The Kardashianization of Our Politics

Billionaires party while Congress decimates the safety net

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The Bezos wedding in Venice this week, coming as it did while the Senate was debating Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, stands as a symbol of everything wrong with American society today.

The Jeff Bezos-Lauren Sanchez nuptials cost over $50 million — a pittance for the world’s third richest man but an eye watering amount for everyone else. The couple effectively shut down one of Italy’s great (and most vulnerable) cities at the height of tourist season, all to hold a gaudy three-day bacchanalia for their billionaire friends.

The Kardashians were there, of course. So were Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, as befits a groom whose company donated millions to Trump-aligned groups, prevented his own newspaper from endorsing Trump’s opponent and leased the rights to Melania Trump’s life story for $40 million.

But so were a number of people who talk a good game about helping regular folks. "All of the freedoms that I have enjoyed, the successes that I’ve enjoyed, I feel that they’re on the line and at stake in this moment,” Oprah Winfrey said at the Democratic National Convention last summer. She was in Venice this weekend, dancing the night away in Valentino couture, fully confident that her personal freedom and success cannot be at stake as long as her billionaire tribe sticks together.

So was Huma Abedin, lately Hillary Clinton’s right hand woman and more recently the wife of another multi-billionaire. That financial upgrade seemingly allowed her to access the shindig in Italy this weekend, where she joined Jerry and Jessica Seinfeld (whom Oprah once dubbed “the quiet but mighty activist you want in your corner” for helping the poor) and Leonardo DiCaprio, who never met a private plane or a luxury yacht he would not board, even as he lectures the rest of us on climate change.

Do these people not get the cognitive dissonance between their rhetoric and the staged paparazzi shots of them blowing kisses at the hoi polloi from a motoscafi on the Grand Canal? Were they not aware of what was going on back home, where the Senate was in the process of approving the largest transfer of wealth to the rich in modern American history?

In other words, to people like them. The ones jetting in on private planes to feast a couple who flaunts extreme wealth like it’s a job. The ones who have the means to shut down a city for days of excessive conspicuous consumption. The ones who host a “pajama party” where the guests show up in lingerie worth five figures and a “foam party” aboard a $500 million yacht off the coast of Croatia. (No, really.)

Meanwhile, far from the Venetian Lagoon, the United States Senate gave the green light to legislation that causes almost 12 million Americans to lose health coverage. It slashes SNAP food assistance and restricts access to Pell Grants and student loan relief, tightening the squeeze on low-income families and students. It rolls back clean-energy incentives, threatening green jobs and raising energy costs, particularly in rural areas.

As all this is happening, the wealthy reap windfalls through regressive tax cuts, with top earners gaining tens of thousands annually while the poorest Americans lose an average of $1,600 per year. All this is happening while the national debt balloons by an estimated $3.3 trillion, placing future pressure on Medicare and Social Security.

The split-screen of the Bezos wedding and the Senate’s vote to advance the legislation that will decimate anyone without access to concierge doctors brings to mind the extravagant parties that Marie-Antoinette hosted at the Hameau de la Reine in Versailles. She and her ladies-in-waiting would cosplay shepherdesses in simple muslin dresses, pretending to milk cows or gather eggs (with animals freshly washed beforehand) — while real peasants and city folks starved to death from food scarcity.

This time, not even so-called progressives like Oprah are playing pretend. They are fully flaunting their private jet lifestyle, while sipping Bellinis at Harry’s Bar, which shut down for regular tourists so the billionaires could party in peace.

We are living in an era where food scarcity is increasingly quite real — thanks to Trump’s tariffs, thanks to his deportations of farm workers, thanks to the Big Beautiful Bill that will decimate food assistance and cause mass hunger throughout the land. We are living in an era where millions of people will get sicker and die because they will lost access to medical providers and hospitals, which will shut down due to funding cuts.

We are living in an era where billionaires, fueled by the massive windfalls they are about to receive and with one of their own in the White House, are making no secret of their avarice. The Kardashianization of our culture has seeped into our politics, where politicians reward greed and punish those who can’t afford to keep up.

The Bezos wedding was the apotheosis of the new normal in this country. Billionaires, regardless of their purported political ideology, will continue to party, even more so if this giveaway of our money to the very wealthiest happens. The rest of us won’t be so lucky.

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Further Reading:

Photo by Tom Hermans on Unsplash

Travel and Culture Salon: Venice’s Fight Against Over-Tourism: Cruise Ships, Crowds, and Preservation

Oprah Daily: A Force for Good

Luxury Launches: Jeff Bezos’ fiancée Lauren Sanchez, may lead a life so luxurious that she pilots her helicopter to a superyacht that takes her to a $500 million megayacht, but in the end, she is a girl next door and uses Pinterest to plan her upcoming destination wedding with the Amazon founder

Vogue: Lauren Sánchez Bezos Wears Atelier Versace to Her “Dolce Notte” Wedding Party

The Guardian: Senate opens debate on Trump’s bill estimated to add $3.3tn to US debt

The Associated Press: Senate Republicans seek tougher Medicaid cuts and lower SALT deduction in Trump’s big bill

The Wall Street Journal: Tax Cuts, Student Loans, Medicaid: What’s in the Senate GOP’s Megabill

Politico: Millions of students could lose federal aid under a proposal to slash Pell Grants

San Francisco Chronicle: Big Beautiful Bill: California’s top officials excoriate Trump’s big bill while it is debated in Senate

Politico: Megabill would cost poorest households $1,600 a year, boost richest by $12K, CBO predicts

Washington Center for Equitable Growth: Congressional Republicans’ budget bill is the most regressive in at least 40 years