I feel the need to discuss something that isn’t talked about enough but thankfully is increasing in dialogue. We are consistently divided into “sides.” This is by design. Divide and conquer is the oldest tactic in the human power book. In the United States, the easiest way to divide us is through our party affiliation. Republicans traditionally believe in small government and corporate freedom. Democrats traditionally believe in labor rights and regulation. But it isn’t that simple. In America, we give the illusion of being divided by party affiliation. But the reality is that both parties are the same. Both parties are elected by donors, and the donors come from one group, one class…the wealthy elite. In the United States, thanks to actions like repealing Glass Steagall in 1999, an act that separated commercial banking from investment banking (under Bill Clinton, a Democrat), and the overturning of campaign finance regulation in the Citizens United decision of 2010 (a Supreme Court decision led by five Republican-appointed justices), both sides are guilty of maintaining a class hierarchy of power. As proven by the last fifty years of policy to give tax breaks to the wealthy, $50 trillion has been redistributed from the bottom 90% to the top 1% of earners from 1975 to 2018 (as shown from a study by Carter Price and Kathryn Edwards). 

Today, we have a Republican party that is flouting all the democratic norms as well as the rule of laws so that Trump (and his cronies) can benefit financially from this presidency. Trump alone has enriched himself to the tune of at least $1.4 billion in this first year of his second term. Republicans are no longer even trying to hide their enrichment from their political positions. Democrats, on the other hand, are more insidious because they give the illusion of fighting for the little guy while maintaining the status quo on both wall street and within the financial systems that decide the reallocation of wealth. In the end, the power structure is decided by who controls the money, and it’s not the little guy, the majority of Americans who only want to make a decent living and enjoy the comforts of a functioning healthcare system, affordable college, and the ability to take a vacation once in a short while. Increasingly, that gap between the grotesquely wealthy elite class and the workers who earn a wage is growing into a deep crevice of kings versus dependency. This looks a lot like the 1890s, the age of the robber barons. Wealthy tech titans and finance gurus, with the help of Trump and his power to approve monopolistic acquisitions, are consolidating both industries and power into the hands of a few in ways we are powerless to stop without real pushback from Congress. However, when we have two parties working for the same elite class, the system of checks and balances fails. We are left with an ever increasing chasm of division that solidifies the kings at the top and their position of power. Now Trump is trying to consolidate this power globally through his “Board of Peace.” 

I am not saying that both sides are equally bad or that all politicians are corrupt. What I am saying is that enough Democrats are in place to maintain the current power structure, to push back just enough to create the illusion of resistance while continuing to push for deregulation of the corporate and wealthy elite interests. By focusing on culture wars (again, by design), the public is distracted by issues that divide us culturally and politically while the elites continue to steal the spoils of productivity and exploit the labor of the working class. Once you understand this, you can’t unsee it. As someone who has been ranting about the need for campaign finance reform and the unequal taxation system in place for decades, even I still fell for some of the culture war bullshit. Of course, I did; of course, you did…because the threat to strip us of our rights is very real. There is a very legitimate attack on women right now, a backlash from the success and gains women have made since the 1970s. There is also a very real ongoing attack on people of color, a grotesquely open attempt to erase history right now in this current administration. And the LGBTQ+ community might be front and center, an extreme minority that is being targeted in order to distract a base of evangelicals that the Right depends on for votes, both with the abortion issue (manufactured in the 1970s to get Nixon elected) and also with the anti-trans campaign  (a non-issue that affects fewer than 1% of the population). 

Story time: In 2024, I got into a Facebook disagreement with an ally over then President Joe Biden. She was advocating to withhold our votes from Biden (and eventually Harris) over the Gaza genocide. I was vehemently against this because I knew that if Trump were voted in, we would systematically see our rights be stripped away under what I could clearly see was a fascist agenda. No thanks. Though Biden isn’t perfect, he is at the very least pro-democracy. Her response was to say (and this is a loose translation) that we cannot uphold democratic values through leaders who fund (hence, allow) tyranny. In other words, the Biden/Harris’ administration’s participation through both support and funding of a genocide make them wholly unqualified to lead a free nation. 

I struggle with this, and here’s why. In a pluralistic democratic society, we will never get the exact candidate that we want on all issues. In a country as large and diverse as the United States of America, we often will find ourselves in dilemmas where we are picking the best option out of two unsatisfactory candidates. In a pluralistic society, we have to make our case culturally, providing both education and awareness to move the body politic closer to our values so that better candidates are lifted up and eventually elected. That is why we must support candidates who support public education, free access to information, a strong and diverse media landscape, the rule of law, and programs that help our population thrive and succeed. That is why I choose Democratic candidates. Historically, they fight for the little guy, the collective that moves our society towards progress and equality. That said, I also understand what my friend was saying. I, too, don’t see how we maintain a free society when our leaders allow a genocide to occur in other lands, and we help fund it. That goes against everything that democracies should stand for. 

So where does that lead us? I conclude that a few things must happen. First and foremost, we MUST have reform around campaign finance. We must allow the elevation of true democratic candidates who believe in democratic principles who are able to rise to the top without depending on the funding of millionaires and billionaires. That marriage of wealth and access to democratic leadership is wholly unsustainable if we want to maintain democratic and free principles in our society. The election of Zohran Mamdani has given me hope that we can prevail over the grossly skewed electorate in place because of access to wealth. Second, we must boost and enhance both funding and access to public education. It must be public because every child deserves and requires access to a quality education if we are to continue building a civic-minded, democratic society. If we don’t do this, in the future we will eventually find ourselves exactly where we are today, controlled by wealthy elite “slave holders” who pull all the strings on knowledge, access, and our shared reality. I don’t have time to unpack this sentence here (yes, I know it’s a lot), but I surely can in another post. In short, the wealthy elite control everything right now, including workers, the media, education, etc. We are slaves to their wealth and power. Lastly, we must keep specific institutions separate: religion separate from state; media separate from monied interests and influence through journalistic integrity and potentially bringing back something similar to the Fairness Doctrine, amplifying actual truth and diminishing propaganda; and corporations separate from individuals in terms of who is identified as subject to or from freedom. The Citizens United Supreme Court decision that corporations (a business entity) has the same rights as a human, to say that their money is speech, and they deserve the same rights as any one individual, is madness. That decision gave way too much power to the wealthy elite and supercharged the inequality we see today. 

I want to say to my friend who I am guessing didn’t vote for Biden (or Trump) and in a way contributed to allowing this fascist into office, I am no longer mad about that, and I understand her position. And as much as I am so angry we are here right now, there is some hope in seeing people show their true colors and allowing so much chaos and destruction because maybe this is what it had to take in order to wake more people up to the true problems in this country. Maybe our collective society had to experience it getting so bad in order to understand what is truly happening at the top. Maybe she understood that we had to burn this corrupt system to the ground in order to build something greater in its place. My only fear is whether or not we can come together and forgive past grievances so that what we build is loving and sustainable. It requires letting go of the culture wars and seeing each other as human beings and similar to each other rather than so different. It requires a building of community rather than a tearing down of social structures, something that was slowly happening through social media but supercharged when the pandemic hit. We are in collective mourning from all this trauma, but there is hope on the other side of this darkness. Community, understanding, love, and collective bargaining are the answers, not a strongman who is actually weak and pathetic. There is no such thing as one single savior. That is a myth; it is a tempting one because it is easier to look to one superhero rather than doing the individual hard work of opening ourselves up to others through vulnerability and looking at our own shame and healing it from within. 

Our work as a collective is both internal work within ourselves and external work, repairing relationships with each other, reaching across the divide to see how similar we are, how much we are in the same fight, helping each other rise up rather than tearing each other down. To bring this into Christian terms since so many of my own friends are Christian, it is using Jesus Christ as a model (not the savior), the true message of Jesus in loving thy neighbor and thy enemy, feeding the sick, poor, and injured, and overturning tables where the powerful elite exploit the meek. It requires us to do that inner work of self acceptance so that we can go out into the world and not only accept others but help them do their own inner work of self acceptance. This is not to say that we should put ourselves in spaces where harm and exploitation can occur. As someone learning to stop doing other people’s emotional labor, I draw a line at exploitation. We can encourage others to do their own work, but we cannot do it for them. We can provide the safe spaces for them to come into the circle of healing and love, but we cannot walk into that circle for them. I don’t have all the answers, but I have some of them. I think we all do within us, and it includes acceptance and love of each other and an absolute repudiation of the power structures that create harm. Think to yourself, who is in the position of power and how are they using it? Is it moral and just? And are our biases influencing what is moral and just? By extracting out what we have been previously taught, by deconstructing what is happening before our eyes, we can find the truth. We just have to be honest with ourselves about what is happening and who benefits from it. There is no justification for the exploitation of the powerless. Let’s join together in this fight and take the elite out of the equation. They are not elite because they are special. They are elite because they have manipulated the system to their benefit. They have government contracts and tax subsidies that help to enrich themselves. Then they do not pass that wealth down to the workers who make them so productive. Collectively we should be demanding accountability for the extraction of our labor without true compensation. We should be joining together against this evil. Again, who has the power? And what are they exploiting to keep their power? Once you understand power structures and the systems in place to sustain that power, you can’t unsee it. Let’s come together and fight this madness as ONE extremely powerful populace. We are the ones who are going to save democracy. We are our own saviors…through collective awareness and communal love.