Who Rules America? | Politics | Conspiracies | Historical Documentary

welcome to Wall Street the epicenter of financial power in America perhaps the money capital of the world the globally oriented Financial firms based here in the New York Stock Exchange that operates here have extraordinary influence on the politics and policies of this country no one has elected them and in fact these Financial firms are trying to undo the regulations and new laws governing them imposed by the Congress the people on Wall Street are just one of a number of unelected and very powerful forces that operate in the shadows behind the scenes they're the media of forces they're the military and Industrial forces they're the corporate forces and they're the forces that we'll be investigating in this television series which asks a question that most of our media does not who rules America every four years Americans go to the polls to elect a president it's a ritual that goes back to the founding of the nation in 1776. our economy seemingly on the brink of class high unemployment every four years politics and politicians dominate our television screens dominate our news and dominate our national discourse [Music] Ron Paul when I approved this message what independent Watchdogs called this president President Barack Obama is running for reelection Mitt Romney stood with big oil for their tax breaks attacking higher mileage standards and Renewables he is attacking and being attacked by Republicans he said he would turn this economy around in three years or he'd be looking at a one-term proposition we're here to collect all right the two parties may be fighting a political war but pundits labeled it a horse race fueled literally by billions of dollars in campaign contributions used for pervasive advertising where one president's failed policies at home [Music] welcome to obamaville the focus is on political personalities not the forces they represent a large industry of commentators and pollsters are paid to tell us who's ahead and who's behind the focus invariably is on the candidates not the issues but everyone knows the campaigns are run behind the scenes by professional strategists media experts and political advisors the political ads are cynical and slick almost every word is scripted symbols Trump's substance slogans are Market tested aimed at promoting perception and reinforcing prejudices that are world nation marketing is the mission selling is not telling on one level this whole spectacle is presented as a Triumph of democracy as if the candidate who wins will run the country but being in office doesn't necessarily mean being in power Americans believe they are determining their future are they do most know or are they ever told who rules America I just think that these people uh you can't really see them yeah that's what I think the people who rule America people are behind the screen they are behind screen invisible to the General Public we know what's going on [Applause] to some extent yes and to some extent no to what extent yes to what extent no about 50 50. who rules America there's no one right answer Pulitzer prize-winning American historian Eric foner says it's a question that raises many more questions about power that works from the Shadows who rules America uh you know there's no one single easily defined group who rules America but I think you know not just now but I think for a couple of generations we have had a what what the sociologists see Wright Mills called in the 1950s a power elite an interlocking set of connections of people in business in politics in the military who pretty much determine the parameters of possible change it's not that they rule American a conspiratorial way and of course there are elected officials but the leeway of those officials is constrained by what you might call the permanent government presidents come and go but there's a kind of permanent establishment what you know President Eisenhower called the military industrial complex but now it's more a military Financial complex that really you know determine as I say determines the limit foreign Forum a gathering of progressive intellectuals and Scholars and students held every year here in New York City there are 1400 speakers this year they don't agree on everything but they do agree that America is not the Democracy it claims to be they all want to know who rules America Professor Stanley iranowicz writes about the research of this man C Wright Mills who a half century ago wrote about the existence of a power elite that activists today refer to as the one percent the people who run things his contribution to understanding the nature of power in America is in the first place to identify three institutional orders that really together form the power elite an elite that is generally speaking unresponsive to the people unresponsive to democratic Liberties and Democratic procedures and he said the three groups were the corporate capitalist uh institutions the military and the third one was the top layer of the political uh directorate he called them and they were they are the national uh leaders like the executive branch of government not even Congress he said Congress was in the middle levels of power it doesn't really share the decision to make war the major economic policies and so on it participates at some level but basically it's out of power and he said that really has undercut the whole pretense of progressive and of representative government this may be why in recent surveys only seven to nine percent of the American people in both parties believe that the Congress the so-called people's house of government is representative and capable of solving the country's problems if politicians are trapped in a polarized and highly partisan stalemate who does exercise the power to decide what the country's priorities and policies should be we asked JK Fowler an editor of the mantle a political magazine I think it's extremely complicated I think there's not one particular answer for it I think that a lot of the stuff going on in America right now is being led by money and money venture but I think there's a bubbling movement from the ground up as well that's happening is there a ruling class in America or is that a an outdated concept oh I'm a strong believer that there's a there's a Class A particular in particular in New York City where but I don't think it's they're not hidden array in some room with precarious deeds in mind it's it's more it's more structural there's certain clubs they go to there's certain streets they live on they're interacting with one another more we put that question to Aaron crowl a 30 year old working-class mother from a small town in Wisconsin who was working two jobs while pursuing her education if I was to ask you like who runs America who rules America what what is your you know what what is your perception of that people that have the money to do so you know um you know people that that that have the money and the the resources to send a lobbyist to Washington you know like nobody from my town could afford to send a lobbyist you know and say hey Harley Davidson is you know threatening to to move their plants to China unless you know everybody takes pay cuts you know and could literally shut our town down you know we can't afford to defend ourselves do you feel as an American citizen that you have power you know in our country do you feel as if you have the ability to get your dream achieved I feel like it's slipping away um I don't think I do you know because it feels like the closer and closer I would get to that you know like just a dream for me is to finish college you know and take care of myself and take care of my son you know but even that now you know and and I understand like most a lot of people in my position aren't even able to get that far now so if the citizens who are supposed to be in charge don't feel they are who does what we found is that by and large it's the wealthiest Americans who call the shots through unelected institutions that drive agendas in their own interests there may be a cabal running things but in the end the state and the system merges argues Canadian political analyst Leo panich I don't think there's an external Force controlling the American state the American state is capitalist to its core and the Very way it's organized it doesn't do it because there's too much influence from Wall Street it does it because it is structurally embedded with Wall Street it doesn't do it because there's too much influence from a military-industrial complex it doesn't because the military-industrial complex is inside this thing is funded by the state is part of the state sure they're people who conspire and there's people who act in secret but capitalism is not a conspiracy the people who have the wealth they're not a conspiracy we know who they are we know how they collect this money they take it out of our pocket they put it in theirs and it's not a big mystery there seems to be corporate forces in addition to Wall Street that essentially help guide our political and economic Direction leading our America's top corporations political analyst Michael Claire has studied the political economy of oil for 20 years and says a lack of media coverage keeps the public in the dark does the media cover it the media doesn't cover this for the most part in fact the media is largely in League because of the advertising dollars that the oil and gas Lobby provides they're very heavily dependent on Advertising Revenue so they're very careful in what they say who are they accountable to are their laws really controlling and regulating what they do there are laws but they have been written largely by their lobbyists to favor them so in fact the laws for the most part are in their favor not in the favor of most Americans is there an issue where we've seen this very clearly where the interests of the oil industry or the or the energy industry is in conflict with the interests of Americans well I would give an example that uh the oil industry has been pushing for drilling in the Deep Waters of the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska for example and they get all kinds of tax benefits for that kind of Deep Water Drilling and they were able to do so during the bush period with absolutely no oversight whatsoever hence the deep water Horizon disaster most Americans experience the oil industry in two places at the gas pump where prices often rise because of speculation not just supply and demand and also through TV advertising that paints this very profitable business in the most positive of terms I'm still here and so is BP we're committed to the goal for everyone who loves it and everyone who calls it home that's good for our country's energy security and our economy [Music] which brings us to another set of Corporations the media companies Jeff Cohen has been in the media and written books about its impact in shaping how Americans think about their country and its system of power he says media companies push propaganda for war it's the same exact media quoting the same exact experts that pushed our country and the world into a war with Iraq and we were told by these media oh we're so sorry we didn't know you know we made a mistake next time we'll be more Vigilant but here we are next time ten years later and the same media are blowing smoke about a weapons program in Iran that doesn't exist there was no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq either and so we're hearing uh it's it's like you know when the war drums are beating and I worked in mainstream television news in this country during the run-up to the Iraq War when the war drums are beating they don't let you put on opposing views we try to get opposing views that question the evidence the intelligence that would justify an attack on Iraq but we were kicked off the air and now you're finding it's it's a nightmare it's a nightmare that's happening again at the same time Jeff most people who work in major media and I of course did as well don't believe this they don't buy this they feel like they do have the freedom to cover issues and that the networks are much more diverse in their point of view than Outsiders like you and maybe now me would say well the the way to rebut that fiction is just to look at what happened in the wake of the Iraq invasion those of us who question the evidence that they were a weapons of mass destruction threat we were totally right and most of us got kicked out of the TV networks the people who got it wrong have promoted up so this idea of diversity in the mainstream Media or good journalism will win out certainly hasn't been proven in the last 10 years where the the journalists who got it right have been punished sanctioned or kicked out of the media and the journalists who got it wrong most of them have more power today to blow smoke in Iran than they had even when they were blowing smoke at Iraq those people the people who own institutions are usually very conscious of their power not just as individuals but it's part of a dominant class says independent TV producer Brian drolet so there's a lot of talk here about Democrats and Republicans who revote for the Democrats we vote for the Republicans there's a lot of talk about you know the rich versus the 99 but it's it's kind of you know the the there's a certain kind of Amnesia about the structure of our society that at one point in this country at least had some currency you know in the 30s and even in the 60s you could talk about the working class nobody talks about the working class it's all about there's a middle class and then there's the one percent as if there's no and I guess then there's some you know poor blacks and Latinos or something right and I think that that word has been sanitized and scrubbed out of the vocabulary of the people of the United States including out of the vocabulary of the left now that's not the entire left but even the people that use the word class don't seem to have the ability to to phrase it in a way that actually means something to people to talk about classes not to talk about a conspiracy but a complex system that's evolved over the years A system that is stratified and uses campaign contributions and lobbying to ensure that the politicians do the bidding of the companies so these are the building blocks of the analysis we'll explore in this series on who rules America the argument is simple but hard for many Americans to comprehend because many of us want to believe the myths we learned in school that make us feel Superior to other countries and other peoples this has been called American exceptionalism many in America believe that God created this country as the greatest country on Earth and that's what makes it so special so you really have to start with that as a basis for how the United States was founded Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz is one leader of America's indigenous people the first Americans they were the ones to be eliminated yes because it was their land that was wanted not even their labor like in Latin America yeah the indigenous people were enslaved and made into peasants but in North America the Anglo anglo-colonium was the U.S New Zealand and Australia had the motive effectively wiping them out and taking their land so that it's not just that they weren't included they were to be eliminated and so questions about the custodians of real power and who rules America lead back to debates on how to remake power how to challenge its distribution and make it more transparent and accountable these are the issues that the Occupy Wall Street movement is Raising as it challenges institutional power in an attempt to revive Grassroots democracy David DeGraw explains occupies Origins influence of events you know everything 's Direction you know I was I was looking around the world you know it was there's protests happening in Egypt and then it moved to you know the Arab Spring Tunisia and all throughout Europe came back and it was just a matter of time before it hit the United States and really if you look the the occupations globally you know they became like the thing to do so it's just a natural progression for it to show up here I feel like it shows up here because you know even though wealth is so concentrated you know the people have a media system where they're so propagandized and they feel isolated but you know occupy shows that people are you know not suffering alone they're coming out and raising awareness and we changed the national discourse the movement is up against powerful forces with large budgets and the backing of police forces and the political establishment while these activists are on the front lines of the fight for a people-ruled America many of its people share the same hope they're being like an upper class working class absolutely absolutely um you know I I'm I'm a waitress at a very nice restaurant and it's very clear to me you know where what my role is and who I am you know and you can tell just just from the dialogue that I have with people you know um recently I had I talked to a general manager of a fairly large business in our town and you know when when I mentioned that I was going to a public school you know I got kind of an eye roll and oh yeah my tax dollars pay for that you know and it's you feel like there's all this resentment against working people kind of feeling like they don't deserve what they're what little they're getting absolutely absolutely and especially you know with with the recent attacks on public sector employees like on on teachers and you know people are saying you know they don't deserve those benefits we all don't get those benefits so so they don't deserve them either you know or like why isn't the conversation maybe we should all work to get those for everyone instead of taking it away from the few that do have them you know when I hear you talking uh you know I realized it's a such a bigger picture here that most people even understand that we have you know a country where the dream is slipping away for so many people uh and they don't feel particularly powerful they don't feel like they can do anything they can achieve anything they can make a difference right well I think the dream is shifted to uh hopefully I wake up tomorrow and I'll be able to pay my rent and keep a roof over my head you know or it's just like you know I'll I'll work on achieving my dream tomorrow but today you know I have to have to go to class you know and I have to you know I have to get my work done I have to go to work and I have to try to squeeze a couple hours of sleep in and then you know and it's now you're here at this conference with all these brilliant theoreticians and analysts and professors and experts and leaders and how do you feel about this this idea that people have to get together to make a difference I think it's wonderful I I'm I feel so blessed to be able to be here with people like that because I want to learn you know somebody had you know had said to me well why don't you leave where you are and I don't think that's the answer I think that it's my job as somebody who cares about these things to learn from these people to learn from these Brilliant Minds and so I can take this back to people and and and and show them and explain to them where we don't have access to this kind of thing every day you know and so hopefully try to Enlighten them a little bit Aaron expresses the hopes of many ordinary Americans who want to reshape the nature of power so that the 99 not just the one percent can rule but as you can see in here it's not a battle she feels she is winning perhaps that's why she like many want to know who rules America question of who rules America has been debated throughout America's own history it was originally raised and answered to some degree by the American Revolution in the 1770s that fought for independence from the British crown so that Americans at least some Americans could rule themselves or at least they hoped they could we're at Columbia University with Dr Eric foner a historian and writer and teacher here at the University for a long long period of time to own property I think what is unusual today is two things one the degree of inequality never before has the very very top the one percent had so much of the national income and wealth in its own hands and uh you know so that the Gap is greater than ever before and secondly um you know Occupy Wall Street is not primarily a movement of farmers of laborers it doesn't have the same base people need to learn history that's part of our job to know that this issue has been around for a long time there was nothing Un-American about raising the question of economic plutocracy economic inequality it's as American as apple pie and um you know I think that the Occupy Wall Street people are you know legitimate Heirs of a long and venerable tradition in this country today the activists of Occupy Wall Street are continuing the fight for independence and economic Justice from Domination by a small Elite in the name of the majority the 99 of America I do think what's been brilliant about the Occupy Wall Street movement is the framing of the one percent versus 99 and I think I think I think what we basically have is an undemocratic power structure that goes across political economic social and cultural lines what kind of impact has Occupy Wall Street had in raising basic questions about the nature of power in America we asked sociologists Stanley iranowitz it's had it has an impact on perception it has changed the conversation the question is whether or not it will be able to change policy and the argument that I would make is that it should not worry about changing policy in the short run the only way to change policy in the long run is going to be to create even a bigger movement and in order to create that bigger movement what it has to do is has to ask the question what kind of a life do we want to lead what is the good life what is a vision of the way in which we want to live David DeGraw coined the 99 one percent phrase and was an early occupy organizer he explained why who rules America remains an urgent issue so you have big Banks and concentrated wealth that's just rigged the political process uh you know investigating it we have a country where U.S millionaire households have 46 trillion dollars of wealth it's just a mind-boggling number so you know over the past Generation all the wealth has gone to the top you know really it's one tenth of one percent more than one percent but uh you know breaking it down even further you have 400 people who have as much wealth as 155 million Americans so that's 400 people as much wealth as half the population the seeds of a battle that many of the occupiers see as a new American Revolution is not really new but deeply rooted in the unresolved history of conflict in the United States between those who own and control its resources and those who want economic equality [Music] the first thing you have to understand is America is a business venture like still a land still stolen property capitalism and it's about making money you know many revolutions start at the top in other words the people who began the struggle against Great Britain were merchants in Boston and New York plantation owners in Virginia you know most of the founders in Virginia are slave owners but what happens is as the struggle intensifies they have to generate support among Ordinary People and when you do that you break open the political system and you open the door for very very different kinds of Demands slaves start demanding their own Freedom uh women and Native Americans start demanding greater equality so what happens at the beginning when a you know a more privileged class begins the resistance that doesn't necessarily tell you how the whole process is going to take place this conflict between the one percent actually the 0.001 and the 99 percent had its Echoes here in the home of America's anti-colonial Uprising in the back streets of Boston where a freedom trail today commemorates a massacre by the British and a fight for liberty and that's where we'll take you next what's the American Revolution really a revolution the British thought it was a revolution no question about that it was not a social upheaval in the way let us say the French Revolution was but it's certainly overthrew an entire system of government it replaced the ruling class with another one so that seems to be What A revolution is about and it raised these questions of equality in the society not not just equality in terms of one percent and 99 but the role of slavery in American Life the status of women in American life it Unleashed a kind of um uh struggle for equality among all sorts of groups which continued long after the Revolution was over listen my children and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere that's one of the most famous poems of the American Revolution and here we are in front of the Statue of Paul Revere the man who alerted all of Massachusetts to the British troops coming into their communities we're on the Freedom Trail in Boston where the American Revolution is remembered well what kind of a Revolution was it what actually happened here in Boston back in the 1700s what have we learned since then thousands of tourists and students visit these revolutionary monuments every day but most have only a foggy idea of what really happened and tend to repeat the mythologies that are taught in their schools here was Paul Revere Paul Revere was one of the great revolutionary Heroes so you kids here to see the special reports can I ask you a question about it sure we're doing a little TV program here who was Paul Revere what was this all about do you know he was a founding time yeah midnight ride to warned about the British for coming did you know that he was a very rich businessman a silversmith here in Boston and that he wanted to be in the Continental Army and they wouldn't let him in did you know that I didn't know that I know that did you know that in Boston there was this Merchant class you know Business Leaders the one percent who were really running the whole show uh in many ways and that the people were not as involved because back then it was slaves there were indentured servants uh there were a lot of people who didn't have a say in what was going on did you know about that no idea I didn't know anything about Paul revereign okay I'm supposed to learn about it in history my brother Bill here has taught history uh to students in Massachusetts for many many many years and has followed you know the various debates about our history what was it about this revolution uh you know was it a popular Uprising or was it sort of led by Elites here in Boston well both were true there were popular elements uh Ordinary People did resent the British Ordinary People did participate in riots and boycotts uh but there was a one percent back then uh the leaders of the revolution both leaded and channeled it they were certainly not above using words like Liberty and freedom uh to deflect and distract people from their own discontents in the colonies and their own interests I mean the the business class of Boston didn't want more taxes on their products they wanted to compete with the British goods they felt they shouldn't be taxed and as a result there was a t original tea party here in Boston and there were uh you know Merchants like uh John Hancock who was into smuggling goods and you're right they didn't want to pay British taxes I mean there were other factors behind the revolution as well but when this Revolution was codified in 1787 at the Constitutional Convention the people who were invited were the large landowners the slave owners the merchant class no women no Indians no blacks no working people actually there were slaves that were inspired by the revolution to try to get their freedom some actually I think the idea of the Revolution and the idea of democracy uh were Radical inspiring revolutionary in ways that that actually might have made the leaders uncomfortable since some of them themselves owned slaves they they really didn't want this to go viral in the way it it did around the world so who ruled America then in a way their grandchildren are ruling it today and sometimes direct descendants of those people so uh you know I mean there was a certain amount of class Mobility uh indentured servitude disintegrated due to the chaos of the Revolution but I don't think the people who led the revolution really intended a social Revolution that was really not what they were thinking about After the Revolution people like Daniel Shays in Western Massachusetts a farmer a captain in the revolution uh did try to inspire organize another Rebellion against those who he saw as replacing his British Masters this time they were the colonial leaders [Music] foreign [Music] so here we are 225 years after the Shay's Rebellion rocked Western Massachusetts in a challenge to the one percent of those times we have a memorial for Daniel Shays and the men who fought with him and what's interesting is we have American flags being put in a sense almost that his Tombstone here marking support for the values and the aspirations that he fought for my name is Dave wildstein you're at the stagecoach Tavern in Western Massachusetts town of Sheffield and this painting is a painting of Daniel Shea's militiamen Daniel Shay's fault in the revolution they came back from the Revolution and found their Farms being foreclosed and many put in prison because of the same debt crisis that were experiencing now there are many similarities but essentially one of the promises of the Revolution was to annul the foreign debt and the farmers came home and discovered the debt was even greater and the banks were even tougher today the Shay's Rebellion is mostly forgotten but it lives on on YouTube with songs and dramatic Recreations she's now unsheathed his sword and ordered the Fife and Drum players to strike up a tune the men began Marching In Cadence the irony says historian Eric foner is that Shays was just a front man for a mass movement in fact it was the opponents who said it Shea's rebellion in order to find the kind of Boogeyman you know they could attack so let's forget about Shay's as a person and think about the mass movement the farmers the ordinary laborers who took to the streets shut down the courts and said wait a minute we had a revolution we have installed a government that's supposed to represent the people here in Massachusetts and yet it's talking you know it's the bankers and the landowners and the merchants who are getting the benefit of everything it was the first Occupy Wall Street movement they petitioned the government in Boston for redress and the government ignored the petitions and they're having still had their arms they went to these Court sites and picketed to prevent the courts from sitting succeeded to some extent until private militias were formed and the Massachusetts militias were formed to suppress it it was suppressed right near here right last battle was fought in Sheffield it was led by Brigadier Ashley who's the Ashby house is still here and Colonel Ashley his parents were one of the heroes of the Revolution so here we have the same family of building Independence but then trying to suppress it if many white Americans were disappointed by the achievements of the American Revolution what about blacks and Native Americans in 1730 when Sheffield was incorporated there were 30 black families in Sheffield half were slaves half were free but the famous story is again at the Ashley House one of the servants Elizabeth Freeman called ma bets overheard all the talk about the Massachusetts Declaration of Independence at the dining table and it occurred to her that may she might qualify and she actually filed in the court of Great Barrington and won her Freedom so here you have the court giving freedom on one hand and suppressing freedom on the other years later a small black community in the area that Daniel Shays made famous became the home of a young man who had become a leader of the fight for civil rights he coupled concerns for racial equality with demands for economic Justice today in the center of his hometown of Great Barrington Massachusetts there's a wall mural celebrating his political and intellectual contributions it includes quotes from president Barack Obama and Martin Luther King Dr W.E.B Du Bois Du Bois was one of the Titan Giants of the 20th century of course he's born in the 19th century Du Bois put forward the issues which are still with us the race issue in America you know he said 1903 the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line it's still a problem in this country and around the world Du Bois talked about economic equality and how to gain that and he grappled with these questions he's a brilliant writer a brilliant thinker and much of what he said is still relevant I think to thinking about American society what about Native Americans they were the ones uh to be eliminated yes because it was their land not even their labor Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz is part of America's indigenous movements and says the people we call Indians were being exterminated we asked her about the American Revolution it wasn't a revolution it was a war of independence from you know the colonial over the power but it wasn't an anti-colonial Revolution like the bolivarian Revolutions in South America or the Haitian revolution so there are many different even competing narratives about the origins of the United States the United States of course was founded as a settler State as a Colonial power and the democracy has always been an oligarchy you know capitalist democracy with a rhetoric above populism which is so strongly based on race that is if you're not if you're not black if you're not a slave you're not indigenous if you're white and a settler then everyone could be a king everyone can own land and be a landlord so all these peasants who came as settlers the dream is to be you know be the king of the hills and so it's a very um very Insidious kind of democracy because it's a it's a an illusion illusion or not this is a subject that needs to be examined if we are to understand who rules America the origins of the one percent and then teach about it so this is all part of the history that most Americans probably don't know did you find when you were teaching students here that many of them just didn't know much about their own history I think there are many students that I taught in one of the towns that fought at Concord who were never even in the spot we're standing in there I think that that's true that that many kids were not familiar with that is Beyond local battlefields Beyond being about the Revolutionary War which is relevant to today because we live in a globalized world is that this revolution started locally here in Boston but soon the British were involved the Dutch the French it became a war of many different countries all fighting on American soil well very true and the the French intervention was was very critical to Our Success it wasn't all through the force and Valor of our eyes uh there were other people involved but I think the you know the idea itself has played a revolutionary role in history but the idea itself did not create a deep social revolution in the United States and to this day people are distracted by um words like Liberty and freedom and Justice uh in the same way that they were back then ironically the original tea party which inspired the modern right-wing Tea Party Movement today was actually a protest against an earlier form of corporate imperialism why was T the issue not corn or whiskey or something like that it was because the East India Company had gone bankrupt in China and the crown the British crown bailed them out so they wouldn't you know lose their lose their assets but then the crown looked around said well what does the company have that we can sell well it turned out what they had was T so they decided to market the T and that's why it was tea that was uh the tax issue so here you have a big Financial failure and the it was Global the the uh the implications trip rippled across the Pacific rippled across the Atlantic and we have the Boston Tea Party throughout our history there have been sort of conspiracy theories about all of this I mean today for example both the right and the left seems to see the Federal Reserve Bank as sort of a a conspiracy concocted in 1913 without any proper process and kind of running the show yeah well you know conspiracy theories conspiracy thinking is deeply embedded in our political culture my PhD supervisor my mentor Richard hofstetter wrote the famous book in the 1960s the paranoid Style in American politics in which he traced out various kinds of conspiratorial thinking whether it was Catholics or in the before the Civil War trying to undermine America or uh you know various other groups at various times immigrants others trying to you know destroy the American culture or the trilateral commission remember them in the 1970s was supposedly ruling the whole world now the Federal Reserve right if we only abolish the Federal Reserve Bank everything would go back to some Utopia of the past throughout U.S history you see various right-wing movements point out scapegoats in the society and they're usually the the folks who are already marginalized in some way or another and and what happens is that there comes a moment when it becomes really useful for the elite Powers whether they're in government or corporations to encourage these movements so you get a tea party or you get a militia movement like in the 90s or you get the Ku Klux Klan in the 1800s and what this is all about is taking angry mostly white people who are mostly somewhat privileged and convincing them that they're about to fall down the social economic ladder I guess the basic problem with conspiracy theories is that no group can fully determine what happens even people with great power launch things and then they kind of lose control of them and things happen in a way that is unpredictable when you look back at history and and you maybe can see because of you know it's a long time ago all of these forces yet today somehow in the news we never see these forces what we see are politicians spouting various you know rhetoric and speeches but we don't really know whose interests they're serving who's behind the scenes well this is why we need research we need uh we need an understanding of who rules America because the mythology today is that it is the people who rule America and most folks don't know a great deal in terms of specifics about the role that corporations play um the way politicians are tied to corporate interests change is possible I think when one talks about who rules America and a power elite one should not use that to Simply fall into a kind of quietism and say well nothing is possible no change is possible everything's under control many of the major popular movements in our history have been big surprises you know nobody expected them to come and I think the same thing with Occupy Wall Street nobody expected Occupy Wall Street to come up similarly simply out of nowhere and so I think you know we have seen that over and over again in our history and we will continue to people say the one percent you know we are the 99 but you know when I broke down the numbers it was really it is a couple hundred people in this country that have immense wealth if you look at the if you look at our election process it's something like uh you know 100th or one percent accounts for something like 80 percent of the campaign Finance I mean that's Insanity I mean it's completely it's a rigged game and now the ball of History has been passed to a new generation fighting to transform a large and complex country with many power centers but just as in the past it has determined minorities who make the difference and Elite made the American Revolution and as we will see a power elite still rules [Music] when retired World War II General Dwight David Eisenhower ran for president he was hailed as a military Savior and All-American hero from The Plains of Kansas [Music] now is the time for all good Americans to come to the aid of their country vote for Eisenhower no one expected that in his farewell address he would identify and oppose the emergence of a new power constellation the military industrial complex in the councils of government we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence whether sought or unsought by the military industrial complex the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist we must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or Democratic processes this was a prophetic speech especially for a military leader who saw that a fusion of government and corporate power could lead to what he called unwarranted influence and misplaced power 50 years later on the warnings anniversary President Eisenhower's own granddaughter Susan documented how the military industrial complex had grown she wrote in less than 10 years our military and security expenditures have increased by 119 percent this new book on the cloud of the military industrial complex by William Hartung details the power it wields he told me how it works military contractors uniform military the Pentagon basically pushing their interest at the expense of taxpayer National Security uh in case some cases their civil liberties is it a description of an actual reality well the military industrial complex is probably more real now than it was when Eisenhower coined the phrase a company like Lockheed Martin not only are they building missiles they're building cluster bombs they're building uh you know submarines at the same time uh they're helping process your taxes they're counting the census they're running fingerprint databases for the FBI so it's kind of more from just the military industrial complex to sort of the National Security State so you've got surveillance as well as Weapons building Hartung says these companies in effect dictate our foreign policy they've sort of captured our foreign policy and captured our military policy really for special interest purposes to large degree writer David Swanson believes that this military-industrial complex relies on Wars or the threat of Wars to stay in business Eisenhower pushed War propaganda in the very same speech and throughout his career but he could not have been more right I think he he probably did not imagine how huge the problem of what he called the military-industrial complex would become it I describe it as a banker bailout every year it is a trillion dollars over a trillion dollars every year into the Machinery of mass murder it is over half of federal discretionary spending from the U.S government it is as much and more than all other nations of the world put into the military each year it is much of it unaccountable the the Pentagon routinely loses quantities of money that are as much as most other governmental departments get it's not just that more money is being spent on arms but the rise of the military industrial complex has been accompanied by an overall rise in corporate power and not just in the military sphere military contractors now have disproportionate influence says Sheila krumholtz of the center for responsive politics there is a huge sum of money coming from defense contractors in particular and these range from a t and Boeing the largest multinational kind of Goliath their primary source of Revenue may be telecommunications or or Transportation but they have huge contracts worth a ton of money with the dod and and Military there have been a number of uh pieces of legislation aimed at both making that connection more transparent and trying to put a lid on the kind of pay to play uh method that has ruled for instance earmarks have we seen a pattern of military and Industrial occlusion and and Industrial you know companies that do business with the Pentagon giving more and more money to politicians many defense contractors were making contributions spending lots of money to the lobby and and in exchange winning uh contracts that maybe they weren't the best organizations to uh to benefit from so there has been a lot of research done about about how money uh greases the skids for defense contractors I'll also say that the revolving door plays an important role so it's not just money it's other forms of elite influence where people in in the Department of Defense are kind of lining up their next their jump to the Private Industry where they can rake in uh huge sums of money and lucrative posts from in Private Industry that they used to regulate alongside the military are huge intelligence agencies with vast budgets to spy run covert action operations collect personal data and conceal how powerful interests operate today the former head of CIA runs the Pentagon and was replaced by a general the head of the Navy Seals runs the Central Command secrecy is pervasive in a National Security State even as groups like Wikileaks try to disseminate hidden information Wikileaks your baby has um in the last few years has released more classified documents than the rest of the world's media combined can that possibly be true yeah can it possibly be true it's a worry isn't it that the rest of the world's media is doing such a bad job that a little group of activists is able to release more of that type of information than the rest of the world press combined years earlier an auto executive turned defense secretary Charles Wilson said what's good for General Motors is good for America he saw no distinction between an elected government and an unelected Corporation GM was a car company that became a major defense supplier Boyd my military spending and then years later became a mortgage lender driven by Wall Street originated and often fraudulent subprime loans until it nearly collapsed and had to be bailed out by government the United States Supreme Court in its citizens united decision has decided that corporations like GM have the rights of ordinary people and can openly and sometimes secretly Lobby Congress and the public or Finance political campaigns to promote their agendas there are now many criticisms against citizens united many of the arguments can be seen in this video by the story of stuff campaign we have a democracy in crisis 85 percent of Americans feel that corporations have too much power in our democracy and people have too little 85 percent hey that's a majority so let's get together and take our democracy back from the corporations it's the first and most important step in making real progress on all the issues that people care most about there is also a counter campaign underway against corporate control of politics focusing on two billionaire political donors Charles and Edward Koch two brothers both industrialists and both funders of conservative campaigns including one to suppress voting by democrats filmmaker Robert Greenwald has distributed this video Nationwide folks like the Koch brothers are attempting to ensure that as few people of color and as few young people show up as possible we live we've undergone we live in a corporate state Chris Hedges is a best-selling author and former reporter for the New York Times the people who rule America are the large corporate entities which are supernational they have no loyalty to the nation state they are harvesting the country just like they're harvesting the rest of the globe they're implanting a global neofutalism where workers around the planet have to be competitive which means being competitive with Sweatshop workers in Bangladesh who make 22 cents an hour or prison labor in China it's it's a global neofutalism um it's one that is unassailable completely Untouchable and more powerful than the host governments that were there nominally based Hedges is not alone in this view Professor Michael Claire specializes in studying the country's largest industry oil and gas I would say that the oil industry or energy writ large coal natural gas uranium is the most powerful Lobby in America the most powerful economic interest and it's tied to other powerful interests automobile Highway construction Suburbia many other Industries tourism are all linked to energy and they work together to keep America addicted to oil and to avoid the transition to alternative fuels do they have an influence on our politics do they have an influence on what happens in Washington what happens in the ballot boxes of America they're the biggest contributors to electoral campaigns in general to the especially to the Republican party and I think they have a very powerful influence do you think most Americans know how powerful they are only the people who see this power in their daily lives have grasped the the strength of it for many Americans the military-industrial complex is seen only as a source of jobs and in fact military contractors win political support and federal funds by promising to create jobs there are real jobs people working in the weapons factories and all the subsidiary subcontractors but it's a fraud because you could take those same dollars and put it into any other industry into infrastructure green energy education or even into tax cuts for working people and produce more jobs than you do with the military spending so it's worse than nothing purely on the economic terms for years there have been protests against America's Wars and the military but most of targeted politicians not necessarily the corporations who profit from making weapons and other products for the military [Music] one of the groups that's most visible and challenging militarism is a woman's group code pink media Benjamin is a co-founder I've learned that we don't rule America I've learned that the Democrats don't rule Americans the corporations rule America I've been doing the work on the wars and I've just been floored of how powerful these weapons manufacturers are and how powerful the contractors are and that they have the ability to kind of keep the words going I mean that's that's pretty amazing when you think about it like I'm just doing a lot of work around the drones issue do you know there's a drones caucus in Congress I mean instead of having a caucus to feed preschool children you know they decided it was more important to have a drone caucus and that's because all the manufacturers in their districts are funding them they are quite open about it and in fact over 50 members of Congress have created a caucus for drones where they openly promote the use and sale of drones at home and abroad and then they've now authorized the the flight to at least 30 of up to 30 000 drones in U.S skies for whatever purpose uh this this is in contrast to the lack of any caucus for senior citizens for children for health coverage for green energy for for human beings there's a caucus for robots Eisenhower was so right and he was so right when he said that it steals money it robs us of food for our children of health care for our parents who is so right and it's just worse and worse and you get the little puppets in Congress and I live in Washington now so I see these little puppets and wish that they were like the NASCAR drivers that had to have their corporations on their suits but they don't rule America the corporations obviously rule America and when it comes to War and Peace those corporations are so powerful that they've kept us for the last decade anymore and if we don't do something about it they'll keep us at War for the next decade beyond the debates about the role of the military there may be a deeper challenge because the United States has evolved from a nation into an Empire with a far-flung system of bases economic interests and intertangled business dealings all around the world top political leaders interact with corporate leaders at meetings of Elites like the Bilderberg conference the trilateral commission and the international monetary fund meetings it's all part of a global structure of corporate culture politics and Power some like the billionaire George Soros told me a while back that the world economic forum is more like a networking party than a decision-making venue decisions are often made behind the scenes not at public events the divorce meeting is a enormous sort of cocktail party a lot of contacts people meet and so on a lot of things are discussed it's actually very convenient because you can meet a lot of people whom you want to meet in in a con confined period of time and it's also a media event is it also a symbol of the growth of sort of economic power of over political power lack of sovereign loss of sovereignty by some countries well it is actually symptomatic of the age because you have presidents and prime ministers courting the the the financiers and the industrialists only a few Americans seem to understand how corporatization and globalization go hand in hand Walter Teague was one of the first activists against the Vietnam War he believes that Americans can't see the facts because they're trapped in myths I asked them how he would explain the situation to people on Mars I'd have to explain some very crazy things to them I'd have to explain it in terms that they would perhaps understand I'd have to not use some of the terms that Americans commonly use because if you use the language that we're taught in school about democracy free uh free will uh you know all of the how the United States is number one Uber Alice right all those terms lead the person to not being capable of understanding what you're saying which is that there are really and have been for a long time a very small percentage one percent or something like that really make most of the decisions but they are smart enough to make them in a way that keeps most Americans until recently from realizing that they're being ruled we cannot undo the plutocracy the kleptocracy the lack of representation without dismantling the military-industrial complex this is the one percent of the one percent this is where we give a banker bailout every year and we don't get a dime of it back we borrow it from China we pay it back with interest we keep interest rates ridiculously low we crash Wall Street we bail it out because we've created a war economy without any need for war well I think if people had a better sense of how these companies how the uniform military how their allies in Congress are basically running the show scaring us into spending on weapons we don't need I think they'd have the beginnings of a tool to do something about it but I think absent that information there's sort of nowhere to start there's nowhere to sort of plant your feet and try to fight back against it so I'd have to tell the Martians it's going to be very hard for you to understand why Americans don't see how they're being screwed they don't see it except when it gets so bad or so contradictory or so blatant or so personal and then they wake up one day and say oh my God does this mean in a way that business that Wall Street that defense contractors than others have disproportionate power in other words are they kind of one of the forces ruling our country most people don't even know about I think that the money has great influence across the board particularly where the issues are Arcane and they seem disassociated with the average Americans where constituents aren't paying attention and they're not being heard by their representatives in Washington I think where people are paying attention where it becomes a there is a hue and cry from regular people it's hard for the money to to beat out the marathon policy politicians usually will not risk the political liability of being seen as catering to their the interest bankrolling their campaign if the voters are paying attention they're usually not that that unwise most of the public doesn't interface with the military-industrial complex because they participate in the economy as consumers but even there they're being affected by a power shift an economic inequality that drives them deeper and deeper into debt George Scribner is an executive with a corporation that advises other corporations today it takes two hundred thousand dollars a year to feel somewhat affluent I asked George Scribner how he thinks growing inequality is affecting our politics who's in charge of our country we keep reading more and more about big money in politics there was a great article of the one percent by the one percent for the one percent and I think it might have been Vanity Fair but I'm not positive right now but they made a point that I in politics that I've been making in terms of business is that for you know since World War II it was head count that made a difference one person one vote so you go you play to the to the vote you know one person one dollar you played to the as many people as you could to get the dollars now because the assets are concentrated at the high end in the hands of the few actually money is much more valuable both the politicians and to marketers than the mass of people that comprise the middle class so it's a mass of people being left out now the massive Americans they certainly they aren't being left out but they're certainly less important so I think in a variety of ways you'll see them being less catered to and manipulated more in a sense and in politics and in terms of marketing there'll be fewer products and fewer Services that's one view from inside the corporate world essentially saying that the majority of Americans have less economic power and as a result less political power people with money rule America because people with money can acquire power through that but we all have the great thing about America is all we we all live within the myth that each one of us can make a difference and I think there are enough opportunities for that to happen that makes me think that the future will be won't be as Bleak as it seems sometimes let's hope so certainly most Americans believe their future is bright but given the trends we've explored about who's in power there certainly are doubts especially because of the danger and threat of new Wars that are being planned secretly according to Professor Stanley iranowitz w war against Iran as a matter of fact unless you refuse to count um embargoes um uh things like that are going on at this very moment that is to say in March of 2012. that's inactive that is virtually an act of war that we are saying to the Iranians either you bow to our demand that you do not develop nuclear weapons and you renounce nuclear weapons or otherwise we will continue to to Bar your goods from going back and forth I mean after all the market is part of the the system so they're saying you have no Market rights so there is a war underway right now I think so but most Americans don't really know it do they that's right they really know about this power elite do they really know about what she Wright Mills talked about so many years ago why is that and how can that change because we don't have a left that really continually in an effective way talks about who has power in America we have the Occupy Movement talked about 99 being deprived of uh economic uh Power and about inequality but it is not even close to being an analysis that can be uh disseminated throughout the entire Society we don't have it we don't have a daily news system of daily newspapers we don't have a weekly newspaper we have Twitter we have you know uh various other kinds of social media that we have access to but it does not replace the kind of systematic analysis that could take place as a result of having our own media so Americans in a way are still in the dark and I think you know the left forum and so many other efforts are attempts to challenge that to change them well yes that's right even as President Eisenhower exposed the military-industrial complex he also expressed a very American deeply felt desire for peace and Justice that history has largely forgotten from the Earth and that in the goodness of time All Peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by The Binding force of mutual respect and love [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Moconomy

Views: 137,349

Keywords: who rules america documentary, eisenhower speech, surveillance, military industrial complex, military industrial complex dwight eisenhower, danny schechter documentary, american politics, political power, us politics documentary, corporate governance, corporate power, conspiracy theories, conspiracy, democracy, american democracy, american society, youtube documentary, free documentaries, full documentaries, best documentary, business, finance, economy, documentaries, Documentary

Id: FJY77yv9iZw

Length: 72min 13sec (4333 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 22 2022