Tyranny of Greed: Trump, Corruption, and the Revolution to Come

By Timothy R Kuhner

“If you’re as worried about the effects of Trump’s election as I am, then this brave and surprising book is for you.” —Reza Aslan, #1 New York Times-bestselling author
 
Democracy is being destroyed by an ancient evil, and modernity is in denial. In Tyranny of Greed, Timothy K. Kuhner reveals the United States to be a government by and for the wealthy, with Trump—the spirit of infinite greed—at its helm. Taking readers on a tour through evolutionary biology, psychology, and biblical sources, Kuhner explores how democracy emerged from religious and revolutionary awakenings. He argues that to overcome Trump’s regime and establish real democracy, we must reconnect with that radical heritage. Our political tradition demands a revolution against corruption.
 
“Many books are announcing the downfall of American democracy, but Tyranny of Greed operates on another level. It’s an original and powerful work of art. Tapping into a deeper awareness, Kuhner helps us recognize this dark time for what it really is—an opportunity for rebirth. Yes, I feel shaken, but also awakened. The more people who read this book, the more transformative our national conversation will become.”—Frances Moore Lappé, bestselling author of Diet for a Small Planet
 
“Explosive, penetrating and utterly compelling, Kuhner charts the death spiral of American democracy as it collapses into the black hole of the religion of money. Never before in human history have noble ideals been corrupted so deeply with the connivance of so many. This book lays tyranny bare for all to see—as a mirror for the human soul.” —Philip Goodchild, author of Theology of Money

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Aug 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781503614024

Book preview

PREFACE

Thus far, the twenty-first century is thrashing humanity with a sort of violence generally confined to science fiction or biblical times.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, a global catastrophe was well underway. Political analysts warned of democratic decline and rising authoritarianism. Economists uncovered alarming levels of inequality and capital concentration. Sociologists noted a resurgence in racism, sexism, and xenophobia. Scientists documented extreme temperature fluctuations, natural disasters, and an ongoing mass extinction. But in contrast to the pandemic, there has been no serious response to our social and environmental disintegration.

How could there be? The force that’s ravaging the world is bound up with our way of life—with our values and belief systems, our economies and technologies, the laws we’ve passed (and failed to pass), and the leaders we’ve elected. So long as those leaders claim to understand our problems and to be doing something about them, most of us keep going about our lives without any serious change in worldview or behavior. We banish our lucid thoughts from the stage to the balcony. There, looking down on the characters in some futuristic dystopia or time-worn tragedy, our conscious awareness disassociates itself from humanity’s plight.

This coping mechanism has been stretched to the limit since 2016. During his campaign and first presidential term, Donald J. Trump became a transparent catalyst for political corruption, crony capitalism, prejudice, and climate change. That break from the cosmetic righteousness of past administrations has made it harder to continue sleepwalking towards catastrophe. People now flock to catastrophe, as though it were salvation, or throw a fit about it, as though it were a personalized insult. Whether enthralled or enraged, we’re surely more committed and more polarized than before. But I doubt we’re any more conscious.

Dreams of such violent intensity can’t last long. It’ll all be over in November of 2020, we tell ourselves, or 2024 at the latest. But that’s just another coping strategy. Even a clean electoral sweep by the Democrats wouldn’t respond to the underlying causes of Trump’s rise to power or reverse the long-term effects of his presidency. Awakenings can’t be delegated. Plus, Democrats have long been complicit—not in Trump’s specific wrongdoings as Republicans have, but in the overall perversion of government that he has stoked and capitalized on.

We won’t have all the facts about Trump’s presidency for some time. The automatic declassification process doesn’t begin until 2045 and the most sensitive government documents won’t be made public until 2095.¹ But awareness and power depend more on perspective than they do on data.

This book examines today’s democratic crisis from a number of uncommon perspectives, including religion, evolutionary biology, psychology, and even astrophysics. And when it comes to the usual lenses of law, economics, and political science, it applies them to surprising time periods and settings. Why such an unconventional approach? Because, rather than an isolated event, I see Trump’s presidency as the natural culmination of our moment in history—especially the parts we’ve neglected or forgotten.

Celebrating our sins as though they were virtues, he has brought us to the crossroads. Exploiting every weakness, he has pushed democracy to the brink. Rarely has such a portal into the moral, spiritual, and revolutionary dimensions of politics been opened. To all who dare look him in the eye, Trump offers an honest reckoning; and that, I believe, is what the twenty-first century has been asking for all along.

1

A PARABLE

Donald Trump is like an elephant, but I don’t mean the GOP’s symbolic pachyderm or the one from Ringling Brothers. This Republican creature did turn democracy into a circus, and yet that’s not my point. I’m thinking of the proverbial elephant from ancient times. In John Godfrey Saxe’s poetic rendition of the parable,

It was six men of Indostan,

To learning much inclined,

Who went to see the Elephant

(Though all of them were blind),

That each by observation

Might satisfy his mind.

The first man runs up against the elephant’s side and declares the animal very like a wall! The second comes across one of the elephant’s tusks and disagrees with the first blind man: no, the animal is very like a spear! Encountering the elephant’s squirming trunk, the third blind man parts ways with the first two men. No, the animal is very like a snake! The fourth man bases his judgment on a massive leg, very like a tree! Discovering a large flat ear, the fifth proclaims the elephant very like a fan! Finally, the sixth blind man feels the elephant’s swinging tail and pronounces the animal very like a rope!

And so these men of Indostan

Disputed loud and long,

Each in his own opinion

Exceeding stiff and strong,

Though each was partly in the right,

And all were in the wrong!¹

I fear that historians of the twenty-first century will reach the same judgment about Trump opponents today—over 100 million Americans stumbling around an unfamiliar political regime, trying to satisfy our minds.

Some of us run up against Trump’s treatment of women and declare him very like a misogynist! Others come across his promises on trade, manufacturing, and national greatness, and pronounce him very like a populist! A third group encounters the creature’s appeal to the alt-right, the violence at his rallies, his views on immigration, his promises to lock up the opposition, and his disregard for legal constraints. You’re all wrong, this group says. Trump is very like a white supremacist, an authoritarian, and even a fascist! A fourth band bases its judgment on his emotional instability and need for constant praise. He is very like a mentally deranged narcissist! Discovering the many conflicts between Trump’s public responsibilities and private business interests, a fifth group declares the beast very like a plutocrat, an oligarch even! Speaking of oligarchs, a sixth ensemble feels the effects of Russian interference and Trump’s loyalty to Vladimir Putin. They pronounce him very like a traitor!

In the parable, the elephant represents God. The blind men represent human beings in search of the divine, declaring our limited experience to be the absolute truth. Can this ancient wisdom shed any light on today’s political predicament?

Cautioning against theologic wars at the end of his poem, Saxe employed the parable outwardly as social commentary. How senseless and arrogant the religious disputes that consume societies! How futile the conflicts they breed! The lesson for today would seem to be strategic. Instead of succumbing to infighting, the political opposition should accommodate each other’s ideas and form a united front.

Though appealing on its surface, that lesson is lethally dangerous. The elephant parable exposes the mismatch between human faculties and the profound reality of the divine. But the political realm is more accessible to our faculties than the ethereal realm. Accordingly, it stands to reason that some people may be right and others wrong. A political leader could actually be a fascist, plutocrat, or traitor, while no elephant is a snake, spear, or fan.

That issue, the proper identification of a political leader, brings us to the potentially lethal part. The parable’s time frame is uncertain. If employed to avert a religious war by inspiring humility and brotherhood, then the parable is urgent. Beyond that particular instance, however, the parable doesn’t suggest any urgency. Humanity’s quest to understand the divine precedes recorded history and is unlikely to ever reach a definitive conclusion. But the situation with Trump—unity versus a surgically precise diagnosis—is more like that impending war. When a critical mass of citizens has failed to recognize fascism, systemic corruption, or treason in time, democracy has been lost, genocides have been carried out, and world wars have been fought. From the fall of Rome to the rise of Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler, history hasn’t allowed much breathing room. Plus, Trump’s policies pose a danger beyond anything that history has encountered: If carbon emissions continue on present course, climate change may soon escalate to apocalyptic dimensions. And that’s the scientists talking, not the authors of ancient parables.

A final reason for questioning the parable’s application relates to factual inconsistencies. Unlike the blind men, Trump opponents have been immersed in dialogue and media reports ever since the 2016 primaries. Consequently, few people assert that Trump is only a sexist, only an authoritarian, only a racist, a narcissist, an oligarch, or a traitor. Trump displays multiple worrisome tendencies and everyone knows it. That clashes with the scenario in Saxe’s poem, in which the blind men

Rail on in utter ignorance

Of what each other mean;

And prate about an Elephant

Not one of them has seen!

Today, Saxe would surely conclude that we rail on in total awareness of what each other mean, and prate about an Elephant we’ve all seen. Wouldn’t he?

By broadening the universe of blind men to include Trump supporters and by delving into the opposition’s innermost experience of Trump, we may discover that we’re confined within a parable after all. And if we don’t come to our senses, the sages of the future will soon be discussing another tragic mismatch between human faculties and an unworldly reality. But will our predicament be understood as a parable about God, just like the one in Saxe’s poem?

Donald Trump has long inhabited heavenly palaces, surrounded himself with goddesses, and enjoyed considerable fame. He became the head of the country with the greatest economic and military force—i.e., the most powerful figure in existence. And he has been especially concerned with the territory presently controlled by Israel. So you might joke that ours is indeed a parable about God. But that, in all seriousness, is the line that conservative religious voters were fed.

God showed up.² That’s Christian evangelist Franklin Graham explaining the 2016 election. At Trump’s inauguration, Graham quoted the New Testament on how we must make petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving . . . for kings and all those in authority. Kings was the key word in that quotation, a reference to a conservative strategy that began on the campaign trail.

Once Trump’s adultery and misogynistic comments became too obvious to ignore, GOP megadonor Foster Friess had a big idea. He could compare Trump to King David. After all, the second King of ancient Israel also kept concubines and committed adultery. Friess wrote a letter reminding his supporters that all throughout history, God has harnessed imperfect people to fulfil his perfect will.³ Others—including Jerry Falwell, Sean Hannity, and Secretary of Energy Rick Perry—worked to strengthen the narrative. God had chosen Trump to bring about His will.⁴ A film-based revelation of this claim, The Trump Prophecy, dramatized the story for mass consumption.

In 2019, Trump indicated that it was all true. Gratefully retweeting Franklin Graham’s latest message, Trump broadcasted the idea that he, the forty-fifth president, is comparable to the King of Israel and the second coming of God.⁵

But even if you believe in the possibility of divine intervention in politics, the gravity of Trump’s imperfections renders these claims preposterous. Just consider:

• his peculiar gift for insult, ridicule, and the cultivation of hatred;

• his singularly vile comments about women;

• the sex money and hush money he’s paid;

• his incessant flaunting of conspicuous wealth;

• his policy of separating immigrant children from their parents and keeping them in cages;

• his racism in elevating fringe figures, such as Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon, to positions of power, and in inviting American congresswomen of color to go back to their countries;

• his support for violence against protesters at his rallies (offering to pay the perpetrators’ legal expenses);

• his unprecedented use of lies, fake news, and foreign powers to deceive voters, divide the nation, and manipulate elections;

• his dependency on foreign agents and influence peddlers—including Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Rudy Giuliani, Lev Parnas, and Igor Fruman;

• his camaraderie with dictators and oligarchs—including Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un, Narendra Modi, Recep Erdogan, and Rodrigo Duterte;

• his celebration of torture;

• his decision to pardon war criminals and suspected war criminals over the Defense Secretary and Military Secretary’s objections;

• and his eagerness to double down on fossil fuels and rescind environmental protections in spite of ongoing extinctions and impending climate chaos.

Pooling such facts, who among us can honestly conclude that Trump is God or an instrument thereof?

The evidence to the contrary suggests an eerie parallel between today’s reality and the ancient parable. The blind men’s difficulty teaches us about the elusive nature of the divine. But when it comes to making sense out of Trump’s rise to power and the government he has established, the difficulty pertains to the elusive nature of depravity instead. Rather than an elephant or God, Americans seem to have stumbled upon the Devil incarnate.

Just bear with me here.

Who else would revel in lawlessness, defile democracy, fraternize with racist and authoritarian leaders, and—as icing on the cake—fornicate with a porn star and a Playboy model? Who else would bring about a political apocalypse? If not the actual incarnation of Satan, Trump would at least