Jonathan P. Baird

American history is such a vast panorama that how it is seen is a Rorschach test. Emphasis could be placed on presidents, wars, westward expansion and the evolution of civil liberties or it could be placed on the history of slavery and the genocide against Native Americans. It is all about what we choose to highlight.

How we view our own American ruling class is subject to the same type of scrutiny. As someone who tends to see the darker shades, I find it hard to escape noticing an obvious trend. Our American ruling class has shed any notion of noblesse oblige that characterized the 19th century American elite.

Noblesse oblige is a notion that those with great wealth and power have a responsibility to model behavior that is honorable and generous. Part of the privilege is a duty to those less fortunate. While the American ruling class in the 19th century were often seen as robber barons, many of the most powerful capitalists like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Mellon took the noblesse oblige duty seriously. They used surplus resources they possessed for public good. The idea they had was that to whom much is given, much is expected.

This perspective was ingrained in the old-money Protestant establishment. Many 19th century ruling class leaders engaged in large-scale philanthropy endowing universities, libraries, hospitals and museums that improved the quality of life for many Americans.

Andrew Carnegie funded 2509 libraries as well as Carnegie Mellon University. John D. Rockefeller funded the University of Chicago, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research and gave thousands of acres of land to the National Park Service, including Acadia National Park with its carriage roads and granite bridges. Andrew Mellon funded the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC and was a major benefactor of the University of Pittsburgh.

These men cultivated an ethic of some public service and self-restraint. They preferred hiding the degree of their wealth and they were not showy about their money like someone who was nouveau riche and trying to impress.

At the same time, their legacy was complex, odious and at best, ambiguous. They earned their reputations as robber barons by violently repressing workers who were organizing unions. Carnegie and his manager Henry Frick locked out union members and violently crushed the Homestead Strike at his steel plant in 1892. Rockefeller and his son did even worse things in the Ludlow Massacre in 1913-14. They arranged for the National Guard to act as their private army to attack a miners’ tent colony, killing 24 people.

In that era, many saw the robber barons’ philanthropy as a form of public relations to justify extreme wealth and that view has merit, but nevertheless, their giving was tangible. It made some real world differences in education, libraries, art, medicine and national parks.

Now our ruling class would appear to be single-mindedly focused on maximizing their own personal wealth. They are much less steeped in any tradition of civic duty or responsibility. Instead of maintaining a safety net for those less fortunate, they are resentful of the safety net and do nothing as they watch its weakening and dissolution. None of these billionaires speak out against Trump excesses because they are afraid to get on his bad side. The billionaire class is defined by the pursuit of endless wealth and vaporous fame.

Donald Trump is an appropriate standard bearer for our billionaire class. He may never have read a book. No one could ever accuse him of cultivating any ethic of public service or self-restraint. Conspicuous consumption, gilded in gold, is the Trump trademark. No president has ever monetized the office like he has.

The billionaires around him like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos are hardly different. As Musk has said:

“My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy – I want to grab all that money.”

Musk is the first person to have a net worth of $500 billion, an unfathomable sum. Then, of course there is Jeff Bezos whose net worth is a mere $242 billion. Bezos’s wedding in Venice cost between $46-$56 million, placing it among the most expensive weddings in history. Any notion of noblesse oblige is dead to these billionaires. They don’t give back.

The fact that America has the greatest income inequality in the developed world is a result of a crony capitalist system where the ultra-rich shamelessly grab and hog as much wealth as possible. Musk is more focused on going to Mars than any plan that might help humans on earth. As a Jewish person, his nazi salutes did not escape my notice. His mentality would appear to be stuck in the apartheid era.

Which brings me to the matters of racism and sexism. Under the Trump regime there has been a concerted effort to turn back the clock. The anti-DEI campaign has been a thinly veiled effort to rehabilitate racism and sexism. Have any billionaires spoken up about this noxious campaign? Not one. Too many people have sacrificed and suffered to make the progress we have. The billionaire class acts like royalists from the distant past who see the job of people of color and women as to serve them.

Just like the 19th century ruling class, our ruling class indulges a eugenicist world view that posits they are biologically and socially superior to everyone else. For them, poverty is a character flaw, not due to class position and unfortunate circumstances. Assuming their superiority is a lame rationalization to justify the status quo.

You might think a ruling class would have a long-term survival perspective with a sophisticated orientation grounded in learning and history but our ruling class does not. Like the oligarchs who surround Vladimir Putin, our oligarchs’ major concern is feathering their own nests. Whether it is opposing constitutional violations, pandering to xenophobia, respecting science or opposing climate change denial, you don’t hear a peep from them.

Call it nihilism or self-interest, our oligarchs throw in and collaborate with the Trump regime. Our ruling class provides a living example of cowardice and moral debasement. They make Carnegie and Rockefeller look kind.