Thom Hartmann: How 'billionaire oligarchs' are pushing America to 'fascism' and 'civil war'

17 May 2024

The U.S. Supreme Court suffered yet another controversy following a bombshell report published by the New York Times on May 16.

According to Times reporter Jodi Kantor, an upside-down flag was hanging outside Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's home in Alexandria, Virginia on January 17, 2021 — which was only 11 days after a mob of Donald Trump supporters violently attacked the U.S. Capitol Building. At the time, an inverted flag was a symbol of the "Stop the Steal" movement and MAGA efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

Alito told the Times, "I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag. It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor's use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs."

But Alito critics are taking no comfort in that statement.

Progressive journalist/author Thom Hartmann, in a sobering article published by The New Republic on May 17, views the presence of that flag outside Alito's home as a symptom of a large problem: "billionaire oligarchs" who are pushing the United States to "fascism" and "civil war."

Hartmann writes, "The headline in this week's Fortune reads: Billionaire investor Ray Dalio warns U.S. is 'on the brink' and estimates a more than 1 in 3 chance of civil war. Billionaires and civil war? A billionaire-funded Supreme Court justice flew the American flag upside down outside his house after January 6 in apparent support of Donald Trump's attempt to overthrow our government."

The journalist/author warns that billionaires are making generous contributions to the MAGA movement and Trump's 2024 presidential campaign during a time of "political violence."

"For a second time in American history," Hartmann explains, "we're confronted with a near-complete takeover of about half of our nation by America's oligarchs. And with it has come not just the threat of political violence, but the reality, from the death of Heather Heyer to the George Floyd protests to January 6th and the assault on Paul Pelosi. All driven by oligarchs determined to pit us against each other so we won't recognize how they're robbing us blind."

According to Hartmann, history shows that "oligarchies" and political unrest often go hand in hand.

"Oligarchies are inherently unstable forms of government because they transfer resources and power from working people to the oligarchs," Hartmann warns. "Average people, seeing that they're constantly falling behind and can't do anything about it, first become cynical and disengage — and, when things get bad enough, they try to revolt. That 'revolution' can either lead to the oligarchy failing and the nation flipping back to democracy, as happened here in the 1860s and the 1930s. Or it can flip into full-blown strongman tyranny, as happened recently in Hungary, Turkey, and Russia, and nearly happened here on January 6."

Hartmann continues, "To the end of cementing their own oligarchy here, the billionaires who own the GOP are now actively promoting the same sort of revisionist history the Confederacy did, claiming that the Founders were all rich guys who hated taxes, wanted rich men to rule America, and wrote the Constitution to make that happen."

Thom Hartmann's full article for The New Republic is available at this link.

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