- Malkin, Michelle.
Culture of Corruption.
Washington: Regnery Publishing, 2009.
ISBN 978-1-59698-109-6.
-
This excellent book is essential to understanding what is
presently going on in the United States. The author digs
into the backgrounds and interconnections of the Obamas,
the Clintons, their associates, the members of the
Obama administration, and the web of shady organisations
which surround them such as the Service Employees International
Union (SEIU) and ACORN, and demonstrates, beyond a
shadow of a doubt, that the United States is now ruled
by a New Class of political operatives entirely distinct from
the productive class which supports them and the ordinary
citizens they purport to serve. Let me expand a bit
on that term of art. In 1957,
Milovan Đilas,
Yugoslavian Communist revolutionary turned dissident, published
a book titled
The New Class,
in which he described how, far
from the egalitarian ideals of Marx and Engels, modern Communism
had become captive to an entrenched political and bureaucratic
class which used the power of the state to exploit its
citizens. The New Class moved in different social and
economic circles than the citizenry, and was moving in the
direction of a hereditary aristocracy, grooming their children
to take over from them.
In this book, we see a portrait of America's New Class, as
exemplified by the Obama administration. (Although the
focus is on Obama's people and the constituencies of the
Democratic party, a similar investigation of a McCain
administration wouldn't probably look much different:
the special interests would differ, but not the character
of the players. It's the political class as a whole and
the system in which they operate which is corrupt, which
is how
mighty empires fall.) Reading
through the biographies of the players, what
is striking is that very few of them have ever worked
a single day in the productive sector of the economy. They
went from law school to government agency or taxpayer funded
organisation to political office or to well-paid positions in
a political organisation. They are members of a distinct
political class which is parasitic upon the society, and
whose interests do not align with the well-being of its
citizens, who are coerced to support them.
And this, it seems to me, completes the picture of the most
probable future trajectory of the United States. To some
people Obama is the Messiah, and to others he is an
American Lenin, but I think both of those views miss the
essential point. He is, I concluded while reading this book,
an American
Juan Perón,
a charismatic figure (with a powerful and ambitious wife)
who champions the cause of the “little people”
while amassing power and wealth to reward the cronies who keep
the game going, looting the country (Argentina was the 10th
wealthiest nation per capita in 1913) for the benefit of the
ruling class, and setting the stage for economic devastation,
political instability, and hyperinflation. It's pretty much
the same game as Chicago under mayors Daley
père and
fils, but played out
on a national scale. Adam Smith wrote, “There is a great
deal of ruin in a nation”, but as demonstrated here,
there is a great deal of ruination in the New Class Obama has
installed in the Executive branch in Washington.
As the experience of Argentina during the Perón era and
afterward demonstrates, it is possible to inflict structural damage on
a society which cannot be reversed by an election, or even a coup or
revolution. Once the productive class is pauperised or driven into
exile and the citizenry made dependent upon the state, a new
equilibrium is reached which, while stable, drastically reduces
national prosperity and the standard of living of the populace. But, if
the game is played correctly, as despots around the world have
figured out over millennia, it can enrich the ruling class, the New
Class, beyond their dreams of avarice (well, not really, because those
folks are really good when it comes to dreaming of avarice),
all the time they're deploring the “greed” of those who oppose
them and champion the cause of the “downtrodden” ground
beneath their own boots.
To quote a politician who figures prominently in this book, “let
me be clear”: the present book is a straightforward
investigation of individuals staffing the Obama
administration and the organisations associated with them,
documented in extensive end notes, many of which cite sources
accessible online. All of the interpretation of this in terms of a
New Class is entirely my own and should not be attributed to this book
or its author.
November 2009 