Much has been written about rising economic inequality, but this fills in a few, rarely mentioned gaps and points out a few things from a different angle. A very important issue right off is a large portion of human beings does not want equality. It is part of their make up. They are special and other people are not. Otherness is something to be feared and kept away from them. This has been especially true throughout American history and is very prominent now with the Trump presidency, which played on this issue in order to win the election and to try to remain in power. White supremacy almost universally includes these people; all things considered, keeping their own relative power and influence is more important to them than the quality of life of anyone outside their spheres.
This fear of otherness, which occurs in roughly 40% of any population (I will call them, in accordance with social scientists, authoritarian followers - see my earlier essay about them in this same section), is shared by those who have attained positions of power, influence and wealth. This is exemplified by the preponderance of white males in corporate, government, and religious leadership positions throughout the country, and it leads the authoritarian followers to consider rich and powerful white men (and their obedient wives) part of their tribe. The 40% thus align with the whims of the 1% on the vast majority of issues, with the 1% willing to exploit this in order to maintain their power. Thus you get the Republican party in 2019: the 1% calling the shots and the 40% doing the rest of the needed dirty work (both legit and illegitimate) to keep them in position to do so.
I am writing this now because I have been reading Jill LePore’s monumental, fantastic history of the United States called “These Truths.” In the build up to the Civil War, she mentions something I had not heard prior: the number of slave owners in the USA at that time was ONE PERCENT. One percent of the population of this country was able to cause and sustain one of the worst conflagrations in the history of humanity. They were able to do so through the same sociological and political methods we are seeing now, applied with the the fervor of people of power and influence with nearly everything to lose. Because of their power and influence, they were able to compel poorer and less resourceful white men to fight for their cause (the penalty for desertion was generally death).
In my opinion we are near another tipping point of the same magnitude. Our government is held in sway by the rich and powerful, the 1%, and our potentially great nation is being run into the ground to further their enrichment on a scale rarely seen. Our environment and the working class are being exploited at considerable risk to them by the ruling class purely for the ruling class’s benefit. It is growing increasingly obvious to the rest of us this is happening, and we are fed up. Clearly the next few years will see a different kind of populism take over: the rise of the common person, with their interests in better education for their children, better and safer work, preserving and improving our environment and health, and improving our shattered justice system while treating every person with dignity and respect. This will have to be done at the expense of the rich: they have nearly all the money, having benefited from our rigged economic and tax system far beyond any legitimate intentions. This 1% will be as difficult to put to heel as the slave owners of the 1800s. They will not go quietly, nor will the rest of their tribe, which is armed to the teeth and also prone to violence and victimhood. It has to be done: we must get the influence of money out of politics in order to preserve our future. I think we are nearly ready to do what it takes. We must no longer let the 1% have their oversized influence hold sway - they never make things better for the rest of us and never will. A higher tax on the wealthy, more regulation of the financial markets (with a tax on trades on the exchanges), a carbon tax, and taking the national security state down several notches will benefit the vast majority, and diverting the huge amount of money we all invest into health care into a more efficient, not for profit system unhitched from employment will free up this new economy from that burden. It is all there, but we will have to take it; it will not be given to us.