In 2010, I wrote an article for
TomDispatch using a word that’s rarely
applied to the United States:
kleptocracy.
Using the magic of the Internet, Nancy
Pelosi’s net worth is currently $165
million. Mitch McConnell is a relative piker
at $95 million, though much of that seems to
have come from a family inheritance. Hillary
Clinton infamously received $675,000 for
three speeches to Goldman Sachs; her net
worth is currently about $120 million. Just
about every politician in the DC area (there
must be a few exceptions, right?) cashes in,
whether in or out of office. Those few who
don’t, I imagine, are considered to be saps,
suckers, and losers to the many who do
enrich themselves.
I’ve read more than a few U.S. government
officials complaining about kleptocracy in
places like Afghanistan and Iraq while under
U.S. occupation and also now Ukraine as that
country is flooded with U.S. dollars in the
name of freedom and democracy. As I asked
back in 2010, shouldn’t we be flattered as
other peoples imitate what America is really
all about: making and taking money without
regard to any “rules-based order”?
Anyhow, here's my article from 2010,
unchanged.
Kleptocracy—now, there’s a
word I was taught to associate with
corrupt and exploitative governments that
steal ruthlessly and relentlessly from the
people. It’s a word, in fact, that’s usually
applied to flawed or failed governments in
Africa, Latin America, or the nether regions
of Asia. Such governments are typically led
by autocratic strong men who shower
themselves and their cronies with all the
fruits of extracted wealth, whether stolen
from the people or squeezed from their
country’s natural resources. It’s not a word
you’re likely to see associated with a
mature republic like the United States led
by disinterested public servants and
regulated by more-or-less transparent
principles and processes.
In fact, when Americans today wish to
critique or condemn their government, the
typical epithets used are “socialism” or
“fascism.” When my conservative friends are
upset, they send me emails with links to
material about
“ObamaCare” and the like. These
generally warn of a future socialist
takeover of the private realm by an
intrusive, power-hungry government. When my
progressive friends are upset, they send me
emails with links pointing to an incipient
fascist takeover of our public and
private realms, led by that same intrusive,
power-hungry government (and, I admit it,
I’m
hardly innocent when it comes to such
“what if” scenarios).
What if, however, instead of looking at
where our government might be
headed, we took a closer look at where we
are—at the power-brokers who run or
influence our government, at those who are
profiting and prospering from it? These are,
after all, the “winners” in our American
world in terms of the power they wield and
the wealth they acquire. And shouldn’t we be
looking as well at those Americans who are
losing—their jobs, their money, their homes,
their healthcare, their access to a better
way of life—and asking why?
If we were to take an honest look at
America’s blasted landscape of “losers” and
the far shinier, spiffier world of
“winners,” we’d have to admit that it wasn’t
signs of onrushing socialism or fascism that
stood out, but of staggeringly
self-aggrandizing greed and theft right in
the here and now. We’d notice our public
coffers being emptied to benefit major
corporations and financial institutions
working in close alliance with, and
passing onremarkable sums of money to,
the representatives of “the people.” We’d
see, in a word, kleptocracy on a scale to
dazzle. We would suddenly see an almost
magical disappearing act being performed,
largely without comment, right before our
eyes.
Of Red Herrings and Missing
Pallets of Money
Think of socialism and fascism as the red
herrings of this moment or, if you’re an old
time movie fan, as Hitchcockian
MacGuffins—in other words, riveting
distractions. Conservatives and tea partiers
fear invasive government regulation and
excessive taxation, while railing against
government takeovers—even as
corporate lobbyists write our public
healthcare bills to favor private interests.
Similarly, progressives rail against an
emergent proto-fascist corps of private
guns-for-hire,
warrantless wiretapping, and the
potential government-approved
assassination of U.S. citizens, all
sanctioned by a perpetual, and apparently
open-ended, state of war.
Yet, if this is socialism, why are
private health insurers the government’s
go-to guys for healthcare coverage? If this
is fascism, why haven’t the secret police
rounded up tea partiers and progressive
critics as well and sent them to the
lager or the gulag?
Consider this: America is not now, nor
has it often been, a hotbed of political
radicalism. We have no substantial socialist
or workers’ party. (Unless you’re deluded,
please don’t count the corporate-friendly
“Democrat” party here.) We have no
substantial fascist party. (Unless you’re
deluded, please don’t count the cartoonish
“tea partiers” here; these
predominantly white, graying, and
fairly affluent Americans seem most
worried that the jackbooted thugs will be
coming for them.)
What drives America today is, in fact,
business—just as was true in the days of
Calvin Coolidge. But it’s not the
fair-minded “free enterprise” system touted
in those freshly revised
Texas guidelines for American history
textbooks; rather, it’s a rigged system of
crony capitalism that increasingly ends in
what, if we were looking at some other
country, we would recognize as an unabashed
kleptocracy.
Recall, if you care to, those
pallets stacked with hundreds of
millions of dollars that the Bush
administration sent to Iraq and which,
Houdini-like, simply disappeared. Think of
the ever-rising cost of our wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, now
in excess of a trillion dollars, and
just whose pockets are
full, thanks to them.
If you want to know the true state of our
government and where it’s heading, follow
the money (if you can) and remain vigilant:
our kleptocratic Houdinis are hard at work,
seeking to make yet more money vanish from
your pockets—and reappear in theirs.
From Each According to His
Gullibility—To Each According to His Greed
Never has the old adage my father used to
repeat to me—”the rich get richer and the
poor poorer”—seemed fresher or truer. If you
want confirmation of just where we are
today, for instance, consider this passage
from a
recent piece by Tony Judt:
In 2005, 21.2 percent of U.S.
national income accrued to just 1 percent of
earners. Contrast 1968, when the CEO of
General Motors took home, in pay and
benefits, about sixty-six times the amount
paid to a typical GM worker. Today the CEO
of Wal-Mart earns nine hundred times the
wages of his average employee. Indeed, the
wealth of the Wal-Mart founder’s family in
2005 was estimated at about the same ($90
billion) as that of the bottom 40 percent of
the U.S. population: 120 million people.
Wealth concentration is only one aspect
of our increasingly kleptocratic system.
War profiteering by corporations
(however well disguised as heartfelt support
for our heroic warfighters) is another.
Meanwhile, retired senior military officers
typically
line up to cash in on the kleptocratic
equivalent of welfare, peddling their
“expertise” in return for
impressive corporate and Pentagon
payouts that supplement their six-figure
pensions. Even that putative champion of the
Carhartt-wearing common folk, Sarah Palin,
pocketed a cool
$12 million last year without putting
the slightest dent in her populist bona
fides.
Based on such stories, now legion,
perhaps we should rewrite George Orwell’s
famous tagline from Animal Farm as:
All animals are equal, but a few are so
much more equal than others.
And who are those “more equal” citizens?
Certainly, major corporations, which now
enjoy a kind of political
citizenship and the largesse of a
federal government eager to rescue them from
their financial mistakes, especially when
they’re
judged “too big to fail.” In raiding the
U.S. Treasury,
big banks and investment firms,
shamelessly ready to
jack up executive pay and bonuses even
after accepting billions in taxpayer-funded
bailouts, arguably outgun militarized
multinationals in the conquest of the public
realm and the extraction of our wealth for
their benefit.
Such kleptocratic outfits are, of course,
abetted by thousands of lobbyists and by
politicians who thrive off corporate
campaign contributions. Indeed, many of our
more prominent public servants have proved
expert at spinning through the
revolving door into the private sector.
Even ex-politicians who prefer to be seen as
sympathetic to the little guy like former
House Majority Leader
Dick Gephardt eagerly cash in.
I’m Shocked, Shocked, to Find
Profiteering Going on Here
An old Roman maxim enjoins us to “let
justice be done, though the heavens fall.”
Within our kleptocracy, the prevailing
attitude is an insouciant “We’ll get ours,
though the heavens fall.” This mindset marks
the decline of our polity. A spirit of
shared sacrifice, dismissed as hopelessly
naïve, has been replaced by a form of
tribalized privatization in which insiders
find ways to profit no matter what.
Is it any surprise then that, in seeking
to export our form of government to Iraq and
Afghanistan, we’ve produced not two model
democracies, but two emerging kleptocracies,
fueled respectively by oil and opium?
When we confront corruption in
Iraq or
Afghanistan, are we not like the police
chief in the classic movie Casablanca
who is
shocked, shocked to find gambling going
on at Rick’s Café, even as he accepts his
winnings?
Why then do we bother to feign shock when
Iraqi and Afghan elites, a tiny minority,
seek to enrich themselves at the expense of
the majority?
Shouldn’t we be flattered? Imitation,
after all, is the sincerest form of
flattery. Isn’t it?
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