Billionaire Lives Matter

America is Being Made Great Again, Folks, What's Not to Love?

I’m writing this almost precisely one week before Donald Trump is sworn in as our 47th president. He brings to the job four years of experience, another four years of actively campaigning to return, the collective views of supporters who have prepared a detailed plan to make America great again, the support of some of the world’s most successful business leaders, and a vision that will settle for nothing less than America being restored to the heights of its power founded in the real roots of American greatness during the pathbreaking administration of William McKinley.

McKinley like Trump was a man of faith, a true believer in tariffs, an appetite for territorial expansion, and reputation as a man of humility and probity, the courage of a war hero and a lifelong devotion to his wife, even when she was struggling with illness. Admittedly, McKinley’s greatest contribution to American history may have been his choice of Theodore Roosevelt as a his vice president (something he acceded to reluctantly) but we don’t know what J.D. Vance is capable of it is not impossible that at some point in the not-too-distant future will think of Vance of a Rough n’ Ready reformer and inspiration for a line of stuffed JD Bears that our children will cherish.

Washington is already abuzz with excitement about the upcoming inaugural. Hotels are filling up with billionaires and even, in some of the secondary establishments, millionaires with dreams that someday they too may be successful. That’s the Trump spirit. The idea that any rich American, no matter what their background, country of origin, or the return on investment they have enjoyed over their careers to date, can, through working closely with the incoming president and ensuring that he and his sons and daughters get a fully appropriate and in no way illegal taste of the upside they work together to achieve finally hear the crescendo of ka-chings that is our true national anthem.

It reminds me of an actual conversation I once heard at the World Economic Forum (stop me if you’ve heard me tell this story before…I can’t get it out of my mind) when I sat next to two very prominent billionaires at a lunch. It was 2017 and there was great interest in what Trump’s presidency might have in store. A speaker was talking about some of the tensions that existed among Americans and one of the two billionaires leaned over to the other and said, “Hey, what about us? Billionaire lives matter, too.”

How right they were. Billionaires are often targeted by politicians or seen only as sources of funding. But there are now almost 1000 billionaires in the U.S. (more by some counts). Why should they suffer just because of the needs of the less successful? When do their aspirations take precedence? Sure we’ve been catering to the rich for a long time in the U.S. (McKinley did it…although he also showed weakness by being concerned with fair treatment of “workers”). But what about the richest Americans? Those billionaires control over $5 trillion in wealth. That’s greater than the GDP of all but two countries. (Not that GDP and wealth really have anything to do with one another. I’m just saying, like, they have a lot of money and countries with less get to make their own policies why don’t people who are as rich as countries? It’s logic people. It’s fairness. Wake up.)

Further, as I mentioned above, helping the billionaires surely will help others. Millions of others. And by millions of others I mean the 30 million Americans who are millionaires. This is what the Supreme Court had in mind when they handed down the Citizens United decision. The founders of the United States were, for the most part, rich. (Washington had assets worth almost $600 million in today’s terms.) Obviously they intended for the country to ruled by people like them. Therefore ensuring that the rich could spend whatever they wanted to support their political views must have been what they intended—not in spite of the fact that it drowned out the voices of average American but because of that fact. You want rich white guys like the founders as our leaders, they argued, let the check writers be the law writers.

And here we are. 15 years after Citizens United and we have George Washington Musk and Thomas Jefferson Bezos and James Madison Zuckerberger coming together in a kind of big wallet brains trust the likes of which we have not seen since…and that despite of the fact that the rich have always wielded most of the clout in our “democracy.” (You doubt it? Who are your heroes? Roosevelt? Other Roosevelt? Kennedy? Clinton? Obama? All millionaires. Even Jimmy Carter was worth $10 million at the time of his death. Most of the big liberal voices you follow? Millionaires. Don’t begrudge it to them. That’s how the game is played.)

Finally, we are going to look to those with the most success and say, “What do you need?” Less of a tax burden. For sure. We’ll just cut back Social Security and Medicare payments, trim the ACA. After all, why should the little guy be the only one living on the government dole? Just because they pay more taxes? Just because there are more of them? Just because it is fair? Phooey. Life isn’t fair. Rewarding the richest is the core idea behind America as a land of opportunity. Not for everyone of course. Not for brown people. Not for people who don’t know how to code. But you know, for the people that matter and who can help build the big companies that our billionaires own.)

And we’ll have a chance to learn from our billionaires. Elon Musk is the richest man in the world. We shouldn’t resent that. We should study it. We should celebrate it. Maybe we should all take ketamine. Maybe we should all alienate our children. Maybe we should all embrace our inner neo-Nazi. Maybe we too can spread conspiracy theories about a national tragedy and add insult to injury by sending a few of the world’s ugliest most useless vehicles laden with a few measly bags of groceries to rub it in to the victims. Mark Zuckerberg has made so much money that he wears $900K watches with his t-shirts. If he says facts aren’t real, maybe he knows something we don’t know. Bezos doesn’t think we should even air opinions that are contrary to the views of our fearless leader. Let’s listen and learn people. Keep your views to yourself. Donate money to the Trump inaugural. Visit Mar-a-Lago. Set your sights higher.

Billionaire rights matter. The billionaire right matters. We are heading into an exciting new time. It has been too long that the U.S. flag has only had 50 stars on it. What about a 51st star for Canada? A 52d for Greenland? Make Panama number 53 and why stop there? Surely there are parts of Mexico that don’t have too many Mexicans in them that we could take over. And what about all the nice white countries in northern Europe? That is how billionaires think. It’s always about the next acquisition. Stealing other peoples’ lands is what America was built on. It is what made us great. How about a little of that McKinley magic that got us Puerto Rico and Hawaii and, for a time, the Philippines?

Why do you think Trump is always doing that little dance? It’s good to be a billionaire. The law doesn’t apply to you. And if you are a billionaire and president you are in a class of one. You are the untouchable. You are the king of kings.

King of kings. And lord of lords. Hallelujah, you know what I’m saying?

These are good times, America. And to give credit where credit is due: you made this happen.

Let the good times roll.