The John Birch Society and its many heirs, as well as some forebears, contended that plutocrats, not least munitions profiteers, lobby candidates, whose campaigns they finance, for manufactured bellicosity & civil unrest lucrative to their commercial interests.
Remember Eisenhower's parting cautionary remarks re our military-industrial complex's potential for gross social ills ? Would you say the General cum president was a leftist?
The reason you don't perceive perjorative perspective of plutocracy as "right-wing" is that, since the intial election of Ronald Reagan to presidency, the "right wing", as presented by mass media, has been entirely neo-cons, war profiteering plutocrats.
Even Nixon had the decency to use bagmen as cutouts for delivery of munitions makers' campaign contributions. Since Carter's exit, these super-villains are the "base", as Shrub publicly designated them.
That you don't know about the Birch "fringe" and conspiracy focused political theory means you are unlikely to recognize the roman a clef elements of Caldwell's work(s), esp. since they primarily predate, at least in setting if not in actual authorship, the post WWII U.S. political mantle in the dark shadow of which we extantly remain, albeit "Commie" having been replaced by "terrorist", the bastard spawn of the international Communist campaign of global revolution.
Recall that the Bolsheviks were paid $22 million in gold from the Rockfeller dynasty in order to preserve their ownership of vast oil fields on the western Pacific coast? Didn't they teach that to you in public school history class ?
Of course not; you had to study the John Birch curriculum to learn the revolution was funded by its avowed enemies and that bankers fomented war to sell weapons on credit to both Nazi Germany and Wash.D.C. e.g. Prescott Bush, unindicted co-conspirator named by U.S. federal court as trading with the enemy.
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lucascage
16 years ago
This is neither Rightist nor Leftist. It is realist.
Of course owners of conglomerates put politicians in power. Who else pays for them to get their and stay there? Surely nobody believes that middle-class donors have anything to do with this. If the middle-class could do this, Ross Perot and Ralph Nader would have been elected.
The lower class could do this without spending any money at all, but they always exercise their voting power by staying away from the polls in droves. Consequently nothing really changes.
The exception was Clinton, who may have been a sickening person and as corrupt as they come, but he had the charisma to get elected, the demonstrated agenda to balance the economy -- thus getting conservatives onboard -- and the competence to get done what he said he'd get done.
And all without committing treason, as Ronald Reagan admitted having done just as he left office.
He was still a sickening man and had no morals whatever, but we don't elect a person to be good and clean. We want them to be competent.
We very seldom get what we want.
What we generally get is what those conglomerates want, which is a situation that will bring them more money and power.
Richard Nixon asked 25 friends to give him a million dollars each.
George McGovern asked 25 million "friends" to give him a dollar each.
Which of them got elected?
There's nothing paranoid about conspiracy theories. Now, if I think the CIA has cameras on me -- it would be the FBI, of course, but paranoids seem to think it's the CIA, but that would be illegal and thus impossible ;) -- then I'm paranoid. The feds have no reason to glance at me, let alone look.
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carthur27
12 years ago
"The exception was Clinton, who may have been a sickening person and as corrupt as they come, but he had the charisma to get elected, the demonstrated agenda to balance the economy -- thus getting conservatives onboard -- and the competence to get done what he said he'd get done."
A recession during George H. Bush's presidency got Clinton elected. After two poor years in office which saw the failure of his number one initiative, Clnton's health care plan, the Democrats were landslided out in the 1994 election that gave Republicans control of both the Senate and House. Clinton was forced to compromise in order for anything to be done. A good economy, which had nothing to do with his policies, presently causes him to be viewed favorably.
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deerwalkby
8 years ago
The biggest reason Clinton was elected the first time was because crazy little Ross Perot pulled so many Republican voters away from George HW Bush to Perot's third party bid.
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