The Transitional Oligarchy: Democracy’s Last Stand?

The road ahead could lead to dictatorship or renewed liberty, as the American people confront the corrosive power of wealth in politics…

Oligarchy is a form of government where the richest people in a country have captured its political system (or even filled it with themselves) and use that control to direct much of the government’s efforts to increasing their own wealth and power.

We’ll soon again have a billionaire president — helped to power by the richest billionaire on the planet — with his election campaign funded in large part by at least $2 billion in direct, reported donations from roughly 150 billionaire families.

It appears that the other roughly 350 billionaires who openly funded Trump in 2020 chose, this time, to instead donate to “dark money” SuperPACs created by five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court with Citizens United that don’t list their donors or, in many cases, even report their expenditures. With an estimated $15 billion spent on this 2024 election, their expenditures probably dwarf the ones we know about (and collectively they carpet-bombed Americans in often-deceptive political advertising).

And none of that covers the additional billions in “free media” Trump got from FOX “News,” rightwing hate radio, and Musk apparently altering the Xitter algorithm to favor messages friendly to himself and/or Trump while suppressing anti-Trump or pro-Harris posts.

This is extraordinarily bad for average Americans: With billionaires calling the shots in the upcoming Trump administration we can expect more pollution, fewer consumer protections, a war on unions, a frozen $7.25 federal minimum wage, bigger subsidies and grants to billionaires’ companies (from the fossil fuel industry to defense and SpaceX), lower taxes on the morbidly rich, and cuts to social services and entitlement programs.

But far more concerning is the simple reality that oligarchies are merely transitional forms of government, as I mentioned on Ali Velshi’s show Sunday morning and wrote in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy.

Ever since Ronald Reagan embraced neoliberalism (free trade, gut unions, low taxes on the morbidly rich) the top .01% have pillaged the American working class, essentially stealing over $50 trillion over the past 43 years and using that money to buy megayachts, penis-shaped rockets, European chateaus, private jets, and to fill their money bins.

So far, Republicans have been able to largely distract Americans from this naked theft by tossing out red herrings; blaming the ills of America on immigrants, big-city Black people, teachers, and the queer community.  But there’s a limit to how long you can gaslight people; eventually working-class Americans figure out what’s going on and who’s behind their falling behind previous generations.

When that happens, oligarchies begin to tremble, something that’s been gradually happening for several decades. People protest, what’s left of union movements stand up, and progressive political parties begin to get a significant toehold on the national debate. The success of Bernie Sanders in his presidential efforts is an example of the leading edge of this dissatisfaction and dawning realization by average citizens of an early indicator that we were approaching this cusp.

Once protest against the oligarchs buying politicians and manipulating government reaches a critical mass, the oligarchy is faced with a terrible but necessary choice.

They can allow democracy to proceed and end up being voted out of power (as happened in Brazil when Bolsonaro was thrown out), sometimes even facing jail themselves (as happened here in 2020, although Merrick Garland dragged his feet for two long years).

Or the kleptocratic government can clamp down on their opposition, labeling protestors and democracy-advocating politicians as terrorists and “the enemy within,” using the power of the state (guns and jails) to suppress popular pro-democracy movements.

This latter path was the one Vladimir Putin chose as Russia moved from democracy to oligarchy and then to outright dictatorship. Speak up and go directly to jail, if you’re not killed outright like Alexi Navalny was. It’s also the path Viktor Orbán, the man many Republicans claim is their role model, has taken in Hungary.

And, if the rhetoric coming from Trump and his acolytes is translated into action starting in January, that is the path America will soon take.

Numerous Americans have been warning about this ever since Trump’s first term in office (and some, including me, for decades before).

Reagan began the destruction of the middle class (which has gone from two-thirds of us in 1981 when he came into office to 43% of us having that wealth today), Bush and Cheney used 9/11 to expand presidential authority, six corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court granted king-like powers to Trump, and now the wannabee Mussolini is echoing traditional fascist rhetoric about women, minorities, the press, and his political opposition.

Soon, millions of Americans will be confronted with a choice. Will they, like “good Germans,” Russians, Chinese, and Hungarians did, abandon politics and go back to sports, music, and keeping their heads down? Or will they — like millions in Brazil, Chile, and Ukraine — stand up, protest, join the Democratic Party (while it’s still legal) and form a real resistance to an oligarchy that appears bent on morphing itself into America’s first raw tyranny?

In particular, it appears we’re approaching a time when Democratic state governors will need our support in their efforts to resist Trump’s fascist impulses. And, as our mainstream media continues to act like Trump is merely business-as-usual, help sustain independent media that engages in radical truth telling (there are many on Substack: check out my recommendations).

And it’s not too late for America to return to democracy; the next election of great import will be in two years and we all need to prepare.

Those who have faced the violence of state oppression have told us about the importance of times like this.

Elie Wiesel said, “We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented,” and Martin Luther King Jr. told us, “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”

We still have the power to make the choice to resist, awaken others, and organize. Seize it, before it’s gone.

The song that was inspired by this article is here.
My reading this article as an audio podcast is here.
My newest book, The Hidden History of the American Dream, is now available.