Just Because You're Paranoid Doesn't Mean They Aren't Out To Get You

Ever since I read The Rich and the Super Rich: A Study in the Power of Money (1968) in the 1970s, I keep wanting to discuss it in various forums and chat rooms, but I'm always dismissed as a paranoid nut. The problem is that Lundberg's thesis is played out in plain view in daily life. It's encapsulated in the quote in the background of the photo at right (click on the image for a larger copy).

His thesis is that America is dominated by a clique of 60 highly influential families -- let's stop right there. Critiques of his America's 60 Families (1937) complain that he never lists the 60 families he's talking about. This misunderstands Lundberg. He's a rhetorician, not a sociologist. His writing is brilliantly outrageous hyperbole -- the American people he characterizes as sansculottes and descamisados, which of course isn't literally true at all; many wear designer clothes, even the poor. He's speaking of their relative political power, which in recent days sounds like he may have a point.

So he says in the quote that 60 families have concentrated power, while another 90 of slightly lesser standing are influenced by them and coordinate with them. As of 1937, he meant the Rockefellers and Harrimans certainly at the top of a theoretical list. As of 1968, that could be revised to include the Kennedys somewhere in the 60 or 90, with the Harrimans perhaps sliding downward, but who's going to be a bean counter here? I think Lundberg would agree that heirs will die witthout issue, or their progeny will dissipate, and others -- Gates, Buffett, Jobs -- will rise to take their place.

Let's just look at what's happening in this disputed election cycle, which simply removes the pretense behind what's been going on for the past five years. Lundberg refers to a "de facto government, absolutist and plutocratic in its lineaments". While the Graham, Chandler, and other prominent families have left the print journalism business due to changes in economics, they've been replaced by new big tech moguls who are just as powerful and control, or attempt to control, the national dialogue just as firmly. The primary-source media outlets -- the corporate or mainstream media -- publish a received narrative, while the social media platforms suppress published opinions that contradict the corporate narrative as "misinformation" or "unverified".

But beyond that, although the Google/Alphabet/YouTube empire, the Zuckerberg/Facebook empire, and the Dorsey/Twitter empire are separate, owned and governed by different families (in whatever postmodern sense of the word this implies), they act with remarkable coordination. If one YouTube commentator becomes sufficiently irritating, YouTube will deplatform him, but Facebook and Twitter will often follow suit within hours or days.

How is this decided? We simply have no clear idea. How, for that matter, did a group of swing states apparently decide as a body simultaneously to stop counting votes early in the morning of this past November 4, apparently to use the pause to "find" additional Democat ballots? Short of some eventual mid-level whistleblower or guilty plea, we'll nver know. But it's hard to avoid the reasonable conclusion that some such coordination must take place.

This is separate from the idea of Illuminati, Bilderbergs, or lizard people with a single overarching agenda for running the planet. If a bunch of self-deluding rich guys get together in Davos, they're living out a fantasy, not making effective decisions. The actual decisions -- what the polls are supposed to say, who's supposed to be the nominee, who'll be the one to whisper in the senile regent's ear -- are made in some other way, by people we may or may not know.

The other side of the coin is that these people are not omnipotent. Sometimes they seem to develop wise policy, like the Cold War containment strategy that avoided nuclear confrontation. Otherr times, they bungle, and things happen that aren't supposed to. This is the Jason Bourne paradigm, or for that matter the Donald Trump phenomenon.

I don't know if Lundberg ever envisioned a practical plan for resolving the dilemma. At the time he wrote, the "60 families" were at a peak of power. Now, their equivalents are having to struggle more visibly, and we're in uncharted territory. Having to de-platform YouTubers or suspend Twitter accounts is messy and often counterproductive. It's a sign of slipping confidence.