A lot of the current crop of billionaires literally became billionaires by disrupting the establishment, overhauling whole industries and toppling the old systems of power and control. They were by definition anti-establishment. The problem is… now they’re the establishment and they’ve implemented their own, even worse systems of power and control.
Much of the pre-Trump establishment is gone now, and no one should regret that, except for the unfortunate detail that the post-Trump establishment is far, far worse than anything that came before it.
The problem with popular revolutions is that they don’t always end up being very popular once the revolution has succeeded.
That’s my point: billionaires are an establishment unto themselves, and they’re already in a cartel to control the US government.
Corey Robin put it better than I can in The Reactionary Mind:
Far from yielding a knee-jerk defense of an unchanging old regime or a thoughtful traditionalism, the reactionary imperative presses conservatism in two rather different directions: first, to a critique and reconfiguration of the old regime; and second, to an absorption of the ideas and tactics of the very revolution or reform it opposes. What conservatism seeks to accomplish through that reconfiguration of the old and absorption of the new is to make privilege popular, to transform a tottering old regime into a dynamic, ideologically coherent movement of the masses. A new old regime, one could say, which brings the energy and dynamism of the street to the antique inequalities of a dilapidated estate.
cecilkorik@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
A lot of the current crop of billionaires literally became billionaires by disrupting the establishment, overhauling whole industries and toppling the old systems of power and control. They were by definition anti-establishment. The problem is… now they’re the establishment and they’ve implemented their own, even worse systems of power and control.
Much of the pre-Trump establishment is gone now, and no one should regret that, except for the unfortunate detail that the post-Trump establishment is far, far worse than anything that came before it.
The problem with popular revolutions is that they don’t always end up being very popular once the revolution has succeeded.
Zombiepirate@lemmy.world 2 days ago
That’s my point: billionaires are an establishment unto themselves, and they’re already in a cartel to control the US government.
Corey Robin put it better than I can in The Reactionary Mind: