Plutocracy Supreme


Or Is It Supremely Plutocratic?

Abstract: The USA Supreme Court decided plutocrats could buy politicians with as much money as they want, calling this “no right more basic in our democracy”. With democracy like that, who needs plutocracy?

***

Plutocracy is an exponential phenomenon born from the growth of capital and the power it buys, breeding with the excuses the Dark Side makes for it, the increasing means the Dark Side provides with, finalized by tipping into abject cruelty and madness.

In the USA a lot of the Justice system has to do with politics. Judges and prosecutors are either elected as politicians, or selected by politicians.

Supreme Ginsburg, "Liberal" Champion, Worth: Only $20 Million. Nothing Else!

Supreme Ginsburg, “Liberal” Champion, Worth: Only $20 Million. Nothing Else!

So no wonder that the Supreme Court lifted all restrictions, de facto, on campaign financing by the hyper rich. The servants serve their masters well. And cynicism helps. “Justice” Bryer, the second wealthiest Supreme, pointed out liberally that the restrictions to the wealthy buying politicians previously in place did not work, so one may as well remove them.

“Liberally” Up Yours. It’s rather curious that someone such as Ginsburg, and Bryer, who were only teachers and a judges, their entire lives, could amass such a fortune. (Even plutocratic universities such as Harvard, Columbia and Stanford, where they were, don’t pay their professors that much.) It would certainly raise eyebrows in, say, Europe. How come so rich? No wonder they treasure their fellow have-it-alls.

The more modest the intellectual capability, the more economic it is to believe, rather than trying to think.

There are those who believe the USA is the greatest democracy, blah blah blah. How can they make their belief compatible with the eternal reign of the unelected Lords of the Supreme Court? Let alone the “Supremes” playing plutocratic politics?

We are on the correct trajectory to end up just as the Roman Republic did. The Roman Republic had a law enforcing an absolute limit of wealth on each family. After 150 BCE, Rome became a global power, and the wealthy owned properties overseas, allowing them to turn around these limits.

Republican minded Romans tried to limit the power of the hyper rich. They were destroyed by a succession of assassinations and civil war. Rome became a fascist plutocratic empire, that quickly degenerated from its contradictions (and then spent centuries in a morbid state).

***

The USA is obviously following a similar trajectory to folly. The practical cancellation of inheritance taxes, the lowest taxes for the rich, and their buying of their servants the politicians, and the massive propaganda to go with them, insure that the implosion down the abyss will go faster than in Rome.

The Justice of the strongest and wealthiest is no doubt the best.

The very definition of democracy “Chief Justice” Roberts uses is silly: “There is no right more basic in our democracy than the right to participate in electing our political leaders.”… in light of the fact he agrees to let each plutocrat give 3.6 million, to just one candidate, that is, about 72 times the average family income. About 4,000 times what one average family could possibly give. Some can exert 4,000 times the power on the elective process, and a primate is called “Chief Justice”. What democracy is that?

Even among baboons, no baboon exert 4,000 times the elective power. Baboons find the USA much removed from democracy.

Say a skeptical New York Times in “The Court Follows The Money”: “This money can then be funneled to specific campaigns through the use of joint fund-raising committees, effectively nullifying the per-candidate limit. Chief Justice Roberts blithely rejected such a scenario as “speculation,” and he ignored political reality by confining the meaning of corruption to instances of “quid pro quo,” or the direct exchange of money for political favors.

In other words, Chief Justice Roberts is either not very smart, corrupt, or both. It is weird that, in a country often defined by its fans as the “country of freedom” citizens accept to be submitted to the decisions of nine individuals nominated for life, while having obviously so little brain power.

That politicians dominate Justice in the USA has consequences on normal people, such as making them live in implicit terror. That implicit terror, among others things, enabled slavery. So slavery was misunderstood, all along: it has to do with plutocracy, not racism. Racism was a consequence.

The case of the West Memphis Three. Three poor white young boys were accused of Satanism (and this human sacrifice). Damien Echols was condemned to death, and spent 18 years on death row, as an anti-Christian. As he says: “In the USA, the Justice system is founded essentially on politics and money. I would have been dead if other rich and influential people had not been interested by the case.”

Echols and his co-accused spent more than 18 years in jail. When their DNA was finally tested, not only it did not fit, but the DNA of unknown perpetrators was found (Arkansas still consider them culprit, and condemned them to “time served”!). Echols feels that, as he puts it: “instead of talking about “Prosecutors”, “Judges”, “Justices”, as if they were moral persons. But in truth, they are just politicians, who do not hesitate to execute people they know are innocent, just to look like heroes”.

When justice is the abyss, plutocracy is its name.

Patrice Aymé

Tags: , , , , , , ,

21 Responses to “Plutocracy Supreme”

  1. richard reinhofer Says:

    Patrice, You’re an optimist! Do you really think we (USA) have centuries of morbidity to look forward to?

    Like

    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      Dear Richard: The case of Rome was special: by the time the Republic died (shortly after Caesar’s assassination) it controlled pretty much Western Eurasia and 25% of the world’s population. That gave it lots of inertia. Moreover Roman religious tolerance, later replaced by aggressively humanistic Christianity, plus 1,000 years of contact, made the Germans Roman compatible. So Rome did not have dedicated enemies as much as opportunistic and desperate (because of the Huns) neighbors.

      USA plutocracy is now dominant. And the EU is compatible with it. However, the EU, pretty much an amplification of the French Republic, is not necessarily to stay as friendly to plutocracy as it presently is: that could be an unexpected fall-out from Putin (France has been running air patrol over Eastern Europe because of the Ukraine crisis, a weird development for a supplier of major weapon systems to Putin).

      Moreover, there is the EU-USA trade area talks on, and it’s certain France will hold to the “cultural exception” position. So American plutocracy could break its teeth…

      I know for a fact SCOTUS’ “Justices” don’t like to be called savages by their European colleagues…. Which they, of course, are.
      PA

      Like

  2. Paul Handover Says:

    There is a difference between those Roman days and today. The ability of common folk to share their views and opinions around the world. Millions across this world know the system is broken.

    Like

    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      Dear Paul: entirely correct. The Internet is changing everything and that’s why it’s controlled or blocked in Russia, China, and similar dictatorships.

      Also there is more refined historical analysis. President Obama acted extremely well and courageously in the crime of Crimea (whereas Roosevelt acted unreal, badly and cowardly in 1938-1939-1940). There is some evidence that this gave Putin pause (as I hoped).

      Pacifists despise going to war, and condemn it haughtily, forgetting that it is exactly what German and Mittel Europa Jews did in the 1920s-1930s (the Warsaw ghetto revolted when death was certain)… This is, BTW, why Israel is so aggressive…

      Back to the Romans, though: MOST people in Rome knew, especially when the second Gracchi brother was hunted through the eternal city, and assassinated, most people knew that the plutocrats were on a rampage, that they were murderers, that they were stealing the Republic, destroying the Constitution, etc.

      What did the plutocrats do? They kill 5,000 of the Gracchi followers (by their own underestimated count).

      So knowledge is not everything. War, followed by victory, is everything.

      Thus let’s not be over-confident.
      PA

      Like

  3. Lovell Says:

    Bryer and Ginsburg voted against lifting the cap. The voting was along ideological partisan lines with Roberts, Scalia, Alito, Thomas, and Kennedy as the 5 magnificent hacks of the Kingdom of Pluto.

    Like

    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      Dear Lovell: Maybe they did, but I came across outrageous statements of Bryer to the effect that it did not change a thing. And why then did they not write a minority opinion condemning in a strident way the confiscation of democracy, and call the idiocies of Roberts for what they were?

      I am tired of those who sound opposed, but are doing nothing effective to effect that opposition. The best example was FDR in the 1930s: he talked as if he opposed Hitler, but his actions, ALL of them, went the other way.

      At best, Ginsburg and Bryer, filthy rich both. Where did Bryer find the money for a mansion in the Caribbean? How come it’s located in the tax haven of Nevis?
      http://www.taxhavens.biz/caribbean_tax_havens/tax_haven_nevis/

      If we want to destroy the plutocracy, we have to destroy the Fifth Column too! ;-)!
      PA

      Like

      • Lovell Says:

        Evolution, both social and biological, moves ever so slowly.

        We need to speed it up by adding an R.

        Like

        • Patrice Ayme Says:

          R like Revolution?

          Like

        • Lovell Says:

          Yup.

          There are violent Revolutions and there are peaceful bloodless ones too.

          Our plutocrats have the luxury to chose their poison. Democracy cannot co-exist with plutocracy.

          Like

          • Patrice Ayme Says:

            Louis XVI tried to make the plutocrats pay tax. The 2% nobles. Louis was the head plutocrat, and his power was (in theory) if not absolute, then very great. However he failed. Then he re-established the 16 Parliaments. Even that was not enough. So then he called the General Estates…

            In England, the plutocracy did not break, because, paradoxically, it was even mightier than in France. It’s very Darker Side was its force (hanging 7 year old children, etc.). Same in the USA (killing Indians rather than fraternizing and civilizing as the French government had ordered to do).

            That’s an added problem: the Dark Side can be MORE effective.
            PA

            Like

          • Lovell Says:

            Present day American oligarchy is a close replica of the English royals.

            Like

          • Patrice Ayme Says:

            Indeed. The methods are very similar, including deliberately wanton mistreatment of the Commons to keep them properly aligned.
            The English upper class was born as the “West Country Men“, before 1600 CE, and the mentality has perdured.

            Plutocracy, Slavery, Martin Luther Reigns


            PA

            Like

    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      I asked lawyers who have shown in Federal Court hundreds of time why some well to do lawyers decided to become judges (something impossible in say, France, as they would have to go back to school from scratch). They laughed: because of the money and power. I was told. As I was baffled, I was told much more, involving, off thre record, the word: corruption.

      Like

  4. Alexi Helligar Says:

    Alexi tagged you in a post.

    Alexi wrote: “Once again, my friend Patrice Ayme nails it:

    “So slavery was misunderstood, all along: it has to do with plutocracy, not racism. Racism was a consequence.”

    — Patrice Ayme”

    Like

  5. Aaron Greenbird Says:

    excellent post, thank you. re; Paul H., the system is not broken, it was built this way. broken implies ‘fixing’. there is no fix, or repair. like old leaky pipes in a house…one has to rip them out and replace….it will take time, and some blood….

    Like

    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      Thanks for thanking me Aaron.

      And I agree with your points.
      The guys who set-up the system were not giant plutocrats, but plutocrats nevertheless. Prime exhibits are Washington (a British colonel turned real estate speculator turned slave owner and chief rebel) and Jefferson (a rich slave owning parrot turned philosopher in chief turned president and great exterminator of Indians).

      Both knew very well slavery was evil, they had deep agreement on that with their French interlocutor-friends. However they kept practicing it. Lincoln argued later that the Founding Fathers knew slavery was evil, and wanted to get rid of it. Maybe on one level, like a serial killer feeling sorry for his victims. But they could not stop.
      And they set-up a system in which slavery could keep on going (they did not have to).

      So, yes, the system was bad to start with… But because it was bad it triumphed. If the French had established/stayed in control of North America, it would have been very different. But a French like system could not survive very well in direct contact with a much more exploitative system, as the story of the Hurons proved (the French “civilized” them… So the Iroquois, then allied to the English massacred them!)
      PA

      Like

    • Paul Handover Says:

      Aaron, I understand where you are coming from. But it assumes I was using the word broken in a literal sense rather than the metaphorical.

      Like

      • Patrice Ayme Says:

        The system was designed to dysfunction, just the way it does. By favoring the hyper rich. Remember: the president of the USA is selected by a few hundreds, non elected individuals.

        Like

  6. Andy Borowitz Says:

    Supreme Court Defends Wealthy’s Right to Own Government
    By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
    05 April 14

    By a five-to-four decision, the United States Supreme Court today defended the right of the wealthiest Americans to own the United States government.

    Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts summarized the rationale behind the Court’s decision: “In recent years, this Court has done its level best to remove any barriers preventing the wealthiest in our nation from owning our government outright. And while the few barriers that remained were flimsy at best, it was high time that they be shredded as well.”

    Citing the United States Constitution, Justice Roberts wrote, “Our founding fathers created the most magnificent democracy in human history. Now, thanks to this decision, the dream of owning that democracy is a reality.”

    Justice Antonin Scalia also weighed in, telling reporters at the Court, “After all the pro-gay decisions we’ve been making around here lately, it was nice to finally have a win for the good guys.”

    Like

  7. Patrice Ayme Says:

    It’s no coincidence that the USA is the den of climate, evolution, government denial, etc. Being, to start with, the den of justice denial helps.

    Climate deniers are the lowest human sort, the sort that kills for greed. Faced with overwhelming evidence of all types, they deny, because they are paid to do so, by their masters, the conspiring plutocrats. Never mind that the biosphere is threatened with quasi-extinction.

    Like

What do you think? Please join the debate! The simplest questions are often the deepest!