America´s Filthy Rich

Living large as the ice caps melt

by Alan Bisbort

Source: Hartford Advocate, March 10, 2005.

In Palm Beach, Florida, which I recently visited, the heedlessness of the filthy rich is on display. By 'filthy' rich, I mean those rich enough to benefit from Bush tax cuts — you know, the Upper Five Percent (UFP). If one didn't know better, one would — looking around this blinkered, moneyed enclave — be forgiven for thinking the nation wasn't at war, oil prices aren't set to hit $80 a barrel, the polar ice caps aren't melting at an accelerated clip, the ozone layer isn't disappearing at a rate that has stunned even the scientists, species aren't going extinct at a rate of 1,000 per year, and that human beings are, as the Jefferson Airplane put it, the crown of creation.

Among the sights I saw, to prop up these delusions, was a veritable construction zone along the beachfront extending north and south along Highway A1A from Palm Beach. Here, scattered among a fragile sliver of barrier islands, the remaining dunes are being exhumed to make room for another wave of exclusive high-rise condos and luxury mansions (Note: Oprah Winfrey, America's "Everywoman," owns one of these assaults against nature and common sense). The sound of hedge trimmers, lawn mowers and leaf blowers — wielded by a small army of Hispanic servants — never ceases. Two miles west, among the sprawl off bucolic Okeechobee Boulevard, a sign announces a new Hummer dealership will be opened by "Summer 2005." Farther out in West Palm Beach, real estate weasels are telling prospective buyers that their gated communities, built around 18-hole golf courses, are "nature preserves."

In Manalapan, an exclusive Palm Beach County "community" that in its four miles of oceanfront does not offer a single public beach access, a shiny black ocean-going yacht named — in gleaming silver letters — "OCTOPUSSY" is docked in the Intracoastal Waterway. The ship, serviced by a shuffling crew of factotums, sits across A1A from its owner's beachfront mansion. The land here, from Intracoastal Waterway to Atlantic Ocean, can't be more than 50 yards wide; when the ocean inevitably reclaims it, perhaps in the next hurricane season, the owner will be reimbursed by American taxpayers for all material losses, thanks to a federal insurance program that benefits only the UFP who live here.

On Worth Avenue, Palm Beach's tony shopping district, aging women squeeze into leather pants, don needle sharp snakeskin boots and sport T-shirts emblazoned with slogans like "Play More, Think Less."

And yet, if you choose to look, you see the cracks in this paradise. Behind the pastel-colored sea wall, there's no "beach" in Palm Beach. Well, there's a sliver of pumped-in grey-black sand, strewn with litter and only visited by weirdos sporting metal detectors searching for lost jewelry. At high tide, the rising ocean laps at the lower portions of the wall. Even the lifeguard stands are abandoned. Traffic is abominable all over, as bad as rush hour in any city in the Northeast, and the humid air is choked with exhaust fumes. The police presence is overwhelming and oppressive.

I've got nothing against people wanting to make a decent living and earn something extra for expendables and leisure time. Hell, I could use a few extra Benjamins myself. But the people here — the filthy rich — don't work for a living. They chum the financial waters looking for their main chance to descend and prey on the rest of us 95 percent. They live in a world of hostile takeovers, insider trading, offshore tax shelters and Hummers. Let's call it what it is: class war.

Aldous Huxley captured it perfectly in his satiric Crome Yellow. The novel was written in the wake of World War I, the imbecilic carnage that maimed an entire generation, including many of Huxley's friends. He uses Mr. Scogan, a know-it-all blowhard who leeches off the filthy rich, to voice the delusion holding their world together: "If you're to do anything reasonable in this world, you must have a class of people who are secure, safe from public opinion, safe from poverty, leisured, not compelled to waste their time in the imbecile routines that go by the name of Honest Work."

Alas, the more things change the more they stay the same.

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reprinted from The Hartford Advocate