Oligarchy in the US

Each new election year promises change. We will choose a new president and new
representatives in Congress; fresh faces will make their appearances in Washington DC, while
old ones disappear. But what about the people who stay in power, one election after another, less
exposed to the public eye?

The concept of a ‘Deep State’ has been around for a while, but rarely to describe the United
States. The term, used in Kemalist Turkey by the political class, referred to an informal grouping
of oligarchs, senior military and intelligence operatives and organized crime, who ran the state
along anti-democratic lines regardless of who was formally in power.

I define the American Deep State as a hybrid association of elements of government and top-
level finance and industry that is able, through campaign financing of elected officials, influence
networks and co-option via the promise of lucrative post-government careers, to govern the
United States in spite of elections and without reference to the consent of the governed.

Charles Koch is 'disappointed' in 2016

Republicans – but will still give $900m
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These operatives use their proximity to power and ability to offer high-paying jobs to
government officials to achieve outcomes foreclosed to ordinary citizens. As professor Martin
Gilens of Princeton, who studied the correlation between American popular opinion polls and
public policy outcomes, concluded: “[T]he preferences of economic elites have far more
independent impact upon policy change than the preferences of average citizens do ... ordinary
citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does in the United States.”

America’s growing income disparity is not the inevitable result of impersonal forces like
globalization or automation. It is the outcome of hundreds of trade, tax and regulatory measures
that achieved the preferred outcome – enrichment – of economic elites who contribute to
politicians.

Since the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision, big money dominance of politics has
gone into overdrive. Over half the money given to presidential candidates in the 2016 campaign
comes from just 158 families.
Ted Cruz listed as only climate policy 'hero'
by Koch brothers-backed group
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The result is that middle class incomes have continued to stagnate even as America saw its first
hundred-billionaire family. Income inequality has reached crisis proportions. Today, hedge fund
managers often pay a lower federal tax rate than public school teachers or firemen.

Greed is the prerogative of American elites. Their behavior was described by political scientist
Harold Lasswell, who said a society’s leadership class consists of those whose “private motives
are displaced onto public objects and rationalized in terms of public interest”.

Consider that in 1992, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney privatized much of our military’s
logistics. A decade later, Halliburton, a company he headed from 1995 to 2000, received $39.5bn
in logistics contracts to support operations in Iraq, while Cheney, having been elected to the vice
presidency, was receiving deferred compensation from his old firm.

A tell-tale sign of the Deep State’s involvement in policy is the use of fear to make Congress
compliant. In 2008, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke helped panic Congress into
approving a virtual no-strings bailout of Wall Street by claiming that if it didn’t approve the
measure immediately, there would be no economy left. Since he left the Fed, Bernanke has made
a profitable career giving speeches, mainly to financial services firms, at around $200,000 a talk.

Likewise, when there are economic incentives for war, fear becomes the Deep State’s weapon of
choice. In 2002, the Bush administration (and well-paid operatives in the military-industrial
complex) hinted at nuclear mushroom clouds to stampede Congress into authorizing an invasion
of Iraq in search of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. During the last 15 years, elites
have tried to keep us on the edge of hysteria about terrorism.

But lately it looks as if they did their job a little too well. People are now so conditioned by fear
of threats that many support a political candidate who ignores the euphemisms of the political
class and openly appeals to xenophobic fascism rather than a status quo of oligarchy
camouflaged by pro forma elections.

The calculus of the Deep State has been upset by Donald Trump, a narcissistic pseudo-populist
billionaire, who, ironically, is a symptom of all the pathologies within the Deep State. His
followers may be misguided, and Trump is all too ready to offer them scapegoats, but they
instinctively sense that there is something deeply wrong with the status quo.
At the other end of the political spectrum, Bernie Sanders has overthrown the current model of
elite financing of candidates. Tens of thousands of his energetic followers – Sanders’s average
contribution is under $30 – actively seek a return to the New Deal and the Great Society.

The Deep State may yet reassert itself through money and fear, but the 2016 election looks to be
the first ballot of a longer-term national referendum on what it has made of our society.