Rarely lasting more than a generation or two, oligarchies typically dissolve into either strongman fascism on the right or, are broken by popular democratic uprisings on the left. This is the essence of the reckoning facing both Russia and the United States.
In Chile, when Pinochet was deposed, the people reclaimed democracy, although the legacy of Pinochet and his neoliberal constitution have left political, social, and economic landmines in democrats' path that are currently being hashed out in efforts to rewrite their constitution.
In Iraq, the oligarchy imposed by Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld dissolved into the current corrupt strongman neofascist government that today rules that country, particularly since Nouri al-Maliki has consolidated most of the nation's political and economic power into his own hands and those of his close circle.
In the United States, Reagan imposed neoliberalism with the so-called Reagan Revolution in 1981. Since then, five Republicans on the Supreme Court forced on America the neoliberal theory that big money should control politics, legalizing political bribery with their corrupt Citizens United decision and its predecessors.
The result has been oligarchy here for the past 30 or so years, with great wealth determining most of our political decisions. Even programs that could get passed, like Biden's Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill and Inflation Reduction Act, had significant neoliberal elements (demanded by Joe Manchin) requiring virtually all of the money they distribute to run through the hands of generally for-profit corporations.
Since the Reagan Revolution, American oligarchs have demanded massive tax cuts for themselves, largely free access to the nation's mineral and fossil fuel wealth, and an end to laws and rules protecting consumers, the environment, and small businesses.
For four decades, American government has largely complied, gutting the middle class and paralyzing the ability of Congress to pass meaningful legislation that might reverse our neoliberal experiment.
Thus, American oligarchy is now at a crisis stage, on the verge of flipping toward the fascist state envisioned by Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, and the current leadership of the GOP, or returning to a pre-Reagan democratic state as promoted by President Biden and progressives within the Democratic Party.
Trump's failure to gain re-election was a huge blow to his vision of a strongman fascist America, which is why he continues to claim he didn't actually lose.
The fascist movement within the GOP, what President Biden identified as the "semi-fascist" "MAGA Republicans," has shrunk the party (because of Trump's loss) but radicalized the authoritarians in its base, leading to the possibility of increased domestic violence.
In Russia, when Gorbachev let communism collapse he envisioned the new Russia becoming a fully modern democratic socialist state modeled after, as Gorbachev himself said, Sweden and the other Nordic nations.
George HW Bush, Bill Clinton, and the IMF, however, had other ideas, and demanded neoliberal "shock therapy" in exchange for IMF loans. Gorbachev and Yeltsin complied, concentrating that nation's wealth in the hands of a few hundred oligarchs and setting the stage for the rise of uber-oligarch Vladimir Putin.
Putin has tried to impose a Mussolini-style fascist regime on Russia, but for fascism to work the government and its leadership must be perceived by the people as, essentially, all-powerful. Fascism requires fear.
"Strength" and infallibility, or at least the appearance of same, are essential to fascism. Russia's partial defeat this past week at the hands of Ukrainians has led to Russian politicians now doing the previously unthinkable: calling for Putin to step aside.
Fascist leaders never survive defeat, and only rarely do their systems survive, lacking a clear and coherent transition of power from one strongman to another. This is thus a moment of maximum danger for President Putin.
Whether he will do something terrible and dramatic like trying to start a nuclear war to hang onto power, or is arrested/deposed, or steps down with the promise of a golden parachute is still unknown.
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