This is a winner of a read. https://www.amazon.com/Oligarchy-Jeffrey-Winters/dp/0521182980 You aren't wrong, but there are limits to people power that the money power does not have: You have to keep people interested and invested in the issues they press for in their own time. They hire skyscrapers full of people to further their interests 24/7, and their victories last longer, so people miss a trick once and they lose the issue for a generation, the money power mises a trick once and they just try again later, over and over and over. Also, your average American does not give a shit about foreign policy, past agreeing with the TV about whoever is supposed to be getting ordinance dropped on them today. Color me despondent on that changing.
As Jeff Winters says in his book "Oligarchy" oligarchs are interested in the preservation of their wealth. One kind of threat to them is other oligarchs, another is masses of people, another is government that wants to take away their wealth.
As Bernie Sanders said, sitting behind Trump at the inauguration were billionaire after billionaire after billionaire. One most prominent is Sheldon Adelson who will be "directing" Trump's middle east policy. Rebecca Mercer and the Koch brothers are three behind-the-scenes oligarchs pulling the strings. Mercer is particularly involved in picking cabinet members. Look them up. And, yes, there were/are many oligarchs behind Hillary.
For a nuanced explanation analysis of oligarchy try Winters' book:
https://www.amazon.com/Oligarchy-Jeffrey-Winters/dp/0521182980
Or go to Cambridge Univ press, if you don't want to use Amazon.
> It's a view defended by Princeton political scientists
It is not.
/u/LouDorchen should listen to this too because I'll cover both of your points.
"US is an oligarchy, not a democracy" is the title given to it by the BBC blog section, "Echo Chambers" (subtitled, "Blogging global opinion, clearly"). The actual title of the study is "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens", and "oligarchy" is only mentioned three times in the entire text, and only as a comparison made by Jeffrey Winters in his book, Oligarchy:
> Most recently, Jeffrey Winters has posited a comparative theory of “Oligarchy,” in which the wealthiest citizens—even in a “civil oligarchy” like the United States—dominate policy concerning crucial issues of wealth and income protection.^1
As I replied here, a bad system is not an "oligarchy", and calling it an "oligarchy", as in, "we're screwed because the rich rule" is what's being edgy.
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