Plutocracy.The real power behind the throne? Donald Regan (not President Ronald Reagan) telling then President Ronald Reagan to “Speed it up” during a speech. Who in the hell tells the President to speed it up? The real power that’s who. He was the Treasury Secretary and former head of Bank of America Merril Lynch
(image from What IF EVERYTHING you know is wrong)
What is a Plutocracy? Essentially in crayon it breaks down like this:
The wealthy rule the roost through control of politics, money and policy. So what’s new there you might ask. Well just the idea of democracy that’s all. Even more so in the U.S. and thing called the Constitution.
The Western Democracies have essentially been Plutocracies for a long time and its only been a relatively short time that regular folks have had a say and the elite don’t like that and are trying to move back the clock. They want it to go back to feudalism and having regular folks be the surfs ( ie peasants). The thinking is already in place with employers taking out life insurance policies on their employees called “dead peasant insurance“, just goes to show you what these companies think of you.
A quick little excerpt from Wikipedia gives us a break down of voting rights and when people got them.
* Abolition of property qualifications for white men, 1812-1860 — see: Jacksonian democracy
* Non-white men, 1870 — see: Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
* Women, 1920 — see: Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
* Native Americans, 1924 — see:[4]
* Residents of the District of Columbia for US Presidential Elections, 1961 — see: Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution
* Poor, 1964 — see: Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, prohibiting imposition of poll tax in Federal elections
* Racial minorities in certain states, 1965 — see Voting Rights Act
* Adults between 18 and 21, 1971 — see: Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution
* United States Military and Uniformed Services, Merchant Marine, other Citizens overseas, living on bases in the US, abroad, or aboard ship, 1986 — see: Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act[5]
As we can see not everyone is/was equal in terms of voting or having a say.
Its become important that we maintain the illusion of having a say and it would seem that Citigroup also agrees this is the case from a memo dated Oct.16th 2005.
Noam Chomsky sums up the American Plutocracy pretty well in Manufacturing Consent. Now before someone says he’s a left wing “gate keeper” realize that all of us bloggers, show hosts, web servers, etc are “gate keepers” in our own right. We filter what we think is important in our own views and try to get information to our viewers/audience/peers that we think they may find of interest or importance. I don’t think Noam Chomsky is any different in this respect. Its by looking at all angles and opinions that we draw our own conclusions. That being said feel free to view one man’s opinion below. In this matter I agree with many but not all of Noam Chomsky’s views in this video:
http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.com/2010/08/noam-chomsky-on-manufacturing-consent.html
When taking a look at most politicians regardless of political stripes you need to ask yourself what did “Candidate A” do for a living before they went into politics. There is a damned good chance that is how they will see things through the lens of their upbringing, experience and values. Chances are if Candidate A came from an Ivy League family, worked as a corporate CEO and never had to pay a mortgage or a loan then they just dont understand working people. Is it their fault really? Maybe, maybe not but how can you expect them to understand anyone outside of their own social circles? Empathy? Again many elites have a value system completely alien to most so called average people. This is why politicians in our plutocratic system keep making decisions that favor their friends and families (ie corporations and elites) and generally have little to no regard for “regular folks”.
In education barriers are put up to “keep the masses” down just in pricing alone. Most that are able to scrimp and save wind up becoming debt slaves just to pay for an accreditation, really just a piece of paper from a “recognized” university or college. This ensures the advancement of the plutocracy but going along with a debt based currency, credit schemes, moving jobs overseas and tax payers bailing out the casinos for the plutocrats otherwise known as Wall Street, really puts a clamp on any upstarts thinking of crashing the party.
The war against the middle class is just another tool to ensure the rule of the Plutocracy. In history the threat to the “Powers That Be” has ALWAYS arisen from the middle class. There is no such thing as a peasants revolt in it’s truest sense ( if Im wrong on this feel free to let me know but I doubt I will have any serious takers on this one). Thus is why the elites are doing what they can to destroy the so called middle class in order to circumvent any threats to their power from this quarter. When “they” have everyone more worried about food in their bellies and a roof over their heads that is when the plutocracy has unchallenged control.
The movements of the 1960’s almost had it made but got a few crumbs and a few bucks and settled back just at the cusp of true equality for all. The answer isn’t in any of the isms either, we’ve been there and done that. The Constitution should anyone actually choose to follow it has all of the safe guards necessary to keep a free and equal society. Unions also need to pick up the slack and stop giving away all of the gains made between the 1920’s to 1950’s. Problem being with unions is they got sucked into the political game and started taking sides and backing political parties ( and getting sucked into the money game) when they should have remained apolitical , concentrating their efforts for equality, safety standards and fair wages. Too many of the union leadership started to fashion themselves on the politician model forgetting their pasts as working people and getting corrupted by the professional politicians they started hobnobbing with. -Lay down with dogs and your going to get fleas.
Bread and circuses was the order of the day in the Roman times and not much has changed… or has it. The information age as we like to think is here but it would seem that even though we have the methods of instant communication across the world most would use this ability for downloading distractions such as sports, porn and other escapist entertainment. Maybe the daunting task of taking ownership, “waking up” and taking control back is too much for most? Ive heard this from many of the “political research” community, speaking of “sheeple” and the like and it can sometimes seem like an impossible task.
Just in checking around on the net I found this pretty neat graph on plutocracy with dates and commentary by date that I feel is pretty illustrative for the purposes of this blog.
However we have to keep trying to wake up others and it WILL be an UPHILL battle but anything worth achieving is not going to be easy. It’s all about building a critical mass, reaching just the right amount of people to tip the scales and create movement of enough folks demanding justice and equality. This very thing is happening already as corporate media is dying and “the system” is being exposed for all its rot. Have hope folks it will get better but it wont happen by itself we have to get off our asses and make it happen. Your rights aren’t given to you, you have to take them. -EvS
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