Democratic Underground - The Oligarchy

I just finished reading a novel that in telling a story of some of the dark aspects of our country comes so close to reality that it could just about be considered a very long editorial rather than a novel (though it reads like a novel). It might be considered a very accurate historical novel, except that the history is too recent to put it in that category.

The book is “Inside Out” by Barry Eisler. It is the 41st chapter, titled “The Oligarchy”, that I consider the most important part of the book, with regard to what it says about our country. Eisler’s “Oligarchy” is chillingly similar to a description that I posted on DU a couple months ago:

Many ordinary Americans speculate about the “Powers That Be” (PTB), the unelected but powerful and shadowy elite who seem to exercise influence over national and world events far more than a lot of people realize. Yet because of their shadowy nature they are very difficult to talk about with much confidence.

Despite their often minimal visibility, they seem to have their fingerprints over much of our nation’s history. Their ultimate purpose and motives can only be guessed at, but two aspects of our nation’s current condition seem to stand out above most others: 1) Rampant militarism manifested by a military budget almost equal to that of the rest of the world combined, a philosophy of perpetual war, more than 700 military bases scattered throughout all parts of the world, and imperialistic behavior and attitudes in relation to the other nations of the world; and 2) Obscenely unequal distribution of wealth.

Two of the main characters in Eisler’s book work for the portion of the U.S. military known as “Joint Special Operations Command” (JSOC), which is described as the

joint headquarters designed to study special operations requirements and techniques; ensure interoperability and equipment standardization; plan and conduct joint special operations exercises and training; and develop joint special operations tactics.

Ben is tasked by his boss, Hort, to track down a man who gained possession of CIA torture videotapes that are so horrifying that the top of the US government hierarchy is scared shitless. The man blackmails the US government for $100 million with the threat of releasing the tapes. These are the same tapes that the New York Times spoke of on Dec. 6, 2007 as being two tapes that “were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that tapes documenting controversial interrogation methods could expose agency officials…” On March 2, 2009, it came out that the two “destroyed” tapes were in fact 92 “destroyed” tapes.

I won’t tell you how Ben fared in trying to track down the blackmailer. I’ll just say that I was rooting for the blackmailer the whole way and hoping that he would release the tapes whether he got his money or not, as he intended to do.

Near the end of the book, Hort explains the basics of the U.S. Oligarchy to Ben:

The U.S. Oligarchy

Hort: America is ruled by an oligarchy. And if you don’t understand the oligarchy, you can’t understand America.

Ben: I don’t know what you mean.

Hort: I mean a small group of people having de facto control over a country.

Ben: You’re talking about a conspiracy?

Hort: Not at all. Conspiracies are hidden. The oligarchy is right out in the open. It’s just a collection of people in business, politics, the military, and the media who recognize their interests are better served by cooperation than they would be by competition. There aren’t any secret handshakes. Most of the people who are part of the oligarchy don’t even recognize its existence. If they recognize it at all, they think of it as just a benevolent, informal establishment. They tell themselves it selflessly serves the country’s interests rather than selfishly serving their own.

Ben: How does it work?

Hort: Arthur Anderson was examining Enron. The credit agencies were examining the subprimes. That alone ought to tell you everything you need to know about the way the oligarchy works.

Ben: But it doesn’t have – I don’t know – rules?

Hort: There are a few unwritten ones. Number one, above a certain pay grade, a politician can never be prosecuted or imprisoned….

Comment
The one part of this discussion where I somewhat disagree with Hort is where he says that the oligarchy “is right out in the open”. It is and it isn’t. There are enough clues that any clear thinking and well informed adult ought to be able to pick it out. But on the other hand, a great many of the details are hidden. For example, the details on the torture videotapes that Hort tasked Ben to track down. The details are important. And in this particular situation more than most, the devil is indeed in the details.

Oligarchy immunity from punishment

Ben wants to know whether the major perpetrators of U.S. torture would go to prison in the face of clear proof of their guilt:

Hort: Some would. After all, we know from Abu Ghraib that it’s all about the pictures. No pictures, no proof. No proof, no scandal. No scandal, no convictions. But even with video proof of (the most horrifying torture) the real architects would never suffer. The oligarchy wouldn’t be able to whitewash in the way they did Abu Ghraib, but they’d just scapegoat a slightly higher level target. The midlevel bureaucrats… You see, when the oligarchy looks in the mirror and says, “The state is me”, it’s not inaccurate. It’s not hubris. They’re just describing reality. They’ve made it so.

Comment
There are of course numerous reasons why the most powerful and well known among the oligarchy are virtually exempted from being held accountable for their crimes. One of the major reasons – perhaps the major reason – is psychological.

The American public has long been conditioned to believe that its top leaders and the policies they pursue, though often imperfect and misguided, are never ill intended. This conditioning is enforced by constant repetition from most of our politicians and the media who support them. Challenging that view generally results in marginalization, scorn, condemnation, ridicule, and a wide array of epithets such as “Communist” or “conspiracy theorist”. Worse, it can result in various punishments such as the loss of one’s job or worse. For example, in 1998, when five Cubans provided the FBI with proof of a Miami-based operation that habitually spread terror among the Cuban population, they (the messengers) were arrested and imprisoned. Their allegations, if fully investigated, could have brought to light and emphasized the long-standing illegitimacy and mean-spiritedness of U.S. policy towards Cuba.

The bottom line is that speaking out against one’s country – or more to the point, one’s country’s leaders and elite – is widely regarded as “unpatriotic” or even treasonable, terms that almost nobody wants applied to them.

Rationalizing the oligarchy

I believe that the most thought provoking portion of the book comes when Ben, much disturbed by Hort’s revelations to him, poses probing questions to him, and Hort responds by rationalizing:

Ben: I don’t understand. You just accept this?

Hort: I’m a realist, son.

Ben: You don’t want to fight it?

Hort: Maybe I would have if I’d been born fifty or seventy years earlier. But the establishment is bigger now, more entrenched… The leviathan only grows….

Ben: So there’s nothing that can be done.

Hort: No, there is, and that’s where you come in. The only possible solution is to manage this fucked-up system from the inside… Then, if someone within the oligarchy is abusing his position so much that it’s creating a problem for national security, we can quietly remove him, one way or the other…

Ben: Sounds like the mafia. With me as an enforcer.

Hort: You can call it that. I prefer to think of it as good management…. The Constitution, the Declaration of Independence… that’s all just window dressing now, the artifacts of an ancient mythology, the vestments of a dead religion. We need something different now, something suited for the modern world. We need realists, men like us. We are the change we’ve been waiting for….

You want a revolution? Chaos? Russia in 1917, China in 1949? Who knows what we’d wind up with in the aftermath? At least now we have order….

And besides, our oligarchy has a few things to recommend it. It’s open, for one. Look at me. Descended from slaves, and here I am, a member in good standing. Anyone can join. You just have to believe in it. You just have to pay your dues and follow the rules. That’s what we mean these days by “equality of opportunity” and a “meritocratic society”….

There’s always been an establishment, son. In every culture, every country. There’s always going to be someone on the inside, pulling the real levers of power and influence and profit. You want it to be moral men, like you and me? Or do you want it to be the (Dick Cheney’s) of the world? Because it’s going to be someone. That’s the only choice…

Comment
Hort’s contention that anyone can join the oligarchy is absurd. But the content of this discussion is highly relevant to Americans today. The rationalization that Hort provides for going along with the oligarchy is the same rationalization that people have been using for hundreds or thousands of years to justify those of their actions that threaten to make themselves feel guilty.

Yet, the solution is not at all self-evident. I face the problem myself, especially with regard to my job with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which I’ve written about previously. I am not at all proud of the organization I work for, which much too often in my opinion serves the interests of the corporations that they are supposed to regulate rather than those of the American people whom they are supposed to protect against those corporations. I can and do voice my opinions on these issues – but way too often to no avail.

It’s all right there in front of your eyes

Ben just can’t bring himself to condone Hort’s rationalizations of the oligarchy:

Ben: I’m honored. But I can’t work for this thing you call the oligarchy.

Hort: You’ve been working for it. You just didn’t know it…

Ben: You’re not worried I’m going to expose this?

Hort: You still don’t get it, do you? There’s nothing to expose. It’s all right there to see, for anyone who cares to look. But nobody does. And there’s nothing they could do anyway.

Comment
For those who don’t believe that our country is largely ruled by an oligarchy, consider the following figures from 2008, portrayed in Robert Kuttner’s “A Presidency in Peril”:

Goldman Sachs: Net earnings – $2.3 billion; Executive bonuses – $4.8 billion; Taxpayer funded TARP money – $10 billion

Morgan Stanley: Net earnings – $1.7 billion; Executive bonuses – $4.475 billion; Taxpayer funded TARP money – $10 billion

JP Morgan Chase: Net earnings – $5.6 billion; Executive bonuses – $8.69 billion; Taxpayer funded TARP money – $25 billion

Citigroup: Wrote off losses of $65 billion; Executive bonuses – $5.33 billion; Taxpayer funded TARP money – $45 billion

TARP and other mechanisms for bailing out irresponsible financial institutions was an outrage against the American people, not just because it involved huge cash flows from the American people to the financial institutions that were largely responsible for our current economic crisis, but because it did so with almost no strings attached. This arrangement was the responsibility of two American presidents – of both major political parties – and both Republican and Democratic members of Congress. The message we hear from our national media puts the responsibility for this outrage mostly or totally on the Democratic Party. That constitutes another outrage, and it is in large part driving the voter outrage that threatens to turn over at least one House of Congress to the Republican Party this fall. But it’s difficult for Democrats to defend themselves against this when most of them are just as responsible for this outrage as are the Republicans.

The oligarchy in a nutshell

On the last two pages of Barry Lynn’s book, “Cornered – The New Monopoly and the Economics of Destruction”, Lynn summarizes the crisis that the oligarchy (He doesn’t use that word) brought us to, and its solution. I’ll end this post by excerpting from those pages:

Today we face one of the gravest crises in our history, and I do not mean the recession… I speak instead of the political and economic effects of monopolization. And I speak of the fragility, due to monopolization, of all the systems on which we rely… We must recover our understanding of our institutions and the real intent of our laws. Then we must listen very closely to the words the patricians (i.e. the oligarchy) speak and beware.

They will preach their free-market fundamentalism and insist that we dare not interfere in the workings of this magical mechanism. Then they will use their corporations to enclose our open markets… to derange and sack our carefully engineered industrial systems.

They will preach their capitalism and insist that their corporations and banks are private property. Then they will use these social institutions to direct the power in this capital in ways that enable them to seize our own real private properties.

They will preach their libertarianism and (allege) through their attacks on our public government that they love freedom as much as we do. Yet the freedom they envision is for themselves alone, to use their private corporate governments – and sometimes our public governments – to rule us and ruin us.

They will preach their globalism and insist that we dare not interfere in the “free” flow of inter-nation trade… Then they will use their trading companies to crush American producers in order to chain us to authoritarian regimes abroad…

They will… insist that they alone – because they are “the best and brightest – understand the mysteries of capital, the mysteries of markets, the mysteries of trade, and the mysterious science of economics. Then they will jet off to mountain mansions and meadows as the systems they deranged collapse at our feet.

And they will, as they have since 1773… promise us yet more cheap tea for our liberty.

When we finally rise to put an end to their predations, our regulation must be simple and sure… Our regulation must follow the broad-ax tradition, which means that we must use our powers to split and split again the institutions they use to magnify their power.

The Oligarchy [View All]