Late-stage capitalism hardly describes the present state of the US political economy. There are no mechanisms to limit hegemonic Capitalist ownership of all the means of production or alternative political-economic thought.
The egalitarians among us know that society taxes the working poor far more severely than our bloated billionaire caste. Late-stage egalitarianism is the term I would use. The existence of billionaires, and now the presence of a trillionaire in the person of Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates, informs us that inequality depends upon the maintenance of a series of lower castes to fill the god-awful jobs that no one wants. Only the desperate man the kill stations at a slaughterhouse, undocumented persons either take those jobs or they starve. Yet, our electorate accepts the straw-man fallacy that identifies “illegals” as grave economic threats. The current pandemic is an unexpected but welcome cash cow for the captains of industry. How long must the captains wait until they become quadrillionaires? How many homeless people does it take to create a single quadrillionaire, the logical wealth-management schemes?
Civics classes have long disappeared from US educational institutions, replaced with corporate-sponsored groupthink. The town square as the bulwark of democracy has been replaced with extrajudicial arrangements that remove checks and balances in any form.
Media puppets parrot the pap that substitutes for critical thinking and independent action. In their place is a perpetual unending special relationship with a political economy that feeds the “needs” of corporate hunger for direct access to the rare-earth metals that power electronic chips. Meanwhile, orthodox rightwing true believers rally behind leaders who believe themselves saviors of the American sense of manifest destiny. These true believers believe in a concocted set of histories that seek to explain this destiny as proof of the scoundrel’s generosity: the ones who get assigned key positions in every administration. Where lies the justice in absconding the resources of independent countries. The requirements of the war machine are not partisan, it is loyally supported by Democrats as well as Republicans. The two-party system serves the billionaires and trillionaires who benefit from the spirit of a historical destiny deigned by a god that considers hegemony to be a sign of peace on planet Earth. The creation of alternative political parties might threaten the two-party system that keeps injustice system thriving. Access to the game is thwarted at every possibility.
All societal systems occur over a spectrum, so there is plenty of room from one end of the other. Hard extremists at either extreme can quickly become hegemonies. Fair play is my watchword, there are enough prisoners in this country’s injustice system to explain the over-incarceration, particularly of those who are victims of systemic racism. A topic I plan to cover in another blog entry: Critical Race Theory: another misunderstood reality.
Thanks for reading.
billziegler1947 
The tragic reality of human existence at the bottom rungs of the global economic system. The earth upon which the ladder rests is now crumbling. That the billionaires and trillionaires are actively engaged in exploring outer space speak volumes.
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Thank you so much for your reply Rosaliene.
It is absolutely a crime against the planet and all its members of every kind. Climatic chaos finds its roots with those evilly greedy ones, but they only want more for each act of carnage. The outer-space wastes of time are a sign of just how little they care. Given more they would only seek an oder of magnitude more. It is beyond disgusting.
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Nicely put, Bill!
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Thank you, kind Sir!
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…and yet homeless encampments are growing by leaps and bounds. People are mysteriously missing as though they just vanished into thin air. Someone told me that people are being swept up in PPP loan fraud raids. A woman who I followed on Youtube and who was castigated for acting a fool in a hood liquor store owned by an immigrant from Trinidad is also missing. I made reservations at a hotel yesterday and the guy who took the call was from Jamaica and was hoping to make enough money working for the hotel in Amerikkka in order to be able to go back to Jamaica two years from now to live since he cannot survive in Jamaica, especially not with a wife and two children, probably not even by himself. He said the food over here is to die from and how he missed the freshness of the food in Jamaica. In Minnesota, they are crying about the fact that they cannot find enough affordable housing for the Afghan refugees they flew over here, of course, over top of the heads of the already homeless who have been that way for decades and longer, while the trillionaires gallivant around in space. Meanwhile, tornadoes, tornadoes and tornadoes and here where I am, it is 71F. I haven’t had to turn the heat on yet. I’m still wearing shorts. And I’m pretty sure no one wonders why I no longer blog.
Bill, thanks for posting this.
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You make very good points, Shelby. It is always a privilege to read your considered and vetted analyses of the systemic inequality and deeply-rooted racism that only gets worse with every passing day. I plan to write a blog entry on the actual research behind the bastards who decry Critical Race Theory, an open and free examination of the white-supremacist clan mentality that has been going on here since 1619. Not to mention the settler-colonial capitalist model that has been a tool to keep lynching alive and to see that the KKK continues to keep self-whiteousness at the helm and enforced by the captains of industry that keep the opportunities for egregious behavior alive. The Republican Party takes no responsibility for the crimes of the party of Trump. Absolute control of the rights to enter into the billionaires club somehow never admits a single black person, and the Democrats allow those Lilly-white moves to bring back disenfranchisement at the polls that are not satisfied with the death of the Voting rights in any form makes every election a farce.
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I look forward to reading your upcoming post. And thank you for your kind words.
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