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Trump-Sanders Signal an Oligarchy on the Brink of Collapse
- Kurtz79 10y agoI find somewhat hilarious that the supposed harbingers of this "collapse" are staunch members of said "oligarchy" (an elitist billionaire and a career politician). Revolutions are not as they once were...
- majewsky 10y agoOf course they're coming from within the oligarchy. How is an "outsider" going to succeed, when you need massive campaign funding to even make an impression in the primaries? We might see a more diverse background in revolution leaders if people take it one step further and ignore the democratic process.
- cm2187 10y agoI think even within the oligarchy there are people who are not amused to see the wife of a former president competing with the son and brother of two other former presidents. You don't have to be out to dislike this system.
- raverbashing 10y ago> competing with the son and brother of two other former presidents Sorry, who are those?
- cm2187 10y agoNot sure if your question is rhetorical, I am assuming not. Bush & Bush junior.
- raverbashing 10y agoAh no, it wasn't rhetorical. Are you referring to the current election? I only see Jeb Bush in the list
- cm2187 10y agoIsn't he the son and brother of two former presidents? There is a level of endogamy in american politics which is spectacular, even by european standards.
- raverbashing 10y agoYes, but I read it as referring to 2 people, sorry
- jcranmer 10y agoAbout a year ago, I came across an article of political dynasties in US politics. The Bushes came in at #7. The Clintons didn't make the list (the requirement for being considered a dynasty was three generations). The top 10, in descending order, were Kennedy, Roosevelt, Rockefeller, Harrison, Frelinghuysen, Adams, Bush, Breckingridge, Taft, Bayard. Source: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2015/0322/America-s-top-10-political-families http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2015/0322/America-s-to...
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- majewsky 10y agoThat wasn't my point. I'm not saying that all oligarchs are in line with current policy. In fact, quite the opposite: Trump is clearly an oligarch, and Sanders is at least upper class.
- return0 10y agoObama was an "outsider". It's been a while since campaigns are not won by just money. My theory is the rich elites don't want to wield their power through governments anymore.
- cheez 10y agoObama raised more than any president in history from what I understand.
- bko 10y agoHe was such an overwhelming favorite by the end which is what I believe fueled his donations. No point in funding a loser.
- threeseed 10y agoAlso was the Big Data candidate: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/17/opinion/beware-the-big-data-campaign.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/17/opinion/beware-the-big-dat...
- return0 10y agoNot by elite donors though. As I understand, it was donations from a very large user base: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_presidential_campaign,_2008 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_presidential_camp... The campaign raised much of its cash in small donations over the internet, with about half of its intake coming in increments of less than $200.[53] Both major party campaigns screened regularly for patterns of abuse and returned or rejected donations in excess of legal limits, from overseas, from untraceable addresses, or from fraudulent names and his second campaign had 3 times larger user base.
- hodwik 10y ago> "hilarious that the supposed harbingers of this "collapse" are staunch members" You must not be very well versed in history then. That's pretty much where it always comes from.
- jessaustin 10y agoMarie Antoinette would disagree, if she could only find her head... Certainly many so-called "revolutions" are really just one group of elites fighting another, but "always" is just wrong. Do you think ISIS was formed by elites?
- dragonwriter 10y ago> Marie Antoinette would disagree, if she could only find her head... Not really, the Jacobins that were the main leaders of the French Revolution were elite politicians both from the formal aristocracy and the high ranks of the mercantile/intellectual class.
- PhantomGremlin 10y agoDo you think ISIS was formed by elites? I have absolutely no idea. But I'd venture a wild guess and say there are probably a lot of Ba'ath Party people and ex-Saddam Hussein cronies running ISIS behind the scenes. Those people used to be "elites" back when Saddam ruled.
- sqldba 10y agoBernie is a career politician trying to do the right thing though.
- threeseed 10y agoSorry but Bernie can be quite the hypocrite. He's taken his fair share in corporate and special interest money e.g. agriculture, has a notable record of pork barreling for his home state, is one of the few candidates in recent history not to release a reasonable number of tax returns and his campaign has a very concerning amount of illegal donations. Every candidate is incredibly weak and flawed this election including Bernie.
- awesomerobot 10y agoTrying to do what his limited view of the right thing is. There's a lot of good stuff there, but a blanket "make everything better for everyone" ignores a lot of the nuanced problems of inequality. For example: free healthcare and college — great, that's what a civilized country should have... but while that reduces an economic burden on the poor, it also keeps dollars in the pockets of the rich and our tax system is so broken that it doesn't necessarily mean you can recover that money. While much less appealing, Clinton's criticisms of Sanders for giving free college to the rich seems fundamentally rooted in the reality that while yes, eventually al“l of these things should be public services — but in the immediacy it's not really helpful to help everyone out the same amount because that's keeping everyone in the same place.
- ordbajsare 10y agoHe's an SOCIALIST!!! That is not the "right" thing ! It's the opposite!!! Hows Venezuela working out?
- dragonwriter 10y agoActually, most revolutions are led by disaffected members of the elites that rally the masses, not by the downtrodden masses. There are exceptions, of course, but generally its the elites that have the material resources, the leisure, and the social networks to plan and mobilize revolutionary forces.
- jessaustin 10y ago1980-2000s: Reagan removes the Fairness Doctrine... TIL Rush Limbaugh will cause the end of the world. Hilarious.
- cmdrfred 10y ago> ...and stops enforcing antitrust laws; Economic elites argue we need to modernize finance by getting rid of Glass-Steagall; Tax rates on the wealthy plummet while infrastructure crumbles; The Supreme Court supports Citizens United and guts the Voting Rights Act; Gerrymandering increases. In context.
- ideonexus 10y agoNot the end of the world, but I do see him historically as the beginning of the end for the Republican Party. I was in college when I first heard of Rush Limbaugh. Before him, Republicans were these very stuffy folks like William Buckley Jr, who came to our campus and bored many to tears with highly-intellectual and logical arguments that were extremely challenging and generated a great deal of cognitive dissonance for me. Republicans were considered the intellectual party back in those days. Then Limbaugh came along, never referencing anything he said or wrote, constantly contradicting himself and making offensive cracks like calling a 12-year-old Chelsea Clinton the White House dog. My young Republican friends loved him, chanted slogans like "Rush is Right!" and labeled themselves "dittoheads." Anyone who pointed out Limbaugh's contradictory logic or took issue with his offensive statements was dismissed as being "politically correct." Flash forward 25 years and Limbaugh is now considered tame in comparison to Coulter, Savage, and some of the other voices that have followed in his footsteps. I was sad to hear that William Buckley, who I still admire intellectually even if many of his positions are anathema to me, was largely forgotten and ignored in his final years. Trump's nomination would not be possible without Limbaugh laying the groundwork for him two and a half decades ago. Some on the left are gloating about it, but it frightens me. America needs a plurality of voices debating issues and policy logically in order to thrive. We can't let it become one party of power on the left and an easily demonized opposition party on the right, but with the Republican party falling apart... that's the way it seems to be going. *Edited for grammar.
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- FLUX-YOU 10y agoIt's not the zombie apocalypse we wanted, but at least the bunker still works.
- coldcode 10y agoLike in the movies, I imagine the next chapter is "The Oligarchy Strikes Back".
- lr4444lr 10y agoWell, that headline is click bait if I ever saw it...
- Kinnard 10y agoI disagree, I think it's both true and succinct.
- tcoppi 10y agoThis article is massive clickbait, but I'll comment anyway. Trump and Sanders are manifestations of a long-term trend that has been building at least since the 2008 Financial Crisis. People are dissatisfied with the options they are presented politically, and economic participation is at historically low levels. We have never been more prosperous, but at the same time that prosperity and wealth gains are not only not very evenly distributed(they never really were), but large swaths of society are completely left out of them. In the early half of the century, it was a democratizing effect that everyone was drinking a 10c glass of Coke. This is just one example, you can also see it with iPhoneistas vs cheap Android phones, etc. etc. Now the hip drinks are craft beers and fine wines, and a former factory worker forced to work menial part time jobs is looked down upon for drinking what he can afford, Bud lite and coke. There are major class shiftings and reorganizations going on, and people living in and near large prosperous cities have largely been immune and isolated from it. We dismiss and ignore their rise at our own peril.
- chao- 10y ago>Now the hip drinks are craft beers and fine wines, and a former factory worker forced to work menial part time jobs is looked down upon for drinking what he can afford, Bud lite and coke. Two related articles that may inform your discussions of this topic: http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalism http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberali... http://www.stirjournal.com/2016/04/01/i-know-why-poor-whites-chant-trump-trump-trump/ http://www.stirjournal.com/2016/04/01/i-know-why-poor-whites... For context, and lest anyone think I'm taking a cheap shot at liberalism or progressivism, I definitely see myself in the first article. Particularly in my teens and early twenties, I was about as smug as they came. Then I went meta-smug by posing as an angry libertarian, and was utterly insufferable. These days, I think and feel much the same, I just don't go out of my way to socially advertise it (or I put more effort into not making others feel small?). >There are major class shiftings and reorganizations going on, and people living in and near large prosperous cities have largely been immune and isolated from it. One place a prosperous urbanite might bump into this shift is when a city winds up with a commuter police force due in part to high rent.
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- sickbeard 10y agoHow is it going to collapse when they will pretty much do the exact same thing the previous governments did?
- Kinnard 10y ago>"What we’re now facing is a combination of: 1) people who still believe; and 2) people who doubt, but: a) would have to sacrifice their livelihood to act on it; or, b) are willing to leave the system but don’t necessarily know what comes next." We're approaching a tipping point where one of these groups is bigger than all the others . . .
- PaulHoule 10y agoTo be fair, the "New Deal" regime was perceived to be failing circa 1970. For instance, the New Deal left racism intact in the South, there was the Vietnam war, the "Spirit of '68", high inflation, a huge expansion of regulations leading to more problems (for instance the 1974 model year of automobiles were awful because they had to satisfy stricter emission standards without a perfected catalytic converter, etc.) There was the cult boom and the strange fact that "The Greening of America" sold millions of copies. In 1979 Merril Lynch was a penny stock, in many ways capitalism seemed to be on the ropes. If you don't believe me look at "Legitimation Crisis" by Habermas. One contemporary diagnosis of the condition was that there was "too much democracy" and if you look at what happened, all of a sudden the door got slammed on people like Ralph Nader and the range of what you could ask Washington for diminished over the 1980s, with the 1990s sealing the deal -- at that point the lobbying system became almost entirely focuses around tax breaks for special interests with an occasional scam like "Medicare Advantage". For instance in the 1980s you still saw environmental legislation being passed, but once Clinton got in the Republicans ran fanatical resistance until getting solid control of the House and since then there has been gridlock. People like the Koch brothers threw unlimited money at promoting right wing ideas, Fox News has a 24 hours hate whenever there is a democrat in the White House, etc. This has led to a new condition of ungovernability which is as much a riot of the rich (who funded 17 losers to run for the Republican party because Conservatism makes them feel warm and fuzzy) as a riot of the middle class. "Boaty McBoatface" sealed the deal for Brexit because it symbolizes what "democracy" is about these days. They ask your opinion, because they want to look legitimate, but they don't honor it.
- orf 10y ago> "Boaty McBoatface" sealed the deal for Brexit because it symbolizes what "democracy" is about these days. What does that even mean? I hope you don't honestly think that that poll had any effect on the brexit situation? I tend to side with the bookies over listening to polls, and the bookies odds are on staying[1]. Apart from recent football mishaps they seem to be on the ball, they saw Khan coming a mile off for example. 1. http://www.oddschecker.com/politics/british-politics/eu-referendum/referendum-on-eu-membership-result http://www.oddschecker.com/politics/british-politics/eu-refe...
- donatj 10y agoI'm very hopeful this election gives the third parties a boost. Unless I suffer a terrible stroke between now and the election I know I will be voting libertarian simply because I couldn't live with myself voting for Trump or Hillary.
- filoeleven 10y agoI would like to see a coordinated effort from those of us who won't vote for the mainstream candidates. If any 3rd party candidate gets over 5% of the vote, they must by law be included in the debates next time around. We know that a 3rd party will not win the presidential election this time around, so coordinating our votes to get one over 5% in order to inject a new voice into the process seems like a win, even if the party is one I am generally opposed to.
- Kinnard 10y agoThis is a good idea. I was unaware of the 5% rule. Would you consider putting up a site?
- mindslight 10y agoIMHO it will do the exact opposite. People basically vote to keep the other candidate from winning. More radical / "scarier" candidates shore up the party lines.
- discardorama 10y agoHow about this headline: Hillary's Nomination Signal an Oligarchy Doing Fine (Hillary is all but nominated, I know)
- awinter-py 10y agoI like that someone is taking a systems perspective on this but the '26 abandoned cities' stuff doesn't seem relevant. Yes every underclass represents a threat of revolt. But describing this oligarchy as rich stealing from the poor is not completely accurate. The mesopotamians had a 'palace economy' where a large portion of the wealth (i.e. grain) was brought to a central city to be redistributed to non-farmers by the priests. (hence the word 'hierarchy'). The current global economy is to some extent a palace economy (explains the higher salaries and prices in cities) but our economies are no longer 70% agricultural, 30% stonework and a small slice 'prayer services'. More of the economic work than ever is concentrated at the 'top' -- maybe not in the top slice but certainly in the top fifth. If the bottom half of mesopotamian society disappeared the priests would starve. If that happened in, say, switzerland their economic metrics would blip up. Not saying that's a good or a bad thing but it defies the article's definition of oligarchy.
- dmode 10y agoI strongly believe Trump and Sanders signal to the rabid balkanization of media (aided by proliferation of web, mobile, and social media), rather than an oligarchy on the brink of collapse. It has never been easier to read clickbait radical news that provides ample confirmation bias. Globally speaking, Americans have by far one of the best quality of lives anywhere in the world. But hearing Sanders - Trump, you would think we live in some war ravaged developing country.
- wycx 10y agoFor those interested in the relevant history that lead the US to this point, may I suggest American Character by Colin Woodard [1]. The ideology that drives the oligarchy (and arguably modern libertarianism) is descended from that which informed the founding of the Carolina and West Indian slave colonies. [1] http://www.amazon.com/American-Character-History-Struggle-Individual/dp/0525427899 http://www.amazon.com/American-Character-History-Struggle-In... Colin Woodard's previous book, American Nations was the most interesting book I read last year.