Trump and politicians are a distraction

Trump and the circus of conservative politicians around the world are a distraction from the real deep state of selfish billionaires funding organisations to ensure they remain in ultimate power.

People like Trump and Musk are narcissists, with the emotional stability of teenagers, and they lack the self-awareness to be true Dark Triad psychopaths. This does open them to being manipulated by those who are, especially those like Rupert Murdoch whose specialty is Machiavellianism, seen in how they pride themselves on being political kingmakers. Trump may appear to be a loose cannon, but they are allowed free reign to be outrageous because while everybody is focussed on them, attention is not on how Trump's wealthy backers are sabotaging and dismantling democracy under our feet.

These billionaires are not interested in democracy or countries or the welfare of their citizens. They will happily shunt money out of the way of taxing by governments unless it is on their own low-or-zero tax terms. Trump and others just provide a convenient cover for those nefarious activities, giving the manipulative money-hoarders time to further shore up support for their cause by funding lobbyists and organisations to bias elections and public policy.

It is a case of rampant corruption of politicians and thus democracy. The conservative agenda is about putting capital as the most important consideration of society, with support from religious philosophies that are based upon the idea that monetary abundance is evidence of being favoured by God, conveniently forgetting the lies, deception and unhealthy employment conditions that have gone into making it.

The clue to the coordination of the corrupting effort is how similar the rhetoric and operational playbooks are between the various wannabee dictators around the world being funded by the same organisations, and stirring up the same white supremacy sentiments, conspiracy theories about their opponents and the masses of lies and real fake-news.

Of course, the real question is why these people are willing to sink the planet and trample over people's welfare just to make more money than what they already cannot ever use. It's atrocious greed that they have managed to get moral support for by appealing to the greed and aspirations of the middle classes with tax cuts from politicians, though the rich are themselves the biggest beneficiaries.

Manufactured economic disparities, exploitation and rampant corruption have hobbled many peoples' ability to change their circumstances, giving further opportunity for the greedy rich to sabotage the economies of poorer countries, entrenching widespread poverty, and so feeding the exploitation cycle for the next generation.

Nowhere is the stupidity of their rationale more evident than the continued funding of efforts to undermine action upon climate change, which will only hurt their own childrens' future. However, I suspect that is why Bezos and Musk are funding space travel for the rich, possibly as their way off the planet that their exploitation has sped upon a path to humanity's doom.

Economically, the most productive times in recent decades have been in times of high taxation, especially of the rich. Perhaps it is time to go back to that. Some may try to argue that that means many of the rich will want to take their money and live elsewhere. The counter argument is that we are probably better off without their exploitation, and there would still be plenty of people with the requisite expertise to run big corporations extremely competently without excessively high remuneration packages, or the need to engage in punitive employment practices to enable that.

It appears clear that the handling of climate change and extreme wealth differentials will both require dealing with the greed of the same few, which makes the solution a lot clearer: take the money off them, as their willingness to sacrifice the earth and humanity shows that they are not entitled to keep it. Money only gets its value by our belief in it, and the support we give to its use. In a democracy, especially when faced with existential threats from its misuse, we must ensure its proper use.

It used to be said that some companies were too big to allow to fail. We are faced with the reality that a greedy few are the cause of our failure, just as they were the cause of the failures that led to the bailing out measures, just as their greedy forebears profited from the most destructive wars on the planet. It may be time to let those companies fail, and deal with the disruption, as that would enable us to setup better structures more fitting to where we want society to move towards. Spend the bailout money on better infrastructure rather than furthering exploitation.

It is time for us to own up to the responsibility we have to the planet and humanity to undo the folly of money being our master, and make it fulfil its promise of being an enabler of social mobility and opportunities to use our free will to make a fairer society.