It was telling to me that the Koch brothers declined to support or endorse a Donald Trump candidacy, on a couple of levels.
The first is trivial, I confess, yet it’s an indicator. It piqued my curiosity that the Koch brothers wouldn’t hobnob with Donald.That is to say, like hangs with like, and the elite tend to hang out in very tight circles. So it’s a measure of Donald’s ‘likability’, to some extent, that the two brothers didn’t/don’t embrace him in a social and political manner. Take a step further, and I thought, who does hang out with the President-elect? Too few, he had very little popular endorsement and struggled to get performances for his inauguration (I had to laugh/cry at this reality considering this piece I wrote over a year ago, when a Trump presidency seemed wholly unlikely.)
The second issue that raised my concern to alarming level was that their resources (money) were instead being funneled into the state races, effecting a sweep of the congress and in many state governor races. Especially when we consider Article V of the constitution which allows for amending by two thirds congressional consent OR a three-fourths governor’s consent, something Texas governor Greg Abbott is considering himself.
Bottom line: the Koch brothers have subversively and effectively managed to turn the political tide in our nation enough to perhaps amend our only protective document and we’ve given more notice to Donald Trump’s twitter storms, ‘locker room’ talk, and other vulgarities. We forgot about the real races, the ones that mattered, the ones to which the Koch brothers were attending. True, the same conservatives that voted for Trump would most likely have voted a straight Republican ticket and we now know which demographic constituted that vote, but it was Koch dollars that provided commercials and nurtured the anti-liberal frenzy.
We begin the a new year with an inauguration of a con-man to the highest office of our nation. He’ll continue his dog and pony show because it feeds the attention ogre.
While he does, I can’t help but think that somewhere this New Year’s Day, the two brothers are toasting their good fortune at having the perfect distraction for their ploy of changing the political landscape of our nation as we know it.
May change our focus to meet their mettle.
Yours,
Frankie
