In the second half Voltaire's novel
Candide, the hero visits the fabled land of Eldorado, where precious gems and gold are so common that children play with them with as little concern as if they were twigs or dirt. When Candide returns to Europe, he is laden with such great wealth that he is, for a moment, richer than all of the kings of Europe combined. But in almost no time at all, he loses all of his wealth. Some of it is lost in accidents on his travels (the strange sheep that carry his treasure die of starvation, drowning and tumbles from cliffs), and what is left of it is stolen a crafty sea captain. His companion Cacambo tells him. "You see, my dear friend, how perishable the riches of this world are." In Candide's case, money does not provide him with any protection against disaster, and this is a hard truth about what money means for most of us: not a source of power or security, but an invitation to misfortune.
This is what Mitt Romney fails to understand about money. We have heard many statements from Romney, what amount to slips of the tongue that reveal the world Romney lives in and how far away that world is from ours. Not only can he make ten thousand dollar bets (an amount that represents, for us, over a year of rent, the chance to go to school or the ability to get an operation), not only does he blithely joke about how the $374 000 he made on one year of speaking engagements is not very much, but he makes his most revealing and damning statement of all when he says "I like being able to fire people who provide services to me." We should not be particularly shocked at the callousness of the remark, its casual dismissal of these nameless "people" who provide services. In a political field that has included Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry and Donald Trump, we should not be surprised at this kind of barely conscious contempt. What is most revealing about Romney's assumption that he can simply fire those who displease him is his apparent belief that we all see money as a source of power over others. We don't. When we of the middle class spend our money, we do not feel like masters of the universe. We feel like we have, once again, entered into an arrangement where we have no power. When the dry-cleaner ruins our favorite jacket and will not make restitution, when the movers who have quoted us an estimate of three hundred dollars will not unload our furniture until we give them five hundred, when our mortgage payment is not processed by the bank, when we run into the thousand-and-one occasions in our lives when we lay down our money and feel trapped (ask anyone who has ever hired a contractor, for example), it becomes clear to us that money is not a source of power for us. We cannot fire our bank, our utility company. We certainly cannot fire a health insurance company that has refused to honor its contract with us because they have discovered (or invented) a "pre-existing condition." And even when we can take our business elsewhere, we do not feel that we have laid down the law or taught anyone a lesson. We feel that we have just, once again, been put through an inconvenience. Money, for the middle class, is as much a source of anguish as of power. Like Candide, we find that our ability to pay makes us targets rather than masters.
What Romney is simply not able to see (and what his fellow Republicans are equally blind to) is that it is not m
 Mitt Romney believes that corporations are people because, for him, they are. |  | |
oney that offers power, but the political, legal and economic mechanisms this money gives access to. Mitt Romney believes that corporations are people because, for him, they are. They are the agents that can fire those service providers who displease him. They offer him a grip on all the levers of power. His legal disputes are handled by international law firms. His economic interests are watched over by banks and by powerful contacts in government. His life is lived in the protective shelter of powerful institutions. The chance, misfortune, frustration and powerlessness that are part of everyday life for the 99% are simply incomprehensible to Romney. He barely understands them intellectually; and emotionally he understands them not at all. It is not, I think, too much of an exaggeration to say that he simply cannot conceive of a life lived without multiple levels of protection between himself and harsh reality. But it is just this protection that Romney and, indeed, every single Republican candidate, refuses to allow to the rest of us.
Romney attributes the current discontent of the middle class to envy when it is in fact a new-found understanding that what we need is access to similar mechanisms of power to those that Romney has enjoyed since birth. We need a consumer protection agency to stand up to dishonest lending practices. We need government that keeps the rapaciousness of Wall Street in check. We need a medical system that will put patient care ahead of profit. We need a legal system that will guarantee civil rights to all. We need strong unions to conduct the collective bargaining that offers the middle class some leverage against corporations. It is, of course, these very mechanisms that have been hobbled, gutted, and defanged since the 1980s. Without these mechanisms in place, our money means nothing. This is what the election of 2012 will really be about: whether or not the middle class will figure out that good government is the only power left to the middle class and that, properly used, it can provide the kinds of protection that the 1% have taken as a birthright. If we must be afraid of something, let us not be afraid of government, but of those people like Mitt Romney who insist not only on living protected lives, but of leaving us to fend for ourselves in the economic wilds.
