by digby
I have a piece up at Salon today about the way our political system is evolving into a competition between the liberal billionaire and the conservative billionaires. There are far fewer liberal billionaires --- and they aren't fighting the same fight as the conservative billionaires are:
It’s ironic that there was such consternation across the liberal landscape that a magazine that for many decades positioned itself as the home of liberal establishment contrarianism and only under Chris Hughes seemed to be turning itself into a publication with a much more straight-ahead ideology. But the upshot of the whole episode seems to be that people thought Hughes bought the magazine as a way to advance a political philosophy and it turned out that really wasn’t his goal. And it raises an important issue: In this new world of billionaires in politics, where everything seems to be coming down to a sort of cage match between billionaires on the left and billionaires on the right, can liberals count on “their” billionaires to put their money where their hearts are?
This has actually been a long-standing discussion among activists on the left. Setting aside the natural worries about rich people of all political bents keeping one eye on their bottom lines, many liberal donors prefer to put their efforts toward specific charitable efforts they care about. It’s very hard to argue with it — those good deeds are necessary. But it is a very different approach to the way the right-wingers go about using their money to advance their political ideology and directly influence the political process itself.
Now one cannot really fault someone like Tom Steyer who is dedicating a lot of his money to fighting climate change. That is one issue that is so profoundly threatening to the entire planet that you have to be grateful to anyone for putting their fortunes to work to fix it. But so many others are either like Hughes, who everyone thought was political but just turned out to be another tech entrepreneur putting his skills to work in the political field for a brief period, or they are dedicated to their specific causes and allegiance to mainstream Democratic Party politics. And that is definitely not what the Murdochs and the Kochs and the Adelsons and the Foster Friesses are all about. They are attempting to dominate the political process by using their money to directly influence the ideological and political makeup of our society. They leave no stone unturned. From Fox News to think tanks to super PACs to political campaigns they are using their fortunes to actively change American politics. Oddly, unlike their liberal counterparts, they seem to respect state power.
I don't think putting our faith in billionaires is a very good way to achieve progressive goals. At the moment it has to be part of the mix, however, simply because the .001% is so awash in money that they can dominate the system without even feeling it. But they need to be educated about the necessity of engaging systemically in the same way the right wing billionaires are doing.
So next time you are hanging out with your favorite lefty billionaire pal, give them a clue ok?
.
0 comments:
Post a Comment