I have come to believe more firmly over the years that a history of family wealth and privilege results in the production of people, mostly men, who are a pretty unfit lot to have their hands on the levers of power. Anne Applebaum (2020) has outlined the rank corruption and incompetence of a number of leaders from the monied classes that, she believes, are part of the gradual destruction of democracy in various parts of Europe1. From Boris Johnson in Great Britain to Victor Orban in Hungary she paints a dismal picture of their self-absorbed personalities and their ripping and tearing at the fabric of democratic life in their respective countries. She mentions the poster boy for anti-democratic leaders, D.J. Trump of course, but her focus is much wider. I would like to briefly discuss examples much closer to home, of how the rich and privileged seem unfit to govern a democracy.
Here in Canada, there was a rather funny and very truthful cartoon making the rounds which represents the contrast between two well known Ontarians. The first is Professor David Card who was born in Guelph, but has lived and taught in the US for most of his career, and was recently awarded a share of the Nobel Prize for economics. The second is Doug Ford, Premier of Ontario. Dr. Card was recently recognized for his body of research and the use of empirical data, which proved that minimum wage rises DO NOT lead to job losses Associated Press, 2021). Though the results have been derided by the usual suspects, profiteers, business leaders large and small and the right-wing press, his work has been replicated and he has finally received the recognition he deserves. The other individual is Doug Ford the brother of the former (drug addled) Mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford, and son of Douglas Bruce Ford Sr., a minor cabinet minister in the two-term provincial government of the former Conservative premier, Mike Harris (1994 -1995 to 2002) (who was well known for causing the death of the Indigenous protester, Dudley George, and seven residents of Walkerton Ontario, and the illness of hundreds of others, due to his cancelation of water safety regulations (CBC News, 2010). Mr. Ford, the one represented in the cartoon, is the sitting Conservative Party leader and premier of the Province of Ontario and is intoning that he doesn’t buy “those kinds of facts” and will do his own research.
But we know exactly how the premier of the Province of Ontario will react to information generated by empirical research that in any way challenges his preconceived ideas or his sense of his interests or those of his fellow members of the “wealthy class. His first reaction, will be to ignore it (as we’ve seen him do with all uncomfortable reality) and, if forced to confront it, he will denounce it with some spurious rationale. Mr. Ford, who appears to have no love for the working class, upon taking power in 2018, promptly cancelled a scheduled raise in the minimum wage to $15 an hour and imposed a freeze for the next two-and-half years.” (Cohn, 2021). His slowness in following the advice of his science and medical advisers, regarding what should be done about the covid pandemic, is well known. (Howlett, 2021)
Lest we think that Mr. Ford is a one off, we need to think about the present occupier of the office of Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau and of the unlamented former President of the United States.
Trump is the scion of an obscenely rich and unscrupulous New York land developer. According to the book by Trump the Younger’s niece, Too Much & Never Enough, (2020) he was favoured and indulged by his father (who was abetted in his favouring by his wife, Donald’s mother) and never had to worry about any of his many misdeeds and failures since dear old dad would always ignore or excuse them or, if necessary, bail him out. He demonstrated no ability to see the needs or interests of others, whether it be the poor, women, Indigenous people, Black people or, most famously, refugees and immigrants. Indeed, Trump, in office (and out), looked and acted like a spoiled brat who never could look beyond his own ego and has thus been a pox on his country.
Justin Trudeau cannot be placed in quite the same category of D. J. Trump. His father, Pierre, was a very successful (if not always loved) Prime Minister of Canada. Pierre Trudeau is in many ways responsible for some of the most important developments in the country, most famously the repatriation of the Constitution from Great Britain and the enshrining within our constitution of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Trudeau the younger seems to have inherited some of his father’s charisma as well as his money. On the other hand however, he has demonstrated on countless occasions a tin ear about how his actions, or omissions, can negatively affect others. He demonstrated a regrettable habit of dressing up in blackface in his early manhood which, although not much noticed then, has certainly come back to haunt him as the PM. As well, he seems quite unable to get it into his head how indulging himself, with his wealthy friends, accepting flights to the Aga Kahn’s personal island for a Christmas vacation for example, might look to the public. And there was his buddying up to the “Me to We” boys, handing them out a big time, no-bid contract without appropriate oversight. This might smell pretty rank, and it did. More recently he decided to skip any ceremony, on the very first Truth and Reconciliation Day, to spend the day surfing with his family on the BC coast.
F. Scott Fitzgerald has a very insightful observation on people like Doug Ford and the other two rich guys: “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. ...” There is more but this is the essential observation he gives us.
So, Mr. Ford is in “good” company as it were. He and his ilk continually demonstrate either little understanding of the lives of working people or they deride the people that live those lives. It seems, obviously, very difficult, perhaps impossible, for privileged, wealthy and spoiled individuals to see the real lives lived by working class people through the miasma of their own wealth. The ease with which they sail through life, particularly when problems are encountered, is foreign to the rest of us. Facts mean less to them than their own comforting bromides – that they merit their privilege and that they work for their incomes, which in fact they inherited. And they will fight like wild cats to squelch any attempt to have working class reality become part of economic and social policy.
There should be something in the Constitution of all countries that precludes the wealthy from running for public office, or participating in any way in the political life of the country. Let them sit in their offices, enjoy their perks and count their money but, please, let’s keep them away from issues that impact on the lives of ordinary people. They just don’t understand us.
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Resources
Applebalm, A. (2020) The Twilight of Democracy. Random House of Canada.
Associated Press. (2021). Canadian-born David Card among 3 winners of Nobel in economics”. https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/nobel-economics-1.6207162. Oct. 11.
CBC News (2010). “Inside Walkerton: Canada's worst-ever E. coli contamination: The shock, the investigation and the aftermath.” CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/inside-walkerton-canada-s-worst-ever-e-coli-contamination-1.887200. May.
Cohn. R.M. (2021). “No Kudos for Nobelist from Chest-thumping Ford”. Toronto Star. Oct. 16. P. A.8.
Howlett, K. (2021). “Doug Ford overrode Ontario’s top doctor on COVID-19 tests, overwhelming system.” The Globe and Mail. Doug Ford overrode Ontario’s top doctor on COVID-19 tests, overwhelming system. March 1.
Trump, T. (2020). Too Much & Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man. Simon & Schuster Canada.
1 To be clear, Applebalm, herself a member of the monied class, does not put the finger on the wealth and privilege of the individuals as the cause of their leanings toward corruption. She is a self-proclaimed conservative and seems to go to some pains to demonstrate her own connections to the monied classes and I suspect could be considered a charter member. But in reading this very chatty and interesting book it is impossible not to note the privileged backgrounds of the men (Boris Johnson, for example is an old Etonian and went to Oxford, as did her husband who knew him there) and some women she describes and criticizes.
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