Tuesday, June 16, 2026

16: Hyper Gilded Age

The Theory of the Vulgar Class Collapsing norms, cage matches, and a republic in danger ............. On Sunday Donald Trump celebrated his 80th birthday with a cage match on the White House lawn. The match and the events that surrounded it — especially the press conference with UFC fighters, shown above, held on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial — were a desecration of America’s capital, whose monuments and buildings have always endeavored to represent small-r republican virtues. The whole affair was an affront to the values on which this nation was founded and also unspeakably vulgar. ............... That last criticism may strike some readers as elitist and trivial. Yet the vulgarity that is the hallmark of Trump and his surrounding circle of oligarchs is a symptom of something not at all trivial: The collapse of social norms. As I argued yesterday, these norms historically played a key role in mitigating abuses of power and privilege during the Gilded Age, the last time America suffered from extreme income and wealth inequality (though not nearly as extreme as what we have now). ................... Norms matter. In his classic book The Theory of the Leisure Class — published in 1899, at the apogee of the Gilded Age — Thorstein Veblen famously argued that much of the behavior of his era’s elite was driven not by the desire to enjoy life but by the desire to impress others. Partly they did this through conspicuous consumption. Thus they built lavish mansions staffed by legions of servants. .......................... The contrast with the public behavior of Trump’s band of uber-wealthy is startling ..................... Today’s oligarchs, by contrast, have largely given up on the old norms of social and individual responsibility. They give very little money to good causes and their vulgar taste reflects their in-your-face attitude towards the public. In our current hyper-Gilded Age, extreme vulgarity and the decline of philanthropy are really different aspects of the same phenomenon: the rise of an elite so disconnected from ordinary Americans that it feels no need to even appear to be honorable. ...............

we are living in the midst of a reenactment of the decline and fall of the Roman Republic, not a second American Gilded Age.

.................. While the causes of the decline of republican government and Rome’s eventual transition to one-man rule were doubtless complex, there is broad consensus among historians that a key factor was the emergence of extreme inequality. A handful of men became incredibly wealthy from the spoils of Rome’s eastern conquests, and their wealth and power eventually became too great for the rules of constitutional, republican government to contain. Sound uncomfortably familiar? ...................... The death throes of the Republic went on for many years. Politicians declared their rivals enemies of the state, deployed violent gangs to disrupt the rule of law, established temporary dictatorships, and more. The installation of Augustus as emperor in 27 BC was just the final act. ............. And during this long twilight of constitutional government, one of the ways the extremely wealthy and powerful sought both to demonstrate their wealth and to curry favor with the mob was by sponsoring gladiatorial games: ................ The vulgarity of the Trumpian elite isn’t in itself that important. But it’s a symptom of a collapse in values and norms that, unless confronted and reversed, may herald the end of the American experiment. We should heed the words of the Stoic philosopher Seneca about the rise and fall of the Roman Republic: “Increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid.”

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