You’ve seen it, right? But you probably don’t watch it at least once every December, so I’m guessing you don’t recall all the details. What I’ve told you are the only ones that matter here. That and the plaque on the club the Dukes and Ackroyd belong to. It’s a tiny detail and easy to forget if you haven’t seen it lately. The sign shows up briefly, setting the tone for the places being traded with this last, small brick in the wall before the action ensues. Blink, in other words, and you miss it.
The sign reads:
The Heritage Club
Founded 1776
"with liberty and justice for all"
members only
The club members are all rich, white men. The only blacks in the club are servants. In fact, the staff are exclusively black. “Heritage,” right?
The movie’s 40 years old. But the sentiment on the sign, meant to be ironic, is still relevant. Because the incoming administration wants to enforce that “members only” addition to our pledge of allegiance to to our flag.*
Besides, watching it, with its portrayal of life in these United States from the bottom to the top, you wonder when history in these United States started for JMM:
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) December 21, 2024A unique time in American history? Has JMM read Dos Passos? Or even Fitzgerald? Or, for that matter, Veblen? The closest we got to true revolution against the rich (like the Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers, the people who weren’t all that bothered by the stock market crash) was the Great Depression. And you’d only know that if you were an historian. Twain labeled the era of his adulthood the “Gilded Age” as an insult; but by now it’s usually treated as descriptive and even appropriate. America has always had its dissenters, but Americans have always respected, if not outright worshipped, money. Why do you think so many people think Elon Musk is “smart”?
American history always wobbles between some form of populism aimed at controlling the monied interests, and worshipping unashamedly at the altar of Mammon. The current Texas Constitution was written in the late 19th century during a period of progressive reaction to extraordinary wealth in the hands of the few. The Texas Railroad Commission was actually created in that Constitution to control the railroads, the great economic powers of the day. The Railroad Commission was later tasked to oversee the oil industry in Texas, and provided the blueprint for OPEC to control the world oil market in the’70’s (not coincidentally because Texas was OPEC back in the day).
The Texas Constitution is an absolute mess which was written to return power to the people from the people with money. It serves the opposite role, now. Several decades ago there were feeble efforts to overhaul the document, but the monied interests it was supposed to control opposed changing the status quo by returning the constitution to its original intent. The sentiment of the business interests was stated quite bluntly: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Obviously, there was no populist groundswell to fix it, because nothing happened. And I don’t see the catalyst for that kind of fervor coming anytime soon. It’s not like this is a unique time in American history. Times were much more unique after the’60’s, when liberals even in Texas were able to get consumer protection laws passed (all long since reformed into toothlessness), and to raise ideas of a convention to rewrite the mess that is the Texas Constitution. Yeah, that sentiment didn’t last.
And Elon Musk and Trump and some Silicon Valley has-beens (yeah, they’re rich. But influential? At best they run newspapers!) are going to cause America to rise up and follow Bernie Sanders and AOC to the Promised Land?
Sure. It’s a unique time in American history, after all. Just ask John Dos Passos.
It’s times like this I remember the Art and Sausages Party in student government at UT-Austin in the late ‘70’s. The main building there (the big white tower atop which the shootings in the early ‘60’s occurred) bears an inscription from the gospel of John: “You Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free.” The Art and Sausages campaign knew better, and proposed the legend be changed to the more truthful: “Money Talks.”
Never forget the ending of “Trading Places.” This is America. It’s always all about the money.💸
*which, doubly ironically, has nothing to do with Philadelphia or the Constitution, and was written by a socialist. 😈
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