In its discretion, The Bulletin might or might not publish this brief letter to the editor about another botch-up by Ms. Shawna Pfeiffer in a recent issue. I have no intention of commenting on every or even many of her columns; I have every intention of showing that The Bulletin has yet to find a conservative columnist capable of informed and literate commentary, something more than a dog’s breakfast of undigested views and bilious verbiage. As I wrote,
Ms. Shawna Pfeiffer is entitled to her outrageous opinions and loose language, but she is not entitled to her factual distortions or conceptual confusions (“The Good, the bad and the ugly,” 19 July). All those who criticize the police are not filled with “rabid hatred.” The people at the 13 June rally did not report hating the police; they reported fearing the police who aimed rifles at them (even Chief Story admitted that they should not have done so). She writes that “they [officers] often sacrifice their lives for our community.” She then refers to a deputy who killed himself when he drove his car into a stationary semi—not a sacrifice, probably not a suicide, but likely a preventable accident. “Often” should mean more than one LCPD officer killed in the line of duty in the entire history of the department. She also writes about the passage of a law “which removed qualified immunity, making it possible for civil servants like police officers to be held personally liable for doing their jobs.” The law does no such thing; it holds them liable for not doing their job properly while on the job, like using excessive force which injures or kills people who should not have been injured or killed. Ms. Pfieffer speaks of “fundamentally moral stance[s]” without herself being able to make the moral distinctions necessary to moral stances.
She shows herself unaware of or indifferent to the traditionally skewed legal conditions of law enforcement which enable police officers to assume that they are the law as far as citizens are concerned and above the law as far as they themselves are concerned.
Perhaps Ms. Pfeiffer missed the LCPD’s recruitment video posted a few weeks ago. (Thanks to Heath Haussamen, I did not miss it.). Police Chief Jeremy Story talks about the importance of good police-citizen relationships, but his video with his voice takes an antagonistic line. He asks its viewers whether they like to run and then shows film clips of officers chasing suspects. Story appeals to prospective goons, not “good guys.” (Will they serve in his five SWAT vehicles?) His video suggests nothing other or better in the way of public service. It shows us what Story’s professional priorities of the LCPD really are—not the right ones, only hazards to the city.
When it comes to antagonist relationships, class warfare is about as good as it gets. Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill, which embodies the old maxim, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, is its latest instance. The phrase is often associated with Marxism and, by sloppy association, with the Left. But Marxism is not the only or even the first analysis of society by class, defined by economics with cultural, political, and social ramifications. Long before him, there was Robin Hood, and with him, there were two classes, the rich to be robbed, and the poor to be given.
So, from the beginning, the largest part of politics was concerns about the distribution or concentration of wealth: policy issues about who gets what. Like Marx, but not Marx only, Democrats make the wide distribution of wealth their primary concern, and Republicans see this distribution as a kind of societally sanctioned robbery. The Democrats’ defense of the distribution of wealth is the necessity of providing at least a minimum of economic benefits for all. To Republicans, such distributional policies deprive them of what they believe themselves entitled to by virtue of their inherent moral superiority. In America, the idea goes back to the Puritans, who believed that material success signified God’s grace upon the elect; today, the elite believe it is their deserving. Not surprisingly, this sense of moral superiority translates into or accompanies various forms of bigotry: racism, sexism, elitism—, etc.
The result: competition for or differential possession of wealth among classes, or class warfare. The current disaffection with and within the Democratic Party reflects the disconnect between the party establishment, which is seen as elitist in its affiliation with the uber-rich and celebrities, and its natural constituency, the lower and middle classes. Talk about the price of eggs or gasoline is superficial because their prices reflect macroeconomic forces over which neither the President nor Congress has much control. Talk about job security in an age of rapid technological change—the real fear of replacement—and wealth inequality is significant because the President and Congress can influence, if not control, these conditions. Talk of the latter reflects the possibility of control, as the infuriated responses of America's one-percenters indicate. But Republicans are not less waging class warfare, though they do not use such terms. With one exception: some years ago, a notable plutocrat whose name I no longer remember [I have been informed the man is Warren Buffet] admitted that the rich were engaged in class warfare and claimed that they were winning. Instead, they mostly silently wage it without slogans by cutting welfare and education programs, among many others benefitting millions of ordinary Americans. The closest thing to a slogan is their appeal to “opportunity,” which costs them nothing and puts nothing on anyone’s plate.
The struggle for democracy in America involves powerful economic forces. As is increasingly obvious to most Americans, the uber-rich have the financial resources to warp elections to their purposes. Citizens United, the Supreme Court’s absurd, even obscene, decision which equated money and speech—like mobster-speak, money talks—gave plutocrats unparalleled power to influence elections, that is, weaken the ability of the electorate to give the true “consent of the governed.” The remedy, if this fever of autocratic tendency does not destroy democracy, will have to include a non-regressive redistribution of wealth. The means will have to include radical tax reform: multiple tax brackets reflecting the value of money, graduated annual wealth taxes, and graduated estate taxes. As it is, the rich do not contribute their fair and an affordable share to the welfare of the country which has made them rich. Their reinvestment of tax cuts in the economy is a small percentage of their total investments, most of which are in second, third or more homes; jets; yachts; works of art, jewelry, and yet more stocks and bonds. Bottom line: billionaires are not worth very much to society, and millionaires are not worth much more.
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