The whole System from top to bottom is run by oligarchs. I’m just a serf. You may be some kind of artisan or craftsman in some kind of guild, but neither of us has any real power economically or politically. We run nothing and we rule nothing and nobody calls us Excellency or even The Honorable.
Way down at the bottom you might have a little clutch of city or county councilmen. These guys are the “community leaders”. Maybe they own a big ranch, a big hotel, the biggest tourist trap around–something like that. They’re the leaders because they have the most money and influence in some fashion. Their biggest priority is overseeing the cops and making that just the right amount of powerless people are beaten, jailed, or otherwise harassed, to keep them in line.
Up at the extreme other end, you have the tycoons. Elon and Warren Buffet and Bill Gates and the Clintons. The big turd that runs Amazon and the Washington Post, the Beezus. All the weapons manufacturers. The biggest rulers.
There’s a level just below them, a special class of oligarch called politicians, who take their orders directly from the Beezus and his rich friends.
It’s kind of funny, about this second tier. In capitalist Democracy, you actually get to vote for them! Nobody votes on who is going to run Microsoft or GE of course. That would be commie and insane. But you’re supposed to get a vote on who gets to be the Congress drone oligarch who lives closest to you, or Senator, and who gets elected as upper class President.
It’s just as much fun as it was back in high school, and Joe Biden is our current homecoming queen. His oligarch project is running the little theater piece over there about some shooting match between evil bad Vlad and the actor in khaki who is homecoming queen at Kiev High, for the next few months at least.
The major advantage to this system for the oligarchs is that everybody in America High (go team red white blue!) takes this voting shit very seriously.
The people you vote for are supposed to be your “Representatives”, but that’s just part of the show, and a pretty sick joke if you think about it too much.
They never have and never will represent you. They don’t know what you want. They don’t care what you want. Even if they accidentally found out, not one of them is going to represent what you want, or work toward that. Thinking they might is complete foolishness and magical thinking (even though everyone out here, even me sometimes, does it anyway).
They already have bosses above them, with wants of their own, and by comparison your wants, needs, hopes, dreams don’t amount to a bucket of piss; Not to anyone.
The people who really run things keep you doped with religion, sex, and MSNBC, in the words of John Lennon, sort of.
It’s all a lame puppet show. Look everybody! They convicted Trump of, uh, something something errr … Look! They’re thinking about running Kamala or Gavin if the wheels really come off Joe’s cognitive functioning!
In the real world, none of this makes a god damn bit of difference, because every one of those little poligarchs is bought and paid for (Krysten Sinema), or will be soon enough (hi AOC, girl heir to Nancy the Pelosi), by the real oligarchs above them.
But oh the hoopla. Oh the spectacle. For some of us, it’s better’n Monday Night Football, or even pickleball.
Meanwhile, the gears of oppression grind so slowly, and so exceedingly well.
The junkies die and the veterans hold down their trenches still, at a big left turn stoplight on your daily grind of a commute.
But Mr. Vairtere, we have to vote for the good guys, because Abortion, because Mexican kids in chicken coops, because that orange one is just so vulgar and dumb and I hate him so much and my twisted sick fellow americans who want to elect him again, too.
Obama built the chicken coops. He promised, while campaigning, to codify Roe vs. Wade, and after the election said it wasn’t a priority, and it died.
For whatever reason, his bosses didn’t want it codified, so he tossed the idea aside and moved on, to rigging an election against old wacky Bern.
Representatives, my shiny chapped ass. Even when they accidentally do know what you want, you’re still just screaming into the wind, pounding sand, pissing up a rope, and dancing to the tune of your natural Masters.
Sorry to be that guy. Again.
In Jesus’ name.
Amen.
***
I’m becoming an expert about the different kinds of boxes, and packing tape.
So I got that going for me too.