America Is An Oligarcy
Breaking news! Well, if your name is Rip Van Winkle and you just woke up:
We live in a nation controlled by corporate power and the individually wealthy. And the major press, of course, is in on the con.
Over at Alternet, John Atcheson points out two elephants in the living room:
Elephant number one—and it’s a huge honking beast squatting squarely on our ottoman—is the fact that the Republican Party has come unhinged and it’s dragging us back to the Dark Ages. Literally. To be a Republican today you have to have complete disdain for facts, reality, empiricism, the scientific method, or any of the other underpinnings of the Enlightenment.
The author uses climate change and trickle down economics as two prominent examples of how the entire Republican party ignores reality. Then introduces us to:
Which brings us to Elephant number Two – the Democrat’s embrace of the raw deal over the New Deal. The idea that there is a Party representing the left (or the people, for that matter) in the US is ludicrous.
We have a right-wing Party representing the Oligarchy—the Democrats—and an insanely right-wing Party—the Republicans—who represent an extremist fringe of the rich, including folks like the Koch Brothers, Betsy DeVos etc. More about this in a moment, but back to the Democrats for now.
I like this quote a lot:
In a race between those appealing to the passionately ignorant with contentious wedge issues and those paying lip service to progressivism while governing for plutocrats, the passionately ignorant will always win.
This is a short, yet thorough summary of the elitest players, including our corporate media. The conclusion:
Today, there is a virtual army of think tanks who are paid to make the crazy sound sane; to lend legitimacy to the illegitimate; and to tamp down any signs of reason among the citizenry with a mixture of fear, hate, greed, blame, and xenophobia.
But the coup remains the greatest story never told, and the pretense of a left/right political dialectic goes on, with useful idiots like Democratic "strategist" Mark Penn suggesting we take the middle ground between the extreme right wing, and the merely right wing, compromising ourselves into the Dark Ages.
http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/america-oligarchy
And here's John Atcheson again over at Common Dreams:
Can You Say Oligarchy? 75% of Americans Think Wealthiest Have "Too Much" Power
More good stuff with polling graphs:
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/07/13/can-you-say-oligarchy-75-am...
Comments
Great article, thanks for
Great article, thanks for posting it and for the essay!
The more people who come to learn about what the stakes actually are and the strategies used toward destruction-for-profit of life on the planet by what can only be described as psychopathic idiots, the better the chances we have of surviving past this decade. The only freedom we are to retain is that of having nothing left to lose...
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Talk about stating the obvious....
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Well yeah
To everybody here. I didn't mention it, but I was pleasantly surprised to see two well written and complementary articles by Atcheson at two well known blogs.
I would like to see this description filtering out of the blogosphere and become ingrained into the public consciousness. Paul Ryan, McConnell and Gingrich are still hawking Hayek's economic model. Gotta keep pushing!
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
Do they still ban you for using the word oligarchy over
at the GOS?
Don't Know
Don't care.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
Post WWII economy way too old
As any nation's economy get older and older the oligarchs get better end better at controlling both the economy and politics. Power aggregates with time. The wealthy get better and better at control. By definition that means that the economy gets more and more inefficient and that the country gets less and less democratic. Sound familiar? Hillary Clinton's run for the presidency was the ultimate oligarchical feast. A celebration of the compete dominance of the powerful and the connected. The revolution then came from the eccentric Right. Problem is that revolution is dead-ended, yet another bubble to pop. We on the Left should have been paying attention. I think that we were just content that Bill Clinton had slowed the Republican revolution. Bad move. We should have taken the hit an rebuilt a people's party. Now we have lost the means to power for a long time if not forever.
The only good news, if you can call it that, is that The Republicans and Trump will fail spectacularly and end the current post WWII economy. The oligarchs will lose their wealth as the markets collapse and the world will move faster towards a more democratic, stable multi-polar international order.
Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.
One transformation I find very "odd",
which is to say unprecedented and unpredictable, is the seemingly inexorable trend toward the use of electronic money transfers to replace hard currency as the primary medium of exchange. I'm guessing that this ongoing technological shift will have repercussions more profound than most people realize. It might very well affect certain basic understandings of what "money" fundamentally is, in unexpected and influential ways. The future of money, like the future of so much else, has become very difficult to foresee.
native
"paid to make the crazy sound sane"
and the true appear false.
the devil is father to the lie.