As a result, Princeton scholars Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page famously found that the odds of average Americans' political desires being translated into policy are about the same as random noise, whereas what they referred to as "economic elites" frequently get everything they want from the political class.
They wrote that we still have the "features" of democracy like elections, but ended their paper with this cautionary note: "[W]e believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America's claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened."
It seems that America has arrived at the point Spengler saw in early 20th century Europe, and, indeed, there are some concerning parallels, particularly with the late 1920s and early 1930s. Italy, Germany, and Spain all lost their democracies and moved to fascism, while many of Spengler's acolytes cheered.
And, indeed, it was one of FDR's biggest challenges in the early 1930s -- steering America through a "middle course" between communism (which was then growingly popular) and fascism (also growingly popular). He pulled it off with small (compared to Europe) nods to democratic socialism, instituting programs like Social Security, the minimum wage, and establishing the right to unionize (among other things).
Mark Twain is often quoted as saying that history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. Many look at the all-out war being waged against American government right now by the hard right, from Trump and his cronies to the billionaire networks funding right-wing propaganda and lobbying outlets, and think "it can't happen here."
They're wrong. It can happen here.
We now have police intervening in elections, privatized corporate voting systems, and a massive voter suppression campaign to prevent elderly, young, and non-white Americans from being able to vote.
Meanwhile, as Lee Fang reported, Republican politicians and the billionaires who own them are now dropping any pretense at all to caring about the fate and future of our country's fiscal health, so long as they get their tax cuts NOW.
In summary, what's left of our democratic institutions are under siege.
Add to that a largely billionaire-funded/owned right-wing media machine that's willing to regularly and openly deceive American voters (documented daily by Media Matters and Newshounds), and you have the perfect setup for a neofeudalist/fascist takeover of our government.
Or, as President Carter so correctly called it, oligarchy.
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