Democracy Dies in Oligarchness
The Washington Post’s tagline is Democracy Dies in Darkness. Many who work for the newspaper are likely wondering why owner Jeff Bezos turned out the lights by pulling the Kamala Harris for President endorsement at the last minute. The reaction from some opinion columnists was quick. So was the reaction from readers. According to NPR, more than 200,000 people had canceled their digital subscriptions by midday Monday. In his own op-ed (one that didn’t get pulled), Bezos chalked up his decision to a hard truth: Americans don’t trust the news media. I’m guessing they trust it less now. His article doesn’t do much to convince us his non-endorsement was the right choice. That doesn’t matter. Neither to the unsubscribes that will likely hurt journalists more than Bezos. He can do whatever he wants. It’s not just that he owns the newspaper, it’s that his outlandish wealth is beyond the reach of any protest. The moment is a metaphor for a broader story in America that underpins nearly every other story: the vast and expanding economic divide that drives the way Americans look at politics, possibilities, and each other. Of course, the Murdochian trend of rich and politically active individuals owning big media brands is nothing new. But today, we have a handful of billionaires who own the newspapers and the town squares in which they’re discussed. Trump owns his own town square called Truth Social (though he hardly needs it now that Twitter has essentially become it). Elon Musk, the biggest spending and possibly most influential political operative in our presidential election, has turned the former top platform for politcal discourse into his own megaphone. On Elon Musk’s X, Republicans go viral as Democrats disappear. What impact will Musk’s partisan lying, Trump support, and phone chats with Putin cost him? Here’s a hint: SpaceX prevails over ULA, wins military launch contracts worth $733 million. But don’t worry, there’s someone who can compete with Elon in the space race. Jeff Bezos.
+ Fiona Hill explains how “the American political system already drifting into autocracy… A key sign is that members of the country’s billionaire class are acting more and more like oligarchs.” Fiona Hill Explains Trump, Musk and Why They Both Talk to Putin. “They are part of a very small group of men who control vast fortunes and vast political power that have global reach, and who prefer to deal with each other. They aren’t driven by the people they represent or the companies that they represent, but by the peer group that they are in, which is an extraordinarily small group of people … Their interactions are all about them figuring out how to exercise power together. When it comes to Musk, he’s promoting Trump’s candidacy and transacting with Putin because it serves his own interests in amassing political and financial power, Hill said: ‘His loyalty is not necessarily to the United States.'” (In other words, he’s found the perfect candidate to back.)
