The Game is Rigged

I must admit to taking perverse delight in watching two powerful people discover and publicly decry the fact that “the game is rigged.”

Bernie Sanders, a US Senator, who has long enjoyed the benefits of the rigging of the game for those in positions of political power, rants daily about the advantages the rigged financial system enjoys and that his competitor, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has exploited to her personal benefit.  Of course, he’s right, big banks enjoy advantages that others don’t share, and those advantages are not intended to benefit the culture at large.  Those advantages have their roots in years of legislation crafted and supported by the very businesses they affect.

Donald Trump, a successful businessman, who has demonstrably enjoyed the benefits of countless rigged systems, is discovering that the RNC has created rules that give them authority over the electoral process that he finds undemocratic.  No doubt he’s right.  It’s pretty likely that the Republican apparatchiks have kept to themselves enough ultimate control over the nomination process to ensure their own survival in times of challenge to the precepts they, personally, hold dear.  I was reminded of the great chasm between votes and elections when my son sent me a quote attributed to Mark Twain, “If voting made any difference, they wouldn’tallow us to do it” in response to a related cartoon.

As one who came late to understanding the oppressive nature of government intrusion on ordinary business practice, I have yelled and screamed just like Bernie and Donald every week for the last seven years.  The difference between the world I see, and the world they see is profound, however.  Each of them has discovered a rigged system that’s disrupted their otherwise highly privileged lives.  Each of them has lived in a world made better by the rigging because they are beneficiaries of many of the laws, rule, and regulations that suppress behaviors of others.  Bernie doesn’t have to live with ObamaCare, and Donald certainly enjoys tax loopholes that don’t benefit us mere mortals.

The difference between these perspectives presents a fully different worldview.  Bernie and Donald look across the top of a sea of bureaucratic soup by which they are largely unaffected and rail loudly about a ripple in that sea that is temporarily distressing to them.  Most of us live well below the surface of that sea and look continually into the increasingly murky, unending soup of bureaucratic challenge to our business lives.  It’s a remarkably exasperating view.  I feel true empathy for those at the very bottom of that sea.

And then there’s Hillary.  She’s likely relieved that various systems are rigged.