Gilded Class Warriors. By Victor Davis Hanson. National Review Online, February 21, 2013.
Brave New World. By Victor Davis Hanson. Works and Days. PJ Media, February 19, 2013.
Hanson, Brave New World:
Them
and Us
I think
it was around 2009 when an entire new vocabulary entered the American popular
lexicon. Where did the 1% versus the 99% come from? From where did the new
financial Mason-Dixon line arise — good below $250,000 in annual family income,
very bad above it? When did the 47% — or is it the 50%? — pay no federal income
taxes?
At some
magical point, the rich became not the successful, the skilled, the
well-inherited, the lucky, or the hardworking, but “them”: the suspect, the damned even, even as the
lifestyles of the rich and famous became ever more sought after.
There
are not just the rich and poor any more, but now the “good rich” (e.g.,
athletes, rappers, Hollywood stars, Silicon Valley grandees, Democratic
senators, liberal philanthropists, etc.) and the “bad rich” (e.g., oil
companies, CEOs, doctors, the Koch brothers, etc.). The correct-thinking
nomenklatura and the dutiful apparat versus the kulaks and enemies of the
people.
The
president in his State of the Union damns the “billionaires with high-powered
accountants,” as a friendly Facebook pays no state or federal taxes, as a
George Soros walks away with $1.2 billion in speculation profits (in three
months, no less!) by betting against the Japanese yen, and as a Jesse Jackson,
Jr. gets caught stealing from a campaign fund to buy a $43,000 Rolex (was not a
$1,000 one enough?). I thought Soros at his age knew when he had made enough
money?
We
shrug at all this. A president who thunders to the nation that we must be on
guard against the “well-off and well-connected” heads south to Palm Beach to
meet his $1,000-an-hour golf pro, while Michelle and the family go west to hit
the slopes at “downright mean” Aspen, where no one accepts that they’ve reached
a point where they’ve made enough money, or that there was any time when it was
not good to profit.
Something
strange has insidiously happened to the old notion of hypocrisy. Does it even
exist any longer?
Or do
we shrug and just accept it as rebranded medieval penance? Obama gets to golf
with zillionaires because in soaring cadences he attacks them — and all for us?
Jack
Lew takes his $1 million bonus from a federally bailed-out Citigroup and
invests his stash in his offshore tax haven in the Caymans because he will be a
progressive, raise-your-taxes secretary of Treasury — and because Barack Obama has castigated those who took bonuses from a federally bailed-out money-losing
company and derided offshore tax havens in the Caymans?
Chris
Hughes is a cutting-edge, gay progressive who buys the New Republic because his Facebook portfolio does pretty well
without owing taxes? Is that how it works now?
Have we
come to the point where we expect John Kerry’s populist rhetoric to explain why
he can feel no pain over dodging taxes on his yacht or marrying into the big
money that he used to warn against? John Edwards can lounge around in his ugly
mansion precisely because of his “two Americas” choruses?
When
did we expect the elite to enjoy their wealth and to rail against its acquisition, to lumber around on four legs in the barn with the animals and
strut on two in the kitchen with the overseers? Do Levis and t-shirts mean it’s
okay for Google to offshore its profits? Does “Earth in the Balance” mean you
can walk away as a guilt-free liberal with $100 million in petro-profits from a
sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic sheikdom?
