It's the Billionaires, Stupid

The faultline for Dems in the run to 2028 will be attitudes toward elites

In the liturgy of American political theology, there are certain articles of faith that must never be challenged.

These are ideas or even just terminology that must be treated as sacrosanct by people in both parties.

Commandments

They include the following:

• The United States of America is not just fundamentally good, but it is the best of nations. A corollary is that when we describe something as “foreign,” we inevitably mean “lesser.”

• By extension, our system must therefore be the best of all existing or imaginable alternatives—beginning with our Constitution that must be revered as though it were commandments handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai.

• However flawed our democracy may be, the fact that we ostensibly aspire to being a democracy, call it our “original virtue,” is redeeming. It must never be asserted (or acknowledged) that we are not actually a democracy or engaged at all times in the pursuit of a more perfect society and that power rests with anyone other than “the people.”

• Capitalism is as central to both our success and our national virtues as is democracy. Capitalism and democracy are, in fact, the holy duality around which being American is built and from which America’s greatness has sprung. (A corollary is that by “capitalism” we mean American capitalism, capitalism as it is and has been practiced here. Anyone who practices a different form of capitalism—in which, for example, the state plays a larger role in assuring the well-being of the people—is actually doing it wrong. In fact, if you do not practice capitalism as promoted and described by its high priests on Wall Street, in corporate suites, and in academia, then you are a communist, a socialist, or a crook.

• American goals or priorities must never be subordinated to those of other countries or the community of nations. American generals must never report to other generals. America’s laws and legal system must never be superseded by international equivalents. We believe in national sovereignty, but one nation is more sovereign than others.

In the past, there have been other such American commandments that have been overtaken by events. Once, we would say that no one was above the law in the United States, but our Supreme Court has effectively ruled that is not the case. Our president now has such sweeping immunity that it can no longer be credibly asserted that he is not “above the law” or that we are still “a nation of laws, not of men.”

Pity, that. That one should have been a keeper.

The key point is that political leaders in both parties have recognized these commandments and that challenging them publicly is apostasy, grounds for excommunication from political life in America.

A sixth commandment might be:

• Never question the other commandments.

While that is, of course, how commandments generally work, it has important consequences. For example, if someone can assert that by proposing an idea or making a point that you are actually violating one of these sacred precepts, then you can be condemned or penalized as you would be had you questioned the principle directly.

This is only true, as it turns out, if you can convince enough people that the transgression is real and fundamental enough. Republicans are better at this than Democrats because somehow they have somehow managed to be seen despite all evidence to the contrary as being more respectful of this core “values” than their opponents. As an example, somehow healthcare for all has become code for socialism and thereby a violation of our fealty to holy capitalism whereby Trump actively seeking to rig election results has not yet convinced enough people that he is an enemy of democracy for him to pay a high price.

A Prime Directive

This last point suggests that something else is true, however. That is: Some of these commandments have priority over the others. That is due to the fact that there is another, hidden, over-riding commandment, a “prime directive”:

• Never challenge the role of those who are actually in power in the United States, the elites who are and always have been the real decision makers.

This is crucially relevant to the prior example because those elites view the commitment to democracy as important but flexible whereas their control of the economic levers of power in the U.S. should never be challenged.

More importantly, it reveals the underlying hypocrisy associated with the other commandments…and simultaneously the reason for them, not as core principles, the foundations of our system, but as part of a shared national mythology that forgives the sins of yesterday and enables the sins of tomorrow. Perhaps more importantly, the shared national mythology that is promoted by both parties is linked to the ways that those who are really in power can impute a higher objective to those occasions when they seek to exploit society as a whole without unnecessary pushback or friction.

This phenomenon is best illustrated by other more or less unchallengeable elements of our political liturgy. For example, the idea that one can never criticize the serving military or doubt that their sacrifice by the nation (or our use of force against others) is in service of a higher cause linked to the core commandments. If it weren’t for the promotion of the illusion of glory or the enobling ideas associated with patriotism, how many young men or women would take to the battlefield? Similarly, other such ideas are related to our economic “beliefs.” For example, there is the idea that work gives meaning to our lives (although we tax income and those who do not work for their wealth go largely untaxed) or the notion that America is a land of opportunity in which everyone can make it to the top.

It is precisely because none of these things stand up to much scrutiny that we have developed a system that embraces these ideas and at the same time stigmatizes debating or questioning them.

What has all this gotten us?

Are we closer now to our “founding ideals,” to our “national mythology,” to being the “shining city on the Hill?”

The answer is no.

In fact, over time, whatever underlying merits may have been associated with the above commandments…or the founding of the country…have gradually been stripped away or diluted in service of the interests of those who are really in power, who are running our system to serve their needs. Inequality is as bad as it has ever been. The richest Americans own more of our assets than ever, have more political power by far than the rest of us, and are systematically accumulating larger and larger slices of the national pie from which the vast majority of us get only crumbs.

This process has, as I have discussed here before and (spoiler alert) will discuss here again and again, grown so acute in the past forty years that literally no objective observer sees us as a true democracy, as an equitable society, as a nation of laws, as an example to the world.

That is over.

A Generational Imperative

What is more, younger Americans see it so clearly that poll after poll shows they are deeply distrustful of our institutions or our leaders, and that they do not believe that if we continue as we are, the future will be better for them.

Further, today’s headlines regularly send one single message: we are at the mercy of corrupt elites who are acting with a sense of impunity that makes their greed and their contempt for ideas of fairness and justice all the clearer.

Trump daily makes this plain. As do his closest advisors. As do his core supporters. They sip champagne and attend masked balls and the opening of staged propaganda extravaganzas like the Melania movie. They dance and laugh while Americans are gunned down in the streets. They reap obscene rewards from tax cuts that literally were made possible by the death and suffering of the poor.

They might as well be drinking our blood. It would be no different. Sometimes I think that explains the current popularity of vampire movies.

The Epstein case is for all these reasons not a footnote to this moment but an emblem of it. Epstein and a circle of rich men indulged themselves in violation of the law and decency at the expense of over 1000 women, and not only expected to get away with it…they have gotten away with it. One of them is president. Others are in positions of power that allow they to bury the darkest aspects of the stories.

And make no mistake about it…Epstein and the examples of human sewage with whom he partied were not unique. There are a thousand thousand Epsteins in this world, millions of victims, gut-turning displays of repugnant behavior linked to the rich playing by their own rules.

Such abuses have existed before in history. But, we have persuaded ourselves that progress has made them rarer, that our system contains protections that level the playing field and distribute power more reasonably.

In part, we have been able to maintain that delusion by virtue of having a political system in which certain statements about our society could not be challenged, would not be challenged by anyone in any political party who wanted any hope of mainstream success. (That does not mean we have not had voices who spoke out…but they were often assassinated or crushed or otherwise marginalized.)

So, the question becomes, must become, what do we do about it if we are sickened by this era of elite impunity and oligarchic corruption of all the institutions and values of our society?

A Time for “Heresy”

The answer is: It is time to break the commandments.

It is time to actively challenge them. It is time to reveal the lies within them. It is time to reject those lies and those associated with them.

Black Americans and other people of color and immigrants and women understand this. Throughout our history independent voices have also tried to make these points.

But we have a reached a breaking point.

In the years ahead, if the super-empowered are allowed to snuff out democracy, end free and fair elections, continue to reject the opinions of the vast majority of Americans on issue after issue, there is no coming back. It is not just the end of our illusions. It is the end of the vestiges of American greatness that we have clung to as evidence that something promising was taking place within our borders.

This is not some abstract academic idea we are talking about here. It is a set of existential questions about the future of this country…and, at the same time, it is the core issue (or cluster of issues) that will be debated in the elections of 2026 and 2028.

Corruption. Elite impunity. Epstein. Tax cuts for billionaires. Millions without healthcare. Regulatory freedom for the greediest and most short-sighted among us and their crackpot fellow travelers.

Every issue we face comes down to whether we can speak the truth, challenge that prime directive, reclaim power from those who are jealously hoarding it, demand they be held accountable.

Take the commandments listed.

• We must be able to acknowledge that the U.S. has not only always been deeply flawed but that whereas we stood a chance of reversing some of our worst traits in the past, we are now losing ground in that battle. We are not, at the moment, under this administration, a force for good in the world. Quite the contrary, we are one of the greatest threats the planet faces.

• Our system is profoundly broken. Some of the deepest problems we face have to do with flaws in our Constitution that distribute power inequitably and some have to do with structures related to the Constitution that have been twisted and gamed to serve the few at the expense of the many.

• We are not a democracy. As I have written here before, if the vast majority of Americans support an agenda of fair taxes, healthcare for all, reasonable gun control, protecting the environment, making education available to all, dignity in retirement, more just campaign finance laws and borders open to those who seek to contribute to our society, and yet cannot advance any of those issues in Congress then we ceased to be one long ago. The richest Americans dictate to the politicians and judges they choose the course they wish and grant the rest of us only so much as is required to keep us passive.

• Capitalism, as practiced here in the U.S., especially in the past 50 years—vulture capitalism, Darwinian capitalism—is what has destroyed our democracy. American capitalism killed American democracy. Repeat it over and over in your head. Consider the facts as you know them. The obscene concentration of wealth among the few has been translated into an obscene concentration of power among the few—it is a fatal flaw to any would-be democracy that has been condemned by our leaders since the beginning of the “republic.”

• The rest of the world also contains flaws and failures and threats…but at the same time it offers lessons and societies that are better and serving the needs and goals of their people. In most of Europe, especially Northern Europe, their social contract is wiser and more equitable than ours. But beyond that, we must accept that we are part of a global community and subordinate some of our national sovereignty to higher shared goals of the planet…if we seek peace or a healthy planet or leaders who do not feel they can use sovereignty as a shield behind which to commit great crimes.

We can’t play around any more with incremental changes and triangulation that just dilutes programs we need in order to help ensure better outcomes for big companies, Wall Street firms or the richest among us.

Rising generations who are disgusted with the legacy that is being handed to them by Boomers simply will not have it. They don’t believe this stuff anyway. They demand the truth. They demand real change. Or they will simply tune out, disconnect and guarantee our failure a nation.

It’s the Billionaires, Stupid

That is why for Democrats who hope to win in 2026 and 2028, it is increasingly clear that the core message is: It’s the billionaires, stupid.

Either we find leaders who are willing to end elite impunity and oligarchic power grabs and widespread exploitation or we will sink and sink into an authoritarian dystopia engineered to meet the needs of a tiny fraction of our people.

To my mind, that means the “clever” politicians who wish to stand up for the billionaires, who reject fairer taxes, who reject the idea that our system is fatally inequitable, who think they can rake in fat cat dollars and give the people enough of what they need to…they are fossils. They are part of the problem. They are how Trump became president, inequality grew and Epstein got away with rape and who knows what else.

We need to find those who will stand up for the rest of us and not kowtow to the moguls and the gajillionaires.

We need to find people who are willing to acknowledge our system is in shambles and fading fast.

We need to find people who will look for good ideas whereever in the world they may find them.

We need to find people who will demand major structural reforms—will make them a top priority. By that I mean adding DC and Puerto Rico as states, increasing the Supreme Court to 13 seats, ending the filibuster, insisting on campaign finance reform, writing core rights from reproductive freedom to the right to vote to the freedom to marry who you wish into law in such detail that they are not challengeable in court.

We need people who will hold the those who attacked our democracy and our laws accountable.

For those who have been playing by the rules described here who can’t give them up, I say, thank you for your service. Have a great retirement. Your time is over. You cannot help us now.

For those who have never entered politics before because they have not wanted to buy into the lies and deceptions, I say, welcome. Your time is now. Step up. We need you.

This year and the next three will be watershed years in our history. Either for better or for worse.

Let’s spread the word. Let’s summon the courage and clarity we need. Let’s reject the false theologies of American politics and rebuild on real truths and values.

And let’s not wait.

Choose your side.