Originally published at: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/men-only-christian-only-secret-society-gets-more-secret
A secret society that plans on staffing a future, right-wing government with Christian men is disbanding two of its Idaho chapters, records obtained by TPM show. TPM found that two Idaho chapters of the Society for American Civic Renewal dissolved themselves in May, corporate records show, several weeks after a report by TPM revealed the…
FIRST, instead of a picture try this from Paul Krugman.
Freedom’s just another word for not paying taxes.
After Donald Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts, the Heritage Foundation — a right-wing think tank that has, among other things, produced the Project 2025 agenda, a blueprint for policy if Trump wins — flew an upside-down American flag, which has become an emblem for support of MAGA in general and election denial in particular.
This action may have shocked some old-line conservatives who still thought of Heritage as a serious institution, but Heritage is, after all, just a think tank. It’s not as if upside-down flags were being flown by people we expect to defend our constitutional order, like Supreme Court justices.
Oh, wait.
But Heritage’s embrace of what amounts to an attack on democracy is a useful symbol of one of the really troubling developments of this election as it heads into the final stretch. Heritage presents itself as a defender of freedom, but its real mission has always been to produce arguments — frequently based on shoddy research — for low taxes on rich people. And its tacit endorsement of lawlessness illustrates the way many of America’s plutocrats — both in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street — have, after flirting with the crank candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., been rallying around Trump.
Why would billionaires support Trump? It’s not as if they’ve done badly under President Biden. Stock prices — which Trump predicted would crash if he lost in 2020 — have soared. High interest rates, which are a burden on many Americans, are if anything a net positive for wealthy people with money to invest. And I doubt that the superrich are suffering much from higher prices for fast food.
Wealthy Americans, though, are surely betting they’ll pay lower taxes if Trump wins.
Biden and his team have offered fairly explicit guidance about their tax agenda, which would directly raise taxes on high-income Americans and also raise corporate taxes, which would indirectly be mainly a tax on the wealthy. These measures wouldn’t produce taxes at the top remotely comparable to what they were during the Eisenhower years, when the top marginal income tax rate was 91 percent and large estates could face inheritance taxes as high as 77 percent. Still, Biden’s plans, if carried out, would make the rich a bit less rich.
Trump has been far less explicit, but he clearly wants to retain his 2017 tax cut in full, and his allies in Congress are committed not just to tax cuts but to starving the Internal Revenue Service of resources, which would allow more wealthy Americans to evade the taxes they legally owe.
So billionaires aren’t wrong in thinking they’ll pay less in taxes if Trump wins. But why aren’t they more concerned about the bigger picture?
After all, even if all you care about is money, Trump’s agenda should make you very worried. His advisers’ plans to deport millions of immigrants (supposedly only the undocumented, but do you really believe many legal residents wouldn’t get caught up in the dragnets?) would shrink the U.S. labor force and be hugely disruptive. His protectionist proposals (which would be very different from Biden’s targeted measures) could mean an all-out global trade war. If he’s able to make good on them, his attacks on the independence of the Federal Reserve risk much more serious inflation than anything we’ve experienced in recent years.
Beyond all that, Trump will almost certainly try to weaponize the justice system to go after his perceived enemies. Only someone completely ignorant of history would imagine himself safe from that kind of weaponization — even if Trump considers you an ally now, that can change in an instant.
And if you’ve been following Trump’s rantings, you know that his rhetoric is getting less rational and more vindictive by the week. Yet his support among billionaires seems if anything to be consolidating.
So what’s going on? Here’s what I think, although it’s admittedly speculative.
First, America’s oligarchs probably believe that their wealth and influence would protect them from the arbitrary exercise of power. Trump and company might turn corrupt law enforcement and a cowed judiciary against other people, but surely not them! By the time they realized how wrong they were, it would be too late.
As I’ve written before, the superrich can be remarkably obtuse and ignorant of history.
Second, at some level I don’t really think it’s about the money. How much difference does it make to a billionaire’s quality of life if he has to settle for a slightly smaller superyacht? At the top of the pyramid, wealth is largely about status and self-importance; as Tom Wolfe wrote long ago, it’s about “seeing ’em jump.”
And when politicians don’t jump, when they don’t treat the very wealthy with the deference and admiration they consider their due, some of them become enraged. We saw this when many Wall Streeters turned on President Barack Obama — after he helped bail them out in the financial crisis — because they felt insulted by his occasional criticisms.
Biden is hardly a class warrior, but he clearly doesn’t worship the superrich. And all too many of them are turning to Trump out of sheer pettiness.
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It’s a modern day Klan without the silly costumes and a few more college degrees, but all of the traditional hatred and intolerance of The Other + Uppity Women that give these fascists permission to be awful & dangerous elitists. Plus hiding in the shadows like scared sissies.
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“un-hyphenated Americans.”
So only Native Americans!!! Somehow I don’t see them joining.
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Turn on the light and watch the “Nationalist-Christianists” (Nat-Cs) scram.
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These sound like a pseudo-sophisticated version of the dudes who live a Spartan life conducting war training maneuvers in the woods (the correct term eludes me right now), preparing for the end of civilization.
A club and you can bet your bottom dollar they drink some serious whiskey during and after meetups.
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“Jerkwads.”
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That’s it!
And only incels need apply.
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“Shiners”.
I believe it is “Shriners.”
(Unless these “people” are so pale that they glow in the dark.)
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A crowd of craps that have never heard the word ‘no’ and have finally turned to religion to iron out the problems with their own feelings about their own wealth.
They read the Bible and say ‘plainly Jesus wants me to be rich’. Sorted.
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They seem to like cigars too. Anything with the trapping of manliness. Says so much -
I used to drink with these Wall Street types, and leave them in the dust by 9pm.
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First call these scum what they really are; White Trash Christian Nationalists.
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All true and correct. There is a remarkable chapter in Adam Tooze’s The Wages of Destruction about a meeting the Nazis called at Goering’s Berlin estate shortly after Hitler was made chancellor in January 1933. They summoned all the oligarchs of German society there: Krupp, Stinnes, Thyssen, Hugenberg, and all the rest.
After a lengthy period of strained chit-chat among the oligarchs themselves and second-tier Nazi operatives (Hitler was always late in order to build up suspense), Hitler appears. He doesn’t ask them for money – he DEMANDS it as his right. And he demands a very high minimum. After all, he told them, I will destroy unions, destroy communism, destroy social democracy. And you’ll have plenty of armaments contracts. What better return on investment could you possibly hope for?
And they did indeed open their checkbooks that evening, and in the subsequent March 1933 election the Nazis cleaned up.
It’s the same goddamned situation with Trump. Billionaires love fascism: it’s the way they run their businesses, so why not employ that model for society at large?
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I respectfully disagree that this is similar to the KKK. The truth is most Klan members, in fact most White people, have more in common with gay Muslim Black women then they do with members of this group. I posted a recent Paul Krugman article on the Heritage foundation and billionaires rallying around Donald Trump because that is what this group is about.
Or to put another way, the KKK is a blue collar organization. This is clearly White collar.
The KKK is about holding your position by putting other down through violence and oppression. This is intended to advance members positions through membership in the organization. That is this is about keeping money and power with their “CLAN”.
To me this is more like the old White men’s clubs that excluded blue color Whites by having requirements or fees that most KKK members could ever meet. These requirements includes education, wealth, relatives that very few KKK members could ever meet.
That is what this group is about is keeping power and money with a select group of “blue bloods” and membership will be used to conduct business amongst themselves while excluding women, people of color and not Christians.
That is this group is about keeping wealth and through wealth power in the hands of a select few who look and think like them and to hell with everyone else including most White Christian men by having an exclusive club that will only do business with themselves.
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Bullshit – double secret is clearly the sine qua non – but asshats are always with us and, as long as they don’t have privileged tax status, they have a right to associate with other asshats, hiding that along with their porn and other unsavory characteristics if they want to.
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Well done TPM. Always show light and maybe the cockroaches will scatter.
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The stupid billionaires love fascism. Just ask all the Russian billionaires who keep falling out of 10th floor windows.
If you read Lord of the Rings, what Gandalf said to Saruman when asked to join him and Sauron, “only one can wear the ring and he does not share power”.
Billionaires are only billionaires because of the power structure currently existing. I mean a dictator does not need a senate, courts or corporate donors. Everyone in a dictatorship is working for the dictator.
There is a no more sure way for billionaires to lose their billions if not their lives then to help a democracy turn into a dictatorship when other than themselves are the dictator.
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Except they’re not white trash, they’re the heads of the local Chamber of Commerce, they’'re US Senators, and it wouldn’t be surprising if one or more Supreme Court justices are among their members. There’s definitely members of the Federal judiciary that are in this club.
As for the argument that they don’t need to incorporate to be a dues paying organization, hmm, not sure that’s true at all, particularly if the leadership want to avoid substantial personal liabilities that the group could be subject to over time, etc. Seems more like they’re making a move to get away from public scrutiny more than they’re concerned about liability. Or maybe they’ve changed their incorporation arrangement to that of a private for profit club?
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Yes, as was done, forcing them under ground.
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You cannot seriously believe that disbanding this fascist organization means its going away. They’re taking from the old Chinese restaurant playbook. Change “Happiest Chinese Kitchen” to “Happy Chinese Kitchen” and the place disappears from the business tax rolls for a few years. Until they change the name to “Very Happy Chinese Kitchen.”
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