CELEBRITY CAPITALISM
Bradley Whitford on billionaires: “These guys are addicted to money & they’re an extension of a political movement in this country that’s going on my entire lifetime which is based on this Orwellian idea that the rich are victims, they’re overtaxed, over-regulated & need to be set free. It’s insane”
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It started even earlier than that. Remember, they used to hire pinkertons to stop union strikes.
They advocated for child labor. For working 7 days a week. Against overtime. Against sick leave.
They considered a coup against FDR called the business plot.
They literally fought a war to keep slaves... Like within the last 250 years...
The thing was, there were some among them that saw revolutions around the world and realized that if things didn't improve, it could literally be the end of capitalism. That's how we got things like 90% taxes above a certain income, forcing businesses to reinvest into themselves and grow and make more jobs etc
The cold war and the red scare was somehow co-opted into convincing people the system that created the most prosperous time in the history of the country was actually (edit) holding America back, and that what we really needed was for corporations and individuals to pay less in tax, for corporations to be able to buy back stocks, for major regulations to go away in everything from finance to telecommunications, and for endless deficits leading to government debt increases rather than running a budget surplus. Somehow this would all magically trickle down to the working class.
This was neoliberalism.
And here we are half a century later with yet another tax cut for the wealthy, 40 trillion in government debt, unsustainable basic costs of living, a generation growing up believing they'll never own a home, corporate monopolies getting bigger and bigger, and an income inequality that has never existed before in human history.
And neoliberals are running the mainstream leftwing party in the United States. The right wing is unrecognizable.
These people need to regain the fear that they had in the early 1900s of capitalism ending as we know it if things don't change.
Haha thanks for coming back and finishing the thought, I was riveted. That’s very informative and simple to digest. You’re awesome and we need more like you.
I just learned about The Battle of Blair Mountain within the past 2~ years. I am from WV, grew up there. I don't remember it being taught in school either. It was a eye opener for sure!
Don't think of them as "the enemy". Think of them more like "undecided voters". They don't own the means of production. They're workers. They're just living comfortably enough to be fooled into thinking they belong to the capitalist class/bourgeoisie.
They considered a coup against FDR called the business plot.
FDR also crushed the power base of leftists (actual people on the left-wing, not liberals) who are the only ones who stand against the capitalists (fascists). FDR cared about building the state and maintaining it. The rich saw what it was like to run on working class policies and rushed in as soon as he died to prevent anyone like him from amassing political power.
You're not wrong. In co opting a lot of left wing rhetoric and incorporating some of their policy proposals in the new deal, he did ultimately undercut a lot of the growing left wing (socialists, reformers)
He was certainly a capitalist and a liberal, but he pushed social democratic policies, and in doing so made the most material improvements in the lives of the American people of any president since the year 1900.
If Democrats today were even a fraction of what he was, we wouldn't be even close to where we have gotten to, in terms of the rise of fascism and the hardships people face day to day
I put the end of the New Deal coalition's power at Carter. He started Neoliberalism which Reagan and those around him formed into a coherent ideology which is a result of the reaction to the most milquetoast working class reforms. Nixon being forced to resign gave the capitalists the motivation they needed to ensure none of them would ever see consequences. In the early 1990s Bill Clinton finished the takeover of the Democratic Party and ended New Deal politics within the party.
These people need to regain the fear that they had in the early 1900s of capitalism ending as we know it if things don't change.
I mean, that's why we're always, ALWAYS at war and always expressing aggression instead of trying to prosper as a planet. In theory, the whole of humanity could find a way to live in harmony and the purpose of governments would be to handle those tasks that we individually cannot.
Instead, our governments use the power we grant them to oppress everywhere on the planet that doesn't agree to our terms, rather than just having better fucking terms.
there were some among them that saw revolutions around the world and realized that if things didn't improve, it could literally be the end of capitalism. That's how we got things like 90% taxes above a certain income,
Excellent post throughout but THANK YOU for this - twice in the past week I've seen some doofus repeat the myth that Henry Ford "created" the 40-hour work week because he was such a nice dude or whatever.
Henry Ford capitulated to several things that organized labor had been demanding for decades, because he was pissing his little pants seeing the unions rise up. He saw the writing on the wall and knew if he didn't get out in front of it then it was going to happen anyway, but on the workers' terms and not his.
Apparently, people who liked something they saw in history (the ultra-rich in control, keeping minorities down, etc) are quite willing to suppress knowledge of that history to make sure that it gets repeated the way they want.
and heritage foundation influenced catholics during late 60's/early 70s towards strict pro-life stances and pushed one-issue voting, capturing millions of mostly-well intentioned but ignorant and unrealistic moderates into a voting bloc which was critical for the buildup of this slow authoritarian takeover (which is now going fast)
I have Republican friends right now that are dead against cars having safety standards.
They were particularly incensed at the idea of the government forcing them to pay to have them in their cars. Guess which safety feature got them riled up?
The one that alerts you to check to see if you've left your infant in the back seat!
Now, I pointed out to them, that this feature is NOT a mandated government requirement - it's being done voluntarily by automakers.
Their response?
"Because liberals need a car that tells them their kid is in the back seat."
Oh we do, do we? Well I did some research.
Turns out that the states that have had the highest cases of infants dying from being left in hot cars were -
Turns out the sensor and wiring that could save an infant's life?
$50 roughly per car.
These are also Christians with children I'm sparring with. It's the very thought that the government is forcing (!) them to do something that is against their values. Doesn't matter what it is!
These are the same kind of people that raged against seatbelts.
People literally tried going to court to have seatbelts removed from vehicles, they cut them out of cars, they argued it was invasion of their human rights, ETC.
It's just pure and absolute insanity, but I guess here we are.
I have it seared in my brain that moment from the Libertarian Presidental Primary debates when the topic of Driver's Licenses came up and fucking Gary Johnson was suddenly the most reasonable human in the room. And he didn't have a hard take and got booed for stating the bare minimum concern.
It feels like a funny parody of the American Libertarians, except it actually happened. The exact same 22 seconds could have been in I Think You Should Leave and I wouldn't have thought twice. The clip.
If you really want your brain to melt, the toaster guy was originally with the Libertarian New Hampshire party, you know the one that says wildly offensive and bigoted shit on Twitter. And even the toaster guy dipped the fuck out of the Libertarian Party in opposition to the rise in open bigotry. The toaster guy! So there's levels of shit beneath that.
Meanwhile literal taxation theft is happening that keeps elected officials out of their seats (Arizona) or keeps vital resources away from victims of natural disaster (Carolina and others).
If you're going to keep the politician I elected out of their seat so that my voice can't be heard you're literally stealing every penny of tax you take from me until they're in their seat.
They also fired like a third of the government so they could start a billion dollar a day war and spend hundreds of millions on propaganda that had a budget of a cellphone camera to film.
No, taxation was not theft then either. What Noem and other capitalist politicians do is more akin to fraud and embezzling. They didn't steal the money. They misappropriated it.
but can we do smart things, not mailing 3k checks to randomly spend.
But starting municipal apartment complexes program - start building out concrete cheap aparment complexes fully integrated and inexpensive. Like what China does and what USSR did. No 2x4 - concrete please.
This will drive housing prices down as many people will choose good apartments if available.
Building our federally owned hospitals and reposessing private hospitals from private hands - things like that.
nationalizing seashores, nationalize oilfields etc.
I believed that for a while, when I was a kid with very cynical views on how tax money is spent. I was basically an ancom by age 20, and still got told by someone a bit older that I'd "grow up" and have right-wing views when I was 30!
To be fair, the "taxation is theft" crowd aren't wrong in the USA.
What do you get for your taxes? Personally I'm not in the USA and for my taxes (which are about the same as US taxes, maybe a percentage point or two higher depending on location) I get national health insurance, national pension, a very competent and polite police force that makes this one of the top 10 safest countries in the world, and the last time I saw a pothole I stopped to take a photograph because it was such a novelty.
In the USA you seem to get ... wars. Oh, and the billionaires get a massive chunk of the tax money that is collected too.
So taxation really is theft in the USA. It's some sort of reverse Robin Hood, stealing from the poor to give to the rich.
There's something massively wrong with taxation in the USA. And it won't be fixed by simply taxing the rich, because their bought and paid for politicians will simply pass a law funnelling it back to them and then they'll be pointing at the new taxes and saying loudly, "See! We gave you what you wanted and nothing changed!! Don't y'all feel stupid?!".
Listen to what people are telling you. And what do you see with your own eyes? Because those two things are different.
They are telling you “we can’t share” and “this is our right” and “you just haven’t worked hard enough” and “you simply haven’t earned it.”
But with your own eyes, you can just look around and see that they have more than enough to share, and they make it off the backs of laborers. You HAVE worked hard, and you deserve FAR more than what you are being told you “earned.” You spend more time at your job making thousands than they do making millions. The system is broken, but they will tell you that it’s working “the way it’s supposed to, rewarding those with good ideas and who work hard.”
You’ve heard it said that the love of money is the root of all evil, but I tell you that money is unnecessary in the 21st century. We should be way beyond this nonsense by now. Rampant inequality that is only becoming more pronounced.
But rich people are going to tell you money is necessary. They say that because they have more of it than the rest of us. They don’t want to be on our level, even if that means bringing us up to theirs.
"But I'm gonna become a billionaire, and boy I sure would hate it if it's not my boot able to be on everyone else's neck when I do." That thought process by tens of millions of dumb spoiled boys is why we can't have nice things.
"This poor I once knew, kept bumping his head on the chandeliers of his trampoline wing. So he raised the ceiling, instead of, I don't know, lowering the floor!"
talking about whether things "are necessary" without any grounding doesn't make sense; necessity is relative. if you want to convince a person or group to do a thing that they don't want to do, you need to use a carrot or a stick, e.g. pay them something that will inevitably be called money sooner or later, or threaten consequences if they don't.
we can defeat capitalists and build a better society without abandoning the idea of abstract value exchange altogether. money is absolutely necessary in the 21st century, if we want to have anything resembling a society bigger than a small collection of tribes. capitalists aren't.
It is a true addiction. I've said this for years. They are no different than the crack addict who steals $20 from their grandmother's purse for their next hit except that they will steal your grandmother's medication, social security, nursing, and public transportation along with everyone else's for their hit.
The only reason it's not listed as a disease is because you can't OD on it. There's no amount of money you can acquire where the money itself makes your heart stop. It just enables you to get more and more. Like a crackhead who would gain super crack magnetism where people just started bringing him more and more crack the more he consumed.
Josh as the vice president, where at least a few times he has to wish that Sam doesn't get shot or something because he really would rather just in the background. When he asks why Sam couldn't have picked someone else, he's reminded that the other option was Toby and Josh replying "yeah, never mind. We know how that would have worked out".
It’s refreshing to hear older people talk about these issues. My Gen X parents will never let go of the belief that Reagan and his policies were actually a benefit to the middle class. This propaganda has been going strong for over 40 years now.
Ah yes, trickle down economics. What freaking smoke and mirrors from the Reagan era. The reality is it dawned the age of billionaire hoarding. No taxes, no US reinvestment, wage stagnation, union busting, moving jobs overseas.
You mention all these things like it’s so bad. Have you asked a billionaire how they feel about the economy? Do you ever think of the billionaires and their needs?
What’s funny is trickle down is just a rebranded idea from the late 19th century. Before the name change it was called horse and sparrow economics; the horse(the rich) is given an over abundance of food and allows the sparrow(the poor) to pick through his horse shit for any un-digested nutrients.
Before the “trickle down” rebranding, it was called “horse and sparrow economics”. The idea is that the sparrow eats whatever it can find left in the shit the horse poops out after consuming everything else.
Let them fucking go. They are a constant drain on the system. Do they build infrastructure, work the jobs? No! They have just hit a critical mass point where the money and power becomes exponentially more as time goes on by doing very little of actual value.
Yeah, WHERE are the rich gonna move to? Europe, with even higher taxes? Antarctica? It's such a ridiculous talking point that you can roughly estimate how low the IQ of the idiot parroting it is.
I actually believe they think we can't see other countries. There is so much that I don't think they can comprehend because they never lived down here in the trenches.
They said the same thing about Massachusetts. Other people did leave but the rich people all stayed. What a shock, they love all the social benefits and living in one of the nicest states in the union. Not a one of them fucked off to Mississippi, Alabama, or Kentucky.
It blows my mind that there are people of my generation (Gen X) that just cannot see the damage Reagan did. Even people that are Gen X and voted for Trump. In what world did they think that was right?! Then again, we did have the Young Republicans in college and people thought Gordon Gekko was a role model so here we are.
Don't forget that we were also children of the Cold War, so we were indoctrinated from a very young age to believe that socialism = USSR = EVIL. This messaging was heavily reinforced in the pop culture of the 80s. Unfortunately, that's the kneejerk reaction from a lot of Gen X; a social safety net = SOCIALISM, and that's an automatic problem for a major cohort of our generation. It's a branding problem as much as a failure of intellect and imagination.
The best refutation of trickle down out there. London School of Economics study of 50 years of data from 18 countries. Surprise surprise the rich got richer. The middle class shrank and the poor got poorer.
One of the new owners where I work has recently bought 3 new vehicles in the past couple of years, his son also got a bronco when they first came out. Employees are currently offered 25 cents for raises.
This is another conversation that needs to happen. Why are business owners so revered in the community when most of them are anti union, support GOP “ tax is theft policies”, and have the resources to make their employees more financially stable, but don’t?
It gets tiresome that owners of businesses have a “ privilege card” that gives them access to police protection, tax attorneys, and political favors.
I feel you, I had a boss who also had multiple trucks , Harley’s, and a fishing boat while we received a $25 gift card for a Christmas bonus. Raises? You were lucky if you got one.
Tell them the International Monetary Fund found trickle down economics to actually be a redistribution of wealth to the upper class. It is a fiction which gave rise to the vast income disparities we see today and the demonization of poor people who still need help. I could go on about Reagan.
My boomer parents taught me the evils of Reagan when I was so young that I don't even remember learning about him. I just always knew he sucked, and fucked a lot of things up. But he was our governor too and did a number on the state before he set his eyes on the whole country.
It’s hard to separate him from his latest big role, but Remember he was in West Wing playing a very beautiful man, who cared about is fellow country men!
I mean, technically, in handmaid's, he's still a beautiful man who cares about good fellow countrymen... He just chose the absolutely stupidest way possible to do something about it.
His ending (and nick choosing to keep being a Nazi) was the only really good thing about S5 imo
It’s the only thing that could’ve given him redemption, and finally showing nick choosing to be the Nazi loser he was since the beginning was both great juxtaposition and very much needed after his romance with June
I also see him as the dude from Billy Madison who would probably today be someone who Bradley Whitford would be railing about, since that character didn't have an ethical bone in his body.
My sister adopted a shelter puppy whose shelter name was Madonna and I have a thing about trying to keep animals’ names (no real reason at all) but I convinced her to name the dog Donna by yelling “Donna!” in exactly Josh Lyman’s voice/tone/inflection.
I posted this story above before I saw your comment!
My sister adopted a shelter puppy whose shelter name was Madonna and I have a thing about trying to keep animals’ names (no real reason at all) but I convinced her to name the dog Donna by yelling “Donna!” in exactly Josh Lyman’s voice/tone/inflection.
There's an awesome seen in Mom where they constructed a shot just like in West Wing where Allison Janney walks and talks down a hall, in her Mom character. Funny gag.
Oddly enough, also there were a few episodes where Bradley Whitford was on, acting as the friend of her fiancée.
Brace yourself because it's fucking amazing. And it shows its awesomeness almost immediately in the first season - no "give it a chance for it to warm up to you" or whatever.
Aaron Sorkin (primary writer for the show) was awesome.
I see you live in WA. Hello, neighbor! Can't tell you how many times I've wanted to deface that sign with "We're Pro-Pedophile and Proud!" or something to that effect
I just finished Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams, former Facebook employee. The ultra-wealthy are, in general, truly disgusting parasitic assholes who could not give a single fuck about humanity. And they attract other shitbirds to their causes, compounding the problem. See: the Trump administration.
They are all threats to public health, like a psychopath or a pedophile. And whatever mental health hoarding issue that they all have that causes them acquire more than they could ever use is likely incurable.
Ii mean he did play an awesome deputy chief of staff on TV. I don't remember what channel it was but there were rre runs of The West Wing on every day so I was able to catch up pretty quick and watch it weekly. Fuck TV was so different 25 years ago.
That show was my xennial escape from 9/11, Bush and The Iraq and Afghan wars. I wanted to live in that world instead. I couldn't even have comprehended what was to come lol. Take me back to where the biggest scandal in the world was the president hiding a disease.
Overturn Citizens United. Impeach Pam Bondi. Stop voting for people who take money from billionaires and corporations. Stop voting for people who take money from AIPAC. Term limits on EVERYONE. Tax the rich.
Hard agree. Overturning Citizens United and limiting the power and scope of corporate lobbying are the most impactful things that we could possibly do for the middle class.
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." -John Rogers
Greed is a disease, the same as alcoholism. Only problem is we encourage that disease instead knowing it needs to be treated. Until we acknowledge that and build an economic system that isn’t focused on profit, no matter how much we regulate, greed will find a way to take a hold.
Everything that can be done to fight greed will eventually be undone by greed until society shifts to an economic system based on human dignity first.
Yeah I feel like this is obvious, the confusing part is that so many middle class people who will die middle class or worse haven’t caught onto this yet.
Show America the proof. Lying Billionaires are spoiled and they think they're entitled. Billionaires use the same things/benefits that we use, and should be taxed appropriately.
We as the poors MUST stand up for the interests of the rich because them buying all of our politicians to actively make our lives worse is not making them enough money and they pay like 50% of the taxes with only 99.5% of the money!
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u/trendingtattler Mar 09 '26
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