Just how far back does the oligarchical establishment go? Nixon? Reagan? Or further back?
I have begun to think the establishment has much deeper roots, as far back as post-Civil War Reconstruction, and perhaps even earlier. Let's take a walk down the memory lane of history, shall we?
Think of the railroad barons and our pals, the Wall Street bankers, who crashed the economy every few years in the second half of the 19th Century. Think of Andrew Carnegie, the steel king, whose steel built the rails that J.P. Morgan and friends financed. And the dukes of coal, that kept the Carnegie works going, and their miners fighting and dying to unionize against the peonage of their working conditions and pay (Interesting factoid: Carnegie sold his company to J.P. Morgan in 1901 for $480 million (in 2015, $13.6 billion), creating the U.S. Steel Corporation. (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie )
Consider William Jennings Bryan's campaigns against the "cross of gold" that made money (and farm loans, in particular) so tight that small farms by the hundreds of thousands were repossessed by Wall Street bankers, throwing farmers and their families off their land and out of their homes.
T.R. improved the status of the citizenry by busting the trusts, imposing health, sanitation and safety regulations, etc. Then after WWI, the corrupt Republicans took over and ran the country off the rails and into the great depression.
FDR brought us back from the brink of a socialist revolution, and saved capitalism in this country. And look how he was paid back by the industrialist's planned coup and later trading with the enemy. And right up front and accounted for were the Dulles Brothers and Prescott Bush and Brown Brothers Harriman banking house. Notable employees included George Herbert Walker and his son-in-law Prescott Bush.
Immediately post war, The Dulles boys took over American foreign policy, founded the secretive national security state, kick-started the cold war, hired Hitler's scientists and spies, brought down democracies around the world, and founded the permanent MIC.
Eisenhower, JFK and RFK tried to stop it, And we know what happened to the Kennedy brothers for presuming to call halt.
Now think about the years and elections that ensued. Most everyone misses the fact that Republican and Democratic candidates were decided upon in smoke filled, all male conclaves, led by party bosses who were often none too honest themselves. The capo di tutti capos in those days were none other than Averell Harriman for the Dems and Prescott Bush for the Republicans. Remember that old Prescott hand picked Nixon. As for Ave, his blessing was required before any candidate could be nominated. In fact, his influence continued long after his death, in the person of his wife, the gorgeous Pamela Churchill Harriman, formerly the daughter in law of Winston Churchill. I recall either TIME or Newsweek mentioning that she had the final say in the vetting of Bill Clinton.
The lawyers and bankers who were charged with trading with the enemy, even after war had begun, were in charge of the republic. And we all know the rest of the story at this point.
I have begun to think that our heroes were anomalies in the smooth running of a corrupt oligarchic state.
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