When Donald Trump famously declared “I don’t take responsibility at all,” demonstrating his utter lack of concern for how the COVID-19 pandemic was throwing millions of his fellow citizens’ lives into turmoil, most Americans naturally read this as an attempt to minimize his failure to address the pandemic up to that moment. But as Brooke Harrington observes, writing for The Atlantic, what Americans may not have fully understood was that he was articulating a common ethic and attitude exhibited among a certain set of wealthy individuals, extending all around the world, who have adopted the same attitude that assumes neither rules, laws, nor responsibilities apply to them.
Harrington, who has spent over a decade researching the world’s wealthiest citizens, points to Trump’s recently unearthed tax returns as exemplifying not the fiscal machinations of just one corrupt individual, but a philosophy seen over and over again, as a tiny segment of the world’s population accumulates and hoards wealth on a scale that most of us can scarcely comprehend.
Harrington writes:
Those returns, along with Trump’s whole approach to governing, are a concrete manifestation of a broader and more troubling phenomenon: an elite insurgency in which wealthy, well-connected people around the world stiff the societies that gave them success. Observing Trump’s open defiance of the law and rejection of accountability, many critics have attributed the pattern to the quirks of Trump’s individual psychology. But they have missed the larger picture: This president is an entirely ordinary member of a global elite whose members believe that rules are for chumps.
A spotlight was directed—at least temporarily—at this “elite” mindset with the 2016 disclosure of what became known as the “Panama Papers.“ This trove of documentation exposed the incredibly complex efforts the worlds’ wealthiest people employ to prevent their money from being taxed, to launder their money obtained through illegal means, and to hide those efforts from the rest of the world. One of the consistent threads running through these documents is an insouciant contempt for the law, and specifically contempt for the very notion that the law should apply to them.
The Panama Papers, still the largest data leak in history, sketched a picture of elites in revolt: a growing refusal of obligation to the societies that had allowed them to become wealthy and powerful. That point was underscored 19 months later by the Paradise Papers, another offshore leak involving prominent figures as varied as Queen Elizabeth II and Trump’s secretary of commerce, Wilbur Ross. Both leaks showed that the offshore economy had produced something dangerous to the rest of us: a noblesse without the oblige. They also showed that the phenomenon was global.
In order to analyze this rarefied world, Harrington herself underwent training as a wealth manager, a position she describes as specializing in “law avoidance—helping clients dodge creditors and legal judgments, along with the claims of ex-spouses and disgruntled heirs.” She notes the latter “is as much a part of the wealth manager’s role as facilitating tax evasion.” She also interviewed 65 of these “wealth managers” for her own research. The personalities and motivations they described in their clients—collectively described as a “global bunch” of the world’s richest people—repeated itself again and again: They all aspired to a lifestyle “not only luxurious but libertine—one that exempted them from what most average people would regard as basic obligations to society, and gave them the freedom to do what might get other people in trouble.”
According to Harrington, what differentiates Trump from the vast majority of these people is the fact that he so openly flaunts his contempt for the rule of law, and indeed, any social norm that could constrain his behavior. We see this attitude in his casual dismissal of sexual assault and rape accusations, his sucking up to criminal dictators like Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin, and, by extension, his approach to “handling” the COVID-19 pandemic.
When Trump formally declared COVID-19 a public-health emergency in mid-March, he added, “I don’t take responsibility at all.” That was interpreted as a comment on the past, relating to the lack of national preparedness for the pandemic. But it turned out to be the entire plan for the future federal response, as well: blame China, downplay the severity of the pandemic, let the states sort it out, and never allow Trump to be held accountable. In recent months, Americans have watched Trump refusing to wear a mask, pressuring White House staff to do the same, and holding maskless rallies in defiance of state and local laws. Even after testing positive for the coronavirus, Trump has behaved carelessly, essentially ignoring the possibility that he might infect others with a deadly disease.
Trump might be considered an aberration, and less of a danger to respect for the rule of law itself—if his attitudes hadn’t infested his entire administration. But, as Harrington cites, this willful contempt among administration figures for the rule of law—the feeling that it just does not apply to them—now permeates their public behavior. From the refusal of administration officials to comply with Congressional subpoenas—Harrington cites the refusal of sitting Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, whose business affairs were shown to be intertwined with those of Vladimir Putin, causing him to be held in contempt of Congress—to the arrogance demonstrated by Attorney General William Barr, who now sits astride our entire system of justice, selectively weaponizing the law against political enemies as opposed to enforcing it for the benefit of American citizens.
In other words, it is an attitude that isn’t limited to Trump, which makes it ripe for imitation by those who serve him.
The public’s failure to grasp the message of the offshore leaks years ago—that a global elite’s culture of radical impunity threatens all of us—meant that Trump’s flamboyant defiance was treated as a personal quirk, rather than as a wedge prying apart the international rule of law.
This impulse to ignore the rule of law is also manifested by Trump’s supporters in the halls of Congress. In fact, the attitude probably reached its apotheosis in the impeachment hearings, where House and Senate Republicans turned a blind eye to obstruction of justice, tainting themselves forever in the process.
According to Harrington, it is less that Trump aspires to some high-minded notion of refashioning the powers to favor the executive branch and more that it is a willful refusal to accept that his vast wealth imposes any societal obligation on himself to pay heed to the rule of law. As she points out, this attitude is poisonous enough during times of economic prosperity, but in the context of an out-of-control global pandemic, its manifestation is nothing short of lethal.
What Harrington describes as the “offshore world”—occupied by those whose wealth actually really needs to be “managed”—traditionally paid lip service to institutional norms, even as they found ways to ignore those same norms. Trump is relatively unique in that the moral bankruptcy of his type of attitude is revealing itself in real time—in an economic calamity and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. But Trump himself, as a person, is unfortunately not unique. The world has tolerated and rewarded people with attitudes like Trump’s for decades, and done virtually nothing to thwart or dissuade them.
But the disastrous consequences of allowing this type of thinking to fester—at least in this country—are now painfully clear. If the U.S. is ever going to claw its way out of the the wreckage being left to us by this administration, it must start by holding these people accountable for their crimes, and, if at all possible, demonstrating that corruption and breaking and flouting our laws will result in prosecution and accountability. The legal means are certainly available to do this; what is needed are the resources, political will, and courage to use them. Until that happens, we will continue to see more Donald Trumps appearing out of the “offshore” shadows, all believing they are untouchable, unconstrained, and all willing and eager to do their worst.
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