed material desires where there will be accumulation without end.

While nuclear weapons do pose a real threat, Fukuyama dismisses them because they will not be necessary in a coalition of world democracies.

Fukuyama also equally dismisses the climate crisis as an easily solvable technological problem.

So why worry? We will have everything, and therefore there will be no need for war. We will find tech solutions to the climate crisis which will allow us to continue to have everything.

When you look at old book cover accolades from such esteemed places as the Washington Post, the Cato Institute, and other corporate media outlets calling The End of History “a landmark book of political philosophy” you can’t help but weep at the misdirection going on here.