Getting Ready For The Oligarchy!

More than half my life ago, I read Walter Karp's Indispensable Enemies. Regarding American politics, it is one of the three most influential on my own thinking.

For forty years I have been an enthusiastic fan and promoter of the works of the great Walter Karp. Karp was a masterful prose writer and political analyst, a true Jeffersonian republican and foe of the plutocratic oligarchy which has dominated our nation-state since its inception. In such uncompromising works as Indispensable Enemies: The Politics of Misrule, The Politics of War: The Story of Two Wars Which Altered Forever the Political Life of the American Republic, Liberty Under Siege: American Politics 1976-1988, and Buried Alive: Essays on Our Endangered Republic, Karp demonstrated his unparalleled ability to accurately see and cogently describe the raw essence of political power. His works are therefore essential to understanding power elite analysis. Nicholas Strakon has written a powerful, penetrating critique of Karp’s Indispensable Enemies, which is also deeply appreciative of his path-breaking analytical genius, describing Karp as “a political Galileo and Linnaeus.” Strakon’s essay also draws upon such necessary works as Murray N. Rothbard’s “Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy,” G. William Domhoff’s The Powers That Be, James Burnham’s The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom, and Walter E. Grinder and John Hagel III, “Toward a Theory of State Capitalism: Ultimate Decision-Making and Class Structure.” In these heated days of campaign 2012, with machinations, manipulations, and egregious frauds being inflicted upon Ron Paul’s noble candidacy, a quick review of Politics 101 via Walter Karp and power elite analysis is called for by all LRC readers.

Charles Burris, Politics 101: Walter Karp and Power Elite Analysis (2012)

I found similar ideas later in Gore Vidal's essays that kept Karp in my mind.

“There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party … and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt — until recently … and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties.”

The State of the Union (1975)

Well, that was then, and we know what Mr. Zimmerman said about times changing.

 

I think the Republicans began slipping away from oligarchic cooperation with the Democrats decades ago. Maybe when they signed on with Jerry Falwell, probably by the time George W. Bush came along, but certainly with the rise of Donald J. Trump. There is a qualitative difference between the new oligarchs who have taken over our American government. They have no public ethos. Instead, our billionaires are sociopaths. The Republican Party became a party of sociopaths.

 From The Bulwark: One Cheer for Oligarchy:

THESE ARE EXACTLY THE CHARACTERISTICS our current oligarchs lack. Beyond the avarice and narcissism that define Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who have no sense of virtue whatsoever, it has been Vivek Ramaswamy who has best illustrated the gulf between the modern oligarchs’ idea of merit and that of Madison and the Founders. In his infamous December 26 screed about pop-culture America, Ramaswamy champions the merit of STEM students. To him the purpose of education appears to be the efficient production of math whizzes and software engineers, not the formation of citizens. To be sure, America needs the best scientific minds it can find. But those talents are insufficient to wise government.

“Is there no virtue among us?” asked Madison. “If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. . . . To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.” We are about to find out whether Madison had it right.

And from The Guardian, Arwa Mahdawi's Will flattery get you everywhere with Donald Trump? Billionaires are determined to find out:

Of course, this isn’t (all) Trump’s doing: his second term is the symptom of a broken system, not its cause. The US has been for sale to the highest bidder for a very long time. Power has been consolidating into an ever-smaller set of hands for decades – a process catalysed by Citizens United: the 2010 supreme court decision that paved the way for almost unlimited amounts of money in politics.

What’s different now, however, is how shamelessly transactional Trump is. If there’s a silver lining to the current moment perhaps it’s the transparency of it all. The US has long thought itself exceptional; a beacon of democracy completely incomparable to the likes of oligarchic Russia. Trump’s crass modus operandi makes this illusion of American exceptionalism harder to maintain. That’s a good thing: you can’t change what you don’t acknowledge. And it’s time to acknowledge that democracy doesn’t just die in darkness. It’s been dying for years now, in plain sight.

We need to get ready for their rule.

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