Meet the Predator Elite
You should know who has been destroying our Democracy…
Exercise: Which of the following can be used to describe our government?
- Corporatocracy — government action is dictated by the needs of corporations
- Kakistocracy — a government that is run by some of its least qualified and least ethical citizens.
- Kleptocracy — a government that is run by corrupt leaders that exploit laws, people, and resources for their own personal enrichment
- Oligarchy — a government that is run by a small number of people who control through nobility, military, religion, corporate power, etc.
- Plutocracy — a government that is run by a small number of wealthy people
- All of the above
None of those forms of government is appealing, but it’s hard to look at that list and not think that our Democracy has evolved into something that has a little of each. To many of us, the answer is probably number 6.
Now take a closer look at that list. It’s not so much about governments — it is really about the types of people that run them. Governments don’t always reflect society and instead can end up reflecting the goals of only a handful of self-serving people — until those people push things too far. Since most or all of the above list applies to our country and the list is really about people then it would be useful for us to figure out who these people are and to come up with a name for them. We have names for just about everyone in this country; “heroes”, “patriots”, “the working class”, “elitists”, “politicians”, “leaders”, “poor”, “wealthy”, “celebrities”, etc. The list goes on and on. Who we don’t seem to have a name for though, are those who are destroying our country.
Just about every entry on this website will mention the “predator elite” when attempting to label those who are doing extraordinarily bad things to the country and to us. It was pretty tough to give these folks a descriptive label, but below is an attempt to briefly summarize the concept of “predator elite”…
Most Americans live harder and shorter lives because of the predator elite.
The terms “elite” or “elitists” usually conjure up images of those muckety-muck millionaires (especially those up in the Northeast), Hollywood types, or high-brow professors at all those fancy colleges and universities around the country telling us how we can live better lives. While many millionaires and billionaires certainly enjoy their wealth and love watching it grow, most have no intentions of destroying America — most of them know the value of our Democracy and the role we all play in it. Hollywood types are harmless and typically only briefly use their popularity to support a cause. Professors are almost always thinking and working hard to improve our lot in life. Sometimes their ideas are a bit quirky but those are far outnumbered by work that contributes greatly to society — and they certainly never jam their ideas down our throats.
On the other hand, the priorities, goals, and actions of the predator elite are resulting in the destruction of American Democracy as we know it. Most Americans live harder and shorter lives because of the predator elite. This sounds ominous but sadly it is true.
The greatest fear of the predator elite is a government that acts in the interests of the people over those of the wealthy. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, we got too close to that point when our government began reigning in corporate exploitation of our health, our wallets, and the environment. As the strength of the common man continued to increase through a more responsive government, the predator elite felt more and more trapped — so they attacked…
Guerrilla Warfare
Modern American Democracy is the casualty of a 50-year long guerrilla war. Emboldened by the Lewis Powell Memo, enabled by the Supreme Court, and financed and orchestrated by the predator elite, the combatants of this war have brought Uncle Sam to his knees. In this War, the predator elite are driven by a sort of psychopathic ideology to grab as much power and money as they can; not by working hard within our properly functioning Democracy, but by exploiting it and destroying it.
To do this, they spread themselves throughout our government, infiltrating the Supreme Court, Congress, and the White House in order to attack our government from the top-down. Meanwhile, they take over government agencies to attack from the inside. They gradually and purposefully make our government more corruptible and less effective. Every single day they exploit an inattentive news media that they use to convince us of just how bad our government is — the government that they have been neutering for decades. More recently they are able to use their own media outlets — they have become that big and powerful. They have been wildly successful at all of this because, as citizens, we were innocent and trusting, we were head-down and working hard, and our focus was the future of our children. We couldn’t have imagined that there were those among us who would go to such lengths to destroy Democracy. We were deceived and betrayed.
Like wolves, the predator elite instinctively prey on anything below them in the food chain — and that means just about all of us.
Guerrilla warfare often includes winning hearts and minds, weakening institutions, and creating division within society — this is certainly the case of this war. The primary tactic of Guerrilla warfare, however, is to attack in small groups. In this war, these groups are typically political organizations, think tanks, social welfare groups, foundations, advocacy groups, policy research institutes, business associations, etc. that are funded and directed by the predator elite. Because most are non-profit, and thanks to the corruption-friendly Supreme Court, massive amounts of untraceable “Dark Money” is allowed to flow freely between these groups and the wealthy. These are the lair of the predator elite, where they launder and gather vast sums of money and determine how best to use it against us. Like wolves, the predator elite instinctively preys on anything below them in the food chain — and that means just about all of us.
A very short list of their “causes” includes…
- Promoting “The Steal”
- Denying the January 6th insurrection
- Denying climate change science
- Funding conservative media (including extreme right-wing media)
- Keeping minimum wage down
- Limiting healthcare access
- Defunding and attacking public education
- Inserting their cronies at top-level in colleges throughout the country
- Picking and influencing corporate-friendly Supreme Court Justices.
- Picking corporate-friendly White House cabinet members and agency heads.
- Engaging in political funding with their untraceable money.
It is important to keep in mind that these groups will attack a single issue in unison. For example, many groups attack climate change. These seemingly independent organizations, each having numerous “authorities”, use a steady flow of fossil-fuel funding to publish books and research papers that are not based on science and not peer-reviewed.
They continually discredit climate science on television, in newspapers, and throughout the internet — never revealing who they actually work for. They often reference each other’s “research” to expand each other’s credibility. All of this creates an artificial consensus that causes doubt in many of us about climate change. Conversely, scientists don’t have such groups that can lead a campaign to convince us of what they know — they have to rely primarily on that incompetent news media or pray that we all read scientific journals…
A very short list of some of the groups that focus on taking fossil-fuel money and denying climate change (along with other “causes”) includes:
- The US Chamber of Commerce
- The Clairemont Institute
- The Heartland Institute
- The Heritage Foundation
- The Institute of Humane Studies
- The Institute for Energy Research
- Americans for Prosperity
- The Cato Institute
- The State Policy Network
- The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)
- The Atlas Network
Bending over backward to destroy the planet for power and profit, while looking us in the eye and denying it, takes “elitist” to a whole new level.
These groups, and many more, continue to cause extensive damage. They have mercilessly attacked us in rural areas and in the cities. They actively cultivate their next wave by placing their own educators and department heads throughout our colleges and universities, turning innocent students into the next generation of pro-corporate lackeys that will tilt the playing field even more. They have attacked all levels of our government all the way down to local school committees. These groups and their combatants are the weapons that the predator elite use to turn their selfish goals into action against us. To make matters worse, most of us have yet to realize what they are doing and that we are often their unwitting accomplices. They lie to us every day. They relentlessly work to make our lives more difficult, to weaken us, confuse us, and to divide us — and they do a damn good job at all of it.
The “power elite have become the “predator elite”.
In his 1956 book The Power Elite, sociologist Charles Wright Mills describes the “power elite” where the political establishment and corporate America manipulate and control us. The “power elite” is much stronger now, more brazen, and more organized. They do more than manipulate and control us; they have drastically tilted the playing field, they have taken a grotesquely large portion of the economy for themselves, they harm us, they kill us, and they are destroying the planet. We have become their prey. The “power elite” have become the “predator elite”.
Politically, the predator elite are typically Libertarians, free marketers, corporatists, conservatives, Republicans, the Tea Partiers, neocons, and neoliberals*. In reality, the predator elite don’t care about any of these political parties or ideologies — these are just labels to hide behind as they take everything for themselves. The predator elite are true sociopaths that have varying combinations of wealth, power, and influence that allow them to get their way and satisfy their endless greed.
It is important to point out here that everyday citizens that associate with these political factions are hardly the predator elite, in fact, they are the easiest prey and the most often sacrificed. If we are to save this country then we have to realize that we are being conned and that the predator elite are very good at saying all the right things that entice us to follow them down their path of destruction. It’s important for you to understand that you are not one of them…
This is not blaming the traditional Republican party — the predator elite have no allegiance to anything but their wallets. The Republican party was a logical place for the predator elite to bring their attack into mainstream politics simply because the Republicans have always been more aligned with corporate America more than the Democrats. The Republicans were attacked first because they were an easy kill — the Democrats are next.f
The list of the predator elite (living and dead) is really quite large now, but there are some standouts. Most notable are brothers Charles and David Koch (David recently died) and their Koch Network of think tanks, political organizations, and legal groups. The damage caused by these two and their minions is significant and includes spreading doubt about climate change as they continued polluting, stacking the Supreme Court to enable government corruption, and taking away our voting rights. And they did it all under that Libertarian con of fighting for the freedom of man.
There are other predators at the top of the food chain — a tiny sampling includes conservative financiers Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch, Tucker Carlson, Mark Zuckerberg, Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, all top management at the hundreds of corporate/conservative/libertarian think tanks, etc. In other words, they are spread out all over the place. If we are unable to save the planet or American Democracy it will be largely their fault (seriously). We will get into the Koch brothers and other predator elites elsewhere on this site — there is much to say about them all…
A few months after this article was first released, surviving brother Charles Koch authored a book and admitted his creation of extreme partisanship in our country saying “Boy, did we screw up!” “What a mess!”. It’s great that he did that but around the same time many scientists have come to the realization that we may have already moved beyond the tipping point on climate change and all of us can see that we are a the tipping point of the move away from Democracy. So for Charles, his Koch network, and all of his ilk, the confession is much too little and much too late — and it hasn’t stopped them from preying on us, in fact, they are going in for the final kill.
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves” Matthew 7:15
*neoliberals (or neoliberalism) is often incorrectly associated with the Democrats or the Left. Neoliberals seek minimal government, deregulation, privatization, free markets, etc. — all money-makers of the predator elite.
