America's Age of Grift
What has happened to our Novus ordo seclorum?
The American City upon a Hill is in ruins. Our “New” fallen America runs on grift – what’s good for me is good for the world! We are all Boomers now.
Harvard University and West Point led the way to the new promised land.
At Harvard, your personal “truth” validating racism and plagiarism will get you the Presidency. At West Point, there is no need for a mission centered on “duty, honor, country.”
Our President is a compulsive grifter; his Republican rival is a compulsive huckster. For them, it has always been about the money: cash in hand, swanky digs, juicy book or real estate deals.
But they are not alone. Grift is the new American Way. Other words for this culture are “entitlement” and “rent-extraction.” Just give me the money and don’t ask questions.
Our politicians are leeches; our bureaucrats, especially public school teachers and principals, eagerly line up for tenured positions of irresponsibility. Journalists do not seek the truth but fabricate their own “narratives.” Business leaders and “professionals” look for rents to extract most easily from society.
Bureaucracy is a “performative” art, and so it bestows its favors on performers. It is the play that counts, not real-world outcomes for real live people.
Look what public education and welfare have done to our children. We Americans have spent a lot of money to buy systemic academic failure for those who most need a good education in writing, reading and arithmetic.
The Old Testament warned us about bureaucratic power and elitism. In 1 Samuel 8, the elders of Israel ask Samuel to anoint for them a king. Samuel thought that was a bad idea. He complained to the Lord who responded, “it is not you they have rejected but me… now they are deserting me and serving other Gods. … You must give them a solemn warning and must tell them what the king who is to reign over them will do.”
Accordingly, Samuel spoke to the elders of Israel as follows:
This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots. And he will appoint captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots.
And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers and … your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work.
And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your olive yards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants. And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants. He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants. And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the Lord will not hear you in that day.
But the elders of Israel listened not to Samuel and insisted on the anointment of a king to rule over them and fight their wars.
Kings and other hierarchy performers get selected by pleasing people. In today’s America, that process has been formalized. Credentials authorizing one’s admission into the bureaucratic elite are certificates awarded by institutions of higher education. Other, more informal certificates come from sucking up to those who sit and eat above the salt and thereby gaining the status of being “clubbable.”
In the armed services, can one become a general officer without obtaining such academic accreditation? Maybe not. But does such education teach them how to win wars? Our general officers after Vietnam have not shown that they know how to win wars, not even General Petraeus with his COIN manual.
Consider the biography of former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mike Milley.
“In addition to his bachelor's degree in political science from Princeton University, … has a master's degree in international relations from Columbia University and one from the U.S. Naval War College in national security and strategic studies. He is also a graduate of the MIT Seminar XXI National Security Studies Program.”
All that and he never won a war
But, oh, the rents he’ll extract from the government and private industry!
Upon his retirement, “White Rage” Milley started teaching at Georgetown and Princeton Universities, all very “Pukka Sahib”. And he quickly monetized his “brand” by retaining Robert Barnett of the expensive DC law firm Williams and Connolly.
The Williams and Connolly website tells us that: “Bob’s clients have included Barack Obama, Tony Blair, The Prince of Wales, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Michelle Obama, Laura Bush, Bob Woodward, Mary Higgins Clark, Barbra Streisand, Jack Welch, George Will, several former U.S. Secretaries of State and Secretaries of the Treasury, numerous U.S. Senators and House members.”
“Bob [has also represented] former government officials in conjunction with their transitions to the private sector. His clients have included Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Nikki Haley, Janet Yellen, Madeleine Albright, Karl Rove, Ben Bernanke, James Baker, Donna Shalala, and many former Cabinet officials, Senators and Congressmen.”
Sounds like grifter heaven.
As Machiavelli pointed out so insightfully in his reflections on hierarchies of control, a “prince” must know how to change his character with the times and the circumstances for “any man who wishes to make a profession of goodness in every department of conduct, must inevitably come to ruin among so many men who are not good.”
“Therefore, a ruler who wishes to preserve his power must learn to be able not to be good, and to use this knowledge or not use it as necessity may dictate.”
I think Machiavelli would be unimpressed by Milley and Petraeus. Both failed to achieve the one thing they were meant to do for the State—achieve victory in war.
Performance – pretending to be good or bad, smart or dumb, depending on the circumstances – can give one a kind of celebrity. As Donald Trump and Joe Biden have exploited, celebrity status in today’s America builds out your networks of contacts and relationships, which can be monetized with quid-pro-quos.
You come to my party; I go to yours. You help me; I help you. You praise me; I praise you.
Such celebrity and position can give you a “brand” which has market value.
Just talk to Jim and Hunter Biden about how that works.
Miranda Devine writes: Hunter Biden, “the true sheikh of Washington,” as one of his partners dubbed him, wasn’t the only US VIP cultivated by Ye Jianming, Chairman of Chinese energy company, who sprinkled expensive diamonds around Washington like candy.
An energy expert with deep intelligence ties in Washington and Beijing, [Gal] Luft claims, “three former national security advisors, a former CIA Director, a former NSA Director, a former Chairman of the Fed, former cabinet secretaries, former senators, retired generals, CEOs [acted as] CEFC’s enablers in Washington [and] were willing to go to great lengths to enrich themselves by parking under Ye’s gown.”
For economists, cashing in on your brand is one form of rent-extraction, the grease that turns the wheels of crony-capitalist autocracies in country after country. As Karl Marx complained, the rich get richer and the poor stay poor. And, what about our “national security?”
It says whatever the grifters need it to say to keep the wheels turning.
Stephen B. Young is the Global Executive Director of the Caux Round Table for Moral Capitalism (CRT). Young was educated at Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He served as an Assistant Dean at the Harvard Law School and as the third Dean of the Hamline University School of Law. His new book is Kissinger's Betrayal: How America Lost the Vietnam War.
