Liberal America is up in arms protesting Donald Trump’s desire to rule the nation as king, not as constitutionally restricted president. I oppose his kingship, too, but for a different reason: We already have a king. It’s our capitalism, which is our real king who decrees everything we play, feel and think. If we define king as someone whose reign over us is absolute, capitalists are our king and capitalism our constitution. After all, Trump’s famous “insanity disorder” comes from our own citizen insanity which, in turn, is a product of “capitalist disorder.”
Donald Trump is still a human agent whose rule is limited by his own finality in old age, illness or death. But capitalism is a system — an idea, an institution — that runs on its own transcendent logic and self-generating calculus. As we loudly protest king-wannabe Trump, we silently endure the tyranny of capitalism which controls everything we are or do: If you have a thought just now in your head, whatever it is, it’s likely to have come from some capitalist concoction, not from your parents, grandparents, preachers or teachers. If you are hungry and seek food, it’s likely that capitalism will fill (or deny) your stomach.
As its future workers, American children go to school (from kindergarten to college) to learn all about the capitalist economy. Most working Americans are born in capitalist chains, work under capitalist whips, and die in a capitalist bed. Unlike Trump the King who leaves us alone much of the time, capitalism never rests. It controls us even in our sleep with always-on job anxiety, unpaid bills or dreams of freedom. Even the No-King protesters do capitalist-inspired shopping and hurry home to catch capitalist-concocted programs on TV. With their economic iron fist, capitalists control our nation’s laws and lawmakers. They condition our minds and choices by controlling the news media and our lifestyle. As freemen, we may want to overthrow Trump. But, as consumers and workers, we are so intertwined with the system that we don’t even believe we can overthrow our capitalist masters, which is like overthrowing ourselves.
However, there is one difference — a major one — between kings and capitalists: The difference is between “good kings” and “good capitalists.” When kings are good, as benign rulers, they rule their kingdoms with justice, peace and prosperity. History rejoices them as “great kings” and praises their reigns as “golden ages,” whose goodness benefits all their people.
But, there are no “good capitalists” who are good for all. “Great capitalists” are great only for themselves. When one becomes a “great capitalist,” his “greatness” only enriches himself and nobody else. In fact, a successful capitalist makes everybody else poor and miserable as there is no such thing as “good capitalism” that benefits all. Whenever a capitalist succeeds, so many people must suffer. (Remember how Walmart had to destroy all downtown shops for its own success).
Such is the very creed of kingship and capitalism: The kingship includes the possibility that kings could be wise and beneficial to all. By contrast, the very idea of capitalism is based on exclusive ownership and profit, which belong to the owner and profiteer only, and all workers and employees (who actually produce all their wealth) are merely tools of profit-making and are discarded whenever deemed useless. We could dream of a “good kingdom” at every new king’s coronation, but not with “good capitalism.” For a corporation to be successful, the working masses must fail. For a capitalist to get rich, the common masses must sacrifice their toil and labor for their daily bread.
Many economists say capitalism raised our modern living standards, but that’s a pure misunderstanding of history: Our living standards have risen in spite, not because, of capitalism. It’s in our nature to want to make our lives easier and comfortable by improving and inventing things: Our progress toward a higher living standard is sui generis and requires no particular exhortation. Ancients invented the wheel and the bow and arrow without capitalism; and the steam engine and other machines of modern convenience would still be here all by their own progress without capitalism. Humanity has always been insatiable about improving its living conditions.
Human nature also abhors wasting and, without capitalism, we would not have wasted such huge human and material resources to invent AI, cellphones or reality TV whose side effects dwarf their benefits; nor would we invest billions of dollars in movies just to tickle our funny bones for two hours. Mankind would never miss a single movie if none had ever been made.
In Hollywood, Disney, and Silicon Valley, America’s best and brightest manufacture sweet dreams and capitalists sell them as happiness and pleasure to the masses. But, in the end, all capitalist dreams are neither real nor lasting as their fantasy products begin as illusion that never is and end as mirage that never was. As consumers, we must wake up to our crushing emptiness and loneliness. Meanwhile, the cursed economic inequality between rich and poor is destroying the basic foundations of America’s national solidarity and individual moral stability that no make-believe concoctions can salvage.
Slowly but surely from within, everything that capitalism touches rots — our love, our soul, our community — as we happily wallow in its sewage, consuming ourselves insane and broke. Trapped between capitalism’s economic glitter that masquerades its human squalor and Trump’s political comedy that hides its social tragedy, we bluff our way daily to cover up our own nothingness.
In capitalism’s reign of hell, with or without Trump, we are now just the faint echo of what was once “a great nation.”
Jon Huer, retired professor and columnist for the Recorder, lives in Greenfield and writes for posterity.