One-Percenters for Obama
By Daniel Rigney
Because we human beings are generally incapable of complex thoughts, we tend to reduce our thinking, including our political discourse, to simple slogans and clichés. Two of this year’s viral clichés are “the one percent” and the infinitely elastic “middle class.”
Don't get me wrong. I’m deeply sympathetic with the Occupy movement, and I applaud its media savvy in creating catch phrases that focus public attention on the glaring and growing inequalities that beset our plutocracy. But may we have just a moment of intellectual honesty here? I promise to be brief.
First, the one percent are not homogeneous. They include the Koch brothers and Newt Romney, but also Warren Buffet and many other multimillionaires and billionaires who have apparently come to realize that there might be something worth caring about beyond their own economic self-interests. Bill Gates rose to his present wealth by playing a mean game of cutthroat capitalism, but he and Melinda have acquitted themselves rather well in recent years in the ways they’ve chosen to invest that wealth in the well-being of others. Not every one-percenter is a dastard.
I am suggesting that among the one percent there are those who, if their stockholders would allow it, would support Barack Obama’s presidency in 2012, and not just because they think they would further enrich themselves by doing so. At a certain level of wealth, one acquires the freedom to care about something larger than one’s own net worth.
My claim, by the way, does not extend to Wall Street political investors who, like some fund managers, hedge their political bets by giving millions of dollars to both parties, thus ensuring that they will benefit from any outcome. They are and will always be committed to the Opportunist Party. I’m talking here not about about financial dastards, but about rich people who are existentially capable of living for the sake of something beyond themselves.
I wish I had the time, money and organizational intelligence to create a group hypothetically named “One Percenters for Obama in 2012.” Maybe someone with more resources than I have will take this thought and run with it. Warren? Bill? Oprah? Anyone?
Anyone?
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Comments
I read once where Bill and Melinda's donation (tax-deductible, of course) of $25 million was the equivalent of a $13 donation by the average taxpayer. Obviously, the donee would much rather have their $25 mil than my $13, but for the giver, the pain remains the same.
Furthermore, some of that generosity falls in the category of public relations and conscience balm. All the libraries and what not funded by Andrew Carnegie and Jay Gould, et al, don't undo the damage done to ordinary workers by robber barons. Hell, drug lords fund community hospitals and soccer teams.
That said, I'd love to see One-Percenters for Obama. And Oprah would be perfect to head it. After all, it's all about the O.