America’s power elite are a tiny but very mighty fraction of America’s total population. The power elite belongs to America’s corpocracy, the “Devil’s” marriage between corporate America and government America, with the former firmly in the driver’s seat.1
The primary aims of the power elite are to monopolize the world’s dwindling resources by whatever means necessary, usually by force, and to control all peoples’ and nations’ way of life and their conditions of life. That’s a tall order for America’s power elite, but it’s a far taller order for Americans and the rest of the world to stop them.
It matters not to the power elite that the U.S. is seen by people around the world as the greatest threat to world peace.2 It matters not to the power elite that distinguished scholar/activists agree about the deplorable state of America, with, for example, one calling it a “rogue nation,” another calling it “the leading terrorist state,” and another calling it a “sociopathic society.3 It matters not that most Americans don’t like them.4 The power elite are very adept at loosening the political pressure valve just enough to allow dissidents like me to blow off steam without blowing off the lid.
Ever since their invasion of the Native Americans’ land, one of the trademarks of the power elite is their constant lying to the public about what they are doing and why and the true conditions of America. They specialize in giving the rest of us “false facts.” While I suspect that most Americans realize they are being hoodwinked, I think it’s still useful to summarize here what the most salient false facts are and to contrast them with the true facts.
False Fact: The American Revolution was fought to free the people from suppression by King George and his chartered corporations.
True Fact: The war was fought for the benefit of the power elite who subsequently had the new president, George Washington, start military operations to expand the newcomers’ territory. George dutifully did so. One of his military orders was to attack civilians of all ages who belonged to the Six Nations of the Indigenous Peoples in New York.5
False Fact: “We the people of the United States—do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
True Fact: The power elite who contrived the Constitution had no intention of letting “we the people” govern themselves, as evidenced, for instance, by the long delay in allowing women to vote and by the contrived “electoral college,” an obstacle to a popular vote. Former President George W. Bush once said the Constitution is just a piece of paper. And for once he was telling the truth!
False Fact: America is a democracy.
True Fact: America has never been a democracy. From the start it was and remains a corpocracy. Truth be known, the power elite has turned America into a fascist state. The late fascist dictator of Italy, Benito Mussolini, knew what he was talking about: “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” “Precisely!” is what I imagine Professor Lawrence Brit, a political scientist, would say. He has concluded from his studies that America has all of the following 14 characteristics of a fascist state: “Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights; Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause; Supremacy of the Military; Rampant Sexism; Controlled Mass Media; Obsession with National Security; Intertwining of Religion and Government; Protection of Corporate Power; Suppression of Labor Power; Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts; Obsession with Crime and Punishment (of all but the power elite); Rampant Cronyism and Corruption; and Fraudulent Elections.6 If you can’t find evidence in America of any of these 14, then you must be living on an isolated island.
False fact: America’s Civil War was fought to free the slaves.
True Fact: Our Civil War killed more Americans by far than any other of our wars. “Honest” Abe started the war to preserve the “union” for a stronger defense against foreign enemies and to strengthen the power elite’s hegemonic aspirations. Furthermore, Abe was a self-proclaimed racist. Don’t believe me? Maybe you will when you read this piece of what he wrote to a correspondent: “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races—and I as much as any other man am in favor of having superior position assigned to the white race.7 Abe is just one of all but two US presidents (who died shortly after inauguration) whose legacies America’s power elite have had to spin over time to prevent popular uprisings.8
False fact: America’s wars have been unavoidable and just.
True Fact: America’s wars have been contrived by America’s power elite and have thus been unavoidable and unjust. America’s wars are the lies of America’s power elite.9 America’s wars and any wars are also, Albert Einstein once said, “an act of murder,” an irrefutable declaration in my opinion.10 That being so, does it also mean that any U.S. president except for two U.S. presidents in office too short of a stay to have done any harm, are surrogate murderers? And since the murders were done in our name what does that make us?
False Fact: Whistleblowers are traitors.
True Fact: It’s the power elite’s excuse for locking up conscientious dissidents. The true traitors are the corrupt politicians who by having people killed in other lands are violating our Constitution and International Criminal law and thereby endangering our nation.
False Fact: Our nation’s military represents the best this country has to offer.
True Fact: The drone operator who guides a bomb that kills people during a wedding procession in a far-away land certainly doesn’t represent the best this country has to offer. The military responsible for the deaths of millions of people over the years certainly doesn’t represent the best this country has to offer. What does, then? A nation of people that values and supports a caring society and economic system that encompasses “caring for children, the sick, the elderly, employees, customers and our environment.” That is the view of one of the best authors of all time in my opinion, Rianne Eisler. Everyone should read her book, The Real Wealth of Nations.11
False Fact: America’s war veterans are heroes.
True Fact: Some are, and some aren’t. People need to be sensitive to the difference. Referring indiscriminately to all war veterans as heroes only perpetuates what is indefensible, namely the glorification of war, the most ignoble of all human enterprises. Exalting the young men and women going overseas and risking their lives, limbs, and minds to kill foreigners in our name for the benefit of America’s power elite is indefensible.
Consider the sentiments of an Army officer being medically evacuated from battle in Afghanistan: “I’ve been in the Army twenty-six years and I can tell you it’s a con.” He goes on to say that his two young sons in college won’t have to serve,” and then adds, “Before that happens, I’ll shoot them myself.” He says he won’t deploy again. “War is absurd. Boys don’t know any better. But for a grown man to be trapped in stupid wars — it’s embarrassing, it’s humiliating, it’s absurd.”12 If only he could be a US president!
False Fact: To rationalize its own excesses, including its hand-outs from the government, corpocratic capitalists spout the theory of trickle-down economics as a rationalization for their own hefty welfare benefits, arguing that more money at the top will eventually trickle down to the bottom in the way of jobs.
True Fact: The evidence clearly shows it to be false.13 The excesses gush upwards. What small residual trickles down stops at the back door of the shrinking middle class, never going down farther to “the projects,” a euphemism for public housing where the poorest of poor who aren’t homeless live in dangerous and fetid conditions.
False Fact: The rich say the poor get what they deserve.
True Fact: A distinguished professor of social welfare refutes the popular belief that poor people are primarily responsible for their own poverty. Poverty instead, this professor contends, “is largely the result of structural failings at the economic, political, and social levels.”14 In other words, we should blame the corpocracy and its power elite, not poor, jobless people.
False Fact: Public services need to be privatized because government is inefficient and costly.
True Fact: Michael Edwards, activist and author, explains in his book Small Change that the inherent nature of business with its profit-seeking motive and its short-term perspective and demands makes business unable to come even close to solving hardcore problems like poverty, epidemics, war, social discord, and the like.15 I would simply add this question: How many business firms, large or small, can you name that are making significant inroads on such problems?
Yet the public sector is increasingly being taken over by the private sector. Privatization, argue Si Kahn and Elizabeth Minnich, co-authors of The Fox in the Henhouse, is the private sector’s way to “undercut, limit, shrink, or outright take over any government and any part of the public sector that stands in the way of corporate pursuit of ever larger profits and could be run for profit.16
There you have it, at least 11 of the power elite’s false facts repudiated. It will take far more than a massive effort to educate the public. Just what additionally would be required is beyond the scope of this short article.
If you want to know what more I have to say about America’s power elite and whether the living field can be leveled so that power is more evenly distributed among the citizenry, you can e-mail me (ten.ttanull@rewopycarcomed) and I’ll e-mail you in return an advance copy of my new book when its galley proof is ready.
- Brumback, GB. The Devil’s Marriage: Break Up the Corpocracy or Leave Democracy in the Lurch. Author House, 2011.
- See, e.g., Post Editorial Board. U.S. Is the Greatest Threat to World Peace? New York Post, January 5, 2014.
- Blum, W. Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower. Common Courage Press, 2005; Chomsky, N. Noam Chomsky: “The Leading Terrorist State”, Truthout, November 3, 2014; and Derber, C, Sociopathic Society: A People’s Sociology of the United States, Routledge, 2013.
- Ellis, C. “Americans: Government Corrupt, Elite Serving Only Themselves”, WND, March 3, 2016.
- Schwarz, J. “A Short History of U.S. Bombing of Civilian Facilities”, www.theintercept.com, October 9, 2015.
- Brit, L. “The 14 Characteristics of Fascism,” Free Inquiry, Spring, 2003.
- Zinn, H. A People’s History of the United States, Harper Perennial, 2005, p. 188.
- Brumback, GB. Spinning the Legacies of America’s Presidents, Dissident Voice, July 31; OpEdNews, August 1, 2016.
- Swanson, D. War is a Lie, David Swanson publishing. 2010.
- Einstein, A. Original source unknown.
- Eisler, R. The Real Wealth of Nations. Berrett-Koehler, 2007.
- Jones, A. “A Trail of Tears: How Veterans Return from America’s Wars.” Best of TomDispatch: “Ann Jones, War Wounds.” February 14, 2016.
- Sowell, T. “The Trickle-Down Lie.” National Review, January 7, 2014.
- Rank, MR. One Nation, Underprivileged: Why American Poverty Affects Us All. Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 64.
- Edwards, M. Small Change: Why Business Won’t Save the World. Berrett-Koehler, 2010.
- Kahn, S. & Minnich, E. The Fox in the Henhouse: How Privatization Threatens Democracy. Berrett-Koehler, 2005.