Elite Power and American Rights
Introduction
The American republic was born with both promise and peril. Its founders celebrated liberty while fearing the corrupting influence of wealth and aristocracy. Thomas Jefferson warned of an “artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth.” John Adams predicted that property would “accumulate in Individuals and Families” and the “snowball will grow as it rolls.”
Two and a half centuries later, that snowball is an avalanche. Wealth and power have concentrated in ways the founders feared, and in the 21st century this concentration has evolved into something more radical: a movement of elites who no longer seek to influence democracy but to replace it. Their doctrine, known as the Dark Enlightenment, represents an intellectual and technological revolt against democratic governance itself.
This article traces the long arc of elite power in America, from the Gilded Age to the New Deal, from Reaganomics to Silicon Valley, and explains how the Dark Enlightenment has emerged as its most dangerous mutation.
I. The Enduring Tension: Wealth vs. Republic
The United States has always wrestled with the contradiction between its democratic ideals and the privileges of concentrated wealth. Even as the republic abolished entail and primogeniture, it entrenched chattel slavery, the most extreme form of wealth accumulation, which denied Black Americans both freedom and economic participation. That hypocrisy seeded intergenerational wealth for white elites and exclusion for others.
Across history, wealth has cycled through phases of expansion and retrenchment, punctuated by resistance movements that fought to restore balance. Scholars describe these cycles as the First Great Divergence (Gilded Age), the Great Compression (New Deal to 1970s), and the Second Great Divergence (1980s onward). Today, we are entering what some call the Techno-Feudal era, where power is embedded in digital infrastructure itself.
II. Historical Mechanisms of Elite Power and Resistance
The Gilded Age (1870–1900) – The First Great Divergence
The Gilded Age was a period of extreme inequality. By 1900, the wealthiest 10% controlled three-quarters of national wealth. Corruption was direct and brazen: Union Pacific executives bribed Congress in the Crédit Mobilier scandal; tariffs protected monopolies while raising consumer prices.
But resistance grew. Populists and Progressives fought to regulate monopolies and curb corruption. The Sherman Antitrust Act (1890), Clayton Antitrust Act (1914), and the creation of a federal income tax (16th Amendment, 1913) represented victories in forcing elites to pay their share and empowering labor against corporate dominance.
The Great Compression (1930s–1970s)
The New Deal and post-WWII reforms reshaped the social contract. Progressive taxation, Social Security, labor protections, and corporate responsibility reduced inequality dramatically. Top marginal tax rates soared above 90% during the 1940s, unions flourished, and prosperity was widely shared.
Yet exclusions remained systemic. Black Americans were excluded from labor protections and housing programs, locked out of the suburban middle class that policy helped create. Even at its most egalitarian, the system reinforced racial hierarchy.
The Second Great Divergence (1980s–Present)
The Reagan Revolution reversed much of this progress. Taxes on the wealthy were slashed, social programs gutted, and unions dismantled. The corporate creed shifted back to shareholder primacy, fueling skyrocketing CEO pay and stagnant wages for workers. By the early 2000s, income inequality rivaled the Gilded Age.
This was not an accident of markets, but the result of deliberate policy: tax cuts, deregulation, and the dismantling of collective power.
III. The Modern Apex: The “Techno-Feudal” Turn and the Dark Enlightenment
Today’s elites are no longer content with shaping policy. Increasingly, they envision replacing democratic governance with corporate sovereignty.
New Mechanisms of Capture
Sophisticated lobbying replaces old-fashioned bribery.
Dark money PACs and revolving doors blur the line between government and industry.
Estate tax avoidance schemes ensure dynastic wealth endures.
Courts refuse to recognize wealth as a suspect category, leaving no constitutional check on oligarchy.
The Dark Enlightenment: A CEO’s Coup Against Democracy
The most radical expression of this shift is the Dark Enlightenment (NRx), an ideology that reimagines governance as a corporate takeover.
The Cathedral: A rhetorical construct collapsing media, academia, and bureaucracy into a single “enemy” that must be demolished.
Neocameralism: The idea of installing “CEO monarchs” to run states like corporations.
The Patchwork: A vision of thousands of privatized city-states where citizens are customers, not voters.
Real-world echoes are already visible. In 2025, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) oversaw the mass firing of 30,000 civil servants, a direct enactment of Curtis Yarvin’s “RAGE” plan. Meanwhile, experiments with seasteads and enclave projects prototype exit strategies from democratic accountability.
Weaponization of Technology
Perhaps most alarming is the weaponization of technology: algorithms as judge and jailer, AI as enforcer, surveillance as default. The dream of a “Data Leviathan” is to hardcode power into the state’s infrastructure, making democratic challenge nearly impossible.
IV. Conclusion: The Need for Democratic Hardening
Wealth concentration in America has always been political, not natural. But the Dark Enlightenment represents a profound escalation, a bid to render democracy itself obsolete, to replace law with code, and citizens with consumers.
Defending the republic requires more than nostalgia. It demands:
Legal firewalls to prevent capture of institutions.
Technology governance to secure the digital stack.
Civic resilience to rebuild collective power and accountability.
The fight is not abstract. It is underway. And the first step is awareness.
📕 The Dark Enlightenment Files: Dark Enlightenment Unmasked, 2nd Edition, The Elite Revolt Against Democracy (Information War Book Series 18) is written as both diagnosis and remedy: a field manual to recognize, resist, and reclaim democracy before it is coded out of existence.
👉 Available now: The Dark Enlightenment Files on Amazon
