Culture

Rise Of The Oligarchy

It is difficult to tell anymore just who is in charge of the country. Those of a classic state of mind are inclined to say the President, perhaps in concert with Congress, sometimes aided by the Supreme Court.

This can’t be true, not entirely.

We’ve already seen an aging Joe Biden, fresh into his office, confused which new diktat he was signing, a law-in-all-but-name Executive Order which he surely did not write, and admitted knowing nothing about.

Yet the diktat had to be written by somebody. Perhaps a White House staff officer. Perhaps an outside agent. It’s long been true that corporate and special-interest lobbyists have had a hand in penning orders and laws; sometimes, rumor has it, retaining sole authorship.

Have we already forgotten the five thousand-page spending bill that Congress passed, and Trump threatened to veto but didn’t? Congress creatures complained that they had no idea what was in it. Many hadn’t even had a chance to see it before being asked to vote yes.

Obviously, this collection of mystery laws was written not by them, but others.

It costs money to be a lobbyist with law-making clout. Lots of it. The more money, the greater the influence. And it’s not the lobbyists themselves wielding checkbooks. That duty belongs to their masters.

Which means the oligarchs.

It’s the oligarchs who are in charge. Again, not entirely, but to a noticeable and increasing degree.

Many have gleaned the outlines of our new hierarchy. Andrew Codevilla wrote recently:

In 2015, Americans could still believe they lived in a republic, in which life’s rules flow from the people through their representatives. In 2021, a class of rulers draws their right to rule from self-declared experts’ claims of infallibility that dwarf baroque kings’ pretensions.

In that self-referential sense, the United States of America is now a classic oligarchy.

Michael Lind writing at The Tablet, a solid progressive outlet, agrees. He says “America is now ruled by a single elite class” which forms an “increasingly homogeneous national oligarchy, with the same accent, manners, values, and educational backgrounds from Boston to Austin and San Francisco to New York and Atlanta. This is a truly epochal development.”

We’ve seen many examples of non-governmental oligarch power displayed in real time. Here’s just two important ones, indicative of the rest:

  1. Wealthy Tech Overlords purged a sitting President from their platforms.
  2. Banks cancel accounts of those deemed insufficiently obedient.

Our oligarchic class is divided in two categories. C Northcote Parkinson (of Parkinson’s Law fame) aptly defined oligarchy as “rule by a few persons with no special claim to respect other than for their wealth, ability or vigour.”

He also said, “Bureaucracy, or rule by officials, is one form of Oligarchy”, what is also called the managerial state.

The oligarchy is therefore peopled of the amply monied and the doyens of the Deep State. It would seem the media would form its own branch, which is true to some extent, but the media is itself owned by wealthy oligarchs. Media personalities will do whatever they are told, or they will not longer remain media personalities.

It won’t be hard to spot who is and isn’t an oligarch. Some of them meet openly, like at Davos under the World Economic Forum (Great Reset slogan: “You will own nothing and you will be happy”), and Bilderberg.

Still, it would be a mistake to think there is a worldwide conspiracy, as that word is commonly used. There is no cabal that meets in secret in the sense of the Protocols of the Elders of the Internet.

What there is instead is a coterie of like-minded worldly people of wealth who share histories, food choices, styles, vacation spots, opinions—in short, people who think alike. Not on every question, but most.

Oligarchs do and will war among themselves, of course. Yet the one thing the oligarchs agree upon is their disdain of us.

Codevilla says the oligarchs have “become culturally united in disdain for Western civilization in general and for [normal Americans] in particular.” They are engaged in a “never-ending seizure of ever more power and the infliction of ever more punishment—in a war against the people without imaginable end.”

To do this, they leverage anarcho-tyranny and intersectional woke ideology, neither of which affects them, to further enrich and empower themselves. They happily use crises to support brutal measures, like lockdowns, to amass vast fortunes.

Good luck voting them out of power.

This post first appeared in edited form at The Stream.

Subscribe or donate to support this site and its wholly independent host using credit card or PayPal click here

Categories: Culture

17 replies »

  1. “In 2015, Americans could still believe they lived in a republic…

    What a pathetic statement. Is he trying to reassure us that things were hunky dorey and originalist just five years ago? The USA has been sliding into totalitarianism since at least the 1840’s when immigrant Marxists grabbed Lincoln’s ear. The end result predicted for over a century is almost here. Nothing short of revolution may stop it.

    I can still believe in Santa Claus.

  2. I am more and more convinced of two things:

    1. Biden doesn’t really care what he does or doesn’t do.

    He is president for one term. If he can be controlled by others, they will be happy. If he can’t be controlled by others, it could take them the entire term to persecute him – after all many of them are aging in place.

    2. If Biden continues down this path, there may be push back in two years (fraudulent vote counts aside).

    Maybe the masses will wake up. Maybe they will care. Maybe they will attempt to regain government.

    “That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.” Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address

    Of course, there is another push to remove Abraham Lincoln’s name from schools in San Francisco….

  3. You’re soooo slow Briggsy; some of us knew 36+ years ago that oligarchs were in charge when they recruited fascists & evangelicals into their fold to prop up an Alzheimer’s-ridden Reagan and vote him a disastrous 2nd term. Go read about it.

  4. THERE WILL BE NO REDEMPTION IN 2022. FOR PITY’S SAKE, HOW MANY TIMES DO YOU HAVE FAIL BEFORE YOU GET THAT????? They STOLE a presidential election. If Americans get any stupidier, we’ll needs millions of respirators to breathe for them. Or grind them for Soylent Green.

    Shecky: How quaint you are.

    There were very few times in history when the oligarchy did not rule this country. The founders were RICH. RICH, RICH. The plantation owners were RICH, RICH, RICH. During the Johnson County Cattle Wars, THE RICH cattlemen just shot ranchers that got in their way. With zero punishment. (Sound familiar?) There was plenty of room and the First People (incorrectly called Native Americans) and settlers could escape the rich and powerful. As time went by, room ran out. NOW, we think the rich didn’t own the country???? And they say schools taught history correctly in the past. Obviously not. Name a time the rich did not own this country and the only escape was to the more open spaces. Now the spaces are gone and denial of reality is no longer an option. Besides, human LOVE to be ruled over and lorded over by the rich. Check history—it’s been that way for most of humankind’s existence. Why is everyone pretending it changed?

    Oh, and don’t forget we all hate America (Ted Cruz, Trump, ALL of them) because it was founded on violent revolution AND VIOLENCE IS ALWAYS WRONG. That’s what they said. So learn to love the oligarchs. They are here to stay. No more evil revolutions. In fact, we may install a king to apologize for that unjust war.

  5. Briggs, your linked article from CBS, an Oligarch-run media consortium, tells us that “Billionaire Wealth Soars as 255 Million Jobs Lost to the Pandemic”

    We see that it’s the fault of The Pandemic™, a coronavirus that has a 99.8% survival rate (99.997% for those under age 20). The Pandemic™ for which the average age of death is between 78 and 83, in a country where the average life span, pre-pandemic, is 79.

    It’s not the fault of Governments or the Oligarchs who pull their strings, you see. It’s not because they closed our schools, shut down our businesses, forced us to shop only where it benefits the Oligarchs (Walmart, Costco, Amazon etc.), and forced us to view only media controlled by the Oligarchs.

    It’s The Pandemic™, not Oligarchs and their totalitarian, authoritarian governments, who’ve taken away our freedom of religion, association, assembly, and speech.

    Because of The Pandemic™, with its 99.8% survival rate, we will strap on our muzzle-masks whenever stepping outside our doors, and submit ourselves and our children to injections of experimental biological agents.

    Because of The Pandemic™, we’ve become….not Peoples, but Sheeples.

    As for those who still foolishly think and act like Peoples, because of The Pandemic™…..”Put a mask on your pie-hole, and shut-up, you are now anathema to the Covid Cult of The New World Order.”

    Electronic fences of various kinds will soon keep us all contained.

    There’s a strange sense of inevitability about all of this, as we watch our friends and families, even our earthly “shepherds”, the priests and pastors, allow themselves to be muzzled and herded into this unGodly totalitarian pasture, where we’ll graze upon our “guaranteed incomes,” as content as any farm animal.

    Those who resist, will meet the same fate as recalcitrant farm animals everywhere.

  6. “Native Americans, (incorrectly called First People)”. There, I fixed it for you.

    Search for Anasazi to discover that the Indian tribes, whatever you want to call them, often pushed out the tribes who were there first. They all did it. The Salish raided the Salishan for slaves. The Comanche pushed the Apaches south and out of the plains to take over their territory. How were we any worse than they were?

    Ann. That is one of my biggest frustrations with the response to the pandemic aside from the complete loss of freedom. Those with the money were put in a position to make gigantic fortunes. There was no rational reason that Mr. Gill’s small grocery down the street was any more dangerous than the Walmart in town. Yet he was closed and we had no choice but to do our shopping there.

  7. Will Whoever Stole The Black Hills Please Return Them?

    by Willis Eschenbach
    https://rosebyanyothernameblog.wordpress.com/2020/07/08/will-whoever-stole-the-black-hills-please-return-them/

    An excerpt:

    “…Here’s a short history of the ownership of the Black Hills as far back as we know it:

    The first wave of Asian immigrants came to North America maybe fifteen or twenty thousand years ago.

    The second wave of Asian immigrants, known as the Clovis people, drove out and eventually exterminated the First Asian Immigrants.

    Then the third wave of Asian immigrants, laughably called “Native” Americans, came in and stole the turf from the Clovis people, wiped them out, and took all of their lands.

    Around the year 1100, the Arikara Tribe was living in the Black Hills.

    Since then, the Crow stole the Black Hills from the Arikara.

    Then the Pawnee stole the Black Hills from the Crow.

    Then the Kiowa stole the Black Hills from the Pawnee.

    Then the Cheyenne stole the Black Hills from the Kiowa.

    Then around 1776, same time as the US was born, the Lakota Sioux stole the Black Hills from the Cheyenne. This is the turf that they proudly declaim is their “historical sacred land” … funny how they never mention how they sacredly killed the Cheyenne to sacredly steal from them the Lakota’s precious historical sacred land …

    Then the melanin-deficient immigrants stole the Black Hills from the Lakota Sioux. Mostly, they did it by trickery rather than force. Once the two sides fought to a standstill, they signed a Peace Treaty. The melanin-deficient immigrants simply ignored the Treaty between the US and the Lakota, and moved in and took the land piece by piece…”

  8. A sense of proportion is called for.

    Yes, our nature is fallen. Yes, the history of this country and all countries is littered with scoundrels.

    But we are, indeed, reaching a climax. Or pit bottom. Or are frantically excavating now that we’ve reached the bottom of the pit.

    And they aren’t even bothering to hide that their puppet is being run through an ear piece. All. The. Time.

    But push back can and will still slow them down and it behooves us to remember that for the sake of those that come after us. As those that came before us did for us. There is a price to pay every generation and throwing up one’s hands in disgust doesn’t pay it.

  9. The Oligarchy has already risen and been supplanted by a Technopoly. Good old fashioned oligarchs like Eastern-Block mafia thrive on government corruption to keep out of the way of their criminal activities. They are often rivals and can be at least addressed in part by playing them against each other. Our modern Technopoly didn’t even need corrupt government to enable itself. It just saw what it wanted and took it perfectly legally beginning with the telecom-dot com-broadcast-cable-infotainment mergers in the 90’s. They created an entire new economy based on information control that monetizes itself through media and advertising. It isn’t even under control by anybody, it’s a self-perpetuating machine. The government is irrelevant.

  10. “For a Child will be born to us, a Son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.” Isaiah 9: 6.

    Our country is under judgment for the continuous rejection of Jesus Christ, especially shown by the legal murders of God’s unborn and just born children, and more. We are to get right with God, to trust Him utterly, and to pray for others to do the same, as we are led of by God’s Holy Spirit.

    God bless, C-Marie

  11. From the Sugar Barons to the Railroad Barons to the Steel, Oil, and now Techno Barons, this country has always had a rich elite class with undue influence. Twain wrote about them, and de Tocqueville, and Bierce. Sinclair, and other Muckrakers.

    No doubt the New Globalist Billionaire class like Soros, Gates, Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Bloomberg helped Biden steal the election, and their handpicked radicals are Biden’s new advisor-controller-manipulators. It’s that lower echelon of Marxist plotter “activist” henchpersons who write the Orders.

    But are those wealthy oligarchs really in control? Is the slide into Socialism (Marxism) really their doing? I don’t think so. The oligarchs (with the possible exception of Soros) are Capitalists. They made their billions in the marketplace. They need customers with disposable incomes. It does them no good to bankrupt America.

    The situation has turned sour for the oligarchs, too. The Radical Left is out of control, including control by the oligarchs. The rich elites may have opened Pandora’s box, but now they probably regret it. Trump Hate made them stupid; maybe they are getting smarter now. Maybe not. We’ll see.

    Spaceranger is correct. The Technopoly has taken over. However, they are also capitalists. They tried to create their own money via Bitcoin, etc. which isn’t working. They trade in “information” but are now strangling free expression. That won’t work for them, either.

    It could be that the Great Reset is going to be countered by a Great Reawakening on the part of the New Capitalists. It would make sense if that happened. Freedom works, slavery doesn’t. We’ll see…

  12. You get oligarchy when the overall level of trust falls below the level obtained from Hamilton’s rule. Low trust = high oligarchy. It is natural.

  13. C-Marie
    January 30, 2021 at 10:15 pm

    Murder of the unborn is a function of population density. Cities are behavior sinks. It is natural.

  14. “Still, it would be a mistake to think there is a worldwide conspiracy, as that word is commonly used.”

    I used to think this, but in this last year, now it seems obvious. There is too much coordination.

  15. It is not natural for mothers to murder their unborn or just born children. It is natural to be concerned with the support and raising of the children. It would be an amazing wonder if all of the fathers of the unborn and just born children raised their hearts and voices for the preservation of the lives of their unborn and just born children and took responsibility for the children, and that both mothers and fathers took responsibility prior to the conceptions for marriage to each other, to be the state of life in which the children are conceived.

    God bless, C-Marie

  16. We aren’t talking voting or lawyering our way to survival.

    As for the Republic the voters sold the silk purse for the sows ears of checks.

    We won’t statistics or facts our way out of this either.

    Fight or Die, and if you won’t fight: DIE

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *