Citizens United, Perhaps

One-hundred and three days until the November 2012 elections and everything has settled into a predictable pattern. Unlike the 2008 election cycle when Barrack and Hilary were wedgying each other down to the wire, and John McCain was trying to re-learn how to smile, the nominees of the two relevant political parties have been obvious for some time, which has allowed them to go full bore with expending the gross national product of several South American nations trying to convince us what a turd the other guy is.

The role of money in political campaigns is an issue that is almost as old as the nation itself. Somebody had to pay for the hay for Washington’s horse as he rode around fathering the nation. The National Archives are replete with posters opposing Free Silver, supporting the Kansas-Nebraska Act and making fun of Millard Fillmore. Somebody had to pay for that stuff. There has never been a time in human civilization when the wealthy and the powerful didn’t have a disproportionate influence on the development of public policy.

The difference today is the sad reality of who the wealthy and powerful are. A thousand years ago, if you wanted to be the Viking king, you had to at least kick ass on a few dozen big, hairy Vikings and be able to hold your liquor. People listened to you because they knew you would smack them with the broad side of a battle ax if they didn’t, but they also knew that you would kick ass on any unwelcome invaders and that you would bring home the booty. The Viking king would be among the first to die if shit went south; he had not just authority but responsibility and accountability. Certainly he had privilege, but he had earned it by what he contributed to society. Even the 19th Century Robber Barons, with all their unethical and exploitive practices, actually accomplished something positive. They built railroads and steel mills and ships and factories. They got obscenely rich, but their objectives were almost never purely wealth; they had visions and dreams. They may have squashed a lot of decent, hard-working people along the way, but the nation got something in return, including a fresh understanding of how much it sucked to be exploited, which led to 20th Century liberalism.

Wealth in present day America is real mixed bag, but the super-wealthy tend to have one thing in common; they haven’t done shit for anybody, except perhaps their shareholders. The typical billionaire is either an inheritor living off the genius of past generations, has made their money speculating in commodities and stock markets, got rich charging you $30 for every bounced check, or earned hundreds of millions of dollars laying Americans off and exploiting Chinese peasants. While these may be gross and unsupportable generalizations, I am firmly committed to them being correct. There are, of course, always exceptions. Bill Gates, for example, is fabulously wealthy because he transformed civilization as we know it, for better or worse. Interestingly, people who have acquired great wealth through invention and initiative appear to be more likely to use their wealth for positive social change and addressing the needs of the unfortunate, unlike the Koch brothers.

Heaven forbid that we have any class warfare in our classless capitalist utopia, but I just think that if we are going to have people using unlimited wealth to promote political points of view, that it would be nice if they actually knew something or cared about something besides their own economic benefit. Freedom is not any guarantee of quality and no rules or laws are likely to protect us from the cold reality that some pigs are more equal than others, but if we start demanding that people have actually done something worth a shit before we pay any attention to their braying, then things might make a little more sense. As always, we Americans are masters of our own destiny to the extent that we choose to be. We don’t need the Supreme Court to protect us, and they won’t anyway.