Last night I was watching a show on History 2 called The Men Who Built America and I am astounded by the similarities between turn of the century USA and what is happening now in the current decade.
The documentary highlighted how three industrial moguls, J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie bought 25th president William McKinley. Which allowed them to continue their immoral business practices allowing them to increase their personal wealth while millions were laid off and the remaining employees were made to work harder and longer hours for less money than ever before.
Much like Bernie Sanders in 2016, democrat William J. Bryan was running on a platform of anti-corruption/trust, targeting big business and corruption in politics, Morgan, Rockerfeler and Carnegie paid millions of dollars to get McKinley elected to protect their own interests. This is all sounding very familiar isn’t it? America in 2016 is in exactly the same position as it was in 1896, money talks the loudest.
In the 1900 election; it was the same two candidates, McKinley and Bryan fighting for the presidency, but this time, there was a second protagonist, Theodore Roosevelt who was also very anti-trust/corruption. This concerned Morgan, Rockerfeller and Carnegie and again, they put their vast influence and financial might behind McKinley, convincing the incumbent to take Roosevelt as his vice president, effectively rendering him powerless as the vice president of the US in 1900 was considered non-important.
This ploy backfired spectacularly on the trio when disgruntled Leon Czolgosz shot President McKinley twice in the stomach, the president eventually died from gangrene nine days later, just six months into his second term. This, or course put Roosevelt into power who immediately got to work dismantling the huge trusts that had been steering America down a bad path for the American people as a whole.
The break-up of these mega corporations allowed for the creation of the middle class, when Henry Ford created the Model A and successfully won his legal case against ALAM who claimed to own the patent to all gasoline powered vehicles. The result was that the average American was able to work for a living wage with a standard 40 hour working week, the opposite of Morgan’s, Rockerfeller’s and Carnegie’s regime.
This is why I keep banging on about how important it is for Bernie Sanders to get the Democratic nomination. Many Americans are pissed off that the vast majority of the wealth is going to just 1% of the population and the gap between the rich and the poor is getting ever wider. Many are pissed off that huge companies are able to buy influence in Washington DC, money talks in the house and senate while the people who our government are supposed to represent get shut out, it’s time for a revolution!