Separating the Wheat from the Chaff

Mel Brooks (shown above) played Goddard Bolt in Life Stinks (1991) the story of a real estate tycoon who bets that he can live 30 days as a homeless man in a Los Angeles slum.

According to the Declaration of Independence, all men are created equal, and we all have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The sad truth remains that many of our fellow citizens consider certain people “more worthy” of the pursuit of happiness, than others.
It’s all about hierarchy.

During the “Age of Enlightenment,” 17th century men questioned the “divine right of kings” idea.
However, they replaced it with the equally stupid concept that property-owning people are more important than non-property-owning people.
(Jesus tried to dissuade people of this idea in the Sermon on the Mount.
Unfortunately, human greed, and clannishness, are strong drives.)

The Grapes of Wrath (1940) is the story of the Joad family—tenant farmers driven, by a bank foreclosure and drought, to give up their Oklahoma farm, and drive to California. From right to left, Henry Fonda as former convict Tom Joad, Jane Darwell as his mother, and Doris Bowdon as Rosasharn, his sister.

Because property-owners were considered “better” than non-property-owners, most American states originally required property ownership in order to vote.
By 1790, only 4% (out of 3.9 million Americans) possessed enough property to vote.
At the same time, immigrants were allowed to become citizens, after only two years of residency.
Therefore, of the relatively few men who voted in the late 1790s, some were likely recent immigrants.
Then, as now, money equaled power.

During the early days of this country, most states required men to own a certain amount of property in order to hold political office.
The amount varied from state to state.
In South Carolina, men had to “be worth” at least 10,000 £ (the equivalent of one million dollars today) to run for Governor.
In New Jersey, men had to own property worth at least 1,000 £ (the equivalent of $150,000 today) to become Senators.
While those old laws are long gone, it’s still an anomaly for a poor man to run for political office in the U.S.
(Governor Tim Walz was the poorest man ever selected to run for vice-president.)

The Founder’s Fortunes: How Money Shaped the Birth of America, by Willard Sterne Randall. Nearly all the facts, that I’ve mentioned about the Founders, are found in this book.

Most men who signed the Declaration of Independence were wealthy.
Benjamin Franklin was the printer of 30% of all books and journals published in America.
Founding Father John Hancock owned fleets of ships, and hundreds of retail shops.
When George Washington died, his estate was valued at $17 million dollars (in today’s dollars).
(A major portion of George’s wealth came to him through his marriage to Martha.)

Beginning in the late 1960’s, society devised yet another factor “to separate the wheat from the chaff.”*
Gradually, a college degree became as necessary, as a high school diploma had been, to enter the middle class.
There were exceptions (Bill Gates, sports stars, movie actors).
However, people aspiring to become clerks, low-level managers, police detectives, paramedics (and even graphic artists) were asked to obtain degrees beyond high school.

Moreover, there’s a money gap between people who earn degrees in order to educate others (or to treat them medically), and those who earn their degrees so they can deal with money.
The median salary for teachers in 2024 was $63,000.
The median salary for financial advisors in 2024 was $102,140!
Medical doctors are significantly smarter than bankers, but their jobs don’t bring in the moolah.
It’s clear that, in American society, people whose jobs involve helping others, are valued less highly than people who handle money.

The Founders realized that Americans tend to value money more than other nationalities do.
Therefore, they wrote the Emoluments Clause into the Constitution, to stop Federal officials (including the U.S. President), from accepting “gifts, payments, or benefits from foreign states.”
The goal was to prevent foreign influence.

Emperor Napoleon III’s snuffbox, from about 65 years after 1789 (when Jefferson was given his). 

Soon after the Emoluments Clause was written, Thomas Jefferson (then Ambassador to France) violated the law by his acceptance of a diamond-encrusted snuff box (valued at $81,000 in today’s money) from French officials.
Jefferson solved his ethical problem by removing and selling the diamonds from the snuffbox.
He then used most of the money (but not all!) to purchase reciprocal gifts for his French hosts.

Money has been at the root of many events in the 250-year-old history of the U.S.
One major boost to the budding American economy was the property that Loyalists left behind when they fled to Canada or England.
France spent years trying to recoup the money that it spent supporting the American Revolution, because America was reluctant to pay its’ debt.
America never paid reparations to the African-Americans whose unpaid labor was its’ major source of wealth.
The “40 acres and a mule” promise (made by Northern officials after the Civil War) was unfulfilled.

Meet John Doe (1941) is a comedy-drama about a homeless man, John Willoughby (Gary Cooper), and a reporter (Barbara Stanwyck) who invents a story about him. Willoughby is duped into being the symbol of a grassroots political party, by a corrupt businessman.

Despite not holding true to its’ promises, the U.S. has still managed to accumulate a massive debt.
According to Forbes magazine (“With the U.S. Debt A Staggering $38 Trillion Dollars, Who Exactly Do We Owe?” by Doug Melville) the U.S owes $1.13 Trillion to Japan, $807 Billion to the United Kingdom, and $750 Billion to China, with 75% of the debt controlled domestically.
According to Forbes, the interest on this debt will reach $1 trillion per year in 2026 ($83 billion per month).

America has used many strategies to keep the economic wheel turning for the upper crust.
The U.S. allowed generations of immigrants into the country, and used them to do the menial jobs (earning low wages with no benefits).
Immigrants don’t receive Social Security or Medicare benefits; therefore, immigration has helped to keep those systems solvent.
The U.S. healthcare system is based on insurance offered as a benefit through employment. This gives power to the employer, over the employee.

Few Clothes Johnson (James Earl Jones, center) in Matewan (1987). Matewan is the story of coal miners trying to build a union. It’s based on the true story of the 1920 “Matewan Massacre.”

Essentially, America has set up an underclass of Americans who are, by design, at the mercy of the monied elite.
It’s sad how many Americans are still under the illusion that they aren’t the ones being sifted out, as chaff.

*To separate the wheat from the chaff means to separate out the “good stuff,” the wheat, from the waste, or the chaff.

Prepared for Democracy on the Anniversary of January 6th?

In Frank Capra’s Meet John Doe (1941) Gary Cooper plays a homeless man who’s used by corrupt forces to control a budding populist movement.

Capra kept the plot secret until the film's release for fear of American fascists utilizing it for propaganda purposes, and filmed five different endings.

Liz Cheney has spent years learning how the Federal Government works.*
That’s why I take it seriously when Cheney says, in her book Oath and Honor, that the U.S. is “on the precipice of losing” its’ system of government because “a free society that abandons the truth—that abandons the rule of law—cannot remain free.”

On the other hand, most U.S. citizens are fairly ignorant on how Government runs.
Despite this, they seem to have great faith in the overall stability of the checks and balances system.
We seem to believe that the political system will continue ( as if on autopilot), without everyone needing to vote. 

As Rachel Maddow reveals in Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism, the late 1930’s was also a time when the U.S. political system was tested.
During that period, admired hero and aviator Charles Lindbergh (1902-1974), said that Americans should “guard their heritage” from the “Mongol and Persian and Moor, before we become engulfed in a limitless foreign sea.”
Popular Catholic radio broadcaster, Father Charles Coughlin (1891-1979), called for a General Franco-style armed revolt against “invaders of our spiritual and national rights.”
(Tens of millions listened to his sermons, and some set up arsenals!)

Some artists, and thinkers, saw the danger in the 1930’s.
Little-known British author Katharine Burdekin wrote Swastika Night (1937).
This is an alternative history science fiction story in which Adolf Hitler, and the Nazis, won.
(It’s spooky that this work was written just as WWII was beginning!)
In this prescient novel, a male character muses about Democracy (italics and bold face mine):

In a democracy no man of character is willing to give up his right of private judgment. . . there is also the large mass of weaker men, who must be told always what to do . . . I still do not see how democracy can be made to last long enough to develop character in a sufficient number of people. . . And there is another thing. Has a democracy ever started in a community, a nation, where the men all really considered themselves equal, no one fundamentally and unalterably superior to any other?

In 1940, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt expressed similar (if more optimistic) thoughts in her article “The Moral Basis of Democracy” (italics and bold face mine):

If human beings can be changed to fit a Nazi or Fascist pattern or a Communist pattern, certainly we should not lose heart at the thought of changing human nature to fit a Democratic way of life. . . Real Democracy cannot be stable and it cannot go forward to its fullest development and growth if this type of individual responsibility does not exist, not only in the leaders but in the people as a whole.

Katharine Burdekin and Eleanor Roosevelt reached similar conclusions—that a Democracy was only possible if everyone (people of whatever social class and skin tone) was equal, and if everyone was willing to compromise.
(The other choice is first chaos, and then Authoritarianism.)

Italian poster for 1956’s Alexander the Great, in which Richard Burton played Alexander—the Macedonian ruler who conquered all the Greek tribes and most of western Asia.

Alexander inherited power over Macedonia from his father Philip (Fredric March).

Maintaining a Democracy isn’t easy.

It’s not even natural.
For a very long time, “might makes right” seemed to be the rule, and people are mainly concerned about their own needs.
Eventually, humankind developed “the Divine Right of Kings,” and “royal blood,” myths (so sons could succeed fathers).
(This made the passing down of power slightly less contentious.)

Servilius Casca (Edmund O’Brien) struck the first blow against Julius Caesar (Louis Calhern) in 1953’s Julius Caesar.

(Roman senators feared that Julius Caesar would make himself monarch of Rome, but actually, his fall led to a string of emperors.)

Beginning in the 6th century BC, the Greeks, and later the Romans, experimented with people ruling themselves.

In the Greek city-state of Athens, however, slaves and women were excluded from voting.
In Roman society—during the periods when people were allowed to vote—only aristocratic men could vote.
Roman society still maintained the fiction that rule was “with the consent of the governed.”

Europe began to flirt with democratic concepts in the late 1600s.
In 1689, the British Parliament established a Bill of Rights (used as a model for the U.S. 1789 Bill of Rights).

Workers riot in the 1927 science-fiction classic Metropolis.

Critics have called the politics of the film “incoherent”, since both communists and fascists believe that the movie validates their respective philosophies.

One hundred years later, in 1789, the French people rose up against aristocratic rule.
Ten years later Napoleon Bonaparte gained control of France, however, and he eventually crowned himself Emperor.
Today, the British don’t vote directly for their Prime Minister.
Presidents of France are elected by voters—usually, in a two-round system—because there are several political parties.

The U.S. was the first “modern” experiment in Democracy.
However, the U.S. was handicapped with confusion over who was in charge.
In a perfect world, the Declaration of Independence should have read “all humankind is created equal.”
Instead, Black enslaved people, Native Americans, and women were all left out.
Were some Founders really thinking “white Anglo-Saxon Protestant wealthy men,” when they proclaimed “all men are created equal?”
Have Americans always lived in a Democracy in which one group is more equal than others?

Two factors have helped to keep Democracy stable: the U.S. had a large middle class, plus plenty of room to “spread out.”
(Was it “from sea to shining sea,” and Manifest Destiny, that kept Democracy alive?)
However, the size, and prosperity, of the middle class has shrunk since the 1970s.
Today, 66.6% of the total wealth in the U.S. is owned by 10% of the earners and the lowest 50% of earners only hold 2.6% of the total wealth.
(The balance tilts further every year.)

Why are schools so relentless positive about the strength of American “checks and balances” system?
Why are the times—when the rules were bent by people in high places—discussed in academia, but not in textbooks?
We should know more about the occasions when mistakes were made, so we can prevent errors in the future.

There are many examples when “the system” failed.
In the little-discussed 1876 election, Democrat Samuel J. Tilden won the popular vote, and would also have won the electoral college vote.
However, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes still became the nation’s 19th president, in a “smoke-filled room,” allowing both parties to end Reconstruction!
In Prequel, Rachel Maddow reveals how powerful Senator Burton K. Wheeler (1882-1975) engineered the firings of two Department of Justice employees, so as not to further publicize his pro-fascist deeds.

Unless we own up to the fragility of our system, we may lose it altogether.
It seems that our schools, textbooks, religions and parents haven’t done an adequate job of building character in the American voter, or changing human nature so it fits a Democratic (rather than an Authoritarian) model.
Why are so few of us prepared for living in a Democratic system?
Why do so few people vote?

*Liz Cheney represented Wyoming in the U.S. House from 2017-23. Before that, she was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, and worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development. In Oath and Honor, Cheney explains how her parents taught her American history, and about being a citizen.