The man featured in the brief video linked below is not a villain in a new HBO series or Hollywood film about Wall Street abuse. It’s a real Manhattan attorney, one of 16 attorneys secretly filmed during a
Global Witness investigation into money laundering in the U.S. An undercover reporter with a hidden camera sought out legal advice on how a mysterious African in possession of tainted millions could get his money scrubbed clean in the U.S of A. It kind of echoes the Nigerian prince scam that lots of ordinary Americans see passing through their email every year. And though those ordinary Americans, guided by common sense, trash those emails, all but one of the lawyers Global Witness approached--guided no doubt by greed--offered advice on how to get around our laws governing dirty money. The video lasts less than a minute, yet it is an acidic distillation of the message Bernie Sanders has been delivering throughout his presidential campaign. I pause here to give readers a chance to view it because much that follows depends upon it...go
here.
“We run the country.”
The impact of the arrogance, cynicism, and perversity inherent in that statement manifests itself throughout the land in both widespread voter anger and apathy. And though the anger and apathy may be new…or renewed…the arrogance, cynicism and perversity are not. The
60 Minutes segment that covered the investigation was a chilling reminder to me of one of the most profound PBS documentaries I ever saw,
The World of David Rockefeller. It is frustratingly unavailable (some conspiracy theorists suggest that it is suspiciously unavailable), so I am relaying the most outstanding portions here from memory.
Bill Moyers is reporting on a Rockefeller international trip. Aboard Rockefeller’s plane Moyers asks Rockefeller what he thinks about the threat from Nicaragua’s new Sandinista government that in the cause of revolution has vowed not to pay back its country’s past loans from Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan Bank. Rockefeller responds with supreme confidence that it will be paying the loans back if Nicaragua doesn’t want to find itself financially isolated in the world. Moyers then asks why Rockefeller’s bank just agreed to a massive loan to Italy given that the Italian government has proven so unstable since World War II. Rockefeller, again sanguine in the extreme, says, yes, Italy's government does have excessive turnover, but the head of The Bank of Italy has always been the same and that’s all that really matters. At a birthday reception for Rockefeller in Paris, Moyers finds himself in a circle of movers and shakers from around the world…Jews and Arabs, black and white Africans, European socialists and capitalists…and he asks what brings them all together like this and they respond almost in unison: the color of Rockefeller’s money. And finally Rockefeller invites Moyers to take a look at his financial control center in London. It is the size of an airplane hangar, and even though it's 1980 it is clear that it is equipped with the most modern communication and information technology. Looking upon the immensity and complexity of it all, one could only think pitifully, as I did, on homegrown, ragtag, revolutionary groups like the Symbionese Liberation Army trying to bring “The System” to its knees robbing banks like Bonnie and Clyde, Butch and Sundance and the James Gang.
Thanks to Bernie Sanders, the word revolution has worked its way back into the American political lexicon. Despite Madison Avenue’s abuse of the world…applying it to anything from box springs to boxed rice—the word is still pretty potent in a political context. And the political candidate who invokes it should be prepared to lead in a bold and daring new direction. Bernie Sanders has been fairly clear on his revolutionary direction—income equality, universal healthcare, free college. He has been far less clear on how he’s going to get there. How he's going to penetrate those fully insulated, heavily reinforced bastions of power from where the masters of the universe rule?
Will he receive such a sweeping mandate for revolution from the voters that the powers that be will deny or defy him at risk of their own survival? And if so, what about that rather large and vocal (and, dare I say, armed) number of voters out there who don’t buy—despite the evidence—that the game is rigged at the top, and persist in their fear and loathing of the bogeymen concocted by their talk radios and Fox News—the dark-skinned, the immigrants, the poor, the foreign, the educated?
And then there is my tribe—the progressives. I’ve reflected upon our behavior long enough to know that we are subject to two animating—though contrary—myths. One I call the Capra myth, evinced in Frank Capra's It’s a Wonderful Life, and it holds that a good and decent man will dare all to stand up to the greedy banksters... and just when all looks lost for his bravery, the little people with their small donations and big hearts will rally around him and save the day.
The other is the myth of Chinatown, the American classic about political and financial corruption’s ultimate triumph.
Mrs. Mulwray: I'll tell you. I'll tell you the truth.
Gittes: Good. What's her name?
Mrs. Mulwray: Katherine.
Gittes: Katherine who?
Mrs. Mulwray: She's my daughter.
[Gittes slaps Mulwray.]
Gittes: I said I want the truth.
Mrs. Mulwray: She's my sister.
[He slaps her again.]
Mrs. Mulwray: She's my daughter.
[Another slap.]
Mrs. Mulwray: My sister, my daughter.
[Two more slaps.]
Gittes: I said I want the truth!
Mrs. Mulwray: She's my sister and my daughter!...My father and I - understand? Or is it too tough for you?
That dialog isn’t there for its salaciousness; it’s there to underscore the incestuous nature of our capitalist family. If Bernie’s going to bring about this revolution of his, he’s going to have to somehow deal with how
we’re all to one degree or another complicit in it. As Evelyn Mulvey says, that’s going to be tough.
Nonetheless, it’s heartwarming, if not a little disorienting, to see so many fellow liberals--with their well cultivated disdain for the media, the political class, the financial sector, and even many of their fellow citizens--embrace the Capra myth this political season. Years of experience teaches me, however, that there’s hardly a savvy liberal out there who’s not a single discouraging turn away from muttering Chinatown's climatic line, “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”