Better late to the reality party than never one supposes:
By ,
An oligarchy, Webster’s dictionary tells us, is “a form of government in which the ruling power belongs to a few persons.” It’s a shame that the Republican majority on the Supreme Court doesn’t know the difference between an oligarchy and a democratic republic.
Yes, I said “the Republican majority,” violating a nicety based on the pretense that when people reach the high court, they forget their party allegiance. We need to stop peddling this fiction.
On cases involving the right of Americans to vote and the ability of a very small number of very rich people to exercise unlimited influence on the political process, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and his four allies always side with the wealthy, the powerful and the forces that would advance the political party that put them on the court. The ideological overreach that is wrecking our politics is now also wrecking our jurisprudence.
The court’s latest ruling in McCutcheon et al. v. Federal Election Commission should not be seen in isolation. (The “et al.,” by the way, refers to the Republican National Committee.) It is yet another act of judicial usurpation by five justices who treat the elected branches of our government with contempt and precedent as meaningless. If Congress tries to contain the power of the rich, the Roberts Court will slap it in the face. And if Congress tries to guarantee the voting rights of minorities, the Roberts Court will slap it in the face again.
Notice how these actions work in tandem to make the wealthy more powerful and those who have suffered oppression and discrimination less powerful. You don’t need much imagination to see who benefits from what the court is doing.http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ej-dionne-jr-supreme-oligarchy/2014/04/06/823f15ea-bc2e-11e3-9a05-c739f29ccb08_story.html
The Gadfly tossed out that bit of opening "welcome to reality" snark at the top of the post because The Gadfly, quite frankly, is wearily annoyed of the establishment press and media belatedly discovering unsavory truths about what is happening to this country and then feigning outrage as if nobody has been talking about it previously.
E.J. Dionne is a longtime Washington political writer and columnist. He treads in a world of powerful people, both political and financial. For him to just only now, in his duties as a member of the fourth estate, to arrive at the realization that the conservative right and the wealthy plutocrats are laying the groundwork for an eventual oligarchic society in America is disingenuous at best and grossly incompetent and willfully neglectful at worse.
The Gadfly is just some self-educated shlub with access to the internet who also happens to possess an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and the truth. Yet somehow The Gadfly has been talking about this oligarchy business and what it portends for the future of American democracy for several years (look back through The Gadfly's archives to see).
As such then, how exactly is it that someone of Dionne's academic and media credentials, in addition to his access to the wealthy and powerful people who run this country, appears to only just now be noticing this oligarchy business? What exactly, in his duties as an insider Washington DC political reporter and writer, has he been doing the past decade or two that has so effectively distracted him from the reality that a small handful of very wealthy people, with the backing of the modern day conservative political movement, basically is intent on transforming America in to
Hell, even some politicians have broached the subject of this oligarchy business prior to Dionne's "discovery" in yesterday's Washington Post article. Back in 2010, Vermont's Independent Senator Bernie Sanders wrote a piece in the 'The Nation' where he stated, "upper-crust of extremely wealthy families are hell-bent on destroying the democratic vision of a strong middle-class which has made the United States the envy of the world. In it's place, they are determined to create an oligarchy in which a small number of families control the economic and political life of our country."
How can anyone objectively analyze the 2008 world financial crisis and not see how the only people who benefited (and boy did they benefit) from that catastrophe were the super wealthy plutocrats? And that they realized those benefits at the expense of and on the backs of the middle-class and working people of America? And yet they still have the fucking unmitigated gall to fund and run politicians who promise them even further tax breaks and further subsidizing and further power consolidation. Why? Because that is what oligarchs do dear readers.
So yeah -- good for E.J. Dionne to finally acknowledge that which has been staring him square in the face for the better part of a decade or so. And good for him for getting his belated views published in a national media outlet. All of which begs the obvious question -- what are going to do about it then?
Americans need to make a decision. You are either ok with the dissolution of the American middle class and the creation of a two-class social system wherein a couple of dozen uber-wealthy families rules over the rest of us, who for all intents and purposes are designated to being nothing more than their wholly-owned subsidiary of life-long indentured servants, or you are not ok with it.
And if you are not ok with, it, then perhaps it is time you consider the prospect of getting up off of your complacent ass, getting involved in the governing affairs of YOUR country, and getting others involved in the mission to reclaim YOUR democracy and YOUR's and YOUR children's future quality of life and liberty back from those who view it as a privilege with which they, as if by royal decree, reserve the right to grant to you at their whim -- as opposed to what it actually is -- an inherent right that your forefathers pledged to you, and fought and died for you and your descendants to have and to cherish for as long as this country bears the torch of freedom and free people the world over.
The first step in the salvation of this nation's liberty begins with turning off the television sets, disavowing and ignoring the mainstream media until they are separated from the corporate/military-industrial complex, and demanding that our system of representative democracy be freed from the cancerous tentacles of big money and big, multinational business influence.
The ball is in your court dear readers.
----TFG
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