Donald Trump, the GOP, the 13 billionaires in his Cabinet, and the ~150 billionaires who made him president again are all on the side of oligarchy. And we’re already most of the way there, thanks to five corrupt, on-the-take Republicans on the Supreme Court.As President Jimmy Carter told me 11 years ago:“It [Citizens United] violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. … So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election’s over.” [emphasis added]Democracy is when the will of the people is regularly converted into policy and law by their elected representatives. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence:“…Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”Oligarchy, on the other hand, is when the morbidly rich own the government and dictate policy, the “consent of the governed” be damned. We’ve been creeping in that direction since the Reagan Revolution in the 1980s, when rich people stopped paying taxes, corporate consolidations exploded, unions were attacked and wages stagnated, and it began to cost a fortune to get decent healthcare or a good education.But the danger of oligarchy isn’t just that rich people get richer and the rest of us get poorer, which has been the steady trajectory of the Reagan Revolution for 44 years. As I point out in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy, oligarchy is almost always just a transitional system.It doesn’t last, because working class people eventually get tired of being ripped off by the morbidly rich. Which is exactly what we’ve been seeing with our political system for the past two decades: whichever candidate — the best examples are Barack Obama and Trump — who promises “change” gets elected, because the people are angry about the morbidly rich oligarchs having taken over the government and turned it exclusively to their own benefit.In some countries throughout history, that anger is translated into revolutions and civil wars. More often, however, it follows the course it is on right now in the United States: extreme polarization, seizure of the news and political system by the rich to hang onto their oligarchy, and millions of frustrated citizens showing up in the streets.As Jack London put it in The Iron Heel, the oligarchs “own the Senate, Congress, the courts, and the state legislatures” leaving the middle class’s supposed power as “an empty shell.” The rich and powerful boast, “We are the Iron Heel, and none can withstand us,” and insist that morality itself largely flows from “the class interests” and “feelings of superiority” of those on top.Eventually, however, it gets more and more difficult for an oligarchic government to hang onto power because people hate oligarchy.The government toadies of the oligarchs then must either move back toward democracy by making real concessions to the people like FDR did — giving them better wages, taxing the rich, making healthcare and education free or cheap, breaking up the monopolies — or they have to clamp down and put an end to the protests.We’re seeing that being played out right now in America, as protestors are beaten, gassed, arrested, and even murdered right in front of us, with the agents of the oligarchs — ICE in this case — suffering no consequences whatsoever.Similarly, Trump just tried to get six members of Congress thrown into prison for saying that military people shouldn’t follow illegal orders, which actually is the law of the land. Don Lemon is being arraigned for daring to do his job as a reporter. In a spectacle resembling Russia or Belarus, the regime’s goons now gas, beat, and kill people with absolute impunity.This is how every tyrant in modern history — from Germany in the 1930s to Russia in the early 2000s to America today — makes the transition from democracy to oligarchy and finally to absolute tyranny.Germany called them Brownshirts. Russia called them Rosgvardiya or the KGB/FSB, and here in America we call them ICE. They’re the shock troops, loyal exclusively to Dear Leader, whose job is to crush public dissent on behalf of oligarchs who, like Fritz Thyssen in 1930s Germany, believe turning the country into a dictatorship will make them even richer and more powerful.Elections still happen, flags still wave, politicians still give speeches about freedom.