When Great Thievery Was in Flower

Ayn Rand first percolated down to high schoolers in the 1960s. Great door stoppers of pungent melodramas pitting “the unbending genius” who destroys his masterpiece rather than compromise his vision with companies whose design tastes differ. He termed them “parasites.” 

Then we got Ayn Rand fanboys Alan Greenspan and former Speaker Paul Ryan to man the upper echelons of our government to graft unbridled selfishness onto the country’s economic root stock. 

Trump and Musk, both concerned with society’s “parasites” are now sending the U.S. to third world status in record time. All to serve the billionaire class their $3.5 million annual tax cuts. 

From 1981 to the end of this dark night of the country’s soul, whenever it comes, the era should justly be called the Age of Great Thieves.

Not only are we harassed into ever more security software to fend off Internet thieves and scammers from all over the globe, but employers since the late 1970s have stolen $50 billion a year from employees, and the 1% purchased the Congresses to redistribute upward $50 trillion from the 90%.

Now that they’ve taken everything that wasn’t nailed down, they’re deconstructing 60 years — 90 if you count the contributions from Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor — geared to make life easier for the working class and the middle class.The easy pickings are now gone.

So they use their claw hammers to pull the nails from programs and government structures intended to serve the non rich. Those programs helped to honor the dignity of work so long given GOP lip service. That lip service has disappeared from the GOP platform.

Even at the turn of the 20th century, Henry Ford, that anti-Semite, racist and Nazi sympathizer shared the wealth with his workers. How quaint.

For him, it was just business, a way to sell more cars. 

These days, the naked greed of Trump’s billionaire cabinet is a sight to behold. Absent any indication of shame, they congratulate themselves for their financial and power attack.

What we are witnessing is a walk through of the criminal code: trespass, vandalism of federal digital systems, conspiracy to commit the greatest heist in world history, and treason. 

It’s likely they’ve altered the records beyond repair, adding a leg to the GOP practice of underfunding digital systems to COBOL, a 1970s language. They’ve also halved many agencies’ staffs, all to prove that the government cannot work.

It has taken decades to achieve the John Birch Society’s goals and they are inches away from complete success. 

Marie Antoinette never said, “Let them eat cake.”

These people just say, “More for me” in this Age of Great Thieves.