Opinions of Peter Belmont
Speaking Truth to Power
| America’s Enemy Within And Democracy Problem |
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by Peter A. Belmont / 2025-10-11
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| As the joint Israeli and American genocide in Gaza takes a break with the October 2025 ceasefire (I write on October 10, 2025), it appears to me that (among other problems), it seems a good time to remind ourselves of two intertwined and very serious problems oppressing America. Apology This essay has been written very fast which has led to much repetition. For that I apologize and ask my readers to slog though it all in hopes of finding the occasional useful bits. Just read fast or skim. America’s Democracy Problem For many years, America’s principal problem, as I see it, has been that effective control over most of the USA’s political, economic, and foreign policy decisions has shifted away from control by and for the people and into control by and for the oligarchs—the oligarchs being the morbidly rich corporate CEOs, billionaires, and bankers. Although the USA still has elections and a semblance of “democracy”, elections are increasingly “bought” by electoral campaigns paid for by the oligarchs and conducted in their interests rather than in the interests of the people. And today, so many of our senators and Congresspeople are themselves millionaires that they are not only “bought” by (wealthier) oligarchs but are themselves members of the oligarchic class. Making things worse, there has been a wide-spread establishment at the state level, “bought” by oligarchs just as at the federal level, of voter suppression and gerrymandering—both aimed at disenfranchising poor people. The Enemy Within Among the oligarchs, the most dangerous special sub-class is the war-mongers, including especially the group called the “military-industrial-complex” (once called the “war profiteers”) and notably also including its dominating subgroup, since 1967, the neocons and the Zionists, often called “the Israel Lobby” or more simply “The Lobby”. I regard these groups as America’s “Enemy Within”, for they have been notably responsible for the subversion of democracy and for the terrible destruction abroad and vast over-spending at home occasioned by America’s wars since he Korean War. In particular, the USA’s support for the Joint USA-Israel genocidal war in Gaza 2023-2025, so unpopular among American citizens, has been a project and product of our own, our very, very own, Enemy Within. These two groups—the MIL and The Lobby --are so powerful that it might be said that American foreign policy has been “privatized”, sold to and run by the war-monger class for their own ends, ignoring the desires of the people. In the long course of this privatization, elements of the American government such as the military and the CIA have become so thoroughly agents of out Enemy Within that they operate to oppose the interests of the American people while acting to further the projects of the Enemy Within. The phrase “deep state” is used, I believe, to embrace these deeply buried and deeply corrupted elements of the USA government. The Puzzle For Democracy The principal puzzle for democracy in the near future, as I see it, is how to defeat, reduce, or re-direct the political power of the morbidly rich, the oligarchs. As a class, the oligarchs—sometimes called “the 0.1%” or “the 0.01%”—have shown rigid and invariable adherence to a tunnel-visioned ideology of self-enrichment and power-grabbing for the themselves which either ignores or actively opposes the welfare of the rest of the American people and which ignores or increases threats to the global environment, in particular by refusing to oppose climate change and by promoting the burning of fossil fuels. The oligarchs also ignore (and promote) their own contributions to the ballooning national debt while “blaming” so-called “entitlements” for the poor and middle class such as food stamps, social security, and medicare. (The many tax-breaks enjoyed by the corporations and oligarchs seem to me to be regarded by them as entitlements, but are never, by them, so called, the term “entitlements” as used by the oligarch-class being a sort of swear-word and thus never applied to the government benefits which they created and to which they have become accustomed. The mainstream media in the USA is almost entirely owned and operated by oligarchs and serves as propaganda arms of the oligarch class and of its servants, the USA government. The recent advent of “social media” has been, although of mixed benefit, a welcome pro-democracy source of information to Americans who should not, although many still do, trust what they see on TV and read in the newspapers. The curious and very recent invention of the phrase “fake news” as a slur against alleged publication of lies is almost humorous when the very long-existing corporate and billionaire ownership of major media outlets has been providing at least propaganda and often outright lies for a very long time. The national debt, of course, would be troubling in any case (and to rational minds appears to demand, at the least, heavy taxation of the very rich) and continues to rise steeply due to the ridiculously bloated “defense” budget and due to the refusal of the oligarchs to be taxed, if not steeply, then even at the rates paid by ordinary Americans. The Principal Internal Enemy The principal internal enemy of democratic government in America, as I see it, is the war-monger oligarchs and especially the Israel-first oligarchs. That these are enemies of democracy can be seen from the fact that Americans have been calling for an end to the joint USA-Israel genocide in Gaza for two years now and are ignored by the government, which is controlled by the war-mongers. These pro-war and pro-Israel oligarchs have led America into a succession of ruinous wars which have had benefit for no-one other than these same oligarchs, but which have been a disaster for the people of the countries the USA has attacked and have been ruinously expensive for the USA and have helped increase the national debt. Soaring National Debt and Tax Relief for the Oligarchs One example of the nefarious control by oligarchs is the long-standing but under Trump presidencies vastly increased legislated protection for oligarchs from paying fair taxes. This has increased the national debt steeply at a time when war-debt has already ballooned it. The oligarchs have moved from being merely greedy to becoming insatiable, all without any care or regard for America’s future. An indefinitely increasing national debt is not sustainable, especially as many lenders—those who have in the past bought the USA’s bonds—are shifting to other currencies in which to safeguard their wealth. The USA’s credit rating looks to be on the way down. The foreign nations which so far have held and in the past purchased the greatest amounts of USA debt are China and Japan. Especially following the imposition of the Trump tariffs, China does not seem a reliable buyer of dollar-debt in the future. After all, how is a bankrupt USA going to pay off its debt (or even the annual interest on that debt)? The War-Mongers: Military-Industrial-Complex and Zionists In recent years, the war-mongers have directed the USA into a succession of wars—Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen (briefly), Iran (very briefly but perhaps soon to be restarted in a major way), and by most accounts these wars have been fought not to advance any rational American “national interest” but, rather, to satisfy the imperial lusts of the neocons and Zionists and the profiteering lusts of the “military-industrial-complex”. America cannot now afford these wars and for many years past could not afford them. They have bankrupted the USA. The American national debt has skyrocketed and continues to grow quickly as the USA has, on the one hand, lowered taxes on corporations and the morbidly rich, and, on the other, continued to increase its military (usually called “defense” but now perhaps better called “imperial”) budgets. The USA’s expensive support for Ukraine’s defense (possibly halted recently), its continuing support for Israel’s locally-hegemonic-imperial war-making (that support not yet clearly reduced), and the USA’s preparations for a joint Israeli-American attack on Iran, are all conducted (or were conducted if now halted) as if the money for war-fighting will never dry up, as if the military (that is, as if the USA) has an unlimited line of credit. It doesn’t. More About America’s Principal Problem America’s principal problem, as I see it, is how to destroy, reduce, or re-direct the political control of the oligarchs. The Republican Party has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the oligarchs, lately with a MAGA overlay, and the Democratic Party has, except for a growing but still marginal “progressive” wing, also been devotedly attached to and openly and notoriously sucking from the oligarchic teat. This subservience to the oligarchs shows some signs of defeating the Democratic Party as any kind of national power, as oligarchs move, without significant Democratic resistance, to seize control of many state governments and state judiciaries—as they have already done with the federal government. As voting rights for the poor are lost and Republican-favoring gerrymanders are perfected widely throughout the USA, the transition of the USA into single-party rule will cement the power of the oligarchs beyond recall. The problem for America is, then, the problem of the Democratic Party—to break free of oligarchic control, including of course Zionist control, in favor of a progressive program which can win back voters, including MAGA voters, by attending to the actual needs of the American people broadly conceived. A Democratic Party which, instead, acts as a servant to the oligarchs, has much less—if any—likelihood of winning back control of government. I don’t see this change within the Corporate Branch of the Democratic Party happening any time soon, but I do see it as a slowly-moving transition among Democrats toward progressivism, and I do see such a transition as a necessity if one-party rule is to be avoided. I also see it as a possibility due to the Trump Administration’s abundantly over-the-top over-reach in joyfully oppressing most Americans, thereby creating electoral opportunities which Democrats should and might seize. If democrats wish to seize control away from the MAGA Republicans, President Trump has surely given them lots of ammunition. Trump is oppressing most Americans. How is Trump oppressing most Americans? He is doing so [1] through deliberate anti-people policies, such as cutting medicaid and medicare and damaging social security, damaging science and medicine, attacking cities with masked thug-like ICE agents and lately with National Guard troops and [2] through accidental anti-people policies such as (through ICE roundups) damaging American food-productive agriculture and (through tariff shenanigans which have cut much trade with China) damaging soybean agriculture. |
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