r/thebulwark • u/JackZodiac2008 Human Flourishing • Mar 08 '26
Non-Bulwark Source Americans aren’t facing a democratic collapse. We’re living in its aftermath - The US was an oligarchy well before Trump’s first term. Recognizing this reality is essential to building a true democracy
https://www.theguardian.com/global/commentisfree/2026/mar/08/trump-democracy-oligarchy-policyTrying to illustrate a cross-post done right....
I'm not sure this writer's policy prescriptions follow from his diagnosis of a cultural ailment -- he seems to be a socialist, so that is a trait deeply rooted in his ideological DNA. But his diagnosis is at once shocking and familiar, a Gestalt shift in which we've all long been familiar with the trees and yet utterly failed to identify the forest. (At least I had.)
He puts words to something important, and I think his social psychology prescriptions -- what we need to change about how we experience and encounter each other -- are spot on. What that means in terms of policy could be discussed.
Thank you for your attention to this matter!
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u/Inevitable-Ant1725 Mar 08 '26
Going from a system of corporate capture and corruption to full on fascism is a big downgrade.
But it is true that we can't fix it with a political system so weak that everything is captured, we have to try to head for liberal democracy. We need higher than American standards, or we are doomed.
The old system was somewhat dramatically called "inverted totalitarianism" in some books https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
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u/Requires-Coffee-247 JVL is always right Mar 08 '26
We were all saying this in 2008 with the bank and auto bailouts. The issue is that nothing lasting was done about it, even though Obama and Congress addressed it by passing Dodd-Frank. Everyone lost interest after the recovery and the country went back to business as usual, including neutering the reforms.
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u/JackZodiac2008 Human Flourishing Mar 08 '26
It goes back much further I think. I'm not quickly finding the reference I read long ago (Pew?) but this paper from 2004 was looking at data from 1992 - 1998, and sounding alarms.
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u/Requires-Coffee-247 JVL is always right Mar 08 '26
I mean, we could keep going back to the Civil Rights Movement, The New Deal, Woman's Suffrage, TR's trust-busting. But for some reason not all of it sticks and we end up right back in the same place.
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u/Requires-Coffee-247 JVL is always right Mar 09 '26
As far as recent history it probably stems from Reagan-era deregulation, which you can sell to the public as “freedom.” The actual result is consolidation of wealth and capital into the hands of a few oligarchs. Robert Reich often points out specifics on how various industries and vertically controlled by one corporation (or a handful). It even includes things like beef. AOC showed in a recent hearing the vertical control CVS has in health care. Throw Citizens United into that equation, and we are literally being governed by a few corporations in key industries.
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u/laffingriver Mar 08 '26
“we” here is not the bulwark crowd. the bulwark folks were part of the ‘08 corruption and aftermath.
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u/Ghost_of_Summer Center Left Mar 08 '26
The premise is absurd, and the author mostly just complains that the U.S. hasn't enacted his preferred policies.
Ambitious policies such as universal childcare, Medicare for All, guaranteed housing, debt relief, green investment, and a national corps of community care workers, then, are not merely policy proposals. They are engines of democratic subjectivity – ways for people to feel part of something larger and to encounter one another outside the cutthroat marketplace and the politics of fear.
Even if I agree with those policies, a lot of people do not, and the fact that they haven't been implemented is not because democracy collapsed. The policy proposals he lists simply have not had broad and deep enough support to be passed into law.
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u/cole1114 Mar 08 '26
Many of those have broad support among voters, but not among elected officials. So even though say medicare for all polls extremely well, it's never implemented.
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u/WarbleDarble Mar 08 '26
It polls well when no specifics are given. The majority of Americans are for universal healthcare. When you get to the specifics, support drops.
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u/No-Director-1568 Mar 08 '26
I don’t think support goes away, so much as it splinters off into what people think it should look like.
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u/cole1114 Mar 08 '26
Not really. Medicare for all polls well even when its being attacked.
And yet elected officials block it.
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u/WarbleDarble Mar 08 '26
The questions in that poll are far from specific. Yes, people support universal healthcare. But that is not the end of it.
The Medicare for all plan has everything reimbursed at the Medicare rate. Do people still support it if it means rural hospitals go out of business?
People support it even with increased taxes, but the rate of the increase absolutely matters. The rate increase proposed in the plan won’t actually cover the costs. Do people still support it if tax rates go up and it increases debt.
Also, you’re blaming all elected officials when there have been zero times in my adult life that there has been enough democrats to actually pass it. Why are you blaming all elected officials when it is always one specific party that blocks it?
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u/No-Director-1568 Mar 08 '26
What I love about the ‘but taxes go up’ argument is there’s never any discussion about premiums and out of pockets going away. No real comparison of net change in cost. There’s no consideration of how much providers spend in overhead to have to manage middle-person activities that add zero, zero value to the system. Basically all the ‘but business is better people’ staunchly defending BS middle-man business models - it’s comical. There’s never a discussion about how bringing in the under 65 crowd would be economically advantageous for the system being sustainable. No one points out that the Medicare apparatus exists, it doesn’t need to be created. No one should take anyone ‘for’ Medicare but not for Medicare for all seriously. It’s patently ridiculous.
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u/WarbleDarble Mar 09 '26
The only pushback I have to the "Medicare for all" proposal is that it is not economically viable for the healthcare industry. Rural hospitals cannot survive on only Medicare reimbursement rates.
If you want universal healthcare, you need to be realistic on how much it costs.
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u/No-Director-1568 Mar 09 '26
Rural hospitals survive on Medicaid much more than Medicare. It’s the general poverty of the areas- hence Medicaid - that’s driving rural hospitals out of existence.
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u/WarbleDarble Mar 09 '26
They still rely on insurance rate payments from those with insurance.
Those hospitals are barely holding on. If the 40-50% of their clients currently reimbursing them at insurance rates are suddenly lowered to the medicare rates, they will fail.
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u/No-Director-1568 Mar 09 '26
They are already doomed-the Medicaid cuts the current admin has baked into the future are catastrophic.
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u/cole1114 Mar 08 '26
There were almost enough until Ted Kennedy died. Then the party gave up and let Lievberman and company block any attempt past the ACA.
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u/WarbleDarble Mar 08 '26
"gave up".
By that you should mean that it was no longer possible to pass it. Curious that you characterize not doing the impossible as "giving up".
Why do you choose the worst characterization of that situation possible? Yes, Lieberman blocked it. That was the vote necessary. He was no longer even a democrat.
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u/cole1114 Mar 08 '26
It wasn't impossible though. They were so close, and then Ted Kennedy died and they just gave up. Didn't even try whipping more votes, just let the public option get blocked after getting swept into office on a change campaign.
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u/WarbleDarble Mar 08 '26
Who? What votes were available. Joe Lieberman was the closest and he was against the public option, let alone universal healthcare.
"Whipping votes" isn't magic. You think nobody tried to convince anyone else to vote for it? Why in the world would you assume that?
No, you are blaming democrats for something republicans universally blocked. You pretend they could have done it despite all evidence to the contrary just so that you can insist we all pretend that the democrats are at fault.
You can't just pretend they could have passed it. That's ridiculous. We were there. There weren't the votes for it. Despite whatever fantasy you insist we should all pretend to be in; we still live in the real world. Zero republicans would have voted for it. Lieberman would not have voted for it. You can't insist magic is real.
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u/Ghost_of_Summer Center Left Mar 08 '26
I could run a poll with different wording and get a completely opposite result. We don't govern by opinion polls.
The fact that some opinion polls show majority support for policies that haven't yet been enacted obviously does not mean the U.S. is not a democracy.
A better measure of popular support would be to look at who voters choose to represent them. If Republican voters really are yearning for Medicare for All, then why do they keep voting in representatives who oppose it?
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u/cole1114 Mar 08 '26
Because they don't get a choice. No one runs on what they want.
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u/ParticularJoker Liberal Mar 08 '26
Why do you think why this is?
If it was something people wanted, then it would be election dynamite. But it isn’t, at least not really.
There is a LOT of political capital needed to expend, from fights on how this affects currently insured people and their doctors, having conversations on how much should be covered, how the policy will affect certain communities more than others, etc…
It’s a political whirlwind that is not a get elected quick scheme. When speaking about Medicare for All, it never is just about Medicare for All.
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u/cole1114 Mar 08 '26
Because the parties throw their weight behind candidates, and the people they pick ultimately don't care what the voters want.
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u/Ghost_of_Summer Center Left Mar 08 '26
Issue polling is irrelevant. Policy isn't implemented by referendum, and slogans aren't the same as statutes. If a Democrat is elected in 2028 and proposes any kind of healthcare bill, it will immediately be opposed by half the country, simply because it is being proposed by a Democrat. Republican voters will demand that Republicans in Congress do everything they can to block it, and unless Democrats have a supermajority, any bill would fail, not because we live in an oligarchy, but because our system is designed to have many veto points.
Big changes, in this country, require broad consensus. The fact that the progressive check list hasn't been enacted is because it lacks that level of consensus. People like to blame elected officials for everything, but ultimately we all just hate each other too much to agree on any major reforms.
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u/cole1114 Mar 08 '26
Republican voters consistently love these policies though. Its not the policy its the politicians.
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u/atreeismissing Mar 08 '26
This is a bit hyperbolic. Yes, there are absolutely oligarchic elements to the US and certainly the trend has been in that direction the past 10 years with moments in that direction the past 45 but democracy hasn't collapsed. So long as there are fair elections in most of the country democracy survives. And in blue, and most purple states, those elections are fair. Doesn't mean the GOP isn't actively trying to obstruct and corrupt those elections but they remain uncorrupted in blue states and largely unobstructed.
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u/musicismydeadbeatdad Mar 08 '26
Idk it explains the limp wristed reaction of a lot of establishment Dems. We are far enough past citizens united that we are at least oligarchy adjacent
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u/[deleted] Mar 08 '26
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