Topix Underground

"...The transformation of America from a modern “social democracy” with strong protections for the environment and the working class into strongman rule is exactly what Trump, Putin, and some of the billionaires who own the GOP want. Being answerable to the people is bothersome and inconvenient for them.

Conservative thinkers from Plato to William F. Buckley to Russell Kirk have denigrated democracy, claiming that it’s merely “mob rule.” Rightwing billionaires look over their shoulders at the teeming masses and shudder, remembering a time in America when the top income tax bracket was 90 percent for the morbidly rich and 50 percent for the most profitable corporations.

It was also a time of the greatest prosperity for the American middle-class, the highest levels of social mobility, and the strongest social cohesion.

Rather than submit to such “onerous” taxation, regardless of the social benefits it conferred, they’d rather burn the entire system down..."