The overlords who have elbowed aside democracy with their money are quite aware that the thing they have going is too good to be true in a nominal Democracy, and although the US is kind of big compared to what they’re used to overthrowing, it’s not unmanageable if you take your time at it.   Which they have.  At least in the media, what few interests with coins to rub together who might actually challenge corporate power on behalf of the vast majority, mainly lawyers and unions, are routinely chastised for upsetting the natural order of things, where Goliath is, you know, supposed to beat David.  And, now that they’ve managed to recast the Tea Party of yore into a made-for TV event generously sponsored by the modern equivalent of the British East India Company, I’d say that the years were well spent.

In this way, the Beckian attacks on “progressivism” are as transparent as they are politically necessary; the last time the American Government was as wholly owned by a plutocratic elite as it is today, with the widespread poverty and suffering that entailed, a lot of screwed-over people realized that at least they still could vote and spent several decades putting a stop to it.  As a result, from the end of WWII to the early seventies, Americans enjoyed the most widespread prosperity of any nation in history, and the very notion of an astronomically wealthy ruling class in a country like ours became an anachronistic aberration, as Americans perhaps descended from servants could afford to travel and tour the abandoned palaces of the Astors and Vanderbilts without shedding too many tears of sympathy about the income tax and the Servant Problem.

In the end, and this concept is not exactly new, a democratically elected and more importantly, directed,  government is our only bulwark against  corporations so wealthy that they can buy governments, and people so wealthy that they can at least rent them.  FreedomWorks, Fox News, and the Koch and WalMart heirs know this, but the followers they must dupe don’t, at least so far, so a more than usually desperate mop-up operation has ensued.  But really…  even the Astorbilts only had three or so houses, and they were a lot more tasteful than, say the best of John McCain’s seven.  (Or was it eight?)  They may also have had their private cars, but they did still take the same railroads, in some cases having actually built them, which would today be considered both vulgar and vaguely socialistic.  But even if you’re a regular Fox watcher, wouldn’t you still notice the unflattering differences and equally unflattering similarities between the superrrich of then and those of today, a realization which might prove inconvenient to the People Who Matter?

Well, yes, and that’s what everyone from Chief  Justice (!) John Roberts to simian nincompoop Sean Hannity has figured out, and damned if these worthies are going to let such socialist rigamarole get a toehold in our discourse.  Once that evil “government” has been well and truly drowned in the bathtub, the “malefactors of great wealth,” as that commie “progressive” Teddy Roosevelt called them, won’t have to waste their money anymore putting on tawdry and divisive shows each election year, and you can bet they have great ideas about what to spend it on.  It ain’t charity.

If not government, what do we realistically have, against such overwhelming odds and money?  Cole Porter may offer a clue.

After you, why, should I take the time to try?

That’s what they’re counting on.