President John Kennedy concluded his January 20, 1961 inaugural address with the question, “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”
American politicians traditionally prided themselves on serving their country as sacrifice rather than opportunity to enrich themselves while in public office. Boorish behavior observed in third world leaders was anathema to admirable ends that Americans aimed to achieve from the nation’s outset.
It is difficult to discern whether what we witness today is kleptocracy, oligarchy, or plutocracy: It appears to be some combination of all three.
Such situation cannot persist. The sooner that it terminates, the lesser the consequences and the remediation required.
I recently read reference that even Babe Ruth struck out. No politician ascends onward and upward without losing popularity and support. I agonize that accelerating misfeasance will dramatically swing the pendulum in the opposite direction — concern harbored since my college days.
To describe what occurs as conservatism is absurd: Nothing is less conservative than allowing personal enrichment to corrupt Washington — not unlike that occurring during Ferdinand Marcos’ Filipino Presidency.
Revelation that the President of the United States made $2,200,000,000 during the first year of his second term in office alone — most people would consider amassing half that amount in a lifetime to be adequate accomplishment — is reminiscent of Bob Dylan’s line
“You don’t need a weatherman
To know which way the wind blows”
(from “Subterranean Homesick Blues” [1965]).
Analysis in The New York Times, on July 2, 2026 — “Trump’s Huge Windfall Has Few Known Global Precedents” — allows that,
“Mr. Trump’s profits are a haul once unimaginable for any leader of a liberal democracy, particularly a sitting American president. No modern Western leader has ever publicly disclosed such big windfalls while in office.
“The Trump family’s earnings, experts said, have moved him into an echelon of enrichment more associated with strongmen in Russia and Turkey.
“His gains were all the more striking because the United States has long positioned itself as a standard-bearer for financial regulation, anti-graft measures and the rule of law. Yet his cryptocurrency earnings highlight an unusually glaring conflict: As president, Mr. Trump oversees the regulation of an industry that, as a businessman, he also greatly profits from.”
The trend occurs alongside geometrically increasing income inequality. The dynamic causes social disruption.
Southerners remember times when white voters — who were virtually all voters then — could be convinced to blame their burdens on “the ‘nigras.’” Today immigrants — Hispanics, Muslims, hardworking and humble downtrodden individuals — serve as scapegoats for the declining fortunes of white working class voters.
The ruse can only continue for a limited time. The obscenely wealthy — the Jeff Bezoses, Elon Musks, Peter Thiels, and Mark Zuckerbergs of the world, among others — will reap what they sow in the fullness of time. People such as you and me might be swept into the equal and opposite reaction, arguably suffering worse, having less power and money to buffer us from any jihad against the haves: a category which likely includes the comfortable and well-to-do alongside oligarchs and plutocrats.
Individuals dissatisfied with the extent to which they have profited to date, desiring to play a game of chicken, wanting to see how much money can be squeezed out of humanity before no conceivable influence might garner an iota more, risk our financial security with their gambit.
While suggestion is that money buys elections — California Speaker of the House Jesse Unruh famously stated that “Money is the mother’s milk of politics” — many wealthy candidates spend fortunes pursuing unsuccessful efforts to buy political office. When voters have had enough, all the tea in China — figuratively — will not allow kleptocrats, oligarchs, and plutocrats to remain ascendant.
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Postscript: Suggestion that such thoughts are political or ideological would be irresponsible: Commentary covering the indictment of Jackson’s former mayor’s demonstrates conviction that pursuit of personal enrichment by African American or Democrat elected officials is no less problematic than that involving Caucasian or Republican elected officials: It is a pox on any house.
Jay Wiener is a Northsider
