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Democracy vs. Oligarchy: The real American divide is not Left vs. Right


I keep hearing that the Democratic party has moved “left” and that some Democratic candidates may be “too far left.” But in this era of unprecedented concentration of wealth and political power at the top, I can’t help wondering what it means to be “left.”

A half-century ago, when America had a large and growing middle class, those on the “left” sought stronger social safety nets and more public investment in schools, roads and research. Those on the “right” sought greater reliance on the free market. But as wealth and power have concentrated at the top, everyone else, whether on the old right or the old left, has become disempowered and less secure.


So why do we continue to hear and use the same old “right” and “left” labels? I suspect it’s because the emerging oligarchy feels safer if Americans are split along the old political battle lines. That way, Americans won’t notice they’re being shafted.





Divide-and-conquer allows the oligarchy free rein. It makes the rest of us puppets, fighting each other on a made-up stage. Trump is the puppet master. He has been at it for years, long before he ran for president. He knows how to pit native-born Americans against immigrants, the working class against the poor, whites against blacks and Latinos.


He knows how to stir up fears of brown-skinned people from “shitholes” streaming across the border to murder and rape, and stoke anger about black athletes who don’t stand for the national anthem. He’s a master at fueling anxieties about so-called communists, socialists and the left taking over America. He can make the white working class believe they’ve been losing good jobs and wages because of a cabal of Democrats, “deep state” bureaucrats and Hillary Clinton.


The only way to overcome the oligarchy and Trump’s divide-and-conquer strategy is for the rest of us to join together and win America back. That means creating a multi-racial, multi-ethnic coalition of working-class, poor and middle-class Americans who will fight for democracy and oppose oligarchy.

White, black and Latino; union and non-union; evangelical and secular; immigrant and native-born – all focused on ending big money in politics, stopping corporate welfare and crony capitalism, busting up monopolies and stopping voter suppression. This agenda is neither “right” nor “left.” It is the bedrock for everything else America must do.

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