"American Aristocracy"

In so many ways, we Americans are a mass of contradictions. We subscribe to ideals that we do not necessarily practice. Let’s look at the notion of aristocracy as a part of the American fabric.

We pride ourselves in being a nation of equals. Equality is a big issue with us. The credo, “All men are created equal,” is etched in the very foundations of our democracy. For the most part, we honestly believe there are no privileged gentry in our society. Opportunity is there for anyone willing to sacrifice and work hard. After all, that is the essence of the American Dream.

When I refer to “aristocracy,” I am not including the scores of movie personalities, rock stars, sports figures and all the others to whom we so willingly surrender up billions of our dollars a year just to vicariously savor their prowess, fame and fortune.

When I refer to “aristocracy,” I am thinking of a completely different class of people who, other than with close friends and associates, appear to be far more private, conservative in their lifestyles and a with a distinct absence of paparazzi around them. They carry a subdued aura of superiority compared to the rest of us. They are the elites who own and govern our political and economic lives. They are the ones who move in the shadows, with lives of wealth, privilege and power that most of us can only imagine. Yet, we revere them, honor them and we willingly yield up our lives to their benevolence. We feed on the opiates they dole out to us in order to dull our senses and suppress our ability to critically view them as they exist in reality. Their tentacles reach into every aspect of our lives, sapping the lifeblood of what most of us should be and which so few of us are. So much of their wealth and power derives from all they pander to us in terms of our materialistic and hedonistic appetites. They place a lot of stock in our collective ignorance. Their advertising machine has convinced us that there is no harm in easy credit and cheap goods. They have convinced us that a less than perfect body, erectile dysfunction and a whole host of other personal imperfections have reached epidemic proportions. But, fear not, for they have a program, product, regimen or pill readily available to cure any malady that may affect us. They have reduced us to an unhealthy preoccupation with the basest aspects of our human nature. All that is to be desired exists in the material and sensuous worlds they peddle. All we have to do is pay for it.

Those whom I hold most accountable for the erosion of the values that have made us a great people are the political elite inside the Beltway in Washington, D.C. They do the bidding of their wealthy benefactors, exploiting the human condition with the hope of eventually sharing in the largesse of the super-rich and multi-national corporations. They live within an amoral bubble of privilege where very different concepts of morality, integrity and entitlement exist; things they regard as their god-given right. They know better than we do what is good for us. We have created, perpetuated and deferred to this “aristocracy.” By default we have acquiesced to the belief that they really do know better than we as to what is best for us. Let’s look at just a few examples.

• NAFTA and free trade agreements are good for us. We will all be better off with this new thing referred to as “globalization.” Ask all those who have been impoverished by moving our industrial base overseas that provided us with secure jobs, a living wage and decent fringe benefits that have evaporated right before their very eyes.
• Ask those families who once lived comfortably from the income of a primary wage earner, but who are now reduced to the status of “faux” slaves, working two or three service jobs just to keep one jump ahead of the bill collector.
• Ask those who were seduced by the greed and criminal behavior of the financial institutions who sold them a bill of goods with sub-prime mortgages, easy credit and a set of false values that have convinced us we are less than ideal; the perfect personification of all that we can be for “just pennies a day.” Vanity is now our national preoccupation.
• Ask those who have given up their sons and daughters to a war based on lies and the glutoness appetites of business and political conies, few if any who have had to sacrifice one or more of their own on the altar of avarice and empire before which they worship.
• Ask those who are demonized because they resent hoards of illegal aliens pouring across our southern border, laying claim to social and economic programs into which they have paid nothing, but which are safety nets for those of us who have.
• They have given away our national treasures for commercial exploitation.
• They have given away one of the most important foundations of our democratic system of government to corporate ownership - a free and open press. What was intended to be the major watchdog on our democracy has now become the means by which big money frames their case for their own political, social and material benefit. Journalists who were once the vanguard of truth and honesty have now become regulars in the social registers of the Washington elite. The fox and the chicken now share the same circle of friends and associates. The Bob Schieffers and Bill Moyers are a dying breed and we are so much the poorer for it.
• They acknowledge the legitimacy of our vote every 2, 4 or 6 years. Once obtained they simply slide back into the Beltway Bubble to, once again, serve the oligarchy to which they are beholden, responding to our expressed concerns with canned letters, e-mails, etc., filled with latitudes and platitudes that say little and promise nothing.

Europeans have a long history of titled gentry as a part of their cultural collage. It is an honor bestowed by the vestigial remnants of royalty. Who and what they are is common and accepted knowledge. It is simply a part of their heritage.

The “American Aristocracy” represents our interests. We subscribe to the belief that they are accountable to the electorate. Instead, we go the Europeans one better without so much as a whimper; we allow them to ---

• Set their own salaries and salary increases.
• Determine their own healthcare plans, the likes of which are the envy of those of us struggling with the ever-growing burden of health care costs.
• A whole host of other perquisites and largesse of which most of us are totally unaware.
• They have only to flirt with public office in order to be rewarded with a lifetime of fat pensions and benefit plans, with rights of survivorship so their poor hapless spouses need not concern themselves with a lesser standard of living, or with having to tap into their independent wealth, which seems to be just another mysterious by-product of public service.

If the foregoing is not enough, and what I find the most galling aspect of their tenure in public office, is that we allow them to carry the title of the office they hold throughout the remainder of their lives. Therein lays the validation of American Aristocracy. Frankly, once their term of office is over, they should leave the title behind and go back to simply being known as Mr., Mrs., Miss or Ms. It would serve to remind them that they are, in the final analysis, just one of us; no more and no less. There is certainly no shame in that. No more president, congressman, ambassador, judge, councilman, etc., for a lifetime. Titles should remain with the office, not the individual.
Rather than being tainted by corruption, self-serving practices and power trips, serving in the seat of government in Washington, D.C. should be a treasured honor and a noble exercise in service and humility, not arrogance.

As our economy tanks and comes crashing down around our heads, perhaps there is an ironic grain of truth in the old adage to the effect that “the mettle of our character is tempered by the fires of adversity.” Perhaps, with impending national bankruptcy, we will no longer be able to wage immoral wars, our public coffers will no longer be a bottomless pit for the world and our for our massive give-away programs. We may just have to revisit the fact that we need to take care of one another. Just maybe we will have to acknowledge that we are all in this together, and begin to see each other as fellow human beings, sharing a common lot, and whose futures depend on all of us working together for the common good.

Blessings are sometimes manifest in strange and unexpected ways.

Cowboy Bob
March 20, 2008