Support Your Local Oligarch!
America’s modern day oligarchs got their start after JFK was murdered. The health of America’s citizenry has been in decline ever since. The once-thriving American Dream, created as a result of post World War Two Roosevelt-Wallace policies, has been utterly destroyed.
Military-Industrial Complex & Drug War
After sabotaging LBJ’s Paris Peace Talks, Nixon-Agnew, by expanding the Vietnam War, beefed up America’s military-industrial complex. They also spawned a widening clamp-down on domestic civil liberties largely fueled by The Drug War which also opened doors for underground drug and weapons smuggling routes to help keep dictatorial Third World nations in check. Significantly, they changed the landscape of American politics by fine-tuning The Southern Strategy and using racial politics to maintain power.
Why did the then Democratic-controlled Congress allow this to happen?
What actually did stop Nixon’s plan for oligarchy was the mistake of Watergate. Carter-Mondale, like dutiful back-up quarterbacks, reported for mop-up duty and managed to clean house for one presidential term. But then Reagan-Bush sabotaged Carter’s negotiations to free the American hostages after the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and, bingo, the GOPwingers (best friends of oligarchy) were back in power.
Privatization, Tax-Cuts & Destruction of Unions
I remember, before Reagan-Bush, nearly every American community of around 25,000 citizens or more had a municipally-owned hospital. Reagan-Bush went on to actually accomplish what Nixon-Agnew set out to do before the Watergate interruption.
Their 12 years of GOPwinger presidency saw the rise of privatized Hospital Corporation of America coupled to a near total decimation of municipally-owned hospitals. Also destroyed were America’s labor unions, obscene tax-cuts for the wealthy called Trickle-Down were enacted and Americans began seeing exorbitant rises in the cost of housing. Corporate deregulation became the path to the future.
Why did the then Democratic-controlled Congress allow this to happen?
Democrats Became Republicans
Sickened by 12 years of Reagan-Bush, Clinton-Gore assumed power supposedly as back-up quarterbacks. But this time they didn’t mop up and clean house. Instead, like the GOPwingers before them, they carried on with the original plan of oligarchy. They repealed Glass-Steagall giving Big Banking a free ride to speculate, and the FCC was deregulated to enable media monopolization. The military industrial complex, now beefier than ever what with NATO, took on main media as a partner.
The worst part about this article is we haven’t even gotten to Trump yet!
Greedy Millennial Politics
Much like former CIA director George H.W. Bush came on as VP to run Reagan’s presidency, Dick Cheney came on as VP to run George W. Bush’s presidency. All of the policies accentuated above were finally solidified except Bush-Cheney gave us a re-taste of Nixon by expanding wars all throughout the Middle East, eventually spilling into the Stan Region and Northern Africa.
Not only were sovereign nations overthrown and conditions of war sanitized — millions of innocent people were killed, injured and displaced from their homes — but torture became a part of US policy, this while the US gave the finger and lied to the United Nations, ignored the creation of the world international court and began breaking international treaties.
All of this happened while America expanded its military presence into 900 locations around the world and began doing corporate and military business with three-quarters of the world’s dictatorships while hammering away, from a public relations point of view, on so-called freedom and democracy. Meanwhile, the labor from those nations gets used slave-like in order to extract oil, uranium, diamonds, gold, silver, copper, tin, timber, rubber, etc. for US corporate use.
Nice, huh!
The string Bush and Clinton presidencies spread seeds of war; fed the already-wealthy with tax cuts; deregulated policy to grease big oil, big banking, big pharma/health, big agri; enabled offshore tax havens; exported good jobs; eliminated pensions; made bankruptcy more difficult for poor folk; put costs of housing out of reach; and with each generation crashed the US economy affecting the poor and middle class.
Flash to Barack Obama who, after the disgust of Bush-Cheney, came into the presidency for the Democrats, again like a back-up quarterback. Once in office, he governed for Team Oligarchy!
Americans wanted Single-Payer Universal Health Care — like every other industrialized democracy on the planet — but not enough Democrats got on board. Obama’s administration, with a veto-proof Congress, could have provided health care for all. Instead we got a version of Romney Care, with no relief from prescription drug companies.
Meanwhile, Democratically-controlled California — the 5th largest economy in the world — with a Democrat as governor and a veto-proof Democratic legislature saw its last health care for all bill get tabled in the legislature. It used to be, pre-JFK, that Democrats were for people and Republicans were for profits. Not anymore!
If any issue clearly demonstrates America functions as a duopoly — good cop (D) and bad cop (R) — on behalf of the oligarchy (America’s Oligarch Enrichment Project) it is the issue of health care.
Today’s Democrats and Republicans are only different — and main corporate media does its best to accentuate this — on issues like god, guns and gays and, of course, now the almighty wall politics of Trump-Pence.
Regarding Trump? There is too much that is horrible to write about him. I’ll simply state that his administration is worse than all previous presidential administrations rolled into one! He is a cruel, disgusting and dangerous president who could care less about the people. He is unhealthy for children and other living things, and his policy is very much in keeping with the Princeton Study on Oligarchy (2014).
The Only Shining Light
While America became a flawed democracy, slipped into becoming a Banana Republic and the quality of its elections declined, there was one politician, Bernie Sanders, who perpetually warned against everything that was going to happen before it happened. Check excerpts from his speeches over the past 30 years:
Indeed, the best way to enslave people is to make the people you wish to enslave actually think they are free — thank you US monopolized media! This is precisely what has happened with America! Please stop voting for centrist and right-wing candidates!
As a closing note, most folks do not realize that had Hillary Clinton won the presidency in 2016 and had she become re-elected in 2020, America would have seen a Bush or a Clinton at the top of 10 of 11 presidential administrations. This, in part, is why Trump won — it had nothing to do with the Russians! The American electorate still wants and “outsider,” and the only proven “outsider” is Bernie Sanders!
