an act intended to help that turns out badly; “he did them a disservice“ …disfavour, unkindness, bad turn, ill turn You could do yourself a grave disservice. … for when the advantage proposed is trifling, as the accustoming the people …I refer to the statement by former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamed that Malaysians should be granted human rights ” only as far as we are able to” and that the opposition’s struggle for human rights is for their own benefit and “excessive”.
It is no surprise that Dr Mahathir has taken this irresponsible, mischievous and dishonest position. During his harsh and intolerant 22 year long reign as the country’s Prime Minister, Mahathir subverted and undermined most of the rakyat’s basic rights.
Key fundamental rights guaranteed to the rakyat under Part 2 of the Federal Constitution were rendered ineffective and meaningless under Mahathir’s rule, and remain so under current Prime Minister Najib.
Detention without trial laws were used against the opposition, activists, social workers and even against opponents within the ruling UMNO itself. A prominent victim was former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who was sacked, beaten and detained under the ISA in September 1998, for having opposed Mahathir’s policies.
Cynically using the excuse of national security and race relations, Mahathir used an arsenal of oppressive laws to intimidate and imprison political opponents, and to strengthen his personal grip on the country.
In fact, Mahathir should be put on trial for abusing state powers and undermining independent institutions such as the police, judiciary, civil service and election commission. His acts when in power were criminal in nature, and caused far-reaching damage to our institutions and structures of governance. History will judge Mahathir harshly.
Proxy war
The objective of the long struggle for human rights by the political opposition and activists is to return to the Rakyat the fundamental rights once given to them in the Federal Constitution.
How can it be ‘excessive’ to demand freedom of speech, freedom of peaceful assembly, freedom of association or freedom from arbitrary detention? These are among the basic freedoms that were stolen from the Rakyat by Mahathir and his various predecessors and successors.
It is not “excessive rights like the West” that the rakyat ask for, but the basic rights provided for in the Malaysian Federal Constitution. These fundamental freedoms are essential to preserve our dignity as human beings, and to enable us to question and keep the government in check.
It is increasingly clear that PM Najib and UMNO are fighting a proxy war against the Rakyat’s struggle for human rights using irresponsible and intolerant organisations and individuals like Perkasa and Dr Mahathir.
This kind of transparent stratagem fools no one. We call upon Prime Minister Najib and his government to do the right thing: return to the Rakyat their stolen freedoms.
N Surendran is a prominent human rights lawyer and vice president of PKR
related article http://engagemalaysia.wordpress.com/2009/11/28/the-sting-umno-alibabakan-mca-grand-theft-malaysia/
Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad says it is pointless for Malays to call themselves “tuan” (master) of Malaysia if they are unwilling to work for the title.
related articlehttp://engagemalaysia.wordpress.com/2009/07/22/the-kerala-snake-is-back-with-a-vengeance/
In an apparent reference to theketuanan Melayu(Malay supremacy) concept, the former prime minister said Malays would remain “coolies” in their own country if they were content to rely on government handouts to survive.
“We are proud of ourselves and our abilities. But just calling ourselves tuan will not bring any benefit.
“If we want to be tuan, we have to work hard, buy a car, sit in the back, and ask someone else to drive it,” he told the National Entrepreneurs Corporation Bhd (PUNB) symposium here today.
Dr Mahathir lamented the tendency of Bumiputera businessmen to look for fast returns, citing the widespread abuse of approved permits (AP) as an example.
He pointed out that rather than making full use of the government licence to establish a proper car import business, many just sold their APs at a profit with zero effort on their part.
“They don’t make full use of the chances given to them by the government. Instead, they want to make a quick buck. They want returns as soon as possible,” he said.
Instead, Bumiputera businessmen should emulate Naza Group, which made use of revenue from its car import business to fund a successful venture into property development, Dr Mahathir said.
Race-based affirmative action has long been a controversial topic in Malaysia, with proponents pointing to the special position of Bumiputeras set out in Article 153 of the Constitution and the more recent concept of ketuanan Melayu to justify economic privileges.
But critics say the system of privileges has been abused and is driving a wedge between the races, in addition to eroding the country’s competitiveness.
Dr Mahathir has also drawn flak for fast-tracking Malay businessmen into big business and tolerating racial quotas during his 22-year administration, while also admonishing Malays for not being more enterprising and hardworking.
If someone were to ask me- what do you think of the round table discussion sponsored by the Malay Consultative Council (MCC) I will answer as follows.
I did not attend that forum although I did get an invitation to go there. I was gladly spared the preaching of Ibrahim Ali and the sleep inducing drone of Mukhriz Mahathir. I have read the statements of the gadfly from Pasir Mas- Ibrahim ‘Stopa’ Ali( he is also known as stopa among his local supporters) and also the bloody hazy but almost sounding meaningful noises from MUkhriz Mahathir.
PERKASA Dengan Satu Melayu Pariah
Ihe economic ideas of Ibrahim Ali and his cub friends are not difficult to identify. He has supporters of such economic ideas among old school UMNO leaders. His PERKASA has the support of Dr Mahathir who can largely be credited with putting in place many of the economic measures which the current PM is seeking to dismantle.
It’s all about placing near absolute powers in the hands of an economic clique which alone will determine what’s good for the Malays at large. It’s a benevolent despot’s version of economics. It has been a system that has created, in the words of Mr. Walla the following situation:
“In the last almost forty years, the entire political script of this country has been written by a bunch of racial hypomaniacs and rent-collecting cronies which have chalked up their personal bank accounts by running this country into the ground”.
That’s the crux of the matter really. Prime Minister Najib must clearly disengage his administration from this apparition called PERKASA and Majlis Perundingan Melayu (Malay Consultative Council–MPM).
Maybe it’s just a Trojan horse backed by Dr.Mahathir Mohamad who is stalking PM Najib. How do we know, perhaps the PERKASA and MPM are actually the extensions of the hawkish side of UMNO and its presence is countenanced and supported by the life giving system of UMNO style intrigue and political subterfuge?
To allay our apprehensions and suspicions, the Prime Minister must distance his administration from Ibrahim Ali’s guerrilla groupings. Why is the Deputy head of PERKASA appointed as the boss of JASA? The truth is, Malays at large don’t require some supranational body to speak on our behalf anymore. They and those before them have screwed up everything. Let me put it in blunt terms.
Look at the whole government system. All the district officers are Malays. Most of the ADOs are Malays. The officers too. All the Pengarahs are Malays. All the MBs are Malays. The heads of the Judiciary, Police, Army and other uniformed bodies are all Malays. The Kings and Agongs are all Malays. You have Malays in power since 1957 and these Malays have put in place a governing system that is supposed to uplift all Malays.
Now look at the accomplishments. Out of the 10 wealthiest persons in Malaysia, only 1 is Malay. Out of 40 richest, maybe only 15 are Malays. Out of 10 business premises, almost all are owned by non -Malays. In almost every aspect of economic life, they are all dominated by non-Malays.
This environment is the direct result of the system put in place by the very ideas that are being bandied around by Ibrahim Ali. I want to ask the Malays this question. Suppose the entire population of Malaysia is made up of Malays. We see this kind of disparity around, who are we to blame? We blame the system that has been perpetuated and perpetrated by the social and political elite, whose membership is eagerly sought of by Ibrahim Ali.
suddenly realised this. Between the posturing of Ibrahim Ali and his MCC and the clueless MUkhriz , the whole shebang about fearing or hoping for Malay economic salvation is just hot air and a blatant excuse for some special Malays to make more money. Yes sir- it’s all just an excuse for some people to make money and to ensure the way to make money stays there in the NEM.
Ibrahim Ali can continue making money for championing Malay economic interests. He can build more bridges, have money to send people for Haj or Umrah, he can get more land from Menteri Besars etc. People like MUkhriz Mahathir can also continue making more money fighting the imaginary dragons that are coming after the holy economic interests of the Puteras. If you look at his Fibre Optic business- his is probably the only Malay name of significance there and his brother’s Kencana Petroleum or whatever, is just another Chinese moneyed company.
We are fooled people.
Hold on- before you readers say- you are denouncing Mukhriz because you are a supporter of KJ. Allow me to quickly say that KJ is quickly building up frustrations and disillusionment among his supporters. Young Man- stop mollycoddling the human apparition called Dhalkari. His master is Mukhriz still. Our advice to him is stop uncleToming around.
He must live up to his vocation as the real ketua Pemuda UMNO- the voice of conscience of UMNO- not the voice of the mindless herd. He must live up to what he represents- the possibilities of the nameless average Joes in UMNO. His victory in the Ketua Pemuda race previously showed to the world, that you can succeed without having to carry the name of bin Tun Razak, bin Hussien Onn or bin Mahathir. Anyone with above average intelligence can succeed in UMNO. He has proven that and must live up to that symbolism of opportunity. And remember, it was the Ketua Pemuda who decided the outcome of the contest between Dr Mahathir and Tengku Razaleigh in 1987.
But first:-
Allow me first to elaborate on what I think has become a standard operating procedure by UMNO people and their soul mates outside. Let’s start by stating that Ibrahim Ali is UMNO in its worse form. Let’s talk about the way they force things in their favour.
When a few churches were burnt to the ground, we didn’t see any riotous response. There may be a number of reasons why that is so. Maybe its Christian teachings- I don’t know which. Maybe, because PM Najib handled it the way he thinks is the best way- give money to burnt churches. We saw young Christians offering flowers to people in the streets, something strange in a Muslim dominated country.
We did not reach that calamitous level of church burnings, we can already see the different manner of reactions. Any hint at all of some impairment to the much worshipped concept of Malay dominance is likely to result in near mutinous reaction.
It has been a number of months, since PM Najib started dismantling some of what he thinks are impediments to greater competition. He has liberalised some subsectors in the service industry. In one of my articles, I have pointed out that these subsectors are of no consequence to Malay economic interests as Malay participation in those is very minimal to start with. As early as that time, Ibrahim Ali regarded that move as a challenge and threat to Malay economic interest. Inadvertently he was saying- PM Najib isn’t Malay enough.
Even then, Malay groups were agitated. UMNO hawks are also seething over the abolishment of a Ministry which was tasked at looking at Malay economic interests. In effect, they were looking at the economic interests of special Bumputeras only. The abolishment of that ministry is therefore sacrilegious.
People like Ibrahim Ali responded the only way he knows best- carry out some form of riotous actions. Go to Penang, herd all those impoverished traders who were impoverished since Gerakan time with collusion from UMNO Penang. Demonstrate here and there. Create anarchy where possible. Cow the government into submission.
So UMNO some in a prized cattle or sow.
If we were to study the statements given by Ibrahim ‘Stopa’ Ali and the convoluted ideas of Mukhriz Mahathir, we wonder actually what the round table on the NEM is all about. Ibrahim Ali is at least true to form- he wants the NEM to reflect the dominant and overriding interest of Malays. By Malays he meant the puteras in the Bumi. Hence article 153 should be read into every economic measure taken by the government.
But Mukhriz? We don’t know what his message is. No the NEM does not sideline the NEP. Maybe the MPM is misunderstood. Hello, Minister- the MPM is pressing for more intense affirmative strategies- something you should be criticizing unequivocally as they are rejecting the dismantling of the economy. MUkhriz is more interested in not offending the MPM as they have a large Malay membership. MUkhriz was careful not to jeopardize a potential support base. So he does what a generic politician will do- hunt with the dogs and run with the hare.
Its time all Malays see the real agenda of the economic measures insisted upon by MPM and the new measures that are waiting to be announced. They are actually two sides of the same coin- the same coin representing an excuse for privileged Malays to make more money.
Several years ago, I came across an article titled Six uniquely human traits now found in animals. While it was all undoubtedly interesting, tool use fascinated me the most. Until reading the article, never did I imagine that such behavior would be inherent in certain animals. The animal featured in this section of the article, the New Caledonian crow, is one of a number of species that uses tools in its search for food.
We are not talking about using ready-made tools like hammers and screwdrivers which may have been left behind by humans. Instead, it is even more ingenious as these tools are crafted by the crows themselves, from twigs and such. An excerpt from Wikipedia:
‘The ability to fashion tools has always been held as uniquely primate, distinguishing us from (apparently) less intelligent creatures. But humans and apes are not alone in having tool-making
skills. Crows amazed the science community in October when footage recorded using tiny ‘crow-cams’ on the tails of New Caledonian crows showed the birds creating advanced implements. One crow was observed whittling twigs and leaves with its beak to fashion grabbers designed to retrieve grubs from the ground.’
Intrigued, I navigated my browser to YouTube in the hope of finding footage of these birds in action. YouTube did not disappoint, displaying a fair number of results for a rather obscure subject. There are some really remarkable videos in there and after watching them, I wondered how the term ‘bird brained’ was coined to describe humans who have sub-par intelligence.
These birds appear significantly more intelligent and resourceful than a large number of people that I know of and have the unfortunate pleasure of working with. Let us use this video as an example. In this particular video, our corvid friend is being put to a test where it has to earn its food. Instead of food being served to it on a silver platter, it is placed into a tiny bucket which is then dropped into a tall thin beaker. The opening at the top of the beaker is much too small for the crow’s head, leaving the bucket out of its reach.
So what does it do? Sit around, mope and die of hunger eventually? As pointed out earlier, the New Caledonian crow is adept at not only using tools but also making them. The crow uses a wire that is left inside the room to lift the bucket out of the glass. It is just a plain wire and using it in its present shape is just as good as not using it at all. Some ingenuity is called for.
The crow can be seen hopping around the glass, assessing the problem at hand. Eventually, it bends the wire into a suitable shape and successfully uses it to extract the bucket from within the beaker. Dinner is served. Simply marvelous, isn’t it? Even more marvelous is the fact that these birds were never trained to do this; it comes to them naturally.
Contrast this against individuals such as Ibrahim Ali and his ilk. When pitted against a problem, they behave in a rather uncouth and uncivilised manner, threatening those who disagree with them. Behavior such as this would not look out of place in the Middle Ages, which we have long since passed.
The fact is, protesting and shouting loudly is in itself not an easy task. It takes time and effort to organise these rallies and to write these hateful speeches, no matter how nonsensical they may be. If only they could channel this energy into a more productive force, perhaps they too can enjoy the fruits of their labour
As intense protests spawned by Occupy Wall Street continue to grow, it is worth asking: Why now? The answer is not obvious. After all, severe income and wealth inequality have long plagued the United States. In fact, it could reasonably be claimed that this form of inequality is part of the design of the American foundation – indeed, an integral part of it.
Income inequality has worsened over the past several years and is at its highest level since the Great Depression. This is not, however, a new trend. Income inequality has been growing at rapid rates for three decades. As journalist Tim Noah described the process: “During the late 1980s and the late 1990s, the United States experienced two unprecedentedly long periods of sustained economic growth – the ‘seven fat years’ and the ‘long boom’. Yet from 1980 to 2005, more than 80 per cent of total increase in Americans’ income went to the top one per cent. Economic growth was more sluggish in the aughts [the first decade of the new century], but the decade saw productivity increase by about 20 per cent. Yet virtually none of the increase translated into wage growth at middle and lower incomes, an outcome that left many economists scratching their heads.”
The 2008 financial crisis exacerbated the trend, but not radically: the top one per cent of earners in the US have been feeding ever more greedily at the trough for decades.
Inferiors and superiors
In addition, substantial wealth inequality is so embedded in US political culture that, standing alone, it would not be sufficient to trigger citizen rage of the type we are finally witnessing. The American founders were clear that they viewed inequality in wealth, power, and prestige as not merely inevitable, but desirable and, for some, even divinely ordained. Jefferson praised “the natural aristocracy” as “the most precious gift of nature” for the “government of society”. John Adams concurred: “It already appears, that there must be in every society of men superiors and inferiors, because God has laid in the… course of nature the foundation of the distinction.”
Not only have the overwhelming majority of those in the US long acquiesced to vast income and wealth disparities, but some of those most oppressed by these outcomes have cheered it loudly. Americans have been inculcated not only to accept, but to revere those who are the greatest beneficiaries of this inequality.
In the 1980s, this paradox – whereby even those most trampled upon come to cheer those responsible for their state – became more firmly entrenched. That’s because it found a folksy, friendly face. Ronald Reagan, adept at feeding the populace a slew of Orwellian clichés that induced them to defend the interests of the wealthiest. “A rising tide,” as President Reagan put it, “lifts all boats”. The sum of his wisdom being: It is in your interest when the rich get richer.
Implicit in this framework was the claim that inequality was justified and legitimate. The core propagandistic premise was that the rich were rich because they deserved to be. They innovated in industry, invented technologies, discovered cures, created jobs, took risks, and boldly found ways to improve our lives. In other words, they deserved to be enriched. Indeed, it was in our common interest to allow them to fly as high as possible, because that would increase their motivation to produce more, bestowing on us ever greater life-improving gifts.
Gratefulness for the leadership
We should not, so the thinking went, begrudge the multimillionaire living behind his 15-foot walls for his success; we should admire him. Corporate bosses deserved not our resentment but our gratitude. It was in our own interest not to demand more in taxes from the wealthiest but less, as their enhanced wealth – their pocket change – would trickle down in various ways to all of us.
This is the mentality that enabled massive growth in income and wealth inequality over the past several decades without much at all in the way of citizen protest. And yet something has indeed changed. It’s not that Americans suddenly woke up one day and decided that substantial income and wealth inequality are themselves unfair or intolerable. What changed was the perception of how that wealth was gotten and so of the ensuing inequality aslegitimate.
Many Americans who once accepted or even cheered such inequality now see the gains of the richest as ill-gotten, as undeserved, as cheating. Most of all, the legal system that once served as the legitimising anchor for outcome inequality, the rule of law – that most basic of American ideals, that a common set of rules are equally applied to all – has now become irrevocably corrupted and is seen as such.
While the founders accepted outcome inequality, they emphasised – over and over – that its legitimacy hinged on subjecting everyone to the law’s mandates on an equal basis. Jefferson wrote that the essence of America would be that “the poorest labourer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest millionaire, and generally on a more favoured one whenever their rights seem to jar”. Benjamin Franklin warned that creating a privileged legal class would produce “total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections” between the rulers and those they ruled. Tom Paine repeatedly railed against “counterfeit nobles”, those whose superior status was grounded not in merit but in unearned legal privilege.
Definition of tyranny
After all, one of their principal grievances against the British king was his power to exempt his cronies from legal obligations. Almost every founder repeatedly warned that a failure to apply the law equally to the politically powerful and the rich would ensure a warped and unjust society. In many ways, that was their definition of tyranny.
Americans understand this implicitly. If you watch a competition among sprinters, you can accept that whoever crosses the finish line first is the superior runner. But only if all the competitors are bound by the same rules: everyone begins at the same starting line, is penalised for invading the lane of another runner, is barred from making physical contact or using performance-enhancing substances, and so on.
If some of the runners start ahead of others and have relationships with the judges that enable them to receive dispensation for violating the rules as they wish, then viewers understand that the outcome can no longer be considered legitimate. Once the process is seen as not only unfair but utterly corrupted, once it’s obvious that a common set of rules no longer binds all the competitors, the winner will be resented, not heralded.
That catches the mood of the US in 2011. It may not explain the Occupy Wall Street movement, but it helps explain why it has spread like wildfire and why so many Americans seem instantly to accept and support it. As was not true in recent decades, the American relationship with wealth inequality is in a state of rapid transformation.
It is now clearly understood that, rather than apply the law equally to all, Wall Street tycoons have engaged in egregious criminality – acts which destroyed the economic security of millions of people around the world – without experiencing the slightest legal repercussions. Giant financial institutions were caught red-handed engaging in massive, systematic fraud to foreclose on people’s homes and the reaction of the political class, led by the Obama administration, was to shield them from meaningful consequences. Rather than submit on an equal basis to the rules, through an oligarchical, democracy-subverting control of the political process, they now control the process of writing those rules and how they are applied.
Writing laws
Today, it is glaringly obvious to a wide range of those in the US that the wealth of the top one per cent is the byproduct not of risk-taking entrepreneurship, but of corrupted control of our legal and political systems. Thanks to this control, they can write laws that have no purpose than to abolish the few limits that still constrain them, as happened during the Wall Street deregulation orgy of the 1990s. They can retroactively immunise themselves for crimes they deliberately committed for profit, as happened when the 2008 Congress shielded the nation’s telecom giants for their role in Bush’s domestic warrantless eavesdropping programme.
It is equally obvious that they are using that power not to lift the boats of ordinary Americans, but to sink them. In short, Americans are now well aware of what the second-highest-ranking Democrat in the Senate, Illinois’s Dick Durbin, blurted out in 2009 about the body in which he serves: the banks “frankly own the place”.
If you were to assess the state of the union in 2011, you might sum it up this way: rather than being subjected to the rule of law, the nation’s most powerful oligarchs control the law and are so exempt from it; and increasing numbers of Americans understand that and are outraged. At exactly the same time that the nation’s elites enjoy legal immunity even for egregious crimes, ordinary Americans are being subjected to the world’s largest and one of its harshest penal states, under which they are unable to secure competent legal counsel and are harshly punished with lengthy prison terms for even trivial infractions.
‘Two-tiered justice system’
In lieu of the rule of law – the equal application of rules to everyone – what we have now is a two-tiered justice system in which the powerful are immunised, while the powerless are punished with increasing mercilessness. As a guarantor of outcomes, the law has, by now, been so completely perverted that it is an incomparably potent weapon for entrenching inequality further, controlling the powerless, and ensuring corrupted outcomes.
The tide that was supposed to lift all ships has, in fact, left startling numbers of Americans underwater. In the process, we lost any sense that a common set of rules applies to everyone, and so there is no longer a legitimising anchor for the vast income and wealth inequalities that plague the nation.
That is what has changed, and a growing recognition of what it means is fuelling rising citizen anger and protest. The inequality under which so many suffer is not only vast, but illegitimate, rooted as it is in lawlessness and corruption. Obscuring that fact has long been the linchpin for inducing Americans to accept vast and growing inequalities. That fact is now too glaring to obscure any longer.
Income inequality has worsened over the past several years and is at its highest level since the Great Depression. This is not, however, a new trend. Income inequality has been growing at rapid rates for three decades. As journalist Tim Noah described the process: “During the late 1980s and the late 1990s, the United States experienced two unprecedentedly long periods of sustained economic growth – the ‘seven fat years’ and the ‘long boom’. Yet from 1980 to 2005, more than 80 per cent of total increase in Americans’ income went to the top one per cent. Economic growth was more sluggish in the aughts [the first decade of the new century], but the decade saw productivity increase by about 20 per cent. Yet virtually none of the increase translated into wage growth at middle and lower incomes, an outcome that left many economists scratching their heads.”
The 2008 financial crisis exacerbated the trend, but not radically: the top one per cent of earners in the US have been feeding ever more greedily at the trough for decades.
Inferiors and superiors
In addition, substantial wealth inequality is so embedded in US political culture that, standing alone, it would not be sufficient to trigger citizen rage of the type we are finally witnessing. The American founders were clear that they viewed inequality in wealth, power, and prestige as not merely inevitable, but desirable and, for some, even divinely ordained. Jefferson praised “the natural aristocracy” as “the most precious gift of nature” for the “government of society”. John Adams concurred: “It already appears, that there must be in every society of men superiors and inferiors, because God has laid in the… course of nature the foundation of the distinction.”
Not only have the overwhelming majority of those in the US long acquiesced to vast income and wealth disparities, but some of those most oppressed by these outcomes have cheered it loudly. Americans have been inculcated not only to accept, but to revere those who are the greatest beneficiaries of this inequality.
In the 1980s, this paradox – whereby even those most trampled upon come to cheer those responsible for their state – became more firmly entrenched. That’s because it found a folksy, friendly face. Ronald Reagan, adept at feeding the populace a slew of Orwellian clichés that induced them to defend the interests of the wealthiest. “A rising tide,” as President Reagan put it, “lifts all boats”. The sum of his wisdom being: It is in your interest when the rich get richer.
Implicit in this framework was the claim that inequality was justified and legitimate. The core propagandistic premise was that the rich were rich because they deserved to be. They innovated in industry, invented technologies, discovered cures, created jobs, took risks, and boldly found ways to improve our lives. In other words, they deserved to be enriched. Indeed, it was in our common interest to allow them to fly as high as possible, because that would increase their motivation to produce more, bestowing on us ever greater life-improving gifts.
Gratefulness for the leadership
We should not, so the thinking went, begrudge the multimillionaire living behind his 15-foot walls for his success; we should admire him. Corporate bosses deserved not our resentment but our gratitude. It was in our own interest not to demand more in taxes from the wealthiest but less, as their enhanced wealth – their pocket change – would trickle down in various ways to all of us.
This is the mentality that enabled massive growth in income and wealth inequality over the past several decades without much at all in the way of citizen protest. And yet something has indeed changed. It’s not that Americans suddenly woke up one day and decided that substantial income and wealth inequality are themselves unfair or intolerable. What changed was the perception of how that wealth was gotten and so of the ensuing inequality aslegitimate.
Many Americans who once accepted or even cheered such inequality now see the gains of the richest as ill-gotten, as undeserved, as cheating. Most of all, the legal system that once served as the legitimising anchor for outcome inequality, the rule of law – that most basic of American ideals, that a common set of rules are equally applied to all – has now become irrevocably corrupted and is seen as such.
While the founders accepted outcome inequality, they emphasised – over and over – that its legitimacy hinged on subjecting everyone to the law’s mandates on an equal basis. Jefferson wrote that the essence of America would be that “the poorest labourer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest millionaire, and generally on a more favoured one whenever their rights seem to jar”. Benjamin Franklin warned that creating a privileged legal class would produce “total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections” between the rulers and those they ruled. Tom Paine repeatedly railed against “counterfeit nobles”, those whose superior status was grounded not in merit but in unearned legal privilege.
Definition of tyranny
After all, one of their principal grievances against the British king was his power to exempt his cronies from legal obligations. Almost every founder repeatedly warned that a failure to apply the law equally to the politically powerful and the rich would ensure a warped and unjust society. In many ways, that was their definition of tyranny.
Americans understand this implicitly. If you watch a competition among sprinters, you can accept that whoever crosses the finish line first is the superior runner. But only if all the competitors are bound by the same rules: everyone begins at the same starting line, is penalised for invading the lane of another runner, is barred from making physical contact or using performance-enhancing substances, and so on.
If some of the runners start ahead of others and have relationships with the judges that enable them to receive dispensation for violating the rules as they wish, then viewers understand that the outcome can no longer be considered legitimate. Once the process is seen as not only unfair but utterly corrupted, once it’s obvious that a common set of rules no longer binds all the competitors, the winner will be resented, not heralded.
That catches the mood of the US in 2011. It may not explain the Occupy Wall Street movement, but it helps explain why it has spread like wildfire and why so many Americans seem instantly to accept and support it. As was not true in recent decades, the American relationship with wealth inequality is in a state of rapid transformation.
It is now clearly understood that, rather than apply the law equally to all, Wall Street tycoons have engaged in egregious criminality – acts which destroyed the economic security of millions of people around the world – without experiencing the slightest legal repercussions. Giant financial institutions were caught red-handed engaging in massive, systematic fraud to foreclose on people’s homes and the reaction of the political class, led by the Obama administration, was to shield them from meaningful consequences. Rather than submit on an equal basis to the rules, through an oligarchical, democracy-subverting control of the political process, they now control the process of writing those rules and how they are applied.
Writing laws
Today, it is glaringly obvious to a wide range of those in the US that the wealth of the top one per cent is the byproduct not of risk-taking entrepreneurship, but of corrupted control of our legal and political systems. Thanks to this control, they can write laws that have no purpose than to abolish the few limits that still constrain them, as happened during the Wall Street deregulation orgy of the 1990s. They can retroactively immunise themselves for crimes they deliberately committed for profit, as happened when the 2008 Congress shielded the nation’s telecom giants for their role in Bush’s domestic warrantless eavesdropping programme.
It is equally obvious that they are using that power not to lift the boats of ordinary Americans, but to sink them. In short, Americans are now well aware of what the second-highest-ranking Democrat in the Senate, Illinois’s Dick Durbin, blurted out in 2009 about the body in which he serves: the banks “frankly own the place”.
If you were to assess the state of the union in 2011, you might sum it up this way: rather than being subjected to the rule of law, the nation’s most powerful oligarchs control the law and are so exempt from it; and increasing numbers of Americans understand that and are outraged. At exactly the same time that the nation’s elites enjoy legal immunity even for egregious crimes, ordinary Americans are being subjected to the world’s largest and one of its harshest penal states, under which they are unable to secure competent legal counsel and are harshly punished with lengthy prison terms for even trivial infractions.
‘Two-tiered justice system’
In lieu of the rule of law – the equal application of rules to everyone – what we have now is a two-tiered justice system in which the powerful are immunised, while the powerless are punished with increasing mercilessness. As a guarantor of outcomes, the law has, by now, been so completely perverted that it is an incomparably potent weapon for entrenching inequality further, controlling the powerless, and ensuring corrupted outcomes.
The tide that was supposed to lift all ships has, in fact, left startling numbers of Americans underwater. In the process, we lost any sense that a common set of rules applies to everyone, and so there is no longer a legitimising anchor for the vast income and wealth inequalities that plague the nation.
That is what has changed, and a growing recognition of what it means is fuelling rising citizen anger and protest. The inequality under which so many suffer is not only vast, but illegitimate, rooted as it is in lawlessness and corruption. Obscuring that fact has long been the linchpin for inducing Americans to accept vast and growing inequalities. That fact is now too glaring to obscure any longer.
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