DECEMBER 21, 2024 – With the Christmas song, Do You Hear What I Hear? (and its first verse line, “Do you see what I see?”) ringing inside my head, I’m compelled to ask, Who in this country does not hear and see what’s happened to our precious democracy? Who does not hear, who does not see that the Plutocrat in Chief—a non-elected individual—is working the levers of high governmental power according to his whims and interests (and conflicts of interests)? And who does not understand that in broad daylight he has usurped Congressional, even presidential, power and robbed the electorate of its collective franchise?
Symbolic of the hubris that accompanies unfettered financial power was the man’s well-publicized “parade” through the Capitol the other day. That “parade” was his stroll down a main corridor, his kid on the Plutocrat’s shoulders and Vice Plutocrat in Chief in sycophantic tow. In this cynically engineered display of folksy fatherhood and faux eccentricity, the Plutocrat in Chief revealed his arrogant contempt for those beneath his financial station who must adhere to social norms. He revealed how absolute power corrupts absolutely: no other person with less power than he wields—not even the Charlatan in Chief—would dare to make such fools of the American public.
Who would have foreseen that such an exhibition would join the “new normal” wherein everything is extraordinary and therefore nothing is notable? Yet here we are, Trump-lovers, Trump-haters and everyone in between, nearly 250 years into our “independence” . . . yet having lost our freedom to the whims and fiats of one of the richest men in history. Not even the Rockefellers, the Carnegies, the Vanderbilts, the Stanleys controlled such wealth and thus wielded such power as the current Plutocrat in Chief.
Let us not forget that it was the Charlatan in Chief who allowed this to happen. As much as he himself may soon regret his having done so, he did so—mostly, we must assume—in consideration for the $250 million that the Plutocrat in Chief donated to what was a triumphal campaign. Who, we must ask, wields greater influence over a president, a person who contributed $250 to the president’s campaign or a person who gave a million times that? The former wins a sticker. The latter wins a meal ticket at Mar-a-Lago and political favors worth billions for his far-flung business interests . . . not to mention lower taxes, which, cynically, adds to the federal deficit that with such abrasive fanfare, the Plutocrat in Chief has been anointed to “fix” by way of the extra-governmental DOGE.
May I remind the people who thought Harris was “incompetent”; that Biden was a “disaster”; that the rising cost of groceries (due to myriad factors completely outside the control of government, whether run by Democrats, Republicans or Libertarians) warranted a vote for “disruption” . . . here now is what their votes have wrought—even before the Great Disrupter has taken office. We are now witnessing the overwhelming concentration of power tied to the overwhelming concentration of wealth.
If the concentration of wealth by one individual to the tune of $500 billion is part of the “new normal” and makes you yawn, this math should wake you up with a start: if that fortune were spent at the rate of $1 million PER DAY, day in and day out, it would take 1,369 years to burn through the $500 billion; that’s right, 1,369 years. How long, I must ask, would it take you to burn through your net worth at the rate of $1 million a day? I’m guessing far less than a year.
In short, we’ve been duped and anesthetized. Our democracy has been stolen before our very eyes. “One person-one vote” has been Trumped by “one person with $500 billion bucks-one person rule.” But we did not get here overnight. Nor were we dragged here kicking and screaming by the hook and crook of foreign enemies. Our predicament is of our own making, the result of our own choices. In that respect, we were free—free to make unwise, ill-informed decisions about our destiny. Accordingly, we rendered ourselves easy marks to be duped and anesthetized. And now we’ve lost the freedom to choose.
So . . . what now shall we celebrate in this season of light, filled with good cheer, spiked with punch, decorated with greens, holly and mistletoe, with great familiar music sounding in the background? Plenty, leading with the resilience of the human spirit; our historical record of meeting unfathomable challenges (the Great Depression; World War II, to name the two most prominent of the century behind us); and our great promise and prospects—individual and collective—when we come together in the common interest.
In a word, the message of Christmas is . . . “Let there be light!” That imperative is best followed by positivity, not despair; initiative, not resignation. This year especially, don’t celebrate less. Celebrate more but with your eyes wide open and sleeves rolled up. Once enough people understand that the Plutocrat in Chief and his Enabler in Chief are not looking out for the public interest, we can and must turn this ship around and navigate toward better choices. I’m hopeful that we can and will. In this country reside millions—tens of millions—of really good, smart, able and capable people who can take our democracy back. All they need is the will to do so.
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
