CHARBONNEAU – America and the triumph of the oligarchy
IIT’S BEEN YEARS in the making but with the arrival of president-elect Trump, America’s oligarchy is near completion.
The transformation from a democracy to an oligarchy is a victory for Trump’s friend, Vladimir Putin.
In the past, America has taken pride in the exportation of democracy by promoting free elections abroad, placing sanctions on authoritarian regimes, funding civil society to foster democratic values and, when all else failed, invading countries in need of the U.S. brand of democracy.
Unlike a traditional oligarchy, where wealthy elites are part of government, the Russian model is referred to as “sultanistic” oligarchy. This style of oligarchy requires loyalty to Putin in maintaining their influence and wealth without formal participation in government.
As in the U.S., Russia wasn’t always ruled by an oligarchy. The rape of Russian’s public resources began during the post-Soviet privatization era in the 1990s. That’s when a select few oligarchs acquired valuable state-owned assets.
Given the size of Trump’s ego, a sultanistic oligarchy is a perfect match. The morally challenged president-elect imagines himself as a dictator. He imagines himself as being on the top of the heap and with the power of the presidency he will seek retribution from his perceived enemies and rewards for the oligarchs who serve him.
America wasn’t always ruled by an oligarchy, although there were signs of it decades ago.
After a particularly bizarre court ruling, former President Jimmy Carter characterized the U.S. as an “oligarchy with unlimited political bribery.”
The result of the court case in 2010, called Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, ruled that corporations were “persons” under the law and as such they could make unlimited donations to political parties.
Viewed from Canada, the perils of giving corporations the power to essentially buy candidates seems as obvious as it was to Carter. In Canada, corporations are not allowed to contribute directly to political campaigns. This prohibition applies to corporations, unions, and other organizations. The limits for individual contributions are set at $1,700 per year to each registered party.
With Trump’s return to office, wealthy elites such a Elon Musk will play influential roles in his administration, aligning with Trump’s emphasis on business-friendly policies and deregulation.
Trump’s allies and high-level donors will be appointed to key government positions or will exert influence through advisory roles, particularly in economic, regulatory, and trade policy decisions.
Trump has made no secret of his desire for personal gain in the position of president. While in office, his properties, such as Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., attracted foreign governments, lobbyists, and U.S. political allies, raising ethical concerns about indirect influence on policy.
During his presidency, the Trump Organization earned millions from such interests, including government-related bookings and increased rates on rooms and event spaces rented by political or international entities which benefited from the proximity to power.
Trump makes no secret of the authoritarian world leaders he admires. He called Putin “very smart,” and Chinese President Xi a “brilliant man.”
It’s a triumph for oligarchy and coup for Russia. Russian influence in the 2024 U.S. election has been significant, with confirmed disinformation campaigns aimed at undermining Democratic candidates like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris while supporting Donald Trump.
The pressure from oligarchs is constant. In our capitalistic world, money talks.
David Charbonneau is a retired TRU electronics instructor who hosts a blog at http://www.eyeviewkamloops.wordpress.com.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
You speak about some moral authority and ignore what our institutions and government has done ever since nation states were created.
They saw themselves as the good guys-culture carriers “ “Kultur tragen”–. Period. At most we recognised some rough edges, but not enough to question the moral authority of what our institutions and governments have done and were doing.
You see us as the good guys. Period. At most they recognised some rough edges, but not enough to see through the gates where we participated in mass-murder and atrocities.
Machiavelli’s best-known observation is the mechanism of ‘the goal justifies the means’ as a political toolYou seem to forget “you are with us or against us”. This also applies to morality.
You don’t examine history you look away from it or you really don’t know it, so you ignore it.
History is not assumptions nor is moral authority in the words ‘God is on our side’, “God save the King, or God save the tsar or its equivalent, “Gott mit Uns”, This has been uttered by just about every side in a war at some point. When you don’t question where your moral authority comes from, when you simply assume it, you need to be confronted to provide your evidence for what you write.
Which begs the question, how will people in the future look back at us, and our historical era? I hope not the way you are looking at your era which was shaped by our school books, our curriculum where you and I as children studied literature, or where we saw plots in movies which usually portray Russians as members of criminal gangs. Even now we ignore our politicians calling Nazis “freedom fighters” while ignoring their actions in the death of 50 million people in WWII, 27 million Russians.
We are citizens of one of the western countries that thinks of itself as free, democratic and based on Judaeo-Christian moral authority. My fellow countrymen and women consider themselves to be the good guys. It’s so ingrained into the national consciousness, it’s like a super-dogma.
By implication you consider what our government does, especially internationally, morally good. ‘They are us, and since we are good, so too must they be’, your thinking, if any, goes into the ‘bamboozle”.
And yet domestically, you denounce individual politicians like Trump and Pierre and by omission you claim they will be next oligarch and their actions in large numbers will be corrupt, self-serving and elitist. The real liars who brought Trump into power, the Democrats, Clintons and others, the guests of the “Lolita Island” you ignore their swamp.
The economic sanctions imposed by the west between the first and second gulf war have cost an estimated 1.5 million Iraqi lives, of which about 500.000 were children. When confronted with these numbers, former US representative at the UN Madeline Albright stated that ‘it was worth it’. Hillary Clinton had a similar comment. I know of no western leader who, back then, condemned or denounced this, and who acknowledged our actions as immoral and wrong.
The Neo Liberal swamp that lived on war and death in most Western countries are taking a beating in the polls, as they are seen to represent not the people, but their own pockets and supranational interests. Voters flock in masse to the so-called populist parties, on both the left and right of the political spectrum. As long as we maintain our illusion, and refuse to acknowledge that we are in fact not the free and democratic societies we pretend to be, and do something about it, we are as much to blame as our governments are.
1. UK was a nation of Oligarch but they like to be called Lords
2. America was a Plutocracy of wealthy slave owners
3. Where is your evidence Trump will transform US democracy to an oligarchy
4. USA a democracy maybe but certainly not an economic one
5. Political democracy Montana gets 31 times the electoral bang for their presidential vote than a voter in New York.
6. A voter in Wyoming has 70 times the representation in the Senate as a voter in California
7. Democracies don’t invade countries
8. Canada became a Plutocracy with the fall of New France
9. Arrival of the Loyalists Canada becomes an oligarchy
10. Pierre Burton describe McGill Avenue as the Golden Mile where the present financial elite continue to encourage the “old boys’ network”
11. Russia was always ruled by an oligarchy while USA United States is a democracy in theory an oligarchy in practice.
12. In Canada, corporations are not allowed to contribute directly to political campaigns. They control the outcome.
LikeLike
No one reads a comment longer than a long essay. Make a point and talk to Mel about becoming a guest columnist.
LikeLike
If one does not read its like they were born yesterday.
LikeLike
this is hilarious. Like last time, when people like this guy suggested trump was going to use nuclear weapons. Normal people eat some humble pie and adjust for the next time after they’ve been proved so incredibly wrong.
LikeLike
As in the U.S., Russia wasn’t always ruled by an oligarchy. The rape of Russian’s public resources began during the post-Soviet privatization era in the 1990s. That’s when a select few oligarchs acquired valuable state-owned assets.
Yes, and we supported this rape as we were part of it. . Yeltsin was our boy , Gorby was not in as he wanted a Swedish type of Socialism so we went to Putin who sang “Blueberry Hill” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekeq4szDmJo and played the piano” and we said what a guy until he told us where to go.
Locke’s Constitutions created a system in which a small number of barons controlled most of the land establishing “a feudal-type aristocracy. This was true throughout Europe which was exported to the Americas.
Wealthy families set up systems of political and social control using police and private armies to make the native populating and the poor know their place
In the South of USA and the Caribbean Plantation owners (call them Aristocrats, or Oligarchs I don’t care) they were the same exploiters of human labour) some with thousands of slaves
In UK in Ireland absentee landlords like Lord Lucan and Cardigan controlled estates worked by the poor. When poor refused to move, they burned them out as they did during the Clearings.
In the 20th sentry it was criminal gangs’ bootleggers and monopoly capitalism that became the oligarchy, their families are now in government, Trump included. .
In Russia landlord owned huge estates some with thousands of serfs (slaves) working the land.
The fact that “Sultanistic” oligarchy existed for so long in the Balkans, Middle Easy and North Africa was due to British support of the Ottoman Empire. It was the Ottomans that closed the Dardanelles to the Russian attempt to free the Christians in Constantinople and expand their influence into the Mediterranean.
LikeLike
Money talked way way before the USA was even a thought…who knew?
LikeLike
Ever since there has been a USA there has been an American government who takes its marching orders from corporations. It seems to me that we in Canada are also at the whims of big oil, big agriculture, big chemical, and big pharma. All our federal parties are under the cloud of being “bagmen and women”. A Pure Food Act would go a long way to get a little relief from the USA and others who wish us no good.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Credit where credit is due: Putin is very smart. We ignore this at our peril.
The US oligarchy has been vigorously active for at least since the Rockefellers, Carnegies and their wealthy compatriots ran the show.
Q: Why is Obama so rich now? A: He was president of the US. Democrat or Republican, all hugely benefit financially once they’re in the White House.
And no, I’m not a Trump supporter but just b/c he hides his monstrousness less doesn’t mean he’s any more monstrous than anyone else who has been president over the past century.
LikeLike
The Soviet Union was a dictatorship and oligarchy at the hands of the socialist/communist Stalin. Yet Mr. Charbonneau once again leaves out the inconvenient bits and paints Putin and Trump as the bad oligarchs to further the notion that Republican/right is bad, and Democrats/left is good.
Fear mongering about a Republican president, forgetting that under Obama, the US waged more wars than under the Bush administration. Obama oversaw state sponsored assassination of American citizens by drones in foreign countries, as if your rights as an American are left at the border. The NSA debacle. The spying on citizens. Who did that?
Also much talk about “wealthy elites” and allies of the president being put into positions of power, as if that doesn’t happen for every administration, Democrat or Republican. Who was it that bailed out Wall Street and the banks? Obama. A Democrat. Wall Street and Banks are about as elite as it gets.
And what was it that Trudeau said about China? That he admired China’s “basic dictatorship.” Where is the Charbonneau article on that?
If Mr. Charbonneau was being balanced and honest, he would acknowledge that both sides are well funded by “elites”. But these articles are not that. They are presented as news masquerading as highly biased leftwing propaganda. I now see this site for what it is, a biased opinion outlet which in 2024, manually moderates internet comments before allowing them to be posted as if we’re submitting comments to the Goskomizdat. Yet publishes articles castigating Putin. Published articles railing against oligarchy, when there’s a single person determining if your comment passes based on the rumoured but unseen Grand Book of Comment Protocols.
And this is ultimately the problem isn’t it? While we may both want to see a fairer society, we will never get to a place where we can begin to work out those compromises, when one side can’t even present a balanced and unbiased position. We have stopped caring about accuracy and balance, and instead strive to further a dogmatic politcal position, often based solely on alignment with a point on a linear political spectrum.
The US system, by nature, cannot be defined as an oligarchy. There cannot be a single person, or very small group of people, that control that country. The US is not Iran. The comparison is out to lunch and I haven’t even had my breakfast yet.
The American system is truly exceptional. The founders of America were smart enough to foresee a strong man coming to power, and built the appropriate checks and balances. A world without America would be a lesser world to live in, one quite probably far more dangerous and far less free.
The viral 2014 paper claiming America is an oligarchy has been flatly debunked. See Bashir and Branham, Soroka, Wlezien papers (and others) on this subject. Apologies for not posting a quick one-liner ad hominem, as is the preference of the Goskomizdat.
The peanut gallery strikes again.
LikeLike
“Goskomizdat” is somewhat similar to Advertising. When you purchase advertising, you dictate content. Your “manichean” comment seems to represent a world view of democracy vs dictatorship good or evil, light or dark, or love and hate.
The advertisers have vaccinated us with the legendary American experience in anything we read, we the “Collective West” are the good guys we are the light, we represent love and they “China and Russia” with their “running dogs” or “useful idiots” are the bad guys they represent the dark side, they represent hate.
Of course, we have those in between (India, South Africa, Brazil) which we control with a “carrot and the stick” This thinking has replaced the outright Cold War rhetoric when we knew as we hid under our school desk who was going to drop nukes on us.
“Goskomizdat” the other side of the wall experienced our goodness, our light and love in the invasions and support of the tsar and in China the support of the warlords. Those we call evil see us as “Greeks bearing gifts” which include the economic defeat of Putin’s Russia and Xi Jinping’s China — eliminating them as a major factor in our equation and understanding is justified by our definition of who is “good” and who is “evil”.
Any competition to challenge us as the “king of the hill” we eliminated and made subservient as we have done with the Kaiser in WWI, attempt to eliminate Lenin in 1920, eliminated Hitler and Tojo in 1945, failed to eliminate Mao but saved that for another day by keeping Chiang Kai Shek in Taiwan.
With the collapse of the USSR we failed with Putin so we resurrected the “good and the evil” with Ukraine so we are back teaching the school children to hide under their desks.
LikeLike