The United States is an Oligarchy

The United States is an oligarchy. You have probably heard this thrown around by someone ranting about something at some point, and every end of the political spectrum utilizes this argument in an attempt to hype up their cause. Whether it’s a wealthy white kid with dreadlocks protesting on his college campus in Berkeley (disclosure: I dislike Berkeley), or a mentally deranged redneck screaming about Jewish control of the media from his militia compound in rural Montana, odds are you have heard someone express this concern. And then likely dismissed it.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day, and while I will not debate the merits of those individuals’ other points, I will argue that they are correct on at least one – the United States is an oligarchy.

So what is an oligarchy?

Merriam-Webster defines an oligarchy as “a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes”, or “government by the few”. Still somewhat vague, but specifically this is to mean a nation governed by a small group – that is, as we know it, the one percent. Or, the super rich.

But this is a representative republic! A democracy! How could this happen here?

Historically elections have always been decided by the flow of information, and the bias of recent information. In the 19th and early 20th century yellow journalism was all the rage. Perhaps the most infamous yellow journalist was William Randolph Hearst, who would plug whatever he felt the public wanted to hear in order to expand both his sales and influence. One of the highest rated films of all time, Citizen Kane, is based on William Randolph Hearst. Just in case you’re trying to educate yourself on the topic.

Newspapermen could sway elections by writing pro or con pieces on their candidates, and much like these days, news agencies had biases. With the advent of television, and with many journalists dedicating themselves more to integrity within their profession, we had the rise of personalities like Walter Cronkite, who were interested in the truth, and only the truth. As a result events such as The Pentagon Papers, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the Lewinsky scandal all came to light. While far from perfect, for decades the United States – and the world – benefited greatly from increased ethical journalism.

Leaders were held accountable, and facts came to light.

Then the internet came along. Suddenly anyone could comment on global affairs. Even me! Suddenly, everyone had a voice.

In theory this should have led to far more accountability. With the ability to instantly upload video, or tweet what was happening as it happened, the truth should have become more evident than ever before. Instead, the opposite has happened. People make up their own realities, then reinforce it on Facebook echo chambers. People find websites, blogs, forums, and news sites that appeal specifically to their world view. This becomes a destructive cycle. You know what you want to hear, so you find articles and sites that agree with you, then you spread those. This reinforces your own views, as well as those of similarly minded individuals.

I will not sugarcoat it – the right is far more guilty of this than the left. But the left certainly has its own websites, channels, and views.

The information you find, and what is funneled to you, particularly on social media, is easily influenced by those at the top with the resources and motivations to do so. This is not unique to the United States.

In Turkey, the AKP Party used an army of 6,000 people to influence social mediadiscussions. Russia allegedly used bots – automated programs – to help flood social media posts with news that they wished to spread which would benefit Donald Trump. The Israeli military was one of the first to make massive, successful use of social media.

This suggests that any group in power, any group of authority, has learned something the Romans learned thousands of years ago – the mob is power. Social media is the new battlefield, not the streets.

How many videos have you seen end with a blurb about “hey, if you enjoyed this be sure to like and share us on Facebook or Twitter, and be sure to subscribe!” You can’t even watch a damn video on how to hard boil an egg these days without someone telling you to share their crap all over the known world. Because I really want the world to know I need a reminder on how to hard boil an egg, or that I just watched the 10 Strongest Jedi In The Universe on YouTube.

So what’s the benefit of all of this? It has to be more tangible than just spreading a message.

It is.

From the Wikipedia page on income distribution in the United States –

“According to the Congressional Budget Office, between 1979 and 2007 incomes of the top 1% of Americans grew by an average of 275%. During the same time period, the 60% of Americans in the middle of the income scale saw their income rise by 40%. From 1992-2007 the top 400 income earners in the U.S. saw their income increase 392% and their average tax rate reduced by 37%.[14] In 2009, the average income of the top 1% was $960,000 with a minimum income of $343,927.”

If you are reading this then odds are you are not making a minimum of $343,927 and have better things to do, like laugh at that silly poor writing blog posts about how rich you are. If you are making a minimum of $343,927 then odds are guaranteed that you have a lot of powerful people vested in ensuring your voice matters more than mine.

The numbers don’t lie. The top 400 earners in the United States saw their income grow by nearly 400%, with their average tax rate reduced by 37%.

So if you’re rich, you’ve just quadrupled your income, and your tax rate dropped by over a third in the last few decades, you’re doing well. You want to maintain that. You want to keep it that way.

You’ve probably heard about Citizens United at some point. It’s that decision where corporations and political groups could spend as much as they wanted in support of either a specific candidate or idea.

Now we have a group of people with a lot of money, a lot of time – because most of them really don’t have to work a, you know, normal person job, and a government that is saying “you can spend your money however you want to influence the plebs!”

Groups did exactly that, and money started pouring in from wealthy interest groups supporting anything and everything in between. But one of the most successful of these groups has been, without a doubt, the Koch Brothers. The Koch Brothers set aside $889,000,000 in 2016 for political activism. That’s a lot of money, it can buy a lot of advertisements, and it can influence a lot of people.

Who are the Koch Bros? Captain Planet villains.

If you think global warming is a hoax, or if you think the poor one percent is being unfairly targeted by unshaven, gender fluid, racially ambiguous liberals who can’t hold a job, then odds are the Kochs have managed to influence a large amount of what you have read.

Quick point – it’s pronounced like Coke, not cock. I had to look it up years ago when I kept giggling…

Their business interests are in exploiting the environment, and that’s harder to achieve if people want to do things like ‘regulate you’ or ‘tax you’ or ‘not build a pipe over a Native American burial ground like the plot to a damn Stephen King novel‘. For the record the last one isn’t directly applicable to the Koch Brothers. Yet.

So what do they do? They buy up a bunch of advertisements, flood the airwaves, and tell you all about what will benefit them. Then they explain how, actually, if you think about it, it will help you! If that is what you hear and read – and that is what you see reinforced in your own political sphere on Facebook or Twitter – then that is what you will believe.

Do liberals do this as well? Of course. The bottom line is they’re just not as good at it. Which is both embarrassing from the standpoint of “you’re literally losing an argument where the other guy wants you to work with no minimum wage or health care” and “how are 70 year old white guys better at social

media than 20-somethings from New York and California”.

The end result is a bunch of rich people who already have a ton of money utilize social media and the news – ‘news’ – to con people into believing things that benefit them and only them. Then voters go out and vote that way, ensuring that their own representatives have little to no interest in representing them.

It’s as simple as this – if you are a House member and you get a call from a guy that can spend $10,000,000 in your district to help get you reelected, and you get a phone call from someone from your district angry that you want to gut health regulations on school lunches for that person’s kid, whose voice carries more weight? The angry parent, or the guy that can spend $10,000,000 ensuring your vote gets spun into some kind of victory?

Politicians, in many cases, will say whatever it takes to get elected. They will vote however they need to vote to try to guarantee their reelection. This is, believe it or not, the way the system was designed to work. It shouldn’t matter if your representative agrees, personally, with what they’re voting for or not. Their vote, as a representative, should be representative of the best interests of their constituents. This means that even if a member of Congress personally strongly disagreed with something, if they were worried they’d lose reelection because you – the voter – would be irate that they were, say, giving away your tax dollars to the rich, or sending your kids off to die in a war that was a waste, then they would not vote that way.

Nowadays the people they represent are still the ones that will get them reelected. It has just changed from voters to the people who can sway the voters.

So the next time you see a candidate – any candidate – arguing in favor of, or against something, ask yourself why. Ask yourself, who would benefit? Who stands to gain from this? And most importantly, ask how it will ultimately impact you?

Look at reality, look at what the end result will be, and don’t let some fancy graphics or passionate plea override your reason.