Well this is certainly a depressing book.
Though I suppose that’s my reaction to the majority of nonfiction that I read. You know, politics, current events, etc. So much of it turns out to be: “So what are the latest ways people have come up with to mistreat each other and make the world a worse place?”
Even when nonfiction includes supposedly inspiring stories, calls to action to combat the described malfeasance, etc., that never seems to change the downer feel of the material. Like, “Look at these heroic people doing such-and-such about climate change!” or “Let’s not just lament global poverty; let’s do x, y, and z about it!” (Nine times out of ten I end up just lamenting it.)
Anyway, Dark Money is about how massive spending by wealthy individuals and corporations, often difficult or impossible to trace (hence, “dark”), has artificially pushed the country to the right.
It’s not just a matter of buying elections, though that’s a big part of it. It’s also longer term propagandistic efforts to alter public opinion via institutions such as the media, academia, and private think tanks.
So, yes, the money of the top 1%, or the top 1% of the top 1%, skews politicians and elections in their favor directly, but it also skews journalists, academics, pundits, public intellectuals, etc. in their favor, which influences public opinion in their favor, which then also affects politicians and elections. Your local member of Congress not only has mega donors eager to reward and punish based on whether he or she backs massive tax cuts for the rich and the elimination of environmental regulations, but plenty of ordinary voters screaming for these things as well (or at least substantially more such voters doing so than there would be in the absence of such propaganda).
In broad terms, none of this is surprising, none of this is “news.” Of course people with the most money and power in any system tend to behave in whatever ways—including blatantly unfair ways—will safeguard and increase that money and power. Dark Money, though, provides a wealth of detail regarding who’s doing what.
As a reader, it’s not like I’m going to remember more than a tiny percentage of those details. For me it really is more about the general phenomenon; the conclusion will stick with me much more than the premises (evidence) will, in other words. I came into the book with the strong impression that things were corrupt in roughly the way the book describes, and I came out of it having that impression further confirmed. Details in a book like this enable that the way booster rockets enable a spacecraft to get up and on its way at a sustainable speed, but then those details fade from my mind and I continue on my way with a stronger, sustainable opinion, just like the booster rocket breaks up and falls away.
Dark Money focuses on the infamous Koch brothers the most. They and their nefarious doings take up maybe half the pages of the book, with all the other plutocrats combined taking up the other half. But that’s still a decent amount of attention to characters like the Amway Devoses, Art Pope of North Carolina, the Bradleys, the Scaifes, Sheldon Adelson, etc. It’s not just an exposé of the Kochs.
It is almost all about rich individuals like that, though, as opposed to rich corporations (Exxon, whatever). That can be kind of an interestingly different dynamic. The individuals I think of in terms of the quirks of human psychology, with different people having differing tendencies to behave in evil and selfish ways. Corporations I think of more like artificial intelligence, or like those science fiction robots that are programmed to behave in certain ways. They’re nonhuman wealth-generating machines that do evil and selfish things automatically and unthinkingly, to some extent beyond the control of their creators or humanity in general.
As Mayer notes, the much-maligned (and correctly so) Citizens United Supreme Court decision was supposed to usher in an era of greatly increased corporate dominance of elections, but what has actually happened in elections since that decision is that ultra-wealthy individuals have become far more active and influential in the political process than ever before.
Mayer includes a lot of biographical information about these rich folks, which invites speculation about psychologically how they ended up the way they are, and about to what extent their right wing activism is a simple matter of economic interest versus a sincere commitment to ideology. (As to the latter, as she correctly points out, while it might well also to some degree be intellectually sincere, it’s extraordinarily unlikely that the fact that their massive spending is so clearly in their self-interest is some sort of coincidence.)
I have mixed feelings about that. Really it’s probably superfluous to what is most important about the book, which is that the spending and propaganda are happening and are perverting society and its leadership. What’s going on inside the heads of the individuals most responsible for this phenomenon is interesting, and I’m sure it makes the book more readable and a lot less dry, but does it really matter if Charles Koch is knowingly doing evil to benefit himself, or in some twisted way thinks he’s doing good?
I think Dark Money may be most valuable in laying out all the non-electoral ways that these right wing billionaires have systematically pushed the country to the right. Citizens United, gerrymandering, etc. are talked about and denounced all the time, but the noxious effects of these folks exist at a much more fundamental level than what directly affects elections. It’s in education, journalism, the shaping of public opinion.
Why does this country have this bizarre phenomenon of a huge proportion of the working class population consistently and vociferously supporting the most blatantly anti-labor of the two major political parties? It’s not because of gerrymandering, it’s not because of the electoral college, it’s not even primarily because of campaign spending. There are millions upon millions of non-rich folks who will enthusiastically cast their votes for Donald Trump, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, Rick Scott, etc., and thus support the further accumulation of money and power of those already at the very top, even if they never see a single television campaign ad directly urging them to do so. Why?
It’s because, for instance, Glenn Beck as a part of his regular show, not as a campaign ad, was paid (about a million dollars per year) to read copy written for him by Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks propaganda organization, as if he were expressing his own opinions. It’s because of the proliferation in recent decades of “think tanks” masquerading as university-like institutions providing the resources for public intellectuals to objectively seek truth and disseminate the conclusions they reach through their research and debate, when in fact they are simply public relations firms for the 1%ers whose funds create and sustain them. It’s because real universities, including Ivy League and others of the most prestigious schools in the country, are given millions of dollars to set up chairs in economics, philosophy, law, etc. by billionaires, with crucial strings attached mandating that the professors they hire and the material they teach advocate for hard core pro-rich doctrines, sometimes truly fringe doctrines that have never been taken seriously by anyone not thus paid handsomely to (at least pretend to) take them seriously.
Put these ideas out there, with virtually unlimited resources behind them, for enough years and decades, and eventually you end up with a 68 year old retired auto worker spending all day every day online angrily posting in every available forum in favor of certain readings of history, legal theories, economic claims, etc. that have no intellectual plausibility and are blatantly contrary to the self-interest of people like 68 year old retired auto workers.
Now let’s talk about some possible rejoinders to the idea that there’s something nefarious and objectionable about what the Kochs, et al are doing to influence election outcomes and the distribution of power directly and indirectly with their massive spending.
One very common response is “What about George Soros? What about Tom Steyer? What about all the millionaire Democratic officeholders and former officeholders? What about all the money they throw around to bring about their preferred outcomes?”
Well, for one thing, I think it matters what the “preferred outcomes” are. If Jerry Jones is spending millions to change the NFL rules such that all game officials must be able to prove they’ve been Cowboy fans their whole life, and some other NFL owner is spending millions to change the NFL rules such that Super Bowls will rotate through all 32 NFL cities giving each of them an equal opportunity to host the game, I don’t think you’re a hypocrite if you fail to denounce both of those equally.
People at the top who spend their money so as to ensure that they remain at the top and that the gap between them and everyone else further widens are an existential threat to society. People at the top who spend their money to forestall that outcome are not.
But anyway, if the influence of left wing moneybags were to be greatly diminished as a result of actions that greatly diminished the influence of all moneybags, I’d be fine with that. If you want to insist that somehow the Kochs and Soros are the same, and you want to make it harder for either to buy elections, etc., then go for it.
Another response to the book’s argument is that we really needn’t get all that alarmed about the undue influence of these right wing billionaires, or look for ways to drastically change our system to counteract them, because evidently what they’re doing doesn’t work anyway. Obama got elected twice in the post-Citizens United era, there are far more anti-Trump than pro-Trump voices in the mainstream media, there are far more left wing than right wing professors and ideas dominating major American universities, polling indicates that if anything the general public favors what’s conventionally considered the more liberal position on more issues than it favors the more conservative position, etc. Maybe these folks are trying to use their riches to tilt things in their favor, but if so they sure don’t seem to be succeeding.
But I think the mistake this response makes, and it’s a common one, is to equate a lack of bias or a lack of undue influence with some sort of equality or neutrality. In fact the relevant standard isn’t “both sides” somehow having equal standing. The relevant standard is truth.
Let’s say that at American universities today, 30% of academics working in relevant fields think Ayn Rand is a serious scholar who got most things right and that the most justified political and economic system will be largely in line with her ideas, and 70% think that she was basically full of shit.
Does it follow from this that there’s an anti-Rand bias at American universities? Does it follow that any well-funded effort by billionaires to spread Randian ideas at American universities has failed, if not backfired?
Well, if your standard is 50% on each side, then I can see why you’d say yes. But that’s a dumb standard.
The question should be, what would things look like in a parallel universe where academics were engaged in the unbridled search for truth, no one was making their employment contingent on what conclusions they reach and what ideas they teach, there were not massive amounts of money being spent by self-interested outsiders to push them one way or another on various issues, etc.? Where would they come down on Rand? If the answer is that instead of 30%-70% in her favor it would be 1%-99% in her favor, then we do indeed have evidence of bias, but it would be evidence of bias in precisely the opposite direction, and it would be plausible to attribute some of it to the millions of dollars that the Kochs, et al have pumped into academia.
The conservative ideas about economics and such that used to be fringe ideas that almost no one took seriously, that are semi-mainstream now due to the efforts of right wing think tanks (i.e., billionaires’ PR firms) and the massive infusion of cash by conservatives into academia and the media didn’t gain intellectual respectability on their merits; they gained it by having it purchased for them.
I saw a documentary a few years ago called The Yes Men, which is about two Michael Moore-style pranksters who pretend to be spokespeople for organizations like the World Trade Organization, and go around the world giving talks about absurd but only slightly satirical capitalist innovations. In one such presentation, they explain how human feces actually still retain some nutrients, and can be safe to consume if properly treated. They say that they are working with McDonald’s on ways that the feces from First World McDonald’s customers can be gathered, processed, and used as filler in products sold much cheaper to Third World McDonald’s customers. It’s a win/win where people in poor countries get access to nutrients they might not otherwise get, while providing a profitable business opportunity for McDonald’s.
Now let’s say the Devoses, the Scaifes, the Kochs, etc. decided to really get behind that idea. And they got their allies in politics like Paul Ryan and Scott Walker to sing its praises, the “scholars” at the Heritage Foundation to release a research report on how beneficial it would be for all concerned, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity and their ilk to foam at the mouth raging against the Communist Democrats and George Soros for being so cruelly anti-poor to oppose the idea, etc. Soon you’d be seeing a plethora of social media and posting forum posts extolling the virtues of the idea, some planted there for pay, but plenty posted by ordinary Fox “News” viewers who had by now enthusiastically accepted that part of being on their “team” was to applaud the notion of the poor eating shit.
CNN, the New York Times, etc. would be angrily denounced for manifesting their anti-conservative bias by not giving the idea’s proponents equal time and equally favorable coverage as the idea’s opponents. (And truth be told, much of the media would indeed treat the idea a lot more seriously than it deserves, even if they didn’t quite give it the equal status conservatives demanded.)
Well, that happens all the time in real life. It happens with the idea that the jury is still out about the harmfulness of smoking, the idea that the health of the economy depends on drastically reducing the already scandalously low amount of taxes the richest individuals and corporations pay and on further eliminating any regulations that put any restraints on how those individuals and corporations can accumulate even more wealth, and the idea that climate change is a myth perpetrated by dishonest scientists trying to safeguard their funding from Big Government.
No, it’s not facilitating McDonald’s selling shitburgers to poor people. It’s worse.
You know, a lot of it just comes down to the basic unfairness, the basic anti-democratic nature, of some people exercising vastly more influence than others over elections and other aspects of how our lives are governed.
If Sheldon Adelson wakes up tomorrow and decides he’d like a certain person to be president, and he’d like certain policies implemented, etc., and Joe Schmo the guy who works in lumber at the Home Depot in Jacksonville wakes up tomorrow and decides he’d like a certain other person to be president, and he’d like certain other policies implemented, why ought either of them have more opportunity to get their way than the other?
Granted, some of that’s unavoidable. One has more resources to, say, start a newspaper than the other, and if you try to equalize that you end up creating more problems than you solve.
But you should treat whatever amount of such inequality is unavoidable as a necessary evil, not as a good. And you try to mitigate the harmfulness of such inequality any way you can that doesn’t make the situation even worse, whether that means campaign finance reform or whatever.
Think about if the influence were more direct (but not thereby greater). What if “one person, one vote” were thrown out, and we instead instituted a system where Schmo gets one vote, and Adelson gets ten, or a hundred, or a million? Is there anyone who wouldn’t recoil from that as a gross violation of the basic tenets of democracy?
We treat political influence as just another commodity, where the more money you have the more of it you’re entitled to buy if you choose to. When the Kochs, et al use their money to spread their ideas via think tanks, Fox, right wing hate radio, politicians they support, etc., it works out just the same as if these folks got to vote some massive number of times each, and not only in their own jurisdiction, but in states and localities all over the country. The result is an artificial, substantial, harmful, potentially disastrous shift in politics rightward from where it would otherwise be, one consequence of which is that the system becomes increasingly rigged in favor of those with enough power and wealth that they can do this, which then further increases their power and wealth.
It’s like if Adelson could use his million votes under our new system to change the rules further so that next time around he gets five million votes to Schmo’s one.
But to return to the notion of how depressing books like this can be, I’m struck by how these folks won’t hesitate to ruin lives to get what they want.
Think about what happens to climate scientists like Michael Mann. They’re doing their job, pursuing their academic interests, toiling away at whatever university, I’m sure not perfectly where they are above any form of criticism, but very well. Their research—checked and double-checked through peer review and all the usual methods—reveals to them that we’re increasing the temperature of the planet in ways that are likely to cause massive suffering and death. They sound the alarm as best they can, alerting world leaders and the general public to what they have found, so that it can be debated and decided what actions humanity needs to take to respond to this crisis.
Meanwhile, certain very rich and powerful individuals and industries realize that the actions most likely to be taken would be contrary to their economic self-interest.
So what happens is they go after the scientific messengers. They lie about them, accuse them of the most godawful things, go through their trash and hire private investigators to spy on them to come up with any kind of dirt they can use to ruin their reputations, put all the pressure they can bring to bear on their universities to fire them, use propaganda to get the public riled up against them so they will receive hate mail and death threats and be harassed in public, etc.
You do what in any sane world would be the responsible, laudable thing, and for that you get viciously attacked.
These are evil folks. There’s just no two ways about it. Whether it’s the people paying to have these things done, or the people being paid to do them, they’re evil fucks.
The evil fucks don’t win all the time, and maybe the situation isn’t totally hopeless. But as Dark Money shows, the evil fucks sure do win often.
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