America at 250 faces a new struggle over who really holds power
As America celebrates 250 years of independence, debates over democracy, oligarchy and executive power are reshaping the country’s political identity, writes Patrick Keane.
ON ANNIVERSARY American RevolutionThe meaning, importance and consequences of this event are still debated.
What does it mean on your 250th birthday? Declaration of IndependenceAre Americans debating autocracy, oligarchy, and democracy again?
Vice President J.D. Vance claimed the United States was being run “deep state”. The Deep State is a state run by invisible civil servants who undermine legitimately elected governments.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote This week the Supreme Court made Trump more powerful than the King George IIIA person who cannot dismiss civil servants without the consent of Parliament. And the President Embers He rules like a ruler, issuing orders on social media as if he were issuing administrative orders.
Embers signed His first administration had 220 executive orders. Joe Biden162. Trump signed 147 executive orders just 100 days into his second administration.
Like political scientists Jeffrey Wintersthe author of Blind Spot: How Oligarchs Dominate Our Democracy (2026) classify the United States as an oligarchy, not a democracy.
Two hundred and fifty years later Declaration of Independence rejected monarchy, Millions of Americans protested With the slogan of the Trump Administration ‘No King’.
bill one ‘No King’ Organizer from Arizona. I caught up with Bill to find out why he joined. ‘No King’ protests.
I saw a story about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) I couldn’t believe what the agents were saying, dressed like terrorists, masked, armed like soldiers, kicking down doors without permission and smuggling people to unrelated countries. I hung up the phone and went to my first phone. ‘No King’ protest. There were thousands of people there with me. My girlfriend was there. His dog was there.
ICE is responsible For high-profile murders of Minneapolis residents Alex is beautiful And Renee Nicole GoodAmong more than 30 other murders.
Why is it important?
Because the United States is the home of the new idea. Gettysburg Address It’s starting to affect the way we read. declaration. Abraham Lincoln he said that the new idea or American ideal transcends all experience, history and empirics; it was transcendental. And if the new idea can be extinguished there, the light of freedom and equality can be extinguished everywhere.
So if America is no longer a democracy, what is?
Professor Winters explained:
“Oligarchic is intertwined with all kinds of governments, including democracies. There is no doubt that the power of oligarchic wealth operates throughout American democracy. This does not mean that the system is undemocratic. It means that the system is both an oligarchy and a democracy.”
My own research on oligarchy can be read Here.
Bill told me:
“These days I worry about kleptocracy, corporatocracy, technocracy and plain old racketeering.”
Deep State conspiracy theory used by Vice President Vance to explain evidence of corruption and criminality against both administrations Richard Nixon and Donald Trump cannot explain how Trump or Nixon became president in the first place. There are vaccine conspiracies as well as election denial conspiracies, but they are not epstein We can find evidence that shows conspiracy theories are not empirical or true.
Although oligarchy does not require a conspiracy like the Deep State, there is no method or forensic accounting that can empirically prove that the USA is an oligarchy. However, a new model of political fundraising is emerging in which oligarchs can choose their own management and policies, such as preferential tax regimes or government contracts, as a return on investment.
Forty-six billionaires created the cash For Trump’s second presidential transition, but we already knew Elon Musk He was appointed to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) as Trump’s biggest donor. Musk became the first trillionaire during our cost-of-living crisis. SpaceX’s IPO.
But the founders also worried about democracy.
Professor Winters told me:
“The framers of the U.S. Constitution demonstrated in 1787 that oligarchy and democracy could be fused by building safeguards for the wealthy into democracy’s laws and institutions.”
get Electoral CollegeFor example. Democratic candidate in 2016 Hillary Clinton won popular votebut not the Electoral College.
Oligarchy was theorized for the first time Aristotle As a government where a few people were very rich, they had discretionary political power. Massachusetts Senator Bernie Sanders used same definition.
Professor Winters observed That the rule of a few oligarchs has a specific character, different from the generalized elite, plutocracy or kleptocracy. Oligarchs Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos And Mark Zuckerberg Not only are they visible, so are their personalities in vanity projects. It is impossible not to notice that the oligarchs are all white men. Gore Vidal defended that there is no need for the ruling class to conspire; he just has to accept it.
Does oligarchy have anything to do with capitalism?
According to Professor Winters:
“The oligarch has adapted to the capitalist era, but is not rooted in a specific economic system. Oligarchs have existed in every society dating back thousands of years in which extreme wealth was concentrated in the hands of a few.”
Rather than marshaling evidence to prove that the United States is an oligarchy and not a democracy, other scholars have focused on the types of power oligarchs wield. Oligarchs exercise not only influence but also dominance or power. Oligarchic power or sovereignty is a rival to national sovereignty or popular sovereignty.
In other words, a oligarch A person who can use extreme wealth to influence or control public policy, such as a ruler or king.
For example, Musk plans to include The area surrounding SpaceX operations in Texas is “Starbase,” a company town with its own management structures, regulators, and protection from legal liability.
I asked Professor Winters to explain to me the difference between the power of oligarchs and the power of the rest of us:
Oligarchs are defined as people who become powerful with immense wealth. Oligarchy is the policy of the ultra-rich to defend wealth. The rest of us have the right to vote or to protest, speak, assemble, etc. It is strengthened by the power of participation in various forms.
In democracies, one of the most important ways that oligarchs can express their wealth power is through election campaigns. It is difficult to restrict such power, but for democracy to have a chance at representing the people, it is important that societies create laws that limit the role of oligarchs in elections.
But democracy is not just about elections. Although democracy is unruly and noisy, it is less chaotic than the violent oppression of oligarchs and kings. Aristotle simply states: Thirty Oligarchs; Thucydides It tells us that oligarchs were able to come to power in Athens because most of the men qualified to vote were not there during the war against Sparta.
The oligarchy lasted only a few months due to riots outside Athens, and the oligarchs lost their power during street fighting.
Bill said:
At my third No King protest, I joined a local chapter of a nonviolent direct action group called Troublemakers. I was assigned to lead “Peacekeeping” for a 6,000-person march through our city, with some toes and fingers in traffic control and street medics.
Basic security was of course minimal, but nonviolence was critical to the impact of the event, so we deployed around 60 trained activists to stop the agitators. Although the event was not permitted, after six weeks of extensive planning, networking, recruiting, training, and negotiations with police and city officials, we were able to hold a safe, strong, and peaceful event.
Lincoln believed that America had proven that a republic could exist on a large scale.
France is in its Third Republic; the Weimar Republic It only took 12 years.
The Roman Republic lasted almost 500 years, and Venice, by some estimates, 1,100 years.
Was Lincoln right?
Can a republic at large exist?
Patrick Keane was a former staff member of the Labor Party Senator and member of the Australian Labor Party.
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