You had me at hello. Love the first paragraph and one the ones that shocked me the most recently. I had not thought of this idea before nor knew it’s history. Sometimes I feel grateful to have had such a myopic history teaching in middle school that focus on date memorizing of famous and ‘glorious’ battles, as now I seem to constantly learn and to reflect of what happened, who it happened to and what it all means. One of the essential ideas I got out of this piece is that the sense of division among “the left” into which subgroups are repressing others, how they are all different and can’t be unified into one groups like gay or woman, etc. I can appreciate the quest for identity and promote it. But their division is obvious when contrasted against a concentrated angry Trump-wing that is focused on unified white identity, creating political consolidation. As a result, that concentrated power has makes the centrists Dems and GOPs appear more reasonable, and thus tax deductions more acceptable. Those deductions we know with certainty now do not result in the trickle down economics that Reagan labeled it as, but the policy continued without that label. The underlying rhetoric is the same today though: if we tax the rich, they won’t create more jobs. It sounds more like threat than a policy. The promotion of social justice separated from economic justice has enabled the rich and super rich to pretend to take up the mantle of social justice to feel good about their greed, like Elon Musk or Bill Gates, to sooth their public image. But they are not poverty warriors or egalitarian seekers. We are blinded to their glow of fake stardom and fake celebrity, and don’t see their real face. Bill Gates for example “earned” more than $70 Billion since he retired, which is more than he earned when he was working. That is about equivalent to 400 years of a forty hour work week for me. We have social warrior politicians but no more seasoned policy warriors in Washington. The last one I recall was Daniel Moynihan, the New York Senator I grew up under and who my late father noted at least talked about the poor. A few new ones like AOC is constantly branded a “socialist” in an effort to silence her. Your conclusion seems along these lines, that of the furthering divide, and gives me the insight that social justice doesn’t cost the government anything in terms of money, and let’s the rich off the hook for having to think about or do anything about the poor. Robert Dinero and other rich liberal luminaries can go on a tuxedo fancy award show and tell Donald Trump to “Effe You”, without having to say “screw the Rich,” which only points the finger back at him or her or themselves. We can can feel good about Sam Jackson as a social warrior and forget that he is a Hollywood billionaire, literally. Great discussion and will make me continue to reflect and lead me to new and different ideas (“an open mind only opens further when seeking knowledge”). Thank you.
