OLIGARCHY R'US OF A AND R'US SIA TOO ....OR EU R'US ALL OLIGARCHY FOR MORONS TO VOTE ON ..Representative government is artifice, a political myth, designed to conceal from the masses the dominance of a self-selected, self-perpetuating, and self-serving traditional ruling class. PREZZOLINI The essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life ... A ruling group is a ruling group so long as it can nominate its successors ... Who wields power is not important, provided that the hierarchical structure remains always the same.” ― George Orwell..There has always been, and there is now, a profound conflict of interest between the people and the government of the United States.” ― Howard Zin L'esprit d'une nation réside toujours dans le petit nombre qui fait travailler le grand, est nourri par lui et le gouverne. Voltaire, Essai sur les mœurs et l'esprit des nations For centuries, oligarchs were viewed as empowered by wealth, an idea muddled by elite theory early in the twentieth century. The common thread for oligarchs across history is that wealth defines them, empowers them, and inherently exposes them to threats. The existential motive of all oligarchs is wealth defense. How they respond varies with the threats they confront, including how directly involved they are in supplying the coercion underlying all property claims, and whether they act separately or collectively. These variations yield four types of oligarchy: warring, ruling, sultanistic, and civil. Oligarchy is not displaced by democracy but rather is fused with it. Moreover, the rule of law problem in many societies is a matter of taming oligarchs. Cases studied in this book include the United States, ancient Athens and Rome, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, medieval Venice and Siena, mafia commissions in the United States and Italy, feuding Appalachian families, and early chiefs cum oligarchs dating from 2300 BCE.Another stable system can be many unarmed oligarchs with a system of laws to protect their assets. Look to Rome where the contesting oligarchs as senators often were military leaders as well. Did you know there were strict rules prohibiting soldiers from appearing in uniform in the district of Rome? It was to keep someone from marching on Rome and taking supreme power. But it finally happened and Winters relates all kinds of wonderful details on how it did, including the murder of Caesar. Is this beginning to sound interesting? What about the type of government? Does democracy tame oligarchs? We know it doesn't! It's a major assertion of Winters that oligarchy can live quite happily with any system that maintains order and does not deprive them of their wealth or their income. Without a "sultan" or direct force between equals to maintain wealth, there must be a strong legal system, but not necessarily one that protects individual freedoms, only one that protects property. The example is Singapore, where the reader learns of Lee Kwan Yew, a remarkable man who would tolerate no corruption by oligarchs and had a government agency dedicated to going after them without prejudice if they tried to pull any funny business. It worked marvelously, but forget about freedom of speech and don't get caught spitting on the sidewalk!

So nobody must be allowed to think at all. Down with the public schools! Children must be drilled mentally by quarter-educated herdsmen, whose wages would stop at the first sign of disagreement with the bosses. For the rest, deafen the whole world with senseless clamour. Mechanize everything! Give nobody a chance to think. Standardize "amusement." The louder and more cacophonous, the better! Brief intervals between one din and the next can be filled with appeals, repeated 'till hypnotic power gives them the force of orders, to buy this or that product of the "Business men" who are the real power in the State. Men who betray their country as obvious routine.

The history of the past thirty years is eloquent enough, one would think. What these sodden imbeciles never realize is that a living organism must adapt itself intelligently to its environment, or go under at the first serious change of circumstance.” Crowley, Magick Without Tears