Seeing tech billionaires lining up to kiss Donald Trump's ring and seeing media corporations cave to pressure from a mad king unhappy about the jokes made by their late-night jesters makes me think of John Goodman.
In the 2014 film The Gambler, Goodman's character makes an internet-famous speech about money and the freedom it can bring. He says a person's goal should be to accumulate $2.5 million, buy a house free and clear, and create a "Fortress of Solitude." There the person can live with their family and not worry about pleasing anyone else. No one can tell them what to do, because they now have "fuck-you money."
He goes on, "A wise man's life is based around 'fuck you.' The United States of America is based on 'fuck you.' You're a king? You have an army? The greatest navy in the history of the world? Fuck you. Blow me."
Goodman's character today might tell a different story today, as the mega-wealthy fawn over the king and beg him to love them.
One would think that fuck-you status had been reached by billionaires such as Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, and Bill Gates. But there they were, on the Joni Mitchell Patio -- Trump paved the paradise of Jackie Kennedy's Rose Garden and put up a parking lot of white tables and chairs with golden umbrellas.
During Trump 1.0, some people referred to his Florida home as the Southern White House. In Trump 2.0, he is turning the White House into the Northern Mar-a-lago.
The tech bros yucked it up with Trump, and Gates, of all people, praised Trump's "leadership" in artificial intelligence policies -- despite Trump eliminating foreign aid, including food and medical supplies, to Africa. Gates has spent years working and millions of his own dollars to help African communities.
Weeks before the grotesque patio love-fest, Cook gave Trump a literal gold brick in the Oval Office.
Why are these men debasing themselves this way, when, surely, they have fuck-you money? Was Goodman's character lying?
When I thought of Goodman and his speech from The Gambler, I thought of a graph that would chart the relationship of money to freedom. The line would start low, go high, and then drop again. It would represent the Mountain of Freedom.
The x-axis would represent the amount of money you have. The amount increase as you move from left to right. The y-axis represents the amount of freedom you have. It starts low and climbs as the amount of your money increases. But at some point it begins to decline. Even though your wealth increases further, your freedom diminishes.
On the left side of the chart, where you have little money, you have little freedom. Because you need money to survive, you must perform tasks you do not want to do or pretend to believe things you do not believe or pretend to like people you do not like.
As the amount of money you have increases, you gain freedom from those undesirable activities. For most Americans, this does not come until retirement. That is when we have secured enough resources (through savings or pensions and through paying off our homes) that we can live in our Fortresses of Solitude.
However, if the money line keeps rising, ironically, you can lose freedom. Either from an irrational desire to gain even more money or from a pathological fear of losing the money you have, you resume performing tasks you do not want to do or pretending to like people you do not like or pretending to believe things you do not believe.
Or the money twists you, changes you, and you begin liking people you had disliked and betraying your previous beliefs.
Zuckerberg and Company do not need any more money. They have more money than they can spend in ten lifetimes. And yet there they were, flattering an ignorant buffoon at the White House. He is a man with a fraction of their intelligence, but since he possesses no shame or scruples, he is willing to abuse his power, enabling his greed, his petty resentments, and his delusions of grandeur. And because they love their wealth more than their dignity, the wealthy suck up to him.
Meanwhile, corporations worth billions of dollars run by CEOs worth millions curry favor with the minions Trump has appointed to various federal agencies. If they have a merger in the works that needs federal approval, they are willing to silence their employees (Stephen Colbert at CBS and Jimmy Kimmel at ABC) only because Trump does not like being criticized. Other corporations are willing to eliminate their diversity, equity, and inclusion programs to avoid the regime's disfavor. They will do anything to keep the money flowing. The company store has sold its soul.
On either side of the Mountain of Freedom are valleys of enslavement: the Valley of Poverty and the Valley of Obscene Wealth.
Regular people want enough. The Rich always want more.
It is hard to tell who owns whom. Do the wealthy own their fortunes, or do their fortunes own them?
Unfortunately, under the current administration, they may end up owning the rest of us.
No comments:
Post a Comment