Why Do So Many of Us Worship Our Oligarchs?

    Recently a health insurance CEO was slaughtered in the streets of Manhattan. Is this the beginning of the "proletariat uprising" Marx predicted? …I doubt it. And here’s why:

While it is true that some people are celebrating this murder, many others are condemning this celebration. What’s going on here?

To be clear, this is sad on all counts.

It is sad that this man was murdered.

It is sad that he was responsible for the deaths of thousands of people by denying them the healthcare that THEY HAD PAID FOR through their insurance, and that he used this money to enrich himself.

It is sad that someone was so disgruntled, they felt they had to take this CEO out (and let’s face it, there are MANY in the United States currently feeling this frustration).

And it is sad that from a large swath of our country, there is full-throated support to the point of worship of the small but mighty ruling class, our oligarchs.

It would appear that there is some amount of brainwashing happening.

In the late-seventeen hundreds, the peasants in France rose up, aligned with the bourgeoisie, and overthrew the ruling class by force, beginning the dismantling of the feudal system. And thank goodness. As a result of revolutions like this, we live in a world with some level of mobility between the classes. There is a chance, however small, that one can be born poor but work their way out of poverty.

Today there is a tiny but mighty (and growing mightier by the day) group of oligarchs who would love to see the return to a feudal-like system, in which the poor stay poor and the rich grow richer. And I believe that if the French Revolution were to occur today, here, in the United States, it would be an upside-down revolution in which the poor fight amongst and kill themselves, rather than fighting the aristocrats who are holding them down. Actually, I don’t just believe that that is what would happen, I am seeing it happen presently.

There is a loud and vocal portion of the population in the U.S. who openly worship the folks who actively work to disenfranchise them. It’s wild. These people are championed as the “job creators,” when in reality, in many instances, they are exploiting the labor of many to enrich themselves.

In 1950 the CEO-to-worker pay ratio was 20 to 1. Today it is over 300 to 1. Sounds pretty feudal (or futile?) to me.

So many in our country work several jobs to make ends meet, all while CEOs reap the fruits of this labor, hoarding it all for themselves, and paying $8 an hour while they buy multiple mansions and yachts.

And so many of us cheer them.

“They’ve worked hard,” we reason! "They shouldn’t be punished or scrutinized for their success!"

But WHY?

Why do so many of us protect and champion the people who should be scrutinized for exploiting their workers, and stealing the vaaaast majority of the profits generated by these workers?

In the case of this CEO, he took it one step further than merely enriching himself and hoarding wealth. Not only did he rake in a massive CEO salary (and bonuses, no doubt) while lower-level workers in his company (without whom the company could not exist and profit) were paid a pittance, but additionally, his practices allowed thousands of innocent people to die.

I think most of us can agree that murder is bad. But when you deny healthcare to millions of people to make millions in profit...you are also murdering people. Many people.

From any angle, murder is bad. And this CEO murdered a lot of people. I don't celebrate his death, but I understand the inclination to do so. And I certainly cannot wrap my head around the resounding APPLAUSE, admiration, and outright worship a large portion of our populace demonstrates for people like this CEO, like Bezos, like Musk.

This guy was the CEO. He made the rules. And the rules he made and played by extracted as much money out of people as possible for their “health insurance,” and then denied them the very thing for which they had paid so he could make a massive profit – resulting in their death or bankruptcy. Did he care about these people who died as a result of his work as CEO? Did he mourn their loss? Did he empathize with their financial struggles that he caused? It wouldn't appear so. He provided a lavish lifestyle for himself and his family by stealing from others and refusing to pay for the care they thought they had insured.

What is crazy and perplexing about this is that so many of us gleefully and full-throatedly support monsters like this.

I can only believe this is due to the massive amount of disinformation at our fingertips, and to the wealth (no pun intended) of mass media that upholds the current power structure, glorifying billionaires as models, and everyone else as anti-models, despite the current wealth disparity in the United States, and the slow collapse of the middle class. This has declined by about 11% in the last 50 years.

From shows like “Ozark” that prioritize wealth and power above all else, even above the lives of family members, to movies like “Crazy Rich Asians,” (which admittedly is also an obstructed preferred reading, because it is counter to hegemonic norms, as the group with power and wealth is Asians, as the title implies, and not whites), much of our mainstream media idolizes wealth and power.

So I suppose it should be no surprise that we worship our oligarchs. Even when they are killing us.

What can we do as a society to turn down the rhetoric, curtail the disinformation, and give the middle class a chance to flourish once again?