Courtesy of AP, Jan 6, 2025
Last week, a blog reader commented that he would support my right to hold and express my views, even if he didn’t share my opinions. I assumed he disagreed with something I’d written, but without an explanation, I was in the dark.
Examining the essay again, I found no flaws in the argument. My topic was the unequal distribution of wealth in the country. Oligarchs might shrug off my concern, but I doubt that others do. Certainly not consumers. They are the worker bees who buy the products that create the super-rich. They’d have no objection to a fairer tax system.
Disagreements arise in a society when there is talk about transparency but little of it. Not long ago, I complained about the Shadow Docket, an occasion when the Supreme Court issues a ruling with limited explanation. Shadow banking is another murky area that invites misunderstanding. I refer to cryptocurrency and other forms of money transfers that escape federal regulations.
Billions of dark trades that affect the stock market occur daily with no accountability. Jim Cramer, a Wall Street guru, warns that trading without regulation stokes a speculative wave, further fueling the kind of risk-taking behavior that typically precedes a correction. Those who remember the speculative bubble that burst in the 2008 housing crisis would agree.
Like shadow banking, other clouds blacken the horizon. Most of us have no clue where AI and the tech billionaires are taking us. All we know is that they follow the money and will shed their moral values to do so. Katie Drummond of Wired writes that while the President’s authoritarianism is a worry, we should also be concerned about the tech industry’s complicity in Trump’s actions. (“Politics Gets Wired,” by Katie Drummond, Wired, Nov./Dec. 2025, pg. 21)
Most of us realize that excessive wealth can be weaponized. If we were ignorant before, Elon Musk taught us that lesson. After placing a $277 million bet on Trump’s presidential election, he went on to meddle in Germany’s politics. He made a show of both endeavors, but others may be more duplicitous, allowing billions in dark money to flow into our elections without a trace.
Shadow banking leads to shadow government. We got a glimpse of this when one of the super-rich donated $130 million to supplement military pay during the government shutdown. The donor may have imagined himself to be a patriot, but the rest of us should stop to consider. If that oligarch could afford to give the government $130 million on a whim, he could afford to pay higher taxes and allow the people to set priorities.
Ironically, many of us agree that the super-rich hold too much power in our society. Nonetheless, some of these same people balk at boycotts because they are inconvenient. Life without Amazon? Unimaginable!
Even so, inconvenience is the one true choice to save democracy. No white knight is racing across the plains to save it. If power is to shift to the people, then the people must shoulder the burden of change. We are the white knights, and if we fail, we become shadow people, wraiths whom men like Ted Cruz would force to live without basic rights, compliant to the wishes of our masters.
Trump’s crackdown on immigrants is a warning. If we fail to defend our civil liberties, we will lose them.
Still, I live in hope that the lesson of World War II will give us the necessary courage to resist.
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
(poem by Pastor Martin Niemoller)
Boycott Tesla, Amazon, Apple.
