By KIM BELLARD
TO New York Times interview with Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D – Mass) by Bret Stephens caught my attention. I am somewhat familiar with Mr. Stephens from his various articles in the NYT; He’s definitely a conservative, but in the old pre-MAGA sense, where it meant you cared about spending but didn’t hate people who weren’t like you. Rep. Auchincloss, on the other hand, didn’t look familiar to me, but the headline of the interview… The democrat who makes me listen – proved to be accurate.
For me, the last line of the interview summed it all up. Representative Auchincloss is a Navy veteran who served in Afghanistan. Mr. Stephens asked, “Final question. If there’s something you learned in the Marine Corps that every American should know, what is it?” Rep. Auchincloss’ response was concise, direct, and very instructive: “Officers eat last.”
“Officers eat last” – wow. That’s a philosophy I can accept. That is a credo I hope to live up to. That’s a slogan for a political movement you could support.
Of course, I don’t just mean literally Navy officers, and I don’t just mean food. I’m sure Rep. Auchincloss intended it to be a life lesson that should be widely applied. That is, people in authority must ensure that the people they are responsible for are taken care of before they take care of themselves. I don’t think that attitude is solely responsible for the Navy’s esteemed esprit de corps, but it has to be part of it.
The problem is that we don’t see much of that attitude in the rest of the United States. When Congress failed to pass a budget and millions of federal workers went without pay, they (and their staff) continued to get paid. When the White House cut several budgets, it did not eliminate White House jobs.
If you want to keep your blood pressure under control, don’t even ask how generous Congress’s retirement package is. Suffice it to say that, if you are one of the few workers who still qualify for a defined benefit pension, it will almost certainly be less than theirs. Don’t get me started on how members of Congress seem to get richer… much richer – while in office, possibly due to insider trading loopholes.
According to Galluponly 10% of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, while 86% disapprove, but they don’t care. They get paid anyway, and most House seats aren’t. competitiveso most incumbents are in little danger of being eliminated.
It’s not about “the officers eat last.”
It’s not just about the politicians.
All those billionaires: more than 1,000 of them in the United States alone! – I didn’t get (or keep) all that money by putting someone else first. executive directors I used to do it They “only” earn 15 times more than the average worker, but now they earn closer to 300 times their salary. going up 20x the average worker’s pay rise only in 2025. If ever there was an era in which benevolent CEOs looked out for their employees, that era has passed. If CEOs can pay less or, better yet, lay off their employees, the better their compensation will be. The rich eat first, with the best meals that their employees’ labor can finance.
Or private equity investors. They have wreaked havoc on manufacturing and other industries, and more recently have turned to areas such as accommodation and health care. They don’t come just because of your job, they come because of where you live and where and how you receive care. They don’t pretend that what they are doing is for your good; They are openly in this for the return on investment. They are face first at the dinner trough and don’t really care if you get any of the leftovers.
It’s obscene. It’s the opposite of officers eating last.
Representative Auchincloss calls for “economic patriotism” and says:
If the central idea of America is that the circumstances of your birth should not determine the condition of your life, you cannot have a lasting “demos,” a lasting sense of a shared American future, if you have an ossified American aristocracy. And that is what has happened. The top 10 percent of the American economy are people who are increasingly divorced from the rest.
He wants, in particular, to see more wealth taxed at death, so that the richest Americans can no longer pass on their wealth without paying taxes on the earnings. He acknowledges that government overregulation can be a problem, but correctly points out that the rampant corporate monopolization we’ve seen in recent years is also harmful. Gordon Gecko famously said “Greed is good,” but Rep. Auchincloss responds with “Officers eat last.”
I know which side I’m on.
If Democrats had any common sense, which they don’t, they would take advantage of this slogan and help define how it applies to our daily lives. They would develop what “economic patriotism” means. Democrats are still blamed for NAFTA and for allowing China to join the World Trade Organization, with the resulting loss of many American jobs, but those jobs didn’t magically disappear. The rich decided they could get rich by offshoring, and if that meant the loss of many jobs and the devastation of many communities, so be it. Democrats should have never taken the blame and instead should have aggressively pointed fingers at the real culprits.
To be honest, I don’t think Democrats are the right party to champion this idea. They have their own cadres of rich people, both in power and among their donors, and it shows in their policies. The Democratic brand is so toxic that it may not be possible to reinvent it. Therefore, let’s say, Rob Arena in the race for governor of Iowa or Graham Platter in the US Senate race in Maine are carefully trying not to talk about their ties to the party, and So Osborne In Nebraska’s U.S. Senate race he is running as an independent (with the tacit support of the state’s Democratic Party).
Those are the kind of politicians who could make the “officers eat last” speech and make it work. Chuck Schumer? Kamala Harris? Gavin Newsom? I don’t think so.
Neither party has a real vision for how to address growing inequality in America (or even an agreement on whether to do so), much less a vision for how to address AI and other revolutionary technological changes that are coming. Addressing climate change and microplastics is long overdue, but there was too much money in the status quo.
which is not he answer, but “the officers eat last” could be part of a answer. Show me the candidates who believe in it, live it, and will fight for it, and they’ll get my vote.
Kim is a former e-marketing executive at a major Blues scheme, publisher of the late and lamented Tincture.ioand now a regular contributor to THCB
