By Matt Bennett

The United States has long prided itself on being a beacon of democracy, a nation where power is vested in the people rather than a ruling elite. But beneath that noble narrative lies an uncomfortable truth: from its very inception, America was designed to serve the interests of its wealthiest citizens. And now, after centuries of manipulation and consolidation, the ultra-rich are no longer satisfied with simply influencing government—they are working to dismantle it entirely.

At the birth of the nation, the men who shaped the U.S. Constitution were not just revolutionaries but also affluent landowners and economic strategists who sought to protect their interests. Many of them, including Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Pierce Butler, amassed significant wealth through landownership, agriculture, and slavery. While they are often scrutinized for their participation in slavery—they were, first and foremost, men of means seeking to preserve and expand their wealth.

Their desire to safeguard their financial status was not inherently wrong. It was rational. The world they knew was one in which property equated to power, and ensuring that their estates, businesses, and economic structures remained intact was a priority. The Constitution they crafted was not designed to upend social hierarchy but to ensure stability, where those who had built wealth could maintain it against external threats and internal upheaval.

Over time, however, this protective instinct evolved into something more nefarious. As the nation grew and industrialization took hold, the nature of wealth shifted. It was no longer just about holding land—it became about capital, markets, and controlling entire industries. The titans of the Industrial Revolution—men like John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Jay Gould—took this desire to protect and accumulate wealth to unprecedented levels. They were no longer just safeguarding what they had; they were rewriting the rules of the economy to ensure that they and their enterprises became untouchable.

The government, rather than acting as a check on these titans of industry, became their enabler. Corrupt politicians ensured that regulatory policies tilted in favor of the wealthy. Anti-labor laws were passed to suppress worker uprisings, and when protests did erupt, the government often responded with violence—on behalf of the very corporations that had caused the suffering in the first place (History.com, 2025).

By the 20th century, the elites had learned an important lesson: the easiest way to retain power was to distract the public. Instead of recognizing corporations as the true oppressors, Americans were encouraged to see government as the enemy. The Southern Strategy, a Republican political maneuver, stoked racial tensions in order to divide the working class, ensuring that poor white voters blamed their Black counterparts for their struggles rather than the economic policies favoring the ultra-wealthy (The Atlantic, 2025). The rise of the Religious Right in the 1970s saw evangelical leaders fabricate anti-abortion and LGBTQ+ outrage, a calculated shift meant to divert attention away from economic inequality. All the while, corporations continued to consolidate power, gutting worker protections, slashing wages, and maximizing profits at the expense of the people.

Now, in the 21st century, the elite no longer have the patience to influence government and manipulate the people—they seek to eliminate and control altogether. Today’s billionaires, raised in extreme privilege and insulated from the struggles of ordinary people, are not just looking to amass more wealth. They want absolute control. Figures like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and Balaji Srinivasan have openly expressed their belief that traditional governance is obsolete, that society should be ruled not by elected officials but by technological and economic elites (The Atlantic, 2025). Curtis Yarvin, a modern political theorist with deep ties to Silicon Valley and the current administration, advocates for the end of democracy itself, arguing that a corporate monarchy would be a more efficient system.

These men are not merely speculating about the future—they are actively working to reshape it. Musk, with his acquisition of Twitter (now X), has positioned himself as a  gatekeeper of global communication. Thiel has funneled money into far-right political candidates who openly challenge democratic norms (Our Midland, 2025). Andreessen and Srinivasan push for the creation of privatized, corporate-run cities that would operate outside the constraints of national governments.

The ideology is clear: the people do not need a government, because the ultra-rich will decide what is best for them.

The tragedy of this transformation is that many Americans have been deceived into cheering on their own subjugation. Decades of anti-government rhetoric have led people to believe that tearing down institutions designed to protect them is an act of liberation. They demand deregulation in the name of freedom, unaware that it only grants corporations greater power over their lives. They support populist leaders like Donald Trump, who presents himself as an outsider fighting against corruption, even as his policies overwhelmingly serve billionaire interests. They rally against taxation and social safety nets, not realizing that in doing so, they are dismantling the only mechanisms that ever kept corporate greed in check.

We are now at a precipice. The power once wielded in secret by the ultra-wealthy is being openly asserted. Democracy is no longer being subtly undermined—it is being brazenly discarded. If this trajectory continues, the future will not be one of self-governance and freedom, but one of techno-feudalism, where billionaires rule not through elected representatives but through sheer economic dominance.

The question we must ask ourselves is: will we wake up in time? Will we recognize that the very people we have been told to trust—the captains of industry, the tech visionaries, the billionaires promising to revolutionize the world—are not our saviors but our new overlords? The fight ahead is not just political. It is existential. And if we do not act now, we may find that the last remnants of democracy are swept away, not with a bang, but with a quiet transfer of power into the hands of those who always believed they were entitled to it all along.