When Servius Tullius, king from 578 to 535 BC, reformed the tribal system of Rome, giving the vote to men who had not been members of the three original tribes, he increased the number of tribes and assigned people to them on the basis of geographic location rather than kinship ties. Two main reasons for the extension of the suffrage, to increase the tax body and to add to the rolls of young men suitable for the military. Roman politicians passed laws in 140 CE to keep the votes of poorer citizens by introducing a grain dole: giving out cheap food and entertainment – “bread and circuses”, became the most effective way to rise to power. What motive did the Roman government have for providing food and entertainment for the poor? The Roman government knew that a large group of poor citizens would be a threat or attempt to overthrow the rich or start a revolution, so they provided food and entertainment for the poor.
During the late 18th century and the early 19th century, pressure for parliamentary reform and social change in Britain grew rapidly. Some of it came from men who already had a large say in how Britain was run: country gentlemen angry about the use of patronage at Westminster, or manufacturers and businessmen keen to win political influence to match their economic power. Influenced by works such as Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man (1791-2), radical reformers demanded that all men be given the right to vote. The changes made in the British political system between 1832 and 1884 were nevertheless important. The electorate increased substantially in size from approximately 366,000 in England and Wales in 1831 to slightly fewer than 8 million in 1885. Parliamentary seats were redistributed to give greater weight to larger towns and cities. Also, the Ballot Act of 1872, which introduced secret ballots, made it far more difficult for voters to be bribed or intimidated.
Presidential candidates initially did not travel to campaign: they were called to be the nominees but it was considered inappropriate to ask voters directly to vote for them. Thus, it was up to local supporters to organize campaign events and speak on their behalf. Parades, rallies, and stump speeches by surrogates were followed on Election Day by voter drives in taverns and on the streets. Partisan newspapers were another part of the mix aligning themselves with a particular party and openly slanting news coverage to favor allies and excoriate enemies. Commercial publishers quickly realized they could make money by printing and selling broadsides, cards, and prints depicting the candidates of all parties. As one of Lincoln’s supporters noted, “I am coming to believe that likenesses broad cast, are excellent means of electioneering.” And an opponent complained, “the country is flooded with pictures of Lincoln, in all conceivable shapes and sizes, and cheap.”
In successive phases in the 1990s, the Kochs’ Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), mobilized a front group for corporate lobbying, in which the themes of a Tea Party anti-tax, anti-regulation, and antigovernment revolt, were developed together almost simultaneously by two of the largest tobacco companies – Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds – under the guise of political and business coalitions to fight excise taxes of all sorts, including cigarette taxes. It made good business sense – and good political sense as well. You could relabel just about anything as a tax, and heaven knows the American public hates taxes. This, at its core, was the beginning of the American Tea Party revolt against the power of the government to pay for its programs. They could recruit average citizens from a variety of ideological groups to their cause. Basically, Big Oil and Big Tobacco partnered to take over the GOP.1
Citizens for Sound Economy’s successor – Americans for Prosperity (AFP) – was built to coordinate the effort nationally. Within months of the 2018 midterm elections, “the sprawling Koch political network” known as AFP announced “a new tool to build broad policy coalitions in Congress to help advance AFP’s vision,” which “will advocate for candidates who share our commitment to breaking internal and external barriers that prevent people from realizing their full potential” according to CNN. AFP spent more than $1 million on campaigns to get Trump’s federal judicial nominations confirmed. AFP hired Sarah Field to the newly-created post of Vice President of Judicial Strategy to lead this effort. AFP states on its website, “President Trump has nominated more fair and qualified lower courts nominees than any other president in American history.” With the fall of Roe vs Wade, abortion has been returned to the states for regulation.
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF, formerly Alliance Defense Fund) is an American conservative Christian legal advocacy group focused on blocking rights and protections for LGBTQ people; expanding Christian practices within public schools and in government; and preventing access to abortion and contraception. The ADF garnered national attention in its 2014 challenge to the Affordable Care Act. In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., the Court ruled that the birth control mandate in employee funded health plans was unconstitutional. One of ADF’s goals is for Christianity to be reflected in the US legal system, based on their interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. In materials they share with donors, ADF says that they seek to spread a belief in “the framers’ original intent for the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights as it reflects God’s natural law and God’s higher law.” Christian nationalism has built a base that is ready and willing to subvert the will of the American people.
Populists propose economic and social change as dividers, not uniters. They split society into “two homogenous and antagonistic groups: the pure people on the one end and the corrupt elite on the other,” and say they’re guided by the “will of the people.” Populist economic policy claims to design policies for people who fear losing status in society, and those who believe they have been abandoned by the political establishment. The populist economic agenda focuses on single and salient political issues, over emphasizes negative aspects of international economic exchange and immigration, and/or blames foreigners or international institutions for economic difficulties. Much like other populist plutocrats who have come to power around the world, Donald Trump used anti-elite rhetoric to gain office, then performed an about-face to govern for the benefit of the very economic elites he derided as a candidate. He ran as a populist; but governed as a plutocrat.
Ayn Rand was defined by her rage, not her advocacy of a fantasy version of capitalism. Her message of creative aspiration laced with anger and cruelty, and endowed with the resulting selfishness and greed, is just the price of changing the norms of society. The individuals that Trump surrounds himself with is a collection of power- and wealth-obsessed closet Objectivists. Trump’s culture of cruelty views violence as a sacred means for addressing social problems and organizing society. His cabinet and donor lists are full of Rand fans who support neoliberal cruelty. Their cure for economic crisis is more cruelty, through which feelings of resentment, fear, anger, and loathing are enacted against the weak, who are considered a drain on the worthy. Trump calls for homeless to be put into encampments. The most consistent threat to democracy in the US has always been the drive of some leaders to restrict its blessings to a select few.
Are Republicans afraid of Trump? Actually, no – he’s destroying democracy and they love it. But these actions of the former president are possible only with the craven acquiescence of congressional Republicans. As a group, they are pushing towards replacing democracy with a system where a powerful minority holds disproportionate and borderline tyrannical control over government and blocks the majority of Americans from having meaningful say over the direction of the country. No, many Republicans clearly feel empowered by Trump. He frees them to reveal their darkest desire – which is to end democracy as we know it, and to cut any corners or break any laws necessary to get the job done. The conservative chief justices are part of the plan. Trump’s populism of the right created a culture of victimhood to use as a tool to sustain conservative politics. Limiting the public’s knowledge now becomes a precondition for cruelty.
Military spending on defense accounts for more than 10 percent of the US federal budget and nearly half of the discretionary spending. It is second-largest expense category is the military, after Social Security. The military offers a large scope of education opportunities that provides significant social advancement for many. Not only is income inequality rising in the U.S., it is higher than in other advanced economies. Only college graduates have experienced growth in median weekly earnings since 1979 (in real terms). In the United States, 21 percent of all children are in poverty, a poverty rate higher than what prevails in virtually all other rich nations. The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world – 37% of those who are both young black males and high school dropouts are now in prison or jail, a rate that’s more than three times higher than what prevailed in 1980. The top 10% of households controlled 68.2% of the total wealth in 1983 and 73.1% of the total wealth in 2007.
Where is the main resistance to change? There is a small group who have been made very wealthy by the existing system. Change is a threat to them. It is this group that loves its status quo so much that it sees its own change as an underhanded attack on its way of life. The debate is no longer how fast the ocean is rising, rather how fast will we rise to the occasion to introduce change. This is about introducing equality, justice and fairness so that it not just a perception, but a reality, that the system is no longer gamed for those at the top. Public policy analyst Robert Reich argues that “the theme that unites all of Trump’s [budget] initiatives (was) their unnecessary cruelty.” The culture of cruelty has become a primary register of the loss of democracy in the United States. There is more to introducing social change than getting rid of Trump, there is a need to change beliefs to eliminate this pervasive irrationality in which democracy is equated to unbridled capitalism.
It’s important to realize that we are not being manipulated by a clever group of powerful people who benefit from manipulating us. Rather, we are being manipulated by a deluded group of powerful people who think they benefit from it – because they buy into the basic illusion that their own well-being is separate from that of other people. They too are victims of their own propaganda, caught up in the webs of collective delusion that include virtually all of us, acting out of ignorance. Interrogating a culture of cruelty offers critics a political and moral lens for thinking through the convergence of power, politics and everyday life – to seek social change. In 2009, the President of the UN Assembly argued, “The anti-values of greed, individualism and exclusion should be replaced by solidarity, common good and inclusion. The objective of our economic and social activity … should be universal values that underpin our ethical and moral responsibility.”
1 The Secret Origins of the Tea Party (2016) Jeff Nesbitt https://time.com/secret-origins-of-the-tea-party/