Clark’s emphatic rejection of BDS followed some confusion caused by spurious student reporting which suggested that the university had taken steps toward adopting BDS and had even met with pro-BDS parties to discuss doing so.

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

Clark University in Massachusetts has said it has no plans to adopt the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

“Our endowment is not intended to be used as an instrument to express views on social or political issues,” university president David Fithian said in a statement earlier this month.

“Neither is it a means for exercising social power or advancing specific interests. Therefore, the university — under the Board of Trustees’ direction — will not consider divestment as a strategy for addressing world events.”

On the question of “conforming to directives of” the BDS movement, Fithian continued, the university “does not intend to change current institutional policies or procedures. Nor will we allow the adoption of measures within any unit or function that are discriminatory and/or force involuntary adoption of one particular point of view over others.”

The statement described such measures as “inconsistent with our values as a university and would conflict with university policy,” adding that they would also “threaten academic freedom, the respectful free expression of ideas and views, and the principles of inclusion and belonging that are central to our community.”

Clark’s emphatic rejection of BDS followed some confusion caused by spurious student reporting which suggested that the university had taken steps toward adopting BDS and had even met with pro-BDS parties to discuss doing so.

Last month, a student newspaper at the school, The Scarlet, reported erroneously that the student government of the Clark Undergraduate Student Council (CUSC) was seeking to push student clubs into adhering to BDS, creating, for example, a vendor list to help groups use alternatives to Amazon — which maintains investments in Israel — for purchases.

CUSC has reportedly been encouraging student organizations to use this list and regularly check the BDS movement’s website to ensure “compliance.”

The Scarlet also reported that CUSC has worked with the university’s Student Leadership and Programming to use tax-exempt vendors for their supplies such as Walmart, Target, and Party City, all of which comply with BDS.

However, a university spokesperson told The Algemeiner that the report was categorically false and shared with The Algemeiner‘s Campus Bureau documents showing nearly $10,000 in Amazon purchases made by campus clubs during the first two-thirds of the academic year alone.

The Scarlet also said that the university’s dining vendor, Harvest Table, was persuaded to purchase BDS-approved products “from local vendors and providers to better comply with the [BDS] movement.”

Such charges, in addition to not being true, were harmful, Clark University explained to The Algemeiner.

“Providing kosher meals for our Jewish students is extremely important and something the university will never compromise,” the spokesperson said, adding that no recent vendor changes have anything to do with BDS and will not in “any way negatively affect the provision of kosher options for our students.”

Since then, the student paper issued a recantation, which said in part:

“The article … erroneously reported that ‘as of November 15, no purchases have been made through Amazon using CUSC’s club budget.’ As of November 15, 36 clubs have made 68 purchases through Amazon totaling $9,430.97 using CUSC’s club budget. Lastly, it was reported that Harvest Table replaced items from companies flagged by BDS and purchases from local vendors to better comply with BDS. This is not true.”

The paper also noted that an account of a meeting between Fithian and pro-BDS members of student government to “begin charting a path toward divestment” was fiction, explaining that the university “did not indicate in those conversations any specific intentions or action that would be taken.”

Clark University is one of many schools that has rejected the BDS movement, which seeks to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination.

Trinity College in Connecticut did so last month, explaining that “the long-term and practical challenges of divesting or utilizing the endowment to exert political influence would create too much risk for the institution and potentially compromise its ability to carry out its primary educational mission.”

In September, Chapman University trustee Jim Burra cited a “fiduciary responsibility” to future students and faculty which rules out divestment as a possibility, adding that “it is important that we make financial decisions based on risk and return.”

The prior month, the University of Minnesota pointed to the same reason while touching on the extent to which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict polarizes its campus community.

However, the university did adopt a new policy for its investments, a so-called “position of neutrality” which, it says, will be a guardrail protecting university business from the caprices of political opinion.

Several weeks earlier, Oberlin College’s Board of Trustees voted against divestment after reviewing a proposal submitted by “Students for a Free Palestine,” a spin-off of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which has been linked to Islamist terrorist organizations.

Colleges and universities will lose tens of billions of dollars collectively from their endowments if they capitulate to demands to divest from Israel , according to a report published in September by JLens, a Jewish investor network that is part of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

Titled “The Impact of Israel Divestment on Equity Portfolios: Forecasting BDS’s Financial Toll on University Endowments,” the report presented the potential financial impact of universities adopting the BDS movement, which is widely condemned for being antisemitic.

The losses estimated by JLens are cataclysmic. Adopting BDS, it said, would incinerate $33.21 billion of future returns for the 100 largest university endowments over the next 10 years, with Harvard University losing $2.5 billion and the University of Texas losing $2.2 billion.

Other schools would forfeit over $1 billion, including the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, and Princeton University. For others, such as the University of Michigan and Dartmouth College, the damages would total in the hundreds of millions.

The post Clark University rejects anti-Israel BDS movement appeared first on World Israel News.

These pure and beautiful children visited wounded IDF soldiers in the hospital and performed a heartfelt rendition of a popular Israeli song, lifting the spirits of the brave soldiers.

Israeli children sing to injured IDF soldiers pic.twitter.com/tOpDD9Nqqv

— Natalie_Zion (@natalie_Zion_) December 19, 2024

The post WATCH: Israeli children sing to rehabilitating IDF soldiers appeared first on World Israel News.

Putin said the church was ‘being tortured’ — and blamed Jews.

By Ben Sales, JTA

Vladimir Putin accused Jews of attacking the Russian Orthodox Church and suggested that they lacked family and “roots,” the latest antisemitic statement from the Russian leader since his 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Putin made the allegation during his lengthy annual press conference ahead of the New Year, which lasted four hours on Thursday. In the middle of the event, Putin addressed punitive actions against the Russian Orthodox Church elsewhere in Europe.

The church is considered to be closely tied to Putin’s regime, and its leaders have been expelled from countries such as Bulgaria and Estonia.

Putin said the church was “being tortured” — and blamed Jews.

“They’re tearing the church apart but they’re not even atheists,” Putin said. “These are people without any beliefs, godless people, they’re ethnic Jews, but has anyone seen them in a synagogue? I don’t think so.”

After adding that the alleged opponents of the church were also neither Orthodox Christian nor Muslim, he added, “These are people without kin or memory, with no roots. They don’t cherish what we cherish and the majority of the Ukrainian people cherish as well.”

Critics of Putin decried the statement as antisemitic, noting parallels to Soviet state antisemitism under Josef Stalin, when the Kremlin persecuted Jews and accused them of being “rootless cosmopolitans.”

Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, the former chief rabbi of Moscow who left Russia after refusing to support the invasion of Ukraine, tweeted that Putin was “reviving Soviet-era tropes like ‘rootless cosmopolitans,’” and referenced the “Doctors’ Plot,” another of Stalin’s antisemitic campaigns.

“This echoes the Stalinist antisemitic rhetoric of the “Doctors’ Plot” (1948-53),” he wrote. “History teaches us: hate must be challenged. We call on European leaders to condemn these statements!”

Putin and his deputies have employed antisemitic rhetoric in their arguments for their invasion of Ukraine. Although Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish, Putin has claimed that Ukraine is led by a “neo-Nazi regime.”

In the press conference, Putin also blamed the ouster of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad on Iran. Assad was an ally of Russia and is now living in exile there. Putin said he planned to meet with Assad but had not yet. He also said he was open to meeting with President-elect Donald Trump.

The post Vladimir Putin accuses ‘ethnic Jews’ of tearing apart the Russian Orthodox Church appeared first on World Israel News.

By a 13-point margin (39% to 26%), independents reported decreased trust in government following the election.

By Jewish Breaking News

As speculation and debate continue to rage over how the Democrats got beaten so badly in November, new post-election polling data reveals what voters really wanted.

Four years ago, Joe Biden beat Donald Trump’s first chance at election by promising to restore faith in democracy and government. Vice President Harris tried out the exact same playbook as she tried to become the nation’s first female president.

She ended up walking into a buzzsaw of voters more interested in results than rhetoric.

According to the first comprehensive post-election poll by George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management, while trust in government took a nosedive after the election – with 39% of voters saying their confidence had dropped – Americans still picked Trump’s promise of action over Harris’s pledge of integrity.

When asked about government effectiveness under the new administration, 40% expect improvement compared to 36% predicting decline.

The contrast was even starker among independents, a crucial voting bloc that broke decisively against Democrats.

By a 13-point margin (39% to 26%), independents reported decreased trust in government following the election.

Similarly, they expressed less confidence in receiving accurate information by an 11-point margin (39% to 28%).

However, these same independent voters believed by a 10-point margin (39% to 29%) that the Trump administration would prove more effective at achieving results.

America’s fractured media landscape also proved instrumental in sinking Democratic “trust us” messaging.

Three-quarters of voters under 30 now get their news from social media, while 84% of seniors stick to television.

The divide gets even sharper on platforms like TikTok and Instagram, where 61% and 55% of young voters turn for news compared to single digits among those over 65.

Trump capitalized on this divide, with his headline-grabbing Joe Rogan podcast appearance racking up over 27 million YouTube views and dominating social media feeds for weeks.

Concerns about misinformation loomed large, with 69% of Americans reporting that online disinformation made it harder to access “fair and truthful news during the 2024 election campaign.”

A similar 71% expressed worry about the role of “deepfakes” in spreading false information. Perhaps most troubling for both parties, 45% of Americans now say they trust neither the government nor news organizations to provide accurate information.

It’s clear Americans have grown cynical enough to separate belief from results and prefer a distrusted government that delivers than a trusted one that doesn’t.

After watching their party get wiped out in the House, and Senate, and an embarrassing presidential defeat, Democrats are left to ponder whether their cherished “democracy first” message has finally hit its expiration date.

The post New post-election poll reveals why voters rejected Harris so badly appeared first on World Israel News.

Autism, Made in the USA

Richard Gale, December 18, 2024

Global Warfare: “We’re Going to Take out 7 Countries in 5 Years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan & Iran..”

General Wesley Clark, December 14, 2024

Syria Left …

The post This Week’s Most Popular Articles appeared first on Global Research.

Newly released bodycam footage captures the intense shootout between Chicago police and Sidi Mohamed Abdallahi, an illegal immigrant from Africa who was allowed to enter the US under the Biden-Harris administration, shot a Jewish man after shouting ‘Allahu Akbar.’

BREAKING: just released body camera video of the harrowing shootout between Chicago police officers and Sidi Mohamed Abdallahi who shot a Jewish man after screaming “Allahu Akbar!”.

Abdallahi illegally crossed into the U.S. from Africa, under the Biden-Harris administration. pic.twitter.com/ZfeA9lBCbB

— Dapper Detective (@Dapper_Det) December 20, 2024

The post WATCH: New bodycam footage shows police neutralizing Chicago shooter who killed Jewish man walking to synagogue appeared first on World Israel News.

Technocracy Rising: Why It’s Crucial to Understand the End Game

By Jesse Smith, December 19, 2024

We have now arrived at yet another historical inflection point. The desire for political and economic reconstruction is being demanded globally as the …

The post Selected Articles: Technocracy Rising: Why It’s Crucial to Understand the End Game appeared first on Global Research.

Canada, like the US and other countries, is grappling with acute political dealignment. Plummeting working-class support for center-left parties highlights the failure of liberal policies and the appeal of Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s populism.

With Justin Trudeau’s cabinet in revolt, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre will likely be Canada’s next prime minister. Liberals and leftists lampoon him for his dorky anti-charisma, fearmongering about crime, and plans to overthrow the constitution. And yet his polling numbers are so high — nearly double Trudeau’s Liberals — that even a large sampling error will not stop him. Among his supporters are large swaths of the working class. Why are they flocking to him?

Squeezed between a center left that ignores the cost of living and a pro-business Conservative Party that presents itself as the champion of the ordinary people, many working-class voters are choosing the latter. After nearly a decade of Trudeau’s leadership — propped up by the social democratic New Democratic Party (NDP) from 2022 until their recent withdrawal of support — voters feel they gave the Liberals ample opportunity to improve their lives. Instead, they got higher rent and stagnant wages. Frustrated, they are now willing to overlook Poilievre’s regressive policies in hopes of change.

The Liberal Honeymoon

The Liberal renaissance began in 2015. After a decade under Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper, voters sought a center-left alternative, fueled by climate change protests and indigenous rights movements like Idle No More. Liberal leader Trudeau appealed to urban, socially liberal demographics with promises of decolonization, proportional representation, and drug reform. While most of these promises were broken, those that were fulfilled — such as marijuana legalization and support for refugees — boosted his popularity. His charming smile and a housing market in which the average Canadian home cost less than half a million dollars also played a role.

The golden years soon melted away. Before the 2019 election, Trudeau was faced with the SNC-Lavalin Scandal, in which he pressured the minister of justice and attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould to halt the prosecution of a corrupt construction company. A few months later, a photo of him grinning in blackface surfaced, smudging his progressive image.

Two opposing social movements helped Trudeau survive the fallout. On the Right, Maxime Bernier, after losing the Conservative leadership election to Andrew Scheer, formed the People’s Party. Its climate denialism and xenophobic platform earned only 1.6 percent of the vote, but this small share split the Conservative base, costing the party seats. On the Left, over one million Canadians joined the global climate strike just weeks before the election. Despite the Liberals’ pro-pipeline policy, they leveraged the moment’s momentum to emphasize their carbon tax plan. While carbon taxes are flat consumption taxes and therefore not inherently progressive, the Conservatives’ attacks on the policy alienated many suburban voters.

The Liberals narrowly won reelection but were reduced to a minority government. Months later, COVID-19 swept the world. In the face of mass fatalities and economic devastation, the Liberal’s decisive response stood in sharp contrast to President Donald Trump’s downplaying of the COVID threat and the scandals surrounding UK government officials partying during lockdown. Voters rallied behind their government and the Liberals skyrocketed in the polls. Hoping to regain a majority, Trudeau called a snap election in 2021. However, many voters thought it was unnecessary, and his popularity again declined.

Once again, Trudeau benefited from division on the Right. Conservative leader Erin O’Toole opposed mandatory vaccination, but refrained from outright denial of COVID’s severity or vaccine efficacy. In contrast, the People’s Party embraced COVID denialism and anti-vaccine rhetoric. Although they won no seats, their vote share tripled, again splitting the right-wing vote. The Liberals’ share of the vote declined, but they gained seats, thanks to the fractured opposition. Without the People’s Party, Trudeau’s tenure could have ended in 2021.

Poilievre’s Rise

After winning three elections in a row, it seemed nothing could stop “Teflon” Trudeau. But trouble was brewing. House prices had been rapidly rising for decades, culminating in one of the worst affordability crises in the world by the early 2020s. Home prices had already spiraled out of control, but COVID-19 exacerbated the problem further as rents outstripped wages and supply chain disruptions stalled new construction. Inflation further strained household budgets, and corporations took advantage of the situation to raise prices on essentials like groceries. The pandemic claimed nearly 60,000 Canadian lives.

Against this backdrop, Trudeau’s progressive image was losing its shine. In addition to his inability to do anything about the housing market and extortionate grocery costs, he failed to meet his government’s own climate targets, pushed pipelines through sovereign indigenous land, and maintained staunch support for Israel.

Poilievre was quick to turn the situation to his advantage, rhetorically sympathizing with the working class, while maintaining pressure on Trudeau. First, he had to unite the Right. He publicly supported the Trucker Convoy, shaking hands with protesters that shut down Ottawa. Promising to help Canadians “gain control of their lives,” he won back right-wing voters while appealing broadly to those suffering from high unemployment and inflation. His message resonated so strongly that he secured two-thirds of the votes in the Conservative leadership race, the best result in over two decades.

Poilievre built up a mass following through viral, clickbait-style videos. In one, titled “Two homes. 20 minutes apart,” he contrasts a small house that costs $570,000 with a much larger one that costs $210,000. The difference? Standing at the border in Niagara Falls, the former is in Canada and the latter is in the United States. The video has nearly a million views.

Of course, viral videos alone do not guarantee success. But they do underscore the resonance of Poilievre’s populist rhetoric. At times, his language sounds less like his neoliberal idol Friedrich Hayek and more like Bernie Sanders. Trudeau is “taking from the have-nots to give to the have-yachts” he claims, railing against “a government of elites and self-serving snobs who look down on ordinary working-class Canadians.” He has also asked, “Shouldn’t our working class be better off today than it was forty years ago?”

Neither Trudeau nor the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh have effectively countered this messaging. While Trudeau has acknowledged that the economy could be doing better, he has defended his record, touting the government’s low deficit. Singh has condemned the housing crisis, but the NDP’s support for the Liberals has tied the two parties together in voter’s eyes, resulting in low support.

Working-Class Vote

Poilievre exemplifies a wider trend of political dealignment in the West, with working-class voters moving away from left and center-left parties and toward the Right. In Canada, dealignment began as early as 2004, when Harper united the Right and became prime minister.

A recent poll found Poilievre’s Conservative Party leading across all income classes, with only an 8-point difference between the lower- and upper-income support. The same pattern holds for the Liberals. Only the NDP’s support drops significantly as income increases. Notably, Poilievre also leads among union members.

Critics might point to Poilievre’s anti-worker and anti-union record as evidence that working-class voters are acting against their own interests. But this raises a key question: Why now? Why have things changed? Why is the working class withdrawing its historical support of center-left and left-wing parties?

The answer lies in the failure of those parties. Over the past two decades, the Liberals have consistently failed the working class, while the NDP has drifted to the center, abandoning its socialist roots. From 2022 to the fall of this year, the NDP supported the Liberals through a supply and confidence agreement, achieving only modest victories, like the gradual rollout of national dental care for Canadian households earning less than $90,000 per year.

It’s not that voters are enthusiastic about Poilievre; like all party leaders, Poilievre has a negative net approval rating. Many working-class Canadians are so disillusioned that they’ve stopped voting altogether, contributing to declining turnout. But those who do vote hear Poilievre’s message clearly: reject the status quo and stand up for the working class. They may not like him or fully trust him, but lacking better options, they are willing to give him a chance.

Stopping Poilievre

Liberals and leftists have tried to counter Poilievre’s rise by fact-checking his statements. Others note that Poilievre is not a populist outsider, but a career politician. But as with Trump, fact-checking and denunciation will likely have little effect. As long as Poilievre rails against a status quo from which working people have seen no benefit — and as the Liberals and the NDP continue to fail the working class — frustrated voters will turn to Poilievre.

A better strategy is to expose Poilievre’s faux populism. Poilievre is right about how bad the housing crisis is. But his solution — cutting taxes — will benefit investors while leaving everyone else behind. His plan to tackle unemployment is to spur economic growth through tax cuts so everyone gets more of the growing pie. In other words, he is offering warmed-over trickle-down economics disguised as populism, blaming the Bank of Canada for inflation while letting corporations off the hook.

But exposing Poilievre is only half the battle. To defeat him, a socialist alternative is needed. This means advancing economic policies that directly address working-class interests, promoting working-class candidates to reshape party policy and platforms, and revitalizing the labor movement to build a mass working-class politics.

These solutions won’t come easily or quickly. The first step is to clear the deck for meaningful action by acknowledging that, while Poilievre may be a liar, his message resonates because liberal social progressivism has done very little to improve the lives of most working people. With an actual alternative in place, Poilievre’s message will no longer seem radical but rather a farcical attempt to protect the rich.

Mourab also criticized Iran for the destruction of its terror proxy

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

Sunni Sheikh Hassan Mourab, a supporter of Hezbollah, told Lebanese television that “Israel has left nothing of Hezbollah.”

Discussing the assassinations of Hezbollah leadership, he said, “The organization has suffered severe blows at the high command levels, the lower levels, and in the infrastructure in southern Lebanon.”

Mourab added,”What else is left that the enemy has not achieved? What else is left for them to do?” What is left for us? Tell me.”

“Southern Lebanon has been completely destroyed. And at the end, Hezbollah was also forbidden from operating weapons inside Lebanon and outside it. Okay? So what is left of Hezbollah? Nothing. The organization has become powerless.”

Mourab also criticized Iran for the destruction of its terror proxy.

“Iran is the one that destroyed Hezbollah more than anything else. I believe that Iranian conduct has led to a decline in the organization’s power, and this is evident in the reality on the ground.”

According to the World Bank, Lebanon has experienced $8.5 billion in damages and economic losses due to the ongoing conflict—$3.4 billion in physical infrastructure damage and $5.1 billion in broader economic losses.

Over the past 14 months, Hezbollah is believed to have suffered casualties as high as 10 times the number it lost during the 2006 Second Lebanon War, which lasted for a month.

An assessment by Israel’s Channel 12 News and the Institute for National Security Studies indicates that the Israeli military estimates Hezbollah has lost approximately 3,000 fighters in Lebanon, including at least 11 brigade commanders, 37 battalion commanders, and 46 company commanders.

A source with knowledge of Hezbollah’s operations told Reuters on Thursday that as many as 4,000 terrorists may have been killed, the majority of them since September. This increase in casualties came after Jerusalem escalated its offensive in Lebanon, adding the return of tens of thousands of displaced residents to their homes in the north to its official war objectives.

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Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, just used his political influence to shut down a bipartisan deal to keep the government open. It’s obscene — but it’s just one example of the ways billionaires dominate American democracy.

During the first Republican debate in 2015, Donald Trump positioned himself as a bold truth-teller, almost a whistleblower, about the corrupt influence he’d exercised on politicians as a wealthy donor. The moderators asked why he’d given money to Democrats in the past, and he replied:

I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me. And that’s a broken system.

As Andrew Prokop dryly noted at the time, it was an unusual pitch. “Reformers usually present themselves as blameless.” Trump, instead, almost sounded like he was bragging. He presented himself as someone who’d played the system himself, knew it inside and out, and could thus be clear-eyed about what needed to be fixed.

Nine years later, Trump is preparing to start his second term as president. And one of his closest associates (and by far his most important political donor), billionaire Elon Musk, just used his wealth to influence the political process in a far more flagrant way than anything Trump was talking about on that debate stage in 2015.

Musk bought the social media platform then known as Twitter (now X) for $44 billion dollars in 2022. There’s every reason to suspect that he’s manipulated the site’s algorithm to boost his own posts. However that may be, he’s Twitter/X’s most popular user, with 207.9 million followers. Even the president-elect only has 96.2 million. Starting in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, he used that megaphone to post 150 times about his opposition to a bipartisan spending deal intended to stop the government from shutting down just before Christmas.

During the election, Musk spent well over $200 million on two pro-Trump PACs, making him by far the highest-spending donor on either side of the race. He was rewarded with such a prominent place by Trump’s side that a casual observer could be forgiven for assuming that Musk rather than J. D. Vance was Trump’s running mate. The combination of the close association he bought with the president-elect and his prominence on the social media platform he had purchased would be enough, all on its own, for Musk’s noisy opposition to the spending deal to turn the heads of many Republican lawmakers. Not content with this level of influence, though, Musk used his day of rage-posting to publicly threaten that he would personally finance a primary challenge against any Republican congressman who voted for the deal.

When Money Talks

That’s not a threat any Republican with an instinct for political preservation would take lightly. Musk is the world’s richest man, with a reported net worth of $455 billion. To put that into perspective, it’s more than sixty-nine times Trump’s own estimated worth of $6.61 billion. Musk could finance a lot of primary challenges before he would feel his wallet getting lighter.

The combination of this threat, and a desire to be seen as siding with a figure who has bought himself prestige with Trump’s base, was enough to kill a spending deal that the Speaker of the House, Republican Mike Johnson, had spent months negotiating with Democrats. It’s now unclear whether a shutdown can be averted at all. Don’t be surprised if many federal employees end up having to spend a month working without pay like they did in 2018, or if Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits — i.e., food stamps  — grind to a halt. Even if that outcome is averted, though, this was a remarkably blatant way for a billionaire to flex his political muscles, and it should deeply bother anyone who takes democracy seriously.

Allowing billionaires to exist in the first place is absurd. A million and a billion are both amounts of money that greatly exceed what most of us can ever hope to have in our bank accounts, so it’s easy to forget the enormity of the difference. But to put this into perspective, if we imagine a long-lived being (perhaps a vampire) who came to the western hemisphere with Christopher Columbus in 1492 and somehow managed to earn and save the equivalent of a thousand contemporary US dollars every day since he arrived, the vampire would have $1 million by sometime in 1495. He wouldn’t even be a fifth of the way to $1 billion dollars in 2024.

It’s hard to stretch your mind to even imagine how much money $455 billion is. As a matter of distributive justice, letting one man have that much while others struggle to make rent or afford groceries is an abomination. But when we combine that kind of wealth with letting billionaires buy political influence, the consequences for anything resembling meaningful democracy are grim.

A Bipartisan Plutocracy

The problem, however, goes much deeper than Musk himself. The ultrapublic nature of his intervention in the political process made the reality of billionaire rule blindingly obvious, but most of the ways billionaires spend some of their wealth on securing political outcomes are less like that than they are like the process Trump was describing in 2015 — whereby he’d establish relationships with politicians of both parties, and both sides of that relationship would do each other favors. Or like the way Jeff Bezos can influence the political discourse through his ownership of the Washington Post. Or the way anyone rich enough to own businesses that employ lots of people and generate lots of tax revenue can make politicians sweat bullets by threatening to move their operations to a different jurisdiction or overseas.

At this moment, as Musk is rubbing the political power conferred by his wealth in all of our faces, many Democrats may be tempted to make populist hay out of this. That’s a good instinct in the abstract: the talking points write themselves. But Democrats’ own credibility on the issue of billionaire influence is in the gutter. As of the end of October, Forbes estimated that eighty-three billionaires were backing the candidacy of Kamala Harris, compared to only fifty-two for Trump. Of course, given that one of those fifty-two was the man in the world with the most billions, and that he gave more lavishly than any of Kamala’s eighty-three, Trump was still in the better position. But there’s only so much populism you can pull off while cashing checks from eighty-three billionaires.

Of course, many plutocrats prefer to hedge their bets and spread their influence far and wide. They would say what Trump said in 2015. “I give to everyone. When they call, I give!” As long as politicians of both parties keep making phone calls to the ultrarich, rule-by-billionaire in the United States will continue.