Great wealth and the military have a way of hooking up. Always have, always will. When they do, the resultant form of government is called Fascism in modern times, but it’s been around as long as civilization itself. Fascism, however, is not without its problems:
1.) It tends to spawn internal rebellions as the ruled chafe against the yoke.
2.) It becomes increasingly difficult to maintain the loyalty of the troops and their mid-level commanders. Coups are common.
3.) It attracts the concern and then fear of its neighbor nations. Fascist nations are often the target of wars of liberation.
4.) And finally, it’s just no fun for the wealthy rulers as they are soon confined to safe zones maintained by private troops (aka death squads).
IMHO, history has been filled with the attempts to mitigate the negatives of fascism while maintaining its control. The bread and circuses of the Romans, the Divine Right of Kings, and Joseph Goebel's propaganda campaigns have all been attempts to gain the consent of the governed while maintaining absolute control.
The arrival of centralized mass media and the use of computers in vote counting have given rise to a new form of fascism. Now the masses believe that they choose their oppressors. Tanks in the street have given way to
clever vote counting programs with multiple sets of books. Government owned media is now simply an
oligarchy of privately owned media empires.
Some of us here are not fooled. Slowly, ever so slowly, the façade of this form of fascism is pealing away. But now I ask the big question: if this form of fascism fails, will democracy be restored, or are we in for a long spate of the more old fashion variety?
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