• During the 1930’s and 40’s Germans were taught to admire Hitler because he didn't take a large salary – he “wasn't in it for the money.”
But in recent times we've learned that Hitler took a small royalty on the use of his image on postage stamps during his years in power, a royalty that very nearly made him a billionaire.
Not in it for the money, my ass. He had a Beautiful Thing going.
There's lots of Beautiful Things.
• I have a friend who used to work doing promotion for a nationally known touring singing group, famous for being scrubbed and well-dressed young people – none of that dirty hippy stuff for their audience. You've likely heard of them, but I won't mention their name here because they have lawyers.
My friend told me that the young singers in the group paid for the privilege of being in the group, usually by their families, so that they could travel and sing with a famous singing group.
She told me that The Group was mainly a fundraising entity, so I asked her what they were raising funds for. She told me that they raised funds so that they could do more shows.
I asked her about the owners of The Group, and how much they made. She told me that the actual executives of The Group, a small group, made six and seven-figure incomes. They had a Beautiful Thing going.
I asked her if she understood the irony of what she had just told me.
I'm not sure if I can take any credit for it, but she quit that job soon after and started a business of her own, an actual legitimate business.
• In recent times we've learned that the entire “conservative” movement is a network of fundraising groups that raise funds nearly exclusively so that the executives of these groups can live the great life. Conservative fundraising can be a Beautiful Thing. And it isn't such a bad thing if you have a liberal outlook, because money that winds up paying for the salaries of executives of these “conservative” groups is not going to actually fund reactionary politicians.
We are told, for instance, that if you want to use Richard Viguerie’s database of mailing addresses of people who are willing to give money to reactionary causes have to give his company 85% of what they collect. (I wouldn't be surprised if he collects the money and gives you 15%. 15% to fund your own great lifestyle.)
• The family of Bashir al Assad is known to have stripped as much as $100 billion dollars out of the Syrian economy over the years. In fact, every time you hear about a new dictator running a country, what that dictator has really done is to set up a mechanism to siphon either millions or billions out of a nation’s economy. Swiss bank accounts are often mentioned when these guys are finally kicked out for the next ambitious vampire.
• We are told that political campaigns have gotten so expensive in the US that congresspeople have to spend most of their time raising funds and not doing the job we hired them to do.
This fact is rarely mentioned alongside the fact that congresspeople voted themselves a Beautiful Thing years ago: they get to keep all the funds that are left in their congressional campaign chests when they retire.
No wonder they work so hard raising funds instead of doing what we hired them to actually do. They don't want to retire with just their enormous congressional pensions. What kind of sucker does that?
• 40 years ago when I lived in Nashville I found that if you turned the TV on late at night all you could watch was TV preachers. I had never seen one before, but within a short time I had seen a bunch. I was delighted to see that almost all of their air time was devoted to asking for funds from their viewers. The money was going toward “spreading the Good Word.” Meaning keeping their show on the air to raise more money.
Was this a Beautiful Thing? Well, I saw some of the early shows of the PTL Club with Jim and Tammy Bakker. The original set was little more than a couple of chairs and a cross. It didn't stay that way for long.
The PTL Club’s budget for the first year was a million bucks. By the second year it was a million dollars PER WEEK.
I'll say it was a Beautiful Thing. (Jim Bakker eventually went to prison for selling more time shares than he had actually built. Tammy was far too hip for that. She let Jim test the limits of their Beautiful Thing.)
• I have a friend who had an interesting but by no means unique technology that could be used by the military. This guy was Israeli. He somehow got a pitch meeting with a former prime minister of Israel. He made his pitch.
And the distinguished former prime minister listened carefully. At the end of the pitch he said, “This sounds good. Put a million dollars in cash on my desk and I can make the military purchase your technology. Then you can go around the world saying the Israeli military uses it.
The guy told me that story himself. (He didn't pay the bribe, but that might've been because he had become an American citizen and it is illegal to pay bribes like that, and therefore pretty risky to do so.)
• We got to see something like 9 incredible wackos duke it out for the 2012 Republican nomination. Most of these people had to know that they didn't stand a chance of going all the way. All of them saw their speaking fees shoot up into the stratosphere after they dropped out of the race. A Beautiful Thing, it was.
• In Mexico everyone understands that nobody ever leaves the presidency of Mexico without having become a millionaire.
• The first piece of business Ronald Reagan attended to after leaving office was to fly to Japan to give a speech. He was paid $4M for that speech. We paid for the Secret Service costs. All presidents make a beautiful dollar after they leave office. Heck, LBJ spent over 30 years in congress and the presidency, back when those jobs really didn't pay all that well. And yet he retired a multi-millionaire. Before he had ANY speaking engagements.
If you want to get rich and live the Great Life, you gotta do SOMETHIN’.
So when I hear that ISL or ISIS is a “terror organization”, that it wants to found a “global caliphate” – and then I hear that they are making as much as $3 Million a day from oil, investments, real estate and extortion, I stop thinking of it as a terror organization or a global caliphate. The bigger they get, the more money the Fearless Leader makes, along with his investors. They're just testing the limits of their growth. We're showing them exactly where those limits are. Their continued growth in not in out best interests.
But clearly the guy at the top of ISL and a few of his funders have found a Beautiful Thing.
Just like Saddam Hussein, the Saudi Royal Family, the Palestinian terror organizations, the US Congress, former Israeli PMs, The British Royal Family, The PTL Club, Squeaky Clean Touring Fundraising Singing Groups, Hitler, TV preachers, wingnut presidential candidates and the GOP senators bellyaching about ISIS so as to get on TV. Oh, and Fox pundits. Talk about your beautiful dollar.
Sure, it's offensive to lump Squeaky Clean Singing Groups in with Hitler. Some Beautiful Things don't involved killing people. But these Beautiful Things all require a smoke screen. "He's not in it for the money." The top guys are ALWAYS in it for the money, for Big Money.
So if you know anyone who is crapping their pants worrying about Global Caliphates, pat 'em on the head and calm them down.
The people at the top just want to see how much money they can send to Switzerland before the next ambitious creep forces them to leave town and enjoy the great life they have appropriated for themselves.