How America Became An Oligarchy

stateofthenation2012.com...

by Ellen Brown
The Web of Debt blog

According to a new study from Princeton University, American democracy no longer exists. Using data from over 1,800 policy initiatives from 1981 to 2002, researchers Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page concluded that rich, well-connected individuals on the political scene now steer the direction of the country, regardless of – or even against – the will of the majority of voters. America’s political system has transformed from a democracy into an oligarchy, where power is wielded by wealthy elites.

Ellen Brown is critical of the Federal Reserve Banking system and has written book on the subject. She is keenly are the issue is money and those who control it, specifically the banks who create the money.

Control of the media and financial leverage over elected officials then enabled those other curbs on democracy we know today, including high barriers to ballot placement for third parties and their elimination from presidential debates, vote suppression, registration restrictions, identification laws, voter roll purges, gerrymandering, computer voting, and secrecy in government. The final blow to democracy, says Dr. Cobb, was “globalization” – an expanding global market that overrides national interests...

President Franklin Roosevelt maintained that we need an Economic Bill of Rights.

What exactly would that look like, I wonder.

1980. Ronald Reagan. The relaxing of regulations on corporations under the guise of less government restriction let the dragon out of the cage. Instead of freeing entrepreneurial enterprise as promised, the relaxed restrictions allowed the corporations to expand, each, other one after another the larger gobbling up the smaller. But of course this is why Reagan was elected in the first place. He had a popular face, a grand fatherly smile and was very amiable in appearance. He was promoted by the National Association of Manufacturers for this very reason. They had been looking for the symbol they could use to lull the American people into trusting corporations again.

The American voters had come to distrust corporations in the previous century with the rise of the Robber Barons and had a strong aversion to the first world war which was called by many the Rich Mans War. The trust in corporations was also blown by the great depression of 28 and through the next decades, those would be oligarchs worked quietly behind the scenes until the time was right to emerge and take over hook line and sinker. Enter Reagan. Mr. Corporate Smile.

a reply to: TerryMcGuire

And yet you use corporation products everyday.

Yup, that's kinda how it happened, give or take a few trillion...

It hasn't been a death of a thousand cuts... it's been an execution of democracy with arsenic, bullets, axes, clubs, h-bombs and scalar wave weaponry over decades.

The scariest thing is it could be worse...

The rabbit hole goes much deeper than Reagan I'm afraid. The founding of the United States of America was the illuminati's biggest failure but has now become it's greatest success. With each and every war or act of terrorism America endures the illuminati immediately afterwards implements a part of their New World Order plan. The moment at which America became predominantly an oligarchy was following the civil war when a police state was formed in the south and a republic government was forced onto the states who had every constitutional right to choose their own method of governing. People seem to think the civil war was all about slavery but this simply isn't true, it was totalitarian versus libertarian. Unfortunately, the totalitarians won.

a reply to: TerryMcGuire

Reagan was the greatest President we have had in many many moons. Brought the US out of the doldrums, got rid of the threat of nuclear war with the USSR, made us glad to be Americans again. Recall the Democrats controlled everything but the White House. The democrats ruled everything. All we had was inspiring leader that people liked.

V

originally posted by: Enochstask
a reply to: TerryMcGuire

And yet you use corporation products everyday.

I don't want to use products made by corporations putting out GMO food.

Monsanto fights against GMO labeling laws

Where is the power of the consumer in that?

I don't want Non American made products in this country.
What would you say if a hand full of citizens put a stop to Free Trade and the TPP that was started by Corporate Lobbyists at the government level?

You would say they have no right, correct?

So why is it right for a handful of corporate lobbying citizens to decide for the majority of Americans at the government level?

I've been saying since back in the 90s that this country is an oligarchy and not a democracy. I don't think it's even possible anymore for us to have a real democracy there are to many hands in the till. The only way I'm afraid we can have real democracy is for every aspect of life to be localized and remove the centralized situation we are dealing with now.

originally posted by: TerryMcGuire
1980. Ronald Reagan. The relaxing of regulations on corporations under the guise of less government restriction let the dragon out of the cage. Instead of freeing entrepreneurial enterprise as promised, the relaxed restrictions allowed the corporations to expand, each, other one after another the larger gobbling up the smaller. But of course this is why Reagan was elected in the first place. He had a popular face, a grand fatherly smile and was very amiable in appearance. He was promoted by the National Association of Manufacturers for this very reason. They had been looking for the symbol they could use to lull the American people into trusting corporations again.

The American voters had come to distrust corporations in the previous century with the rise of the Robber Barons and had a strong aversion to the first world war which was called by many the Rich Mans War. The trust in corporations was also blown by the great depression of 28 and through the next decades, those would be oligarchs worked quietly behind the scenes until the time was right to emerge and take over hook line and sinker. Enter Reagan. Mr. Corporate Smile.

Actually a lot of money was spent to keep Reagan out.

He was a true conservative, and the mainstream Republicans feared him.

The Bush family really went all out against Reagan.

yes,

people are beginning to grasp the mess we are in,

its now time to begin answering another question ....,...

How do we take it back ???

Find your forefathers axe, ..... and get ready to make some heads roll.

Reagan was a fool. So are the neo-cons.

It's almost time to rage against the machine, methinks.

👣

originally posted by: wasaka

... researchers Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page concluded that rich, well-connected individuals on the political scene now steer the direction of the country, regardless of – or even against – the will of the majority of voters. America’s political system has transformed from a democracy into an oligarchy, where power is wielded by wealthy elites.

It has always been this way. The above paragraph could just as easily be referring to Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin (and the Revolution's financiers) as it could be to George Soros and the Koch Klan.

I think people (especially the "constitutionalists") have been duped into believing they've lost something they never had. The United States was founded by wealthy elites, for wealthy elites. It was built on slavery and genocide in the pursuit of wealth and power.

That's the naked truth. Nothing has really changed. They've just made slavery racially inclusive (only because they had to) and much more comfortable, and turned the whole country into a federal enclave ("reservation") of tyranny just waiting for the right moment to consume itself.

a reply to: NthOther

No, the international mega-corporations changed everything. Their power to lobby is too much. Way over the line. They have their own private armies, for crying out loud.

That power has to be taken back.

👣

originally posted by: Variable
a reply to: TerryMcGuire

Reagan was the greatest President we have had in many many moons. Brought the US out of the doldrums, got rid of the threat of nuclear war with the USSR, made us glad to be Americans again. Recall the Democrats controlled everything but the White House. The democrats ruled everything. All we had was inspiring leader that people liked.

V

And Variable, that is the thing isn't it? Many see this as you. Sure, there are a whole bunch of things that many people consider to be good that are attributed to Reagan, I get it. But many others hold that those apparent good things all came with a cost, and that cost was what was going on behind the wool that was pulled across so many eyes. The truth about all that went on "behind" his administrations are more hidden then those behind Bush and Obama, but it is there for the digging and any who try to pull up the veil that was so slickly pulled across America's eyes.

I hate to be blunt but # society.

originally posted by: NthOther



I think people (especially the "constitutionalists") have been duped into believing they've lost something they never had. The United States was founded by wealthy elites, for wealthy elites. It was built on slavery and genocide in the pursuit of wealth and power.

I'm not going to say you are wrong about what you say,
and yes Constitutionalists, like me, feel we have lost
something... perhaps it was never really practiced,
but we feel our government/nation/country has lost
the principles of liberty... or that those principles
have been so occulted that humanity itself has lost
the best way forward.

We have the right ideas, but today what might
have been as pasted into history like sand through
the hour glass... now only a few grains remain.

Will the hour-glass be set right?
That is the big unknown.

a reply to: wasaka

Good thread OP

Good information

wasaka:

How America Became An Oligarchy

Fact of the matter is, there isn't a country on the planet that hasn't some semblance of oligarchy, and America has never been any different, and the reason for this is due to the way we pyramidally construct our societies. Democracy has always been an illusion of people power, more so in America than say...here in Britain. Historically, Britain has always been an oligarchy, and the British people accepted it through that historical context.

The concept of democracy that Lincoln contextualised in his 1863 Gettysburg Address..."Government of the people, by the people, for the people." is actually a political misdirection, because no matter what society we build, power will always be concentrated in the few. The best society we can form is one where the people ensure that the 'few' remain ideologically favourable to all society, and not just to a particular level of society's strata. Western governments, not a single one, are ideologically favourable to the people they govern, but are primarily concerned in ensuring that only a particular level of society remain at its head directing it to their particular vision and control. This is what we have in the West today.

Do they have an 'Achilles Heel'? Yes they do! They fear the irrevocable breakdown of society, because once society collapses either through war (a quick collapse) or ideological deflation (slow collapse), all their wealth and power and privilege goes with it. They are brought low to the same level as everyone else, and have to fend for themselves. Today, right now, Western societies are held together not by the ideological glue of a common abidance to noble principals, but by the deceptions the oligarchy feed us, and also through the general apathy and disillusionment of the people.

Be in no doubt at all, no matter how strong you perceive your society to be, it is collapsing, because if history has taught us all anything, it is that societies wax and wane like the moon, they bloom and fade, each having their season and eventually relent to the next. Modern societies are more prone and fragile to waning than they are to waxing, because the more technological they become, the greater their fragility.

Why is 'terrorism' a hyped-up threat? If you look at their targets they never amounted to the collapse of the society they attacked, yet their attacks could easily do so, simply by attacking societies most fragile arteries en mass...its electric generating points...power stations and transformers. Technological societies can be brought low simply by attacking these points. The longer a modern technological society goes without electric power, the more prone it is to a rapid and inevitable collapse. Terrorism is hyped-up so that laws and technologies can be introduced (with or without the consent of the people) to surveille the people. You are the real threat to the 'few', not because you are a 'terrorist', but because you hold an ideological difference. 9/11, was the moment the oligarchy fully wrested democracy out of the people's hands, and from that day, laws and technologies came into play with one intention in mind...your subjection to the 'few's' vision and agenda. It wasn't just an American play, it was a play across the whole Western world. 9/11 targets were not simply American, but international, so that the 'subjection' could be applied internationally. Hence the collusion of Western governments erecting a Western oligarchy under the term globalisation.

There is only one way that I can perceive out of this, and that is to allow society to fully collapse and (if possible) rebuild a new one, but that way is fraught with the danger of being irrecoverable, that the collapse would be so severe that a rebuilding would not be able to take place for decades or even centuries. It's a matter of principal and the strength of your conviction to principal.

You can live and die as a 'subject' to the vision and agenda of the 'few', or you can stop participating in the lie you think is not a lie, and let society eventually collapse out of non-participation and chaos. Just to be sure, the 'few' think they are ready for this.

originally posted by: elysiumfire
wasaka:

How America Became An Oligarchy

9/11, was the moment the oligarchy fully wrested democracy out of the people's hands, and from that day, laws and technologies came into play with one intention in mind...your subjection to the 'few's' vision and agenda.

I have a term for this: False Authority...run amok

Running amok, sometimes referred to as simply amok,[1] also spelled amuk, from the Javanese language,[2] is "an episode of sudden mass assault against people or objects usually by a single individual following a period of brooding that has traditionally been regarded as occurring especially in Malay culture but is now increasingly viewed as psychopathological behavior occurring worldwide in numerous countries and cultures".[3] The syndrome of "Amok" is found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV TR).[4] The phrase is often used in a less serious manner when describing something that is wildly out of control or causing a frenzy (e.g., a dog tearing up the living room furniture might be termed as "running amok.") en.wikipedia.org...

The period of brooding by the oligarchy ended on 9/11.

....no matter how strong you perceive your society to be, it is collapsing, because if history has taught us all anything, it is that societies wax and wane like the moon, they bloom and fade, each having their season and eventually relent to the next. Modern societies are more prone and fragile to waning than they are to waxing, because the more technological they become, the greater their fragility.

One symptom of long-term stress is fatigue is crime,
abuse of legal authority, disappear journalist, and
high rate of suicide among military and gen-pop.
Who can deny... we are moving in that direction.

You are correct, the electric grid is most vulnerable
and one would be wise to prepare for its collapse.
When it comes it will reduce the population by 50%

There is only one way that I can perceive out of this, and that is to allow society to fully collapse and (if possible) rebuild a new one, but that way is fraught with the danger of being irrecoverable, that the collapse would be so severe that a rebuilding would not be able to take place for decades or even centuries. It's a matter of principal and the strength of your conviction to principal.

You can live and die as a 'subject' to the vision and agenda of the 'few', or you can stop participating in the lie you think is not a lie, and let society eventually collapse out of non-participation and chaos. Just to be sure, the 'few' think they are ready for this.

I'm hoping the BIG EVENT is still a year out.
At this point I'm not ready... but if and when
someone hits the "reset" button, the name
of the game will the be SURVIVAL.

I just hope the principles of LIBERTY will be
restored someday... but that may be a day
that our children see without us.

What steps can be taken now?

a reply to: Enochstask

Of course we do, it's really the only choice. Does that mean it's ok for them to run our government?