No Oligarchs Zoom — Noon PT / 3PM ET
The real enemy within
Hello friends,
Both the Washington Post, a newspaper I grew up with, and the Los Angeles Times, my current hometown paper, did what
says one must not do in the face of a fascist threat, “obey in advance.”In both cases, the oligarch that owns them, Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong — who, full disclosure, I know very well, because he maliciously destroyed my company 12 years ago — intervened to stop their own editorial boards from endorsing Kamala Harris. This was blatantly obeying in advance, in spite of the wishes of their own customers and employees. It was also a terrible signal to the nation, and a blow to the long-term trustworthiness of our free press.
Once we get through this election, we need to take a sledgehammer to the American oligarchy before it overtakes us once and for all.
“The American dream” is not about collecting so much money and power that you deprive everyone else of the opportunity to live well. What we’re seeing is not democracy. It’s plutocracy collaborating with fascism. We know how that goes.
There is an “enemy within” — a small group of elites who believe their ability to siphon massive amounts of money away from people means they are inherently more capable of making the “big decisions” for us.
They see the government as an outdated relic they can make more efficient just by having it do whatever they want. I know this from personal experience with oligarchs. Empathy doesn’t enter their thoughts at any time. They see people as labor and resources, and as a mechanism of their own glorification. If you get on the wrong side of their personal calculations, or wound their egos, they will cut your throat without hesitation.
Humanity has always had this type of person. The problem arises when a society sanctions and subsidizes them and allows them to gain enough power to destroy the system they got their power from. In that scenario, you have a society in danger of collapse, and a system that has stopped functioning.
“Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
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