Where Ben Cartwright was brave, strait-talking and honest, Gordon Gekko was ruthless, manipulative, and corrupt, i.e., a fictional representation of real-life corporate raiders like "Chainsaw Al" Dunlop, "Neutron Jack" Welsh, and of course, the current Republican nominee for president, "Bullshit Mitt" Romney.

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The Battle of the Rich White Guys

Ben Cartwright of Bonanza v. Gordon Gekko of Wall Street

By John F. Miglio

From the late 1950s to the early 1970s, a time when America had a flourishing middle class, strong labor unions, and a highly progressive tax code, one of the most popular shows on TV was Bonanza.   It was about Ben Cartwright, a wealthy rancher who owned over 500,000 acres of majestic land north of Lake Tahoe called the Ponderosa.

Old Ben had three sons:   Adam, the smart one; Hoss the big lug with the heart of gold; and Little Joe, the quick-tempered youngin'.

Now what made the series notable--aside from its beautiful locale and six-gun action--was the fact that almost every episode was a melodramatic parable of some sort, a morality tale of good versus evil.

And although Ben Cartwright was very wealthy, he was a self-made man and never used his money or power to exploit his neighbors or his ranch hands. In fact, every week, he used his influence to help those in need or in financial distress, or to stand up to greedy businessmen or disreputable bounty hunters, or to help people with emotional or psychological problems.   He was also willing to give outcastes or lawbreakers a second chance.

Moreover, he was brave, straight-talking, and a firm believer in telling the truth at all costs, and he instilled these values in all three of his sons, who also were knights in shining armor cowboy-style.

Over the many years the show was on TV, the scripts dealt with a variety of standard Western topics, like cattle rustling, quick-draw shootouts, kidnapping, armed robbery, etc., but it also dealt with more controversial subjects such as religious intolerance, racism, and sexism.

In one episode, for example, Ben and his boys protect a black opera singer who is discriminated against by the town folk of Virginia City and falsely accused of being an escaped slave.

But the thing that stood out to me as a kid as I watched these shows was the fact that the Cartwrights were good guys, they cared about their community, and they were compassionate human beings.   The fact that they were filthy rich was irrelevant.   They worked right alongside their hired ranch hands and did physical labor. What's more, they gave all their employees a fair shake and treated them like family.   It would not even occur to them to cheat their help or exploit them, although they could have easily done so.

Now let's face forward to the 1980s, the Reagan years, the era of supply side, trickle down," greed is good" economics, a time that extolled the virtues of Gordon Gekko, the ruthless corporate raider in Oliver Stone's brilliant film, Wall Street..  

Gordon Gekko was also a self-made man, but he was the antithesis of the Ponderosa patriarch Ben Cartwright.   Gekko routinely used his money and power to destroy companies and lay off workers, and the only person he cared about was himself.

And where old Ben was brave, strait-talking and honest, Gekko was ruthless, manipulative, and corrupt, i.e., a fictional representation of real-life corporate raiders like "Chainsaw Al" Dunlop, "Neutron Jack" Welsh, and of course, the current Republican nominee for president, "Bullshit Mitt" Romney.

And could you imagine Gordon Gekko (or Mitt Romney) doing manual labor alongside the workers at one of the companies he was about to sack and throw into bankruptcy?   No, manual labor is for losers.   In fact, working for a living or starting a business that actually produces goods and creates jobs and stimulates the economy is for suckers.

"I create nothing," Gekko tells his young protégé Bud Fox, "I own!"   In other words, he is the ultimate amoral capitalist, the slick, conniving salesman who uses his acumen to make tons of money at the expense of everyone else--including Bud Fox, whom he betrays in the end in order to make more profits for himself.

Thus the difference between a compassionate old-school entrepreneur like Ben Cartwright and a ruthless vulture capitalist like Gordon Gekko could not be more striking.

The problem is, since the 1980s, the Gordon Gekkos of the world are winning the battle of the rich white guys.   They're the ones who are dominating our economy and our political process. They're the ones who have taken our jobs overseas, who don't pay taxes, who buy and sell our politicians, who pollute our environment, who destroy our unions, who create financial bubbles, and who want to privatize everything, including Social Security.   And they don't take any prisoners-- they destroy whatever is in their path to attain their goal.

But why do the Gordon Gekko types feel the need to be so ruthless and want more and more for themselves at the expense of others?   Psychologists tell us that it's a pathology that stems from feelings of insecurity and weakness in their childhood.   And as these individuals grow into adults, they become obsessed with "having" things rather than "sharing" things, and greed becomes second nature to them.

As the famed psychoanalyst Erich Fromm explained:   "In the having mode, one's happiness lies in one's superiority over others, in one's power, and in the last analysis, in one's capacity to conquer, rob, kill."

Add to this pathological behavior a moral justification for it based on philosophers like Ayn Rand and economists like Milton Friedman and-- voila!   Greed is good becomes a fascist religion!   And anyone who doesn't go along with the program is a socialist or a bum or a loser. And this is one step away from saying these people should be eliminated, the final solution in the fascist playbook.

Naturally, this begs the question:   Is it possible to reason with fascists?   Is it possible to force them to change their pathological behavior with peaceful protests and civil disobedience?   So far it hasn't worked.

So what's left?  

In Bonanza, whenever Ben Cartwright and his boys would be pushed too far by bad seeds or outlaws-- and when they couldn't settle a problem with reason or logic or in a court of law-- they were not averse to pulling out their Colt. .45s and dispensing justice with violence.

Sometimes that's the only way to deal with bad seeds or outlaws--or fascists.

Authors Bio:

John F. Miglio is a freelance writer and the author of Sunshine Assassins, a dystopian political thriller. His articles have been published in a variety of periodicals, including Los Angeles Magazine and LA Weekly. His most recent articles have been featured in Wand'rly, Truthout, Op/Ed News, the Democratic Underground, Counterpunch, Cynic, and Hippocampus Magazine. He has also appeared on Air America Radio and Radio Power Network.

His novel, Sunshine Assassins, has been called "a bone-chilling political morality fable," "wickedly entertaining," and "unforgettable."