Oligarchs Think Licking Trump's Jackboots Is The Safe Bet. It's Not.

Jeff Bezos, Patrick Soon-Shiong and Elon Musk w

by Justin Rosario

Last week, the billionaire owners of the LA Times and the Washington Post overrode their editorial boards to keep their respective papers from endorsing Kamala Harris for president. It was a cowardly move informed by both greed and a disdain for democracy. Worse, it displayed an utter disconnect from the concerns of the average American whose lives will be deeply and adversely impacted by a fascist Trump dictatorship, something Trump has explicitly promised to enact.

The two billionaires in question, Patrick Soon-Shiong and Jeff Bezos, went a step further to insult our collective intelligence by pretending they were not, in fact, bending the knee to Trump by obeying in advance. Rather, they claimed they were doing us a public service by, and they really said this, “remaining neutral” and letting the public decide.

This might have worked if both papers had not already made numerous endorsements this year for candidates up and down the ticket. Can one argue that an endorsement for the President of the United States is different? Yes, one could make that argument. Would one sound like a lying hypocrite? Yes, one would.

Both Bezos and Soon-Shiong have billions of dollars in business deals, both current and future,  with the government. A fascist government run by a lawless tyrant would cost them both dearly. Therefore, both billionaires chose their profits over the future of the United States.

They appear however, not to have thought this through.

A declaration of class warfare

Class warfare is a feature of history, long before we recognized it as such. Peasants revolted in Germany in 1524 because the rich had left them so desperate they had no choice. The French Revolution. The American Revolution¹. Slave uprisings. All forms of class warfare. Sometimes it was the poor attacking the rich. Just as frequently, it has been the rich declaring war to protect their power, like the American Civil War.

Class warfare has always existed in America, and when the rich get too powerful, a backlash occurs. It is why the South was put to the torch, and it is why we spent decades breaking up monopolies in the early 1900’s. It is why the rich turned to fascism leading up to and after WWII and had every intention of overthrowing the government through a coup. And it is why the billionaire class is trying to do again, right now.

Rich people don’t give up wealth willingly. When they lose, they plan how re-rig society to ensure they own and control it. The ultra wealthy are content to play the long game. They buy up media companies, fund think tanks, and manipulate public opinion over the course of decades. Oligarchs know that with an obedient population, the poor will do the work for them.

And it has largely worked. The Reagan Revolution dismantled the middle class and shifted trillions of wealth to the rich. Millions of Americans abandoned collective bargaining for a culture of greed. We worship millionaires and billionaires and believe we can be just like them. “We the people” has become “What’s in it for me?”

The silent enemy

The key ingredient to real class warfare is that it has to remain invisible and unspoken. The rich cannot be seen as actively hostile towards the rest of us. At most, they can be seen as indifferent and impersonal, but not actively working against the average American or the best interests of the United States. Its power lies in its ability to deny its own existence. But once we all see it, the lie is exposed.

This is where we are now. The rich have gone too far — so much so that the rest of us have noticed them. Elon Musk abandoned the practice of subtle influence and playing the long game. He moved fast and broke things, and in the most obnoxious way imaginable. Unfortunately for him, it has hugely irritated everyone who isn’t a slave to Trumpland. 

Now we have other billionaires spitting on our faces. Bezos and Soon-Shiong made the calculation that licking Trump’s boots is a good business decision. If he wins, he might spare them and their bottom line. If Harris wins, she’s unlikely to retaliate.

But is that true? Again, I don't think they thought this through.

Harris the pro-union president

I’m not going to argue that no amount of debasement is enough to guarantee your safety in an authoritarian regime. This is already obvious to even the casual observer. Ask all of the oligarchs who have fallen from windows in Russia:

Rather, I am going to argue that the billionaires will not be safe under a Harris presidency. She won't have them thrown out of a window. But she’s not going to forget how they shivved her in the back, either.

Do you know what some of the most popular policies under the Biden/Harris administration have been? Their trustbusting and pro-union work. Even Republican voters aren’t really hostile to the idea of breaking up monopolies like Amazon. Who owns Amazon, again? Isn’t he the guy who’s also been fighting tooth and nail against unions? And hasn’t the Biden/Harris administration been the most pro-union administration in more than half a century? 

Wouldn’t it be just awful if a Harris administration continued supporting unions while also pursuing antitrust cases against Amazon? Bezos could make the case that Harris is retaliating against him in court but these are policies that have been ongoing well before Bezos showed what a coward he was. Good luck with that.

Elon Musk, also a foe of unions, faces a loss of billions if the government severs ties with him. Space X will cease to exist. Tesla will dwindle without government protection. Musk relies on government largesse like all libertarian leeches do.

The billionaires got uppity, even before this election. There’s a reason unions are on the rise and people are tired of living to work instead of working to live. We’ve reached a critical mass of public awareness. Trust-busting is acceptable again. People are tired of price gouging. We’re tired of having our money stolen by billionaires who give nothing back and sneer. They owe hundreds of billions, if not more, in back taxes alone.

Beating billionaires is good for America

President Harris is going to want to be reelected in four years and what better way to “pander” to the average American than to bring the pain² to the billionaire class that stopped hiding their contempt for us? And why not? It’s all upside for her.

It’s good economics: Oligarchs are bad for business. They bring instability to the market and crowd out competition. They stifle innovation and are forced to resort to increasingly drastic measures to preserve their wealth. Eventually, the system breaks and they leave behind a smoking ruin.

It’s good politics: Stomping on oligarchs is very popular. Is it “populism?” Technically, yes. It sets up the average American against the elite. Unlike the fake populism of Trump and the GOP, Harris can deliver real results. It’s not demagoguery if the people you’re singling out really are inflicting real harm and need to be reined in.

It’s just good for the country: The rich will always exist. And, frankly, they should. You build a better mousetrap, you should reap the rewards. But parasites like Musk and Bezos and Peter Thiel do not contribute to society. They only seek to drain and control for their own benefit. Their vision of how the world should be run is incompatible with human dignity and happiness. That means their vision has to lose. It’s that simple.

The billionaire class has been trying to destroy this country for longer than I’ve been alive. They’ve recruited millions of bigots and imbeciles as their foot soldiers, but it was all being done mostly out of sight. Now, the billionaires have either grown bold or reckless. Or in the case of Musk and Trump, desperate and almost certainly drug-addled. The result has been to pull off the mask of the “job creators” and “benevolent masters of the universe,” revealing their naked greed.

A week from today, we have the chance to send a message to Jeff Bezos, Patrick Soon-Shiong, Elon Muck, and all of the other cowardly and corrupt billionaires willing to sell out democracy for profit: We are coming for you and the money you’ve stolen, because the United States is not for sale.

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1

The French and American Revolutions were led by relatively wealthy landowners and were therefore hardly “peasants”. But in terms of class, they were far lower than the monarchy.

“Pain” in this context does not mean abusing the power of the government to punish the rich. That’s Trump’s promise. In this context, “pain” means “stop giving billionaires special treatment.” To the wealthy, however, that will feel like punishment.

2.