No democracy can long survive which does not accept as fundamental to its very existence the recognition of the rights of its minorities.
How did we go from uplifting millions out of poverty and creating laws abolishing racial injustice through the New Deal and the Civil Rights movement to the near disappearance in 2021 of the middle class and massive voter suppression even beyond the scale of the old Jim Crow laws?
The Struggle for Rights and Power
The simple answer is that America failed to protect the rights of its minorities and women. We can’t maintain a democracy without protecting the rights of all Americans.
However, the problem actually goes beyond this. Sustaining a democracy is always a struggle because there are, invariably, a few individuals who lust for control and who, therefore, seek to rig the government and economy to work for their own interests. History of world governments from ancient times shows a trend of oligarchs arising from time to time to seize control. This pattern continues unless and until the people become vigilant in protecting their rights and power. Democracy must expand to the extent that all citizens are given the right to vote and power to govern, including holding government office at all levels. But democracy worldwide has been contracting in some nations because rights and power for people are not protected.
The U.S., in particular, has a difficult time protecting human rights and power because from the beginning, America has maintained a caste system. It still assigns worth, and, therefore, rights and power, to its citizens based on their skin color, gender, and class. Also, the U.S. hasn’t atoned for the sins of slavery or Native American genocide, which puts us at risk for repeating these atrocities. The historical links between justice and peace are strong.
Across the political spectrum, a few selfish, greedy, and corrupt people — politicians, media people, faith leaders, the super-rich, and other members of the oligarchy — have supported the American caste system. Through their dominant ideology and scapegoating narratives, corporate and other oligarchs began regaining control of the U.S. government with the presidency of Ronald Reagan in 1980. As a result, America has been evolving to become an anti-people, pro-authoritarian nation.
What Is the Anti-People, Pro-Authoritarian Ideology?
In his first inaugural address, Reagan said, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Fundamentally changing the way people, including the Democratic leadership, looked at the role of the government, he set about dismantling the balance of power that Roosevelt’s New Deal had established between corporations and the American people. Without these protections, corporate oligarchs once again came to own the U.S. government, just as they did in the Gilded Age (circa 1870 to 1896).
Horse-and-Sparrow Theory
It’s not surprising that Reagan championed the “trickle down” theory of economics, which had been tried in the Gilded Age. This theory purports that cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy will stimulate business growth and produce long-term benefits for society. We know it doesn’t work this way in reality. In fact, the Gilded Age name for this theory is more apt — the “horse-and-sparrow theory”: What the horse eats comes out as excrement, which the sparrow searches through to find a few morsels. This analogy sums up what the majority of American people have been provided by their government and oligarchs over the past forty years — meager subsistence within a pile of excrement.
Laissez-Faire Capitalism
“Trickle down” economics is part of laissez-faire capitalism, an unfettered form. This ideology is also known by other names such as “modern capitalism,” “free-market capitalism,” “doomsday capitalism,” “unregulated capitalism,” “free enterprise,” “disaster capitalism,” “predatory capitalism,” “austerity,” “crony capitalism,” etc.
No matter what they call it, the goals of laissez-faire capitalism are a limited government with limited regulations, a “free market,” and “individualism,” exactly what the Gilded Age had. It’s no coincidence that our current wealth inequality mirrors that of the Gilded Age and that corporations again own the U.S. government. Laissez-faire capitalism concentrates power in the hands of a few ruthless people and corporate monopolies, the basis for fascism.
Today we need major reforms to level the playing field again, like those that saved us in the Gilded Age; however, oligarchs will, unsurprisingly, deride anything that threatens their power. This is why they demonize labor unionization, social programs, regulations, wealth taxes, people voting for democracy (especially marginalized communities), etc.; and, they use terms like “socialism” and “communism” and racist dog whistles, among other wedge issues, to distract the American people away from the real problems within the democracy.
If we are to save democracy, we must learn from our mistakes and not fall for the oligarchs’ old tricks
What the Oligarchs Don’t Want You to Know about Capitalism & Socialism
On October 10, 1952, in Syracuse, New York, President Harry Truman remarked about “socialism”:
Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years.
Socialism is what they called public power.
Socialism is what they called social security.
Socialism is what they called farm price supports.
Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance.
Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations.
Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.
When the Republican candidate inscribes the slogan "Down with Socialism" on the banner of his "great crusade," that is really not what he means at all.
What he really means is "Down with Progress--down with Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal," and "down with Harry Truman's fair Deal." That's all he means.
Truman was right. “Socialism” is, still today, a scare word propagated by oligarchs to keep America from progressing to a more perfect union.
Oligarchs don’t want the people to understand the terms or to realize that there is not just one type of capitalism or socialism. These two concepts are on a continuum regarding who owns and controls the main forms of production and natural resources. This range goes from complete privatization with very few regulations (power concentrated in corporate monopolies) to complete ownership and control by the government (power concentrated in the monopoly of government). Those two extremes both lead to authoritarianism (fascism or communism).
America doesn’t have to have complete privatization or nationalization of its production to be under control of oligarchy — a form of authoritarianism. Presently, our postal service, fire protection, police departments, public schools, etc. — essential services — are run by the government while the main forms of U.S. production remain privatized. However, even government control doesn’t preclude oligarchs from taking over essential services, like the police departments, the postal service (Louis DeJoy), or public education (Betsy DeVos).
In a healthy democracy, essential services, primarily those that affect all Americans, are usually best left for the government to run, while others are ideal for privatization (for businesses to run). Private prisons are a great example of the potential for problems in privatizing some industries. While prisons are necessary to protect the public, there is a huge, immoral incentive to lock up people and keep them locked up — especially members of marginalized communities — when someone stands to make a profit from incarcerations. For this reason, prisons should be run by the government whose objective must always be to reform and release reformed prisoners back into society, not to get wealthy off them. A privatized prison system also incentivizes companies to lock up people who can’t afford bail while the rich, in far too many cases, get away with huge crimes. This problem is, in part, why we are in “The Golden Age of White Collar Crime.” Just look at Trump, as an example, and how he has pardoned his cronies.
For a democracy to survive, there must always be accountability and balance between the interests of capitalism and socialism. Justice must apply to everyone, and power should never be allowed to accumulate within one group. Accordingly, the U.S. needs to shift its focus toward a social democracy, like what Scandinavia has, a hybrid economy of capitalism and socialism that is consistent with the balance and ideals that the U.S. previously implemented in the New Deal, except, this time, it should be implemented without racism.
Libertarianism’s Patron Saint, Ayn Rand, & Her Corrosive Philosophy of Selfishness & Greed
One of the most influential writers of anti-New Deal ideas is Ayn Rand. Best known for her popular 1943 and 1957 novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and for her philosophy of Objectivism, Rand wrote many books, including a volume of essays in 1964 titled The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism.
Arguably, Rand’s ideology did more to build the American Libertarian movement than anyone else. Rejecting altruism and the New Deal’s social programs, Rand championed laissez-faire capitalism and “self-interest.” However, what she was really endorsing was greed and racism, offering excuses for these behaviors. Is it any wonder that her writings continue to be extremely influential among Libertarians and many conservatives, or that she is considered a patron saint of Libertarianism?
Like many who immigrated to the U.S. from the Soviet Union, Rand, a self-professed atheist, feared communism and socialism. In fact, she hated all forms of authoritarianism, including fascism, communism, oligarchy, theocracy, etc. It’s ironic, therefore, that she embraced the type of extremist thinking that leads to authoritarian control. However, fear, selfishness, greed, and lust for power blind people to the truth.
Oligarchs, like Rand, hide behind euphemisms like “individualism” and “personal freedom” while actually seeking the latitude to rule over others. “Individualism,” or “rugged individualism,” forces people to survive periods of hardship with few to no safety nets. (Important to note: Dating back to American colonization, the terms “individualism” and “personal freedom” have been intertwined with White supremacy. This thinking is also what slavery was based on.)
Libertarianism Is a Malignant Ideology
Libertarianism dominates American politics today, due, in no small part, to the billionaire Koch brothers, self-professed Libertarians, who are famous for their support of conservative causes.
Because power tends to be a corrupting influence, it’s no surprise what happens when unprincipled and unbridled people gain control. Adherents of Libertarianism seek to privatize everything in a “profits-at-all-costs” mentality, grabbing power as fast as possible at the expense of the public. Without regulations and wealth taxes to limit power concentration, Libertarianism, by design, creates monopolies — therefore, fascistic power — which threatens the State and the world.
On a more personal level, monopolistic power kills competition and eliminates small businesses. Motivated by corruption and greed, unfettered big businesses do little to eliminate waste and neglect of public resources and social services. The results are increasing poverty and inequality, which — in the short run — lead to increased crime, substandard housing, homelessness, poor nutrition, lack of childcare, inadequate health care, and under-resourced schools. Over time, massive wealth inequality destroys the middle class and destabilizes democracy, as the most powerful among us prey on the public.
This “wolves and sheep” power-concentration scenario is exactly what Thomas Jefferson and other Founders feared.
History shows that Libertarianism unfairly concentrates power among the selfish, greedy, and corrupt few. Without an major intervention (i.e., massive reforms), the inevitable result is a fascist autocracy and submission of the people to a single leader whose agenda is control over everyone. We must learn from our mistakes and constantly break up concentrated, oligarchic power, or another strongman will, inevitably, seize control.
Exploiting Crises by Grabbing Power
Oligarchs grab more control wherever and whenever they can, especially during crises. For example, the U.S. wealth and power disparities have worsened since the COVID-19 pandemic, as this 2020 Business Insider article “American billionaires' net worths have grown to $4 trillion during the coronavirus pandemic” states. Naomi Klein calls this rapid power grab from people who are reeling from calamity “the shock doctrine.”
Oligarchs don’t just profit off of natural disasters, like the recent pandemic or hurricanes like Maria in Puerto Rico, they intentionally create disasters and work to make them worse. For example, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, there was resistance by the American oligarchy to take measures that would protect the people. The delays caused unnecessary deaths, unemployment, business losses, and more damages.
Not only do oligarchs profit from crises, monetarily, they also gain leverage by putting policies in place to give themselves more political power. While shock and panic are overwhelming the populace, greedy and corrupt individuals and corporations are well-positioned to take advantage of them. This self-serving behavior is another reason our democracy has been trending toward autocracy bit by bit over the past 50 years.
Implementing Social Darwinism
There is another terrible consequence of the Libertarian ideology. With massive wealth inequality and little government help for the vulnerable, the result is “survival of the fittest,” also known as Social Darwinism. This is a theory that people in society are subject to the same Darwinian laws of natural selection as are plants and animals.
Social Darwinists — like Ayn Rand and many others — believe that poor people are “parasites.” Social Darwinist thinking ruled the Gilded Age, was present in the beginning of the Great Depression under Republican President Herbert Hoover, and is prominent among Trump and other oligarchs.
As we have witnessed during the pandemic, oligarchs are content to let certain Americans die. Sarah Kendzior, expert on authoritarianism, said, “These are fascists. They see a depopulated country and planet as easier to implement authoritarian policies in, especially during a time of climate change. They have been telling you their plans the whole time.”
Psychological Damage of Our Hyper-Competitive Environment
Social Darwinist thinking is creating a hyper-competitive environment made worse by oligarchs who are artificially limiting resources. The article from New York Magazine “Trump’s Disregard for Blue States Is at the Heart of His Shoddy COVID Response” exemplifies this:
Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the [public health expert in frequent contact with the White House’s official coronavirus task force] said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert.
Trump and his administration were fine with letting blue-state residents die. To the administration, they represented political enemies. Therefore, Trump limited the pandemic relief resources that blue states could receive. For example, he failed to use the power of the government to shift production of masks and other personal protection equipment (PPE) into high gear. Consequently, the citizens and health care providers within these states were forced to fend for themselves, creating a hyper-competitive environment for essential resources, including PPE, hospital beds, and ventilators.
Such hyper-competitive environments have dangerous psychological consequences beyond the normal fighting over scant resources. In the mid-1990s, psychologist Suniya S. Luthar, made an interesting discovery, documented on the Psychology Today magazine website. She set out “recruiting youth in a prosperous suburban community in the Northeast as a comparison sample for a study of inner-city teens.”
What she found shocked her.
She wrote (bolding my emphasis), “In a surprising switch, the offspring of the affluent today are more distressed than other youth. They show disturbingly high rates of substance use, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, cheating, and stealing. It gives a whole new meaning to having it all.”
And as she indicated, it has broad implications for society, which explains part of why we are here (bolding my emphasis):
Striving ever harder to be at the top—or, in their vernacular, a "baller," one whose status in society has been earned by his possession of "game"—puts such boys at risk for limited compassion and kindness. They can have low capacity for tenderness in close relationships, high capacity for chauvinism and narcissism. In a recent study, we found that narcissistic exhibitionism scores among affluent boys at elite private schools were almost twice the average scores of a more diverse sample.
In other words, our environment is creating people, especially affluent men, to be unempathetic, chauvinistic, and narcissistic. Trump is an example. He exhibits an extreme form: malignant narcissism, which is the same personality disorder manifested by Adolph Hitler. Malignant narcissism includes four pathologies: narcissism, antisocial behavior, paranoid thinking, and sadism, as outlined by Psychology Today.
Our hyper-competitive environment also helps explain why a study found “21 percent of CEOs are psychopaths. Only 21 percent?” However, narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths don’t just inhabit CEO positions, they typically seek positions of power, like government, too. Our hyper-competitive environment is helping to create people with psychological disorders, such as psychopaths.
What Are the Oligarchs’ Motives?
The American oligarchs’ motives are both simple and complex. They’ve wanted to take and maintain control of the U.S. government through whatever means necessary for decades with the main objective being to increase their power and wealth. However, there are multiple groups involved, making their plans diverse and multifaceted and, therefore, a challenge for outsiders to monitor.
While there are various motivations forming an oligarchical rationale, three are very common: (1) selfishness and greed, (2) uncontrolled lust for power, and (3) fear. These are not mutually exclusive.
Selfishness, greed, and uncontrolled lust for power are at the core of why all government types across world history trend to autocracy. However, what about fear?
There are many types of fear, but we need to be aware of four of the most common which drive American politics today; they are the fears of (1) communism and socialism, (2) loss of God, (3) uncertainty, and (4) other races. Again, these fears are not mutually exclusive.
Concerns about communism and socialism loom large in America. It’s understandable to fear an authoritarian system. However, most people don’t understand what fascism, communism, and socialism mean or how they affect a democracy — and therefore, how these concepts could affect their lives. They also don’t realize that the New Deal saved America from communism and fascism. We are in danger of allowing history to repeat itself or rhyme when we forget the past.
As for the fear of losing God, far-right Christians worry that a secular society is a death threat to “Christian values” and believe that America was founded to be a Christian nation. They are particularly fearful of communism (and by association, socialism) because communist nations, including China and the Soviet Union, viewed religions as antagonistic to State interests. While these countries didn’t outlaw all organized religions, they embraced atheism and many anti-religious practices.
Regarding fear of uncertainty, which psychologist Glenn Wilson and others have documented as a huge driver of human behavior, many people are afraid of major deviations from what they consider the norm, no matter what type, and deeply desire ordered and predictable lives. Preferring a more authoritarian way of doing things, they fear chaos, unless they believe it will be short-term and lead to some larger purpose they desire. They don’t like many of the changes in society they see, no matter the reasons. For example, many Americans were left behind by a fast-changing technology-based society with dwindling good-paying jobs, so these people are, understandably, fearful of technology.
Intertwined with the other phobias are racial fears (which are actually part of the fear of uncertainty, along with the loss of God). For example, some people claimed that the Civil Rights Movement was a communist plot and that Martin Luther King was, himself, a communist. Dr. King’s moral preaching on social justice and social democracy threatened their power, way of life, and version of God. Oligarchs also use racism as a tool to further their goals of power over everyone else and to maintain status quo and White supremacy.
All of these fears are especially prevalent among far-right Christians. In fact, White supremacy is embedded in the DNA of American Christianity, and far-right Christians fear losing their version of religion and the power it gives them. This is why many have gone so far as to embrace Libertarianism as the God-ordained economic system.
Creating a narrative that echoes Ayn Rand’s ideology, Libertarians denounce social justice as against God and extol Rand’s “political freedom” as justification for discrimination and the pursuit of a nationalized Christian theocracy.
The self-avowed “orthodox, Protestant Christians” site, ChristianIntellectual.com, offers an example of this viewpoint on the page about Ayn Rand:
Rand did not invent political freedom. But she has been its best defender. The same is true for other topics of importance, including the four ideals we explicitly advocate:
Reason—Rational Self-interest—Individualism—Individual Rights
The creators of the same Christian website wrote a guide about why social justice is against the Bible. They claim that sharing and redistributing wealth is “Marxism” and that God is against that. However, this group does not have a problem with oligarchs redistributing the people’s hard-earned money to the top.
The Oligarchs’ Anti-People, Pro-Authoritarian Narrative
In addition to the anti-people, pro-authoritarian ideology, the oligarchs’ dominant narrative uses racial fears, a disgust for government, and economic resentment to influence and control the public.
“Messaging memo” from Policy Matters Ohio talks about how this works.
Members of the oligarchy say something like, “Programs like food aid and Medicaid only create a ‘culture of dependency’ on the taxpayer’s dime.” Then, oligarchs demand “‘work requirements’ for people to receive food and basic medical care.”
Disgust for Government: This message seeks to undermine the effectiveness of social programs by encouraging disgust for the existing government.
Racial Fears: “Some people are deserving of help while others are not.” This message implies that White people are deserving while people of color are not, thereby advancing racial fears.
Economic Resentment: The message encourages resentment by people who are upset that their taxpayer dollars help to support people who are “undeserving.” The implication is that people of color and poor folks are “lazy” and want a free ride.
Many Americans whose political ideologies are on both the left and right sides of the aisle believe these narratives. President Reagan, for example, declared the era of big government to be over in the 1980s, which initiated a widespread sentiment of disgust for the U.S. government. The “Messaging memo” from Policy Matters Ohio explains,
This narrative is so dominant that many Americans automatically accept it as truth. It taps into important American values: individualism and hard work. The right also often taps into American values of freedom (to call for deregulation) and patriotism (to promote anti-immigrant policies or support oil and gas drilling to create energy independence). This narrative also identifies clear villains: lazy people who don’t want to work and the government that enables them.
These frames have been so effective that often, politicians and organizations on the left think the only way to win is to accept them and adopt their own, watered-down version of the right’s frame. In his 1996 State of the Union Address, President Bill Clinton declared ‘the era of big government is over.’ From welfare ‘reform’ to banking deregulation – he made good on his word. When the left accepts the right’s frame, Democrats might win some elections, but they won’t win policies that help people. Over the long-term as Democrats fail to deliver, they lose people’s trust.
Americans need to understand how Republicans and Democrats are responsible for the crisis of democracy. This is not suggesting a false equivalence. The GOP has already become a fascist party. However, we must recognize the role prominent Democrats have taken to wittingly or unwittingly aid this fascist takeover, so we can have accountability and correct our past mistakes.
What Are Some Actions Can We Take to Save Our Democracy?
To save democracy, Americans must remember the struggles we, as a nation, have faced in the past, which were caused by oppression and abuses levied on the citizens of this country by oligarchs. We must educate each other on the dangers of malignant oligarch ideology and narratives; teach compassion, modeling it (didn’t Jesus say this is what we needed to do?); look at our own parenting skills; and adopt a new values-based narrative and framing. Reading through the “Messaging memo” from Policy Matters Ohio is a great start to understanding the new narrative and framing needed.
Coming Up…
In the next article of this series, we will continue to examine how we got here by exploring the dangerous merger of religion, economics, and political ideology.