As The Year Winds Down

As the year winds down, it is hard not to feel dispirited. With our domestic federal politics in disarray, and, of course, the United States' devolution well underway, with oligarchy brazenly flaunted, it is difficult to believe better times await us.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez succinctly addresses the latter:

Unfortunately, the traditional bulwarks of democracy are also rapidly fading, engaging in the very thing American historian Timothy Snyder has warned us against: anticipatory obedience. The thirst to appease Trump seems insatiable.

Tech chief executives, media organisations and foreign leaders are seeking the president-elect’s favor through donations, self-censorship and appeasement. Analysts say the surrender is driven by a combination of greed, fear of Trump’s unfettered power and a belief that resistance is futile.

In Star Trek: the Next Generation, the Borg were a hybrid species that subsumed into their collective various cultures and civilizations, with the warning that resistance was futile. And yet in that universe, resistance, and ultimately victory, prevailed. The real world, however, seems to be doing the opposite with Trump.

“Part of the shock of the Trump win is how quickly and how many people in various areas, from the media to politicians, are acquiescing in advance,” said Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill. “People are resigning themselves to self-preservation over the good of maintaining a free and fair democracy and resisting Trump.”

Despite his criminal, civil and moral record, Trump is being feted everywhere.

Steve Schmidt, a political strategist and former campaign operative for George W Bush and John McCain, said: “He’s entering office is the most powerful president in American history. He is an American Caesar, unrestrained. Trump has made a threat and said, I’m coming after people, and he’s appointed people that will do what he wants without him having to tell them to do it.”

A parade of chief executives have travelled to Mar-a-Lago to bend the knee to Trump. Along with Meta chief executive Zuckerberg, Apple’s Tim Cook, Google’s Sundar Pichai and Sergey Brin and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos made the pilgrimage. Meta, Amazon, Uber and Open AI chief Sam Altman are all reportedly donating $1m to the fund for the inauguration on 20 January.

Bezos, a onetime critic of Trump’s rhetoric, now says he is “optimistic” about Trump’s second term while also endorsing his plans to cut regulations. As owner of the Washington Post newspaper, Bezos killed an endorsement of Harris during the presidential election. The Post is struggling to find a new executive editor amid fears it will no longer live up to the “Democracy dies in darkness” slogan it championed during Trump’s first term.

The hosts of MSNBC’s Morning Joe show, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, visited Mar-a-Lago in November despite previously eviscerating his fascist rhetoric. Scarborough defended the meeting, arguing that any journalist would take an opportunity to meet the president-elect but he and Brzezinski were being penalised for being “transparent” about it.

This proliferation of knee-bending is bad for the body politic and can only embolden the president-elect. 

Setmayer, who now runs the Seneca Project political action committee, commented: “The way some in the mainstream media have already decided that acquiescence is their way of self-preservation not only is naive but dangerous because without that we don’t have an informed citizenry. It’s supposed to be without fear or favor and media is acting out of fear. And by way of acting out of fear, they are giving Trump the favor that he wants.”

There is much, much more in The Guardian article that I have excerpted here, and I hope you will have the time to read it. There are at least two inferences to be drawn from the current sycophantic demonstrations of fealty toward Trump. One is that democracy is being debased to the degree that it will soon be unrecognizable. Another, and this is more disturbing in its own way, is how quickly our species can adjust/pervert our concept of what is right and just. In the current rush to normalize Trump, we are casting aside traditional concepts of morality, fairness and justice, something history amply teaches us will lead to dire consequences for all.

Guest Post: The Mound Of Sound On Oligarchy

I am pleased to present to you this second guest post by the Mound of Sound, a.k.a. The Disaffected Lib:

When the "Greatest Democracy on Earth" closes up shop and re-opens as an oligarchy every other supposed democracy, including our own, better sit up and take notice.

The United States of America has proven that the ballot box does not guarantee the health or even the survival of democracy. Citizens can vote to their hearts' content and it doesn't matter if economic and political power resides elsewhere.

Remember that old joke about the Golden Rule? He who has the gold, rules. That's not a joke any longer. It's called "political capture", the process by which political power is taken from the electorate and vested in a group of oligarchs who, through their influence over legislators, call the shots.

It's pretty dismal when you have to realize that whether you vote or how you vote doesn't matter. The day after the election those individuals that have just been 'hired' by your vote will go to work for someone else. Thank you very much. See you in four years or six years or - well, whatever. And, remember, don't call us, we'll call you.

Thanks to a study from Princeton, we now have confirmation that the United States has transformed from democracy to oligarchy. Many of us knew it at a gut level but the study meticulously documents what we suspected. Now, here's the thing. America remains notionally a democracy, one citizen - one vote sort of thing. It has a constitution and bill of rights that reflect democracy, not some other form of political organization. What that means is that the rise of oligarchy is a subversion of democracy and powerful, prima facie evidence of a thoroughly corrupted political process. It reeks of wholesale corruption and, given its once lofty perch atop Mount Democracy, it proclaims America one of the most corrupted states on the planet.

The massive and steadily widening gap between rich and poor in America is no accident. Nor is it the natural outcome of merit-based or market forces. It is the bastard child of the incestuous bedding of the oligarchs and the political classes. Government that pledges to serve the people instead serves them up on a legislative platter to its real masters.

Now we learn, via Paul Krugman and Bill Moyers, that America's oligarchy is in the process of the next stage of its ascendancy, the establishment of a perpetual, inheritance-based aristocracy.