Feb. 7, 2011 (Salon) -- One of the most revealing journalistic genres is the effort by establishment media outlets to explain to their American audiences why Those Other Countries -- usually in the Middle East -- are so bad and awful and plagued by severe political and societal corruption (see here and here for examples). This morning, The New York Times has a classic entry, as it unironically details how Egypt is a cesspool of oligarchical favoritism and self-dealing. The article focuses on Ahmed Ezz, a close friend of Hosni Mubarak's son who has exploited his political connections to corner much of the nation's steel market, triggering growing resentment by the public. Along the way, we learn several disturbing things about Egypt, including this:
For many years, Mr. Ezz has represented the intersection of money, politics and power . . . . Public resentment at the wealth acquired by the politically powerful helped propel the uprising already reshaping the contours of power along the Nile. . . . Hosni Mubarak's Egypt has long functioned as a state where wealth bought political power and political power bought great wealth.
Can you believe that "in Hosni Mubarak's Egypt," private wealth translates into great political power and vice-versa? What is it like, wonders the curious and concerned Times reader, to live in a country like that? No wonder there's an uprising.
How many American politicians with a national platform over the last thirty years have failed to convert their political standing into great personal wealth? Perhaps only those who began their political careers with great wealth. Ex-Presidents and their wives and top aides are routinely lavished with many millions of dollars from media companies and other corporations forbooks, speeches and other services (Obama didn't even wait to become President to capitalize on his political celebrity), while a large portion of ex-members of Congress and administration officials with any real power feed at the trough of corporate largesse in exchange for peddling their influence. It would literally be impossible to list all the top officials from both parties who have quickly converted their political influence into vast personal wealth over the past two decades; it'd be much quicker to list the few who haven't.
And that's to say nothing of the virtually limitless political power automatically wielded by those with great private wealth, who own America's government institutions and literally writemost of its laws. As the NYT taught us today, "Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt has long functioned as a state where wealth bought political power and political power bought great wealth." We also learn this about Egypt:
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