Plutocracy, Oligarchy, or Idiocracy? How About… All Three!

I’ve been biding my time since the U.S. election, watching and waiting to see what unfolds during Trump’s transition period.

Now six weeks have elapsed and several unsavory, downright creepy patterns have emerged: Trump and his team are falsely claiming to have a vast ‘popular mandate’; his Cabinet and agency-head picks are almost universally billionaires, oligarchs, and/or unqualified idiots; and Trump and his team have stolen the limelight from a near-invisible Biden and in effect ‘taken over’ long before the actual inauguration on Jan. 20.

I’ve often thought that the U.S. is more a plutocracy than a democracy, but the rise of Trump and ‘Trumpism’ over the past nine years has shown that our situation is much worse than that. Sure, we still live in a putative ‘democracy,’ but the effective power and active agency lie with the plutocrats, oligarchs… and increasingly, the fast-expanding ‘idiot class.’

Take Trump’s recent spate of nominations. Almost a third of them are billionaires or centi-millionaires, many have extensive Fox ‘News’ or finance ‘cred’ but NO experience with government, and several — such as Kash Patel, RFK, Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard — are vicious MAGA firebrands, conspiracy-theory wackos, and/or seditious dictator-lovers.

The things most of Trump’s nominees have in common are: 1) unswerving fealty to Trump and MAGA, 2) disdain for government and specifically the agencies or departments they are nominated to lead, and 3) an intense desire to ‘burn it all down’ and root out/destroy the supposed ‘deep state.’

In all my years observing American politics, I’ve never seen a more bizarre, unqualified, and frightening collection of nominees. If even half of these nominees get confirmed — as they are sure to be — the U.S. is in deep, deep shit.

Far-right ‘America haters’ are on the rise

Plutocracy — the rule of the wealthy — is harmful enough. But when it gets combined with the rule of a small group of ultra-rich men (these American oligarchs are all men) and a vast array of unqualified, super-partisan ‘yes men’ and mindless, hateful idiots… it’s safe to say that our nation is in BIG trouble.

Even further, it’s increasingly obvious that Trump’s re-election and the far right’s iron grip on the Supreme Court has emboldened all the MAGA crazies and America haters.

Wait, whaat? America haters?! Aren’t these the same people who are constantly brandishing their ‘patriotism,’ condemning liberals and Democrats as un-American ‘socialists,’ and insisting that only they can ‘make America great again’?

Well, if by ‘great’ you mean White-centric, racist, misogynist, and White-controlled, then sure, MAGA seeks to make us ‘great’ again. But if we look at the actual intentions of our Constitution and its many Amendments, the goal has been to continually increase equality, diversity, fairness, and equal justice in our nation.

The ersatz version of a ‘great America’ MAGA is promoting is not only backward, it’s also a lie. Their ‘ideal’ U.S. is NOT what our nation has strived to be, and it’s NOT the nation most of us want or believe in — or want to live in.

That’s why I call these folks ‘America haters.’ They think they’re upstanding patriots (of course!), but the reality is that they hate our ‘modern’ U.S. and the (slow) drive for greater equality and freedom for everyone.

They believe in a bygone, cruel America, but reject and wish to destroy our real, vibrant, multi-racial, more tolerant America. That’s exactly why they seek to ‘burn it all down’ and replace it with their blatantly racist, unfair, and oligarchic America.

That’s what makes them, in truth, America haters.

Photo by Rochelle Brown on Unsplash

A deadly downward spiral of oppression and corruption

When we live in a system that combines and rewards racism, misogyny, plutocracy, oligarchy, and idiocracy, we are all participants — willing or not — in a deadly downward spiral of cruelty, oppression, and widespread corruption. Each of these systemic aberrations, viewed separately, is dangerous and dysfunctional on its own. But when they are combined, they greatly amplify each other and intensify their overall effects.

And what are those intensifying effects? To name just a few, we’ve got our accelerating, massive gap between the super-rich and everyone else… and our regression back to the days when misogyny, racism, and ethnic hatreds were ‘acceptable’ (or even desired)… and the fast-increasing, seditious entanglement between Big Money, party politics, and the actions (or inaction) of our U.S. Congress… and the rapid rightward thrust of American politics and law-making.

However, the worst effects don’t always show up as obvious legal efforts or far-right legislation. No, to me the very worst effects — and they are truly horrendous — are the accelerating anger, hatred, and ugly antisocial passions that have been stirred up and liberated by Trump and his corrupt band of America haters.

Think of all the deluded, misogynistic ‘real men’ who are turning women’s frantic assertion ‘My body, my choice!’ on its head — and now insist it’s really ‘Your body, MY choice.’

Shudder.

Think of all the ‘patriots’ who are busy attacking LGBTQ+ folks, accusing them of ‘grooming’ and corrupting our children, stripping away their rights — and trying to ban any books that deal with gay sexuality or any aspects of LGBTQ+ folks’ reality.

Or actually … it’s even worse than that. They want to ban books, even classics like ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ that depict anything positive at all about a diverse, multi-racial, tolerant society.

Think of all the angry, misguided haters who use social media to spread fear, misogyny, and racism. Think of all the crazies who threaten and harass public figures for the ‘crime’ of being liberal, Democratic, or (God forbid) progressive! Think of all the death threats now directed at public officials and the spreading advocacy of ‘civil war’ in our nation.

Yes, it’s safe to say that we are fully immersed, now, in deep shit. And our blossoming oligarchy/idiocracy (plutocracy was already well-established) is sure to make matters far worse.

We don’t need ‘civil war,’ we need a true revolution

How can ‘we the people’ reclaim our power and turn this situation around? In the short term, it looks like… we can’t. For we ourselves, through our inaction, blindness, and complicity with all these trends, have allowed this craziness to fester and grow. More, we have encouraged (either passively or actively) these vicious trends to spread and get progressively crazier and more UNdemocratic.

What will it take for ‘we the people’ to even start rectifying this situation? I think a lot more of us — many more — will need to ‘wake up’ to what is really happening in our country, and get angry and disgusted enough to rise up against our oppressors. We would need to rise up en masse against the plutocrats, oligarchs, and their burgeoning minions of ‘useful idiots.’

There would have to be a full-scale revolution in this nation — and we may have just gotten a foretaste of what’s coming in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The alleged murderer, Luigi Mangione, has been turned into a folk hero on the Internet, and many Americans are ‘all in’ on offing corporate CEOs.

Wow. I’m not sure this will ever ‘solve’ anything, and I certainly don’t support cold-blooded murder — but I also don’t support cold-blooded corporate greed, dangerous denial of health care, outrageous CEO pay packages, and the increasing crappiness of goods and services in America (much of which is directly due to corporate ‘efficiency’ and layoffs).

As a well-known film title put it, “Something’s Gotta Give.” The current social, economic, and political organization of the United States isn’t working for the vast majority of our citizens. We’re faced with increasingly restrictive and oppressive minority rule — and this ugly, devious minority consists mainly of the ultra-rich, their lobbyists, their toadies and obedient servants in Congress, and their legions of ‘useful idiots’ who have drunk the MAGA/oligarch Kool-Aid.

Our current system is NOT working for most of us, and the only thing yet to be determined is this: how long will it take for Americans to get SO fed up and angry that they rise up and do something about it… and really ‘take back our country’?

—

This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

***

You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:

Escape the Act Like a Man Box

What We Talk About When We Talk About Men

Why I Don’t Want to Talk About Race

The First Myth of the Patriarchy: The Acorn on the Pillow

—

Photo credit: iStock.com