Ben,
We don't have oligarchs, we have kleptocrats.
That's why our president is a senile puppet, not a Strong Man. If we had an oligarchy, then we would have someone projecting power, a chief oligarch, not some black hole at the center.
Government, as the executive and regulatory function, is analogous to a central nervous system, while money and banking are analogous to blood and the circulation system.
Both originated from individuals providing essential functions to society, so they naturally developed as forms of private enterprise, but over time we came to acknowledge that government should be a public function. The problem is that gave bankers power over the political process, since the politicians are subject to election cycles. So we have a system, capitalism, where the bankers can control the government. Where government is reduced to guaranteeing the value of the money and providing sufficient public debt to stabilize it. Not any actual decision making function, that might seriously limit the power of the banks.
So that rather than circulating value around the society to where it is most productive, they can skim off as much as they can and pretty much tell everyone else to go suck dirt and like it. As they own the media as well.
Russia had their reality check, with the fall of the Soviet Union and thought they could all just be good capitalists and everyone would live happily ever after, but when they showed up for dinner, found themselves on the menu. So they reverted back to strong man politics. Sending our media prostitutes into a frenzy of name calling.
The problem for our side is that since government is the function of decision making, not just feeding desires, we have all the strategic aptitude of bacteria racing across a petri dish. Like checkers, we can only go forward until we reach the other side, while the Russians can afford to play chess.
The irony is that strong man government is most effective when there is a clear eternal threat that needs the centralized focus it provides. Since the West acts like a pack of starving hyenas, circling Russia like it's a wounded rhinoceros, we are Putin's greatest asset.
Eventually we will come to recognize that banking has to be a public utility as well. The irony of which is the greatest threat to the bankers is their own greed, as they cook their own golden goose. The banks are having their, "Let them eat cake." moment.
Though it took over a hundred years to finally break monarchy, in the trenches of World War 1.
Remember reality is yin and yang, not God Almighty. Always keep in mind how the sides play off each other.
The anarchies of desire, versus the tyrannies of judgement. Motor and steering.
