The existence of a ruling class is undeniable!

Or at least it can't be denied by anyone that expects to maintain a reasonable degree of credibility.There have been numerous high profile people like Condoleezza Rice, Mitt Romney and many others who say this in the mass media where it goes unchallenged, but as I indicated in Tracking the elite ruling class it isn't that hard to demonstrate that people from the upper class routinely get powerful jobs while those from lower or middle classes are routinely shut out from them. I began tracking a high number of people that were related to to other people within the ruling class and could have gone much further if I took the time.

It is clear that a large number of political candidates are from the ruling class. The ruling class also controls the vast majority of the media and one of the most effective way they guarantee that only those that they approve of get elected to office is to decline to cover anyone unless they're reasonably sure that they will stay within certain parameters.

Those that control the version of truth, even if it is mostly lies, used by the majority of the public to make their most important decisions can, and often do, manipulate, indoctrinate and, in the most extreme cases, virtually enslave a large segment of the public.



Even the conservative magazine, "The Economist" admits that we still have a ruling class according to the following excerpts, which only tells part of the story:

The enduring power of families in business and politics should trouble believers in meritocracy Apr 18th 2015

“AS A democracy the United States ought presumably to be able to dispense with dynastic families,” wrote Arthur Schlesinger junior, one of America’s best-known historians, in 1947. Yet almost 70 years on, next year’s presidential election could well become a family affair. A Clinton or a Bush has been on the ticket in seven of the past nine races. Hillary v Jeb may offend against equal opportunity, but not the laws of statistics.

How, people wonder, can this happen in a country that went to war to rid itself of a king’s hereditary authority? That is the wrong question. Around the world, in politics and business, power is still concentrated in the family. Power families and dynasties are here to stay. The question is how to ensure that they are a force for good.

Double helix, double standards

In politics the Clintons and the Bushes hardly count as exceptions. The leaders of Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Bangladesh are all related to former political chiefs. The “Stans” of Central Asia are family fiefs. The Gandhis are struggling in India, as are the Bhuttos in Pakistan, but the Kenyattas are kings in Kenya, a Fujimori is once again leading the polls in Peru and a Trudeau has a fighting chance in Canada. Meanwhile the lengthy catalogue of China’s “princelings”, the children of Communist Party grandees, starts right at the top with the president, Xi Jinping.

In Europe family power is one reason why politics seems like a closed shop. Fifty-seven of the 650 members of the recently dissolved British Parliament are related to current or former MPs. François Hollande, France’s president, has four children with Ségolène Royal, who ran for the presidency in 2007. Three generations of Le Pens are squabbling over their insurgent party, the Front National (see article). Belgium’s prime minister is the son of a former foreign minister and European commissioner. The names Papandreou and Karamanlis still count for something in Greece. Complete article

This article presents the assumption that "Power families and dynasties are here to stay," as an unavoidable fact without fully exploring how they maintain their power or what it would take to educate the public so that we didn't have to continue to settle for a ruling class in the future, and that we could hold out leaders accountable in the future whether they're from the ruling class or not.

They also refer to the "Economist" as a liberal magazine, which indicates how meaningless political labels are except to give people impressions that are often misleading or manipulative.

The implied reason given that we should accept the inevitability of being ruled by the same families over and over again is "the laws of statistics," and a history of allowing the same families rule us over and over again without a thorough review of how and why they maintain power and how this could be changed. When "the laws of statistics," are applied to social activities they might not apply unless the social behavior that led to the results of these statistics remains the same, or as another saying goes "there are three types of lies, lies, damn lies and statistics." The most important part of a major change would be educating the public about other alternatives and convincing them that they actually have a chance of electing truly democratic leaders that are accountable to the public more than they are to the corporations that finance and control campaigns.

There have been numerous exceptions in the past where the public has refused to accept the rule of the ruling class and if more people understood the alternatives then it could be more likely in the future, perhaps the near future.

This could be extremely difficult with multinational corporations controlling the vast majority of the media and refusing to cover the best grass roots candidates; however this could be a double edged sword. By doing so bad a job covering grass roots candidates and issues it is much less likely that many people will continue to trust the traditional media especially with alternative media outlets available.

Many people, including me, have been hoping that this would have led to reform by now; however it hasn't, or at least it doesn't seem to have done so.

But the grassroots supporters of reform keep at it and the political establishment is demonstrating that they're getting even more extreme; which could provide the greatest opportunity since the great depression for major reforms that are truly democratic.

Many of these grass roots supporters are better informed than a large percentage of the public and they're creating alternative media outlets that are far more credible than the traditional media, as I indicated in a previous post, Alternative Media is an Absolute Necessity!! And as I implied in Invest in Activism, AND Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein and Grassroots many of them recognize that elected candidates to support the will of the people involves supporting them because they really do represent the public and holding them accountable when they get in office.

Right now the leading sincere grass roots contender seems to be Bernie Sanders and even though the media is trying to do anything they can get away with to discredit him by presenting Hillary as the front runner they may have overreached their credibility. They routinely present her as leading in the polls, yet I don't know anyone who supports her strongly, if at all. I have no idea where all this supposed support for Hillary is but I suspect that most of it is either manufactured by political people or polling relatively uninformed people.

A look at some of her support from the internet including on Twitter compared to the support for Bernie Sanders, seems to imply that Sanders might have much more support, at least from people that are active on line, and I suspect better informed.



Both Albert Einstein and Karl Marx and many others recognize that the ruling class has been able to maintain power by controlling powerful institutions and the propaganda that is given to the majority of the public. One of the most effective ways they use to promote propaganda is to stereotype belief systems that often stand up for the majority better than they do, which is why they demonized socialism and communism equating it with Stalin and Mao, even though they never represented the majority of the public. Real grassroots organizations are much more likely to recognize that although Marxism or communism might not be perfect they do have some ideas that are better than the ones being implemented by the ruling class and sorting through them regardless of stereotypes promoted by the ruling class to keep the good ones is much better than accepting the ideology of the ruling class.

Recent disclosures about the American Psychological Association indicate that they've been studying how to manipulate the public in addition to their participation in torture programs, providing additional details about their manipulation tactics. It remains to be seen if alternative media outlets and the strong grass roots support for real reform will be enough to elect a real reformer but it already seems clear that if the ruling class is going to defeat Bernie Sanders then they'll have to show their tactics even more; and a large portion of his support might abandon the Democratic Party and go to the Green Party; and if they use the same tactics against Jill Stein, or whoever the nominee is, as they have in the past then they'll show how they rig elections even more.

The media has already demonstrated how little they care about important issues by providing much more attention to clownish candidates like Donald Trump than they do for sincere candidates like Jill Stein that do a much better job addressing issues. They give candidates from the ruling class one chance after another guaranteeing them large amounts of coverage no matter how much trouble they get in refuse to provide much if any coverage for candidates the ruling class don't support. One of the most brazen examples of this was Mark Sanford but there are many more.

In Hong Kong they understand that their candidates are screened by Beijing, and that this makes a mockery of democracy; if enough people in the USA understand that the traditional media continues to screen the candidates considered for office, virtually rigging the elections for corporations that donate to campaigns then they might not be able to rig the elections.

If people don't recognize this, or go along with the lessor of two evils over and over again then it will make a mockery out of democracy here as well, only many of the people falling for the scams might be so thoroughly indoctrinated they might not realize it.