Among all groups, including ours, the issue of the behavior of wealthy, right-wing political activism is viewed as a legitimate participation in democracy, when it is war on democracy.
Basically, the entire idea of democracy — since this seems to have been forgotten by many — was to recognize that the few had a lot of power over the many, and to replace that power — from their money — with a new artificial currency in determining our leaders and therefore their policies, giving one unit of the new currency to each person, rich or poor — the vote.
That way — with some protections for individual rights to limit the tyranny of the majority — policies most people agreed with would pass, not policies benefiting only a few.
And since the moment that was decided for our country’s direction in the 18th century. there has been a war between that wealthy class and democracy.
But not an honest war, where they admit it; a dishonest one, where they don’t say they are fighting it, but they pour billions of dollars into the war.
Louis Brandeis said, “You can have democracy, or you can have great wealth concentrated in few hands, but you cannot have both.”
What he was saying is that there is an inherent conflict between democracy removing concentrated power and great wealth giving it.
What the wealthy have done is to:
- Fight to destroy our constitutional protections for the rights of the people over the wealthy
- Fight to enshrine their rights to use their advantage — wealth — to an ever greater degree in our elections and politics as a constitutional right of theirs, immune to the will of the people
- Use that wealth for a massive propaganda war — again, undeclared — hiring armies of experts to create messages to sell their agenda to the American people and a media system to distribute it
In short, they look for ways, recognizing that democracy in some form is the best they can get for a system, for their wealth to buy them the power democracy tries to take away.
And they’ve basically succeeded.
When all the Republican candidates for president visit Las Vegas to kiss Addleston’s ring and beg for his billions to pick them, it’s an example. When the koch brothers raise billions on funds to distribute the candidates of their choosing to buy the power for the Libertarian agenda they could never win the honest way, it’s an example.
What these billionares are doing, by funding the propaganda machines, by using their wealth to buy elections, is about as un-American as it gets.
Everyone likes power pretty much. But there are right ways and wrong ways.
If you make a great argument for single-payer healthcare and it influences people, that’s the right way.
When a celebrity uses their fame to agree with you and it persuades people, that’s a gray area. Not really the ‘right’ way to influence politics, but can be good or bad depending on the position.
But when the health insurance industry fights for its profits by defending a system that denies coverage to tens of millions and kills thousands of Americans annually, by writing big checks that pay liars and propagandists to persuade the American people of the false positions on the issue, they are directly fighting the system of democracy, trying to buy the results they want — not with actually better arguments or policies, but the opposite.
They are spending those fortunes to say that because they’re rich, they should get far more say than their one vote.
An extreme case of this would be to replace “one person, one vote” with “one dollar, one vote”. That would be the opposite of democracy, but it’s what they are fighting for and largely getting.
The point of this diary is to criticize how they are not treated as the enemies of democracy they are — but rather simply as ‘people like any other who advocate for their views’.
I see effectively zero criticism or accountability toward them for the war they are fighting on democracy — only criticism of the positions they take.
But if their billions buy the messages and media for the messages that win the day at the ballot booth, it’s treated as all good, no problem, democracy working just fine. It’s not.
These people deserve the title of worst enemies of democracy in the world. It’s what they are.
And I’d like to see that more widely understood and those who try to buy our politics treated as the enemies of democracy and our society they are.
And I’m not describing every wealth political donor.
There are plenty who donate to ‘good causes’, to charity, to promote democracy, to try to help the public good, to counter the plutocrats.
I’m referring to those who try to buy the results bad for the public they can’t win on the merits of the issues, but instead try to buy with money.
It is the biggest threat to our democracy today — and arguably that’s pretty much always been the case.
It seems the only way to win the issue, as Brandeis said, is to take away much of their weapons — wealth — but in the meantime, popular understanding they are enemies of democracy helps.