The Rich Paid at the Office

On American Greatness and elsewhere, Salena Zito wonders why The Rich (or C-suite as she calls it) are not as community minded as in olden times. Such as when Mark Twain lived in Hannibal, Missouri.

Zito tells the story of John Garth, playmate and school friend of Samuel Clemens, how he went to New York City.

Garth and his wife Helen, also a childhood friend [of Clemens], had briefly moved to New York City, where he prospered in the banking, brokerage, and manufacturing industries[.]

Then they returned to Hannibal, built a fancy house, and devoted themselves to good works.

They provided jobs, donated to worthy causes such as the Home for the Friendless, and attended church shoulder to shoulder with the people in the community. And when Garth died, his wife donated $25,000 for a stand-alone library to be built in the center of town.

But today's rich don't do that. Imagine Jeff Bezos doing that. According to Steve McMahon, "Washington-based public affairs professional and co-founder of Purple Strategies",

those who run the corporations that employ millions and dominate the culture have shed their connection with both their employees and their customers. 

And who among us, who live in America's super ZIPs, knows or cares about the ordinary middle class?

Back in the day, Zito wants us to think, the rich and successful did not look down upon the ordinary.

That cannot be said about today’s cultural curators in our C-suites of legacy media, corporations, education, bureaucracies, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley, who have decided that those who live outside of their super ZIP codes deserve nothing less than a daily onslaught of vigorous attacks on their values and way of life. 

So what has changed?

I'd say it is the over / under culture of our present ruling class.

Our present ruling class experiences itself not as the top of a natural cultural and political hierarchy, but as noble activists fighting for the rights of the oppressed against the oppressors.

Yes, you may ask, what "oppressed" and which "oppressors?" Thank you, senator, I'm glad you asked me that.

The difference is clear in the whole Black Lives Matter frenzy of 2020.

Back in the day, the kid that made it big in the big city came back to the town of his birth, built a fancy house, and did what was expected of him. He built libraries, helped the poor, and was ready to lend a hand.

Today, the well-educated resident of a gentrified neighborhood puts up a BLM sign and the billionaires put up millions to support left-wing activism.

And in Washington DC our ruling class erects museums celebrating their support of helpless victims, as I write today in The American Thinker in "Let's Build a National White Trash Museum. Not." 

What is the point of the National Museum of African American Culture and History? It's obvious. It is to celebrate how advanced and anti-racist our current ruling class is, and how its support for the oppressed former slaves is just about the most wonderful thing in history. The same with the Holocaust Museum. There was no Jewish Holocaust in the United States. But the US ruling class wants you to know that it attacked Nazi Germany and ground it into dust for the mass murder of Jews. And the same with the National Museum of the American Indian. The museum does nothing for the conquered and decimated tribes of North America. But it certainly puts our modern ruling class in a good light.

Do you see the point? The modern elite is all about virtue-signaling its magnificence, and nothing about actually helping people in their communities.

Put it this way. Back in the day, the ruling class built magnificent palaces to demonstrate its magnificence. Today's ruling class builds virtue-signaling museums to demonstrate its magnificence.

And having paid for the museums, and made contributions to left-wing activist causes, and paid its taxes, and contributed to politicians, our modern overclass figures it has made its contribution to society. That it already paid at the office, thank you.

Hey, who can blame them?

But I dream of a better America. 

But we won't get it while the Department of Good Works is a government department spending north of 35 percent of GDP per year.