Why do we empower rich people and weaken democratic government?

One thing that limits how much I try to convince people that Donald Trump is an awful person who should never have been given power (yes, I would actually be trying more) is this: It’s so PLAINLY OBVIOUS. Seeing Trump on TV in the 1980s, sneering down at the common people from his gold-plated penthouse, I could instantly tell he was a bad person. I thought everyone, even kids like me, knew this: Good people don’t brag about being rich. The more you brag about being rich the worse a person you probably are, and Donald Trump’s entire personality and career is based on bragging about being rich. He should have been laughed into obscurity, or maybe slightly-pitied-for-his-sad-vanity into obscurity. Instead, millions voted for him to be president.

To Nazi, oops I mean to NOT SEE and reject obvious-bad-guy Trump, the 77,284,118 people who voted for him last year must have an incredibly different way of viewing people and the world than I do. I’m going to speculate about those differences and hopefully maybe get to some kind of useful insight about where our thinking goes astray and how we could do better.

 

Difference #1: We differ in how we think people get rich, and what we think wealth indicates about character. Some people associate wealth with positive traits, some associate it with negative traits, or just luck.

Positive View: Wealth is a sign of____

Hard work

Intelligence/Creativity

Contribution to society; Productivity

Goodness; Being rewarded by God

 

Negative View: Wealth is a sign of____

Selfishness/Stinginess/Greed

Ruthlessness; Willingness to cheat and exploit others

Luck- especially the hereditary luck of being born to rich parents

The advantages of attending elite private schools and colleges and entering the high-society "Good ol' Boys" club

Corruption/Collusion; Benefitting from a political system you’ve twisted in your favor

The various “rich get richer” feedback loops in our economic system

 

I think it’s a combination of these positive and negative things that lead to individual wealth, and the relative amounts of different causes of richness varies from one rich person to the next. Not all rich people are purely evil, is what I’m saying. But generally, I think richness comes more from luck and negative traits than wealthy people would like to admit. I also think we Americans are WAY too gracious in how we think about rich people as noble heroes while denigrating poor people as trash. This kind of thinking, which is encouraged by media owned by rich people for whom its important muffle class grievances, makes it easy for rich people to stay rich and get richer while avoiding criticism for bad behavior.

 

Difference #2: We differ in beliefs about “the government” and “the elites.” A common thing about people who’ve embraced Trump seems to be a super strong belief that government, per se, is bad, and therefore anyone who cheats the government or fights the government is good. The story goes like this: There’s a democrat / deep state “elite” that does not work in the public interest and needs to be destroyed by a strongman like Trump who will then recreate a government that is truly by and for the people… or maybe just reign as a benign dictator. The details of what’s supposed to happen after the strongman destroys the government aren’t very clear, which I wish was a matter of greater concern for his supporters.

I agree that government CAN be bad, and sometimes it’s necessary to resist, reform, or even overthrow the government. However, the democratic governments we form are also our only means of protecting ourselves (everyday people) from being exploited by actual elites- the ultra-wealthy and powerful like Trump, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Robert Murdoch, etc.

Also, much of the dysfunction of government that gets people upset today is because of how it has been beat up and weakened over the decades by the corruption of big-business influences. Handing the steering wheel of government directly to those big-business influences is not helpful. The GOP’s biggest lie is saying they’re taking power from the elites and giving it to the common people, when actually they’re doing EXACTLY the opposite in such an obvious way that I’m astounded more people don’t see it.