General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsOligarchy: When Brutal Capitalism Becomes More Important than Democracy
In an oligarchy, the rich can get away with anything and average people who try to stop harms to themselves and their communities get crushed. Were now there; the question is whether well pull back from this horror show, or whether itll continue its evolution toward a full-blown police state.
The Sackler family, whose criminal Oxycontin drug-dealing killed over a half-million Americans and destroyed the lives of millions more, is close to a deal with the states to keep around $10 billion of their ill-gotten gain in exchange for giving the states a bit over $4 billion over a nine years. Nobody will go to jail or even suffer an inconvenience like no longer being able to use a private jet or give up one of their many mansions.
And its not like they were caught in a one-off crime. In 2007, they reached a settlement with the government over their illegal and deadly marketing practices, promising to behave like good citizens. Then, as the Washington Post noted yesterday:
The family members including Richard Sackler, David Sackler, Mortimer D.A. Sackler, Kathe Sackler and Jonathan Sackler (who is now deceased) demanded in 2012 that company executives come up with a plan to generate greater revenue in response to slumping sales, according to the Justice Department settlement.
Recidivists. Repeat criminals. Billionaires. But because the crime they committed was mostly against average Americans rather than against big companies or rich people, theyll quietly retire to one of their chalets or mansions.
Meanwhile, Jessica Reznicek was just sentenced to serve 8 years in prison for damaging an oil pipeline that she believed threatened the water supply of Iowa and surrounding regions and is contributing to climate change. Nobody died. Nobody got addicted. She didnt make any money doing it. Shes not rich.
Instead, she was trying to save lives and prevent further ecocide. During her sentencing this week, Jessica said, The toxins we enter into our waterways here in Iowa enter into the Mississippi, which enters into the Gulf [of Mexico]. Going to this extreme was out of character for me.
Ironically, on the same day she was sentenced a senior Exxon executive and lobbyist told a reporter that his company had no intention of going along with a carbon tax and that he could stop any kind of serious climate legislation because, with his companys billions, he had about a dozen senators, including Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, in his back pocket.
The death toll from the heat dome caused in part by Exxons product (and their decades of funding climate denialism every bit as horrific as the Sacklers marketing efforts for Oxycontin) has now officially killed over 116 people in Oregon, probably twice that in Washinton State (which has a much larger population), and over 500 people in British Columbia.
Nobody from Exxon is going to jail or even paying a fine, while the fossil-fuel money keeps rolling in to Manchin and Sinema. And if the voters try to mobilize to do anything about it, the Supreme Court said last week, Republican election officials can simply purge them from the voter rolls, make sure they face 8 to 10 hour lines to vote, or go to prison if they make a single mistake.
What we are watching is the final stage of the 40-year Reagan-started transition of our nation from a forward-looking and still-evolving democratic republic into a white supremacist ethnostate ruled by a small group of fascist oligarchs.
Some years ago, Trump economic adviser Stephen Moore (before he was Trumps advisor) was a guest on my radio/TV program. I asked him, Which is more important, democracy or capitalism?
Without hesitation, Moore answered, Capitalism.
That philosophy (of capitalism being more important than We the People democracy), has held the Republican Party in its thrall for the past 40 years, and has brought America to this moment of great crisis and danger.
It has transformed America from a democracy to an oligarchy, and the point of no return is now visible. And that presents a true crisis for America, because oligarchy is almost always merely a transitional phase in the evolution of full-blown tyranny and/or fascism.
Oligarchies are inherently unstable forms of government because they transfer resources from working people to the oligarchs. Average people, seeing that theyre constantly falling behind, first become cynical and disengage, and when things get bad enough they try to revolt.
That revolution can either lead to the oligarchy failing and the nation flipping back to democracy, as happened here in the 1860s and the 1930s, or it can flip into full-blown strong-man tyranny, as happened recently in Hungary, Turkey and Russia, and nearly happened here on January 6th.
Oligarchies almost always become police states where any average person who dares seriously challenge the ruling oligarchs is squashed like a bug, while the oligarchs themselves are immune from prosecution and get to keep their billions regardless of how many people die because of their crimes.
Oligarchic governments almost always do a few predictable things, as I lay out in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy:
* They change laws and regulations so their rich buddies can take control of most of the media.
* They stack the courts and regulatory agencies with oligarch-friendly ideologues or outright corrupt toadies, while massively eliminate regulatory protections for average citizens.
* They cut taxes on the rich and drive wages low on working people while criminalizing and cracking down on dissent, particularly if it involves any sort of direct action or property damage.
* They distract voters from their own looting by demonizing minorities and encouraging racism and regionalism.
* They actively suppress the vote among people inclined to oppose them (typically minorities and the young), or outright rig the vote to insure their own victory.
* And they transform their nations into police states, heavily criminalizing demonstrations, nonviolent resistance or direct action property damage while radicalizing and encouraging rightwing vigilante militias to put down the inevitable rebellions as people realize whats happening.
To stop this trend, Congress and the White House must take definite steps to undo a series of disastrous Supreme Court decisions that culminated with Citizens United in 2010, and thus reduce the political power of billionaires, giant corporations and their lobbyists. We need to get money out of politics, and return politics to the people through public funding of elections.
The starting point to back down oligarchy now, in this era, is found in the House of Representatives first proposed legislation, HR1, also known as the For the The People Act. Tragically, because this legislation doesnt involve budget issues, its subject to a Republican filibuster, forcing a required 60 votes in the Senate to pass.
Thats why Americans must reach out to lobbyist-aligned Democrats like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, demanding they help the rest of the Democratic Party end the filibuster now or at least transform it into a Jimmy Stewart Filibuster. (The phone number for the Senate is 2022243121.)
If we dont reclaim democracy now, the next generation of Americans may well grow up in the dystopia George Orwell imagined in his novel 1984 and Europe suffered under in the 1930s. And more and more average people who rise up to try to save our environment and country, people like Jessica Reznicek, will be thrown into prison while more and more Sackler-type billionaires will get away with more and more crimes.
Between great wealth, control of the media, police-state tactics and social medias algorithmic radicalization of the American mind, tyranny is itching to take over completely. We must stop them before it is altogether too late.
CommonHumanity
(246 posts)This dude's analysis could not be more spot-on, accurate, concise and perfect.
Dustlawyer
(10,495 posts)Their ad dollars influence the media companies on which stories get aired and which dont. Until and unless we join together to focus on getting the money out of our politics and require truth in the media we will continue to spiral down.
Uncle Joe
(58,372 posts)Thanks for the thread thomhartmann.
Budi
(15,325 posts)Oh btw, it's not Jeff Bezos & Amazon.
I dare you to pull the the shade from RU & Silicon Valley.
Start with Palintar, Pete Thiel.
Could you do a piece on Pierre Omidyar?
You know Pierre.
"He founded a "network," which is just a slush fund, to attack Amazon, Google and Facebook, and promote eBay and Peter Thiel, the far right billionnaire."
Then do Ro Khanna and the other millionares & billionares, all deep in the Silicon Valley RU hidey hole.
Also if you could do a piece on every candidate who has their own Super PAC & the money flowing freely & undetected by FEC, by donations just under $27.
That'd be great! Thanks
XanaDUer2
(10,696 posts)Moostache
(9,897 posts)I won't name names (seems like a good way to get a bad post take-down), but there are non-team players in the caucus that do not need to be explicitly stated but who have nonetheless sold us all down the river and cannot be brought back into the fold.
Everyone should know who they are, but no one is capable of convincing them to toe the line or return from profit-taking and fantasy to reality any time soon.
There is increasingly no legislative path to beginning the repairs and the republic's stress fractures are becoming full on bone breaks very quickly. I am not optimistic, to say the very least.
jalan48
(13,873 posts)Wild blueberry
(6,641 posts)Much appreciated!
Javaman
(62,531 posts)alwaysinasnit
(5,066 posts)Auggie
(31,174 posts)instead of them.
Mosby
(16,320 posts)Are tobacco companies.
They sell their poison without concern or consequence.
They all need to be shut down completely.
appalachiablue
(41,153 posts)moondust
(19,993 posts)Culture of depraved indifference.