So, what, Stewart should live in a hut on a mountain somewhere, while taking a vow of poverty??? I think many of us in the real world understand that sometimes you have to work for someone odious in order to keep a roof overhead as well as health insurance, food, clothing, medicines, savings, you know, life.
That doesn’t preclude addressing the very real issues which face us as a (failing toward fascism and anti-democratic/republic) society. Yes, the failure has been thoroughly engineered by the ultra-wealthy since at least the 1970s. Bit by bit they have taken away our rights, raised OUR taxes, lowered their own taxes to a miniscule percentage of their incomes, removed every kind of banking and trading legislation passed to prevent financial abuses, and purchased most of the legislators and judiciary in this country.
It wasn’t always this way—not for the entire nation. Most of us know that there was an attempted coup in 1933 to overthrow Pres Franklin D. Roosevelt by a group of wealthy businessmen who wanted a return to people starving in the streets and dying of typhoid due to lack of infrastructure paid for with taxes, among other reasons. Well, pretty much NONE of those plotters were actually jailed, because they were all very wealthy and connected. George Bush’s grandfather, Prescott Bush, was said to have been involved as a liaison. But the oligarchic class did learn their lesson – an outright coup was not the way to gain control of the nation. Better to go slowly behind the scenes, out of the public eye, and (somewhat…sometimes) without violence.
And here we are today, they have mostly succeeded, since most American workers now believe they are better off without labor unions, subsidized health insurance, low-tuition college(!), and a home that would only cost 5 years salary on average. The next steps into outright takeover won’t be too bad for *some* people, at least for the first few years. All bets are off after that.
