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The Gilded Age? Nah. The Tarnished Age is where we are now [1]

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Date: 2025-04-23

Off and on since Trump was inaugurated there have been references on various media to the very real possibility that the United States is once again experiencing what was named the Gilded Age by historians (who actually "borrowed" the name from Mark Twain's 1873 novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today). This era spanned approximately 1865 to 1902, and the name stuck as this period in history was seen as a time of major financial and economic expansion that was marked by incredible material wealth, to the point of excess, as well as major and deep political corruption.

It was also a period in history during which workers experienced very high wage growth but conflated with worsening poverty and inequality as a result of the millions of immigrants who took Emma Lazarus literally after her poem, "The New Colossus" was read for the first time in 1883 as part of a fundraiser for the Statue of Liberty and they flooded into America:

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus"

And then once again, during the Reagan presidency, the Gilded Age was among the names given to the period between 1980 and 1988 or so. But with a twist--an incredibly popular work of fiction by Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities, published in 1987 became acceptable shorthand for the tremendous excesses of the 1980s, particularly focused on New York City. Again, the financial excesses were a counterpoint to the rampant racism of this period in our history and woven into a compelling novel that treated of the wealth, the racism, the greed, the frightening level of ambition, seemingly without a conscience, and the deepening chasm between and among social classes.

However, upon much reflection, particularly while walking my two dogs and eschewing the cell phone, it seemed clear that there was a more descriptive, truer name for the era in which we now find ourselves: The Tarnished Era. Gilding is a metalwork term for the application of thin sheets of beaten metal, and often with those sheets made of gold. And as far as I could determine now, today, there is no longer even the appearance of a veneer of opulence, richness, and of the finer things, particularly moral and ethical, in life. All of that is gone. And what are we left with? A society that is deteriorating in front of us, with besmirched ideals and corroded values, a moral and ethical vacuum so pervasive we are at real risk of losing everything that made us a democracy that knew it could do better and was striving to become a more perfect union.

This is why millions of us are in the streets now. Literally almost every day. Outside of dozens of Tesla dealerships. Outside of government buildings to show support for our fellow Americans. Gathering along busy roads and on overpasses. We may not be calling it a tarnished era, but we darned sure know we are living in a time of baseness, amorality and immorality, political corruption the likes of which we've not seen before, and the widest spread between wealth and poverty the modern world has ever experienced.

Further, it is happening right in front of us even as the oligarchy running us into the ground and working to entrench fascism is hard at work behind closed doors. So sad for them the pervasive leaks. So unfortunate they have to deal with the multitude of liberal or progressive social media who won't lie down as Bezos did with the Washington Post. Or Patrick Soon-Shiong did with the Los Angeles Times. And now law firms and universities are finding their backbone too. But not before many law firms cowered and capitulated to Trump's demand that they do his bidding or they will be kept out of the halls of power and won't be able to defend their clients. And some universities---I'm looking at you, Columbia. But now we have Harvard drawing that red line. Ditto a consortium of universities who have created a compact, a "three musketeers one for all and all for one" organization in order to stand strong together.

The corruption that we know about so far is breathtaking. Ditto the drive to control all narratives, all workers, all information. Just some examples. There are hundreds more.

Watch for more cryptocurrency bros to be pardoned--among them, Binance head, Changpeng Zhao. And welcomed to the banquet. Because cryptocurrency is the Trump family's "new thang." And they expect to make billions on it. Do remember that his very first week back in office, Trump signed an Executive Order to promote American leadership in cryptocurrency. Yet this currency has a cloud over its head--it has been used for money laundering, tax evasion and all sorts of other financial crimes.

And how about this: in the tariff talks with Vietnam, guess what was credibly floated? No, don't bother--here it is: on the table, the very real possibility of a Trump resort (or even more than one) in Vietnam, partly in exchange for lifting the tariffs against them. Although this is the only story so far that is related to the tariff "negotiations," past history with this guy says it's not the only one out there. We just haven't learned about the others yet.

In progress, the signing of an agreement between Ukraine and the USA for a hefty share of the mineral rights of this country, but in exchange for what appears to be nothing, nada, zip, zilch. And even more pressure recently for Ukraine to just cede once and for all Crimea and any other territory they've lost to date. To benefit Putin. And what do we get for this?

The attempt to kill off both Head Start and Americorp. And FEMA. Why? Ostensibly to rein in the budget (the reason for these three though, to give power back to the states) as has been the overarching reason for the dozens of other deep cuts to government services by either Executive Order or DOGE meddling and pressure. The corruption in plain sight though: tax cuts for the obscenely wealthy among us.

The tracking of government workers' phones and other devices to make sure they cannot talk with any entity about what is going on in their various agencies. A blackout keeps us in darkness and makes certain more fascistic takeovers are possible.

Each day, each week will bring to our attention dozens of other examples of how tarnished America is now and why ordinary folks have to continue forward doing what John Lewis told us to do: "make good trouble." The risk otherwise is that this particular era will not come to an end but instead will become the “new” United States of America, a failed democracy and a pariah.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/4/23/2318267/-The-Gilded-Age-Nah-The-Tarnished-Age-is-where-we-are-now?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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