excerpt from How Things Work newsletter (https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/subscribe)
The class war is a reality. It is an ongoing process in the real world that constantly affects our lives. American capitalism is a system in which the forces of capital forever try to strengthen their own economic and political position, and the result of their success if that everyone else finds themselves in a diminished economic and political position. Politicians can either acknowledge this and take a position on it or they can try to deny it, but either way, the class war continues on. Some politicians say, “Hey, we should probably draw a line that limits how powerful and wealthy rich people and corporations can get, since we don’t want to live in a dystopia,” and some politicians say “All wealth is created by our beloved rich people and businesses and we must not stand in their way.” Some politicians avoid the entire issue by saying “Look at all those immigrants!” and some politicians avoid the entire issue by saying “What we need is civility and hope,” and in both of those cases the rich win the class war by default. It takes energetic political action to place limits on capitalism. In the absence of that energetic political action, there is only capitalism’s logic, which is the ruthless and ceaseless accumulation of wealth in fewer hands. Those hands are the hands of the rich. You can see why it might behoove us to pay attention to them.
MAGA-style fascism benefits the rich but it is also crucial to point out that neoliberalism, the status quo prior to Trump’s rise, also benefited the rich. The status quo in general benefits the rich. Having more comity between Democrats and Republicans, having Congressional baseball games where members come together across the aisle, having John McCain as the moral soul of the Republican Party—none of this matters much in terms of the class war. In fact the reason why it was so easy for a monster like Trump to slide into the king’s throne is that the political landscape had been so polluted with insincerity for so long that the “norms” that Trump shattered were already hollow and brittle. Most people expect that they will get bullshit from political leaders, and they are not disappointed. This is not an atmosphere conducive to generating high-minded outrage about the decline of Our Venerable Democracy.
The Democrats are trembling over the apparent migration of working class voters into the Republican Party. The labor unions that they have allowed to decline for decades no longer seem sufficient to corral voters into their corner. Is there any doubt that the cravenness, the meekness, the empty sloganeering of the Democrats themselves for the past 15 years is to blame? The Republicans do not offer working people a genuine ally, but they do offer them an enemy. The Democrats offer them a mush of mixed messages, a bunch of technocratic pablum, an offer to join hands with Hollywood millionaires and Silicon Valley billionaires to come together in a united front against… something. “Let’s not be crude” seems to be the Democrats’ overriding pitch against Donald Trump. Not as catch, I’m afraid, as “Fuck the rich.”
Do not tell voters that Trump is rude and boorish and impolite. Tell them that Donald Trump is the motherfucking problem. This silver spoon billionaire motherfucker wants to take away your health care! This skyscraper-living motherfucker wants to take away your retirement! This spray-tanned greedy motherfucker wants to raise your taxes to give his greaseball rich buddies a tax cut! This soft-handed hand sanitizer grasping motherfucker wants to talk shit about people who actually work for a living! This scumbag con man overpriced steak-selling motherfucker wants to keep you overworked and underpaid and sick while he rides around on his ugly ass private jet with some of America’s biggest assholes kissing his ass the whole time! He wants you to have less so he can have more—more money, more power, more fucking meatloaf to shove in his fat fucking pink lips while he rides around on his little golf cart.
Piece of shit rich motherfucker.
Economically speaking, the rich and their interests are the underlying cause of our drastic crisis of inequality. Politically speaking, the rich and their interests have captured our government and our laws and twisted them to serve those who have the most. Plainly speaking, the rich are the problem. Want a villain? Don’t look at Mexico. Don’t look at people who came to this country for a better life, just like your ancestors did. Don’t look at poor people who never had a fair chance, or at people different from you in some superficial way. Look right up at the rich people who have too much and keep taking more and fix the whole world so that nothing can ever change that.
