2. to say that this is a red country. What they're pointing to is land, which we already know. But you should think about that.
— Fames Jallows (@FamesJallows) November 13, 2016
4. And now the media is looking at a graph of land, of essentially physical property, to convey political power.
— Fames Jallows (@FamesJallows) November 13, 2016
7. Which is basically, do you have land, do you have property? Then you are a person who has a vote.
— Fames Jallows (@FamesJallows) November 13, 2016
There is a long “Constitutional” tradition, going back to Thomas Jefferson and his fellow slave-run plantation owners, aping the worst European-aristocracy men-of-property kleptocracy. Our most perilous historical era came when the propertied “flower of Southern manhood” attempted by force to ensure that their title to outsized tracts of valuable land should not be imperiled by “stealing” their right to hold other humans in slavery. It is not a coincidence that today’s American neo-Nazis still aim so much ire at rootless money-grubbing cosmopolitans — people who don’t own land, property that can be milked for resources.
It’s unclear how much property Donald Trump actually owns, but it’s clearly important to him that his name be slapped on every physical ‘development’ for which his mortgage-holders allow him to stand as a figurehead. It’s also significant that some of his nastiest court battles have concerned his “right” to despoil such properties as he will, regardless of regulation, nuisance to his neighbors, or safety of his guests/clients. In such cases, his assertions somewhat resemble those of the Bundy clan — another bunch of dole-dependent grifters outraged at the idea that “tha gubmint” wants to prevent them from using “their” (our common) land however they will.
A slumlord like Trump’s old man, a real estate developer knocking together cheap McMansions and jerry-built office parks in hopes of a quick turnover before the basements start to subside or the parking lots to flood, is never a sympathetic figure. But a reality-tv “star” with a far-flung chain of celebrity properties — big-city skyscrapers, Palm Beach mansions, Scottish golf courses — there is a man who might gamble on becoming the closest thing America has to aristocracy. Assuming, of course, he can attract the support of the xenophobic, bigoted, socially inbred “Heartland”‘s revanchist white peasantry, living resentfully off government-paid agricultural support and federal welfare programs, and slobbering over (cosmopolitan media elite professionals’) fairy tales about the return of the Good Old Days, when only white men of property could act with impunity.
Late Night Open Thread: Propertied White GriftersPost + Comments (246)