I can't wait to read this new book from NBC political analyst Anand Giridharadas. It sounds like it's something we need. He appeared on Morning Joe today to plug the book, entitled, "Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World." I suspect this may be the next "Disaster Capitalism."
"I want to read from a recent column you wrote for the New York Times," Joe Scarborough said. "When you warn to, quote, 'beware of rich people who say they want to change the world.' You write in part, 'Fake change and what it allows to fester paved the road for President Trump. He tapped into a feeling that the American system was rigid and that establishment elites were in it for themselves. Then, darkly, he deflected that anger on to the most vulnerable Americans and having benefited from the hollowness of fake change, he became it -- a rich man who styles himself as protector of the underdogs who pretends his interests have nothing to do with Washington. He succeeded. He is what we get when we trust the rich to fix what they are complicit in breaking."
"I remember in the last week of the campaign, Donald Trump's last internet ad had a flash of a lot of images that showed how the international financial system and political system were rigged against working class Americans. It was a very effective populist ad. Then this guy gets elected president of the United States, cuts taxes, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and he's even bragging to his rich friends at Mar-a-Lago, 'Hey, I made you guys a lot of money today.' How does he still get away with it?"
"Well, he's getting away with something many, many people get away with in our time, which is rich people breaking the world and then presenting themselves as the repairman. Rich people being arsonists who then show up as the firefighters for the blaze that they helped spark," Giridharadas said.
"Donald Trump didn't do this in a vacuum. If rich Americans and wealthy corporations had not spent the last 30 or 40 years gutting the American working class and middle class, gutting the ladder of American opportunity for the sake of their profits, there wouldn't have been so much hurt out there. Social mobility wouldn't have plummeted in America. People born in the '40s used to have a 90% chance of outearning their parents. It's now down to a crap shoot, 50/50. That was done because rich people siphoned the gains of progress for themselves. They hurt people and they rigged the economy for their benefit.
"This is the second part of the con, is what this book is about. Having then done that, they turned around and present themselves as the warriors for the underdog, the only people who can fix it. Remember 'only I can fix it'? Remember Trump saying, because I manufactured in China and Mexico, I am the guy who can help things from being manufactured in China and Mexico.
"What I want to argue in this book is that Donald Trump is not the only one playing this game. When Mark Zuckerberg compromises our election, guts the news industry by bringing Mafioso tactics to publishers trying to make money and turns around and says, 'I'm going to fix education in America, I'm going to fix homelessness which by the way I helped to cause by driving up real estate prices in San Francisco, I'm going to fix it.".
