United States of Covid: Oligarchy

From Ruling Class to Oligarchy*
"You peons shut up and obey!"

​11-20-20, ** -- By its campaign and conduct of the 2020 election, the ruling class in America has ceased pretending to be part of a constitutional republic. By treating fellow Americans as inferiors through word and deed, its members renounced their common citizenship with us. Eschewing persuasion, they set about compelling obedience to an openly manipulated election.  Henceforth, they must rule or ruin as the oligarchy they have become. This happened as government’s stated reason took upon itself the tasks of eliminating poverty and harmonizing the races, and as it controlled ever greater shares of the national income. 
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Increasingly, their powers were based on claims of expertise coming from the universities. These underwent a fourfold increase in size (from 9 percent of Americans with four-year degrees in 1965 to 36 percent in 2015). Their connection with government conferred both wealth and additional prestige. By the beginning of the Obama Administration in 2009, …  the American country class’ budding resistance spurred the ruling class further to become conscious of itself, to increase its own privileges, its cohesion, and above all its contempt for and demands on those below them. That’s why the 2016 presidential election revealed a substantial anti-ruling class majority among Americans electing NY businessman Donald John Trump and may prove to have been the last more-or-less bona fide free election in America’s history.

In short, during the Obama years the ruling class was becoming an oligarchy that ruled by exercising the powers of government and of incumbency in corporations as well as all manner of social institutions. Private institutions, allied with government and inspired by government-supported universities, increasingly exercised arbitrary powers. Donald Trump’s surprising victory proved to be the catalyst for this oligarchy to articulate itself into something that was able to transcend our constitutional republic altogether, to dispense with and even to penalize the habits and institutions that had held it together. Ours is now a socio-political system wholly different from that constitutional republic of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. It is mandating a way of life that few in America could have imagined.

It had been clear to the ruling Democrat class that Donald Trump was dangerous only because he represented his supporters - the ‘irredeemable deplorables.’ They attempted to dispirit and discredit them in their own and others’ eyes. Demonizing Trump was the means by which they sought to do this. [It didn’t work as it only enflamed freedom loving patriotic Americans they called ‘irredeemable deplorables.’-Ed.]
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When the Covid hit, Americans didn’t realize how thoroughly their ruling class had already jelled into an oligarchy with the intention above all to crush them. Not comprehending how assuredly it would not waste this opportunity to do so. President Trump was tragically led astray and his misplaced faith in the objectivity of “the experts,” personified by Dr. Anthony Fauci, conservatives were persuaded to respond to an epidemic with an infection/fatality rate comparable to the average flu as if it were the plague. Thus, by following the ignorant promise of safety through masks, etc. did conservatives at first agree to suspend face-to-face relationships. They suffered to disarticulate social life even more than economic life, to put aside one’s friends and God. They agreed to restrict their understanding of things to what the mass media would allow them to hear. They did all of this even as evidence mounted that the “experts” were nothing but agents of the oligarchy [and their fears were unfounded as more than 95% of all Covid victims survive.-Ed.]
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On election night, Nov 3, 2020 – as predicted – corrupt election officials in places controlled by the Left’s ruling class stopped counting until it was clear how many ballots it would take for President Trump to be defeated. The requisite number came, filled out by - no one knows who. And then the call came from all of society’s commanding heights [the Democrat’s media]: Trump’s defeat had been declared. It wasn’t declared by the Constitutional authorities designated to decide who wins and loses. However, the increased instances of fraud President Trump’s campaign lawyers investigated and found; the louder and from more sources the judgment was declared that there was nothing to investigate. It had been decided.
"You peons shut up and obey."

*Definition of Oligarchy: a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes, often of wealthy families.

**Excerpted and adapted full original report from Andelo Codevilla here https://amgreatness.com/2020/11/20/from-ruling-class-to-oligarchy About Angelo Codevilla 
Angelo M. Codevilla is a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute, professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University and the author of To Make And Keep Peace (Hoover Institution Press, 2014).