Speaking of a Golden Age

While the rest of us grind it out, avoiding potholes on the way to work, shunning buying eggs this week, hoping to pay rent again come first of the month, and trying to find the good wife another job, because she was let go at the grocery store where self-checkout is de rigueur, our gallant leader, Donald John Trump, has declared his occupancy of the White House constitutes to be a “Golden Age.”

No doubt, from his vantage point, it is indeed such an age, for after living in the lap of luxury all his life, he can now have the comfort of adding yet another “accomplishment,” of being “president” a second time. Perhaps it is this “second time around” that makes the present age “Golden?” It is difficult to say.

But lest we lose heart, we have all the other great billionaires of America surrounding Mr. Trump, for he is their primus inter pares, and America was built to make such as these happy and prosper.

It is strange to see how the possession of billions also supposedly makes the possessor of wealth a man wise enough to lead a nation of 300-plus million. In the American mind, finding a way to channel mega-wealth your way can only mean that you know exactly how to run a country—exactly as you want it to run for you. This is the “American way”—sycophancy passes for wisdom.

And then there are the pares, the most bizarre being Mr. Elon Musk who threatens to verge into a trillionaire, but who only succeeds in demonstrating a deep hunger for adulation, far greater than that possessed by Mr. Trump. Applause fuels both men. Mr. Musk’s delight often leaves him speechless, so in response he can only jump, dance, give straight-arm salutes, and mutter something about transhumanism, while planting flags on Mars. How can humanity possibly falter with Mr. Musk its faultless cicerone to herd us all in the boss’s “Golden Age.”

Now, it’s usually the case that the classification of an age as “Golden” or not falls to the historian, who from the comfort of his easy chair assesses what happened in said era, good and bad, and decides that the good largely outweighed the bad. And making any such declaration means having to face the nay-sayers who are quick to point out that this assessment is wrong. In this way, we can speak of Fifth Century Athens, or the Pax Romana, or even the empire of the Mongols. The point being assessment can only come after the fact, and by people who were living back then. We can be certain that if we were living in each of the three eras mentioned, we would be hard-pressed to come up with examples of goldenness around us.

But such is the sapience of billionaires that they can instantly discern that anything they touch will turn to gold… for them. The rest of us are supposed to just rejoice that such an age has at last dawned for them, and we can so lucky to be living in it. Imagine the envy of those who will come after us—why were they not born in this “Golden Age.” Put another way, why did it have to us?

Many will here introduce an interjection or two about Mr. Biden and even Mrs. Emhoff, though neither of the two spoke of their golden age. But such is the realty of the United States, where politics is a game, and you pick your team and stick to it, and the two teams involved have zero interest in what you actually need or want. Your job as a team fan is to cheer and badmouth the team opposite and all its supporters. And for the record, the only legacy Mr. Biden and Mrs. Emhoff leave behind is overseeing the Holocaust in Gaza.

Billionaires dream of global impact, when their middle name is Ozymandias. And it is here that Mr. Trump’s dream of conquests, be it Panama, Greenland, or Canada are to be understood. Potholes and the price of eggs therefore are meaningless. And conquest is not only more territory, but more subservience. This is why Mr. Biden loved sending bombs to Ukraine and Israel, and Mr. Trump speaks of “peace through strength.” The “peace” that both presidents imagined was first propounded by an earlier president, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, who liked to speak softly and carry a big stick. Peace through fear… of being mauled and/or murdered.

Let us consider Mr. Trump through the lens of an essay aptly entitled, “The Golden Age,” written by H.L. Mencken:

The man’s merits, in the Babbitt view, are almost fabulous. He seems, indeed, scarcely like a man at all, but more like some miraculous visitation or act of God. He is the ideal made visible, if not audible—perfection put into a cutaway coat and trotted up and down like a mannequin in a cloak and suit atelier. Nor was there any long stress of training him—no season of doubt and misgiving. Nature heaved him forth full-blown, like a new star shot into the heavens. In him the philosophy of Babbitt comes to its perfect and transcendental form. Thrift, to him, is the queen of all the virtues. He respects money in each and every one of its beautiful forms—pennies, nickels, dimes, dollars, five-dollar bills, and so on ad infinitum. He venerates those who have it. He believes that they have wisdom. He craves the loan and use of that wisdom. He invites them to breakfast, and listens to them. The things they revere, he reveres. The things they long for, he longs to give them (Prejudices, Fifth Series).

Here is the perfect description of the plutocracy that we are now under. But since we are dealing with a “Golden Age,” perhaps it better to be more accurate. We have entered a chrysocracy. This word is made of two Greek terms: the first is khrysos, which means “gold,’ and the second is kratos, which means “power.”

The people who administer this chrysocracy are the billionaires (who were aptly lined up behind Mr. Trump as his installment); they are America’s chrysoaristocracy, whom the team supporters all view as filled with endless wisdom and benevolence.

Again, we must turn to Mr. Mencken, who we can update slightly [in square brackets]:

Democracy is that system of government under which the people, having 35,717,342 [now 300-plus million] native-born adult whites to choose from, including thousands who are handsome and many who are wise, pick out a Trump [for Mencken, it was Coolidge] to be head of the State. It is as if a hungry man, set before a banquet prepared by master cooks and covering a table an acre in area, should turn his back upon the feast and stay his stomach by catching and eating flies (“Definition”).

And Mr. Mencken continues:

Q. If you find so much that is unworthy of reverence in the United States, then why do you live here?

A. Why do men go to zoos? (“Catechism”)

Featured: "The National bench Show," illustration, Puck, February 10, 1904.