Gilded Age

Donald Trump and the Tradition of the American Blowhard

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The Donald's presidential run proves that pretty much any billowous gas-bag can run for president, as long as they have lots of cash.

The Donald’s presidential run proves that pretty much any billowing gas bag can run for president, as long as they have tons of cash.

Donald Trump embodies what it means to be American. No, seriously, hear me out. The Donald is loud, brash, and seemingly allergic to the concept of nuance. Indeed, Trump appears to possess a bottomless well of misguided self-confidence completely unpolluted by the mitigating toxin known as shame. That alone would put him in the pantheon of American leaders who not only carried big sticks, but also wagged them incessantly into the rest of the world’s collectively embarrassed mug.

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Horatio Alger’s Long Shadow: Blaming the Poor in American History

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Upon viewing this sign, Jesus Christ, a guy who once told people to

Upon viewing this sign, Jesus Christ, a guy who once told people to “sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven,” was reported to have metaphorically spun in his empty grave.

Have you ever been poor? Have you ever lived in a state of poverty where the basic necessities of life, such as food, water, shelter, and income security barely existed? If not, then count yourself lucky. Really lucky. Because being poor is awful. It’s not just damaging to every aspect of your physical health and well-being; it’s also psychologically damaging in that being poor tends to reinforce a sense of despair that leads to viewing poverty as an inescapable trap. In a column for Pacific Standard, Paul Hiebert recently reported on a new Harvard study that explains how poverty reinforces itself:

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Of Kochs and Carnegies: The Myth of Capitalist Market Purity

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Charles and David Koch flood the U.S. government with cash, and get subsides in return.

Charles and David Koch flood the U.S. government with cash, and get to shape the government-private sector relationship in return.

This week a story broke that would surprise no one with even a passing knowledge of the shady relationship between business and government in the U.S. It turns out that a previously unknown conservative “sugar daddy” group called Freedom Partners had raised a cool $256 million in 2012 and then funneled out $236 million of that cash to a rogue’s gallery of right-wing organizations, including Americans for Prosperity, the National Rifle Association, and, of course, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The group organized as a 501(c)6 tax-exempt chamber of commerce, allowing it remain in the shadows raising so-called “dark money” from a host of secret donors. Several members of the board have close ties to Koch Industries, the vast industrial conglomerate based out of Witchita, Kansas and owned by ultra right-wing billionaires Charles and David Koch — better known the general public, and to those with a soul — as the Koch Brothers.

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Labor Day in the New Gilded Age

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United States Infantry square off against Chicago workers in the Stock Yards, by Fredric Remington, from Harper's Weekly Magazine

United States Infantry square off against Chicago workers in the Stock Yards, by Fredric Remington, from Harper’s Weekly Magazine

Well, its Labor Day 2013, a national holiday in both the U.S. and Canada bolstered by an idea — that the national economy thrives when we recognize workers’ contributions to creating an economic system based on broadly shared prosperity — that seems more and more hopelessly symbolic in the New Gilded Age. In the contemporary U.S., American income inequality has reached pre-Great Depression-era levels, private sector unionization is now a pale shadow of its former strength thanks to 30-plus years of concerted right wing ideological and policy assaults, and public sector unions seem destined for collapse for the very same reason.

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