Yes there is a Ruling Class
Yes they are waging war against the rest of us
A very, very brief history
By John Johnson
The ruling classes have waged war on the rest of us, practically since Day One. Maybe it began when a chief, or perhaps the head religious leader stole wealth, usually in war or from the labor of others and, determined to prevent its being stolen from him, he surrounded himself with armed mercenaries.
They built an armed unit. Then he has to figure out how to control them the rest of the population. One way is to keep them poor, unable to mount a campaign against him.
Then he had to figure out how to control the rest of the population. One way was to keep them poor, unable to revolt, while enriching himself on their poverty.
Our current rulers can trace their lineage to European (phony) Royalty. They enslaved their citizens into serfdom. During this nation’s beginnings “indentured” servants did the work. Then the wealthy kidnapped millions of Africans for their slaves. If any revolted they were whipped and put to death.
After the civil war the laborers tried to organize against the terrible working conditions and salaries. At the same time some of the greatest fortunes were accumulated by the barons of industry, and the bank owners. Between 1870 and 1900, The Gilded Age which resulted in the Panic of 1993 with a great depression, the share of national wealth held by the richest one percent of households peaked at around 45 percent. By the end of the century labor and socialist movements were shaking things up. That was met by severe repression. Strikers were brutally attacked, many labor organizers were arrested and deported.
Teddy Roosevelt arrived on the political scene to fight the excesses of the infamous “robber barons” whose greed had undermined economic fairness.
Then the Royalities of Europe started WWI in order to expand their own power, and millions of workers and middle class men suffered and died, along with vast numbers of civilians.
With WWI came the infamous “Red Scare,” and the Palmer Raids during which thousands of labor organizers, socialists, anarchists and certain foreigners were rounded up, imprisoned and deported.
Next, we had the roaring Twenties, built on stock manipulations which drained what was then the middle class, and created the “Great Depression.”
Then the Royalty and the Dictators wanted another war and murdered many more millions of workers, peasants and what there was of middle class.
Programs put in by Roosevelt and Eisenhower did help to build a larger middle class in the US, with the provision that the population drop their politics and conform to this new political and social agenda. Veterans bought homes and went to college under the GI Bill. In the late Fifties and early Sixties, the Civil Rights Movement disrupted that apathetic narrative.
By the Sixties the elites invaded Cuba, and they violently sabotaged other popular Latin American revolts. But their big mistake was invading Southeast Asia and Vietnam, which left over two million Vietnamese and 58,000 American troops dead.
Another worldwide revolt against the rulers began. They couldn’t stop it, but by the Seventies were able to slow it down. By the Eighties with the Reagan election came more wars, more social oppressions.
Under George W. Bush, taxes were slashed for the rich, “my base,” as he called them. Then he started the Middle East Wars, which made billions for his base, but all of that money, two trillion, was put on “our’ deficit and the population will have to pay that off in coming years.
Today’s ruling class members (Haliburton, General Electric, Exxon, Chase Bank, Wall Street and billionaires such as the Koch brothers) are no longer subtle about their intent to control all the world’s markets, resources and labor. We slide into another Depression, a scant three years after the massive ‘08 bailouts began, following the collapse of the rigged housing and mortgage crisis. Where housing prices were artificial raised. It was thought they would continue to grow and people took out huge mortgaged on them. Which were then divided up and sold for huge profits. Housing prices dropped like stone so great that the mortgages became useless to the home owners, who had no choice but to bail on them, creating millions of empty house and the rigged housing crisis. Their greed continues unchallenged, because of their control over the media and government.
They sit on trillions, yet invest not a dollar of it in the US economy. Why? They plot to privatize the more than a trillion in the Social Security bank, then invest it in Wall Street, where win or lose inflated commissions are made.
They intend to shrink the middle class and produce a low wage, no benefits working poor, similar to what they created in China, with the massive exportation of jobs there.
Contemporary so-called civilization has inherited a system of violent and brutal conditions under which we are obliged to live. We are brainwashed to believe that opposing them is “unpatriotic.” In truth, very few of us – now, or in times past – ever actively agreed to these conditions. And the reprisals are swift and cruel for those who attempt to improve them.
The rich only call it Class Warfare when we fight back, which the deluded call treason.
