Let’s say you work at the Renaissance Esmeralda in Indian Wells, just down the road from Palm Springs. You do maintenance stuff: irrigation, pool filters, plumbing. Or maybe you clean the rooms, strip the beds, the massage tables, scrub the toilets and bidets. There’s an order to these things, like everywhere. The valet guys, the women at the front desk and in the restaurants – they’re paid to be seen. You’re paid to be invisible.
Which is fine. The money’s good, enough to send home a bundle every month and to pay for a one-bedroom outside Indio. You’ve got a coffee maker, a microwave, a flat-screen the resort was ready to trash. From where you came, from what you grew up amid, this is a dream life, safety and abundance, and you love America, even if nobody visits, and the only night sounds are the drone of the A/C and the dumb rumble of the big trucks on I-10.
***
But then it’s Friday morning and the guy who acts like your boss – he’s not really your boss, but he could make trouble about your papers, so he gets to deliver orders like they were his – tells you there’s no work today, no work tomorrow, or Sunday. You look at him like, What? Because this is late January, peak season, and the register lists every single room as booked through Monday.
Go home, he says. Don’t come back till Tuesday.
Am I in trouble? you say.
Just get the fuck out of here, he says. Crack some beers. Have a fiesta.
You want to ask someone what’s going on, but you can tell from the way this asshole’s talking to you that he’s scared, too, that whatever’s happening is bigger than he can pretend to understand. So what you do is park yourself behind a berm near the driving range, and watch as the black SUVs glide in from the airport. Men emerge from them, alone, in suits mostly, a few golf shirts. They blink at the sun, glance around, slip into the lobby. You’d like a closer look but you realize, suddenly, that there are private security guys flanking every entrance, standing in the small rods of shadow cast by the columns. There’s a queasy charge in the air that reminds you of something you saw as a little boy, standing outside the municipal building with your father. A phalanx of bodyguards passed by, at their center a plump man in a fedora and sunglasses.
You asked, Is it the governor, papa?
Your father issued a sharp hiss and lowered his head and you understood, without wanting to, that it was your place also to fall silent and look away, that this was the nature of true power, to make itself invisible, and to impose its will through the garish, costumed puppets of the church and state.
***
So you go home. What choice do you have? It’s not your place to solve the mystery of American democracy. But here, in fact, is what’s happening:
Charles and David Koch, inheritors of an oil and chemical fortune, have invited 250 of their wealthiest allies to a retreat which will raise $100 million in a single weekend. This money will be funneled into political action committees to buy television ads against the President. Virtually every single one of these ads will be driven by distortions, or outright lies. They will represent an unprecedented infusion of propaganda into the political discourse of the United States. The special interests once focused on morally malleable elected officials will try their luck lobbying a lazy and aggrieved electorate.
The reason you and the rest of the staff have been sent home—that the restaurants have been closed, the facilities locked down—is because the Koch Brothers don’t want people to know what they’re doing. If word gets out, protestors show up, then the media, then people start asking questions about the motives of those willing to pony up $100 million to shape the electoral process.
***
You can’t know this, but there’s a long back story here, which starts in 1973, when President Richard Nixon resigned under threat of impeachment. The Watergate scandal grew out of a break-in engineered by Republican operatives. They were seeking to illegally tape Nixon’s political opponents. The following year Congress, in an effort to curb corruption, set a strict limit on contributions. Republicans lost badly at the polls.
Ever since, they have been trying to figure out how to get more money into the political process without breaking the law.
It’s worth asking why conservative candidates need all this money and the short answer is because, as a rule, they can’t win on the issues. And they can’t win on the issues for the simple reason that their core economic policies—cut taxes for the rich, cut spending for everyone else, deregulate business—are wildly unpopular.
The way Republican candidates win, therefore, is the way Nixon won the presidency in the first place: by appealing to the primal negative emotions of an electorate willing to set aside its own economic self-interest. His Southern strategy was predicated on scaring white Democrats into voting for him by playing to their anxieties about an empowered African American population.
***
What Republican operatives quickly realized was that they needed a way around those pesky contribution limits. And the way around them was to form political action committees, PACs, that were officially unaffiliated with campaigns, but worked on their behalf.
These “independent groups” not only funneled millions of dollars into elections, but provided cover to candidates who enjoyed the political benefits of sleazy ads while dodging blame for running them. George Bush, for instance, ran for the presidency in 1988 against Massachusetts governor Mike Dukakis. Bush the elder won partly because of an “independent” ad featuring the mug shot of an African American murderer named Willie Horton, who had raped a woman while on furlough from a Massachusetts prison. The message was simple: elect Dukakis and your (white) women get raped.
The Bush campaign claimed to have nothing to do with the ad. But Bush’s media consultant, Roger Ailes, later joked about creating a version for the official campaign: “The only question is whether we should show Willie Horton with a knife in his hand, or without.” Ailes currently works as chairman and C.E.O. of Fox News.
Sixteen years later, George W. Bush was the recipient of a similar gift, when a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth produced an ad questioning the valor of Bush’s opponent, John Kerry, who served in Vietnam. The ad deflected attention from the fact that Bush avoided serving in Vietnam.
Because these ads are, by nature, salacious and incendiary, the corporate media covers them obsessively, thus magnifying their impact. In this way, campaigns drift further and further from matters of actual policy.
***
From time to time, legislators have sought to limit the money in politics. But Republicans recently have found solace in the judiciary. Stacked with conservative appointees, the Supreme Court ruled two years ago, in Citizens United, that the government cannot limit spending for political purposes by corporations and unions.
The result has been a deluge of corporate money into PACs, and the expansion of a kind shadow army, consisting of operatives and ad men utterly unmoored from the codes of conduct that govern traditional political campaigns. To extend the metaphor: political war in this country has gone rogue. It is no longer waged by soldiers loyal to the Geneva conventions, but mercenaries who are beholden to nobody but the men who pay them.
***
And this, of course, is what brings us back to the Renaissance Esmeralda in Indian Wells, and to you, the worker sent home for the weekend. Because what the Koch Brothers are doing, while perfectly legal, is morally unsightly. Americans take pride in their democracy. They don’t like feeling that they live in some primitive backwater, where oligarchs meet in secret to buy elections.
And you yourself, though an immigrant in this place, mostly reviled, probably want to believe this, too. That’s partly why you came here. It wasn’t just because there was money to be had, but because you assumed that in America power resided with the many, not the few.
And this is why you feel such a strange foreboding as you watch these men gathering on the grand rotunda. You will feel it later on as well, in the night, the same reverberations of dread, as you gaze out your window at the flicker of the screens in the homes around you, the people staring into them, hypnotized by rage and innuendo, ready to believe. You will be reminded of the sudden obedience in your father’s eyes, the way he consented to his tyranny, the way he wouldn’t look up.
18 responses
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$AURGHgggggggggggggggggghhhha
These events are not party specific. Both parties participate. I am saddened that you made no mention of this.
Of course both parties participate in this, and Obama sadly acknowledged this recently. Greed to go around. But the bottom line is, and this column makes the point: Roger Ailes of Fox News, the creepy Koch Brothers, The Swift Boaters… Lets call this like it is. A Naderesque a pox on both houses just isn’t the truth. We’ve been down this road before. All you have to do is look at the judges who voted in favor of Citizens United (and who appointed them) and the judges who voted against (and who appointed them). Corporations are people my friend…
Both parties can be accused of playing the game this way, but there is no denying that the deep Republican party is one of the worst offenders. It doesn’t matter. The way it’s set up, we all lose, regardless of who wins.
Yes, let’s call it like it is. There are fat cats on both sides that pay big money to get their way regardless of truth.
And thankfully we can freely call them out on it on sites such as these.
@Darren: “And thankfully we can freely call them out on it on sites such as these.”
For now, we still can…
The SOPA battle was too close. I turned my web site black for the day but that isn’t enough. All that is necessary for the forces of evil to triumph is for the rest of us to do almost nothing. Glad that some are re-occupying their country and let’s move on from there…
@Steve, great article.
Darren, Serah, etc.
Your points are well-taken and I thank you for writing.
I do urge you to study the history here — in more detail than I could provide. Don’t settle for a false equivalency.
The Democrats are “playing the game,” as you rightly point out! I wish Obama had said he wouldn’t take PAC money. Period. Totally agree with you about this.
But.
Republicans invented the game as we know it, and have worked tirelessly to shape its rules. Look up the history of PACs. Ask yourself: which party has pushed for reforms to limit the money in politics? Who benefits most from the infusion of private money into politics? How does it function? Also, please note: the left-leaning PACs are run by and for unions (who lobby for the interest of workers), not billionaires who represent corporate interests.
I provided links in the piece so people would see that I wasn’t “making stuff up.” If you want to convince folks that Republicans and Democrats are equally guilty here, I urge you to send along links. I’ll check them out. Promise.
Obama raises lots of money. But the vast majority of his donations are small and come from individuals. It’s not who has the money, but where that money comes from…
I do appreciate your thoughtful feedback.
steve almond – i admire your brain and your writing. thank you for using your talent and skill for our edification. you write so clearly and with such conviction, yet without unwarranted guile. thank you so much.
The whole rotten mess is just sickening, from Super PACS to birth control panels that don’t include women. WTF is going on here? I understand constitutional rights, but when it’s being twisted in so many ways, it’s hard to see there is a constitution and the rights we’re supposed to have are nothing but pages of funny money.
Power and greed take over and we, the people, get shafted. Sometimes I wish I was an ostrich, but I’m not able to stand still long enough!
As always, love your work.
The Kochs’ scheming could yet be undone if Rick Santorum becomes the nominee, and/or if a wealthy Democrat (Gates? Buffett?) throws his billions into the fray. It’s tragic that it has to come to this, but Obama can’t be expected to fight in that toxic arena with one hand tied behind his back.
Steve,
Your story was well done, and a pleasure to read. You will get no argument from me that the republicans aren’t a disgrace. They are, and I by no means meant to suggest that you were making things up.
Working in Manhattan, I have been interrupted many times by Obama’s trips downtown to kiss Goldman’s ass, so it just frustrated me that he was seemingly getting a pass. I’m quite sure if you google top donors to Obama, Goldman is right there at the top, and the crony capitalism and cabinet appointments continue to roll on. Its this messy, antiquated two party system that, to me anyway, is the big problem.
It’s all so incredibly disturbing. The networks airing the ads won’t refuse the money, either.
Would that the social media / network technologies being used to mine our personal information were turned on the movement of money in the political process. It seems the only way to prevent the abusive influence from escalating is radical financial transparency.
At what point does despair and powerlessness drive us to emigrate?
Also: I liked the narrative on the intro and closing, Steve.
reading this makes the beating of my heart ring in my ears. it’s always nice to be reminded, every once in a while, that your voice is not as big and as loud as the money that rustles in the 1%s pockets.
as the laws in favour of these money-rustlers increase, there will only be fewer and fewer of them until there is only those select two or three. isn’t this why we wanted a true democracy in the first place?
“At what point does despair and powerlessness drive us to emigrate?”
@Eric, I tried emigration. I recommend that everyone who can, try living overseas and seeing what “we” look like from abroad. The rest of the world can see our glaring hypocrisy so clearly (plus you’ll fall in love with A4 paper and in most other countries, a saner health care system).
Acting out of despair and powerlessness doesn’t feel good to me. But ACTing is the key and maybe it’s OK if we each have our own reasons.
During the last week the Koch brothers’ foundling, Americans for Prosperity, has been making robo calls throughout southern Nevada in an effort to privatize water, raid retirement trusts, and replace employees with contract workers who receive no benefits. Their scare tactics attempt to vilify management, create false accounting data, and trash employees as “rich” freeloaders. Unlike the rest of Koch industries, public water agencies are subject to review, public accountability, and oversight on rate structures. To privatize water is to create a monopoly beyond scrutiny and very likely price gouge while leaving infrastructure to deteriorate. When bad enough, the public will have to take over a gutted and unmaintained system. The same is happening in Canada and happened in Argentina; it’s time to stop it in America.
But WHAT can we do?
What CAN we do?
What can WE do?
What can we DO?
Pam,
I’d suggest forwarding a link to this piece to “independent” voters, and Republicans, with a conciliatory note suggesting that getting money out of politics will help make elections more honest. And that studying the history of how big corporate money got into politics is vital.
There may come a point when voters will reject the corruption of these ads, rather than being brainwashed by them…
Steve Almond! You are good at getting to the emotion behind the deception and the helplessness we all feel. I am posting on my fb page. Thanks.
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