Trump, Sanders and the ruling class.
The term “ruling class” is of fairly recent coinage. It is a pejorative used to describe a cohort of people at the top of government and key institutions in the United States. The ruling class has members from both parties. It includes the likes of the Bushes and the Clintons. Nancy Pelosi is a member, as is Mitch McConnell. It includes Ivy League college presidents and Fortune 500 CEOs.
The ruling class is attended by a covey of well-tailored, well-coiffed and well-manicured courtiers from the elite media. The relationship between the ruling class and the media is a symbiotic one. Each depends on the other in order to thrive.
Members of the ruling class inherited an unimaginably wealthy superpower nation that was capable of accomplishing anything to which it directed its resources and energies. The parents of today’s ruling class defeated the tyranny of Hitler in Europe and the tyranny of the Japanese Imperial Government in the Pacific. Having saved the world, they came home and built the Interstate Highway System, put men on the moon and left to their children well-functioning industries, hospitals, universities, public schools and local governments.
Members of today’s elite media inherited platinum-plated brand names like CBS, NBC, ABC and the New York Times – all of which enjoyed high levels of trust by the American people.
In a single generation, the ruling class and the elite media have each managed to squander their inheritances.
The ruling class turned government into a lucrative industry. They greatly expanded the federal government and then created the mechanisms by which that government could be manipulated for private gain.
While few were noticing, they created an economic model under which profits are privatized while the risks attendant to generating those profits are socialized. From this insidious bargain we got the housing crisis and the resulting deep recession of 2008.
The ruling class collaborated to outsource massive portions of the U.S. economy to China – where slave-wage labor fattens profits on manufactured goods at the expense of the American middle class. As a result, we find ourselves on the cusp of a pandemic only to learn that most surgical masks, hospital gloves and antibiotics are now made in China.
Concurrent with the export of manufacturing the ruling class was busy importing cheap household help and service industry labor from Mexico.
For its part, the elite media abandoned even the pretense of objectivity in order to shield the ruling class from unfavorable scrutiny. That tacit arrangement ensured that all involved did very well financially. Some of the best-paid people in the country work in Washington D.C. or within the 20 square block chunk of Midtown Manhattan that is home to most of the national media.
All of this helps explain the rise in 2016 of two political figures who have next to nothing in common save for an innate understanding that millions of citizens have finally realized that they’ve been getting screwed.
One of those figures is Donald Trump. The other is Bernie Sanders.
Another good one Paul. I will spread this to my liberal friends throughout the country. Keep up the good work sir.
Don’t fret surgical masks and pandemic.
Rush Limbaugh MD assures us that Coronavirus is tantamount to “the common cold.” All the fuss is a ploy by “the Democrat Party” to embarrass the president.
Hi Paul, yes, another good one and right on the mark. I’m so busy right now with my business that I have little time to comment, but be assured you have in me a most faithful reader.
Yes Paul, Trump and Sanders are both non-members of the ruling class fraternity, but that is about all they share. Trump is doing everything he can to improve the quality of life for Americans, not the rest of the world. Even though the ruling class has been enriched by outsourcing the production of critical products like antibiotics and surgical masks; thanks to Trump, we are now energy independent. Meanwhile, Sanders is trying to wreck our economy by promising unrealistic free stuff in exchange for votes. Sanders hates this country and our economic system, and the first step to replace it requires a wrecking ball to completely destroy the foundation. Once the country is bankrupt and the citizens are desperate (ala Venezuela, Nicaragua, etc, etc), Sanders and his favored lieutenants will live like kings and will determine what benevolence their subjects will receive. Many of the current ruling class will be able to escape to other countries, but most of us will be trapped in a miserable existence, with no retirement funds. The dirty little secret of Sanders’ plan to pay for some of his promises, other than confiscatory taxes, is the pension fund accounts. The theft of these retirement funds will be a simple caper for any self-respecting Socialist/Communist!
One additional comment to refute my earlier post: I need to give Sanders a little more credit for what he may be able to accomplish with his vision of Socialism for our country. Trump has been struggling with building a wall to protect our southern border, and has met with strong opposition from every corner of the Democrat establishment, including Sanders, an Independent. Within a short tenure of a Sanders administration, the wall will be expeditiously and completely constructed, razor wire and all. This necessary project will not be to prevent illegal immigration into our country, but to keep our citizens from sneaking across the border into Mexico. I am old enough to remember the U.S.S.R. iron curtain; it was very effective in discouraging any attempts to flee the same political system about which Sanders fantasizes. By the way, isn’t it comforting to know that those who have been able to get through the southern border undetected have no communicable diseases, such as Coronavirus, or worse? As long as they get here, the Democrats do not seem to worry about what their future voters will bring with them!
#AndMexicoWillPayForIt