If you work hard in the United States, there is no limit to the possibility of what you might achieve. That’s the American Dream. But the reality is that America today increasingly resembles aristocratic societies of the past, which were characterized by little social mobility and dramatic inequality perpetuated in part by the passage of enormous fortunes from one generation to the next. How and why this has occurred in the United States is largely the result of power, politics, and policy choices--choices that enable the coding of wealth in the legal systems that structure not only our economy, but our society and our democracy. The system is rigged--and rigged in favor of the few. Join Sean Morrow on the final episode of the third season of “Who Is?” for a look directly at the money, what it means for the rest of us, and what we can do about it.
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Rebekah Mercer may be the most powerful woman in conservative politics today, and she’s never held--and probably will never run for--elected office. Since 2004, Rebekah Mercer has been the director of the Mercer Family Foundation, which means for nearly twenty years she has been one of the key people who is in charge of how her father Robert Mercer’s vast fortune is spent. And following the Citizens United decision in 2010, millions of dollars of that vast fortune have been dedicated to American politics, and primarily to American politics on the far right. The Mercers have played a major role in the contemporary rise of the far right, and from Cambridge Analytica to Kellyanne Conway, Rebekah Mercer and her father were instrumental in the election of President Donald Trump. But after Trump won, it was Rebekah who was named to his transition team. In 2021, however, Trump’s election almost feels like ancient history, and the real question is what will Rebekah Mercer do next, and what does that mean for the rest of us and our democracy?
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Mayor Pete is now Secretary Buttigieg, which means that the former Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is now a member of the Biden Administration. A surprisingly popular presidential candidate in 2020, Buttigieg has an unusual story, and in just a few years, he’s gone from planning bike lanes and roundabouts to overseeing the nation’s highways, airports, and more. Buttigieg has already run for president once and he’ll almost certainly do it again, so it’s South Bend and beyond on this episode of "Who Is?," for a look at the man who could one day be America’s first (openly) gay president.
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In 2020, Andrew Yang ran for president, and although he never really had a serious chance, he became a familiar name, and a familiar face. In 2021, he’s running for Mayor of New York City, and this time, he might win. If he does, Yang will face an enormous challenge: navigating one of the world’s most important cities through an uncertain recovery. A man with essentially no political experience but a lot of ideas and a lot of charisma, Yang has the opportunity to reimagine how the post-pandemic city functions. But he’ll also have to contend with the day-to-day realities of governing, from policing to public schools to public housing. On this episode of “Who Is?,” Sean Morrow dives deep into Yang himself, examines the policy and the people behind his current campaign for mayor, and explores how a city like New York can build an inclusive economy as it recovers from Covid-19.
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Unless you’re lucky enough to live on another planet, you’ve probably heard about the climate crisis. It’s a problem we must address if we want humanity--and the rest of the Earth’s animal and plant population--to continue to survive and thrive. But in order for that surviving and thriving to happen, we must immediately and definitively cut emissions and begin the transition away from fossil fuels. How’s that going? As you’ve probably heard, not so well, and as a result, more radical approaches are increasingly in the mix. Geoengineering is one of these, and while it won’t solve the climate crisis, it may enable us to remove some of the carbon dioxide we’ve emitted and even artificially lower global temperatures while we detox from fossil fuels. The catch? We don’t really know what would happen if we did it, and we may not be able to undo it. On this episode of “Who Is?,” it’s a look at one of the big choices we may have to make in the not so distant future.
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