“…we had come to the stage where for our people what was needed was a real democracy; and of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of a plutocracy.”
Theodore Roosevelt, Autobiography
“A few thousand people with families, kids and so on, who are real rulers who concentrate economic and political power. Executive power. They control ruling party, administration of president, and they control main part of wealth of Russia. Seventy percent of Russian wealth is concentrated in the hands of less than one percent of population…
And key resources in the hands of a few families, one hundred, two hundred families. So, the problem is that they have common interests, but they have clans, like in, I don’t know, court of Louis XIV or XV in France, different clans of aristocracy fighting between themselves. But generally speaking, it is one power, one strata of aristocrats who has power.”
Alexander Buzgalin, Is Putin’s Rule a Dictatorship?
““Political decisions helped to create the super-elite in the first place, and as the economic might of the super-elite class grows, so does its political muscle. Surging income inequality is such a strong violation of our expectations that most of us don’t realize it is happening…
Somebody ought to sit down and think about this, because your corporate types are soon going to be a stateless superclass, people who live for deals and golf dates and care a lot more about where you got your MBA than the country you were raised in. It’s the Middle Ages all over again, these little unaffiliated duchies and fiefdoms, flying their own flags and ready to take in any vassal who will pledge his life to the manor…
They are becoming a transglobal community of peers who have more in common with one another than with their countrymen back home. Whether they maintain primary residences in New York or Hong Kong, Moscow or Mumbai, today’s super-rich are increasingly a nation unto themselves.”
Chrystia Freeland, Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else
“Trump represents the latest iteration of a very particular sort of global plutocrat. These super-wealthy elites have a penchant for nationalism, and often xenophobia. They boast authoritarian streaks, and exhibit total shamelessness about mixing business and politics. You often can’t tell where one form of power ends and another begins…
Such government-run self-enrichment schemes are classic Putin, too. The economic chaos that followed the Soviet Union’s fall created a market ruled by feudalistic Russian business elites. Putin took advantage to install himself as Russia’s permanent leader, enriching himself and his compatriots along the way. “
Jeff Spross, The New Global Plutocracy
So why all the babble regarding Vladimir Putin as the controlling elites of America’s circle jerk of Wall Street to K-Street to Capitol Street he (Putin) fits right in . Putin has no patriotic desire to restore what has been stripped from average middle America . He is just self promoting wealthy political hack . What the hell , make him an honorary citizen and let him be a senator or congressman . He would fit right in !
What all these political systems that grow into such wealth/power concentrations have in common is top-down, ruling elite, govern by force-democracy. Think of all the countries that call themselves democratic republics, including NoKo and China. We’ve all been force fed democracy since our earliest programming. This is largely fostered by those who support the state; a Prussian designed school system, politicians and other state employees who profit mightily from the scam. Democracy, largely a construct of the 20th century is when monster states grew, like the u.s. So a governing template that fosters concentrated power creates plutocrats. We live in a rational universe.
Arguably the most prescient of the Founders, Patrick Henry said “Give me Liberty….” not democracy for a good reason. Liberty is an individual construct. Democracy is a collectivist one.
Decisions my arse.
Political structures – transmissions of color of law, where the rubber truncheons meet the rode hard & put up wetwork – are projections. Of inherent, & inalienable, defect. (Once a lemon comes off the line, it’s wherever yugo, there you are, forevermore.)
They are not decisions any more than lampreys decide to clamp their blood-sucking rasps onto whatever comes along. Political humanimals, 1:1 analogous to lampreys, just do what they do: they suck sap. & sapience has got nada to do, does not apply.
But don’t take defect too literally. It is just how these creatures, most of them, are designed. Are social drones, or any of the other castes, in a hive or mound defective?
But rhetorical question begs: is there actually anything social about ‘just do it’ (whatever design has the creature do)?
Castle keep? No. Castle kept. White castle burgers on the hoof rhymin’ simon slip slider’ing away down gullets…with a bullet. Cuz that’s the law, jungle buns, not the color.