It has been brought to my attention through the standard digital pipelines, which I understand are powered by invisible currents and the tireless labor of folks sitting in cubicles under dimly lit fluorescent lights (to save on the electric bill, Bob Cratchit) , that we are on the precipice of welcoming our very first trillionaire.
Now, a trillion is a figure that rather defeats the human imagination. If a man were to sit down at a sturdy wooden table with a stack of crisp one-dollar bills, and if he had the stamina to count one bill every single second without stopping to eat, sleep, or complain about his union representation, it would take him something upward of thirty-one thousand years to count to a trillion. By the time he finished, his coffee would be cold, his supervisor would have written him up for unexcused absence, and the administration in Washington would have changed hands a few thousand times.
Yet, a recent piece of statistical sorcery, a survey, they call it, informs us that fifty-seven percent of the American public is perfectly content with this state of affairs, provided this mountain of capital is accumulated through “value creation” rather than “exploitation.”
“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
This survey is a most magnificent piece of upholstery. Its chief utility is to take the raw, bony frame of old-fashioned avarice and drape it in velvet so as to not offend the delicate sensibilities of the public. We are told with a straight face that the everyday workingman, whether he spends his day wiping grease off a lathe or staring into the blue light of a spreadsheet until his eyes water, is deeply concerned with the theoretical “fairness” of a trillion dollars.
What?
The strategy is as ancient as the hills, though the machinery is brand new. In Mark Twain’s residence on this earth, during that grand era we called the Gilded Age, the great rail barons and oil kings did not say they wished to own the legislature; they said they were fulfilling America’s Manifest Destiny. Today, our tech robber barons do not say they wish to avoid the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act; they merely suggest that if you look upon their fortunes with anything less than reverence, you are standing against “innovation” and the grand march of progress. It is a perversity of logic that informs the citizen: if you are for common equality, you are strangely against the majority of your peers.
The fallacy, of course, lies in the gentle fiction that a trillion dollars can be gathered in an equitable manner, like berries in a common meadow. When wealth becomes so dense that it exerts its own gravitational pull, it ceases to be mere currency. It becomes the power to mold society, to buy the ink in the printing presses, and to dictate the laws of the land.
And who are the grand figures leading us into this digital paradise?
We are treated daily to the spectacle of a political administration that prides itself on a certain brand of robust, muscular Christianity, a cultural identity used much like a rented tuxedo, worn for the cameras but terribly restrictive around the shoulders. The current leaders project a fierce, “alpha” male image, a gospel of strength where the powerful deserve to inherit the earth and the weak are merely bad investors. The head of this grand procession, Mr. Trump, expresses a profound and touching affection for strongmen and iron-fisted rulers the world over.
Yet, when one looks into the historical ledger, we find that during the great trial of his own generation, the conflict in Vietnam, this champion of martial virtue discovered a sudden and most debilitating infirmity in his heels. The record shows he utilized every available deferment to remain safely on dry, un-shrapnel-ed land. There is a quiet, beautiful irony in a man who worships the sword but was vanquished by his own bone spurs.
THE MODERN FEUDAL BALANCE SHEET
The High Authors of Project 2025
- Supply the Blueprint for a Technocratic State
- Require a Familiar Face to Calm the Populace
The Appointed Frontman (Mr. Trump)
- Supplies the Broad Smiles and Muscular Rhetoric
- Functions Elegantly as a Stationary Prop
Indeed, the hardline authors of that ambitious document known as Project 2025 seem to view the former President less as a commander and more as a highly useful piece of stage property. They wheel him out to the footlights to distract the crowd with grievances and tales of unmatched strength, while behind the curtain, the technocrats quietly assemble a corporate state designed to ensure the workingman stays precisely where he is. It reminds me vividly of that modern moving picture, Weekend at Bernie’s, wherein a deceased gentleman is fitted with sunglasses and propped up on a sofa to convince the neighbors that the party is still going on.
The machinery has changed, but the human comedy remains identical. The few still require the sentiment of the many to protect their ledger books. They ask the clerk and the mechanic to look upon a trillionaire not as a master, but as a brother who simply had a very good quarter. It is a beautiful dream, but it is time for the sheep to look up from the pasture.