by Tony Seed
The American social and aristocratic class is as rigidly hierarchical as the British monarchy the American media seems to deride. In fact, evidence shows that those born into the top 1 per cent continue to enjoy the benefits of the system far more than those at the bottom. The system favours the top 1 per cent disporportionately to the detriment of others.
Toronto,
July 25, 2013, 18:47 EDT updated July 26, 4:46 am
By Tony Seed
The omnipresent American media may be cynically mocking the so-called royal baby fever in the United Kingdom after Kate Middleton gave birth to a son on Monday, but its social structures and aristocratic class system are just as fossilized as that of any feudal monarchy and the House of Windsor. According Bruce Covert of ThinkProgress, a web site linked to the Obama faction, who cites a new study originally reported in the New York Times, American children have very little chance of climbing out of the social class they’re born into.
The great American “melting pot” is a pipedream and mirage unparalleled in its decadent history yet the media shouts its head off with absurd “news.” According to Mr. Covert, “A third of people who grew up in the top 1 per cent of the income distribution makes $100,000 by the age of 30, the study reports. By contrast, just one out of every 25 people who grew up in the bottom half of the income distribution was making that much at that age.
“The study also notably found that economic mobility depends heavily on where someone grows up. It is harder for low-income children to climb the economic ladder in the Southwest and industrial Midwest, and in particular Atlanta, Charlotte, Memphis, Raleigh, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and Columbus are particularly challenging. But the highest rates of mobility are found in the Northeast, Great Plains, and the West, in cities such as New York, Boston, Salt Lake City, Pittsburgh, and Seattle. The mobility rates aren’t necessarily tied to higher average incomes, however, as areas that have similar income levels can have very different rates.”
The article obscures the fact that the USA has within it both a natural and a hereditary aristocracy.
The ruling economic and political authority of the US Empire has within it members who inherit their positions and members who move to positions of authority and incredible wealth from lower social classes, including those of persecuted nationalities.
Politically, examples of the hereditary aristocracy who bequeath their positions of privilege to family or those among their retinue they favour are the Bush, Kennedy and Rockefeller families. There is no need in this article for any proof to substantiate this case.
To overcome the disastrous problems created by the inherited George W. Bush presidency of unending war crimes and attacks on the rule of law never acquired widespread legitimacy, especially internally, which Bush also termed in 2008 “democratic capitalism,” the US oligarchy promoted to president a member of the natural aristocracy, Barack Obama, who followed in the footsteps of Condoleeza Rice and Bill and Hilary Clinton.
Obama proved his allegiance to the owners of monopoly capital as commander in chief of the US Empire’s economic and military interests at home and abroad, his enormous bailouts to the rich and his constant contemptuous derision of the working class as a “labour cost” to the rich that must be reduced if their capitalist paradise is to be secured and expanded.
The objective results of rule by the US natural and hereditary aristocracy are shown by the fact that, according to ThinkProgress, “Growing income inequality is a phenomenon effecting nearly the entire country, however. It has increased in nearly every state over the past 30 years. On the whole, incomes for the wealthiest 20 per cent of Americans are eight times greater than those at the bottom 20 per cent thanks to the fact that top incomes have seen far faster growth. The social safety net has blunted the blow, but other government policies are helping to fuel the growing disparity between the rich and everyone else.”
In the “great democracy” of the United States, half of those with the right to vote are not registered; of those registered, half do not vote and only 25 per cent elect those who govern them.
Once the capitalist class came to power in the United States, on the basis of the theory of natural law of private property and a “natural aristocracy”, the feudal aristocracy of the British colonialists was replaced with elites whose power resides in their private ownership of the means of production. The new “republic” strengthened and enriched these elites with massive handouts of the resources and land accumulated from the genocide of the Amerindians, the conquest of Mexico and Spain, and from the exploitation of labour. They too benefit from the oppression of the rest of society and oppress minorities the most because they are the most vulnerable. All of this is done for economic gain and to keep the reins of power firmly in the hands of the most economically powerful.
Is it also not fortuitous that it is the “greatest democracy" that has given succor and refuge to the hereditary monarchists of the world, thrown into the dustbin of history by the peoples of their lands, such as the current pretender to the Peacock Throne, Reza Pahlavi?
For over three decades since their flight from Iran, first Egypt (Anwar Sadat provided a palace for two years) then Washington kept Farah Diba Pahlavi, the Shah’s widow, and oldest son, Reza Pahlavi Junior [1], in the lap of luxury in reserve for future use, just as the USA, Britain, Spain and Italy keep other monarchs and despots such as Baby Doc of Haiti, the Emir of Afghanistan, King Idris of Libya and King Zog of Albania in reserve to be deployed according to their interests. Indeed, the American republic still formally addresses the former Empress as Her Imperial Majesty although the titles and distinctions of the Iranian Imperial Family were abolished within Iran by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Endnote
1: Pahlavi is a fighter pilot trained by the United States Air Force in Lobbock, Texas following his graduation from the University of California. He is now a resident of the Washington, D.C., suburbs, where he maintains his “secretariat.” Pahlavi, 51, has his own group of followers who are seeking to restore the dynasty founded by his grandfather. Along with a retinue of servants and advisors, Farah Pahlavi still leads her fabulous life in a multi-million dollar gated estate in Potomac, Maryland just outside Washington, DC and flies back and forth to a luxurious apartment in Paris, France with annual side trips to Egypt, where the Iranian royalists gather in homage from around the world at the Shah’s tomb built and maintained by Hosni Mubarak. Reza Pahlavi's sycophants include Nazanin Afhsin-Jam, wife of Canadian cabinet minister Peter MacKay.