Political terminology regarding American political parties has changed over time, but the basic premises of the two remaining party’s arguments never has.  “Democrats” have represented a working federal government while the Republicans have had as their goal, the abolishment of a federal government.  As Grover Norquist so eloquently put it: “to reduce [the government] to the size where [they] can drag it into the bathroom and drown it…”[i]

The Republican ideology does, in fact, support a free market capitalist society, but only for the bottom ninety-five[ii] percentile of the American public.  The top 1% of the country lives by an entirely different set of rules, expecting to be bailed out (by the American public) for being “too big to fail”, enjoying legal tax loopholes that allow for the richest individuals in the United States to pay little and in some cases, no taxes.

In essence, what the Republican’s wet-dream amounts to is shareholder capitalism.  Shareholder capitalism maximizes profits for investors rather than stakeholders.  It does nothing for society, produces no goods and does not add to the community in any way.  Shareholder capitalism is bad for everyone except those investors that have access to the hundreds of millions, sometimes billions, of dollars it takes to play the shareholder game.[iii] 

Shareholder capitalism will be the ruination of the United States, of a civilization and all the while the new republicans led by Trump and bolstered by Christian nationalism eggs on the end of the world for nothing more than profit.

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[i] https://theconversation.com/the-shutdown-drowning-government-in-the-bathtub-111333

[ii] More or less.  The number is probably larger given that the top .01% of this country owns all of the large, international corporations.

[iii] https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2020/01/05/why-stakeholder-capitalism-will-fail/?sh=4006f19c785a

In September 1970 Milton Friedman published an article in The New York Times Magazine, “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits.”

https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2007/0212/027.html?sh=4a381a9d6541

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