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AndyWAWG's avatar

Thom,

Thank you for adding to this concept on our history of repeated coup attempts. From the plantation oligarchs of slavery, who started the Civil War, to the oligarchs of the industrial age, who planned to remove FDR in 1934 with a military coup led by retired Marine general Smedley Butler, to the oligarchs and their lackeys of today, who attempted to reinstate the losser of the 2020 election on 1/6/2021, we have a historical pattern that we haven't learned how to end. "It's all about America’s ongoing battle between oligarchy and democracy."

My first reading of this history was detailed in How The South Won the Civil War, by Heather Cox Richardson, which I didn't see referenced in your post.

https://billmoyers.com/story/bill-talks-with-heather-cox-richardson-about-how-the-south-won-the-civil-war/

"Yes, the Civil War brought an end to the slave order of the South and the rule of the plantation oligarchs who embodied white supremacy. But the Northern victory was short lived — Southern ideals spread quickly to the West. It's all about America’s ongoing battle between oligarchy and democracy."

When you have time check out this book and please consider why our system keeps repeating this cycle. Why do oligarchs keep regaining power - each time more powerful than the last time? Something in our system needs to change.

Consider changes to our authoritarian economic system - which empowers the oligarchs and allows them to buy critical parts of our government, which then passes laws to protect the oligarchs. Can we make our economic system more democratic as suggested by Professor Richard Wolff?

https://www.democracyatwork.info

I think we need more than unions. Union reps need to be members of corporate boards of directors, as in Germany. We need to repeal Taft-Hartley. We need to make the work place more democratic. Maximizing that power shift will require additional pro-labor laws. One such law would promote the creation of worker owned coops and enable the conversion of monopolies into multiple coops.

Coops eliminate the adversarial employer/employee relationship by finally eliminating the employer and, more importantly, eliminating those excessively wealthy oligarchs who buy/destroy democratic political systems to preserve their excesses like wage theft.

We need a democratic economic system that reenforces our democratic political system and vice versa.

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Laurel Hall's avatar

I’ve been saying for about a decade that the GOP is becoming the new Confederacy. Have been ridiculed for my comments, but, here we are.

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