Editor’s note: This commentary is by Jeffrey Reel, a writer/lecturer living in Lyndon Center, and general manager of Natural Provisions, in St. Johnsbury. He was previously sustainability manager at the Omega Center for Holistic Studies in Rhinebeck, New York.
Author’s note: The words “plutocracy” and “oligarchy” are often used interchangeably. “Oligarchy” is derived from the Greek oligos, meaning few, and arch, meaning rule. “Plutocracy” is derived from the Greek ploutos, meaning wealth, and kratos, meaning to govern. “Oligarchy” refers to government by the few, while “plutocracy” adds the element of wealth to the equation. For purposes of this discussion, I will use the term plutocracy.
[I]t is apparent there are financial and political constraints in place in our federal government where the wealthy few move policy, with the average American having little or no influence. What I find particularly troubling is that the existing plutocracy in this country not only owes no allegiance to our form of government (or to any form of government for that matter) but that they profit enormously from our misfortunes: from our dependence upon fossil fuels to profiting from the lucrative federal contracts to fight our wars over it. The effects of climate change? When we go to the halls of Congress to sound alarms over the dire consequences of climate change, what many of our representatives hear, instead, is “opportunity”: desalinization plants; the purchasing of water rights; increased private security contracts; the development and monopolization of genetically modified crops (93 percent of Americans want genetically modified foods labeled yet Washington votes it down. There is only one reason why that can happen.) Increased social unrest worldwide as climate change forces populations to migrate will require a security response, including war materiel.
When we voice our concerns about the high incarceration rate in the United States (caging 25 percent of the world’s prisoners), do representatives hear this as a cause for alarm or opportunity? Privately-run prisons is a $5 billion industry and quotas are established to fill the cells. Then there is the profitability of private health care – that is, the benefits of illness – which is ingrained in our national psyche. (The pharmaceutical and health care industry poured $46.7 million into the midterm elections last year.)
Since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Congress has authorized more than $7.6 trillion on defense and homeland security. That is a staggering amount of money. Profiteers have engorged themselves, leaving virtually nothing for education, health care, Social Security, food security, climate change initiatives … Misfortune lines the pockets of the plutocracy and their representatives in Congress, bankrupting the country.
What can the average citizen do about it? Well, the flag-waving, knee-jerk response is to say: Vote. Vote the bums out of office. But perhaps that is an exercise in futility because the flag-waving, knee-jerk response is also to vote them into office, at least in the heartland. We have now elected a Plutocrat-in-Chief who attempts to dismantle health care and social safety nets in order to pay for tax cuts for his fellow patricians – or just enact giant tax cuts for them, all in the name of “tax reform.” Don’t let the voices raised by indignant liberals and progressives in your immediate vicinity drown out the chants from his unwitting base.
Democracy is sometimes described as a “fragile experiment,” and, after 231 years, its failings are becoming apparent. We’re not a hungry nation anymore. In fact, we are satiated, and satiation dulls the senses and ushers in a sense of complacency. At the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, 1787, Benjamin Franklin was approached by a woman as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. The woman asked: “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?,” to which Franklin replied: “A republic – if you can keep it.” He was of the opinion that we could not.
