The Oligarchy of America

We've become, now, an oligarchy instead of a democracy. I think that’s been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards to the American political system that I’ve ever seen in my life." -Jimmy Carter (2015)

Well before Citizens United was decided, former President Jimmy Carter was interviewed on the Oprah Winfrey show. What he discussed then is as true today as it was then, and even truer now that corporations can buy their own presidents. The divisions among the people have repeatedly chiseled us into smaller and smaller groups, and with each split, there goes the power that we once had as a nation. It’s past time to understand the truth: we’ve been bought, and most of us didn’t see a dime of it.

Did you think it couldn’t happen in America? That’s part of the reason it worked, and worked in such a uniquely American way that we’d be hard pressed to see it unfold the same way anywhere else. Today is the first day of the rest of history, and we see ushered into office this month a presidency undeniably bought by the richest man on earth. How was he able to do this? Because we forgot who we are. We are not sycophants, or small people who fear our corporate overlords. We’re barely civilized humans, feral creatures with a nascent need for freedom. While we’ve been spending our energy protecting our freedom of the body, we’ve forgotten to guard our freedom of the mind.

It is by this we’ve fallen, then and even now. Can we rise again to be a bastion of liberty, a beacon to the world?

You decide that, don’t you?