We've reached a critical stage where five unethical Republican justices on the Supreme Court have inflicted such severe damage that our country is now vulnerable to an oligarchic takeover. aka A constitutional crisis is unfolding as Trump is disregarding court orders and openly intimidating judges to such an extent that even Chief Justice John Roberts feels compelled to address the situation publicly.
The story of America is marked by leaps forward in progress, interspersed with oligarchic pushback resulting in eras of suffering and standstill (with the exception of the extremely wealthy).
The initial eight decades began with the American Revolution against an autocratic ruler and the planet’s biggest enterprise. However, the vision of the Founding Fathers faced opposition from Southern elites who viewed the abolition of slavery as a danger to their riches and authority; these leaders had transformed the South into something akin to a neo-fascist dystopia before instigating a conflict with America, which Abraham Lincoln emerged victorious from.
Lincoln proceeded with several forward-thinking reforms such as the 13th Amendment, the Homestead Act, the National Banking Act, the Pacific Railway Acts, establishing the Department of Agriculture, and enacting the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act which provided federal lands to establish over fifty institutions offering free education to American youth. Additionally, he became the first U.S. President to embrace the term "union" positively at a time when this usage was so uncommon that newspapers highlighted it by putting it in quotation marks.
In our next eight decades, we witnessed a right-wing reaction against Lincoln's changes, beginning with the tainted agreement that concluded Reconstruction during the 1876 election. In his 1887 State of the Union address, President Grover Cleveland declared:
As we examine the accomplishments of pooled resources, we uncover the presence of conglomerates, mergers, and monopolies, with citizens lagging behind or being crushed underfoot. Businesses, intended as controlled entities governed by laws and serving the public, are rapidly turning into overlords controlling the populace.
The reaction came in the form of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1891, which Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft implemented rigorously, dismantling large companies and monopoly alliances such as Standard Oil. A further instance was the Tillman Act of 1907, prohibiting businesses from providing financial contributions or anything of worth to political campaigns. any candidate for federal office.
Across the country, various states tackled corporate influence as well. For instance, a 1905 law enacted in Wisconsin provides such an illustration. This legislation was invalidated by five unethical Republican justices of the Supreme Court who ruled that corporations possess personhood and financial contributions equate to free speech (referencing Section 4489a, Sec. 1, ch. 492, 1905). The statute clearly stated:
No company operating within this state shall make payments or contributions, nor agree to do so, either directly or indirectly. any funds, assets, complimentary services from its staff members or items of worth any a political party, organisation, committee, or individual for any for political aims of any kind, or to sway legislative decisions any to support or oppose the candidature of any individual for suggestion, selection, or choice to any political office.” (emphasis added)
The penalty entailed a significant fine, multiple years in jail for individual executives, and essentially a political demise with the company barred from conducting business in Wisconsin.
Should any officer, employee, agent, attorney, or another representative of a corporation contravene this legislation, they will face punishment through either a monetary penalty... or incarceration in the state prison ranging from at least one year up to a maximum of five years,... furthermore..., their authorization to operate within this state can be revoked.
A couple of years afterward, attempts to regulate misconduct by wealthy individuals and businesses turned into a nationwide effort under federal jurisdiction. Tillman Act From 1907 onwards, that legislation clearly prohibited any corporation from providing "contributions related to any election for any federal political position."
The conservative response to that period (alongside the implementation of the estate tax under Theodore Roosevelt and the income tax introduced by Woodrow Wilson) emerged during the 1920 election. When Republican Warren Harding assumed the presidency, he promptly reduced the highest income tax rate from 90% to 25%, and started loosening regulations across various sectors including banking and investments.
That, of course, led straight to Black Tuesday of 1929 and the start of what was then called the Republican Great Depression. Out of that Republican disaster, Franklin Roosevelt kicked off a new progressive era in 1933 with Social Security, unemployment insurance, the legalization and protection of unions and workers’ rights, and the minimum wage.
Our third 80 year period began with the end of World War II and is ending now. Because Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt (and Congress and the Courts) had severely limited the power of big corporations and the morbidly rich from owning politicians, we got a lot done during the first 60 years.
President Eisenhower was re-elected on a platform of expanding Social Security and unionization, Kennedy called for a national healthcare system which led to LBJ passing Medicaid and Medicare, along with solidifying civil and voting rights.
The third great backlash to this progress began in the 1970s with the Powell Memo and Lewis Powell himself authoring the 1978 Bellotti The ruling stated that businesses qualify as "persons" endowed with rights according to the Bill of Rights, such as freedom of expression. According to Powell, this encompasses the capacity to spend money for political advertisements during election campaigns.
That was intensified by the 5-4 decision. Citizens United The decision made in 2010 completely and definitively overturned more than a century of congressional efforts aimed at curbing the influence of wealthy individuals and big businesses. This has led us to confront an urgent democratic crisis today.
That choice, as outlined in The Concealed Story of the Supreme Court and the Treachery Against America , constituted a violation of the trust of the American people at such a level Dred Scott The decision made in 1856 potentially steered us directly towards the Civil War.
The third backlash has hit its climax as the Trump/Musk administration has dismantled many of the institutions established by leaders like Teddy, Franklin, and Lyndon. This has severely impaired the IRS’s capacity to ensure wealthy tax evaders face consequences. Additionally, they have altered the narrative of American history to omit the achievements of women, African Americans, and LGBTQ+ individuals.
Will this third 80 year period wrap up with a return to the progressive values on which America was founded like the first two did? Or will Trump and Musk succeed in ending our democracy, replacing it with an autocratic “illiberal democracy” like in Hungary and Russia?
Democrats in Congress came damn close three years ago to rebooting us into a new progressive era with the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act of 2022.
The former would have rolled back large parts of the Citizens United decision and its predecessors, putting limits on corporate and billionaire money in politics, ending gerrymandering, and solidifying multiple good government reforms. The latter explicitly said every American citizen has a right to vote, so we could only be purged from voting rolls by court order.
Both passed the House and had enough votes to pass the Senate, but were stopped by a Republican filibuster. Democrats had enough votes to break the filibuster, until Republicans reached out to two corrupt Democratic senators (Sinema and Manchin) who sided with them and killed the legislation. (Now they’re working on Fetterman.)
As a result, Elon Musk is expanding his use of his billions to threaten Republican politicians and defeat Democrats in ways that, prior to Citizens United , would have been crimes.
Americans are waking up and starting to fight back; Bernie and AOC drew 86,000 people to a handful of rallies in the Midwest last week, and more are planned. As the courts struggle to restrain Trump’s authoritarian impulses, there’s a very real possibility that his and Musk’s attacks on American institutions have so horrified voters that they’ll hand power back to Democrats in 2026 and 2028.
If so, reprising even more forceful versions of the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act is an urgent priority. Money in politics has been — from the earliest days of our republic to today — a cancer in our political system. Musk is a symptom of that, although he’s only one of many rightwing billionaires who’ve effectively seized control of the GOP and, through it, our government.
But there is still hope. Abraham Lincoln told us:
“In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed.”
Because our only salvation lies in again outlawing billionaires from buying politicians and political parties, the most important thing we can do right now is to participate in the kinds of demonstrations and support the politicians who are leading progressive public opinion.
They will give judges, law firms, and politicians who know what Trump is doing is wrong the backing they need to stiffen their spines and hold the line until the electoral process can return sanity to America.
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