In one headline, we read Behind Trump’s Dealings With Turkey: Sons-in-Law Married to Power. This describes how President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, officially an Advisor to the President, is working outside normal diplomatic channels with the son-in-law of Turkish President Erdogan and the son-in-law of a wealthy Turkish business tycoon. It is this backdoor diplomacy that resulted in the withdrawal of American troops from northern Syria, allowing the Turkish army to occupy territory once controlled by the Kurds. And at the same time, Trump Towers rises in Istanbul.
In the other, less prominent headline and story, we read Jimmy Carter Hospitalized for Brain Procedure. When former President Jimmy Carter was running for President in 1976, he was so concerned with the appearance of a conflict of interest that he sold his south Georgia peanut farm.
From the time of Teddy Roosevelt's Square Deal, through FDR's New Deal, Ike's shepherding of the economy through the post-war boom of the 50's, and with LBJ's Great Society, we generally had an American sense of shared purpose and shared prosperity. That sense wasn't perfect, set against the backdrop of racism and America's original sin of slavery. But we sensed that our leaders understood the social compact and the concept of the common good.
That changed with the Reagan supply-side tax cuts, his breaking the air traffic controllers' union, and the move toward "small government" and deregulation. Gordon Gecko declared that greed is good, and the prosperity gospel carnival barkers joined right in the chorus. So we continued with tax cuts for the wealthy, neutering regulation of financial services, and generally transferring the wealth created by working people (labor) to the ownership class.
And so here we are. Where government policy is nothing more than just another business deal. Where the foundations of our system of government are no longer obstacles to nepotism and self-dealing by government officials. Where legal fictions that exist on paper are imbued with the rights and privileges of natural persons, and the government sides with corporations that have, for example, the right to worship over the rights of individuals.
And that is the threat to our Constitution that we cannot ignore.
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