"It's not about right versus left anymore"
I recently saw Glenn Greenwald, the progressive journalist explain that, “It’s not about right versus left anymore, it’s about the people versus the cronies”. I’m paraphrasing but that’s pretty much what he said. There are those who are connected, who profit from the current system, who enjoy the spoils of a crony capitalist system, and then there is everyone else.
Over the past decade I‘ve followed the expansion of our crony capitalist system very closely. If you are connected, know the right people in Washington, if you have some clout in the crony system, you get favors - bailouts, special regulations, special tax breaks. If you aren’t connected, you are (often) screwed. Just ask the people of East Palestine Ohio, or the farmers along the southern border, or the former residents of Lahaina Maui.
Or ask the many people who have been censored from the Internet (effectively) because they have espoused views that conflict with the interests of the crony class.
This is supposed to be a country where the everyday person is valued. It is one of the things that has made us historically different from our friends in Europe.
On The Continent there is an old and tired aristocracy that still dominates much of political life on both the right and left. In the US, we have instead long embraced an ethos of merit based egalitarianism. (Though we have often fallen short on this.)There isn’t supposed to be a real aristocracy in the USA. In a land of generally free markets and open economic opportunity such an aristocracy, even if one emerged, would be under constant threat because new entrepreneurs also emerge with new wealth (which is usually bigger than old wealth). More or less this was the case in the US for a long time.
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