The most pronounced class war in the United States today is between those who believe that empathy is the greatest weakness of western civilisation (Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Republicans, most billionaires) versus those who believe that empathy is its greatest strength (Democrats, Plato, Jesus, David Hume).
At this time, it appears that the ultra-selfish are winning as the bought and sold US Supreme Court and Republican-controlled Congress enable Trump’s destruction of the federal safety net, constitutional rights, and the further enrichment of the top 1 per cent of the population.
As Evan Osnos illustrates in his important book, The Haves and Have-Yachts, Trump is accelerating the trend towards greater inequality revived 40 years ago when US president Ronald Reagan cut taxes on the very rich and declared that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem”.
Today’s billionaire oligarchy cartel has a new twist on that canard, fervently believing that the purpose of government is massive enrichment of the few who control it by manipulating and buying presidential and congressional elections.
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Osnos writes that the essential fault line in American politics is inequality, feeding the anger of ordinary Americans who know that the elites are winning at their expense.
He seeks to answer the question why this anger is directed at Democrats, who want to create a more equal society, and not at Trump and Republicans, who are cutting healthcare and education and most recently rewarded the top 1 per cent with a ‘Big Beautiful’ tax break that will cost taxpayers $3 trillion.
Republican strategists and their billionaire backers have known that inequality and affordability have been top issues since 2013 when former president Bill Clinton’s pollster Pat Caddell advised them that there was a “public appetite for a populist challenger who could run as an outsider exposing corruption and rapacity”. Hello, Donald Trump, reality TV star, who has stimulated and ridden this anger in three presidential elections, winning two of them, and showing how to thrive in the power elite while decrying it as your enemy.
Trump and Republicans have successfully exploited mass-manipulation techniques to distract and win ongoing support from working-class voters by stoking culture wars against diversity, affirmative action, gay rights, abortion rights, trans women playing female sports, and “wokeness” generally.
For example, a considerable number of working-class Hispanic and Irish Americans have voted three times for Trump despite his cuts to social benefits. They also believed Trump when he said he would deport only criminal immigrants, but instead, his massive ICE white nationalist army is locking up easy targets such as honest, hard-working immigrants who have been undocumented and denied a path to citizenship for more than 20 years due to Republican congressional opposition.
[ ‘Really scary territory’: AI’s increasing role in undermining democracyOpens in new window ]
Trump’s tariffs are another bait and switch, ostensibly designed to make America great; in reality, they are a tax on working people. Worse still, he chickened out on stopping China’s unfair trading practices when it imposed export controls on rare earths which are essential for US industry and defence. Then, Trump turned to pick on the EU, traditionally close allies and trading partners of the US.
Osnos shows how social media is at the core of this mass manipulation as the dopamine-driven feedback loops of X, Facebook and TikTok destroy human empathy with huge misinformation and minimum civil discourse. Bowing to Trump, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg promoted a Republican operative as policy chief and named Dana White, a Trump ally who heads the Ultimate Fighting Championship, to Meta’s board of directors. By 2025, Zuckerberg’s net worth had surpassed $200 billion, ranking him the world’s second richest person after Elon Musk.
Many Democrats believe that the best presidential candidate to beat this Trump formula in 2028 would be a Bernie Sanders/FDR candidate who would appeal to working people and to younger voters with promises of real economic populism, rather than the fake Republican brand.
And what do the billionaires do with their ill-gotten wealth besides owning the US government? The sad fact is that they have no idea; the point is just to keep making more. As they undermine American government power at home and abroad, the ultra-rich can think of little more than outbidding each other to buy diesel-polluting floating toys, costing anything from Zuckerberg’s $300 million yacht to Jeff Bezos’ $500 million schooner.
To be sure, there will be no Zuckerberg or Bezos municipal libraries from this second “Gilded Age”.
