TALES from the GRIFT
The Inertia Engine
By BR Wilson, The Bipartisan Patriot
I keep looking at that photograph.
Three billionaires standing beneath chandeliers the size of municipal water towers, smiling at one another with the easy confidence of men who haven't checked a price tag since Clinton was explaining what the word "is" means. Maybe they were discussing politics. Maybe artificial intelligence. Maybe climate policy. Maybe yacht maintenance. Hard to tell anymore because eventually all billionaire conversations start sounding like rejected James Bond plots.
The actual conversation doesn't matter.
The photograph is the conversation.
That's the thing.
You can almost smell it. Expensive cologne. Polished marble. The faint odor of old money mixing with new money while both pretend they're completely different species. Somewhere in the background there's probably a waiter carrying a tray worth more than my first pickup truck. Christ, my first pickup truck had a hole in the floorboard big enough to watch Massachusetts pass beneath your feet.
Anyway.
The picture captures something most Americans already know but rarely say out loud.
Money has inertia.
Not power.
Power is too simple.
Power sounds like a comic book villain sitting in a volcano base petting a cat.
Inertia is worse.
Inertia doesn't need villains.
It doesn't even need intent.
It just rolls.
Money becomes influence. Influence becomes access. Access becomes policy. Policy creates more money. Then the whole damn machine circles back around and does it again. Like a slot machine possessed by the ghost of John D. Rockefeller.
People keep talking about corruption.
I almost wish it were corruption.
Corruption is easier to fix.
You find the crook.
You prosecute the crook.
Everybody applauds.
Roll credits.
What we're dealing with now is something far stranger. A system so large it no longer requires bad actors. It runs itself. Like one of those old New England mills after everybody forgot where the switch was. The belts keep turning. The gears keep grinding. The machine keeps eating people because that's what the machine was built to do.
Or maybe that's too cynical.
Then again, maybe it isn't cynical enough.
I've spent enough years in emergency services, government buildings, corporate offices, dispatch centers and boardrooms to develop a healthy distrust of anyone who claims they have all the answers. The people most certain they're saving humanity are usually the ones making me nervous. Every billionaire eventually develops a crusade. Save democracy. Save the climate. Save free speech. Save society. Save civilization. Save us from ourselves.
Everybody wants to save somebody.
Nobody wants to fix a pothole.
Funny how that works.
The average American, meanwhile, is just trying to survive Tuesday.
The roofer in Florida heat.
The nurse working doubles.
The mechanic staring at tool prices.
The truck driver paying diesel costs that seem generated by a roulette wheel.
The retired couple studying grocery receipts like they're decoding enemy intelligence.
These people aren't attending summits.
Nobody flies them to Switzerland.
Nobody asks them to sit on panels titled "Reimagining Tomorrow."
Most of them are too busy trying to afford today.
That's what kills me.
The people actually carrying civilization around on their backs are rarely invited to discuss civilization.
Instead, we get endless conferences filled with professional visionaries. God help me, I hate that word. Visionary. Half the time it means somebody with enough money to turn a personal hobby into public policy.
At a certain level of wealth your opinions stop being opinions.
They become institutions.
That's the danger.
Not evil.
Not conspiracy.
Just scale.
Enough scale and your preferences become everybody else's problem.
A billionaire decides electric vehicles are the future. Suddenly governors, regulators, corporations, journalists, universities and activists all begin orbiting the same idea. Another billionaire decides artificial intelligence will save mankind. Now every boardroom in America starts acting like a chatbot is the Second Coming. Another decides social media should become the global town square and before long we're all screaming at strangers while sitting on toilets.
Progress... I think.
Hard to tell anymore.
Maybe that's why the photograph bothers me.
Not because I hate wealthy people.
I don't.
Hell, if somebody offered me three billion dollars I'd probably be insufferable by Thursday afternoon.
No, what bothers me is the distance.
The distance between the people making decisions and the people living with them.
The distance between theory and consequence.
The distance between a ballroom and a break room.
Somewhere outside that photograph a firefighter is working overtime because the department is short-staffed. A nurse is skipping lunch. A small business owner is wondering whether insurance or payroll gets paid first. A truck driver is trying to stay awake at three in the morning somewhere on I-95 while listening to bad radio and worse politicians.
The country keeps moving because ordinary people keep moving it.
Same as always.
The republic doesn't run on hedge funds, white papers, strategic initiatives, stakeholder engagement, thought leadership, synergy, sustainability frameworks, or whatever other consultant pornography they're selling this week.
It runs on people.
Dirty hands.
Long hours.
Alarm clocks.
Missed vacations.
Bad backs.
Coffee.
The same way it always has.
Which brings me back to the photograph.
Three smiling billionaires beneath golden chandeliers.
Maybe they were discussing the future.
Maybe they were discussing golf.
Maybe they were discussing where to put the next hundred million dollars.
Doesn't matter.
Because outside that room the people carrying the republic were still carrying it.
The only difference is they've become so accustomed to being ignored that most don't even bother knocking on the ballroom door anymore.
Sadly, that's the sort of thing that looks harmless right up until it isn't.
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