Yes, if we don't find some way to curb the excesses of the several dozen people who own every goddamned thing of value in this country -- the media, the political system, the modes of production and distribution -- why, we might eventually become an oligarchy. That would be a bad thing, you see.
It doesn't take a history major to see that all countries have always been run in the interests of the majority owners of capital. But it's been a while since there has been such an obscene level of hyper-concentration, of wealth stratification, of the utter lack of upward mobility. What we're experiencing is, in the physics term, called stasis, and is defined in this case by lives of inertia and clutter.
This is an area where hope consistently triumphs over logic; poor and middle-class people are consistently rolled into voting for rich people because they hope to be part of that club, someday, someway. This is a fantasy straight out of a perverted version of Lake Wobegon, where everyone is good-looking and all the children are above-average, where no one ever gets laid off or poisoned by the chemical company up the road, where everyone has the same opportunities, and so forth. It's similar to the fantasy that voting for a fake Republican will produce much better results than voting for a real one.
But let's not shit ourselves, friends 'n' neighbors -- in the sense that all important decisions are made by the same class of people, in the sense that all modes of political discussion and accession are made by the same owners and donors, this is an oligarchy, more so than any time in the last hundred years. It may be slightly more benign than your garden-variety banana republic, or Russia, but only by matters of scale and degree, and where you live, and what socioeconomic or racial background you have. As long as the Albuquerque Police Department doesn't think you might be carrying a joint in your asshole, you should be fine.
Other than that, sure, it's a democracy.
It doesn't take a history major to see that all countries have always been run in the interests of the majority owners of capital. But it's been a while since there has been such an obscene level of hyper-concentration, of wealth stratification, of the utter lack of upward mobility. What we're experiencing is, in the physics term, called stasis, and is defined in this case by lives of inertia and clutter.
This is an area where hope consistently triumphs over logic; poor and middle-class people are consistently rolled into voting for rich people because they hope to be part of that club, someday, someway. This is a fantasy straight out of a perverted version of Lake Wobegon, where everyone is good-looking and all the children are above-average, where no one ever gets laid off or poisoned by the chemical company up the road, where everyone has the same opportunities, and so forth. It's similar to the fantasy that voting for a fake Republican will produce much better results than voting for a real one.
But let's not shit ourselves, friends 'n' neighbors -- in the sense that all important decisions are made by the same class of people, in the sense that all modes of political discussion and accession are made by the same owners and donors, this is an oligarchy, more so than any time in the last hundred years. It may be slightly more benign than your garden-variety banana republic, or Russia, but only by matters of scale and degree, and where you live, and what socioeconomic or racial background you have. As long as the Albuquerque Police Department doesn't think you might be carrying a joint in your asshole, you should be fine.
Other than that, sure, it's a democracy.
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