It’s no coincidence that our national political conversation continues to be toilet talk—and I don’t just mean whatever comes out of Donald Trump’s potty mouth. The headlines keep piling up over the pissing match between Republicans and Democrats regarding who can use which bathroom. It’s not an insignificant issue—but by pitching another battle in the endless culture war, our political gentry can energize their own bases without having to address all those messy economic issues that Bernie Sanders won’t stop preaching about. And that would lead to more uncomfortable conversations for both parties about why income inequality, poverty rates, and college tuition keep ballooning as the Dow Jones, corporate profits, and CEO salaries rise—no matter which party is in control of the White House or Congress.
It’s a good line because it’s true—after all, real-life American Scrooges are totally cool with fucking over Tiny Tim and keeping the Christmas turkey for themselves. The whole “rising tide raises all boats” theory of economics doesn’t actually work as a fair means of distributing wealth, especially when the “tide” in this case selectively flees to foreign waters or hides itself in international tax havens. The more appropriate nautical metaphor? While a large portion of Americans are drowning in the sea of stagnant wages, trickle-down economics adjusts its monocle and occasionally stoops over to toss them tiny life rafts while pouring Cristal for the gentry on the decks of their luxury yachts.
This is one of the major themes of Thomas Frank’s latest book, Listen, Liberal: Or, Whatever Happened to the Party of the People? Frank has a name for it: “liberalism of the rich.” “It has no patience with the idea that everyone should share in society’s wealth,” Frank told me in a recent interview. “Once diversity has been achieved and the brilliant people of all races and genders have been identified and credentialed, there is no further grievance against the system. It’s about a more perfect meritocracy, a system where everyone gets an equal chance and the truly talented get to rise to the top. It’s concerned with managers, not the managed.”
That the Oscars controversy brought about so much righteous anger instead of an outcry of support for workers who are twice as likely to be paid minimum wage or below as compared to the national workforce isn’t a surprise. Again, it’s a feature of postmodern liberalism’s obsession with a certain brand of identity politics, in which it’s more important to create symbolic equality than material equality for everyone.
A laughably appropriate metaphor for the state of things has emerged: While liberals have focused their energies on who can poop in which toilet—and color-blind emojis and all-lady Ghostbusters movies—the economic shit continues to trickle down over all but the best, brightest, and luckiest of us.
