The liberal platform: therapy for those flattened by the free-market hurricane?

i classify myself as a liberal and one of the reasons the mainline leadership of the democratic party pisses me off so much is precisely what thomas frank is fulminating about in this op-ed...

Mounting a campaign against plutocracy makes as much sense to the typical Washington liberal as would circulating a petition against gravity. What our modernized liberal leaders offer — that is, when they’re not gushing about the glory of it all at Davos — is not confrontation but a kind of therapy for those flattened by the free-market hurricane: they counsel us to accept the inevitability of the situation and to try to understand how we might retrain or re-educate ourselves so we will fit in better next time.

if we're going to go all semantic* here, let's be a tad more precise in our use of words, shall we... plutocracy* may indeed have been a populist term in fdr's day but it doesn't adequately describe what's happening in the u.s. now... oligarchy* doesn't quite do it either... neither do autocracy* or dictatorship*... help me out here... what's a word that captures government by the wealthy few buttressed by fear and a fundamentalist, extremist religious ideology...?

* se·man·tic
Pronunciation: si-'man-tik
Variant(s): also se·man·ti·cal /-ti-k&l/
Function: adjective
Etymology: Greek sEmantikos significant, from sEmainein to signify, mean, from sEma sign, token
1 : of or relating to meaning in language
2 : of or relating to semantics

* plu·toc·ra·cy
Pronunciation: plü-'tä-kr&-sE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -cies
Etymology: Greek ploutokratia, from ploutos wealth; akin to Greek plein to sail, float -- more at FLOW
1 : government by the wealthy
2 : a controlling class of the wealthy

* ol·i·gar·chy
Pronunciation: 'ä-l&-"gär-kE, 'O-
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -chies
1 : government by the few
2 : a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes; also : a group exercising such control

* au·toc·ra·cy
Pronunciation: o-'tä-kr&-sE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -cies
1 : the authority or rule of an autocrat
2 : government in which one person possesses unlimited power
3 : a community or state governed by autocracy

* dic·ta·tor·ship
Pronunciation: dik-'tA-t&r-"ship, 'dik-"
Function: noun
1 : the office of dictator
2 : autocratic rule, control, or leadership
3 a : a form of government in which absolute power is concentrated in a dictator or a small clique b : a government organization or group in which absolute power is so concentrated c : a despotic state

(thanks to atrios...)

Submit To Propeller
Tweet