Having just watched the latest film on the Koch Brothers by Robert Greenwald tonight on the net, I found that it is time to "spend" this metaphor which I had been saving in my head for perhaps a work of fiction or something of my own some day. I conceived it as a teen after watching the movie "In Cold Blood" based on the famous book by Truman Capote. The "third person sinister" could have been the title for Capote's work had he thought of it. I envision it as what sometimes happens when two people influence and facilitate each other in such ways which lead to evil which neither would probably do with any other person or on their own. But this one figure being enormously influential in their life causes a force bigger and badder than the sum of its parts to emerge. In the movie it was the Clutter family who fell victim to the third person sinister. There have already been many victims of the Koch third person, but the film revealed a greater agenda most foul.
This film, the one about the Koch Brothers, led me to the very deep opinion that they are the opposite of what we call philanthropists. Yes, they are renown for donations to various charities and causes. But such can be the price of appearing to be a philanthropist when another agenda is really at issue and money is absolutely no object. What generally unifies most real philanthropists is their recognition of having earned the privilege to do good things with their wealth that advance humanity in general, perhaps provide financial wings to the exceptionally motivated problem-solver regardless of anything like race or ethnicity--gestures of endowment of others to brand a legacy worthy of veneration. What was clear from this film is that a unifying element between these two brothers which continues to drive them to meddle and manipulate our country's government is a history "colored" by belief in white supremacy, also handed to them with the enabling fortune from their father.
The price of appearing to be philanthropists is apparently worth it to them to garner favorable opinion from other persons of exceptional power or fortune--white of course. And notice I did not say exceptional people. A person of exceptional power very obviously needn't be an exceptional person--after all, who would these two be if not for their father's fortune? But perhaps Koch brother philanthropy covers a multitude of sins others are too dazzled to care about when they make the decision to be bought.
For many months people asked "why do Republicans hate Obamacare so much?" I speculated that if the poor or not well-heeled were to have access to healthcare on a massive scale it couldn't help but produce information which would reveal patterns of disease or ill-health which industries like those of the Koch Brothers would want to quash. Hello! The film made that more than just a suspicion of mine. In addition to the presentation of evidence of black persons of the same neighborhoods who should probably otherwise we well but having died young of multiple cancers for the misfortune of living in homes downwind of a Koch refinery, and others struggling with life-threatening illnesses now for having a polluted stream from a Koch Industries plant close enough to their houses to make them deathly ill, there was a thread of particular ill-will toward minorities--especially black folk. One was a persistent and consistent undermining of public education.
One wonders what the plan is if there is a libertarian agenda to get rid of laws and government while trying to privatize education (and controlling its curriculum to reflect the Koch philosophy). What is the plan for those who depend on public schooling like inner-city African Americans and Hispanics? This is not Game of Thrones or fiction--get any notion of that out of your head. This is an American phenomenon with real "skin" in the game, or rather, on the line.
Is it just Republican ideology to privatize everything including education? Or at the top of the top where the Koch's throw down lightening bolts of cash from multimillion dollar mansions, is there also a core which wants to isolate persons of color both for the misguided belief in preserving racial purity and, dare I say it, the historical and dreadful default of unbridled race hatred i.e. a deliberate attempt to kill them off in a number of slippery ways that can be denied? To me it seemed as though the Kochs exist to pull the floor out from beneath persons of color as if a virtual noose is already set in place around their necks.
There is something of evil, a megalomaniacal thirst shared by two aging white men who are brothers. It qualifies most certainly as one of such rare occurrences that one would be ridiculed to suggest preventive legislation to ever stop such an eventuality in a market economy--the idea that someone (or two) can be warped yet make $13M a day so that their particular kind of "third person sinister" can rise to over-shadow a nation which was founded to be free of and from tyrants and tyranny. Ironically, they pay many a dollar to keep the real POUTUS constantly placed on the defensive for the kind of tyrannical over-reach only they are capable AND WILLING to be part of.
They will both die, just as we must all. But they may live for at least another decade unwilling and unable to break from the flawed belief system which by now should be recognized as arch-criminal regardless of charity greased or hospital built. But they are vulnerable. And to whom they are vulnerable is the one person they spend the most money on trying to defeat. President Obama has the power of the DOJ and no one else does.
Sen Harry Reid appeared and talked of them buying the House of Representatives, maybe the Senate. And then he asked "what next, a President?" I could only wonder if Sen. Reid knew that for the chance to be POTUS, Mitt Romney put his name to the Grover Norquist anti-tax pledge--which at the time I felt disqualified from becoming President. That signature meant donor blessing or the ring of a king(s) having been kissed. If Romney had won, would we really be one nation under Norquist? Or was the real line straight up to Kochsville? Norquist appears to have been the "bag man" in buying the House. And if it has been bought, I doubt that that clever opportunist had the juice to buy it all by himself. He could threaten consequence for not signing the pledge, but even Romney? I would think there was juice involved way above Norquist's pay grade.
The President has yet to see that this is where his own legacy is being lost and all of our futures come together needing bold use of the law and abandonment of the concerns of wannabe Presidents--polls. As long as the law is adhered to and persuasive cases made, owning Scalia and Thomas won't matter. And knowing at least one of those exposed vulnerabilities myself in which these megalomaniacs can be reduced to wearing handcuffs and facing arraignment, I don't have much hope that it will be this president who will answer that bell. He is a nice man who lets cut-throats like Romney walk all over him to be polite. It's not a business today where being polite always works. Unless the left gets on him in the right way, it's a question mark. But it's not just America's economy on the line now. It's perhaps a veiled genocide with only bad plans for persons of color. That would be plenty for me to get my skin in the game. I'm ready to stick some in anyway just on principle. But I'm just a citizen without juice. Thanks Mr. Greenwald. I hope it provokes new thought and action.