Counterpunch, Topic: Oligarchy in America
"But the most important part of the explanation, in the American case, is the lack of a real opposition party that the system in place does not thoroughly marginalize. The Democratic Party is useless for that. To be sure, even Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have been known to mouth off about the evils of inequality. But you don’t need a bullshit detector to see that they are part of the problem, not part of the solution."
"The Trump phenomenon is both a symptom and a cause of this sorry state of affairs. It seems anomalous, because Trump’s persona is so outrageous, and because it is plain that no one with his temperament should be anywhere near the seat of power, much less anyone as clueless as he. It doesn’t help either that his cabinet is full of nincompoops and that his advisors are even worse; or that, for the time being, he is pursuing reactionary social and economic policies at home, and a reckless and basically incoherent agenda in foreign affairs.
But the fact is that were he now to disappear from the scene – say, by getting himself impeached or by quitting, as he has done before in his capacity as a casino tycoon and real estate mogul — it will seem, in retrospect, that while, during his tenure in office, he raised the profile of the polyarchy’s plutocratic deformations to new heights, he did not fundamentally alter the nature of the regime.
If, however, Trump somehow stays on – because his vanity demands it and because Democrats permit it – it may look instead, in retrospect, that, at this moment, we are indeed on the brink of a radical transformation; that our flawed polyarchy is about to become something America has never quite seen before, even in the robber baron days — a full-fledged oligarchy.
Oligarchy Trump Style
Oligarchy, the rule of the few, is the problem we are facing – not fascism. Trump is no fascist, not even a “friendly fascist,” as Ronald Reagan was sometimes said to be.
For one thing, he has no coherent political vision, fascist or otherwise; for another, he lacks the stature of a true fascist leader. Calling the Donald a fascist actually demeans fascism. This might seem like a good thing to do. But the description is anachronistic, and things are what they are. It would be foolish to trade off clarity for a dubious rhetorical advantage.
It is true, though, that Trump is a magnet for the kinds of people who, in the right circumstances, become fascists; social psychologists call them “authoritarian personalities.”
The description applies, however, only to a subset of Trump voters. Most of them were not so much voting for Trump as against Clinton and, insofar as they understood what she represented, against Clintonism – against the neoliberal turn, against liberal (“humanitarian”) imperialism, and against America’s perpetual war regime.
The great German Social Democrat August Bebel called anti-Semitism “the socialism of fools.” In that spirit, we might say that “Trumpism is the anti-Clintonism of fools”; or rather that it would be, if saying that didn’t require dignifying Trump’s politics by putting an “ism” after his name.
Trump has unleashed the furies, the forces of darkness. Plenty of people – Muslims, Hispanics, persons of color, women, and white workers too – are suffering on this account, and if he isn’t stopped, it will get much worse. Even so, he will not leave America a fascist state. The danger he poses to the political realm is of a different nature.
If he is able to ditch the largely beneficial rules and regulations he and his minions inveigh against, and if he can get Congress to enact the spending programs and tax cuts he says he favors, some very rich malefactors will do very well under his reign. Plutocracy will flourish.
But even allowing that, as “dialecticians” would say, quality arises out of quantity, this will not change the fundamental nature of the regime. America will still be a polyarchy — with large and growing plutocratic deformations.
It would be a regime changer, though, if Trump were to turn the rule of the many into the rule of the few. This is what he seems to be doing, right before our eyes.
He is not just forming a “kitchen cabinet” and relying upon it inordinately. He is relying upon people he thinks won’t betray him, and turning the reins of government over to them.
However, his is no ordinary oligarchy. His oligarchs didn’t find him; he found them. And, with one major exception, they aren’t even plutocrats who have grown too big – or too rich – for their britches.
“Oligarchy” has had unusually bad press in the United States of late– thanks mainly to the resurgent Russophobia that Americans of a certain age imbibed with their mother’s milk, and thanks to the fact that Democrats and their media flunkies are doing all they can to stir it up – not just to delegitimize Trump but also to deflect blame for the thrashing they took in the last election away from themselves and onto an enemy Republicans hate as much as they do.
Delegitimizing the Trump presidency is a worthwhile project, but there are less reckless ways of going about it than antagonizing a nuclear power. Inasmuch as Trump is his own best delegitimizer, there are countless ways.
Were left-leaning pundits to go after Trump for moving the country in an oligarchic direction, they would actually be doing some good. However, they prefer to go after him by linking him not to the homegrown oligarchs he is actually empowering, but to the oligarchs of Russia and the former Soviet republics, the evil “other.” That way they can get Trump and get Russia too.
Russian oligarchs and their counterparts in other former Soviet republics are, for the most part, well-connected cronies of leading politicians – especially Vladimir Putin, the man Democrats and Republicans of the John McCain variety love to demonize. The official line is that they reek of corruption; that our plutocrats are angels in comparison.
It is true that the Russian system is corrupt. The corruption started when, with Western – especially American – help, Russia’s regression to capitalism got underway. At first, the beneficiaries of that debacle were kleptocrats, connected to the old nomenklatura and, in some cases, to organized crime.
They made off like the bandits they are, setting the tone for what would follow as the system matured. The corruption has never gone away.
We in the United States have our share of corruption too. Trump fooled a lot of people campaigning against it; on the principle that it takes one to know one, he got them to think that, being on their side, he had the will and ability to “drain the swamp.” Where is Sarah Palin now that we need her to ask how that “swampy drainy thing” is going?
The way that it’s going is that he is bringing the swamp into the White House itself. He is doing it by putting together a kind of ma and pa oligarchy that does nothing to diminish the level of corruption and that is manifestly less competent than anything Russophobic liberal pundits can find to complain about in Russia today.
Reduced to its core, the Trump oligarchy is comprised of a Trump, a Kushner, Steven Bannon and, scariest of all, Robert Mercer."
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