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Budi

(15,325 posts)
Sat Oct 10, 2020, 01:58 PM Oct 2020

"Trump's Very Ordinary Indifference to the Common Good"/The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/trumps-very-ordinary-indifference-to-the-common-good/616675/

Trump’s Very Ordinary Indifference to the Common Good

Blowing off tax obligations and public-health dictates makes the president an all too typical member of a self-indulgent global elite.

6:30 AM ET

SNIP
...Trump’s tax returns was not just one man’s refusal of his fiscal obligations. 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.


SNIP

That story, known as the Panama Papers, exposed a sprawling web of tax evasion, money laundering, and other financial misdeeds by the global elite. Also exposed was a brazen contempt for the law by many officials—including heads of state and ministers of justice and finance—who were empowered to uphold it.

Trump’s name came up more than 3,500 times in the documents; although he was not implicated in any wrongdoing, many of his customers, business partners, and other associates were.
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.[/i]

SNIP
Trump is the ideal representative of the elite insurgency. His offhand remark while filming Access Hollywood 15 years ago could serve as the unofficial motto for the whole offshore world: “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”


Excellent Read....
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