The Storm is Coming

Those who benefit from the arbitrary privilege of inherited wealth are eager to pass on a privileged life to their biological children. The idea of calling privilege into question is therefore not something they are willing to consider.

The media bombards us with images of prolific consumers to persuade us to consume. The intent is to displace feelings of righteous indignation aroused by arbitrary privilege, and replace them with feelings of awe and admiration. The intent is to make sure we exhaust our resources on consumption, so no money remains to organize politically and overthrow the tyranny of the privileged. They want us living paycheck to paycheck. They want us desperate, and therefore easy to rule. If they could find a way, they would ensure we don't have a single spare moment to think, or to organize.

The junior Bush rechristens the inheritance tax "death tax" and persuades Congress to repeal it. The ruling class manipulates politics to provide privileges to their biological children. We don't even notice. We're busy idolizing privileged celebrities. The ruling class can get away with anything.

Is it moral to live in luxury while other human beings suffer? Is it moral to permit the privileged to continue their rampage of destruction? Aren't we morally obligated, as citizens of the regime that gives them shelter, to take them down?

We keep talking about "equal opportunity." And we keep failing to deliver it. Of course wealth doesn't correspond precisely to skin tone. But so long as privilege follows bloodlines, there's a race of rich and a race of poor.

When activists demanded equal opportunity in the 1960s, they understood the inheritance tax and other taxes on the rich were essential to deliver it. The rhetoric of Reagan, Clinton, Bush and Bush has persuaded us to give up on the dream of an equal opportunity society. The new regime they have created allows privileges to pass unchallenged across many generations, forming, in effect, a hereditary plutocracy. If we look at who pays for the campaigns of these rulers, we find precisely the same hereditary plutocrats whose privileges these leaders work so diligently to preserve.

Whether the poor and oppressed will wake up in time for this election cycle remains to be seen, but, sooner or later, the storm is coming.