English

Partisan Politics and the Road to Plutocracy

As billionaires dance in the halls of the second Trump administration, it’s haunting how well Plutarch’s two-thousand-year-old words describe the state of American politics. It’s a barren landscape of plutocratic insatiability. How did it get this way? One way to tell the story is to look at the battle between the ruling class and everyone else — a battle which elites are obviously winning. But another way to understand the struggle is to look at the war between factions of the ruling class — a battle that plays out largely within partisan politics. On this partisan front, the historical backdrop is that for forty years, Republicans have been playing a political shell game. As Jay Michaelson puts it, Republicans “appear populist … but act plutocrat”. What’s disorienting is that this shell game has worked. Although Republicans have historically governed for the benefit of the rich, they have recently rebranded themselves (successfully, it seems) as the party of the working class. Is this new Republican messaging sincere? Or is it gaslighting? Well, Trump’s billionaire-stacked administration is quickly answering the question for us. However, this essay is not primarily about Trump, n

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