The Promissory Sanctity of the American Rich
Yangon, Myanmar, February 20th, 2016
Salaroche


“All things being equal”, the 13th - 14th century English friar William of Ockham said, “[when looking for explanations to a problem] the simpler theory is more likely to be correct”. Yet, even as plenty of digital ink has being spent over the past few months trying to explain the complexities behind Donald Trump’s surprising ascent to the center of the American political scene, thus far no one seems to have hit the nail in the head. Could that be because they are all looking for complex answers when a simple one would do?

“Americans are angry at the political establishment”, some pundits and commentarists say, “Americans feel disenfranchised” say some others, “they are xenophobic and afraid of ISIS”, some TV anchorpeople claim, “they are disappointed in the face of China’s rise”, some newspaper analysts write, yet none of that suffices to explain why, after The Donald has hurled so many insults even at Republican establishment icons, a large number of Americans keep placing him at the top of the Republican Party polls.

As is the case regarding a few other matters of self-perception afflicting the US of A, the issue at hand seems to be just another case of blindness by denial. There are a few taboos that have plagued the American political culture over the past few decades and among them is one that sits at the core of the Trump phenomenon: Money is highly revered in America and Donald Trump has billions of it.

A clear and undeniable fact is that the rich are privileged and virtually untouchable in the US. Go ahead and repeat the previous sentence in public and you will immediately be branded a socialist waging class warfare against the people at the top income brackets. And don’t dare to mention that the case is totally the other way around, that it is the American legislative and judicial systems that keep granting privileges to the moneyed classes thereby waging class warfare against the middle and lower classes, because such privileges are taken for granted in the US and the subject is taboo in the national discourse for the simple reason that American culture dictates that it be so.

Such is the perverted side of the American dream: To side with the guys at the top of the economic scale in the hope that someday you might find yourself among them. In the meantime, while the middle and lower classes wait for that miraculous day to come, the American dream keeps turning into a nightmare where living standards keep deteriorating, wages are stubbornly stagnant, household debt keeps increasing exponentially, and the middle classes keep steadily disappearing.

But some myths are hard to dethrone. Just check out that huge fallacy that America has been swindled to accept for the past few decades: Trickledown Economics. Americans have clearly been taken for the ride of the millennium with that delusion. How could a nation of over 300 million mostly-educated people have fallen for such a ploy for so long? But since in the American cultural iconography the rich are now viewed as saintly and even as saviors, what else could we expect?

A good majority of Americans seem to have come to believe that, as if by miracle, once anybody becomes rich they become sanctified, that they, from then on, will care about the welfare of the country and will start thinking about creating jobs and providing their employees with healthcare and better wages. In other words, Americans have come to presuppose that the rich, by the sole reason of being rich, are extraordinarily good and conscientious people, therefore deserving of special care and privileges, hence the persistence of the trickledown delusion.

But nothing is farther from the truth. Rich people are only human beings like the rest of us and as such they can be as selfish and corruptible as the next person. Give the rich a tax break and most of them will just grab that extra money and go buy a new yacht, or a fourth luxury car for the family, or pay their children’s debts, or go fatten their accounts in the Cayman islands, or invest it in the stock market where the money generated stays at the top and close to nothing trickles down to the country’s economy, or ultimately use it to move their businesses out of the US to countries where labor laws are lax and wages are half of those back home.

Or just check out how of those billions of dollars invested by the Fed as Quantitative Easing to save all those banks during the 2008 debacle virtually nothing has found its way down to the American economy. It was the American people who were defrauded out of billions of dollars by the banks, yet it was the latter who got rewarded with a humongous QE, money that is still, as we speak, parked at the Fed, protected by the Financial Services Regulatory Relief Act of 2006.

By some counts, there are now some $1.6 TRILLION dollars parked at the Fed, the great majority of which was part of the QE handed to those very same banks by the very same Fed and was intended to bring the US economy back on its feet. As it is, however, most of that money is just sitting there generating interest that only benefits the fat cats at the top.

But none of that seems to matter to the American electorate, except for those who presently follow Bernie Sanders. Those who follow Donald Trump wouldn’t even want to talk about it, as they are deeply and blindly immersed in the trickledown delusion. They see The Donald as their savior because he is rich and because the American mythology tells them that, for that single reason, he qualifies as their savior.

There may be some interactive complexity of factors behind The Donald’s political success, such as the American people’s anger at the political establishment, etc., but they are all resting upon a single and simple premise: Donald Trump is rich and for that reason he is allowed to say whatever he wants and promise whatever he wishes and his followers will not hold him accountable to much as long as they perceive the only obvious irrefutable truth behind him: His fortune.

Nothing shines in the eyes of the American people as much as money does, and Trump has plenty of it. Nothing seems to be more desirable to the majority of Americans than the power that money confers on its possessors, and Trump brags about that power constantly. The privileges that America used to enjoy in the international scene that are now fading as the world becomes increasingly multipolar, Donald Trump promises to restore to his followers and they believe him because he is rich and as such he personifies privilege in America.

Take the money away from The Donald and what is left is just a vociferous lying charlatan. Nobody in his right mind would be as foolish as to fund the political campaign of any narcissist of Trump’s caliber, but the fact that he can stand by himself on his own two feet to loudly say whatever he wants shows the American people that he possesses a very decisive power that no other candidate has: The power of money, and that in itself seems to be reason enough for a good number of Americans to vote him into the White House this coming November.

Salaroche