It's been an open oligarchy since Citizen's United. Seems like a lot of people are just now seeing the effects of what that decision allowed. Our Supreme Court was already corrupt, but because they at least maintained an air of dignity, people just looked past the death of our democracy.
this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2025
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You're thinking of Kleptocracy, where politicians are mainly worried about extracting wealth from the country. Oligarchy has to do with class mobility and who is allowed to run for office. (Namely a financial and political class of "elites") Citizen's United kick started another era of politicians working to grab as much money as possible for their donors.
I would argue that Citizen's United effectively made it impossible for non-elites to meaningfully effect the US political process, forcing us down a road where only those who can raise the most money are considered eligible for political office.
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Yes.
Really and truly, yes.
When Eisenhower warned of Military Industrial complex, US was already an oligarchy, and the warning was the declaration of defeat.
JFK assassination was deep state stuff, followed by more pandering to oligarchy with Regan. Media was always in charge of who won elections. That the veil of pretense for liberalism is removed doesn't change the nature of US empire, and its autocracy over meaningful rulership. Trump simultaneously threatens the US empire's covert colonization of world, while threatening to subjugate world even harder. Naked Oligarchy, and explicit anti-liberalism as treason, is a hallmark of incoming rulership through.
Agreeing with this individual. The US has been an oligarchy for a while and late President Carter said it himself “It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and U.S. senators and congress members. So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election’s over. … The incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody’s who’s already in Congress has a lot more to sell to an avid contributor than somebody who’s just a challenger.”
True. We've had J. Paul Getty, JP Morgan, Wm. Randolph Hearst, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Howard Hughes, Aristotle Onassis up to George Soros and Elon Musk. Since long before Citizen Kane and actually since the founding of the nation, it has been wealthy families, companies and individuals wielding the actual power in the nation and, honestly, across the world. It's not like millionaires from billionaire families have never been elected senator or president before.
The people that are called "oligarchs" in the news and across the internet, though, are amateurs, puppets or patsies. Especially, the new Russian, Chinese oligarchs. The real powers don't hold office and they try to keep their names out of the news.
It has been an oligarchy for a long time. This has been studied and proven.
There was a study from Princeton showing that no major policy has aligned with public opinion since the civil rights era.
There is no measurable way that our government has reflected the will of the majority in over 50 years.
Someone also did the other side where they tied policy- and law-making to benefiting the ultra rich. I do not recall source so I can’t provide that, but I did read the paper at one time a few years ago. It was legit.
Link
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There are political cartoons from over a century ago where they're talking about how much of an oligarchy it is. Look at this one: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e5/The_Bosses_of_the_Senate_by_Joseph_Keppler.jpg/1920px-The_Bosses_of_the_Senate_by_Joseph_Keppler.jpg
Yes.
Always has been. They're simply not hiding it any more.
We've been an oligarchy since the Reagan years.
Astronaut Pistol Astronaut.
Can someone explain this comment? I can ask dumb questions here right?
"Wait, it's an oligarchy?"
"Always has been."
The usa Is a fascist regime. Plutocracy and oligarchy are normal Components of fascism.
Lol this post made me appreciate Lemmy so much.
There was a question on dead-it asking something about why the American middle class seemed to suffer so much since the mid20th century and it was full of obvious bots pointing to the positive but temporary effects of WW2. It took quite some scrolling before I saw any mention of the stagnation of real wages since then.
According to Jimmy Carter it has beensince 2015:
The USA has always and forever represented the will of the Bourgeoisie. The issue we are seeing now is further and further separation between the Proletariat and a smaller and smaller concentration of the Bourgeoisie due to Capitalism's centralizing nature. The silver lining is that this same centralizing process makes Socialism even easier to implement once the Proletariat siezes control, as these large intricate networks have already developed their own infrastructure for planning that can be folded into the Public Sector, the hard part is getting over that threshold of power.
It always was
I sorta disagree in the context of having a middle class. We did and still do have our oligarchs, we had our Gilded Age which I would definitely call an oligarchy that lasted into the early 1900s with the Rail, Steel, and Oil barons to name a few. But the middle class exploded in the post-war years, unions became powerful, corporations and the rich were brought somewhat to heel with consumer and worker protections, along with high taxes that kept the rich from taking an even bigger chunk of the pie. Yeah, the rich still did rich people stuff, but they tended to do it more on the DL.
Now? We’re literally at the point where people are so absurdly rich they can have private space programs, dump hundreds of thousands into political campaigns, crush unions, invite themselves into the government, and have fuck you money. Literally, Musk telling people to fuck themselves.
So IMO yeah, the US is an full-on oligarchy again after a brief semi-respite in the middle to later parts of the 20th century, and it’s a shameless and open one.
the US is an full-on oligarchy again after a brief semi-respite in the middle to later parts of the 20th century
It went from oligarchy that provided a certain minimum quality of life to workers into one that is intentionally as extractive as possible. Once women entered the work force and effectively doubled the labor pool, capitalists had a lot more leverage.
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Oligarchy, kakistocracy, kleptocracy take your pick.
LoL! Just because the Richest Man on Earth bought Our Presidency and anytime you kill a Rich Person it's considered an Act of Terrorism DOESNT make us an OLIGARCHY!
Wut. When was the US not an oligarchy? Give me a year.
1200 BCE
Technically correct
1908 and 1940.
During this time populist policies that disrupted the owners were implemented and being implemented. As such, it is clear they weren't in control of the country. Thus, it was not an oligarchy.
These are the easiest examples. Anyone who thinks it was always an oligarchy is simplifying history. Anyone who disputes that is a liar or an idiot.
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: Oh, HELL yes.
Americans foundation was built as an oligarchy.
The land of the free enslaved it's inhabitants.
Yes, it has
The people saying "always has been" have really short memories or've forgotten about the Roosevelt administrations.
There is a decent argument to be made that the USA is a de-facto oligarchy. However, it's a de-jure liberal democracy and Constitutional Republic for the time being.
Fdr was the exception to the rule. He pushed against the fascist oligarchs to prevent violent uprising of the proletariat.
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