The Standard Warning

JOE BIDEN is going out gracefully and graciously. I would be tempted to boycott the inauguration, but, that's me. His remarks and actions are right on the mark, noble and wise, although sometimes I wonder whether it might signal inhetegrity to issue presidential pardons a bit earlier in one's administration. One might also wonder whether President Biden thought he was issuing a novel warning to us, his remark about America being perilously close to slipping out of a democratic republic and into a plutocracy. We are on the verge of being taken over by billionaires, Biden stresed. Did he think that we didn't alreay perceive this, or hadn't been warned before? Jame's Madison's constitution went into effect on September 17, 1787. By 1792, Madison saw, or thought he knew that, it wasn't working out, this resurreced ancient idea of representative republican democracy. Madison's once firmly held belief that the wealthy, the "better sort" could be counted on to govern the nation in the best interests of the masses, the "lesser sort" had been tragically, shockingly incorrrect. They would do no such thing, and never had any intention to. Madison realizzed he migt as well have installed a constitutional monarchy, hopefully a benevolent one. The idea of the United states as a nation governed by the people, of the people, and for the people has always been, and remains, a sham. The constitution was written by and installed by powerful land owning white men who firmly believed that only wealthy, powerful, educated, land owning white men were capable of governing a nation, and that the masses of people in general, the "lesser sort", as Madison called them, were child -like, and needed close guidance and control. It could be argued, and probably is and long will be argued by scholars, historians, and political scientists, that the current political sitution in the United States proves that our founders, who had so little faith in us, were ultimately quite correct. These United States of America have always been a county owned and operated by the wealthy elite few for the wealthy elite few. Trump may be thought of as the culmination of a trend which has been brewing and growing for more than two hundred years, and doing so profoundly and rapidlly since Reagan. The consolidation of wealth and power in t hands of an elite few. The corporate oligarchy. Trump is assembling a government of billionaires, which will within hours begin governing on behalf of and in the best interests of the billionaire class, not the middle class or the working class I want to walk up to some of my friends and ask why anyone would even for a moment think that a billionaire from New YOrk City would have any interest in caring about or helping a dirt farmer in Arkansas, but so far haven't. Why bother? Biden's oligarchial warning reminded me of Eisenhower's military-industrial complex" warning in 1961, as I'm sure it did many people, including Biden. After all, its the same warning. The thing is, the cow is out of the barn, as we used to say. Warning this country about plutocracy at this point is about like warning southern California about wildfires. AS long as the poorest, most powerless Americans by the millions endorse our plutocracy by voting for it and electing it to office and forming a cult centered on a member of it; the plutocracy is here to stay. We the American people will perhaps hear the standard warning against concentrated power and wealth again in the future, by some future demagogue. The question will be whtether our descendants choose to resist it, or embrace it.