In 1944, the dream of the oligarchs to once again control America the way they did during the Gilded Age of the 1880-'90s was just that, a dream. Wallace's president, FDR, had called them out, repeatedly, calling them "economic royalists" and damning their efforts to corrupt American democracy.
"These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America," Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed in 1936. "What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power."
But, he thundered in that speech, "Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power!"
FDR kept them in check, as did Truman and Eisenhower. The latter, a Republican president who ran for office on the 1952 platform of ending the Korean War ("Vote for peace, vote for Eisenhower" said the TV ads), even wrote to his right-wing brother, Edgar Eisenhower, about the very wealthy oil oligarchs who wanted to end the American experiment of a strong middle class:
"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
That was back when Eisenhower/Nixon ran for re-election in 1956 on a platform of having expanded Social Security, increased union membership, raised taxes on rich people, and built thousands of miles of freeway, hundreds of schools and hospitals, and radically increased funding for public education.
It all changed in the 1970s. As I outline in detail in my book The Crash of 2016, the modern oligarchic takeover of America began in a serious way in 1971 when Lewis Powell outlined in a memo how the very, very wealthy and corporate America should launch a massive, well-funded program to take over American media, take over our schools and colleges, take over our courts, take over our economy, and ultimately take over every branch of our government.
In 1976, Powell had his chance to put it all in motion in a big way. From 1776 until 1976, giving money to politicians in exchange for political favors had been considered a behavior (and often considered a corrupt behavior) that could be regulated by government.
But in the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo Supreme Court decision, Powell, who had been put on the court by Richard Nixon in 1972, wrote that giving money to politicians wasn't a "behavior" subject to regulation, but, instead, was merely an "exercise in free speech." Free speech protected by the First Amendment.
This major rewrite of American law, sweeping in its breadth and reach, has echoed forward into our time with Citizens United and McCutcheon, among others. The result is that today right-wing billionaires not only own Fox and much of the rest of our media, but they are also largely determining the result of our elections.
In the 2016 election cycle, just the Koch network pledged over $800 million to elect billionaire-friendly Republicans. They succeeded, taking the House and the Senate, and with the efforts of their pliant shill Mitch McConnell, in blocking President Obama's middle-of-the-road SCOTUS nominee, Merrick Garland, from ever taking his rightful seat on the court. It's reported that they're planning to "invest" $400 billion, more or less, over the next 16 months.
Neil Gorsuch is more hostile to the interest of working-class Americans, minorities and traditional American egalitarian values than any member of the Court since the Lochner era. Billionaire-funded right-wing judicial groups like the Federalist Society are salivating at the chance to replace Anthony Kennedy and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, cementing their control of the Court for as much as the next two generations.
This is the greatest crisis for democracy since Henry Wallace's era during World War II. Similar assaults against democracy are taking place all over the world, from Poland to Hungary to the Phillippines.
Will America see its way back to the expressed values of this country's founding? Having used those values as a guidepost, we've ended slavery, enfranchised women and created a social safety net that, at least until the era of Reagan, was still capable of offering life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to working American citizens.
Now, instead, we're seeing the values expressed by the dark underbelly of the American Revolution -- the oligarchs who owned plantations in the South -- ascendant.
Violent policing, more people in prison than any other country on earth, and the destruction of competition and entrepreneurial opportunity by monopoly are all the new normal. Corporate power is now being used not just to advocate for corporate interests, but to prop up faux populists like Trump and Scott Walker.
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