Protecting the Minority of the Opulent

James Madison’s blueprint for billionaires still runs the show, from part-time gigs at the sandwich shop to Trump’s NATO shrug and Elon Musk’s calls for dissolution of Parliament.

Good morning! James Madison didn’t mince words at the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. “In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of the landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government to support these invaluable interests. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.”

That wasn’t a slip of the tongue, it was the blueprint. Madison wanted to make sure the rich had a firewall against the rabble, and bless his powdered little heart, he succeeded: nearly 240 years later, America still runs on that warranty. The billionaires have their security detail. The corporations have their loopholes. And the rest of us? We get whatever shifts are left at the sandwich shop.

The Wall Street Journal politely calls it a “cooling labor market,” but that’s like calling the Titanic a “boating inconvenience.” The official unemployment rate clings to 4.3%, yet the real picture looks like a Jackson Pollock of despair: underemployment up to 8.1%, the highest in four years. Anna Whitlock, once a tech project manager, is now nannying for half her old pay. James Reynolds, fresh computer-science degree in hand, is slicing hoagies for $18 an hour. They’re not anomalies; they’re the new normal. Employers brag about “flexibility” as they slice jobs into part-time scraps, and the Fed’s own surveys show workers have less confidence finding work than at any point in the past decade. The “minority of the opulent” is doing just fine. Everyone else is juggling three jobs and rationing groceries.

In Europe, Vladimir Putin is probing NATO’s tripwires with drones like a kid daring the dog to bite. Nineteen Russian drones slipped into Polish skies, one landing 400 kilometers deep. Poland invoked Article 4, consultations, not retaliation, but Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski says the red line is clear: dead Poles or a strike on Rzeszów, the weapons hub feeding Ukraine, and Article 5 kicks in. Translation: war. Romania scrambled F-16s after its own breach, Germany’s Eurofighters joined in, and NATO is rolling out “Eastern Sentry.” Allies are improvising resilience with Ukraine’s help, rigging cheaper counter-drone systems that don’t cost millions per interception. And Donald Trump? He told Fox News, “I’m not gonna defend anybody.” It’s the clearest signal yet that the U.S. commander-in-chief is golfing his way out of mutual defense while Putin takes notes.

Abroad, allies are cashing out. Denmark just ditched the U.S. Patriot system for an $8 billion Franco-Italian shield. Portugal passed on the F-35 in favor of France’s Rafale. Canada is rethinking its F-35 buy. South Korea is seething after ICE rounded up 300 Hyundai and LG engineers, on legal visas, to chain them like criminals. Koreans still talk about the hot cuffs burning their wrists, the moldy beds in detention, the humiliation of watching America treat their best and brightest like contraband. The backlash is visceral: lawsuits are already moving forward, and in Korean media the comparisons to Japanese colonial-era abuse are blunt. Nobody’s lining up to finish Trump’s “great factories.” The message is clear: America is no longer the reliable partner Madison’s “opulent” minority pretends it is.

And then, inevitably, Elon Musk lumbered into the circus. Fresh from calling Democrats “the party of murder” after Charlie Kirk’s shooting, Musk FaceTimed into a far-right rally in London, headlined by Tommy Robinson, no less, to declare that Britain must dissolve Parliament and “fight back or die.” This is the richest man in the world, safe in his bunker, exhorting 100,000 riled-up Brits to violence. Several police officers ended up bloodied, while Musk’s post declaring “violence is coming” racked up hundreds of thousands of likes. He’ll never do the fighting himself; he’s too busy suing Apple, but he’s delighted to hand out matches in a crowded theater. As Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey put it, “Our democracy is too precious to be a plaything for foreign tech barons.” But that’s exactly what Musk wants: a billionaire’s sandbox where elections are another algorithm tweak, and rage is just an engagement metric.

So here we are, with Madison’s wish fully realized. The minority of the opulent is still protected, from Washington to Silicon Valley to Turnberry’s back nine. The majority? We get the part-time gig economy, foreign policy sold off to the highest bidder, ICE raids that burn our alliances, and billionaires live-streaming calls for insurrection. Who protects us from them? Certainly not Trump, not Musk, and not the parchment ghosts of Philadelphia. If we’re waiting for Madison’s heirs to save us, we’ll be waiting in line at the food bank, résumé in hand, while the “opulent” minority toasts their good fortune with imported Russian eggs.