Posts Tagged ‘Vladimir Lenin’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 20, 2025 at 12:10 am
Long before he took office for the first time on January 20, 2017, Donald Trump never intended to rule as an ordinary President.
Under the Constitution, a President can hold office for—at most—eight years. But a “President-for-Life” can rule until he dies.
That was—and remains—his ambition.
In a closed-door speech to Republican donors on March 3, 2018, Trump revealed his ultimate intention: To overthrow America’s constitutional government.
He praised China’s President, Xi Jinping, for recently assuming full dictatorial powers: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot some day.”
The statement was greeted with cheers and laughter by Republican donors.
Xi Jinping
Upon taking office as the Nation’s 45th President, Trump attacked or undermined one public or private institution after another.
Among these:
- American Intelligence: Even before taking office, Trump refused to accept the findings of the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency (NSA) that Russian Intelligence agents had intervened in the 2016 election to ensure his victory.
- “I think it’s ridiculous,” he told “Fox News Sunday.” “I think it’s just another excuse. I don’t believe it….No, I don’t believe it at all.”
- And when FBI Director James Comey dared to pursue a probe into “the Russia thing,” Trump fired him without warning.
- American law enforcement agencies: Trump repeatedly attacked his own Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, for not “protecting” him from agents pursuing the Russia investigation.
- On November 8, 2018, Trump abruptly fired him, following Democrats’ winning control of the House in the midterm elections.
- He threatened to fire Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, who oversaw Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian subversion of the 2016 election.
- American military agencies: In 2018, Trump refused to visit an American cemetery near Paris and referred to U.S. Marines buried there as “losers” and “suckers.”
- Trump regularly abused military officials, calling Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley a “dumbass” and former Secretary of Defense James Mattis “the world’s most overrated general.”
Seal of the Department of Defense
- The press: On February 17, 2017, Trump tweeted: “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!”
- Appearing before the Conservative Political Action Conference on February 24, 2017, Trump said: “I want you all to know that we are fighting the fake news. It’s fake, phony, fake….I’m against the people that make up stories and make up sources. They shouldn’t be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody’s name. Let their name be put out there.”
- The judiciary: Trump repeatedly attacked Seattle US District Judge James Robart, who halted Trump’s first Muslim travel ban.
- In one tweet, Trump claimed: “Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and court system. People pouring in. Bad!”
- At Trump’s bidding, White House aide Stephen Miller attacked the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals: “We have a judiciary that has taken far too much power and become, in many cases, a supreme branch of government.”
Donald Trump
Even after leaving the White House in 2021, Trump continued his attacks on one cherished American institution after another:
- Facing 91 criminal counts in four cases, he discredited the judicial system, attacking judges, prosecutors, witnesses—and even their family members.
- He attacked Independent Counsel Jack Smith as “deranged” and accused him of trying to invalidate his candidacy for President in 2024.
- He attacked retired U.S. Army General Mark Milley for calling him “a wannabe dictator,” and said that Milley deserved execution as a traitor.
- Milley had successfully averted war with China by calling his Chinese military counterparts in the final weeks of Trump’s administration to assure them that Trump was not planning to attack China.
- He claimed voter fraud where none existed, casting doubt on the integrity of the electoral system.
- He claimed himself to be the victim of “the deep state” inside the federal bureaucracy.
- He attacked the integrity of the FBI—causing previously “law and order” Republicans to demand its defunding.
* * * * * * * * * *
Donald Trump isn’t crazy, as many of his critics charge. He knows exactly what he’s doing—and why.
He intends to strip every potential challenger to his authority—or his version of reality—of legitimacy with the public. If he succeeds, there will be:
- No independent press to reveal his failures and crimes.
- No independent law enforcement agencies to investigate his abuses of office.
- No independent judiciary to hold him accountable.
- No independent military to dissent as he recklessly hurtles toward a nuclear disaster.
- No candidate—Democrat or Republican—to challenge him for re-election in 2028—or any other year..
- No candidate—Democrat or Republican—to challenge his remaining in office as “President-for-Life.”
A dictator can die of illness or old age.
China’s Communist ruler, Mao Zedong died on September 9, 1976, at 82, from a series of heart attacks.
And Spain’s Fascist tyrant, Francisco Franco, died on November 20, 1975, at 82, of congestive heart failure.
But there are other ways a tyrant can be forced to give up power—such as the following three.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on December 12, 2024 at 12:10 am
In his 1975 book, The Corrupt Society: From Ancient Greece to Modern-day America, British historian Robert Payne warned that the predatory rich would not change their behavior:
“Like the tyrant who lives in a world wholly remote from the world of the people, shielded and protected from all possible influences, the rich are usually the last to observe the social pressures rising from below, and when these social pressures reach flashpoint, it is too late to call in the police or the army.”
Robert Payne
There are signs that millions of Americans are seeing themselves not on a racially-conscious basis but on a class-conscious one.
During the 2024 Presidential campaign, Democrats expected to retain control of the White House through the loyalty of groups that had traditionally voted Democratic: Blacks, Hispanics, women, those under 30.
Yet Vice President Kamala Harris fared badly with all of these groups.
According to a November 12, 2024 story on National Public Radio, “Why high prices toppled Democrats—and other governments around the world”:
“This year’s election results made one thing clear: People really don’t like paying more for everyday expenses….
“A survey by the Associated Press found high prices were the number one concern for about half of all Trump voters.”
Donald Trump
Hispanics, for example, ignored Donald Trump’s incessant attacks and threats to deport 11 million of them—because they were upset by the high price of eggs.
And according to a December 3 story published in Right on Time, Gen Z voters—those voters between 18–24 years old—turned Right “because of economic factors, like the desire for a whopping salary, according to a new survey.
“Financial services company Empower surveyed more than 2,200 Americans, and respondents born between 1997 and 2012 declared they’d need to make $587,000 a year to be ‘financially successful.’”
In short: Most of those who voted for Trump wanted to move from a lower financial class to a higher one. And they’re dangerously angry at their inability to improve their living conditions.
The latest evidence of this occurred on the morning of December 4: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, 50, was shot in the back while walking to an investor conference in Manhattan.
Brian Thompson
The accused shooter—Luigi Mangione—left behind shell casings with “deny,” “defend” and “depose” written on them.
The phrase has been adopted by critics of the healthcare industry to describe how insurance companies delay paying claims, deny valid claims in whole or part, and defend their actions by forcing claimants to enter litigation.
The phrase was popularized in the 2010 book, Delay Deny Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It, by Jay M. Feinman.
Feinman, an expert in insurance law and professor emeritus at Rutgers University, wrote the book to be “an expose of insurance injustice and a plan for consumers and lawmakers to fight back.”
Apparently, Mangione, the accused gunman, decided to “fight back” in a more direct and lethal way.
For the executives of America’s $1.6 trillion (in 2022) individual health insurance industry, online reactions to the clearly targeted assassination of Brian Thompson must be chilling.
Many comments ranged from unfeeling to outright hostility toward health insurance companies and the executives who run them.
UnitedHealthcare, as the largest private insurer in the United States, has been the primary target of those attacks:
“When you shoot one man in the street it’s murder. When you kill thousands of people in hospitals by taking away their ability to get treatment, you’re an entrepreneur.”
“An innocent victim was gunned down in cold blood. Have a heart regardless of your health insurance.”
“Can’t find the room to care over my daughter’s $60,000 cancer treatment. Thoughts and prayers.”
“My copay for thoughts and prayers is $100,000; I heard his condition was pre-existing; My ability to care was denied; My sympathy requires a referral; Submitted claim for condolences was denied.”
“My empathy is out of network.”
“Thoughts and deductibles to the family. Unfortunately my condolences are out-of-network.”
“Today…we mourn the deaths of the 68,000 Americans who needlessly die each year so that insurance company execs like Brian Thompson can become multimillionaires.”
“Now the norms of violence are spreading into the commercial sector,” said Robert Pape, director of the University of Chicago’s project on security and threats.
“What I think we’re really experiencing as a country is the erosion against norms. That means, basically, seeing violence as the more normal tool, or acceptable tool, to resolve what should be straightforward civil disputes resolved in nonviolent ways.”
Incoming President Donald Trump has picked at least 11 billionaires and millionaires for his Cabinet. In some cases, they will have the power to cut spending on public services that are used by the most poor and vulnerable.
Trump has also threatened to ignite a tariff war with America’s biggest trading partners—Canada, Mexico and China. This will cause prices for life’s necessities to spiral out of control for millions of Americans.
At that point, Walter Scheidel’s 2017 book, The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century, may become required reading for overpaid corporate executives throughout the country.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on December 11, 2024 at 12:19 am
The gap between rich and poor in the United States has never been greater.
The Economic Policy Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank working for the last 30 years to counter rising inequality. Its September 21, 2023 report stated:
- In 2022, CEOs were paid 344 times as much as a typical worker.
- In 1965 they were paid 21 times as much. In 2021, CEOs made nearly eight times as much as the top 0.1% of wage earners in the U.S.
This would not have been news to Niccolo Machiavelli, the father of modern political science. In his masterwork, The Discourses, he observed the human condition as that of constant struggle:
Niccolo Machiavelli
“It was a saying of ancient writers, that men afflict themselves in evil, and become weary of the good, and that both these dispositions produce the same effects.
“For when men are no longer obliged to fight from necessity, they fight from ambition, which passion is so powerful in the hearts of men that it never leaves them, no matter to what height they may rise.
“The reason for this is that nature has created men so that they desire everything, but are unable to attain it. Desire being thus always greater than the faculty of acquiring, discontent with what they have and dissatisfaction with themselves result from it.
“This causes the changes in their fortunes—for as some men desire to have more, while others fear to lose what they have, enmities and war are the consequences. And this brings about the ruin of one province and the elevation of another.”
Author Walter Scheidel, Dickason Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Classics and History at Stanford University, has also given this subject a great deal of thought. And, like Machiavelli, he has reached some highly disturbing conclusions.
Walter Scheidel
World Economic Forum [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D
He gave voice to these in his 2017 book, The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century. His thesis: Only violence and catastrophes have consistently reduced inequality throughout history.
According to the book’s jacket blurb: “Are mass violence and catastrophes the only forces that can seriously decrease economic inequality? To judge by thousands of years of history, the answer is yes.
“Tracing the global history of inequality from the Stone Age to today, Walter Scheidel shows that inequality never dies peacefully. Inequality declines when carnage and disaster strike and increases when peace and stability return.
“The Great Leveler is the first book to chart the crucial role of violent shocks in reducing inequality over the full sweep of human history around the world.
“Ever since humans began to farm, herd livestock, and pass on their assets to future generations, economic inequality has been a defining feature of civilization. Over thousands of years, only violent events have significantly lessened inequality.
“The ‘Four Horsemen’ of leveling—-mass-mobilization warfare, transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic plagues—have repeatedly destroyed the fortunes of the rich.
“Scheidel identifies and examines these processes, from the crises of the earliest civilizations to the cataclysmic world wars and communist revolutions of the twentieth century.
“Today, the violence that reduced inequality in the past seems to have diminished, and that is a good thing. But it casts serious doubt on the prospects for a more equal future.”
Revolutionaries have known the truth of Scheidel’s findings from the gladiators’ revolt of Spartacus (73-71 B.C.) to the French Revolution (1789-1799) to the overthrow of the Czarist Romanov dynasty (1917).
But American politicians serenely ignore that truth. They depend on the mega-rich for millions of dollars in “campaign contributions”—which pay for self-glorifying ads on TV.
Thus, in 2016, American voters had a “choice” between two “love-the-rich” Presidential candidates: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Trump owed his wealth to a $200 million gift from his real estate tycoon father. Clinton owed hers mostly through her husband, Bill, by his writing books, giving speeches, consulting private companies and advising billionaire Ron Burkle.
After leaving the Senate (2001-09) and President Obama’s cabinet (2009-13), she earned $9 million in speaking fees in both 2013 and 2014.
The result was that millions stayed home or voted in protest for third-party candidates who had no chance of winning.
In 2020, American voters got to “choose” between another two “love-the-rich” candidates: Donald Trump and Joseph Biden.
In his 1975 book, The Corrupt Society: From Ancient Greece to Modern-day America, British historian Robert Payne warned that the predatory rich would not change their behavior: “Nor is there any likelihood that the rich will plow back their money into services to ensure the general good.
“They have rarely demonstrated social responsibility, and they are much more likely to hold on to their wealth at all costs than to renounce any part of it.
“Like the tyrant who lives in a world wholly remote from the world of the people, shielded and protected from all possible influences, the rich are usually the last to observe the social pressures rising from below, and when these social pressures reach flashpoint, it is too late to call in the police or the army.”
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on December 10, 2024 at 12:21 am
Americans are used to Presidential candidates telling lies (euphemistically known as “campaign promises”) to get elected.
But when a candidate actually (and usually accidentally) tells the truth, the results can be electrifying.
A pointed example:
On June 18, 2019, Democratic Presidential candidate and front-runner Joe Biden addressed a roomful of donors in New York. Money is, after all, the lifeblood of all political campaigns, and Biden wanted to guarantee he got more of it than any of his 23 Democratic rivals.
So the former vice president had a message he felt sure would appeal to his well-heeled audience of billionaires: Don’t worry, if I’m elected, your standard of living won’t change.
Joe Biden
Addressing the 100 or so guests at a fundraiser at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City, Biden said that he had taken heat from “some of the people on my team, on the Democratic side” because he had said that rich people were “just as patriotic as poor people.
“The truth of the matter is, you all, you all know, you all know in your gut what has to be done. We can disagree in the margins but the truth of the matter is it’s all within our wheelhouse and nobody has to be punished. No one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change,” he said.
And he added: “I mean, we may not want to demonize anybody who has made money.
“When we have income inequality as large as we have in the United States today, it brews and ferments political discord and basic revolution. Not a joke. Not a joke. It allows demagogues to step in and say the reason where we are is because of the ‘other’….
“You’re not the other. I need you very badly. I hope if I win this nomination, I won’t let you down. I promise you. I have a bad reputation, I always say what I mean. The problem is I sometimes say all that I mean.”
Biden talked about decreasing income inequality and promoting workers’ rights. But he took a moderate stance when it came to taxation.
Vermont United States Senator Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, has attacked the ultra-rich as responsible for the ever-widening gap between themselves and the poor.
Bernie Sanders
“I love Bernie, but I’m not Bernie Sanders. I don’t think 500 billionaires are the reason why we’re in trouble,” Biden said in March, 2019.
Instead, he proposed expanding tax credits for the poor and middle class, and making the tax code less friendly to rich investors.
Robert Payne, the distinguished British historian, had a different—and darker—view of the rich.
Payne authored more than 110 books. Among his subjects were Adolf Hitler, Ivan the Terrible, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, William Shakespeare and Leon Trotsky.
In 1975, he published The Corrupt Society: From Ancient Greece to Present-Day America. It proved a summary of many of his previous works.
Among the epochs it covered were the civilizations of ancient Greece, Rome and China; Nazi Germany; the Soviet Union; and Watergate-era America. And the massive corruption each of those epochs had spawned.
In his chapter, “A View of the Uncorrupted Society,” Payne warned: Power and wealth are the main sources of corruption.
“The rich, simply by being rich, are infected with corruption. Their overwhelming desire is to grow richer, but they can do this only at the expense of those who are poorer than themselves.
”Their interests conflict with those of the overall society. They live sheltered from the constant anxieties of the poor, and thus cannot understand them. Nor do they try to.
“They see the poor as alien from themselves, and thus come to fear and despise them. And their wealth and influence enables them to buy politicians—who, in turn, write legislation that protects the rich from the poor.”
But Payne foresaw an even greater danger from the rich and powerful than their mere isolation from the rest of society: “The mere presence of the rich is corrupting. Their habits, their moral codes, their delight in conspicuous consumption are permanent affronts to the rest of humanity. Vast inequalities of wealth are intolerable in any decent society.”
Writing in 1975, Payne noted that a third of the private wealth was possessed by less than five percent of the population—while about a fifth of the populace lived at the poverty level. By 2000, he predicted, about five percent of the population would possess two-thirds of America’s wealth. And more than half the population would be near or below the starvation level.
Payne has proven to be an uncanny prophet.
On October 8, 2024, Fortune magazine noted that “over the past 30 years, the U.S.’s top 1% got richer, and now hold nearly a third of the nation’s wealth.“
Oxfam is a British-founded confederation of 21 independent non-governmental organizations, focusing on the alleviation of global poverty, founded in 1942. On January 16, 2023, it noted:
“The richest 1 percent grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth worth $42 trillion created since 2020, almost twice as much money as the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population.”
But this situation need not remain permanent.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on March 8, 2024 at 12:12 am
The gap between rich and poor in the United States has never been greater.
A May 1, 2018 article in Forbes—which bills itself as “The Capitalist Tool”—vividly documents this truth.
“In the 1950s, a typical CEO made 20 times the salary of his or her average worker. Last year, [2017] CEO pay at an S&P 500 Index firm soared to an average of 361 times more than the average rank-and-file worker, or pay of $13,940,000 a year, according to an AFL-CIO’s Executive Paywatch news release today.”
Since 1978, the CEO pay among America’s 300 biggest companies has gone up 1,460%, while the typical worker’s pay grew by just 18%
This would not have been news to Niccolo Machiavelli, the father of modern political science. In his masterwork, The Discourses, he observed the human condition as that of constant struggle:
Niccolo Machiavelli
It was a saying of ancient writers, that men afflict themselves in evil, and become weary of the good, and that both these dispositions produce the same effects.
For when men are no longer obliged to fight from necessity, they fight from ambition, which passion is so powerful in the hearts of men that it never leaves them, no matter to what height they may rise.
The reason for this is that nature has created men so that they desire everything, but are unable to attain it. Desire being thus always greater than the faculty of acquiring, discontent with what they have and dissatisfaction with themselves result from it.
This causes the changes in their fortunes—for as some men desire to have more, while others fear to lose what they have, enmities and war are the consequences. And this brings about the ruin of one province and the elevation of another.
Author Walter Scheidel, Dickason Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Classics and History at Stanford University, has also given this subject a great deal of thought. And, like Machiavelli, he has reached some highly disturbing conclusions.
Walter Scheidel
World Economic Forum [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D
He gave voice to these in his 2017 book, The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century. His thesis: Only violence and catastrophes have consistently reduced inequality throughout history.
According to the book’s jacket blurb: “Are mass violence and catastrophes the only forces that can seriously decrease economic inequality? To judge by thousands of years of history, the answer is yes.
“Tracing the global history of inequality from the Stone Age to today, Walter Scheidel shows that inequality never dies peacefully. Inequality declines when carnage and disaster strike and increases when peace and stability return.
“The Great Leveler is the first book to chart the crucial role of violent shocks in reducing inequality over the full sweep of human history around the world.
“Ever since humans began to farm, herd livestock, and pass on their assets to future generations, economic inequality has been a defining feature of civilization. Over thousands of years, only violent events have significantly lessened inequality.
“The ‘Four Horsemen’ of leveling—-mass-mobilization warfare, transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic plagues—have repeatedly destroyed the fortunes of the rich.
“Scheidel identifies and examines these processes, from the crises of the earliest civilizations to the cataclysmic world wars and communist revolutions of the twentieth century.
“Today, the violence that reduced inequality in the past seems to have diminished, and that is a good thing. But it casts serious doubt on the prospects for a more equal future.”
Revolutionaries have known the truth of Scheidel’s findings from the gladiators’ revolt of Spartacus (73-71 B.C.) to the French Revolution (1789 – 1799) to the overthrow of the Czarist Romanov dynasty (1917).
But American politicians serenely ignore that truth. They depend on the mega-rich for millions of dollars in “campaign contributions”—which pay for self-glorifying ads on TV.
Thus, in 2016, American voters had a “choice” between two “love-the-rich” Presidential candidates: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The result was that millions stayed home or voted in protest for third-party candidates who had no chance of winning.
In his 1975 book, The Corrupt Society: From Ancient Greece to Modern-day America, British historian Robert Payne warned that the predatory rich would not change their behavior: “Nor is there any likelihood that the rich will plow back their money into services to ensure the general good.
“They have rarely demonstrated social responsibility, and they are much more likely to hold on to their wealth at all costs than to renounce any part of it.
“Like the tyrant who lives in a world wholly remote from the world of the people, shielded and protected from all possible influences, the rich are usually the last to observe the social pressures rising from below, and when these social pressures reach flashpoint, it is too late to call in the police or the army.
“The tyrant dies; the police and the army go over to the revolutionaries; and the new government dispossesses the rich by decree. A single authoritative sentence suffices to expunge all private wealth and restore it to the service of the nation.”
2020 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, ABC NEWS, ADOLF HITLER, ALTERNET, ANCIENT GREECE, ANCIENT ROME, AP, BERNIE SANDERS, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CHINA, CNN, CONSUMER PROTECTION, CORPORATE TAXES, CORRUPTION, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOZ, DEMOCRATIC PARTY, FUNDRAISING, INCOME INEQUALITY, IVAN THE TERRIBLE, JOE BIDEN, JOSEPH STALIN, LEON TROTSKY, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NAZI GERMANY, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI, NPR, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, RAW STORY, REUTERS, ROBERT PAYNE, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DISCOURSES, THE GREAT LEVELER, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, TIME, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY, Vladimir Lenin, WALL STREET, WALTER SCHEIDEL, WATERGATE, WEALTH GAP, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, WINSTON CHURCHILL, X
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on March 7, 2024 at 12:11 am
Americans are used to Presidential candidates telling lies (euphemistically known as “campaign promises”) to get elected.
But when a candidate actually (and usually accidentally) tells the truth, the results can be electrifying.
A pointed example:
On June 18, 2019, Democratic Presidential candidate and front-runner Joe Biden addressed a roomful of donors in New York. Money is, after all, the lifeblood of all political campaigns, and Biden wanted to guarantee he got more of it than any of his 23 Democratic rivals.
So the former vice president had a message he felt sure would appeal to his well-heeled audience of billionaires: Don’t worry, if I’m elected, your standard of living won’t change.
Joe Biden
Addressing the 100 or so guests at a fundraiser at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City, Biden said that he had taken heat from “some of the people on my team, on the Democratic side” because he had said that rich people were “just as patriotic as poor people.
“The truth of the matter is, you all, you all know, you all know in your gut what has to be done. We can disagree in the margins but the truth of the matter is it’s all within our wheelhouse and nobody has to be punished. No one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change,” he said.
And he added: “I mean, we may not want to demonize anybody who has made money.
“When we have income inequality as large as we have in the United States today, it brews and ferments political discord and basic revolution. Not a joke. Not a joke. It allows demagogues to step in and say the reason where we are is because of the ‘other’….
“You’re not the other. I need you very badly. I hope if I win this nomination, I won’t let you down. I promise you. I have a bad reputation, I always say what I mean. The problem is I sometimes say all that I mean.”
Biden talked about decreasing income inequality and promoting workers’ rights. But he took a moderate stance when it came to taxation.
Vermont United States Senator Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, has attacked the ultra-rich as responsible for the ever-widening gap between themselves and the poor.
Bernie Sanders
“I love Bernie, but I’m not Bernie Sanders. I don’t think 500 billionaires are the reason why we’re in trouble,” Biden said in March.
Instead, he proposed expanding tax credits for the poor and middle class, and making the tax code less friendly to rich investors.
Robert Payne, the distinguished British historian, had a different—and darker—view of the rich.
Payne authored more than 110 books. Among his subjects were Adolf Hitler, Ivan the Terrible, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, William Shakespeare and Leon Trotsky.
In 1975, he published The Corrupt Society: From Ancient Greece to Present-Day America. It proved a summary of many of his previous works.
Among the epochs it covered were the civilizations of ancient Greece, Rome and China; Nazi Germany; the Soviet Union; and Watergate-era America. And the massive corruption each of those epochs had spawned.
In his chapter, “A View of the Uncorrupted Society,” Payne warned: Power and wealth are the main sources of corruption.
“The rich, simply by being rich, are infected with corruption. Their overwhelming desire is to grow richer, but they can do this only at the expense of those who are poorer than themselves.
”Their interests conflict with those of the overall society. They live sheltered from the constant anxieties of the poor, and thus cannot understand them. Nor do they try to.
“They see the poor as alien from themselves, and thus come to fear and despise them. And their wealth and influence enables them to buy politicians—who, in turn, write legislation that protects the rich from the poor.”
But Payne foresaw an even greater danger from the rich and powerful than their mere isolation from the rest of society: “The mere presence of the rich is corrupting. Their habits, their moral codes, their delight in conspicuous consumption are permanent affronts to the rest of humanity. Vast inequalities of wealth are intolerable in any decent society.”
Writing in 1975, Payne noted that a third of the private wealth was possessed by less than five percent of the population—while about a fifth of the populace lived at the poverty level. By 2000, he predicted, about five percent of the population would possess two-thirds of America’s wealth. And more than half the population would be near or below the starvation level.
The result could only be catastrophe. The only way to halt this this increasing concentration of wealth by fewer people would be through law or violent revolution.
Payne has proven to be an uncanny prophet.
On December 8, 2017, the Seattle Times noted that the wealthiest one percent of Americans owned 40% of the country’s wealth. They owned more wealth than the bottom 90% combined.
From 2013, the share of wealth owned by the one percent increased by nearly three percentage points. Wealth owned by the bottom 90%, meanwhile, fell over the same period.
But this situation need not remain permanent.
2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, 2020 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, ABC NEWS, ADOLF HITLER, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, ANCIENT GREECE, ANCIENT ROME, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BERNIE SANDERS, BUZZFEED, CATASTROPHE, CBS NEWS, CHINA, CNN, CONSUMER PROTECTION, CORPORATE TAXES, CORRUPTION, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOZ, DEMOCRATIC PARTY, DONALD TRUMP, DRUDGE RETORT, EXECUTIVE PAYWATCH, FACEBOOK, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, FORBES, FUNDRAISING, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HILLARY CLINTON, INCOME INEQUALITY, IVAN THE TERRIBLE, JOE BIDEN, JOSEPH STALIN, LEON TROTSKY, MEDIA MATTERS, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NAZI GERMANY, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI, NPR, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REUTERS, ROBERT PAYNE, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, SPARTACUS, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE CORRUPT SOCIETY (BOOK), THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE DISCOURSES, THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, THE GREAT LEVELER (BOOK), THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWITTER, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY, VIOLENCE, Vladimir Lenin, WALL STREET, WALTER SCHEIDEL, WATERGATE, WEALTH GAP, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, WINSTON CHURCHILL, WONKETTE
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on April 29, 2022 at 12:11 am
The gap between rich and poor in the United States has never been greater.
A May 1, 2018 article in Forbes—which bills itself as “The Capitalist Tool”—vividly documents this truth.
“In the 1950s, a typical CEO made 20 times the salary of his or her average worker. Last year, [2017] CEO pay at an S&P 500 Index firm soared to an average of 361 times more than the average rank-and-file worker, or pay of $13,940,000 a year, according to an AFL-CIO’s Executive Paywatch news release today.”
The average CEO pay climbed six percent in 2017—while the average production worker earned just $38,613, according to Executive Paywatch.
The average wage—adjusted for inflation—has stagnated for more than 50 years. Meanwhile, CEOs’ average pay since the 1950s has risen by 1000%.
This would not have been news to Niccolo Machiavelli, the father of modern political science. In his masterwork, The Discourses, he observed the human condition as that of constant struggle:
Niccolo Machiavelli
“It was a saying of ancient writers, that men afflict themselves in evil, and become weary of the good, and that both these dispositions produce the same effects.
“For when men are no longer obliged to fight from necessity, they fight from ambition, which passion is so powerful in the hearts of men that it never leaves them, no matter to what height they may rise.
“The reason for this is that nature has created men so that they desire everything, but are unable to attain it. Desire being thus always greater than the faculty of acquiring, discontent with what they have and dissatisfaction with themselves result from it.
“This causes the changes in their fortunes—for as some men desire to have more, while others fear to lose what they have, enmities and war are the consequences. And this brings about the ruin of one province and the elevation of another.”
Author Walter Scheidel, Dickason Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Classics and History at Stanford University, has also given this subject a great deal of thought. And, like Machiavelli, he has reached some highly disturbing conclusions.
Walter Scheidel
World Economic Forum [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D
Scheidel gave voice to these in his 2017 book, The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century. His thesis: Only violence and catastrophes have consistently reduced inequality throughout history.
According to the book’s jacket blurb: “Are mass violence and catastrophes the only forces that can seriously decrease economic inequality? To judge by thousands of years of history, the answer is yes.
“Tracing the global history of inequality from the Stone Age to today, Walter Scheidel shows that inequality never dies peacefully. Inequality declines when carnage and disaster strike and increases when peace and stability return.
“The Great Leveler is the first book to chart the crucial role of violent shocks in reducing inequality over the full sweep of human history around the world.
“Ever since humans began to farm, herd livestock, and pass on their assets to future generations, economic inequality has been a defining feature of civilization. Over thousands of years, only violent events have significantly lessened inequality.
“The ‘Four Horsemen’ of leveling—mass-mobilization warfare, transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic plagues—have repeatedly destroyed the fortunes of the rich….
“Today, the violence that reduced inequality in the past seems to have diminished, and that is a good thing. But it casts serious doubt on the prospects for a more equal future.”
Revolutionaries have known the truth of Scheidel’s findings from the gladiators’ revolt of Spartacus (73 – 71 B.C.) to the French Revolution (1789 – 1799) to the overthrow of the Czarist Romanov dynasty (1917).
But American politicians serenely ignore that truth. They depend on the mega-rich for millions of dollars in “campaign contributions”—which pay for self-glorifying ads on TV.
Thus, in 2016, American voters had a “choice” between two “love-the-rich” Presidential candidates: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The result was that millions stayed home or voted in protest for third-party candidates who had no chance of winning.
In his 1975 book, The Corrupt Society: From Ancient Greece to Modern-day America, British historian Robert Payne warned that the predatory rich would not change their behavior: “Nor is there any likelihood that the rich will plow back their money into services to ensure the general good.
“They have rarely demonstrated social responsibility, and they are much more likely to hold on to their wealth at all costs than to renounce any part of it.
“Like the tyrant who lives in a world wholly remote from the world of the people, shielded and protected from all possible influences, the rich are usually the last to observe the social pressures rising from below, and when these social pressures reach flashpoint, it is too late to call in the police or the army.
“The tyrant dies; the police and the army go over to the revolutionaries; and the new government dispossesses the rich by decree. A single authoritative sentence suffices to expunge all private wealth and restore it to the service of the nation.”
For millions of struggling, impoverished Americans, that day cannot come soon enough.
2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, 2020 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, ABC NEWS, ADOLF HITLER, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, ANCIENT GREECE, ANCIENT ROME, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BERNIE SANDERS, BUZZFEED, CATASTROPHE, CBS NEWS, CHINA, CNN, CONSUMER PROTECTION, CORPORATE TAXES, CORRUPTION, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOZ, DEMOCRATIC PARTY, DONALD TRUMP, DRUDGE RETORT, EXECUTIVE PAYWATCH, FACEBOOK, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, FORBES, FUNDRAISING, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HILLARY CLINTON, INCOME INEQUALITY, IVAN THE TERRIBLE, JOE BIDEN, JOSEPH STALIN, LEON TROTSKY, MEDIA MATTERS, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NAZI GERMANY, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI, NPR, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REUTERS, ROBERT PAYNE, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, SPARTACUS, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE CORRUPT SOCIETY (BOOK), THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE DISCOURSES, THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, THE GREAT LEVELER (BOOK), THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWITTER, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY, VIOLENCE, Vladimir Lenin, WALL STREET, WALTER SCHEIDEL, WATERGATE, WEALTH GAP, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, WINSTON CHURCHILL, WONKETTE
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on April 28, 2022 at 12:31 am
Americans are used to Presidential candidates telling lies (euphemistically known as “campaign promises”) to get elected.
But when a candidate actually (and usually accidentally) tells the truth, the results can be electrifying. And sometimes devastating for the candidate.
On June 18, 2019, Democratic Presidential candidate (and momentary front-runner) Joseph Biden addressed a roomful of donors in New York.
The former Vice President believed that his message would comfort his well-heeled audience of billionaires: Don’t worry, if I’m elected, your standard of living won’t change.
Addressing the 100 or so guests at a fundraiser at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City, Biden said that he had taken heat from “some of the people on my team, on the Democratic side” because he had said that rich people were “just as patriotic as poor people.
Joe Biden
“The truth of the matter is, you all, you all know, you all know in your gut what has to be done. We can disagree in the margins but the truth of the matter is it’s all within our wheelhouse and nobody has to be punished. No one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change,” he said.
And he added: “I mean, we may not want to demonize anybody who has made money.
“When we have income inequality as large as we have in the United States today, it brews and ferments political discord and basic revolution. Not a joke. Not a joke … It allows demagogues to step in and say the reason where we are is because of the ‘other’….
“You’re not the other. I need you very badly. I hope if I win this nomination, I won’t let you down. I promise you. I have a bad reputation, I always say what I mean. The problem is I sometimes say all that I mean.”
Biden had talked about decreasing income inequality and promoting workers’ rights. But he had also taken a moderate stance when it came to taxation.
United States Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT), on the other hand, has attacked the ultra-rich as responsible for the ever-widening gap between themselves and the poor.
“I love Bernie, but I’m not Bernie Sanders. I don’t think 500 billionaires are the reason why we’re in trouble,” Biden said in March, 2019.
Instead, he proposed expanding tax credits for the poor and middle class, and making the tax code less friendly to rich investors.
Robert Payne, the distinguished British historian, took a different—and darker—view of the rich.
Payne authored more than 110 books. Among his subjects were Adolf Hitler, Ivan the Terrible, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, William Shakespeare and Leon Trotsky.
In 1975, he published The Corrupt Society: From Ancient Greece to Present-Day America. It proved a summary of many of his previous works.
Among the epochs it covered: The civilizations of ancient Greece, Rome and China; Nazi Germany; the Soviet Union; and Watergate-era America. And the massive corruption each of those epochs had spawned.
Robert Payne
In his chapter, “A View of the Uncorrupted Society,” Payne warned: Power and wealth are the main sources of corruption.
“The rich, simply by being rich, are infected with corruption. Their overwhelming desire is to grow richer, but they can do this only at the expense of those who are poorer than themselves.
”Their interests conflict with those of the overall society. They live sheltered from the constant anxieties of the poor, and thus cannot understand them. Nor do they try to.”
They see the poor as alien from themselves, and thus come to fear and despise them. And their wealth and influence enables them to buy politicians—who, in turn, write legislation that protects the rich from the poor.
But Payne foresaw an even greater danger from the rich and powerful than their mere isolation from the rest of society: “The mere presence of the rich is corrupting. Their habits, their moral codes, their delight in conspicuous consumption are permanent affronts to the rest of humanity. Vast inequalities of wealth are intolerable in any decent society.”
Writing in 1975, Payne noted that a third of the private wealth was possessed by less than five percent of the population—while about a fifth of the populace lived at the poverty level. By 2000, he predicted, about five percent of the population would possess two-thirds of America’s wealth. And more than half the population would be near or below the starvation level.
The result could only be catastrophe. The only way to halt this this increasing concentration of wealth by fewer people would be through law or violent revolution.
Payne has proven to be an uncanny prophet.
On December 8, 2017, the Seattle Times noted that the wealthiest one percent of Americans owned 40% of the country’s wealth. They owned more wealth than the bottom 90% combined.
From 2013, the share of wealth owned by the one percent increased by nearly three percentage points. Wealth owned by the bottom 90%, meanwhile, fell over the same period.
But this situation need not remain permanent.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 7, 2022 at 12:13 am
On February 6, 2011, Ronald Reagan, if he had been alive, would have been 100 years old.
Publishers rushed to put out worshipful tributes to his eight years as President. Network political programs such as “This Week” and “Meet the Press” assembled surviving members of his administration to re-live the “glory days” of Reagan’s—and their—time in power.
Actually, it was during the Reagan administration that America entered its decline—a Right-wing legacy of huge Federal deficits, tax-cuts for the rich, bloated military budgets and cutbacks in government programs to aid the poor and middle-class.
Ronald Reagan
No two men could have been more different than Vladimir Lenin and Ronald Reagan. Lenin created the Soviet Union in 1917 and became its first in a series of absolute dictators. Reagan spent his life fighting Communism, most notably as President.
So it’s ironic that both men, in death, got essentially the same funeral—and for the same reason: To sanctify and legitimize their respective organizations—and the authority of their potential successors.
Vladimir Lenin
Lenin died in 1924 and was immediately succeeded by Joseph Stalin. Stalin knew that, despite Communism’s official atheistic stance, most Russians remained loyal to the Russian Orthodox Church.
So in giving Lenin’s funeral oration, Stalin used the language of religion to confer sainthood upon a militant atheist—and upon his successor, Stalin himself: “We vow to thee, Comrade Lenin, that we will fulfill this, thy commandment….”
Funeral for Vladimir Lenin
Stalin and his fellow Communists immediately launched the “cult of Lenin,” depicting him as a fatherly, all-wise leader whose genius could only be bestowed upon his closest disciples.
Lenin’s extensive political writings were treated as divine writ, and were used to justify everything Stalin and his own successors wanted to do.
A classic example: Although he died 20 years before the American creation of the atomic bomb, Lenin was hailed by the Soviets as the “father” of “Soviet nuclear physics.”
Similarly, Republicans quickly turned Reagan into a modern-day saint of mythical proportions.
They did so for the same reason that Stalin deliberately forged a cult around the dead Lenin—to create a “holy” figure of whom other Republicans can claim to be true disciples.
Funeral for Ronald Reagan
These deliberate fictions conveniently ignore a series of ugly truths:
- Reagan was only one of a series of Presidents who held the line against the Soviet Union.
- His budgets were just as stained with red ink as those of all previous Presidents.
- Far from standing up to Iranian terrorists, Reagan sold them our most sophisticated missiles in a weak-kneed exchange for American hostages. Then he went on television and brazenly lied that any such “arms for hostages” deal had ever happened.
- By the end of his term, 138 Reagan administration officials had been investigated, indicted or convicted for official misconduct and/or criminal violations.
- His “trickle-down” Reganomics brought prosperity to only the wealthiest 1% of Americans, proving that “a rising tide lifts some yachts.”
- By drastically shrinking the tax-base, bloating the defense budget and destroying programs to benefit the poor and middle-class, Reagan produced a $1 trillion deficit—which only the Clinton Administration eliminated.
- Reagan believed that government should not help the impoverished. Those who lacked wealth to buy such necessities as housing and medical insurance were written off as unimportant.
- John F. Kennedy had praised government service as an honor. Reagan repeatedly said that “the best and the brightest” could be found only in business.
- This denigration of government service continues among Republicans to this day—defaming the very institutions they lust to control.
- Although he often berated the poor for their “laziness,” Reagan adhered to a “banker’s hours” schedule: During his working hours in the Oval Office, he often had blocks of free time—two to three hours. He would call for his fan mail and answer it.
- Reagan saw no need to protect America’s fragile environment against corporate polluters, eager to enrich themselves at its expense: “Approximately 80% of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation, so let’s not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards from man-made sources.”
Reagan famously attacked “welfare queens” and sought to deny government benefits for the poor. But he didn’t hesitate to enrich himself at public expense.
- Before his Presidency ended, 18 wealthy Californians contributed $156,000 apiece to buy him a 7,200 square-foot mansion overlooking Beverly Hills.
- Reagan signed a multi-million dollar deal to write his Presidential memoirs and publish a collection of his speeches.
- He signed an exclusive contract with a Washington lecture bureau, which paid him $50,000 per speech given in the United States and $100,000 overseas. This made him the highest-paid speaker in the country.
- These monies came in addition to his Presidential pension of $99,500 a year for life and his $30,000 annual pension as a former governor of California.
- At a cost to the government of $10 million annually, Reagan—a millionaire who could afford private security—continued to receive lifetime Secret Service protection from 40 fulltime agents.
The “cult of Lenin” died when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The “cult of Reagan” died only when it was superseded by that of Donald Trump.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on December 21, 2021 at 12:11 am
The gap between rich and poor in the United States has never been greater.
A May 1, 2018 article in Forbes—which bills itself as “The Capitalist Tool”—vividly documents this truth.
“In the 1950s, a typical CEO made 20 times the salary of his or her average worker. Last year, [2017] CEO pay at an S&P 500 Index firm soared to an average of 361 times more than the average rank-and-file worker, or pay of $13,940,000 a year, according to an AFL-CIO’s Executive Paywatch news release today.”
The average CEO pay climbed six percent in 2017—while the average production worker earned just $38,613, according to Executive Paywatch.
The average wage—adjusted for inflation—has stagnated for more than 50 years. Meanwhile, CEOs’ average pay since the 1950s has risen by 1000%.
This would not have been news to Niccolo Machiavelli, the father of modern political science. In his masterwork, The Discourses, he observed the human condition as that of constant struggle:
Niccolo Machiavelli
“It was a saying of ancient writers, that men afflict themselves in evil, and become weary of the good, and that both these dispositions produce the same effects.
“For when men are no longer obliged to fight from necessity, they fight from ambition, which passion is so powerful in the hearts of men that it never leaves them, no matter to what height they may rise.
“The reason for this is that nature has created men so that they desire everything, but are unable to attain it. Desire being thus always greater than the faculty of acquiring, discontent with what they have and dissatisfaction with themselves result from it.
“This causes the changes in their fortunes—for as some men desire to have more, while others fear to lose what they have, enmities and war are the consequences. And this brings about the ruin of one province and the elevation of another.”
Author Walter Scheidel, Dickason Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Classics and History at Stanford University, has also given this subject a great deal of thought. And, like Machiavelli, he has reached some highly disturbing conclusions.
Walter Scheidel
World Economic Forum [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D
Scheidel gave voice to these in his 2017 book, The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century. His thesis: Only violence and catastrophes have consistently reduced inequality throughout history.
According to the book’s jacket blurb: “Are mass violence and catastrophes the only forces that can seriously decrease economic inequality? To judge by thousands of years of history, the answer is yes.
“Tracing the global history of inequality from the Stone Age to today, Walter Scheidel shows that inequality never dies peacefully. Inequality declines when carnage and disaster strike and increases when peace and stability return.
“The Great Leveler is the first book to chart the crucial role of violent shocks in reducing inequality over the full sweep of human history around the world.
“Ever since humans began to farm, herd livestock, and pass on their assets to future generations, economic inequality has been a defining feature of civilization. Over thousands of years, only violent events have significantly lessened inequality.
“The ‘Four Horsemen’ of leveling—mass-mobilization warfare, transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic plagues—have repeatedly destroyed the fortunes of the rich….
“Today, the violence that reduced inequality in the past seems to have diminished, and that is a good thing. But it casts serious doubt on the prospects for a more equal future.”
Revolutionaries have known the truth of Scheidel’s findings from the gladiators’ revolt of Spartacus (73 – 71 B.C.) to the French Revolution (1789 – 1799) to the overthrow of the Czarist Romanov dynasty (1917).
But American politicians serenely ignore that truth. They depend on the mega-rich for millions of dollars in “campaign contributions”—which pay for self-glorifying ads on TV.
Thus, in 2016, American voters had a “choice” between two “love-the-rich” Presidential candidates: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The result was that millions stayed home or voted in protest for third-party candidates who had no chance of winning.
In his 1975 book, The Corrupt Society: From Ancient Greece to Modern-day America, British historian Robert Payne warned that the predatory rich would not change their behavior: “Nor is there any likelihood that the rich will plow back their money into services to ensure the general good.
“They have rarely demonstrated social responsibility, and they are much more likely to hold on to their wealth at all costs than to renounce any part of it.
“Like the tyrant who lives in a world wholly remote from the world of the people, shielded and protected from all possible influences, the rich are usually the last to observe the social pressures rising from below, and when these social pressures reach flashpoint, it is too late to call in the police or the army.
“The tyrant dies; the police and the army go over to the revolutionaries; and the new government dispossesses the rich by decree. A single authoritative sentence suffices to expunge all private wealth and restore it to the service of the nation.”
For millions of struggling, impoverished Americans, that day cannot come soon enough.
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THREE POSSIBLE FATES FOR A TYRANT: PART ONE (OF THREE)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 20, 2025 at 12:10 amLong before he took office for the first time on January 20, 2017, Donald Trump never intended to rule as an ordinary President.
Under the Constitution, a President can hold office for—at most—eight years. But a “President-for-Life” can rule until he dies.
That was—and remains—his ambition.
In a closed-door speech to Republican donors on March 3, 2018, Trump revealed his ultimate intention: To overthrow America’s constitutional government.
He praised China’s President, Xi Jinping, for recently assuming full dictatorial powers: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot some day.”
The statement was greeted with cheers and laughter by Republican donors.
Xi Jinping
Upon taking office as the Nation’s 45th President, Trump attacked or undermined one public or private institution after another.
Among these:
Seal of the Department of Defense
Donald Trump
Even after leaving the White House in 2021, Trump continued his attacks on one cherished American institution after another:
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Donald Trump isn’t crazy, as many of his critics charge. He knows exactly what he’s doing—and why.
He intends to strip every potential challenger to his authority—or his version of reality—of legitimacy with the public. If he succeeds, there will be:
A dictator can die of illness or old age.
China’s Communist ruler, Mao Zedong died on September 9, 1976, at 82, from a series of heart attacks.
And Spain’s Fascist tyrant, Francisco Franco, died on November 20, 1975, at 82, of congestive heart failure.
But there are other ways a tyrant can be forced to give up power—such as the following three.
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