How Democracies Have Degenerated into Aristocracies

Eric Zuesse

There are two ways that this has happened:

One way is by means of coups that are either initiated by the U.S. Government such as happened in Ukraine in February 2014, or else are initiated by the local aristocracy (which American propaganda refers to instead as “oligarchs” so as to be able to hold America’s oligarchs as being superior to that) but then granted international ‘legitimacy’ by the U.S. Government, such as happened during June through August of 2009 in Honduras. In both instances, the U.S. Government changed what had been (though only briefly) a democracy into instead an aristocracy, in which the control of the Government passed from the country’s citizens (as in any democracy) and into, instead, control by America’s aristocracy using that local aristocracy so as to appoint the leaders of that nation’s Government. However, when the U.S. Government has itself initiated the coup (instead of merely adopted the local aristocracy’s coup), it is the American regime, and not the local regime, that appoints the new leaders (such as happened in Ukraine — and here is when that happened, and here is the broader context in which it happened). But in the cases where the local aristocracy has initiated the coup, the local aristocracy does the picking of whom will be the nation’s leader, and America’s aristocracy (via their agent the U.S. Government) either allows or disallows that chosen person to be installed there. But, in either type of coup, the result is that the U.S. empire has acquired an additional ‘ally’ or colony: that country (which had been a democracy).

The other way in which democracies have degenerated into aristocracies is by means of that democracy’s super-rich buying off enough politicians so as to (by means of the ones they’ve hired into the Government) appoint a Deep State who rule the country, such as has happened starting on 25 July 1945 in America, after which the U.S. Government has been an aristocracy building its empire, instead of even the limited democracy that the U.S. Government had previously been. And this creation of the new imperial America then spread its tentacles into and took control over other countries, such as by subversion, false-flag terrorism, sheer buying-off of European politicians, and carrying out coups there and elsewhere, and so created and expanded NATO, the EU, etc., and became the largest empire in all of world history.

Once a country becomes a colony, it loses its most-basic freedoms; especially it loses its freedom internationally, because all of its foreign policies are controlled from the center of the empire, the imperial aristocracy, which rules supreme over each local aristocracy. This is one reason why a country that has been grabbed directly by the U.S. regime, such as Ukraine did in 2014, is much more locked-into the empire than is a country whose own aristocracy had initiated the coup is, such as Honduras. The U.S. regime places especially high value upon a colony to the extent that capturing it had been long planned by America’s Deep State — that is, by the bureaucratically institutionalized persons whose careers have consistently been sponsored by the profit and non-profit corporations that America’s billionaires control. This is why the U.S. regime and its colonies refuse to allow Ukraine to go back to being what it had been — a neutral country on Russia’s (the actual target’s) border.

Brian Berletic is one of the giants in applied political science, who — unlike the academic political ‘scientists’ (all of whom depend largely upon America’s billionaires’ organizations that fund their work) — doesn’t rely at all upon any such super-rich funding source. He published on 7 August 2024 the best article that has yet been done on a crucially important title and topic, “Who Really Controls US Foreign Policy?” I suggest you read it, because it brings together almost everything, though the article is only 1,879 words.

Elsewhere, Berletic had already summarized, on 23 July 2024, what he would soon document in that article:

https://x.com/BrianJBerletic/status/1815658002084667646

https://archive.is/OVqDh

Brian Berletic@BrianJBerletic

US Elections are for Protecting the "Deep State," Not Changing it

1. Political power is determined by those who control the most wealth;

2. Wealth affords the ability to control the media, policymakers, legislators, as well as the means to enforce policy through lawfare & actual warfare;

3. Current corporate-financier monopolies across the West maintain a vast network of think tanks arriving at a concensus, publishing policy papers, turned into bills by lawyers, brought to Washington by lobbyists to be rubber stamped (by both parties) while the corporate media sells it to the public;

4. If this monopoly over wealth has not transferred hands, neither will the political power or the policies determined by it;

5. American elections exist as a layer of protection for this monopoly, not as a means of changing it;

6. Breaking these monopolies requires diverting public money, time, attention, and energy away from them and into alternatives - multipolarism is already achieving this globally, it is up to Americans to do this domestically;

7:59 AM · Jul 23, 2024

To see how this works, consider the Bill (which, if it becomes law will enormously increase even further America’s wealth-inequality, by supercharging the money-funnel from the public to the billionaires) that the Democratic Party’s leader in the U.S. Senate Charles Schumer introduced on 21 May 2020, as "116TH CONGRESS 2D SESSION S. 3832”, the 79-page Bill, “S.3832 - Endless Frontier Act.” It became the 2,376-page Bill, “117TH CONGRESS 1ST SESSION S. 1260”, titled “S.1260 - United States Innovation and Competition Act of 2021”, on which “There have been 22 roll call votes,” as-of 10 August 2014. It passed in the Senate by 68 to 22, on 8 June 2021, but won’t likely be taken up by the House unless and until the House majority switches to become Democratic. So, this is a bill that's being funded by Democratic Party billionaires. At the website of the (non-billionaires’) progressive Western States Legal Foundation, was posted on 9 June 2021, the day after that overwhelming majority Senate passage, Andrew Lichterman headlining “The U.S. vs. China: A Capitalist Globalization Divided but not Transformed?”, and he wrote:

Yesterday, the U.S. Senate voted 68-32 to pass the Endless Frontier Act, framed as bolstering the ability of the United States to compete with China. The New York Times described it as “...the most expansive industrial policy legislation in U.S. history, blowing past partisan divisions over government support for private industry to embrace a nearly quartertrillion-dollar investment in building up America’s manufacturing and technological edge.” The bipartisan support for the bill, said the Times, “is a testament to how commercial and military competition with Beijing has become one of the few issues that can unite both political parties.”1

Across the political spectrum, many are portraying the U.S. China competition as a “new Cold War.” This legislation underscores the fact that despite much the same roster of antagonists, the dynamics driving the new confrontation are different. It is not a collision between starkly different ways of ordering the economy, and the relation of the economy to the State. It is a competition within one system, a struggle for ascendance in a global circuit of production, trade and investment that is far more “capitalist” than anything else.

This competition is taking new forms, under new conditions. Unprecedented ecological stresses are driving conflict within and among countries. With the entire world now part of the capitalist circuit of trade and investment, there are fewer opportunities for the “accumulation by dispossession” available to competing states that characterized past forms of colonialism and imperialism. …

It would take broad-based opposition to take on the interests lined up behind this legislation. The Endless Frontier Act provides something for a wide range of powerful interests, from the military-industrial complex to the tech sector and telecommunications to the auto industry. And it likely would require a sustained, multi-issue movement to deflect U.S. economic and political elites from the collision course with China that they are setting for all of us.

He was describing how an aristocracy functions in the modern world. He did not mention that Donald Trump and the Republican billionaires who fund Trump’s political career are at least as gung-ho for war against China as the Democratic Party’s billionaires and their agents are. The Republican ones might want to rewrite some parts of Schumer’s now 2,376-page Bill, but their goal is the same: to conquer the entire world, so that all countries except the U.S. will be colonies of the imperial U.S. aristocracy.

This world is hurtling toward WW3. If there won’t be a Second American Revolution, to eliminate the wealth of America’s billionaires — the individuals who are enormously profiting form all of this, and who are ultimately behind it and behind the astronomical corruption of the U.S. Government — then WW3 is coming. There will either be a Second American Revolution, or else there will be WW3.

I do not  agree with Berletic’s proposed “multipolar” ‘solution’ to his 6th point, “6. Breaking these monopolies.” If the problem can be solved, it can be done only WITHIN America — the empire’s ONLY “indispensable nation,” as Obama repeatedly said. It’s indispensable to the problem, and Obama (like virtually all post WW2 American Presidents) loved the problem and wanted it to continue. It can’t be solved, for example, by China and the other targets of America’s aristocracy, because America itself IS the problem. Imperialism ITSELF is what caused WW1, and WW2, and is about to cause WW3, because the U.S. regime insists upon growing its empire yet further. FDR was working toward a solution, but U.S.-and-allied billionaires won’t WANT a solution, because they are the BENEFICIARIES of the problem. The problem is pointing us toward WW3. Only a Second American Revolution can solve this problem. Everyone needs to take sides now: either on the side of U.S.-and-allied billionaires, or on the side of survival (the side of the public). It’s like during the First American Revolution, which produced a blessed outcome. It is also like the French Revolution, which wasn’t nearly as successful but was far better than nothing. At this late date, no other solution is available, than Revolution. That’s just a fact. “Multipolarism” is no solution to America’s problem.

I hear from my opponents, that if America won’t control the world, then China will, or perhaps Russia will; but this is EXACTLY the idea that Eisenhower and the Rhodesist  Churchill suckered the naive Truman into believing — that everything is win-lose, nothing is win-win. They represented Rhodes’s vision of the future — a purely win-lose, never win-win, future. They are actually the enemy. And we need to recognize this. FDR was working toward the solution. Unlike the Presidents who came after him, he loathed the problem, and was intent upon solving it. Now, in 2024, the need to do that is more urgent than ever. And only we can do it; no one else can.

I think that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been trying to offer his own candidacy as a way by which this Revolution can be done peacefully. Right now, it doesn’t seem to be catching on. But if it won’t happen peacefully, then it needs to happen, and America’s Founders faced the same situation. Of course, on November 5th, I shall be voting for Kennedy, since my proposal for a write-in campaign for Col. Douglas Macgregor never caught on. At present, most Americans are satisfied to vote for either the candidates of the Republican Party’s billionaires, or the candidates of the Democratic Party’s billionaires; and, so, accept the way that things are heading, which is toward WW3.

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.