We are just two weeks from perhaps the most important general election in our nation’s history, and I’m hoping beyond hope that we can salvage our failed democracy. Each day we are barraged with news of corruption in the White House, voter suppression, skyrocketing bonuses for corporate fat-cats, tax breaks for the 1%, the impending appointment of a right-wing, anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ Supreme Court judge, and the possibility that millions of Americans will lose affordable health care because that would cut into the profits of health insurance companies. And all the while we face a new surge in coronavirus cases, with 12.6 million unemployed, and a House and Senate dragging its feet on a second coronavirus aid package.
An interesting fact is that right now, there is a bigger gap between rich and poor than during the French Revolution (2). The French Revolution! We are Les Miserables on steroids. A US Federal Reserve study in 2017 reported that the top 1% owned 38.5% of the country’s wealth in 2016, and according to a June 2017 report by the Boston Consulting Group, 70% of the nation’s wealth will be in the hands of the 1% by 2021 (3). 70% of our nation’s wealth in the hands of only 1% of the population. Imagine that! The rich have definitely gotten richer under Trump, whose tax cuts enabled the rich to hold on to more of their cash, allowing them to invest it and earn even more money in the stock market.
And then what about the PPP loans to the wealthy that came with the first coronavirus CARES Act? The most famous billionaire to receive PPP funds was Kanye West, his fashion brand received $2 million to $5 million in PPP loans. Private jet companies received millions of dollars in under the aviation portion of the CARES Act, as well as millions in PPP loans. Some publicly traded companies that received taxpayer-backed small business loans that were meant to pay their employees during the early weeks of the pandemic paid millions out to Wall Street investors in dividends and stock buybacks (5). Instead of paying employees, they bought back their stock with tax-payers money!
Our nation has been at the mercy of an oligarchic, wealthy ruling elite for quite some time, and it’s no more apparent than now. An oligarchy is defined as rule by a small number of rich people, and in an oligarchy, wealthy elites seek to preserve and extend their wealth and power. The ruling elite will do whatever they can to preserve the status quo, from defending tax cuts for the wealthy and egregious salaries and bonuses for CEOs, to bailing out banks that give out bad loans, and ultimately amassing more and more wealth. Oligarchs use economic power to gain and hold political power and, in turn, use politics to expand their economic power.
In an oligarchy, a small number of wealthy elites are in charge, and even in a nominally democratic society, you would think that a democratic majority would protest and throw the elites out. But that’s not what happens. So how does an oligarchic system maintain it’s power? The answer is nationalism and authoritarianism. The success of an oligarchy is due to two strategies: 1.) Divide-and-conquer tactics to ensure that a majority cannot unite, and 2). by rigging the political system to make it harder for any emerging majority to overthrow them. Sound familiar? Trump and his sycophants have succeeded in dividing our nation, and voter suppression in red states is the norm rather than the exception.
The divide-and-conquer strategy is a classic and it works every time. A key aspect of this approach is the recruitment of followers through the promotion of nationalism. The Trump administration and leading GOP leaders have used ethnic, religious, and racial tactics to spread their message of fear and division. QAnon followers are brought together with stories of satanic worship and child trafficking by communist Democrats, mobilizing its followers to demonize the Democratic party and support the current administration and far-right GOP candidates. Fox News is a well-known Normal people, our neighbors, our friends have been sucked into the oligarchic cult which aligns them with the ruling oligarchy, mobilizing them to support the status quo and even sacrifice their lives for it. By diving society through nationalistic propaganda, the ruling elite ensures its solidity because the masses are too busy fighting about other things like gun rights, wearing masks, or freedom from big government. We have witnessed fearmongering about minorities and immigrants coming to take our jobs and deal drugs, and those in power claim that the country belongs only to “true” Americans who happen to be white and male (the majority of whom the government leaders represent). By lighting emotional, cultural, and political dumpster fires, the ruling elite makes it difficult for citizens to unite across these divisions, and to come together to challenge the status quo.
Tipping the scales and rigging the system is another tactic. It means changing the legal rules of the game or shaping the political landscape to preserve power. Voting restrictions and suppression, gerrymandering, and manipulation of the media are examples. These tactics act to silence the minority, to take away their democratic voice, and they prevent the people from voting the ruling elite out through ordinary political means. The tactics of oligarchy are not new, they’ve been around since Ancient Greece and Rome. But the problem remains: Nationalist oligarchies continue to deliver economic policies that benefit only the wealthy and well-connected.
Our democracy and our Constitution are fading as norms are constantly broken and non-partisan institutions are under siege. Government agencies, such as the EPA and the CDC, are designed to be non-partisan but have been transformed by the Trump administration to serve the oligarchy and not the nation. Bill Barr, the Attorney General, acts more like Trump’s personal lawyer than the AG of the United States. In four years, we have seen the rise of a nationalist oligarchy in this country, and a government that feeds populism to the people delivers special privileges to the rich and well-connected, and rigs politics to sustain its power. Nationalist oligarchy is a serious threat to our nation. Countries such as China, Russia, Brazil, Turkey, Hungary, and the Philippines (to name just a few) steal technology and use economic power as political leverage, and like Russia, oligarchies actively try to undermine democracy through cyberattacks, social media disinformation, hacking, and conspiracy theories. These regimes participate in corruption, money-laundering, and bribery all around the world, widening the chasm of inequality between rich and poor.
The status quo will not change until the American people unite and come together to vote out those that would keep us fighting amongst ourselves and voting against our own interests. It’s time for the rich to pay their share of taxes, it’s time for the government to work for us, for “we the people,” not for themselves and the elite.
Vote the oligarchs out! It’s our only hope.
Sources:
1. https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/51/countering-nationalist-oligarchy/
4. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/07/the-billionaires-and-country-clubs-that-received-ppp-loans.html