As that economic elite watched what JFK was doing, it would appear that a decision was made within their ranks that the gloves must come off and that it was time to do whatever was necessary to assure that the economic elite would never again lose control of those levers of power.
Within the 1960s, four key leaders of the democratizing resurgence were tragically and systematically assassinated. The antiwar movement became powerful, and the discontent of the citizenry was on full display. And finally, the fiasco of the Democratic National Convention and the police riots of Chicago in 1968 shifted the election toward Richard Nixon and his "law and order" agenda and definite pro-business stance.
Then, in August of 1971, the Powell Memorandum to the National Chamber of Commerce weaponized business to become politically involved, lobbying, influencing tax policies, and becoming more directly involved in governmental economic decisions. The result was to shift the nation and the political process toward economic priorities and away from the priorities of a democracy; to government serving the economic elite rather than the ordinary citizens of this nation. Incidentally, soon after that memorandum, Lewis Powell was appointed to the Supreme Court.
The shift continued apace, gradually changing taxes from progressive to regressive, a process of deregulation and privatization of public functions, practically destroying labor unions and producing an obscene income inequality along with the dominance by a society of billionaire oligarchs.
Finishing the Job
We are now at the culmination of that quiet coup, with the election of Donald Trump, the quintessential oligarch, now finishing the job of institutionalizing a government whose sole purpose is to serve the interests of the economic elite by debasing all other elements of government, including the support of justice, to make those other elements dysfunctional and meaningless. We can expect more deregulation, more tax breaks for the economic elite, more pro-business Supreme Court Rulings and less concern for fairness, equality and inclusiveness. This next four years will be spent normalizing those changes.
The Quiet Coup that began with the assassination of JFK has continued apace culminating in the election of an oligarch to dismantle what was left of a democracy that might serve the ordinary citizens.
Thus, the Quiet Coup is complete; the democratic government of the US has been quietly overthrown to be replaced by a government now servicing free-market capitalism and an economic elite of billionaire oligarchs.
The Quiet Coup may be complete, but democracy's fate now depends on whether the collective will of ordinary citizens can rise once more to challenge this imbalance of power.
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